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10 Things That KILL THE VIBE in Video Games

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Rating: 4.5; Vote: 2

When you hit that groove, you're playing a game and you're just cruising. You're really getting into it. But, then something happens, and you're taken out of the game. That immersion is gone, and all that's left is this hollow feeling that you're kind of wasting your time. Everything was going great, but now the vibe is gone. Hi, folks, it's Falcon. And today on game ranks 10 things that kill the vibe in video games, starting off with number 10, dying during a scripted moment. Probably one of the most obvious examples here, single player games live and die off their big setpiece moments, but there's a careful balancing act. These got to be interesting and exciting to experience. Number 10 And that means play, rather than just see GAM playay, means there's often the threat of death to add to excitement and motivation for the player. That's fine. That's not the problem. The problem is if you die during one of these big scripted moments, it completely kills the moment. One second. You're enjoying this crazy spectacle. The next, you're staring at a loading screen and doing it all over again. I mean, that just, the magic just vanishes. There's plenty of games that fall victim to this kind of vibe. Killer too. One older example, I feel like a really sticks out for me is Uncharted 3. This big marquee set piece. The plane crash, you know it. You've seen it when you get into a shootout. In the cargo plane, it explodes. Drake grabs onto some cargo and he rides it down into the desert. It's this huge cinematic event that's supposed to really get your blood pumping. But I kept dying. Like within seconds of loading a checkpoint, it really killed it, for me, because it stopped being about this crazy thing, this adventure, and started being about. All right. Well, this thing's going to happen, and I need to do this thing, and then I need to do that thing. It is a sequence of events that I need to get good at, rather than an incredible thing that's happening. Seeing Drake, RAGD doll across the screen for like 20 time, in 10 minutes, it wasn't just demoralizing. It really killed the vibe. And number nine is performance issues. I love PC gaming, but compared to consoles where you can just start up in the game, it mostly works. Number 9 Trying to whip a PC game in shape can be a total vibe killer. A lot of games want to start off with some kind of impressive cinematic moment to seamlessly introduce you to the game. But the stutter, ah, dang. Well, time to jump into the settings and mess around with the options and sliders for 20 minutes, and kill any moment to my head. Starting the game up. O, and that's not even getting into the more gamebreaking stuff. Like all those problems in Alo 2, where items ended up permanently in your way and you couldn'! t progress. I was one of the victims. I tweeted about that one, believe me, I went through the whole RigaR-roll, trying to fix it, going into my PC settings, updating graphics drivers manually, tweaking presets altering. If there were any INII files, I would have altered the hell out of them. Because I have done that many a time to fix an issue with stuttering. Or what have you? And all too often, performance issues come entirely down to the game itself. And sometimes there just nothing you can even do about it. But, there's no way to know until you waste that hour, trying to fix it first. Yeah. Even if you do get things going, the rest of your gaming session is kind of spent in suspense. You're like,y, what if that happens again, then you're back to square one. If it happens, again, it has nothing to do with what you fixed. It probably sounds pretty neurotic to console players, but if you play on a PC, you know exactly what I mean, and don't pretend you don't. Number 8 And number eight, when you feels like you're doing something wrong and you don't really know why. It's rare that a game makes it feel like anything is possible and your choices truly matter. But what there is freedom, there's also uncertainty, like if you ever played an RPG, where you made a choice, but in the back of your mind, you're really, like really honed in on whether that choice is the right one. I don't, I don't mean something that can just affect the ending. But ultimately, how you play the game. I mean, the types of games where you can like lose party members or destroy entire settlements by mistake, like Balers, gate 3, don't get me wrong. Amazing game. But sometimes a random choice you make can completely kill the vibe. Perfect example. At the start of Act 2, you end up in the last night in the only good-guy, refuge in this part of the game. So, for most people, you need to access this place. If you want to survive at all, cuz the entire region. Act 2 is shadow, cursed and literally hurts to be in. Without some kind of protection. Talk to the wrong NPC who, by the way, seems like the character you're meant to talk to, and the, in-gets attacked by a powerful group of enemies, who you most likely will not be able to beat at the start of the ACT. If you fight and fail, literally everyone at the end, dies, and its protection goes down. So, the one-friendly town in the area is just gone, and it's just from talking to the wrong NPC. And that's a direct choice. What about the times where certain decisions have long-term consequences that aren't obvious for hours, if sometimes disastrous consequences, bother you. This is one of those games that is going to, it's going to drive you absolutely nuts. There's a reason most games barely react to your decision, cuz. The ones that do are really nerve wracking, and number seven is protagonists that just won't shut up. Number 7 Modern games have done a lot to alleviate the grievances of previous generations, things like long load times, slow tutorials, awkward control schemes. Those things are mostly a thing of the past, but some vibe, killers will never go out of style, sometimes. All it takes to kill A vibe, is for someone to say something stupid. Take the opening of atomic heart. It's a visual feast with incredible world building. He can't help but drink in the scenery and feel immersed by this truly unique vision. And then the protagonist talks and talks, oh, and he also talks. Does the protagonist have a stupid catchphrase? Yeah, oh, yeah, you bet I can't figure out what it is. Crispy critters, man. Now, I'm not going to lie, I'm the kind of person who likes the hammy-type, goofy nonsense that this guy spews not. Because I think it is good. Keep in mind, but I get a certain level of enjoyment from it, that I will acknowledge, is probably not the most common reaction to it. And for people who are not like that, this idiotic protagonist manages to single-handedly ruin the vibes in this game. And it never really manages to recover A lot of games. That would be better served with moments of silence. They're kind of deathly afraid of the, like the player getting bored. So the character just talks. It's even worse when they start yelling at you to move on or hurry up. But thankfully that doesn't happen as much as it used to. Sonic tap in his toe, gets a pass, cuz, it's Godamn, adorable. And look at Sonic Superstars. That's okay, man. You, you do the same thing you did back in the 16-bit era, but cuter, really. Playing our nostalgia against us there. But most of the time, yeah, it. It's unbearable. And thankfully, there's less of it, cuz, man. That can kill the vibe, like crazy. At number six is the wall of Side Quest Should be fun to explore and find new places in an RPG, but some games just make us dread it. And instead, like, have you ever been in this position, where you're playing a game, you enter this new area. Number 6 The first thing you see is a brick wall of new side quest markers, just waiting for you to meticulously go around and collect. It's like coming into the office late and finding 30 messages in your inbox, labeled urgent. I see this, and my eyes just they glaze, right? The hell over. It's worse in games that really want you to have an entire conversation, just to get every quest going. Because, you know, it's going to take like 20 damn minutes. Just sitting there listening to NPC's talk, you sort of have to pay attention, cuz, a dialogue, tree B, they're probably hiding little nuggets of information in there you need, or maybe they're not, I don't know, a lot of the time they are, but you can't watch something on your second screen, because something might require your attention. Might the way side quests work in some games, just, it's exhausting sometimes. When I go in a new place, I just got to turn the game off. I, I can't, I can't deal with that right now. I'll take the time to talk to all these people when I'm mentally prepar. Like I'm, I'm socI anxious with virtual people in the thing I'm using to get away from social anxiety in the real world.come on, man. Number 5 And number five is rubber banding, the never-ending debate over AI and rubber banding and racing games. It's not going to end here, because I'm just saying what everybody knows. Yeah, a little rubber banding is necessary to keep racing games competitive or even interesting in a lot of cases. But if it's overly aggressive and the game obviously cheats, it takes. It takes me right out of the game, even in moments where it's not, obviously just teleporting AI racers around, it still really sucks to spend the entire race in first place, completely dominated in competition, only for the rubber banding to kick in the last second, get beaten to the finish line. It's not just unfair, it's nonsense. It's annoying, both ways. It sucks when you get beaten out of nowhere, and it sucks when you're completely whiffing the race and somehow manage to win, just because the other racers get artificially bad at racing. They, their cars suddenly become slow when you're not doing as well in a real race. Everyone's trying to win when, you know, notice obvious rubber banding. It's like, when you know, your big brother's letting you win in a fighting game, intentionally pulling punches feels like it's handling you with kid gloves. But, when you're actually doing well and impressing even yourself with your own skills, and the game comes, and slaps you down. For the audacity of actually being good at the game, the oh, O, it's a careful balance to make races feel fair. And it's something developers are still trying to get, right, is one of those things. It's very easy to get wrong too. And when they do, the fun racing vibes are just over, no more. You're done under way. Don't leave me hanging info here at number four is overly complicated, crafting. There's no faster way to kill an open world action game, then introduce some kind of really fiddly crafting system. Number 4 When the crafting works, it's okay, sometimes it's even really fun. But when you suddenly find yourself needing that one specific crafting ingredient, it can just suck, especially when you need like the, this one material to upgrade your equipment, where you got tons of the ladder. More rare stuff, but this one random thing from a zone you cleared out ages ago. You need that to progress, but you don't remember what enemies dropped it, cuz. It's not something that really matters. Sometimes only spawn specific times, appears certain part in a huge map, and you don't remember that crap. Now, you're behind on upgrading equipment. You're not playing at optimal efficiency, depending on how difficult the game is. You may suffer pretty bad from that. These kinds of crafting systems can turn anyone to an obsessive impulsive hoarder. And even when you try to pick up every possible thing, you still not missing, like one extremely specific thing. And of course, there's no way to just find it, like, find out where it is in the game. Good luck. Oh, and have fun online, cuz when you search it, you get placeholder clickbait, which is my favorite thing. Now fandom, wiki, for the games, AI generated gibberish. We are living in the end times, folks, crafting systems, especially the overtly demand, I'm exaggerating, obviously. But these, kill the vibe, man. Moving on to number three, just barely surviving a combat encounter, and feeling pretty good about yourself. And then grade F. It's true of pretty much any game with a grading system built in. You're struggling through a tough level, or you're fighting an enemy. Just barely manage to sneak out a win. Number 3 It's tons of difficulty and you overcame it. And the game rewards you with this big F and a chorus of children laughing at you. I mean, not necessarily, always, a course of children laughing at you. But yeah, it's like, dang, like, why not? Give me at least a D here, and F means failing, and failing, means like dying, right? If I came out alive and won, that's not failing, right? I don't know. Maybe winning on its own should be a reward. Like in Sonic 06, the fact I somehow managed to beat one of your garbage levels without turning the game off and chucking it into the nearest trash compact as an act of superhuman restraint. That game had some brass balls to try and throw up an F rating after anything, after all said, and done Too easy. No sweat. And number two, dying over and over again. Number 2 In a horror game, it's like dying in a set piece, but it's worse. Cuz. Horror games are very vibe-oriented. You know, the only way someone's going to get scared is if they're really immersed in the experience and when it's working, really good, a horror game can terrify you without barely doing anything at all. When the vibes are off, the whole house of cards falls apart. They can throw the most terrifying thing ever at you. But, but if you're fully aware of all of the mechanics, you're thinking about patterns and cause and effect, you just, you're not scared anymore. It's just math. I'm not scared of. Well, I take that back, but I'm not that kind of scared about math. Once you understand how the enemies work and how precise things are, what you need to do to stop them, avoid them. The game just doesn't seem like a desperate struggle of survival. Just a series of actions that you need to perform to achieve the optimal output. When the mechanics of a horror game laid barar. It's just not scary, stops being a frightening thing, especially when the game's mechanics are really simple. The makers of the amnesia games in S, they were super smart about this. They change the hunter's placement, or just remove them entirely, if you get caught too much, because they know, if you get caught too many times, the scary part just doesn't work anymore. In contrast to something like Outlast 2, which can be extremely confusing visually and has some pretty annoying, sneaking sections that feel arbitrary, even when you're in the middle of them. It's a game where you're going to dial on and replay a bunch of sections over long past the point where it feels even remotely scary. When your game is based entirely on vibes, you've really got to work on preserving those vibes. Stop. And number one is the servers going down, which is, of course the ultimate vibe killer. You're playing the latest game, everything's going smooth. You're enjoying the experience for the most part. Number 1 And suddenly the game stops. And you're hit with the ultimate vibe killer. The server error message, it's annoying when you're playing multiplayer, but it's infuriating when you're playing by yourself, especially when you didn't even know, a game was going to be online, only finding out through an error message is just going to kill any positivity. You were feeling up to that point. It's all completely dead. When I think of the Justice League, I think of Wonder woman, superman, green Lantern, batman, you don't want to mess with that. As long as you get back in the game quickly, it's not terri when the servers are down for like a couple hours, maybe even 12. All those happy vibes that's out the window. I do have a bonus for you too. Bonus When the game turns off the spigot and starts the hard sell, you know what I mean? You know what I mean. Play enough, free to play mobile games, you're going to see this. The game starts off real-generous with drops and rewards. But when you get further into the game, suddenly everything grinds to a halt. This is when the timers start popping up. When the ads start.com in with a cash shop and the speed up and a microtransaction, all that stuff. B also usually conveniently after the game asks you for a review. Nothing weird about that at all, even if the game is fun and you're into it, it just kills the vibes at a certain point it's expected. But, sometimes a game comes along, that's surprisingly decent or has a longer honeymoon period for new players. So, when the pendulum swings back, it's jarring as hell. If you play a lot of mobile games, it's probably not a deal breaker, cuz. You're probably used to it, but for, you know, basically everybody else, it kills the vibes without a problem. That's all for today. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. If you like this video. Like if you're not subscribed. Now, a great time to do. So we upload brand new videos every day of the week. Best way to see them first is, of course a subscription. So click, subscribe. Don't forget to enable notifications. And as always, we thank you very much for watching this video. I'm Falcon. You can follow me on Twitter. At Falcon, the hero. We'll see you next time. Right here on game ranks.
Date: 2024-02-13

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Comments and reviews: 19

BlackMoonHowls
I don't know if this counts but I have been watching someone play GTA RP and because it is basically GTO but without all the BS kinda. Nothing sucks more that trying to play regular GTO and Rockstar screws you like server connection and the haxors and the tech BS and the coding and stuff over-sights the like you know. I want to make an RP server where playing a criminal and being in a gang helps the world building of the RP, the interaction between the in-game Cops and Criminals and stuff. Since me and my friends (semantics) set this up we're Admins but we set it up as having our characters basically have control over the city, friends in the gangs and police and stuff. Free drinks and no entry fees to the clubs and stuff, after all we literally set it all up and also in universe set up the city to the way it is. Hook ups, deals and devil's bargains of whatever. Being Secret Police as Admins has its advantages and one could easily RP the Admin privileges as whatever you can think of, hey say it's super tech or something sounds like fun.
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BiggusDickus147
Something that kills a game for me is when your companion NPC's shout out to, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! when you're about to get attacked from an off screen enemy. It feels like I'm 12 agaub being yelled at by my friend for not playing the video game the correct way. This mechanic almost killed God of War 2018 for me, and absolutely killed Ragnarok for me. There are so many better ways to do this, I'm not sure why they didn't make some more apparent UI element for an incoming attack. Or just give us the option to turn the NPC dialogue off in those instances.
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paradsecar
What really kills the vibe for me is when you complete a mission in an open world game and you end up in the middle of nowhere with no fast travel or means of transportation and the only way to save your progress is to hoof it back 2 or 3 in-games miles back to your safehouse on foot. I was playing Saints Row 2 the other day and it pulled that crap on me. Why are some games able to respawn an endless supply of cars except when you actually need them
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gameranx
I found in Cyberpunk some of V's options were very misleading. I'd want the conversation to go smoothly when speaking to someone, and have to between What I can't believe you'd do something like that! and Oh, well I'm sorry. Here I'd pick the latter hoping that was the right pick, but nah. V ends up saying it in the most sarcastic tone, and the NPC I'm saying it too gets pissed. Like at least put in parentheses (sarcastically) or something.
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jaychapman4466
Man I felt like there were so many ways to deal with areas in BG3 where you can make a sudden decision that screws you over, and you went and picked the one that you're actually meant to do quite early on. You're literally prompted to go there immediately upon arriving at the inn, and the fight isn't particularly hard unless you skipped every bit of content up to this point and you're somehow only level 3.
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bonniehuh
Not rubberbanding, but made me think of Hogwart's Legacy: Summoner's Court. It infuriated me that the NPC's balls stop on a dime, but mine roll for miles. It never feels like you're playing against another wizard child, but it feels like you're trying to accidentally yourself into winning a game against a computer actively trying to make you rage quit. And cry.
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sercba8728
In horror games, jumpscares are the easiest most dull choice to inflict fear. But it only last for a few times, then I get annoyed and sigh after them. I want to experience a constant terror with only little safe rooms, not get prank scared while playing by a falling book or some asshat screaming in my headphones while a super load piano string plays
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dbznappa
When you lose all the powers you've been building up for a period of the game. You have all these sick abilities then for a portion of the story you can't use any of them.
Getting pulled into a big unskippable side-story with no warning.
The Wutai Sidequest in OG Final Fantasy VII where Yuffie steals all your materia did both spectacularly.
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Pe3k_
even a damn powerful pc which costs 150, 000$ sometimes have issues of game crashing and all because i have seen doc disrespect trying to play pubg but his game kept crashing again and again that day so yeah for the graphics quality and performance better than console you gotta sacrifice a bit: (
yeah i hate this: ( only pc users will understand
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robertespinoza5958
See for pc gaming I play the rog ally and I refuse to mess with settings lol like I've noticed studder goes away 5 minutes after loading the game but I've noticed pc games have Gama turned wayyyyy up and that's really the main thing I wanted to adjust but can't figure out how lol and i learned how to download and use mods for games
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GrimGho5t
When you play a server based survival game like rust or scum or even ark and you spend so long grinding for good gear and building yourself up only for other players on the server to come destroy you, your stuff, your base and take all your hard earned gear you went through hell to get or grind for. If that's not a vibe killer nothing is!
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theshizl4400
With number 2, I feel like I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. I conquered RE4r so much that it now feels like I'm just going through the motions while playing. Enemy patterns are perceivable enough to where it becomes muscle memory to beat them. I almost want to say that I play to see if I can get hit, but I'm not there yet
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malkaviian
When you prepare that charged TCS attack in MHW, your timing is perffect, the monster is coming right at you and it will land perffectly, you know that the monster will be sent to the moon with attack, but then, when you're going to hit the monster's head with all you got, the Gajalaka paralises you.
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leegaul2161
I feel like Max Payne was the template for games going forward where protagonists narrate their every thought, however that franchise is based on a film noir aesthetic. It's intentional. Action adventure games with overly pensive protagonists making snarky millennial humor doesn't vibe.
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comeonweareready
The bonus section mentioning the games asking for a review just so they can then throw some micro transactions, remind me of all companies I have worked for. They would have the monthly/yearly feedback, just for a week later change everything in the company hahaha
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danielhoveling342
I know i'll get some hate for this comment. But assassins' creed simulation BS sections. I don't get it. I get into the game and then they pull you out to play meet and greet at some office. This is usually where i end up turning off the game.
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deicide3821
Number 9 hits home being a PC gamer and always wanting The Pretty Graphics Setting to be on. Spending time just making the graphics just right can be a thrill killer especially if you're having issues with stutters or low FPS or just buggy games
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pyroslev
One I'll add that may not fit the list but it goes with video games: When you get into the game vibes but your wife/kids need you for something so minute. It's part of the reason I don't play new games early on as when I play it, I want to enjoy it.
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NightchaserX
Here's a big one.
When you're lost or missed something obvious
You missed a piece of dialogue or hint the games gives you and suddenly you spent an hour just to figure out how to get back on track or figure out the gimmick to a boss.
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