foxdvd

What things in games do you hate and wish they would stop doing? The two that drive me crazy.

Unskippable cutscenes. I know you are very proud of your story and cutscene work, but if I want to skip them you should allow me. Some games will let you skip them on a second play, but others won't let you skip ever. To me that is just unacceptable. I hate to break it to you, but most games stories and acting would not even be good enough for The CW. I might be enjoying your game a lot, but when the "story" is going on and I am not having fun, forcing me to watch your cutscene is not making me want to get on the internet and tell everyone to buy your game. Forcing me to watch them a second time if I am trying to clean up achievements or just play at a higher difficulty is almost unacceptable.

Getting overpowered, knocked out or in some way incapacitated in a game. Always makes me want to put my controller down. Some games do it well (Batman Arkham City when you are cuffed and taken by the penguin) but most use it is a tool to push you down so that you can feel a sense of empowerment when you overcome the situation. They are usually poorly handled to the point that even if you know it is coming there is nothing you can do. I mention the Batman game earlier, but other parts of those games are hair pulling. The worlds greatest detective walks into an obvious trap? I have been playing Far Cry 3 recently and it is borderline insane. It happens over, and over and over and over and over. It just leads to frustration at the GAME not a enjoyment.

So what game mechanic or trope pisses you off in games?

spainlinx0

I hate that I don't have full control over a camera. I want to not only be able to spin the camera around me, but please, let me pull the camera out. This comes to mind specifically because of Dead Rising. I want to be able to see more of my surroundings at a time, and I always feel like my view is being obscured.

cleaver

I hate when you beat a boss then you have to beat them again and then I hate it even more when you have to beat them a third time and I hate it the most when the third time is easier than the 1st 2 times.

Canis Firebrand

Unskippable cut scenes or dialogue when replaying a section of the game after you die or fail to complete the mission. I don't want to listen to that stuff each time, especially if the part of the game is particularly difficult and I have to retry multiple times.

I don't play many RTS games any more because I hate the cheesy, repetitive dialogue each time you click on each of your units. The different units might have 2-3 saying each, but you hear it every time you click on the unit. If you have to select multiple, but don't want to do the "select all" option, its very annoying to have to listen to. Not sure what the alternative is, though, since without it the game would be fairly quiet except for background music and sounds of units battling.

I'm sure I have others, but those two come to mind first.

discostu1337

Not being able to skip the game credits pisses me off more than not being able to skip cutscenes. Especially for long ones like GTA etc, where I just want to free roam and do side missions!

shizawn

Adding to the unskippable cutscenes, unskippable Title, Legal, intro video scenes. Just take me to the main menu, please.

Checkpoint-only saves. I understood its necessity back in the days where consoles didn't have extra space, but I really hate that this infected PC gaming, where this was never an issue. I want to be able to save wherever and whenever. And if I want to abuse the save/load system, that should be my prerogative.

DRG

I'm not a fan of on-the-rails shooting segments in games where you otherwise move around with free will. An example is in the Gears of War games, the segments where the whole stage has you manning a turret on a vehicle and shoot down things in the sky. I'm terrible at these and I feel like the games hit a brick wall whenever I get to one of them.

I'm also not a fan of areas where they slow your character down and take away control of weapons, reloading, etc. to receive a communication or some other story reason. These are annoying the first run through but become excruciating on subsequent plays.

DRG

And even once you get to the main menu, it often takes forever to get into the actual game. Checking for Live content, checking for Save location, and so on I often have to go through 5 'OKs' before I can even select 'Continue Game'. I wish I could just check 'Remember these settings'.

Obi-Wanma

Online achievements/trophies. I don't really like them in the first place, because I shouldn't have to rely on other players to get all my trophies, but then they become nearly unachievable as games become abandoned, or even worse, as servers get shut down and then you're really SOL. Who wants to deal with that shit?

slop101

This is a fun article [part 1, part 2] - and I hate most of these things as well.

wlj

I hate:


QTEs: they can be such a pain in the ass. for instance when i played Tomb Raider which was very QTE heavy there were certain sequences where I had to repeat several times. Partly because i didn't really understand what it wanted me to do and you had to do it really fast. I got pissed big time

Long cutscenes -- I don't really care if they are skippable or not, I am just not a fan of long cutscenes. I have very little gaming time and I don't want to spend 30 minutes of my 2 hour playtime watching cutscenes. I posted a thread about not caring about story much anymore in games

Poor save system -- I like to be able to save the game ANYWHERE I want. I don't understand why that can't be implemented in all games. At the very least give me alot of checkpoints and opportunities to save. A game I admire, from waaaaaay back on the SNES was Ncaa Basketball -- you could save the game at any point and come back and start where you left off. I wish all sports games were like that.

I hate constant shooting galleries -- Tomb Raider and Call of Duty come to mind. Go in area, 10 million people come out. Kill them all move to next area 10 million people come out...kill them all... Rinse and Repeat. Call of Duty is especially annoying because they have certain points where the enemies are never ending. You can sit there all day and they keep coming. you just have to run to a certain spot and they stop.

Hacking and lockpicking -- I hate having to do this in a game. it is frustrating trying to figure out what to do and even more frustrating when you have to do it fast. For example, I like Warframe, but you have to hack terminals alot and do it quick. I am old and my mind and limbs don't work as fast

MoviePage

Losing all my equipment/gear/inventory as part of the story progression.

Canis Firebrand

This is one I missed in my original post. In an RPG type game, like Elder Scroll.. I made use of the save system and multiple save files a lot. I'd save before fights and doing different actions in case I did not like the outcome.

For a non-RPG game, multiple save files might be a bit much. But allow me to have one that I can save anywhere in addition to the autosave. That way, if I think I'm coming up to a challenging area, I can save right before starting it instead of having to rely on the auto save that might put me further back and I have to do other actions over again.

Tarantino

Enemies that walk in the same pattern over and over again.

DRG

Another one that just came to mind... I hate when a game asks you to do some task like "kill five of every enemy type" for a bonus or achievement, but doesn't track these stats anywhere.

Similarly, I wish more games tracked which collectibles you've found... like "Stage 10: 2/3 Dog Tags collected". GTA V had the option for seeing what you had already collected if you logged into Rockstar Social Club, but this was a pretty shitty way to force someone to use the site when this feature should have just been built into the map in-game.

Decker

Missions that require you to trail people not too close, not too far away and arbitrarily decide you failed because you let them get a distance ahead of you, even though you can still see them.

Missions where you fail because you completed it a few seconds beyond the arbitrary time limit. Watch Dogs fixer missions are like that -- a car sits unattended for a long, extended period of time, but if I get in and drive to the designated drop off point in 152 seconds instead of 150, you don't want the car any more?

mndtrp

The save anywhere is a big one for me. Gamers are getting older, and kids all of a sudden having a meltdown means I may need to pack it up for an evening at the drop of a hat.

Making me press anything, like the start button, to get to the main menu when loading up the game. If you're going to have two minutes of crap before I can even start playing the game, at least let me boot the game and wander off to do something else. Better yet, don't put every single logo and credit at the beginning of the game.

Unskippable cutscenes is another one. After watching the skinning cutscenes a few hundred times in Red Dead Redemption, I wanted to kill something living.

DRG

In the very least they should put these extra logos at the beginning of the campaign, so you only have to see them when you start up the game for the first time. The way it is now is like a book that forces you to read the copyright page and acknowledgements every time you pick it back up.

wlj

So true! My 5 month old loves to interrupt my gaming time. The other night, I started some co-op play in Marvel Heroes and 5 minutes later, I heard "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaa". I was like "dammit fellas I gotta go." This is 100% why i have never tried the new Raids out in Marvel Heroes. I can't commit to an extended period of time. I don't want the team to be left high and dry



oh yeah, i thought of one more thing I don't like -- Escort Missions -- I hate having to lead and protect some idiot A.I. character. It is infuriating most times. In Goldeneye 64, i hated the mission where you had to get Natayla out of the bunker, i believe it was. Also, the GTA series will throw you some infuriating escort missions alot

spainlinx0

That damn skinning animation! Argh! Do these developers even play the game to realize in about 20 minutes how annoying that's going to get?

Drexl

Games that nag you to activate a second controller while in singleplayer mode (the LEGO games are bad about this). I understand why it's there and it's fine by default, but at least give us the option to turn it off.

PC games that keep showing an unnecessary mouse cursor although you're playing with the gamepad.

Regarding opening logos, videos, etc., I think sometimes games use them to hide some of the loading. But I'd still like to skip past them, especially if the game is on a SSD.

gryffinmaster

Mandatory turret sequences.

TheKing

The idea that headshots are the only kind of bullet wounds that matter. Shoot people in the legs, and they're still just as fast, shoot em in the chest and they're aim is still just as accurate. But get one lucky shot to a head covered by a helmet, and boom, they're dead.

mhg83

Forcing you to lose/die for story purposes. This is something I saw a lot in old school RPG's. I would use up a lot of my potions only to find out there was no way to win

QTE Scenes. Seriously this is not Sega CD FMV anymore Developers!

Intentional glitches for retro style games. I remember Mega Man 9 and 10 did this shit. Some of it was fun like the old graphics, but having the enemies re-spawn when you go back a screen?!

Groucho

Along the same lines, presenting the credits as a "reward" for beating the game.