bad video game level design

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Here I am playing Dead Rising 3 again and I can't help but wonder what Capcom was thinking when it designed the map. Below you can see an image of it:

This hellhole is riddled with obstacles, roadblocks, huge holes in the ground, and other objects that make traveling from point A to point B unnecessarily frustrating. Not to mention there are thousand of zombies everywhere that would have been enough to deal with if the map was designed well.

What really made Dead Rising 3's poor level design stand out was playing it after finishing The Last of Us for my second time. Although The Last of Us isn't an open-world game, it's one that has expertly crafted levels.

So what games have you played that had bad level design?

This hellhole is riddled with obstacles, roadblocks, huge holes in the ground, and other objects that make traveling from point A to point B unnecessarily frustrating.

Almost as if the area was rattled by an apocalyptic event.

Halo 3 - Cortana. God dammit that level sucks.

arkham city

I hated the way the city was, got quite lost a few times and didn't know where to go because almost every corner looked almost the same. When ever I was in the streets, I would hate it because it is way too small and claustrophobic and most of the time, you'll just come to a dead end when traveling by foot.

Perfect Dark Zero. The game would place arrows on the ground showing you where to go if you didn't leave an area after awhile. The devs knew people would get stuck with the shitty level design so they used the arrows as a band-aid.

Killzone Shadow Fall and Bionic Commando (2009)

Shank. Bored to tears with everything in that game. The levels ran together from almost zero variety.

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People should explain why the level design is bad.

Perfect Dark Zero. The game would place arrows on the ground showing you where to go if you didn't leave an area after awhile. The devs knew people would get stuck with the shitty level design so they used the arrows as a band-aid.

I'd argue that the multiplayer maps were really well done at the very least. I agree about the solo campaign, though, for the most part.

I'll probably get hate for this, but the Destiny beta had horrible level design, for solo play at least. It just felt waaay too claustrophobic and it didn't really allow for strategic movement and such, if that makes sense at all. That's what it seemed like on hard mode, solo play.

I loved Dead Rising 3's map design. You just have to learn which areas you can drive through and which you have to traverse on foot. It wouldn't be as fun or tense if you could just drive everywhere.

Dark Souls II... A hallway filled with enemies isn't really the best design for a level. It's a straight line. This isn't just one area, but plagues multiple areas in the game, unfortunately.

Persona 4 Golden's dungeons. They're well stylized, but it's weird. It seems like its randomly generated, but I don't think it is, or at least that all of it is. And they're just kind of repetitive and boring. Really probably the game's only majorly glaring flaw.

I found the dungeons in P4G extremely repetitive and boring, if they count.

edit: whoa, twin mode activate.

arkham city
I hated the way the city was, got quite lost a few times and didn't know where to go because almost every corner looked almost the same. When ever I was in the streets, I would hate it because it is way too small and claustrophobic and most of the time, you'll just come to a dead end when traveling by foot.

This was actually my favorite part of Arkham City.

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Killzone Shadow Fall is the reason people sound stupid when they say linear levels are a bad thing. Game would have benefited so much from a simpler level design. Instead, we ended up with big, bland squares.

Any Dimps Sonic game.

: Sep 10, 2013

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Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Every level is like 5 times bigger than it should be.

BeforeU

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.

Halo 3 - Cortana. God dammit that level sucks.

That's what I used to think when I first played. But I literally finished this level on legendary today itself. Its confusing, and there are lot of enemies but I wouldn't call that a bad level design. There are lot of tricks and short cuts you can master. I call that a great level design. But yes, you have to invest time to know inside out.

Killzone Shadow Fall is the reason people sound stupid when they say linear levels are a bad thing. Game would have benefited so much from a simpler level design. Instead, we ended up with big, bland squares.

Apart from a couple confusing moments I didn't find the "open" areas to be bad.

: Apr 13, 2013

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Most Sonic games.

Pits everywhere. ESPECIALLY in Heroes.

RE6 campaign. Thank the heavens for mercenaries, though.

Busby 3D.

How do you fuck up the level design of a 3D PLATFORMER??

Or rather, a game with great level design brought to a screeching hault by a single extremely intuitive idea.

Crescent Pale Mist has a similar problem. So you have these teleporting daggers you can use, the tutorial teaches you how. You never use them in combat or to traverse anything, and the tutorial, IIRC, doesn't teach you their real purpose. 3 levels and an hour or more into the game, you need to dagger teleport through an energy field. There's no prompt, there's no practice, there's no reason to have ever teleported before this point or reason to assume teleporting goes through certain barriers.

Both instances of things that make perfect sense if you're the dev, but are unintuitive nightmares if you're the player because they're gimmicks used a single time in the entire game with no explanation or reason to guess their existence. You just think you're stuck, especially since both maps are not strictly linear, so you might not even realize this is the way to go.

: Oct 12, 2010

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arkham city
I hated the way the city was, got quite lost a few times and didn't know where to go because almost every corner looked almost the same. When ever I was in the streets, I would hate it because it is way too small and claustrophobic and most of the time, you'll just come to a dead end when traveling by foot.

This is still the main reason why I prefer Asylum to City.

RE6 holy shit.
Batman Arkham Origins. Cross the city between that bridge is annoying, especially in side missions.

Kingdom Hearts has arguably the worst level design for being a good game

Really obtuse or unclear objectives. Little to no flow between areas, you just sort of appeared in a new area, very little transition. Areas with lots of jumping, but no thought into jumping controls. Overall just really bad, honestly probably the only game Ive played that noticeably poor level design.

Resident Evil 6. "Who loves giant snowy slopes where if you get hit once you slide back down to the bottom??? Nobody? Well let's just put it in anyway". So many terrible design choices, and just plain uniteresting levels (like Leon's super sparse open environments in the graveyard, or boring corridors). It doesn't help that the combat system does not encourage active consideration and interaction with the level design for the most part.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter N64. Not so much just the level layout but the various paths and nearly no sense of progression at all cause you're key hunting and have to take leaps of faith off of cliffs without even knowing til you hit the floor.

RE6 campaign. Thank the heavens for mercenaries, though.

The levels weren't designed with the game mechanics ,or anything else for that matter, in mind at all.

And that snow level with Jake and Sherry *urk* Edit: Dammit Fancy Clown!

Edit: Wasn't much of a fan of Dead Rising 3 either. Things just kept getting more and more cluttered as they were to artificially extend travel time.

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Almost as if the area was rattled by an apocalyptic event.

That's not entirely fair to the OP's point though. Dead Rising 3's sections are clearly walled off in extremely artificial ways with no reason other than to hinder the player.

Perhaps the holdups in between city sections are built to give the game a little breathing room to load in the next area, like how Arkham Origins has this insanely long bridge in between city parts.

Kingdom Hearts has arguably the worst level design for being a good game

Really obtuse or unclear objectives. Little to no flow between areas, you just sort of appeared in a new area, very little transition. Areas with lots of jumping, but no thought into jumping controls. Overall just really bad, honestly probably the only game Ive played that noticeably poor level design.

While I agree that that platforming was crap, I would argue that part of the charm (at least for me) was exploring and getting lost in the levels. I particularly liked doing this in the Tarzan world, and Atlantica (shit swimming controls notwithstanding).

EDIT: And I'll take this level design over the stupidly linear levels of the later games.

One big obnoxious corridor with the occasional exciting moment where you get to do something else... like.. backtrack.

Here I am playing Dead Rising 3 again and I can't help but wonder what Capcom was thinking when it designed the map.

They were probably thinking, "How can we make the world SEEM big without taxing the system too much so we can add more zombies?"

Seriously, the worst part of Dead Rising 3's map is at the end of the game, you're traveling between the different sections of the city so frequently that it gets so boring driving back and forth on the same boring highways...

: Mar 27, 2012

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Apart from a couple confusing moments I didn't find the "open" areas to be bad.

The style shooting, stealth, and open level design just didn't mix well at all.

I think stealth would have been better if ammo was scarce, or there was greater reward for going undetected. Instead, the only reason to try to remain unseen is because picking off the Helghast one by one might be easier than just going all out (which it rarely was).

The openness to the levels didn't help either, since it was never clear where enemy visual boundaries ended.

It's like they thought they were making it open, but actually restricted it even more. If you didn't take out your enemies the way the developer intended (stealthily kill guy X, grenade guy Y, shoot guy Z), the game punishes you. Instead of trying to figure out this predetermined path to go undetected, it was easier to just go guns blazing.

They were probably thinking, "How can we make the world SEEM big without taxing the system too much so we can add more zombies?"
Seriously, the worst part of Dead Rising 3's map is at the end of the game, you're traveling between the different sections of the city so frequently that it gets so boring driving back and forth on the same boring highways...

Yeah, I think it is a technical limitation. There are still serious framerate issues.

One big obnoxious corridor with the occasional exciting moment where you get to do something else... like.. backtrack.

Fuck the Oliphants in this game

You forgot the part where there's bottomless pits everywhere. DIMPS!!!

Wow. Some actual good suggestions.

Not HALO:CE LIBRARY and all your other favorite games.

Seriously. Remember this?

Or this?

Fuck them.

: May 30, 2012

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Dark Souls II

Horrible spider map design, early obstacles that dont let you explore those areas till you explore the low level areas, fast travel since you cant return by foot, bunch of corridors with cheap enemies to add a sense of danger, areas are too small to enjoy and you suddenly change to a completely radical change of area in the next corridor

Wow. Some actual good suggestions.
Not HALO:CE LIBRARY and all your other favorite games.

Well thats low hanging fruit.
Well thats low hanging fruit.
Well thats low hanging fruit.
Well thats low hanging fruit.

One big obnoxious corridor with the occasional exciting moment where you get to do something else... like.. backtrack.

To be fair, it's basically FFX "Lord of the Rings Edition", level design included from what I remember. I don't think a turn based RPG necessarily needs complex level design because the combat literally doesn't have anything to do with it, it just streamlines the whole 'running around waiting to fight things process'.

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