What's the stupidest fucking design choice you've seen in vidya?

To answer your question OP, the paragon/renegade bar in mass effect series. Since your persuasion skill depends on how much you've successfully used it before you will have to go through the game not only choosing everything with one alignment without even looking at the optons. If you want to be successful you have to be either full paragon or full renegade. That also makes the games extremely linear, since you will have to gring easier dialogues to beat the harder ones, i.e. in ME2 Samara loyalty mission you need about 80% of the bar to get through the dialogue without failing it, so it has to be done last.

Essentially, if you actually want to choose things based on their actual in-universe consequences and not because you need some paragon points so you always pick the top right option without reading it, then you have th cheat. That's when the game actually becomes enjoyable.

Like the gems from tekken vs SF?

bring back excessive cutscenes cuz at least i could skip those on a replay or if the story is trash

Or another one.
The Witcher 3 has level scaling loot which doesn't fit into the game at all. The enemies don't level scale, but the loot does.
I beat blood and wine, crafted myself grandmaster armour and swords, then decided to go visit a questionmark on skellige. After beating a bunch of level 14 bandits I found a level 56 skellige sword that was better than my grandmaster witcher gear.
This shit really ruined it for me because the witcher gear quests are well done scavenger hunts, but you can get better weapons from any blacksmith if you have a high level. And that shit is fucking retarded.

I actually thought it was bretty gud, tho. Like, it's super jank, but I remember dicking around in missions for hours trying to break shit. A lot of the levels are so open and broken that you can do some really cool stuff. Like the fucking skyskraper one. The objective is at the bottom, and you can only die if you've been airborne for a certain number of frames, so you can skip like half the level with 2 jumps.

This one was pretty fucking bad.

The worst design choice I've ever seen, though, is the TES-style of difficulty slider, where greater difficult just means enemies do more damage and take less damage. Level-scaling is just one level lower in terms of retardation.

When games do this it's like an FPS where you press fire and every enemy in the level dies automatically

i agree, its retarded as shit but its pretty fun at the same time
i like path of neo better tho

Any series that removes well received mechanics in future entries is a shit design choice.

I knew the day would come

As for the stupidest design choice - one of the three key collectables being stuck in a random fucking bush you have to burn down with no indication or hint of it being there anywhere in the game.

Well, in the first game it wasn't as much of a good/bad choice. It was, as in the name, paragon/renegade. You could be a goody two shoes and care about civilians pretending to be a knight in shining armour, or you could be a motherfucker who gets the job done. It is not always better to be a paragon, for example letting the Rachni go would be a fucking ridiculous decision. It was a neat idea ruined by bioware making every fucking character trustworthy and making no downside to being a paragon aside from being a pussy.

Never played that one. And from how, uhh.. "incomplete" a lot of missions looked in Enter, I thought that was a pretty good decision. Path is even guder, you say?

hey buddy if you don't want difficulty SCALING, don't play as an argonian

Those are all I can think of.

yeah, i found it to be more polished and less wonky than enter the matrix

I always play Redguard nigga.

Durability actually serves a purpose, at least in Dark Souls 1. It provides a significant downside to using certain weaposn which are overpowered at certain stages in the game. I.e. uchigatana can be leveled up to incredible damage but it breaks easily and you need to constantly fix it. Same with crystal weapons and drake sword.

It really didn't matter, repairing a weapon was piss cheap and you had repair powder too.

In des, you had to go back to the nexus to repair, and whetstones were crazy expensive early on, like 2000 souls.

...

whoever thought it was a good idea to add level restrictions on items in rpgs killed the genre indefinitely.

It's because the people who want the biggest guns have the tiniest brains, user.

:^)

i found them pretty unoffensive

this might be the only "okay" design from battlebortion because you would be able to identify the character immediately in a battle, all the other characters i've seen from it just look like lanky samefags

...

Yeah, the tutorial quests in monhun didn't feel like a big deal, and now they are basically optional anyway.

Well, unless they aren't in monhun X.

When cartoons do the shrunken gag, it's meant as a joke, I don't know why they think making a character look like a joke all the time makes for a good design or joke.

Whoever thought it was alright to use leveling outside an rpg should be shot in daylight.

...

...

it fits right in when the whole game is a joke

I see your point.

How am I supposed to reach these impossible standards of beauty?

Stalker: Clear Skies.

Making you see every single enemy in the game on your PDA map pretty much ruined the games atmosphere.

My problem was mostly a lack of consistency. For renegade, sometimes it's "mean or callous", sometimes it's "overly pragmatic", sometimes it's "vigilante", sometimes it's "psychopath murderer".

Like, the first renegade option you get is to be racist, the very next one is to yell at a crewmate for being racist. What the fuck?

Rachni was definitely one of the only ones that was what it all should've been, a decision with ambiguous consequences where you have to rely on (roleplayed) moral intuition.

Having it be a stat you level was probably just a mistake all around. But the alternative was, I guess, having decisions matter at all, so…

Anybody that tells me that Bioshock Infinite isn't the worst game ever made I'll fucking bash yer face in

Also speaking of destroying atmosphere, amnesia: Machine for pigs. All the safe areas put a blue tint on your screen. I thought my game was bugged, but nah. The devs where just that incompetent when it came to comfyness.

Wait until you get to the chase sequence where you run after an NPC who's both invincible and whom you can actually outrun if you try hard. Or the bloodsuckers which are invincible when invisible this time because nothing says spooky like mashing the quickload key. Or the two possible points in the game where you can have all your money suddenly taken away, and have no means of getting it back even if you immediately kill the guy who took it.

Its bugs and crashes aren't the only reason it's considered the worst STALKER.

2 from this one:
and

It's a smart game for smart gamers, unlike you buddy.

I forgot about all that. The part I do remember is how completely awful the end game was.

sigma 2 is a fucking abortion

how about

That game was good, fuck you.

That would be much better. At least it wouldn't encourage shooting from cover and you could actually play the game and move around without having the fear of dying.

Each weapon had two upgrades and there were about 8 weapons.
The upgrades cost a ridiculous amount of money though.

No. There were like 4 stages of upgrades for two or three different things.

Yeah, they also removed some of the things you could do in the sequels.
I.E. I was running around in the first ME telling aliens to fuck off being all pro alliance. In the second ME I couldn't do that anymore.
The first thing I did in the second ME was tell EDI that an AI is just a piece of equipment and that all robots can go fuck themselves. In ME3 Shepard treats EDI like a person no matter what you do.

I really liked a moment in citadel DLC where you can just look at one asari and go "Have the asari ever won a war". Was really refreshing.

Implementing a moba mechanic into the game was stupid, but don't die until you can buy the upgraded crow power earliest thing possible and you've trivialized the game.

Nothing wrong with owning a PS3 user even if companies went full jew during 7th Gen.
8th Gen though is pure cancer and should not be owned by no one.

Getting a ps3 for cheap is pretty gud, there are enough exclusives on it to warrent it.

does the wiiu count ?
I seriously don't know where to place it.
it might as well be 7 or 7.5

Play it in 1999 mode and then tell me if it's well designed.
The rest of the difficulties are trash and you don't need upgrades at all since they're so fucking easy.

EtM was shit

Should've played the 360 version fam

Fucking Bioshock.

Almost every animu card game ever

i did initially, but my 360 broke because it was a piece of shit unit

so sigma 2 came out and i was like "oh man i would love to play NG2 again" and made the horrible error of thinking it would be on par

Modern TF2.
Valve's new employees are fucking retarded, they just add shit the community made and play DoTA 2 all day. I want the old guys back.

I got it with orange boy when it still cost money. It was pretty good back then and i enjoyed the fuck out of it. Opinions differ here but i enjoyed the class updates because they got a little bit of flavor into the mix, but i stopped playing after that.

Fuck whoever designed and okay'd that boss, he should be fucking horse whipped. Its bad enough they repeat that shitty boss 3 god damn times in a row. Infinite sucks so much shit its unreal. At least 2's improved on the gameplay, was actually fun and the choices had some impact on the ending, there is nothing redeemable about Inf.

This dialogue system, I hated it in L.A. Noire and I hate it in Fallout 4.

One of the boss fights is literally a window who tanks so much damage and is so dull it legit takes 3 times the time the level it's in to end. .

I love the gameplay in 4 but the bosses are such a downgrade.

Also
That's dumb, the bosses in this game didn't have too much to begin with but when you know what to do it feels all you need is a minuet because you can go all out with DT charged guns and the like and they're down 50% ready for the next for another 30%
Especially as Dante who already does more damage then Nero so he can cause the stun faster and has attacks that capitalize off it better his Beowulf DT super charged uppercut.

A shit ton of ps2 games.

...

They could've solved all those problems by just having melee weapons.
I wonder what was the process behind that decision.

Eat your candy bar, Jensen.

The devs actually admitted that they were stealth biased in the game

Didn't the new Smash do something similar to this?

Nothing wrong with that but if anything that should mean Stealth is harder but with more options to make it more rewarding.
There it's just easy mode.

I meant as in they said that they fucked up and made it easier/give out a fuckton more exp.

Still not gonna buy the new one tho.

And yet you have boss battles you can't beat using stealth or non-lethal
Something Metal Gear had figured out a decade before

God I hate this industry

Oh, and on that note I'll point out crystal weapons for the dog shit they are. Why would anyone dedicate that much time and resources for what will inevitably be a paper weight?

...

The concept itself is cool, weapons that are stronger but breaking during regular combat is a possibility now, but on practice they were shitty as fuck because

There's your problem, if you just have a deck of normal (which are stronger anyway if you're taking advantage of your noise form) it doesn't happen

My nigga

To be fair, its because they outsourced the bosses to someone else. Not defending the decision to do so, just stating why the bosses suck shit.

...

Oh, no the flavor of it is really cool. It's just the design choice I'm criticising. One point you forgot though:

You know what would be a cool? If getting cursed repaired crystal weapons. It would still be a shitty design, but it would been flavorful as fuck.

This mechanic is there specifically to punish you from mashing.
When you panic, you're supposed to keep your cool and juse the system to your advantage by attacking and then slipping in a precise heal or dodge by timing your animations.
If you mash, you die instead.

People are free to like or dislike it but it's completely deliberate.

Stat customization is only available for local play, and you can set the rules to only allow default stats, so it doesn't really get in the way of the game.

That was the fucking worst.
I tried to play a Shep that didn't give a shit about orders, then the game gave me good-guy points for disobeying TIM, when every other "fuck you I'm Shep" response gave me renegade points.

Also, fuck any dialogue system that doesn't let you play a character outside of "goody-good guy" and "edgy good guy."

melee as a whole

Its called metagame. Also you dont need to be successful. Although game designed around that.

I had a similar issue in 3. If I mistimed a roll and got hit, the roll would be cancelled until after my guy recovered and then he'd still roll. It was annoying as hell and often meant one hit would lead to several because now I'm out of position rolling headfirst into another attack

MOBAs. Pretty much everything associated with MOBA's once they were no longer just a custom map on WC3.

They sucked but it was acceptable because they were a custom map. It's absolutely terrible as a game.

...

Why was I thinking Vegeta before seeing you pic
Also that was the big problem with Undertale

It is the same gen as the PS4, 7.5th gen.

If I aim at his feet, will he die?

So what does that make the PS4N and Scorpio then, Gen 7.75?

This game's UI.

i didnt say it was bad, i said it was retarded

Everything in this game except the setting.

Oh wow

New XCOM's enemy spawns.

seriously, what the fuck

You have some shit taste

You are shit.

The redesigned boss fights in the Director's Cut (ie. added vents, security systems and hackable turrets so you can kill the boss without shooting them yourself) were a decent apology, but the pre-established plot prevented them from adding completely non-lethal options, so the apology seems a bit hollow.

Characters with customised moves and stats were mostly restricted to local gamemodes, or when playing a friends-only "For Fun" online match.

Like this game.

A whole game about trading.

PROCEEDS TO REMOVE ALL THREATS / AI PLAYERS SO IT IS JUST ONE ENDLESS LONG GRIND
THEN ADDS 'RARE' MATERIALS THAT CAN NOT BE TRADED IN A GAME ABOUT TRADING
"PLAY OUR SMARTPHONE GAME TO GAIN MORE RARE MATERIALS"

AOEGJNAWROHYJN REIO)%UYJ Tgkb0dfyhxy98 FUCK YOU UBISOFT! I WILL NOT USE YOUR SHITTY APP!

It makes me so mad to see what Ubisoft did to Anno series. I mean 2070, despite the shitty uplay integeration, the core gameplay was still there. Now it is nothing but a shell. I'm still mad.

It doesn't ruin games for me, but yeah, I don't prefer doing it that way either. If you try to do other things mid-animation, your most recent input should be what happens once the last animation finishes, not the second thing you tried to do. The choice shouldn't be "locked in" until the next animation actually starts.

If the most recent input got priority you'd still be able to heal or dodge the instant the last animation finished, only difference would be more capability to change your mind mid-animation.

I WANT MY UPGRADE POINTS BACK. Also, seriously, why can he recharge some batteries but not others? What's the logic there in-world or in-game? Aside from just making battery capacity upgrades near useless, of course. It never even made sense that takedown should be so incredibly energy-intensive anyway, compared to everything else he can do infinitely.

Those additions were nice, but it ever really made much sense to me why all bosses hung out in rooms with said security and turrets and such that didn't seem to really be doing anything.

This could serve a purpose. Is it really hard to get headshots on him? That could help him be more tanky if that's his role.

Some clarification.

wrong one

There are two things that upset me about those fights:

1. They're uncreative. It's literally the same fight, three times over. It's perfectly fine to fight the same boss three times, but at least have some variation instead of making it a copy & paste job. Change her attack patterns, make it three different environments (rather than just three different locations) and thus force the player to come up with three different strategies for three, fundamentally different, fights.

2. She is piss-easy to defeat (even on 1999 mode), if you know her weakness, which the game never mentions or really hint at. She resurrects the dead, but needs actual corpses for that. The fire and lightning vigors reduce your enemies to piles of ash. So all you need to do, is to equip the two lightning related upgrades; The one that makes your lightning attack chain to nearby enemies and the one who releases an additional lightning attack, if one enemy is killed by your initial attack. Both of them together are so OP, that you might as well start calling yourself Zeus, the destroyer of bitches. She will run out of corpses in no time and the boss fight will turn it into a ridiculously easy 1 on 1 fight.
The thing is that your enemies turning into ash, when killing them like this, is never mentioned and a small detail that you can quickly overlook during combat.

Floating objective markers that show you exactly where to go and minimaps that have no contextual purpose for existing are quite cancerous.

CGI in the 90s was pretty bad, huh?

Level scaling mixed with the stupid do something X times system is cancer.

I'm also not a fan of skill trees.

Radiant quests
Wheel dialogue system
Level scaling
Voiced protag for a not-predefined MC rpg
Dragon Age: Inquisition as a fucking whole with the…
…facebook game timers and events(?)
…broken commands
…broken fighting system
…MMO quests in singleplayer
…MMO maps lied as open world

Holy shit is there anything good what modern gaming invented?

Saying VR porn is not fair!

...

Man I did fucking hate oblivion and skyrim

Also

Another thing about that game:

Find that shit and the game is pretty much over. The handyman fights became fucking laughable thanks to that gear.

I had mild fun with that game, I'll admit that, but holy shit is it poorly designed as fuck, 1999 only accentuates that fact. Good thing I actually got the game for free.

really, the whole "use a skill to level it up" thing is terrible to begin with. I'd rather just get points or gold stickers or whatever and allocate them however I want.

OP as fuck.

I would lie, if I said I didn't like the game, but fuck me, it was such a step backwards from the first BioShock.
Granted, it wasn't nearly as big a step backwards from BS, as BS was from SS2, but I think this has more to do with the fact that BS removed so many features, that there simply weren't much more places to cut.

System Shock 2 was a real FPSRPG. BioShock was a FPS with RPG elements and Infinite reduced that to the point of almost absolute meaninglessness.

BN4 is so phenomenally retarded, it's difficult to believe that it exists, especially considering that BN3 was the previous game. I'm not sure I've ever seen a series go from absolutely God-Tier to absolutely garbage in one game without at least suffering a reboot.

I was talking about 1999 mode for the crow upgrade.

IV really dropped the ball hard

Clicking to move around in a character-focused RPG.

So, if clicking buttons is out of the question how would you propose it was done? Controlled by your mind?

at least it's better than that "drag your cursor to the edge of the screen" bullshit.

With direct movement control, like any other sane character-focused game. You know, you press the left input and your character moves left as long as it's held down?

Jesus fuck just use WASD already.

And this isn't even getting into story, music, and art decisions.

Actually yeah this one does kind of give me the shits. Though it could just be because I'm playing Harbinger right now and it's pretty janky.

Money having weight.

I feel like I've seen this somewhere, but have blocked it out. Example?

Super Hydlide
Daggerfall

also Everquest.

That can be done right in dungeon crawlers, forcing you to make trade-offs between money and staying alive.

It can be an interesting mechanic like level scaling or skill trees but it is usually not. Also, sell-able items works better.

Sounds reasonable as a way of balancing progression speed and safety.
Kind of like souls work in Dark Souls.

...

What I mean is that I don't like those things.

Boo hoo, he is playing an old game so it isn't shilling or fangoying.

No. Why not just have treasures that you can sell?

Maybe you don't want looting to be your game's primary focus?
Depends on the game really.
If you make something where looting is a central gameplay aspect, by all means, go with your suggestion. But if it's not? If it's more about purchasing the items you want to use, your approach just adds an unnecessary extra step.
Whether you sell items that you can loose and have weight to get money, or get money that you can loose and has weight directly, doesn't really make a difference in that case.

It forces you to balance between carrying money to other stuff. In the system that I mentioned, the treasure becomes a non-problem after it is sold.

Why make it that you could lose your money if you carry it around like with thieves or death?

Who the fuck thought that was a good idea/made any sense whatsoever?
That just sounds fucking retarded.

Is Witcher overrated cancer? Or did it only started at 3?

Because thats what vegata looks like?

Again, it depends on the game.
Suppose you have a dungeon crawler or something where your enemies don't drop items and the whole progression system is centered around leveling up/purchasing items? Increasing weight could be a debuff that, for example, affects the rate at which you get tired while attacking and your movement speed.
The further you get, the more money you get, but you also get that debuff which makes it increasingly more dangerous to go on. You have to decide when the risk gets too big, when to call it a day, bail out and save what you've already got. You could then invest that money into your character/equipment so you can get further the next time.

What I'm trying to say is that such a mechanic has potential, but the game should be centered around it. If you have a game that focuses on looting, picking up and carrying items, it seems like a stupid idea.

When I walk into Draugr cave, I wonder why I'm finding Septim in there.

Honestly is started at 3.
Seriously nobody ever talked about The Witcher series at all until they made their "muh better graphics" version of 2.
The Witcher 2 was OKAY-ISH(?), the combat was alright, though for some reason someone thought it was a good idea to only allow the use of potions only outside of combat.
Never played The Witcher 1 though.

It's objectively shit how they handle it. If you mistime a dodge and get knocked down, your dodge gets queued for several seconds later when you get up. That's just fucking stupid. It's not even related to mashing, just a simple mistimed button press that everyone's bound to do occasionally.

Also, if they want to punish people for mashing they should find a way to do so through the game mechanics rather than by fucking up the controls. If something happens and you correctly respond to it in time, locking you in an animation that you haven't even started is stupid. A situation can change in a split second, causing what was previously a good input to be a bad one. That isn't even related to button mashing.

huehuehue that pic

how does it not confuse the fuck out of them

No I saw the post but I didn't see the picture

The Witcher 1 is a pretty interesting CRPG with rhythm based fighting system with 3 different stances and a in-depth alchemy system

2 and 3 are typical action games with above average writing

It's shit don't listen to that guy

I never played any Witcher or even seen footage and I know
Doesn't happen, that sounds infinitely better on paper than what an execution would be

… "Classic" RPG?

Really now?

jrpg = Japanese rpgs
crpg = Chinese rpgs

That's a very creative way to describe Witcher 1's combat.

Fixed camera angles that can obscure boss attacks.

Bethesda titles are full of these. This is what their fans value.

all of these come from the same game
guess the game

so what you're saying is, all this cosmetic bullshit serves the tactical purpose of making it harder for your enemies to know what they're up against? great to know.

this

it looks retarded, but gameplay-wise it makes sense.

yggdra union's ui is as shitty as the rest of the game.

second one reminds me of that game where you have a boomerang blade thing. it was called Dark something and it was on the 360.

...

Tell me.

crpg = character rpg

Fallout 1 came out in 1997, point-and-click interfaces have been around since the 70s. Hell Condemned spearheaded the FPS standard of controls. If you want to play anything prior to 2006 your going to have to suck it up and get used to the different control schemes of older games.

"C" stands for "Computer" but now people consider it to mean "Classic" refering to the gameplay elements of games such as Planescape Torment and Fallout 1+2 the Witcher series does not have those to qualify it as a CRPG.

I could write a book bitching about this game, yet everyone fucking loved it. Game is downgrade in every way from the first one, except for graphics, animations and maybe dialogue system (which is debatable since story is not even that interesting).
Barely decent for first play through, not even gonna bother replaying it ever again.

And it was fucking retarded the entire time. The difference, however, is that a great many of those top-down games before isometric cancer like Fallout became the norm had support for sensible direct numpad movement control.

But user, that's retarded. And Black Isle Studios' trash heap game mechanics are anything but "classic".

Why is it retarded?

Because consoles are all computers themselves and it also discounts the plethora of personal computers that existed in Japan before Windows gained dominance such as the MSX, PC-88, FM Towns, and X68000. All of which were home to RPGs of their own.

computer RPG as opposed to traditional pen & paper RPGs you fucking mongoloid

valdis story. pic related fits the first one and the last two.
I swear to god I will hunt down the motherfucker who made this game and skullfuck him to death.

Wasted potential: the game, it was fun in the start.

This isn't the 80s anymore, grandpa. The C stands for character, as in a character progression-oriented RPG. Not classic. Although that is what classic RPGs are as well.

I know of a really bad one from the Final Fantasy 4 DS reboot.

See, in the remake they added new items that some of the bosses would drop that would let you use the boss' special attacks. So after beating, say, Cagnazzo you could then get an item that lets you use his Tsunami attack. You could even get items that let other characters use what were once character specific abilities.

So what's the problem? that sounds pretty badass! And it is! Except for one little issue.

ONCE YOU PUT THEM ON A CHARACTER THERE'S NO WAY TO TAKE THEM OFF OR GET THEM BACK! So if you give an ability to Tellah or Edward you'd better not be too attached to it!

Added fun in that certain abilities can only be gained if you give those characters augments! Want an augment that halves casting time? You have to give two augments to Tellah! Want to decrease a character's received damage by 75%? Two augments to Yang! I've already got a thing for collectathons, but I can't get everything without giving something up!

The whole thing just drives me NUTS!

Oh so you just mean RPGs then.

Oh you just mean games then

you mean leisuring with your kin after a successful hunt

How are you all this retarded?

I'm assuming at least one of you is actually trolling.

Why the fuck would you bother making that distinction? Why would people talk about tabletop RPGs on a video game board?

Whether or not you think it's retarded, that's exactly what crpg stood for and has been used regularly for old rpg games hence why the change went from "computer" to "classic".

Point to me anyone who uses crpg as an acronym for character instead classic on any forums involving vidya.

I am not Trolling.

Because western rpgs burrowed pretty much everything from /tg/ rpgs, a lot of what you think is standard in fantasy can be traced back to the tabletop like Skeletons being resistant or outright immune to piercing and arrows.

Still retarded fam. There was plenty of RPG diversity even back in the '80s. Trying to imply that some narrow group of Windows/DOS RPGs is the only one that should be called "classic" is moronic.

It refers to all and a specific narrow group of RPGs. It is the evolution of language,since Roguelikes and Dungeon Crawlers already had their own terms it was only natural that would happen.

Disgusting.

I always though the C stood for Crawling, as in dungeon crawling, which is what most of those games did.

Also, don't fucking double-space between the reply link and your reply, it makes your post too fucking big if you reply to more than two people.

The purpose of language is to communicate thoughts clearly and your idiotic label does anything but that. You might be a retard yourself, tbf fam.

Hey if you don't like it that's fine, but if you still don't believe me then go anywhere else to fans that love this stuff and they'll tell you the same thing that it means "computer role playing game" and that it's used as "classic" as well.

Fuck you too, faggot.

Planetside 2

The C stands for Co-op because they're almost always designed with coop play in mind and the original games that pionered the gameplay designed them for coop purposes.

Jesus christ how horrifying, all games should have at least one standard implementation of FXAA, MSAA and the ability to turn AA off.

I just bought Moon Diver on sale, which also had a demo I checked out years ago, and didn't have this problem. Maybe a Crapcom specific issue?

How to jump in Zelda 64.

Name an example.

I played this and rather enjoyed it, but as I got further into it I grew to hate it so much.
And lots of stuff I don't remember anymore, it was a mess of a game underneath the surface.