Are some power-ups pointless?

In Super Mario Bros., the mushroom allows him an extra hit. The fire flower allows him to attack enemies from a distance. The star allows for pure invincibility for a short period of time. Then in a later game, the ice flower is introduced. However, it's essentially a fire flower with a longer time to damage enemies. Does that make it useless?

This is just an example. Do you know any useless power-ups?

Perhaps it has some secondary effect that you don't know about......

I don't actually know.... I haven't played Mario

A lot of Batmans combat abilities in the Arkham games are useless. Unless the game forces you to use them, your better to save your attention and focus on possistioning and standard punching kicking / counter attack. Twatting about with gadgets is just trailer fuel or showing off.

I'm sure there's some but I think it usually depends on how one plays the game as they're probably there for flexability. I think the ice flower in Mario games freezes enemies allowing you to stand on them or pick them up and throw them.

@Evil_Saluki:

Well thats kind of the point...... if you do the bare minimum then Batman is an extremely boring game...... the gadgets actually do have uses, each one does something different.

I think in some Mario games you can use the ice flower to make platforms.

For the normal game, sort of. The main game doesn't force you to use them but they are far from useless, especially in Predator areas. Where these really shine is in the challenge maps, where you can use elaborate traps to take down all of the opponents in very short periods of time. Watching Predator challenge record runs on Youtube is very enlightening and I have seen people use the various gadgets in ways I never would have thought of, and to great effect.

Also, working gadgets into combos in combat challenges increases your score considerably.

As to the op's question, sure. Hell, sometimes entire weapons in games are demonstrably worse than others that are available at a given point in the game. Half the weapons in Sunset Overdrive suck prior to being upgraded. Sometimes this is just the result of poor game design, or other times there are other reasons for it (such as sim-type games that strive for realism over balance).

But where I see this the most, is games what give you non-violent options or incentive to use non-lethal takedowns. In games like MGS, Deus Ex, etc there are tons of weapons and upgrades that are basically useless if you are going for a non-lethal playthrough because their only purpose is to kill.

-Byshop

@Byshop:

Don't forget RPGs..... pretty much evefything you start with and many of the things are only as usefull as how long it takes you to reach the next weapon or upgrade.

@Lulu_Lulu: Not really the same thing.

-Byshop

@Byshop:

Thats true.... :(

The fire flower only kills enemies. The ice flower turns enemies into platforms that can be jumped on or thrown...but doesn't necessarily kill them.

They're similar, but definitely have different uses - and I seem to remember some sections in the Mario U games where it was important to have one, the other, or both.