I hate: Ice Wraiths

 And they hate me too.

Skyrim is one of most well travelled games of all time on account of being ported to every system under the sun. I know we joke about how many editions of the game exist but to be frank, it's a stellar game that thanks to the work of modders has a handle of genuine immortality without being necessarily built to facilitate that sort of game. There's no rougelite systems or decent cyclical play loops; but fans refuse to let the game die by modding in any and everything they can think of. Just recently Skyrim got itself a multiplayer mod and a Nemesis-style system straight from Shadow of Mordor. (Better watch out for a cease and desist on that one right there. Who knows how petty Warner Bros are willing to get.) What I'm trying to say is that this a game that has had everything in it torn apart and put back together so well that most players know it's landscape better than Bethesda's developers do. We should considering the amount of times we played through the darn thing. By all rights we as consumers should be surprised by nothing in this game, it should be incapable of rustling any jimmies. And yet...

I have a deep and enduring hatred for the enemy known as Ice Wraiths that I've had since the game first launched in 2011, and retain to this day. I despise their stupid wisp-like design of being bright shining blue, which clashes with their usual spawning environment; ice sheets. I hate the noise they make like a rattling cobra, loud enough to alert you to imminent death but nowhere near clear enough to indicate where the danger is swiping from. I hate their sweeping attack pattern which is nigh on impossible to dodge with how far it travels. And I hate the ice-wall effect they create on the floor with every swoop they make, essentially turning every encounter into a hardly visible minefield thanks to the fact that they spawn in snowy environments and again, the snow floor clashes with Ice Wall. In essence; I think they're most annoying enemy in the game and I hate them.

To be clear, Ice Wraiths are not the most deadly, nor the most one-shot capable in the game. Without turning off kill animations those dubious honours would probably go towards Dragons who, thanks to a badly programmed kill move parameter, can literally cutscene kill you at full health on the highest difficulties. Or maybe towards the Dragon Priests who are pretty much the only other creature in the game to make use of the borked 'wall' spells, that apply constant damage at such a ludicrous rate they can melt your health bar in about five consecutive seconds unless you immediately move, whereas the same amount of time spent in concentrated fire would do a fraction of that damage. (I think it's because of overlapping damage sources that hit you simultaneously, if I were to guess.) Those enemies are both bearable for the sole reason that slaying them is worthwhile. That life-or-death struggle is the demand of a serious boss encounter at the end of a dungeon or a epic ambush from a flying dragon. Are they poorly balanced? Sure. But getting that kill on the otherhand feels like all the more of an accomplishment because you faced that unfair wall. But what of Ice Wraiths?

They're trash. Pitiful forgettable worthless trash mobs so useless they're not even really afforded any substantive lore snippets explaining what the hell they even are! I guess they're just 'elementals' as nebulous of a title that is, but they aren't tied to any quest that really puts any amount of attention on them or their function because they aren't supposed to have a function. Yet somehow they're one-shotting demons. Off the top of my head I can think of only two quests in the entirety of vanilla Skyrim that will pit you up against Ice Wraiths, on any of the major critical paths. You have the route up to High Hrothgar, where they serve as obstacles that can feasibly just be run past. The game doesn't explicitly force you to fight them. And then there's the introduction quest to the Stormcloaks, which pits you against three of them to 'prove your worth'. A funny hazing ritual given that it is single handily the most dangerous task you'll embark on in the entire Civil War quest line. Does every Stormcloak have to kill three Ice Wraiths in order to join? If they did the army would consist of no-one but the Dragonborn.

The problem here is a clash of aesthetic and design, one that I can assume is driven worse by any of the numerous ENB mods that players choose to install given their tendency to up bloom to JJ Abrahams levels in the pursuit of 'beautification'. Bethesda designed an enemy with a jabbing stab range melee attack that does vicious levels of damage on it's own; a split second timing thing if you want to try and side-step it; but they made it damn near invisible thanks to their translucent icy body that slips right inside the already gleaming white of the ice caves and/or sheets they spawn near. They also tend to spawn in packs, meaning you can suffer an heavy infestation of invisible death snakes flying through the air at you for any given time without knowing it before your death.

And this is coming from a guy who actually loves the winter world of Skyrim. In fact, I like all depictions of winter as long as it come from the distance of a plasma screen. Yet for the Ice Wraiths that very theming is it's death. Not to mention how the things are damned sturdy too! Skyrim in general has a pretty piss-poor elements system where elemental weakness or strengths are pretty inconsequential in combat, and nowhere is that more frustrating then when facing literal ice monster that hardly feel it when being blasted with fire spells. They're also resistant to straight physical damage, which makes them a small tank and a canon; guess god really did the min-max stats when coming up with these guys on their character sheets; huh.

I welcome any number of ice-tainted Skyrim beasts over the bloody ice wraiths. Ice Trolls; annoying for their regeneration abilities but at least they're slow enough to make sense for the power behind every swing. Ice wolves; sturdy but easy to ultimately overwhelm. Frost Giants; so overpowered they literally break the physics engine but still good for the odd laugh. Everything else has some saving grace to them but the ice wraiths. I don't even think they're visually all that interesting; you know, in the brief moments you can even actually see them. Their design of spikes upon spikes just sort of brings to mind memories of the Prometheans from Halo 4; messy overdesigned garbage that melts into the scenery. It's just a good thing that Ice Wraiths are only a single rarely used enemy instead of an entire third of the running time. (God, Halo 4 made me weep.)

Many people flock to mods for Skyrim looking for some sort of mod to disable the spiders from their game because they've allowed their phobias to grow so bad they literally can't function if a badly animated one is on screen. (To be frank, I also have a phobia with spiders. If you think Skyrim's are bad, you would suffer a heart attack playing 2001's Resident Evil.) What I need is a mod that erases all Ice Wraiths for the game entirely so they be neither an eye nor brain sore ruining my good questing time any longer. A great exorcism of every Frost Snake from the border of Hammerfell to the Sea of Ghosts. Maybe a Saint Juib-style figure who drives all them from the land in some heroic act of self sacrifice. I don't care about the excuse behind it; it just needs to be done. No more Wraiths!

I hate: Platforming Puzzles where it doesn't belong

A said a Hip, Hop-

We all have our places in life, I am told. Our inexorable, inexplicable mortal duties to which we are chained and drawn like moths to a roaring open flame. To lash out against that fate, or to rove off in search of it, is the topic of many a philosophical piece; but the way I see it, the proposition alone contains the most salient tincture of truth. For if we are to accept the premise that somewhere out there, tucked behind the golden clouds, lays our marble-paved destiny draped and ready in anticipation, then wouldn't it track to say that there are plenty of paths in life simply not for us? Pitfalls to ruin? Dreams within which we simply do not belong? If there is one then there must be the other, and that's why I never shy to point out when I see an errant pilgrim, driven far from their field and languishing in a life not theirs. And today my finger points towards platforming puzzles.

For some reason or other, games absolutely love throwing sections of precision platforming into games that, rather pointedly, are not always platforming games. It galls because platforming is not some throwaway minigame you can just shove into your game when your think the loop lacks variety, like a match 3 tile game. Platformers are delicate and intricate machines, a masterwork of delicate control tweaking, mindful level design and balanced vectors for challenge. Platforming has been around for as long as home gaming as been (longer even) and still it's an artform being worked upon and reiterated towards; people have dedicated their professional lives to making sure their platformers play the best they possibly can. And then Valve comes along and just shoves a platforming section into their first person shooter.

Yes, Half Life, a game renowned for it's groundbreaking variety in mission structure, apparently abandons all vestiges of sanity near it's end act and sends the player into a notoriously fiddly platforming section. I haven't played the game myself so I can't attest to it from experience, but I have seen the section in question and heard tell of controls implicitly not designed for precision platforming. Because of course not, why would they be? The sorts of movement you need for a good first person shooter, smooth fluid movements, decent travel, subtle immersion touches; don't cross the Venn diagram for Platforming in the slightest. (intuitive movement weight, responsive and disciplined controls that start when you prompt and end when you stop.) And perhaps I can't add my own voice to the mix for this game; but I did play DOOM.

In DOOM (2016) there is one level in particular that tasks you with making large jumps over deadly pits of death whilst trading projectiles with a smattering of imps all scattered across a service pipe leading into your destination. This isn't the only platforming puzzle section, but it's the most frustrating to my mind. The large leaps to safety you are required to make, whilst the split second reactions you need for avoiding demonic balls of flame, often clash together to spectacularly frustrating effect. In the heat of it's action, DOOM is dance of call and response between waves of enemies and the suite of movement/violent tools at the player's disposal. All of which comes to a grinding standstill when you need to line up the perfect jump for fear of tumbling to your demise. For this one small section of an otherwise adrenaline fuelled game, it suddenly becomes most heavily advised to find a vantage point and pick off the imps from afar before getting all embroiled in the steelworks of the service bridge. It changes up the pace, I guess; but since when is DOOM not about getting up in the face of demons and blowing their jaw through their skull with a super shotgun? Consider me wholly unconvinced as to the necessity of that platforming section.

And speaking of platforming sections that wrestle with the genre of the game they're thrust into; who's played Dark Souls? Yes, the king of difficulty itself tripped into a vat of ill-advised platforming section for a few memorable awful scenes. Everytime it's been a case of 'you need to drop on these tiny ledges in order to reach the bottom of this pit', and everytime the result is you being reminded once again how pathetic Dark Souls' jump mechanics are. The way you hardly leave the ground more than a couple centre meters, heavy amounts of fall damage, the fact that the button to jump is the same as the one to sprint; everything about these sections are awful. Although little tops the platforming puzzle in the worst boss of the franchise. Which, incidentally, is the reason why this is the worst boss in the franchise. The Bed of Chaos requires a precision jump in order to finish it off, and that single leap alone is the hardest challenge Dark Souls has to offer. It's so unreasonably difficult, that this is the only boss in any Souls game where the progress you make on the boss (cutting his roots) actually stays completed if you die and respawn. Platforming so bad it challenges the traditions of an entire subgenre; that's impressively terrible.

Hollow Knight is a platformer. It's a lot of other genres besides just sharp and precise jumping from stage to stage, but the platforming element to the gameplay cannot possibly be overlooked or undersold. But does Hollow Knight dedicate itself to it's platforming? Well... yes actually. There's a plethora of abilities, some discrete others locked until found, that modify the way you explore the world in a way that meaningfully unwraps the corners of the Hallownest like any good Metroidvania demands. However, is that any excuse to give me something like the Path of Pain? For the entirety of Hollow Knight it's challenge proposition has been on the dance of boss fights, weaving between deranged swipes, crazy slashes and a prolonged assault of energy wave beams shot periodically at you from the boss who is currently rolled up in an invincible ball in the centre of the room. But the optional 'Path of Pain' forgets all that, and shoves frankly inane platforming challenges, squeezed one after the other with but a rare smattering of platforms inbetween hell to rest and checkpoint. They pull platforming tricks on you that the rest of the game never even hinted at. Suddenly you have to pogo bounce on thorn walls, jump-dash-jump through tiny slivers of free space between deadly spike walls and even master a bit of wall-dash cancellation. And what is the reward? For what do we endure these ceaseless attacks on our sanity and goodwill? An insultingly uncomplicated 3 second cutscene. Thanks for the rondo of pain followed by salt to fester the cuts.

And finally, the very reason which I bring this topic up: Blasphemous. Crossing over with another big Metroidvania should have been a cause for celebration, specifically when that game is 'Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night', the much-beloved spiritual successor to Castlevania! But then the team at The Game Kitchen conspired to have us associate Miriam forever with hatred after they unveiled the five Miriam platforming challenges that made up this collaboration. Movement in Blasphemous is decent, it's not the draw and it's platforming challenge typically comes from frustrating movement elements, such as the way this game breaks the rule of 'whatever your sprite can touch, it can climb on', due to the Penitent One's lengthy conehead that doesn't count to his climbing hitbox. Or the unexpected heft which makes you sink like a rock the second after your manual jump is done, so don't expect to angle-glide to your destination. Which makes the concept of challenges that are only platforming related just a nightmare. And indeed, the Miriam Challenges are that nightmare. Precision jumps when the Penitent One is liable to combust the second his pinkie toe scratches a spike's hitbox. Prolonged and timed stringed-together challenge hallways wherein a single death restarts the entire three minute sprint. Oh, and lamp jumping. A mechanic absolutely never explained in the game wherein you attack a lamp mid-air in order to stunt the momentum of your fall briefly. Sounds simple right? Wrong. Because the only time it works is if you hit down as you swing, a variance in attack with absolutely no visual indicator whatsoever, and which makes it difficult to make forward momentum for the way you have drag your analog forward-down and then forward again. Of course, a little tip on that front: you get the same Lamp-jump effect automatically if your just hold the 'dash' button whilst you hit, something else the game goes through great pains to never tell you! I completed these once and they were easily the most frustrating and unrewarding challenges this game had to offer; curse that poxxy Miracle!

And so you can see my problem; when you shove platforming challenges into games not built for them, you are no longer adding to the gameloop but you're throwing in the game's own controls as an enemy to wrestle with. Even games like Hollow Knight, with great movement, feel a little out of place sending us up against a platforming-only battle. Yet despite saying all that, I do recognise the desire to diversify content and would myself wonder about the viability of a game who's only battles are against platforming sections. I suppose at the end of the day this comes down to a question of how you handle it and if your game is built to sustain it; which in that case leaves no room for justification for games like Dark Souls and bloody DOOM; Learn to stick to you lane a little more, devs!

I hate: Tusken Raiders

 I hope they don't come back. Screw their numbers.

No, this isn't a backwards stab at one of the most lamentable lingering plot-threads in the recently ended and decently bloated 'The Book of Boba Fett' series, although why I'm at it: those guys really did drag the show, didn't they? I mean sure, they were supposed to serve some sort of role in teaching Boba how to work in a tribe, in turn showing us how the big bad Fett lion became a mewling house cat for the latter length of our season. But lacking any sort of baseline for the person who Boba Fett was, the transformation felt entirely and utterly devoid of consequence, making these walking carpet salesmen feel like catalysts to pointlessness and mediocrity. But that isn't why I gripe myself with their entire race, much as it must seem like that case. No, my indignations run deeper and fouler, because I hate video game Tusken Raiders.

That must seem pretty general to you. 'Video Game' Tuskens? Which ones? They've been adapted any number of countless times in so many different games it's wont to make your head spin; surely I can't mean to make a statement as meaninglessly sweeping as to declare them all the worst of the worst! Except I can, and I do, very much so. I hate all Tusken Raiders in every game they're in. And I admit that it's unfair. There's no rot so deep that it touches each and every iteration of them- that would be impossible. What I'm about to discuss, for example, has no bearing on their Lego Star Wars incarnation. (At least, not exactly, but they do show up quite frequently in the level they star for.) But it's an issue of such frequency that their presence now imbues me with the expectation that they are soon to wrong me. And what is my great cause for concern? Simple: They're OP as heck!

I know that Star Wars has always found itself infatuated with the idea of the weak prevailing over the powerful, from rebellions to teddy bears, so it shouldn't be too surprising to see that a race of tribalistic sand-people that largely shun the technological bars that dictate the entire rest of the Star Wars universe tend to be unrealistically savvy battle opponents. That's a given for a George Lucas species. But these Tusken's, in most every one of their games, are just demons. They shatter the difficulty curve whenever they show up, rewrite the combat standard, bring home the sweaty palms and distressed brows. Tusken Raiders absolutely wreck shop, and I cannot stand them. Why should nomad tribals be able to haunt me across Star Wars games like this? When will it stop!

Perhaps the first time I really noticed it was during the original Star Wars Battlefront, where their people hold the unique position of being one of the only non-combatant factions who simply inhabit a certain map and are allowed to capture and hold territory completely for their own. They terrorise the Dune Sea map and their weapon holds the dubious honour of being one the highest damage output rifles in the game, capable of one-shotting you on the highest difficulty. They spawn endlessly, forcing the real conflict to try and continue around them, they hold enough prowess to take the entire map if only their programming would allow them to leave the areas around the Sarlacc pit, and they turned my defence position into rubble countless times with sheer indomitable force. I'm not ashamed to say that they ran me out of that area of the game for life, I've never tried to capture their Command Posts in the years since I was a child playing their poxxy levels. Thus was the first time I realised that these tribal were more than just troublesome.

Next I vividly recall that feeling of an injustice being made upon my person during my first time playing the classic: Jedi Knight Academy. As every Star Wars property must do at least once, there is a mission where you visit Tatooine. Because for a backwater, no-where planet with nothing of consequence on it whatsoever, it doesn't half seem to attract the fate of every significant player in the Star Wars Galaxy, does it? I can't remember why you have to go there, I don't remember much of what the mission held. All I remember is the hell that was trying to clear the parts of the level invested with Tuskens, for their sheer damage output rivalled that of the many full-blow, card carrying, Crimson saber wielding, Sith your go up against throughout the game. This time it was their Gaffi sticks that I feared, for they seemed to possess the power to pass through my invincible light blade and gut me like a fresh-hung fish in the Butchers. There was none of the intense, back and forth duelling which characterised the other power melee duels that Jedi Academy seemed to excel at. None of the dangerous dance of death, ducking and diving around deadly daggers. It was just boom: you're dead. You meet a Tusken, it kills you. (Best keep your distance!) For a game that seemed to fuel the power fantasy of being an incredibly versatile Jedi, this single mission turned that dial to the exact opposite end, where I was feeling as green and gangly as a fresh spat-out Undead in the waking hours of my Dark Souls playthrough.

Of course, there's no way I could talk about overpowered overlords without bringing up the single greatest Star Wars game ever made. That's right, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic features it's own share of Raiders, and they're just as bad as ever. Populating, where-else, the Tatooine level; these cretins prove to be the single most consistently troublesome threats in every playthrough I do. Key reasons: they're resilient, hit hard, come in packs- oh, and they ambush the living daylights out of you the second you touch the sands. It's almost laughable for the fools at Arrakis to be afraid of their petty Sand worms, when the true reapers of the sands wear baggy curtains. I cannot, for the life of me, spec a Tusken-proof team, and I've tried repeatedly. Once again, these inexplicably invincible insurrectionists dominate the day. More the fool, I.

I think for me it comes down to the ignominy of the matter. In Battlefront I'm a trained solider, battle-hardened on the blood-stained sands of countless worlds, and effortlessly bushwacked by rug ruffians. In Jedi Knight Academy I'm an aspiring Jedi knight who's downed battalions of Stormtroopers, and who is coming to grips with slaying Dark Jedi themselves! Only I can't handle the ragtag raiders from down in the Dune Sea. And in KOTOR I'm a deity of ability, effortless mowing down rooms of Sith, putting down Dark Malak himself with but a few hits- but Tusken Raiders are harder to hit? Am I interpreting that right? Sand People make for more competent duellists than the erstwhile Dark Lord of the Sith? Some part of that is undeniably hilarious, but the rest is achingly sad. And frustrating. Good thing these guys are stuck to their sand Tipis, they'd be worse than the Mandalorian menace if we let them loose in the stars!

Who can say when it was that every single disparate Star Wars game developer sat down and collectively decided that this particular enemy archetype was going to the bane of this franchise from every corner, but I lament that day with a passion! I can only assume that this curse extends further than the game within my ken too. Masters of Teras Kasi? I'll bet that Hoar can wreck the player with a hand tied behind his back. (Wait, no, the Tusken Raider from the game is called 'Hoar'. That's literally his name, I'm not calling him-) New Lego Star Wars? I bet the raiders swarm and demolish you in freeplay like biblical locusts. And Jedi Fallen Order 2? You heard it here first, but I'm betting Cal's greatest yet-to-be-fought nemesis wears a tatty cowl and caws like a hog in an orgy.

I hate: Skyrim's Killmoves

 Fatility.

I have been playing a simply obscene amount of Skyrim recently, and that renewed familiarity has sparked up some dormant issues that you only really think about when 200 hours into a playthrough. Such as the killmove system: which sucks. And to be clear, I remember this being one of the most exciting things proudly postured in the marketing leading up to that initial 11/11/11 release date. Oblivion's combat was rather famously one of it's weakest aspects, with a notoriously flimsy 'chopstick' waving of swords that was considerably lacking in impactful connection and even more in strategy. Somehow even Morrowind manages to give it's players more options in the heat of combat than Oblivion did, and the magic/ archery system wasn't much more advanced. So now that Skyrim was going to be directly addressing that, people were excited to try out this fighting system for themselves. Which was when Bethesda lifted that cudgel and squarely struck the heated Iron with the Killmove trailer.

This was a trailer that consisted purely of every single moment in the game where the animations took over and the player performed some choreographed show of martial prowess, far eclipsing anything we'd seen in an Elder Scrolls game to date. It was violent, it was exciting, and I even think it might have made the cut to be included in the Trump Administration's supercut of video game violence, for those who remember that little MLG compilation vid. And we, the many who were ready and eager for Skyrim to drop into our waiting hands for months already, went crazy for it. We ate that action up to the dregs and didn't even hang around the cafeteria lady in order to beg for more, because we'd feasted heartily. All of which is to say that I was pretty predisposed towards the whole Killmove ecosystem for months before the game came out, so I was just fine ignoring any budding complications with it's implementation once the title arrived.

And nor did I really have any reason to be upset. The gameplay was spiced up sufficiently with the special little flourish moment, typically performed on the last enemy in a wave of combat, and the ability to throw on a perk that allowed for decapitations was widely celebrated by the majority of players as 'super dope'. Even playing on Master difficulty it all seemed to work out just fine. And then Bethesda added Legendary difficulty. Now to understand how these two parts of this story work together, I'm going to need to explain both how the killmoves work and how legendary difficulty works, and then you'll see why this turned into a problem so bad that I, just recently, had to cave and get the mod 'Violens' just so that I could disable killmoves almost entirely. I do not exaggerate when I say that this combination of systems makes the combat nearly unplayable in Legendary difficulties lategame, and if you don't have Violens in your load order but are trying an Anniversary Mode Legendary run; be warned about what to expect from Level 30 up!

Killmoves are triggered on the enemy when two conditions are met, namely that slaying the enemy in front of you will take the player out of combat, and that the attack in question has the potential to kill the enemy in the next hit. As in, the expected calculated damage of the hit will drain all the remaining target's hit points. At the very moment that attack is initiated, before the animation to swing has even begun, the game takes control of the action and the player can watch as an animation plays off. Archery players will know that this becomes a problem when the camera takes control for a ranged shot, and then the enemy simply moves out the way and you get a cinematic presentation of your screw up, but otherwise the system works fairly well. However, it also works on the player. Killmoves on the player can activate even if the player isn't the last enemy in the area who needs to be slain, and will take over, once again, if the attack that is about to be executed has the potential to kill it's target. Keep that in mind.

Now Legendary difficulty in Skyrim expands the difficulty of the game merely by applying modifiers to combat which, when you realise them, absolutely suck. So let me give you a warning that once you realise what the game is doing, it might subconsciously ruin Legendary difficulty combat for you in the future forever. Are you fairly warned? Okay: it's just cutting the damage that NPCs take back 1/4 of the expected damage and multiplying player received damage by x 3. Not really the 'fair world' I was shooting for when I picked the highest difficulty. I wanted to be less of a god, not become the world's most paper-thin human. Oh and yes, the buff to damage received is only on the player, meaning that if you walk around with companions they'll serve to be great damage shields with their x 0.25 damage reduction. Basically; you have to get real good at dodging attacks if you're going to be playing Legendary solo.

But then there's a issue there, isn't there? Because as I described with the way that Killmoves work, the animation takes over the second an attack is queued that has the potential to kill the target. Now kill move animations overwrite the controls of the attacker, and the target; which means that if an enemy launches an attack against you that might have killed you, but you have healing potions or, you know, the ability to move out of the way, your chance to save yourself is overruled by the game taking over for a killmove animation. This becomes an even bigger issue in Legendary difficulty, because every enemy does 3x their damage, which essentially makes it so that any level 30 or above enemy with a two handed weapon can instantly kill you just by focusing their melee aggro on you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Dodging is useless when the killmove activates before the attack animation has begun, and solo legendary play becomes effectively impossible.

And even with a huge group of companions, like how I play, it's still an impossible situation to manage. I remember recently conducting the final mission in the Civil War, and it was essentially like trying to navigate a landmine of enemies who would instantly kill me just by looking in my direction. I had to try to sneak around the enemy lines so that I could quickly break the barriers between me and the final room and just hope that the game didn't spawn 6 guys ontop of whilst I'm doing it. The problem becomes even worse who you realise that, whilst human enemies pull off the most killmoves, most other humanoid enemies do too, which makes Nordic Ruins a slog. And then Dragons can do it on top of that, so melee-range dragon fights are a no-go. Basically, the further along in the game you get, the more impossible it becomes to play the way you want to; and that's a bit of a huge problem.

I can't recall the amount of times I nearly tore out my hair from having a five minute fight totally wasted because my handy shields, Sofia and Inigo, dropped aggro for a split second; I've even had times when I've been behind a wall of companion bodies and still had the animation glitch out, thus I've been melee killed from across the room. It's quite clear we're looking at the sort of game for which Bethesda have layered so many systems ontop of each other that they didn't really realise when two glaring mechanics didn't play nice together, and I suppose now it's just too late to change anything. At least from their end. From yours you can turn off killmoves in the Ini, or download a mod to give the player killmove immunity, which sucks to have to do; but the alternative is a practically unplayable melee combat system in a melee focused fantasy game.

I hate: Minions in Boss fights

 Not the yellow guys. They're aight.

Hate is borne from love they say, or something to that avail, because both demand the utmost extremes of emotion to be reached. Thus I suppose it only figures that I absolutely love boss fights in video games and am so glad that they're coming back into the mainstream lately. I live for those moments of mortal showdown between the protagonist and some powerful, towering foe which stretches every wit and sinew to trade blows with. I love the climatic nature of the events, the emotions, the thrills, the highpoints and the low. Standing across the deck of a burning ship and ripping off perfectly fine suits before Shibusawa, drawing guns inside of a snow-white field of stagnant water lilys against The Boss, and stepping into the Kiln, watching the Soul of Cinder slowly rise amidst a sea of discarded burnt-up swords from a thousand battles fought; these are the moments that steal my heart away time and time again. A perfect boss fight, in set-up alone, can be unforgettable tournaments of one on one. But we're not here to talk about things that I love, now are we, so let's discuss how games often manage to bottle it and burn my wings in anguish. Time after time.

Minions. Why? I've just fist fought my way through the streets of Kamarucho, snuck across a Russian forest crawling with soviet hit squads and bested Lords with the strength to relight the world; I expect on the other end for my foe to have the common courtesy of facing me like a man; instead of hiding beneath the coattails of swarms-worth of brainless anklebiters that I've already stepped on hoards of in order to get here in the first place. It's demeaning. What enjoyment do I get out of taking a break between each expertly dodged move to go "Oh whoops, the mobs are getting rowdy again, better take a quick time out"? Why should anyone have to deal with their clash of the titans moment being interrupted by an errant skeleton who's trying to remember how to cast a basic fireball? "Excuse me, Skeleton-mage-man, but I'm right in the middle of something right now. This huge climax of tension and narrative drive that the world designers and storytellers have been weaving throughout my last stretch of gameplay, could you sod off and let me enjoy that now?" Is that being too direct? Not enough?

A boss is a very special milestone to reach, and it should be an exciting affair as well. Oftentimes they precede important story revelations or an impressive tract of land that's about to open up to you. Rarely does a boss not come without a reward, even if it's just relief of having duelled and won the day. Thus there's almost a sacredbond between these moments and players; an unspoken rule that things are about to get tough but you can mange through the struggle by learning your enemy, maybe through several attempts, and exploiting those weakness. The game has saw fit to challenge our resolve, and thus we meet it with all our vigour and intrigue. Something new, exciting and unexpected lurks just beyond that foggate and I'm going to be the one to figure it out! Only for it to turn out to be a swarm of nobodies who sit on you whilst their boss does the dirty work. Does anyone else come away feeling cheap after such fights? Like they were used and tossed out the next morning without so much as a cup of coffee? 'Cause that, win or lose, is me. Utterly unamused. 

In my eyes this spawns the same sort of dissatisfaction that those feel who complain whenever a boss is simply just a scaled up version of an enemy you fought in the level beforehand. (I mean it's not that lazy, mind you, but it feels that way to me.) I expect new experiences, new movesets and new tension, such to the point where I'll even rate boss fights with unique boss minions in them over those that recycle the level's mob trash, because at least then I know that these are enemies geared to be in this fight. Otherwise it almost always turns into an inelegant mess of a battle where attention is drawn away by a back-up troop who all engage in their own tactics instead of supporting their boss, because that's just how they designed at a base level. So I switch target, loss focus, get bum rushed, die, rinse and repeat. And it's almost never with a smile on my face.

Dark Souls, bless that franchise, understands this fully, and even in the battles that are occupied by mobs the boss in them is designed in such a manner where they would be useless without the mobs. Imagine battling the Deacons of the Deep without the hoards: the fight would be even more trivial then it already kind of is. I just don't see why, when you already have a tough-as-nails headlining act, they need to have the audience rush the matt for backup. Okay, that's not true, I do kind of understand the logic. Some of the reasoning doesn't escape like I wish this practice would. I say that because, at a base level, good design does dictate that the challenges and tribulations of a level should reinforce the skills that you need to use as the game becomes more difficult. Thus I can kind of see the logic behind populating boss fights with identical enemies to the level you just bested as though to say "Look, you fought these guys before so you should be familiar with them!" But I'd call this a case where the forest is wholly missed for the tress.

Now there's obviously a angle to be addressed here of design and balancing that I am sort of knowingly bulldozing over to make a point. That's because I think the expectations of a boss battle are fundamentally different what what is sought out of level-filling mob trash. When trudging through levels, I expect a diverse smattering of enemies who feel intelligently placed enough to give the area life and stretch gameplay across the area I'm playing in. They don't necessarily have to feel like they were crafted for the halls I'm fighting down because I expect these guys and their AI to meet me in a variety of locations over my gaming adventure. Level trash needs to be adaptable, a little indistinct and be designed to be fought time and time again without being boring. And I'll imagine you're already starting to see the comparison I'm about to make. Boss enemies are, ideally, meant to be as synonymous with their arenas as they are with their gameplay. (Remember how I noted each boss' location when I gave examples earlier?) Their size, attacks, speed, design: everything should be crafted to compliment the location within which you fight them, whether that is to hinder your struggles or aid them. These aren't enemies you could just pick up and place across the game, they have their space and it's a space made for them. So isn't it galling, then, for the mob trash to invade that space? Doesn't it speak to an inherent disrespect of the sacred boss arena?

But of course, there has to be an example of a climatic boss fight which does exactly this but does so without such complaints from me, and the example which comes most readily to mind right now is that of the Dragon Age Origins finale. (Spoilers. Duh.) At the end of that game you're tasked with duelling a huge dragon atop a burning city whilst hoards of Darkspawn do their best to rearrange your face. Now this is by no means the first dragon you've met in your journeys (his breath does unique damage but that's about it) so you know these guys can hold a fight on their own. But you're being assaulted by other enemies as well in a manner that doesn't feel ridiculous, and here's why. Firstly, you're not alone during this fight and this is supposed to resemble a large scale conflict, so the trash makes sense. Secondly, they're intelligently spawned so that you're not drowned in them. Thirdly, only the simplest of enemy types spawn so that you don't have to deal with complex strategies that draw attention from the main fight. And lastly; because the game is a tactical RPG in which you can take the time to pause the action, take a step back and unravel each new complication as it heads your way. That's why this sort of mobbing can work in games like X-Com too; it's fits the genre.

Of course, at the end of the day if you'd ask me which I'd rather have, trash filled boss arenas or no boss fights at all, I'd have to err towards the former, but that doesn't mean I'll stop suing for fundamental improvement to how such encounters are designed. Great boss fights can make or break a game's legacy and I think that in today's age, with as many brilliant examples of tight boss design as we have, there's not really an excuse for such clear, at least to me, missteps. Maybe I'm the one being regressive and there's some brilliant execution of this very issue of mine that blows away every single bit of my criticism. But I haven't played it yet and, given the breadth of games I have played, I can rather confidentially say that it's probably the exception and not the rule.

I Hate: Fallout 4 Radscorpions

King of the Scorpions

I'm going on a rant. Can I go on a rant? I haven't really tried this out on the blog before but I'm biting the bullet this time. I never thought that one of the series that I would start on this blog would be focused on executing rants but I do have a few things to get off my chest and what better forum is there than here. As such I've devised a little irregular blog topic wherein I ponder on those little nitpicks that do more than irate, but illicit actual rage from the player. (I.e. Me) Maybe that will open up an opportunity to talk about ways these gameplay decisions could have been avoided, or suggest improvements. But even if neither of thus are feasible; at least I'll find it theraputic enough to rave to myself on the Internet. (Is there any more noble a sport?) Although, just to be clear; I'm talking specific aspects of games that drive me wild, even when the rest of the game is solid. (Afterall, there's no point ragging on bad features of bad games.

With all that said; you guys remember Fallout 4? Back when that game was still fresh I remember losing my mind over a great many features and baubles that Bethesda dangled in front of us with those damn trailers, with one of the more esoteric points of excitement being the way that the engine improvements allowed for whole new enemy animations. Now this may sound like a small thing, but being such a huge Fallout fan as I was I knew that this was huge! Previous games suffered from an ageing version of Unreal engine that made enemy attack animations very stiff and limited, whilst this new iteration would allow for the zombie-like Ghouls to literally hurl themselves through the air at you in a much scarier way. In many ways this was a complete overhaul of the monsters themselves, completely changing the way they acted and fought resulting in wholly different experiences.

At the time I remember quaking in my flip flops, fearing what sort of crazy change this would make to some of Fallout's most fearsome foes. Super-mutant behemoths would be terrifying! Mirelurk kings might actually present a threat! But most exiting of all, was imaging the world of difference this would do to the ironically blood-chilling Deathclaws. The change would be game changing. And it was. It changed the Deathclaws from being one of the most intimidating threats in the Fallout universe into a mild inconvenience. Yeah they hit hard, but they moved like a drunk dumpster now, they somehow became more predictable and dodge-able. (I miss when they just charged up to give you the biggest hug!) Of course, there was one iconic Fallout monster for which this change had the opposite effect, and you guessed it; It's the humble Radscorpion.

Now Radscorpions were nothing to shake a fist at in the old Fallout games either. Mutated Emperor Scorpions that had somehow spread across America and reigned terror on the people of the wasteland with their huge pincers and poisonous stingers; they weren't exactly teddy bears. In Fallout 3 they were quite the intimidating sight for the early adventurer, boasting resistance to most kinds of damage and, confusingly, no damage bonus in their stingers. (But it's so tempting... why shouldn't I shoot it?) Even by the late game they retained their scare-power with their powerful 'albino' variants. But they were ultimately a manageable threat every-time, you know that all it was going to take was patience, speed and a big-ass-gun. But that all changed when the Fallout 4 nation attacked.

"It just works" Huh, Todd? It just works? Is 'working' what you call the abomination upon humanity that you all call 'the modern Radscorpion'? In Fallout 4's development I can only imagine that someone in the team suffered from a small bout of concentrated malice injected directly into his psyche, an affliction he or she decided to relieve by significantly altering the formula of the Radscorpions into easily one of the most dangerous threats in the Commonwealth. No, actually I changed my mind; Radscorpions are the threat of the Commonwealth. Forget the Institute and Synths, that's baby stuff, what we should really be worrying about is the potential annihilation of the human race at the hands of immortal, teleporting Arachnids. Radscorpions are what would happen if the Pillarmen were innumerable and even more pitiless. Rumours say they can't die because even Satan doesn't want their ass down their. If Thanos snapped his fingers, the entire Radscorpion population would survive it as they are master to no one, not even infinity stones. (I'll stop.)

"You're blowing things out of proportion again, you unhinged loon; tell it like it is!" Oh, you doubt me? You dare doubt the supremacy of the Radscorpions? Let me enlighten you... In their revised Fallout 4 incarnation, Radscorpions move at three times the speed of the player (Makes sense, they're giant arachnids, afterall) but their transportation has another horrible quirk to it. You see, on the absolute off chance that you manage to break line of sight with them (Which you'd have to be freakin' Usian Bolt to pull off) they've borrowed the burrow ability from the molerats. Essentially this means that they burrow underground and then teleport beneath you before coming back up again. During their time submerged, Radscorpions are invincible, can cross huge tracts of land instantaneously, and reserve the right to hit you with their stinger in the same action as resurfacing. Speaking of getting hit...

Radscorpions not only do an unreasonable amount of damage (to be fair, that was always sort of their MO) but they also wave their stinger around like they're worried it's going away soon. (Which it most certainly is if I get my hands on the scaled bastards!) Their stinger hits with the kind of poison after-kick that puts 'New Vegas' Cazadores to shame, (and I never thought I'd say that) it's quick acting, strong, and in higher difficulties one sting can straight up kill you if not treated. Also, there's no cure so the only way to shrug off the poison is to pump a Stimpak and hope you out-heal it. (That's how medicine works, right? You don't address the problem, you out-heal the patient. I think I read that somewhere...) So we've established that the Radscorpions move incredibly fast (basically just teleport), overuse a supremely overpowered ability on the player and, to make matters worse, can cheese-hit you with that ability whilst teleporting. Can it get worse? Of course.

You see, enemies like this are not uncommon in games. Strong, fast hitting enemies are great 'oh crap' fodder for enemy design and titles tend to make use of that. That's why in every Dark Souls game there is one boss with a flaming sword and an overabundance of adrenaline to ruin your day. (Okay, maybe Dark Souls 2's 'Pursuer' doesn't exactly have a flaming sword but the principle is the same.) It works like this; the enemy hits fast, hits hard, but is a glass cannon. There has to be that weakness tacked on at the end otherwise you'll start feeling like this prison is hopeless. Seems no one told that to the Bethesda team, however, because they gave no such weakness to god-scorpion-san. Radscorpions are almost entirely laser proof this time around, the lasers literally bounce right off their shell. They are resistant to bullets, rad damage and even fire doesn't seem to burn them like you'd hope it would. (Then again, I suppose if concentrated lasers didn't work that's sort of a given, huh.) Your only option is to hit them like a truck, resistances and all, until you've expended an entire armoury worth of bullets into them; at which point they become so damn heavy from all the extra weight that they keel over and die. That is the only option.

To say that I hate these enemies is an understatement. I totally despise their entire existence. They feel like they were made for an entirely different game altogether, (one with dodging) and the only way they can be decently fought in Fallout 4 is by exploiting the heck out of the mechanics. And if you think that's bad; don't even try to imagine how painful they are in Fallout 76. In that game the developers had the presence of mind turn down their poison damage (thank god) but apparently not enough sense to remove their ability to spawn in packs. In fact, due to the way spawning works in Fallout 76, it's possible to come across a goddamn colony of them roaming the woods. If you're wondering "Wait, if all this is your thoughts about handling one Radscorpion, how in the heck do you manage a pack of eight?" You don't. You die. A lot.

So how could the Radscorpions of Fallout 4 and 76 be improved? Just get rid of the teleportation, honestly, it feels cheap. Imagine facing off against the last game in a Battle Royale only for him to teleport underneath you and whack you with a deathblow; you'd feel pretty robbed and that's literally every Radscorpion encounter ever. To be clear, this would in no way make them a fun enemy to fight, but it would at least make it feasible to approach them in your own way. (Something that Bethesda games use to promote.) As it stands, these monsters can only be taken down by overwhelming force, nothing else works. Running away? Nope, they can teleport. Stealthing? Nope, the second they take damage they teleport to it's source. Avoiding althogther? Kinda, but they have a bad habit of spawn surprising you anyway. So kill the teleport, and maybe one of the resistances, (There is no reason why bullets wouldn't crack their shell) or just cull their entire species altogether. Actually, yeah, do that last one. Okay, I've ranted myself back into relative sedation now. Screw Radscorpions, and I'm done.