Make one change to your favourite game to ruin it

We all have our top games, don't we? However...some of them could be bad.

What would you change about your favourite game to turn it into a stinker?

Me? Super Mario World, but with Super Mario Bros jump controls

@sombre oh man, that's evil - the thought of it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I could just ruin almost any FPS I love for myself by taking away the tiny reticule in the centre of the screen. That'd do it.

As a more specific example - I don't think the Arkham games would survive without the Batman glide mechanic. For all the other aspects of those games I love, taking away the glide would just make for a meh to terrible game for me.

Hitman 2016 without saving

Dota 2 but it's 100% mouse driven. Gone are all the crispy executed fights. Instead you have a bunch of characters staring at eachother while their masters furiously swing their mouse around the ability and item bars to select their move :D

Zelda BotW but it takes your local weather data and uses it to generate your in game weather. The times you feel most like hunkering down with a game are when it's most unplayable.

@gerbilsinspace: This seems like a potential mixed blessing though.

Step 1: Move to Death Valley.

Step 2: Play BOTW uninterrupted until you dehydrate to death.

A perfect plan.

Even if you don't do that at least you'd have long stretches uninterrupted by rain or could plan for when you could play.

My answer would be Breath of the Wild but it's linear. Same world and everything but you have to do the missions/shrines in order, no straying from the path or leaving the mission area.

Sunless Skies but written by David Cage.

Gravity Rush w/o Kat. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Halo, but Cortana is voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait.

@sparky_buzzsaw: You're in the wrong thread. This is not "describe a perfect game."

Can't think of one for my absolute favorite game (FF Tactics), but how about this one:

Just Cause 2 w/o grapple hook.

@relkin: FF tactics is super easy to ruin. Just replace the beautiful spritework with PS1 3-D graphics and, more importantly, long PS1 era attack and magic animations (think FF-9) complete with some mid-battle load times for the more powerful attacks.

Boom. Ruined.

I've been thinking for a bit, and I can't think of just one thing I could change about Return of the Obra Dinn to make me hate it.

So I'll go with an easy one: Skyrim (or any game with a big open world, really) without any form of fast travel.

@bigsocrates: Well I thought the point was to ruin it in one stroke, and I'm not sure either of those two things would ruin that game. The latter of that pair would hurt it considerably, considering how long that game takes to play already; I'll give you that.

Maybe if subclasses were removed? Even with the Counter/Equipment/Movement slots still in play, the loss of having a second classes skills available would so dramatically diminish that games complexity in battle, it's depth of customization, it's replayability, etc.

Metal Gear Solid but with an editor.

New X-COMs with no enemy variety nor equipment variety, it's all just human males with basic machine guns fighting.

Left 4 Dead with only a lone character who doesn't speak (and no it's not Chicago Ted).

Tribes with no skiing, wherever you land you just stick and take fall damage.

Undertale with no music, just stark silence with the occasional aesthetic bleeps and bloops.

Not necessarily my tippity top faves just the ones I can apply this question to at the moment.

Add a Stamina bar to the Batman Arkham games

Have John St. John narrate Dear Esther in the Duke voice

Reduce the number of missiles you get in Ace Combat to a realistic amount

Remove the inventory from Hitman, you can only hold 1 item and it has to be out at all times

Fallout 2 but it’s first person.

Planescape Torment, with every line of text poorly narrated by some incredibly bored intern.

FFT but with that stupid zoom in that Fire Emblem does for every attack

@sombre: This would be such a better game.

Oblivion with the Resident Evil 1 ink ribbon save system.

Spelunky but multiplayer.

@quasiconundrum: I can think of one for Return of Obra Dinn. Don't confirm any of your choices so you never know for sure if any of your choices are correct. You need to confirm every single person with the right cause of death at once to get the "ending".

Mine would be Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door. Replace every character with Toad.

Wait a second...

Remove conveyor belts from Factorio/Satisfactory.

Fallout but it's an mmo

Take any game and give it that mid-low budget 3DS JRPG chibi deformed character art/graphic styles.

Damon's Souls .. Change the og difficulty to extremely easy.

Sonic the Hedgehog, but it plays, sounds and looks like a Mario game.

Officer? This one, here.

Senran Kagura, but with only conservative outfits.

Fallout 4, but no mod support.

Destiny 2, but the servers have been shut down.

Final Fantasy X, but with modern voice acting.

Metal Gear, but designed by Ubisoft.

Devil May Cry, but designed by Ubisoft.

Dragon's Dogma, but designed by Ubisoft.

And Persona 4, but no Chie.

Final Fantasy X but it's all Blitzball.

DOOM but with twin stick shooter controls.

@shindig: I'd buy the shit out of that.

Animal Crossing but everyone hates you

WWE All Stars but there are no character classes and everyone controls the same.

AC: New Leaf but there's no way to change the clock.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX but you're allowed to bump into sleeping ghosts.

Ocarina of Time but with time limits, npc schedules, and an item reset.

Yakuza but written by David Cage.

Metal Gear Solid Series, but replace Snake with Tidus.

honestly any of my favorite games can be ruined if david cage or sam barlow wrote it

@nexivselecaf: Ubisoft's Metal Gear is Splinter Cell which was great but they didn't succeed with refreshing the game as time went by.

Ubisoft's Devil May Cry would be Prince of Persia? The Sands of Time trilogy was their high point but it seems they decided to quit on it too quickly after Assassin's Creed.

I'm not sure about Dragon's Dogma though...

I miss the old days of Ubisoft :(

The only example I can think of would be DOOM (2016) but without the shotgun/super shotgun. That change wouldn't make it a bad game overall, but I love that super shotgun so much it's genuinely distressing to think about it not being there.

Also concurring that every game on the planet would be ruined with the addition of David Cage.

I feel like you could accomplish this by either replacing everyone in Animal Crossing with the cast of Zeno Clash or putting the entire cast of Animal Crossing into Pathologic 2. This thread is evidence that this community is full of monsters who want nothing more than the destruction of good video games. ;D

Tetris, but you can't turn the shapes.

Kerbal Space Program, no keyboard and mouse support. Gamepad only.

Skyrim without the music.

Halo, but you can talk to the blue lady.

A CRPG but I hate all the party members. I guess that counts for any RPG really.

@merxworx01: lol that describes a lot of existing CRPGs for me, but it would be more "I hate the design of half these characters" since I only ever really played the Dagon Age games to completion to know the characters (I dont care if those aren't "CRPGs" or not they ain't JRPGs)

This entire thread:

@quasiconundrum: I like @nuttism 's take, but for Obra Dinn, I was thinking removing a quality of life feature would be the most insidious way to ruin it (whereas the fate confirmation thing seems more a difficulty scale thing to me), so: remove the page that allows you to read the dialogue spoken in the murder scene. Every time you want to confirm if people were speaking Russian, or if that guy said a certain name, have fun remembering, locating, and viewing/listening to the entire scene in its entirety again. Or making your own notebook.

For my own, I'll go with OG Resident Evil 2. Remove the tank controls and put in normal directional controls. Tank controls might be the most acquired-taste control scheme in video game history, but those classic RE games straight up do not work without them. They are either ridiculously easy (see the REmake remaster for examples of this) or God-awful to control, particularly when the camera shifts and suddenly what was just "right" has become "down" or something (see the "classic" homage levels in Silent Hill Downpour for this).

As a bonus, take Resident Evil 4 and make it play like Resident Evil Dead Aim. A pulled back 3rd person camera instead of over-the-shoulder, and when you aim your gun, it switches to a first-person view with a giant reticle in the middle of the screen. Dead Space and Gears of War would have to look elsewhere for inspiration... or be VEEEERY different games.