Pet peeves in games

[Sharingan]

Have you ever stopped and wondered at certain game design decisions, and asked yourself ... "What the f**k were the developers thinking when they decided to implement THAT?", or something to that effect?

Let's take invisible, unavoidable spike traps, for example. What the hell? They don't test your skill (save for your ability to memorize where all the traps were on your next playthrough), they're just freakin' annoying. A lazy design choice made to artificially slow down the pace, so that you don't complete the game too quickly. There are hundreds more examples that can be named, things that, if omitted, would make 95% of all games much more palatable. I simply can't understand why, during the game testing stage of development, no one ever seems to stand up and say: "Hey guys, this 'feature' is sure to annoy the f**k out of everyone. Let's scrap it."

So what annoyances in games do you hate most? Has there ever been anything that disgusted you so much, that you actually shoved a game aside, never to play it again, even though it wasn't a bad game at all?


Some things I hate most:

1. The aforementioned invisible traps. Most prevalent in titles such as Rick Dangerous and Switchblade II, they're simply a pain in the ass.

2. Slippery-slidey ice worlds. It isn't remotely clever, and when you plunge to your doom the umpteenth time, you just want to strangle someone.

3. No restart points/having to restart a level at the very beginning, even if you were almost at the end of one. Now, if a game has relatively short levels, this isn't a problem ... but you simply don't want to have to start over after a 20-25 minute round!

4. Big framerate problems. Normally, I'm not a graphics wh0re, but if there's one thing I would like to be sorted out in any game, it's the framerate. Inconsistent framerate really can ruin a game; it also means a developer simply bit off more than they could chew. What's the big problem with toning down the amount of objects on-screen by a bit, to keep things flowing smoothly? What's the difference between having 16 sprites dancing around, as opposed to having 'only' 12? The regular (non-AGA) version of Robocod had a lot of framerate problems, and that alone defeated the developer's goal of wanting to make a game to rival Sega's Sonic series.

5. Wildly illogical puzzles, that require trial-and-error rather than logical thinking. Even more annoying are trial-and-error puzzles that lead to instant-death when you happen to make the wrong choice. Any adventure game lover should know what a pain this can be.

[Harrison]

Your last one, illogical puzzles, used to be so annoying in many Adventure games. Having to try every object you had collected with everything in the area until something worked and allowed you to progress. That was pointless and not fun. Just required because you wanted to see the rest of the game.

And no restart points or save games is a big problem in many older games, and this is one element that made games harder than they are now. Most games these days allow you to either save at any point or have well placed restart points, and most don't limit you to only 3 lives for the whole game. This used to be a nightmare in some games.

Another that annoys me is scene flipping and scrolling. In many games where you flip to the next screen it flips before you want it too. I've encountered this in recent games too. The most annoying is when an enemy has dropped some items but they are right at the edge of the scene. You move towards them, but the screen flips to the next screen and you lose the items. Very annoying. The other is scrolling, especially in platform games where you can't move back at all. Even some Mario games suffered from this annoying problem, where you see something you want to get to but move too far on and can't get back. Very frustrating.

[Demon Cleaner]

Invisible traps like you mentioned in some games, ESPECIALLY Rick Dangerous just drive me mad. You have to play the game over and over again and learn it by heart, which gets rather boring.

The game that drove me almost totally nuts, was Green Beret, whether the C64 or the original arcade version. I smashed 3-4 Quickshot 2 joysticks whilst playing that game.

And there are also some RPGs with random encounters, which are sometimes happening too often. You make 2-3 steps, and BAM, another battle. But recently it seems that the developers have also noticed, that this annoys lots of people, when you look at the latest RPG releases, you can always see your enemies.

[Harrison]

The updated version of Final Fantasy 1 on the PSP brought the annoyance of random battles back to me recently, and I think FF1 has to be one of the worst examples, even worse that Breath of Fire 1.

In FF1 you walk two steps in the world view and you hit another random encounter, and these can be very annoying for two reasons. Firstly if your character isn't yet very strong for the area you are in then ever battle uses up valuable resources such as characters MP to heal the party, or potions. And if you have run out and are trying to get back to a town to get more supplies every battle is even worse (obviously you should have some Tents in your inventory, but you don't always have enough money for them). And the second is if you are in an area with enemies that are now insignificant to your party. Having to stop and fight weak enemies that take one hit from your party to kill every few steps is very annoying and just wastes time as you don't get anything good from their deaths.

[Sharingan]

Ugh. Over-frequent random encounters are the suck. Luckily, developers with sense actually think of adding some accessory that lowers random encounter rate.

Another big annoyance of mine: NON-SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES. Or, even worse, NON-SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES RIGHT BEFORE A TOUGH-AS-NAILS BOSS.

[Harrison]

Those are bad. Keep dying and have to keep watching the 3 minute cut-scene and then die 2 seconds later, only to watch it all again!

[Demon Cleaner]

Another big annoyance of mine: NON-SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES. Or, even worse, NON-SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES RIGHT BEFORE A TOUGH-AS-NAILS BOSS.

That is annoying, but luckily they learned from their mistakes.

[Submeg]

random encounters are the worst....Im glad in FFXII you can see them beforehand. thankgod.