Games, which were ruined for you after you realized how a mechanic works

This poster is right.

Thief to an extent.

The physics engine was pretty good.

Nothing wrong with this one, try actually being on guard duty for days on end and you'll notice yourself being less and less focused and efficient.
But when shit hits the fan you're back to 100% again.

Try Alien Isolation, does way better with the concept.

Everyone who ever learned about IVs in Pokemon.

It's a garbage mechanic that encourages grinding against the RNG. On top of that it makes individual Pokemon objectively better or worse, which is in direct opposition to everything every game says about Pokemon being friends and not just tools.

I don't care how many tools they add to make breeding good IVs easier, it's inherently trash to have them in the first place.

You can tell dogshit monster design when it's only scary because you don't know anything about it, playing into your instincts of caution. Good monsters get scarier when you get to know them. Pic sort of related, flamethrower tanks were so frigtening that they had to mask them as normal tanks so that the enemy doesn't scramble instantly.

What would the point be in breeding if you couldn't make Ubermons? You're just mad because random faggots you caught can't be as strong as something someone actually took time on.

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Maybe I'm in the minority, but I was always much more fascinated with the technical aspects of the monsters in films, like how the Alien's blood is acidic because it functions like a bioligical battery, and how it's head houses a complex series of organs to detect prey. When the prequel to the Thing came out everyone was whining about how they already knew what was going to happen, but I just wanted to see what cool shit they could make the monster do with CG, although I was pleasantly surprised when they found a new way to detect who the monster is.

Should've just given it normal distribution from minus to plus absolute fuckton, clustered around plus minus ten, instead of uniform distribution from 0 to 31.

I didn't mean to imply it was a bad thing, it makes complete sense. I meant to write than guards in heightened alert catch me easier so then starts the goofy chasing.

The mechanics of interacting with NPC civ leaders in every single civ game. Once you crack the code for their diplomacy they become 100% predictable in their actions.

That's a good idea user, I'll steal that for the not-pokemon game me and a friend are making. I'll have breeding change the distribution, and up it for legendaries so people don't have to soft reset so much. You can be my idea guy any day.

Fuck you.

Fuck you

this is pretty much a flawless strategy in all hitman games. and pretty much all stealth games i've played. knowing i can always fall back on some version of this strategy when i get in a tight spot kind of ruins games like this for me.

Not a big civ player, though I have dabbled with a guy who loves the series. What's the code?

Because Penumbra was genuinely refreshing and interesting for its time, so seeing what they could do with a better budget was exciting.
Budgets and the (((people))) that provide them are not necessarily good things.

Korean MMORPGs in a nutshell. Don't forget to to goy out 20 shekels for an extra high school uniform that gives stats while it shouldn't!
A shame because the soundtrak is really great.

You say that like its something new to NuHitman.

Blood Money especially, where 47 just has a magical bag of infinite coins to throw everywhere.
At least in Hitman2016 you have to actually go pick up your coins to re-use them.

The point of breeding would be the same as when the devs still pretended that IVs didn't exist. If you had the mental capacity to read more than one sentence you would have seen the rest of the post you replied to, where he mentioned that the entire concept of IVs goes against the shit that they constantly beat you over the head with, that being muh friendship, muh every monster is great. It's just shitty game design that your starter, the monster they keep trying to portray as your bestest BFF, is just shit and will need to be replaced with another of the same kind if you want to use it for anything beyond getting through the shitty story.

So you're a literal retard. And you realize that IV grinding is entirely up to luck, right? Someone can get a perfect monster in one egg while it takes someone else a hundred. Not that it fucking matters anyway, because for over a decade everyone who cares has just been cheating in their monsters to get past the RNG grind.

The Mush Badge AA from Super Star Saga makes the game really easy.

No, fuck (YOU)

Gears of War

And that's why they introduced golden bottle caps, for fags like you who want to love your starter even though it was just handed to you.

Literally? You talk like a faggot.

Also I'd really like to see something outside of the cartoon from the 90's that said every monster is great. Last I checked the games have been aware a raised Mewtwo is going to rape your beloved starter every time since the start.

Also, your starter is fine for the ENTIRE single player campaign of every pokemon game and will have no trouble being good enough. It's only weak in competitive play because competitive play is meant to be deeper than just "friendship is magic and other gay shit".

The Last Remnant.

Some anons on here posted how you need tactics to beat this game and grinding will punish you. It was a complete lie after you put 1 healer and 1 guy that has vivification herb (no ap cost instant resurrect) in every union you can press whatever button you want even on the bosses.

Oh boy White Day
Why must horror games do this? Is it really too hard to think of gameplay systems that could fit the game better than no gameplay?

If you think that's bad try their other game, Soma. It's actual garbage.
As for games that get ruined when you work them out: New Vegas feels really broken once you figure out enemies have a range which they can chase you from. If you find the exact limit you can go back and fourth and cheese the shit out of the game.

I'll give you an idea
start working on it

Yeah I know it's become a cancer that lazy directors rely on these days, but there's just some shit you simply can't make the monster do with just traditional effects, so it had to be CG because I doubt they'd ever make an animated film of The Thing. Parasyte was the next best thing though, very good level of detail for the monsters in it's animation, I highly recommend.

This game was ruined from the start and it was hardly because of what you say.

I do not know, they did a pretty good job before the studio decided to say "Nah, fuck you. Scrap all the work you did, we are going to do CG anyways."

Tasteless faggot detected.

animatronics and props>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>CG

we are not at the point where having CG alongside live actors is believable.

wew, are you like 18 and NV is the first fallout game for you or something?

You could say this for every third person shooter. I wish they would stop having fucking cover mechanics in these games because it takes the tension out of the entire game when you can tell if you are going to get attacked based on how many crates or cement road barriers are in the room.

I think it works in superhero movies, because things are huge and bombastic and the characters are all from comics anyway.

I do not. Either make it all CG or play up the fun things you can do with live action stunts.

I didn't know this, that really sucks. Don't get me wrong I love traditional effects, and while the traditional stuff does look much better than the CG, my point still stands that there's still shit you simply cannot do with only traditional effects. Like the scene where parts of the monster, after being split in two, crawl along the walls and reconnect themselves. Or pretty much the entire Parasyte anime for that matter, like .gif related.

And on top of everything, the movie was a prequel so I didn't care too much about the plot, I just wanted to see the monster do cool stuff.

Didn't meant to spoiler.

At least it gave us the possibility of making custom stories which sometimes can be better than the main game which is a glorified simplified point'n click game with jumpscares.

This is the problem with the hiding mechanic in general.
You realize that as long as you are hiding you are safe.

oh wow! its all ruined! what a terrible game

After you've experienced enough monster closets and scripted encounters you'll develop a good eye for it pretty soon. Immersion can temporarily help but sooner or later you're going to notice.

Bad horror games think that they can instill a fear for your own life in the gameplay because they forget that immersion isn't unbreakable and that the player will eventually figure out mechanics.
Good horror games play with the concept of irritation and tension connected to the fear of losing. That's why Silent Hill rarely gives you save points, because you know that once you're dead, you have to do a lot of shit over again, and you start getting tense at the prospect of that, which makes the game still tense even if your immersion breaks.

In short, bad horror games treat you like retard who cannot differentiate reality from ficiton.

Good monster design in games must be supplemented by them being dangerous, because in the tense situation when you don't meet them but know how they look, your mind starts imagining them as scarier than they actually are. Low-poly is even better for that because the details of the monsters are less visible.

Are you fucking retarded user?

Resident Evil takes this a step further and requires you to use up ink ribbons you scavenge throughout the game in order to save.

I'm with you there. My interest in the monster itself far surpasses my interest in the plot or the protagonists when watching a horror movie with a creature at its center. Finally getting a good look at them, learning what they are, how they came to be, what they are doing, why they are doing it and how they do it is the absolute highlight of these films for me. It's also why I really appreciate beastiaries in video games.

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Yeah and they typically give you three ribbons for each new typewriter that you'll never run out of saves unless you go full retard with saving. Hell even just only saving at the first time you see a typewriter is sufficient enough to get by in those games.

I figured it out pretty early on, but it didn't make the game any less scary for me at least

Diablo 2 was the first game to abuse the random number generation on items to hide that its just a slot machine.
Its popularity paved the way "rpg elements" in ego shooters, MOBA and lootbox DLC.

Outlast.
The fear is gone completely once you notice how all the baddies follow this pattern.

Another one I can't remember what game did this, but it went like so:
I want to say it was one of the Dark Souls games, but I'm not sure.

Don't forget that drop chances for certain high level runes (pretty much everything beyond Vex) were worse than playing the lottery.

Alien isolation had the opposite problem with lockers, you used it once and the Xenomorph would obsessively hound all lockers close to you and if you hid in a locker it either zoomed in on your location or simply made it impossible to escape it's patrol.

.t skinwalker

I'm not sure if that is better or worse. On one hand it keeps you from getting through using the same technique throughout the whole game, but on the other hand it looks like they give it ESP style detection that sounds like some serious bs. I never played it though so someone else will have to chime in on that subject.

Think about it, in Alien Isolation you are hiding in a locker from an Alien that in universe should have pheromone based tracking.

It's basically a combination of a strange glitch causing an instant teleport that was fixed and the AI itself being oddly obsessed with lockers no one has been able to adequately explain.

maybe xenomorphs just really like lockers

Well I suspect it's another glitch, specifically it used to attack lockers it was suspicious of but they removed it so now it can only attack lockers you're in. It must know you're in the locker because it knows it can attack it.

I think this is the video, but the AI behind Alien Isolation is fucking phenominal and how these games should be made.

in short there are two AI's at play.
The director AI that knows everything and issues commands to other AI.
and then the Alien's AI which doesn't know shit about where you are or what you're doing. Only what the Director wants to let it know

You really have no idea what practical effects are capable of if you think that is impossible. Though true there is probably something that can't be done with practical effects, there hasn't been a single thing so far that couldn't. Stop being such a CG shitter and learn you some film.

Did not know they had that, but wouldn't it just make a beeline for you then every time if it could do that in game though? Or is the scent trail for that pretty short? I know very little about the Aliens lore/abilities, so forgive me if this is a retarded question.

Thanks for the explanation user.

Will have to check that out later. Always interesting to see how AI works in vidya.

Every leader has a preset agenda/personality (Atila and Shaka are very aggressive, pre-nuke Ghandi is very pacifist, etc.), so you can expect exactly how they'll react to your actions.

Civ V has an option to "randomize" the NPC leaders' personalities and agendas, so at least you can get some variety and unpredictability.

I'm familiar with that video, however the locker issue I believe is because of the removal of the ability to attack any lockers it is suspicious of. It either just knows because it can or it's actually deciding to attack a separate locker but because it's forbidden to it attacks your locker instead

In Tactics Ogre LuCT the enemies don't update their gear past level 30.
I never got past this mental block, I will only get stronger because of endgame rare drops and they will remain at a static powerlevel? What's the point then if I could already beat them?

A good game would make gear not mean shit.
If a game doesn't make it possible for starter monsters, given proper environmental set-ups and sufficient numbers, to kill a end-game character, it's a shit game.

That was really interesting. Thanks!

Max Payne, dynamic difficulty.
It's still fun, but what the fuck.

They never establish the length, but what is always the same about the Xenomorph be it in the movies, comics or games is that their eyesight is pretty poor and may even be just something the drones have that come from species that have eyes and instead all Xenomorph primarily rely on a combination of other senses like pheromones, vibrations and electroreception. So hiding in a looker is a terrible idea when running from the Xenomorph.

The whole game becomes about backtracking, trying to avoid it, getting better at platforming so it goes by faster. Except that doesn't help you progress through the game at all. Spend 2 minutes dying to a new enemy, spend 20 getting back there, die, rinse and repeat. Its watered down fun. Dropped the game when I realized I didn't want to spend an hour of fun for every 10 hours of backtracking.

Underrated post.

Hollow Knight was definitely not that difficult. If you died a ton in order to learn enemy moves, you're just bad. There are only 2 or 3 standard enemy types that are above challenging, and the only bosses I'd consider difficult would be the Mantis Lords and the endgame one. It was certainly not too big a deal to wander into new territory and deal with new enemies as long as you weren't a retard trying to sprint through everything.

You definitely should not have died a ton throughout the entire game unless you're Dean Takahashi levels of bad.

I've played a lot of games that do this. At least one of the Dark Souls games does it, but some enemies will start blocking if you try it and only take chip damage. I think it's generally that in a lot of games enemies are programmed to have only a certain distance from their spawn point that they'll chase you, in order to prevent them from chasing you across the entire zone/worldmap. I remember one game, Unturned, where this was especially bad because you could lure an enemy or a group of enemies right to the edge of their zone, and then if you were positioned well enough, because your melee weapons had longer range than their attacks, you could stand there and whack at them in melee range and they wouldn't retaliate because you were just barely outside of their attack range and they couldn't come any closer. The AI would normally return to their spawn point or somewhere inside the zone after a few seconds to prevent something like this, but attacking them would reset that timer and turn them towards you again. I think that the dev eventually fixed that specific exploit, though.

Yeah I caught on, I know I'm bad at vidya. I'm not retarded, just slow enough to make normal stuff tedious. I'm sorry.

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This is too harsh, Takahashi wouldn't have even been able to get to the main hub.

At least you have good music taste.

In one of the AVP games, the humans had lights set up that blinded the xenomorphs. They clearly have some amount of vision

Your dubs and willingness to admit your weaknesses have redeemed you along with the reassurance that you are not, at least, Anthony Burch

Yes that may have been a bit too far, it would have taken that 25-years-of-experience faggot ten minutes to work out how to left click.

I'm debating buying the vinyl for this.

This happens even for games like Warcraft 3 when you play against bots, the bot knows exactly where your base and base expansion is but doesnt attack it until certain time passes or you force his hand through direct attack.

I distinctly remember there being a scene in one of the movies where they shine a light directly onto an alien and it doesn't react at all. Maybe it depends on the alien, as they're said to take on some physical aspects of their hosts, so some may not have eyes at all. But I also wouldn't be too quick to take one of the games as canon.

Yeah I know I've seen it outside of the Souls games, but I can't recall what they were. Funny how I can remember exploiting enemies this way, but not the games themselves.

This reminds me of another RTS one.

So does your guy wear tap-dancing shoes and jumps with both feet instead of walking, or what.

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I was so glad that I hid in the locker in Outlast and the guy actually found me by opening all of them, then just beat my guy to death.

It has other rules, but that was refreshing.

I wouldn't bring logic into it given that any earth predator would instantly sniff you out using a mix of senses if you were hiding in the same room that it's in.

Glory Kills in nuDoom
>however, enemies will already drop emergency health when you kill then while you are on low health
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, they marketed a whole game about this shit and everybody knows what it does and praises the game for it, but it's actually never worth using

I played through that whole game without that ever happening to me. I played it around launch though so maybe they fixed that since then. Or you just got "lucky"?

Fair enough.

Most rooms have carpeted floors, but some get marble/metal in order to add depth, risk and tension to the game. And I guess the main character has a really specific neurological disorder that prevents him from walking silently, or at least putting socks over his shoes.

No idea, but I know it happened twice: Once with the big dude, and once when you're down in the basement with the big generator in a central room and need to pull two levers or something. One normal dude is there with you and would just pull me out of the locker.

The first example of the creature re-forming? I can't imagine it being done without the pieces just slapping together, and then becoming whole in a separate cut, rather than actually melding together and changing color before your eyes. Doing it at all, and doing it well are two different things.

And if the game is well designed then it doesn't really matter at all if you have NPC behavior figured out.

So if the mechanics suck in Amnesia, why does Holla Forums hate Alien Isolation, saying its an Amnesia clone?

The xenomorph does not just go away. Hell sometimes the damn thing will walk off and then randomly come fast marching right back into your areas. Like its baiting you to come out from cover/hiding.

People really like to hype up how hard and obtuse the game is, but you really don't need to minmax and the "grinding will punish you" meme only affects the 360 version, which is unplayable anyway.

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Well if Alien Isolation used the same mechanics, I'd hate it too. But Alien Isolation is one of the few examples of actually well-made AI, since it actually tries to hunt for you instead of just being teleported around all the time.

You need to go back.

Glad to see someone else who like it.

Yeah the reason I don't bother to play the higher difficulties is because the damn thing is too good.

Did they accidentally program a Monty Hall-esque bug into the alien's AI?

The Dark Project actually had uncapped inherited velocity when jumping forward so if you timed your jumps right you could go so fast that when you hit a wall you'd take fall damage.

Not really as intended and more a legacy of Thief's being created in the age of arena shooters but still hilarious and fun to do.

What the fuck are you talking about, A:I was great
Good variety in enemies too

did anyone mention the fact that if you died to the thing it gets removed?

It's not very hard to achieve this speed either, the game has a buffer period between landing jumps which stores your momentum and gives you plenty of time to jump again, and long enough hallways are present for you to hurt yourself in the first level.

Other people on Holla Forums have compared the 2 games
I've never even played Amnesia

Completed it and found it alright, but nowhere near as good as people make it out to be

Well I loved Isolation.
8/10
The best xenomorph in a game and the closest to invoking the overall feel/atmosphere of the first movie (my favorite, I love Aliens as well though)

DnF is a multiplayer side scrolling brawler. What did you guys expect from it when you even started?

Only autistic cunts caring about competitive would think this way, even without IVs plenty of pokemon species are objectively shittier then other's but you can still use them if you like them. In addition, while not strictly called IVs, different base stats between
pokemon of the same species has existed since gen 1.

If the game requires you to poorly or inefficiently to enjoy it then it isn't a good game.

Basically, any game that makes a song and dance about choices mattering and does this shit.

I agree with this. They need to develop horror games that are scary and unpredictable even when you have absolute understanding of their underlying programming and mechanics. Like even if you memorize every nuance of their algorithms, they'll still scare the fuck out of you. That's what we need.
Sentient AI monsters when?

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The whole point of being a ninja is that you move faster than the speed of light, you make zero noise, nobody ever sees you coming, and everybody you attack dies silently and instantly while spraying their entire body's blood supply at 200kph in every direction except at you.

I'm more pissed off with the mobility being way too easy to handle, You pick up ninja gaiden and you feel like a fucking ninja, Shinobi doesn't even feel like it. The killing part was almost cool but the lock on system is even more shittier than I expected, so you're better off dealing with an awful camera

Truly, metagaming is hell. I wish I could forget it all and play it again for the first time.

Mobility should be easy to handle, not hampered down and make you feel like a tank.

To the point where I don't need to actually try to wall run? There's no risk in approaching someone on a wall because I can just magically switch directions and I don't have to move along the wall, that's fucking stupid.

No, that's being a ninja.

as someone who avoids the cancer that is those kinds of storytelling games, why did so many people at the time basically memespout so often about Kenny being /ourguy/ or whatever it was?

I wish this all the time for Doom 3. Especially with the Overthinked mod, the best one that exists for the game.

Make a model, film it being melted, run the footage in reverse during post-production?

Every game where if you put it on "hard" it makes everything a sack of HP

The movie was trash regardless of what special effects method they would have used.

Didn't they fix this in the remake or is was it still broken?

Not sure how that's a surprise the dynamic difficulty of Max Payne was printed on the back of the box. Speaking of dynamic difficulty SiN Episodes would armor up the enemies depending on where your shots were landing so if you kept getting headshots they'll start wearing helmets and if you were doing well some late game enemies would spawn earlier.
I recently found out Resident Evil 4 actually tweaks enemy spawns depending on how good or crap you are doing

Was final boss health also determined by the dynamic difficulty system?
Fucker took years to kill.

That looks like a Mudokon from Oddworld, but with a much more elastic jaw. If elastic is the right word.
I will buy Amnesia if there's a mod to replace the monster growls with Abe quotes

A sea of triggers and hitboxes. Still, it's fun to see if you can find and understand them.

I got a similar feeling after learning how to draw.
Art I used to like I now look at and see all the cheap tricks and shortcuts the artist used to make their art not look as bad.

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Lol you are pretty funny kid

Shinboi for the PS2 doesn't feel like being a ninja, felt more like a demon hunter with vague ninja themes then anything. The bosses later requiring you to kill a bunch of dudes they send at you to charge up an attack to do any damage worth a damn doesn't help.

As I recall Kenny was a family man and a character that was easily likeable in comparison to the rest of the characters. Often people would pick choices that would lead them to easily gain affinity with Kenny, it helped that Kenny was the only remotely likable male character, this would result in Kenny always having the players back in return.

Anyone else start to feel it when they listen to this song?

Early on in the game's life you could walk through the game scot-free by carrying a crate in front of you. For a time you could hide from them and progress by simply obscuring their sight-line with an object. This was patched ages ago but I got through most of the enemy encounters this way.

Okay heres the thing. High runes were a win more button. Nobody played Diablo 2. At best you fucked around with friends for 2 acts and went to bed for school, or you got rushed and botted. The only reason youd need them is for your enigmadin bot to farm shit, or for competitive pvp. Plus it was anexpansivon item so how dare you call the base game bad

Secondly calling it a lottery is a bad analogy. Your weekly lottery costs $5 per entry and occurs once a week. Diablo 2 was free online, and every kill was a pull on the roulette (at level 48+ or something, I have the dat files kicking around). So no its not the same because even if its 1/100th chance of winning the lottery, you are killing hundreds of monsters an hour

Why are you so desperate to make Maria Takeuchi into some sort of forced meme? Are you spamming it non-stop across 8/v/ and 4/v/ to try and make people hate it or something?

Was the sequel any different or does it follow the same formula?

Even Thief has this issue, where you can circle around an enemy to blackjack them, and as long as you're in the dark it will knock them out. I suppose this is why everyone’s solution is ghosting but it always feels forced and tedious, knowing that there's a better way.

I think the only time this didn't exist was the spy class in TF2, because you're playing against people who will catch on to you spamming the same thing over and over again forcing you to mix it up. Also in games where stealth is in the game, but not intended to be used like farcry 2 so it's so hard and fucking broken that it actually feels like you're sneaking instead of doing what the game wants.

As said. But there is a catch, in the last season they introduced a crazy SJWhore and made all decision to make her be the new boss around the town failing misarebly, making each decision become more and more of a danger to the groups to prove she is right
And like this is one of a lot of example leading to the apex of the season…
But you know what's the worst part? They made us kill kenny using a underdog BS moment having cheap tactics for normalfags…. obviously idiots wanted to save the bitch because was getting killed from Kenny so /ourguy/ got shot to save a screeching cunt….which made Clem understand she was crazy and had to travel alone.
Janefag killed the story because they can't logically think.

Man you sure showed me that Diablo 2 was not the beginning of passing off gambling addiction as a total legitimate way of gameplay.
user lets face it, the reason why no game managed to replace Diablo 2 was because when you grew resistant to the high this skinner box gave you, other skinner boxes running the same scam couldn't affect you anymore.

I used to love playing this game for score until someone figured out that you get double points when you kill things with a weak ship spin attack that's very difficult to trigger. Fucking ruined it for me, I'm still mad about it.

Metal Slug is another one. It has this absolutely awful exploit in mission 6 where you can get the APCs spawned just far enough on the screen to shoot at but not take damage. This allows you to fire at them infinitely for points until the timer runs out. This exploits accounts for about 1/5 of your overall score in a score attack (even more if you sacrifice two of your lives to milk), and makes you spent 5 minutes (or more) in a given playthrough just sitting there massing a button. The worst part is that with the first APC you only have your pistol on you, meaning that score can vary significantly depending on how fast and long you can button mash. This puts people who don't use autofire at a significant disadvantage, in a game where autofire is already obvious cheating because it destroys the meaning of collecting powerful weapons to use. It's such a frustrating exploit. I wish SNK would do a sort of Metal Slug update some day where they fixed this horrendous exploit and tossed in the more fluid movement control of the sequels.

You know what, I can go on all day about score exploits ruining otherwise fun arcade games. So I will.

Wild Guns has a neat scoring system that rewards chaining enemy kills when you stay still. Unfortunately, the mid-boss in the mines level has infinitely spawning turrets that can be easily and safely milked for points, rendering the whole system pointless. It's such a shame. If you want you can sit there and stock up on extra lives too, rendering a single-credit clear much less meaningful.

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Pretty much the entire "run and hide" approach to horror has this problem OP.

People insisting that having a weapon to defend yourself makes things less scary are idiots, having a weapon means you know there is an actual possibility you'll have to use it.

This is why they need to take the roguelike/random generation genre, and apply it to the run and hide genre. So if you run and hide there's basically no gaurentee at all you're safe.

Alien: Isolation would beg to differ. The Xenomorph will rip open lockers or check under beds/tables. The majority of the time, if it walks close to your hiding spot, it'll kill you. Makes hardest difficulty speedruns interesting to watch because you really can't hide that much.

these are the worst kind of games
I've played a game recently where doing the fights smart and quik punishes you because HP stat increase was tied into taking damage and then healing yourself, why would they design it like that?

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World of Warcraft Cataclysm's greatest sin

Valkyria chronicles.

Spent time min maxing, using different characters, playing tactically trying my best to eliminate all enemies and have no casualties.

Then I found out the way to get S rank and super equipment was to just take a single scout and run through the level as fast as possible.

How about the opposite:
I loved it even more once thief stopped being a stealth game

This is only if it's near enough to hear your radar beep. You just need to holster the radar and lean back into the locker (if it's looking at it) and it will never open it. (Yes, it actually has eye vision)

The AI is incredibly stupid, with absolutely no memory at all. Some animations will also make you invisible to it. For instance, if you're sprinting and cutting a quick corner with the alien nibbling at your heels and you manage to initiate the 'open and enter' animation for the closest locker, even a milisecond before it also turns around the corner, it can stand there and look at your animation and it won't process that you entered the locker. - This works even better with waist-high lockers, so you can play duck hunt with the alien. Shoot the alien when it's on the other side of the 'cover', to make it fritz out, then just duck and enter, it simply won't register that you entered it.

To reiterate; Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES will it open the locker so long as you lean back into it, and holster your radar and it did not see you -initiate- the animation.

Both yes and no. It all depends on how loud the player and NPCs are, or if the players is interacting with objects with triggers. Other than that, it spawns and despawns, but to give you a feeling of imminent dread it also spawns at random intervals. It's sometimes scripted to only make a brief appearance in some areas, only to then disappear from that area pseudo-permanently, (until you return much later in the story). The radar for when it is 'in the vents', and the sounds it makes while in the vents doesn't mean jack shit. It's just bullshit played at random to keep you on edge.

I really wish I had kept my thirty or so webms that I made around the launch of this game, where I demonstrated the AIs flaws.

Until that one quest that isn't anywhere near the glitched out marker, and none of the NPCs bothers to give you directions.

There was a Canadian film inspired by The Thing a few years ago that was actually really good.

It's worse than that in Thief, all you need to do is lean forward and blackjack from the front. This works even if they're searching for you. I try to avoid using this or blackjacks in general, unless I'm just playing to relax.
Though, regarding easy blackjacking techniques, TDM handled this fairly well by only allowing you to blackjack from the back and having enemies more sensitive to footsteps.

Reading Loomis and realizing heads are three dimensional makes learning head drawing much easier than to autistically bruteforce the distances until it looks human.

Don't care, still a good game.