It's good stuff, as usual. Cracked's daily articles are a must :)

Only 7? In some ways I think he should have gone for the full 10, in others I think he shouldn't even have bothered (some might think it's blasphemous).

If there's one commandment that GTA IV has broken, its this one: "Thou shall not make every four out of five missions a damn stupid chase mission, where the player must keep up using unsound driving controls else fail utterly."

Meh! Where is my "Thou should not make Mini-game/shovelware" commandment?

Don't worry, grisled space marine I'll always love you! <3

I agree with the repetition comment. Games need to make level-design and gameplay creative. Case in point: Assassin's Creed. Who here got bored with every assassination being practically the same as the last? Pick-pocket this guy, eavesdrop on that guy, collect some flags, ad finitem.

That killed me. It killed me in WoW too. Go kill then thousand of these critters, maybe one will drop epic loot.

Any game mechanic that simply functions as a way to prolong the length of the game by making players do the same task over and over, without adding anything inherently creative or different, gets monotonous.

How about a "Thou shalt not milk thine franchises for over twenty years"?

I really wish more people listened to rules like this when doing game development. The only one I really disagreed with was the loading times one. the only game I've played this generation that annoyed me with loading times interrupting anything is GTA IV. Cmon, every time you die you get a load screen in multiplayer?

Making fun of Space Marines in games is as cliche as having Space Marines in your game.

A lot of these criticisms show that the author has no idea how game development is done. I agree with some of it, but complaints like saying you shouldn't start out with a basic weapon are stupid. Getting new weapons in a game is a way to show progress, and reward the player for beating a boss/getting through the level/whatever.

I also like how he spends a ton of time praising the Wii, then says that games should go get better stories.

Make that 8:

Thou shalt not end thy game with a cliffhanger.

Where's the love for "If there's a waterfall, there'd best be some hidden shit behind it" ? Games these days break this one all the time, and it's very disappointing.

Loved it. Especially the bit about having quality voice actors. Biggest violator is SQUARE ENIX!!! At least give us the option to either turn it off, or put in the original JP voice works!

Going in reverse order...

7) OK, understandable. You want to play with friends. But not EVERY game has to have multiplayer, or offline multiplayer. Sometimes it just doesn't work, or the designers don't like it. It's their call, not yours. Deal. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

6)Stretches of land? Not so bad if you have some speedy way to navigate it. On foot, not so good. Just do make sure the objective and destination are clear. Mandatory fetch quests? As long as they have purpose and meaning behind them (GOOD purpose... not like 'collect 40 coins to unlock the door...') then they're acceptable.

5)OK, let me get this out of the way. 90% of all video games rely on repetition. Every game encounters it sooner or later, and repetition is the key to progression in most games.

However, I do agree that being set back for failure and being forced through unskippable scenes is bad. It frustrates the player and causes them to lose interest. The problem isn't repetition in and of itself; it's the frustration of failure FOLLOWED by repetition.

4)The first part of this just shows a lack of understanding about game design. Believe it or not, using crappy guns at the beginning has more to do with balance and difficulty curves than wanting to start you with a crappy gun. Oh, and I enjoy the handgun in most games. It adds to the challenge, and frustrates people in multiplayer when they get pwn'd by it.

The third, I agree with, to a degree. Every player action should have a visible outcome. Still, keep in mind how difficult actual battle damage on 3D character meshes is to program and animate. I think you may be confusing things with the real world, where physics and aesthetics weren't assembled painstakingly by the human hand.

"How hard would it be to randomize facial features and skin tones?"
Not incredibly in some games, moreso in others, but even if you did you'd still end up seeing the same features just as often as before, and the differences wouldn't be as notable as you'd think.

3)"No one has ever liked an escort mission, ever, in the history of gaming."

Mmm, tasty, tasty generalizations. Speak for yourself, bud. This isn't even the worst of it. The author is quickly dropping their own credibility with stuff like this. The three elements listed all have been done horribly in the past, but don't say it can't be done well; it can, it just hasn't for a number of reasons too long to list here.

Genres: WWII? Yeah, been done to death, I agree. Space Marine? Done even further to death. God help me if I ever have to do 3D models for a game in either genre, I may go berserk.

2)Finally, I agree with everything here, though perhaps not the presentation. Developers know what they're working with on consoles; make it work well and without long loads before you ship!

1)GRAPHICS DO NOT EQUAL INNOVATION OR CREATIVITY. I've been saying this for years. Let's add 'GOOD GAMEPLAY' to that list, too. As for the writing and dialogue, I agree. There are plenty of great writers and voice actors out there. Hire them. Get people to critique both BEFORE you get too far in to back out.

Wow, that was long. Overall, I don't put a whole lot of faith in this author, though there were some very good points made, too. Still, in the end all this is up to the developer, not the player. If the developer chooses to listen to the players, super. They can decide if what the players want is a good or bad idea, because it's their game. If they don't listen, it's their loss, but hey, it's still their game and what they decide to do with it is up to them. For any player to make demands about their content shows that they think they know more than the developers do. If this is true, they should become developers themselves. If not, they can go ahead and shut up now.

Oh, and I do agree he tried to do too much per commandment. The subcategories weren't often related.

Seems like modern mmo's violate all of the rules straight off hahaha

Fantastic!

Cracked is always a good read

"Turok, Gears of War, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Call of Honor, Metal of Duty: Honor Call"

HAHA, I loved this one.

He's mostly right, but someone should definitely hand him a copy of Ico: it's a giant escort mission, but that doesn't prevent it from being one of the best games of the previous generation.

#7: Alot of games piss me off in regards to this. I mean, seriously, frak everyone that decided to make Catan, Uno, and Lost Cities into Live only multiplayer. Sometimes people just want to play and not have to hassle around 10 minutes to set up the game, and another 10 to pack it back up.

Thou shall let me pause during ANY cutscene, prerendered or not. Serious offenders are

Gears of War
Grand Theft Auto 4
Blue Dragon

Only game which allows me to pause anytime is Lost Odyssey

Seemed like for the most part he just wanted to complain. While some of his points are valid, I think others are just rants that aren't nearly as bad as the he made them out to be.

@fronsacqc: You forgot Metal Gear Solid (unless you are not a fan). 30 minutes cutscenes that you cant pause is idiotic.

the guy had some pretty decent points, but some of the comparisons were a bit ridiculous, such as his comment on the sword fighting in Oblivion: "Why give us a sword if we can't decapitate people? Don't tell us the system can't handle it, we were blowing off zombie limbs in House of the Dead a decade ago."

i do, however, whole-heartedly agree with the first point, as well as the points about escort missions and unskippable cut scenes. The second God of War game drove me up a goddamn wall because of a very challenging boss battle that i had to give up, simply because i didn't have the patience to sit through the preceding 8-minute cutscene for the twelfth time.

@Antiterra: one of a few exceptions to my hatred of escort missions. Ico is a sweet game.

@mphz: I really don't get how everyone keeps saying the driving controls are bad in GTAIV. There is a learning curve, but I am weaving in and out of traffic and making hairpin turns like a pro now. For me it took realizing that I didnt have to always have the trigger all the way down to accelerate and that a lot of the time the e-brake is not even necessary to make a sharp turn, just slow down and brake a bit. I dunno, I think the cars handle great and have yet to fail a mission because I couldnt drive. Now slamming into the side of a car while running a red light, thats a different story.

Mario Galaxy gets someone closer to touching boob? That's a new one on me. I do find Wii Sports and Wii Play to be great ways to spend time with someone you're dating.

I think of that clip from Final Fantasy X whenever I think of Final Fantasy X. I was embarrassed playing that game when I watched that. I hope some developers see this.

Side note: Just because an ending is long, doesn't make it good. Lost Odyssey has one of the worst endings ever, and it clocks in at over 30 min, probably (plus all the boss fights before it).

@salmonax: Kingdom Hearts I did that for me, glad they made skippable scenes in II.

You know, I like the concept, but as I was reading this, all I could do is shake my head. My thoughts were basically "No, no, you're wrong, that's just stupid, okay, right, sure, wrong, no, go kill yourself, no..."

"There are people who say that preventing saves adds to the "tension" of the game. Sure, in the sense that the fact that your 360 could catch on fire at any moment also adds to the tension."

Flippin awesome article.

While I don't enjoy "Instant failure quicktime events" I do enjoy quicktime events during cut scenes. It makes you feel like you are controlling the character at all times.

The instant failure part is pretty weak though.

God of War gets this part right most of the time. Resident Evil Four was a little more diabolical with theirs but I still enjoyed it.

@MURDERFACE: Meh! Where is my "Thou should not make Mini-game/shovelware" commandment?

There's no Thou shalt not make money commandment I guess. People must like it if they keep buying it again and again. :/

@Antiterra: Ico took its escort mission and made it something epic. I'm glad you mentioned it, because I had so much fun with Ico I forgot it even was an escort mission.

In Ico's case it was understandable that protecting Yorda would be difficult--he's a little kid with horns that might do *something* against a *tangible* enemy, but no, he's gotta fight off black ghosts with a stick.

At least in Ico's case, the game isn't making fun of you. It might seem cruel, but what's really cruel to me is when the game throws a literally infinite amount of ammo your way when it only takes one or two bullets from the enemy (or from YOU) to kill your escort and make you start over from... god knows where.

The moral? Ico. Never. Lies.

A Cracked article covered on Kotaku? I can already envision the strange marriage and commencement of a new site! featuring hilarious factoid articles and the very best gaming news... I'd never have to visit another site again.

Regarding being forced to start with some lame weapon like a pistol or a crowbar, what rule in the book says you can't start the game with über abilities and weapons? Anybody remember Banjo-Tooie? You started the game off with all the abilities you learned in the previous game and went UP from there. More games should do that.

"Look, we know with PCs it's hard as hell to make sure your game runs smoothly on every system--every PC is different. But you know what's inside an Xbox 360. There no reason, none, ever, under any circumstances, that your game should stutter and slow down because the console is choking on the graphics. This is like selling us an L-shaped condom. You know damned well what we've got to work with here."

That's pure comedy gold right there.

I'll admit that there were a few valid points in the article: First-person platforming, quick-action events, WWII games. But overall, the author painted general rules with broad strokes.

If every game followed these commandments, then all games would be even more similar to one another and thus boring.

I agree on the overly broad parts, but there are some good points.

Unskippable cutscenes: Yes. it would take like 2 seconds to implement. In fact why not go even further and treat cutscenes like you would movies. Let people pause, rewind, skip, replay, etc. Okay, some features are unnecessary, but still. It's not like it's that hard. Also, why not include a feature so that people can go view old cutscenes?

Padding game length: Yes, but one exception. Travel between areas shouldn't count, unless it's a repeat offender. Many of these "offenders" are adventure games. Not much of an adventure if the dungeon in right outside the city is it?

Making killing fun: This is a mixed bag. The crappy weapon thing makes sense. The Half Life 2 pic about giving him a crowbar and having him fight alien conquerers was funny, but they wouldn't be very good conquerers if they left rocket launchers laying around everywhere, now would they?
I agree about the pointless enemies. If they're not a threat, why bother? There were enough health packs in HL2 that headcrabs were nothing but an annoyance, and in Oblivion you could cast a heal spell using your regenerating mana if the rat even hurt you.
As for limb damage, more games should have it, but many existing games shouldn't. Oblivion would be a very different game if you could one-hit-kill anyone with decapitation.
Adding enemy variance is easy if you've already implemented a character creation system. Otherwise, each new variant is either a new model or a palette/texture swap.

Focusing on Graphics: I agree 100% here. Every time screenshots of a new game appear on Kotaku, and people disregard the game just off of a static picture, a part of me dies inside.

I could go on, but I think I've said enough. That, and I should be working.

Commandment #8: Thou Shall not lie about the power of thine console. Sony
Commandment #9 Thou shall strive to make reliable hardware. Microsoft
Commandment #10 Thou shall make games fun and enthralling instead of trying to make the game as close to reality as possible. It does not matter that your game can render every leaf on a tree or every pimp on a face if your game is more boring than watching grass grow.

Wow, this was more of a list of someone's personal whining they might have stuck up on their myspace page at one time or another.

Some of the stuff had merit, like the repetition, I know that frustrates most of us. And I do agree about graphics do not make the game, and make sure the game works! I personally feel console games have crossed that horrible line where devs are under pressure to get the game out and figure they can just patch it later. That is what I used to really like about consoles, I did not have to worry about patching like I did all my PC games.
The rest just felt like whining. The grizzled space marine? Come on, if you do not like it, dont buy the game. Let the devs and publishers you want a new genre by not buying it.
Some games do use too much padding, however I happen to enjoy the vehicles in HL2. Plus the distances helped give the game world some depth unlike other games where you leave one level and magically you have arrived 800 miles later at your destination. Games and life are both about the journey, not the destination, so enjoy the stuff in between.

And jumping puzzles in a FPS, if it is done well it is not a problem. Again in HL2, going from roof top to roof top make sense, since the streets were infested and all. This seemed like more personal taste resulting in whining.

The bottom line, if you don't like something about a game, don't buy it. Write a letter to the developer. Please note this should be a well written out and thoughtfully letter. Saying something like: "OMG you sux because you did this and that" is just not going to work. If put some thought and effort into the letter you might even hear back.
Whining about it online and developing online petitions are about as usefully as powdered milk with nothing to hydrate it with. If you are going online, same rules apply as writing a letter.
If you are so unsatisfied with how something is done, learn how to do some development and take a stab at it yourself. The Torque game engine and the Torque Game builder are both good engines to prototype something with, there are also free engines out there you can learn and try something with. If your idea is good enough, maybe you can convince other people to join you to develop it and release it. If you are lucky maybe a publisher will take interest and your game can be released world wide, then someone can whine how you screwed something up and tell you how you should have done it different.

I actually LIKED using the handgun in Half-Life 2.

Most of them seem pretty good, except for the "starting with a crappy weapon" one. That one makes no sense. I wouldn't want to start out playing a Ratchet game with the RYNO.

Funniest thing I've read in a while, and I agreed with most of it. "Assassin's Creed" was a disappointment because it violated several of those, including padding it out (with a million of the same rescue/eavesdrop missions) and putting miles of landscape between cities and making you ride a horse to get there.

"Here's your goddamn crowbar." Haha.

Lol that was a good read he should of had 3 more though
commandment #8: thou shall not make a game that will not run on the next generation of graphics cards then the one's already out
commandment #9: thou shall not tell us your hardware is a super computer because it has 8 processers and a ok graphics card
commandment #10: thou shall make a actual singleplayer and not just give you a 3 hour story and then rely on multiplayer

As a Wii owner, I don't care how well the damn thing sells, if it has mostly shit games I want nothing more to do with it. That said, I'm loving MKWii. All of his other points I fully agree with.

@TalKeaton: Game Design Major: I agree with most of what you said here so I'm going to amen just about everything and add alittle.

6. Everyone poo poo's Assassin's Creed but I liked the fact that when you ride your horse from town to town, there are: bad guys to get around, Templar to kill, and flags to find. Finding/Killing all of them aren't essential to the game but it did give me a chance to play around with the controls and get used to the game.

5. Totally agree! Every game has repetition, what really matters is if you are having while doing it and don't notice. I played Creed (sorry but it's a good example) one city per night so I didn't notice the repetition. PLUS since I played the PC version there were extra ways for me to get info for the assassination so I never had to do the same thing twice in the row or at all if I didn't like doing it.

I do hate limited save spots though.

4. I personally find using the handgun as a challenge if I can take out some of the more difficult baddies with it. In Resident Evil, the handgun was still pretty powerful towards the end of the game if you upgraded it accordingly.

3. I don't mind escort missions if the person i'm escorting can take a hit. And in Res. Evil's case, that girl didn't even TAKE a hit. You just had to shoot the person who was trying to carry her away and AWAY meant out of that actual room.

1. while i agree with most of it, the author loses credibility from me because he puts up a video of FFX but that game was developed in Japan and then localized here was it not? I think he should be pointing out that localization should be better not the writing in that case. Who knows what it was originally supposed to sound like.

oh wow, i only read a few but the points i read were stupid, just seemed like he was whining. Game Site commandment #1 : Dont sound like a whiny brat when
making a list.

@Cathaoir: Ditto. The handgun was way better than a sniper rifle -- it was dead accurate from miles away.

I guess the commandments makes Myst a game designed by gods!

meh, some i disagreed with, ie crappy weapons at start (would you like your bfg now or 20 minutes in?) and the 1st person platforming one.
i actually like it.

@Malevolentburrito: Ain' no pimps on mah face!

Holy shit... does this "Cracked" website have any relation to the "Cracked" magazine? The crappy MAD knock-off?

That would explain why it's not funny.

Here's another old favorite of mine. I posted it in my profile back in February.
1UP: Hey devs, WTF?

@Billkwando: Sorry meant to pimples. Pimps an your face would be funny though.

I agreed with this article in just about anything.

Esp. no save points and unskippable cut scenes.

@fuchikoma: That's good stuff too. It ought to be stapled to all devs heads.

Seems to be in the same vein as Zero Punctuation, can't tell if he's to be taken seriou