What are Five things developers put in video games that you hate?

Everyone's list will be different, but here's a list of my pet peeves that video game developers sometimes put in the games I play that almost (and even sometimes) ruins the whole experience:

#5. That annoying cat character (usually a female) in J-RPGs. Ugh, I hate them with a putrid hatred beyond, especially when they freakin` "meyow" whenever they say something!!! :evil:

#4. Crystal-chasing storylines in JRPGs....very dull and boring. With all that development time and a big budget, can't they think of something more interesting than that? :?

#3. Self-destruct scenes where you have to escape before the time runs out. I know, I know, it's a tradition in almost every Metroid game, but NST went overboard when they had one every stinkin` time you beat a boss in Metroid Prime Hunters. Which is funny because the planet isn't even destroyed!!! :roll:

#2. Constant failing health and the need to rejuvenate your energy by finding heal items or you die. Ugh...I hate this concept. I hated it in Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, I didn't like it too much in Metroid Fusion, I loathed it in Scurge: Hive (that Metroid rip-off) and I will definitely hate it in Heavenly Sword.

#1. Not enough checkpoints where you need them and forcing you to start over from the very beginning. This is the worst!!! I'll pick on Prince of Persia Two Thrones again because those developers were either lazy to put in saves and checkpoints OR they have a thing for creating sadistic and torturing gameplay! AND the Prince's health fails when he turns into that demon-sand thingy! Ugh...bad game design, it really killed the experience IMO. They should really take some cues from the Tomb Raider Anniversary team. Crystal Dynamics did a great job in providing gracious checkpoints whenever Lara died. That's the way those type of games should be designed!

Anyway, that's my list. I'm sure there are a lot more but these are the ones that get under my skin the most! 8)

I have two.

1. Any Timed Missions. Sometimes they are alright but most of them are the reason why I have to buy another controller, because the one I was using is in a million pieces.

2. My other is the escort missions. Why does 99% of all games have an escort mission? And I love how most of the time the character you are escorting is retarded and loves to just stand there so the enemy is a much easier time killing them.

I was trying to think of five but those are really the only things in a game that could either make me stop playing or make my blood boil.

Hmm, let's see.

1. Escort missions. They wouldn't be so bad, but it's like every person you have to escort is a complete retard "Oh hey, I think I'm just going to stand here and let people hit me until I die! Instead of, you know, running away or fighting back like a normal person would!"

2. Having to fight a gazillion things in the middle of a maze. Especially in RPGs, it's really irritating to be trying to find your way around a place that's really difficult to navigate, take two steps and get into a fight, and then by the time you've won the fight you've forgotten where you were going. Then by the time you remember you're in a fight again.

3. Anything with a timer. I've very rarely died due to running out of time for something, but it still makes me overly nervous to have it ticking away at the corner/top/whatever of my screen. I try to rush, and then I make stupid mistakes because I'm going fast, and THAT's what kills me.

4. Having a "good" ending and a "bad" ending, and having a good ending that you can't possibly get without looking up a guide and knowing specifically what you have to do to get it. (coughFFX-2cough)

5. The classic overly wussy heroine of JRPGs. Which is why Ashe from FF12 is my hero.

5. An "open" world: While this works somewhat in games like Oblivion, it usually just makes games more tedious. All the running/walking/driving around just seems like a chore.

4. Long, un-skippable cutscenes right before a really hard boss fight.

3. Box puzzles. Couldn't we think of some new kind of puzzle to completely overuse?

2. Two-weapon holding limit inFPS games. Apparently it's not unrealistic to have your character get shot in the face 100 times over the course of one level while his health just magically recharges, but god forbid you should be able to carry an Uzi, an shotgun, AND a 9 mm. That would be absurd.

1. Tutorial levels! They make instruction booklets for a reson. TO TEACH YOU HOW TO PLAY THE GAME!!!!! And why does every game have to explain how to jump/double jump? And I always like the "Okay (insert hero's name here), use the control stick to move around." Is that really necessary? Really?

thos annoying bits like having to use stealth even when there are enermies you could kill with a very low grade weapons

or when you get sloppy puzzles the one'sthe puzzles in lucas arts and tell talehave very creative puzles or the others who try just do it bad

1. Escort Missions with Dumb AI

2. "Find ITEM to obtain ITEM to defeat BOSS which will UNLOCK new world to find ITEM to obtain ITEM to defeat BOSS..."

3. NO SKIP cut scenes! This is really bad when you've already beat the game, know the story, and just want to get straight into the action.

4. Massive worlds with nothing to do. Oblivion was kinda like that, and so was San Andreas. I liked Morrowinds massive world alot better because of the diversity.

5. INVISIBLE WALLS

Games with really stupid barriers such as Rainbow Six Vegas. I'm an elite soldier trained on how to kill people with 300 different weapons and I canslide down 1000 feet of ropebut i can't hop over a desk in a hallway.

Oblivion's GPS tracking system. I ran into Umbra when I was at a huge disadvantage, but luckily for me, my thief was quick enough to outrun it and fast travel some place safe. I went on my merry little way and started to do other side quests when, in the middle of a different ruin, I heard yelling behind me. I turn around and it's Umbra who had tracked me down after 45 minutes of gameplay.

Psychic Nazis and Terrorists...yes this has to do with Call of Duty and R6 Vegas... this is when the enemy shoots at you, you wait for them to reload so you can pop up and aim at them.... you aim and aim and aim but they either stay down until you take the reticle off that spot or they run off and shoot at you from another spot. of course if you try to run and find a new spot... they know exactly where you went to and will shoot you in the face.

Melee combat in most FPS's... 6 bullets, laser shots and a couple grenades might only injure an enemy, but one good rifle butt will kill them

Everyone's list will be different, but here's a list of my pet peeves that video game developers sometimes put in the games I play that almost (and even sometimes) ruins the whole experience:

#5. That annoying cat character (usually a female) in J-RPGs. Ugh, I hate them with a putrid hatred beyond, especially when they freakin` "meyow" whenever they say something!!! :evil:

#4. Crystal-chasing storylines in JRPGs....very dull and boring. With all that development time and a big budget, can't they think of something more interesting than that? :?

#3. Self-destruct scenes where you have to escape before the time runs out. I know, I know, it's a tradition in almost every Metroid game, but NST went overboard when they had one every stinkin` time you beat a boss in Metroid Prime Hunters. Which is funny because the planet isn't even destroyed!!! :roll:

#2. Constant failing health and the need to rejuvenate your energy by finding heal items or you die. Ugh...I hate this concept. I hated it in Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, I didn't like it too much in Metroid Fusion, I loathed it in Scurge: Hive (that Metroid rip-off) and I will definitely hate it in Heavenly Sword.

#1. Not enough checkpoints where you need them and forcing you to start over from the very beginning. This is the worst!!! I'll pick on Prince of Persia Two Thrones again because those developers were either lazy to put in saves and checkpoints OR they have a thing for creating sadistic and torturing gameplay! AND the Prince's health fails when he turns into that demon-sand thingy! Ugh...bad game design, it really killed the experience IMO. They should really take some cues from the Tomb Raider Anniversary team. Crystal Dynamics did a great job in providing gracious checkpoints whenever Lara died. That's the way those type of games should be designed!

Anyway, that's my list. I'm sure there are a lot more but these are the ones that get under my skin the most! 8)

ASK_Story

Good list. Timed missions are the devil's work.

1. Button mashing, no skill just endurance

2. To easy puzzles, looks like games are dumbing down with people, HL1 puzzles>HL2 puzzles

3. JRPG's character format that always has atleast these for characters: whiney guy with girl troubles, Cutey cute innocent girl, The "cool" guy that is everyones favorite character, sluty eye candy girl.

4. Cross platform games that are heavly sided to eather consoles are computers: Oblivion on PC blows 360 out of the water in more ways then one, Tony hawk was just ment for consoles. If its better on computer i feel like iam missing the true game, if its better on console it just doesnt feel right on computer cant explain why.

5. Games that are made off of a popular name but are no good, but still sell well. Nuff said.

1. Unskippable cutscenes. This was particularly annoying in Guild Wars because everyone in the party had to agree to skip the cutscene. If you'd seen it 700 times like I had and another party member had never seen it, you'd have to sit through it again. Just really, really annoying.
2. Choice-making. Oblivion shall be my example. In Oblivion the players ability to make choices is pretty much absent. Most of the game involves "go here, kill everything along the way, come back". However, when you shouldbe able to make a decision, the game makes it for you as evidenced in the journal. IIRC, one quest said "I had no choice but to fight". When did I make that decision? Oh yeah, the game made it for me.
3. Formulaic design. Case in point is Twilight Princess. Every dungeon boiled down to "get to the mini-boss, get the item, use the item to get to the boss, use item to kill boss". That grew tiresome after a while.
4. Tacked on multiplayer. This makes no sense to me. Why spend time making a lackluster multiplayer when you could use that time to make a better singleplayer? The game would benefit from a greater singleplayer rather than a good singleplayer and poor multiplayer.
5. Illogicality. Again, Oblivion is my example. Why do Oblivion gates open all over the world yet the enemies never actually make an attempt to begin an invasion? They just...stand at the gate. Why do people see it as the end of the world, yet they go about their business as if nothing is happening? They'd rather stare at a wall for 6 hours than prepare for their impending doom. Why can I become the head of the Mage's Guild as a fighter? Why can I become the head of the Fighter's Guild as a mage? Going against logic like this really detracts from the experience.

1) Wicked sick, time consuming multiplayer achievements.

2)Escort missions with dumb AI

3)Collectible hidden items dogs in Kingdom Hearts ,packages in GTA3 , VC ; horseshoes in San Andreas etc .I allways end up with FAQ in my hand and bunch of screens in order to get them.

#4. Crystal-chasing storylines in JRPGs....very dull and boring. With all that development time and a big budget, can't they think of something more interesting than that? :?

ASK_Story

Oh Good god don't remind me. Like I LOVE the save the world story but that Crystal crap is just...seriously horrible. Wasn't every single FF like that before VI?

Also mine.

#1 Developers put presentation throught the roof and gameplay through the floor just to impress gamers with flashy graphics and their games end up selling millions. *Pretty much the majority of the big games that come out now*

#2 Needlessly changing the game for "natural progression" crap. *2D to 3D transfers, let's make everything openworld, death of level based games, add online to everything*

#3 Dumbing down the game for casuals *Oblivion, Rainbow Six Vegas, Final Fantasy XII (I know this is a casual series to begin with but XII took it just too far*

#4 Hesistating to try new ideas thus following a strict formula or sty1e. *well pretty much every game follow this, so I'll list gamesthat don't Contact, No More Heroes, Okami, Rez, Portal*

#5 Trying to put too much crap into their games instead of focusing on making it good. *Metroid Prime Hunters*

I wish developers would leave out:

1) In game advertisements: I get enough of this crap on the radio and television, I don't want to see it in a video game that I paid money for. If the developers are going to keep it in the game, fine, make the game A LOT cheaper or even better....free.

2) Long intros leading up to the title screen: Jesus f'n Christ, I know they want to make their development team known, but the company's name is already written on the game case and manual if I want to look at the credits. Everytime I'm about to play games like Socom or Virtua Fighter 5 it takes about 5 minutes just to get the game started. It's ridiculous. I should be able to press start and be able to play the game right away. I don't want to have to waste a second staring at the company's logo.

[QUOTE="ASK_Story"]

#4. Crystal-chasing storylines in JRPGs....very dull and boring. With all that development time and a big budget, can't they think of something more interesting than that? :?

Dencore

Oh Good god don't remind me. Like I LOVE the save the world story but that Crystal crap is just...seriously horrible. Wasn't every single FF like that before VI?

Also mine.

#1 Developers put presentation throught the roof and gameplay through the floor just to impress gamers with flashy graphics and their games end up selling millions. *Pretty much the majority of the big games that come out now*

#2 Needlessly changing the game for "natural progression" crap. *2D to 3D transfers, let's make everything openworld, death of level based games, add online to everything*

#3 Dumbing down the game for casuals *Oblivion, Rainbow Six Vegas, Final Fantasy XII (I know this is a casual series to begin with but XII took it just too far*

#4 Hesistating to try new ideas thus following a strict formula or sty1e. *well pretty much every game follow this, so I'll list gamesthat don't Contact, No More Heroes, Okami, Rez, Portal*

#5 Trying to put too much crap into their games instead of focusing on making it good. *Metroid Prime Hunters*

Nah..casuals still wouldn't like Oblivion and neither would your average gamer. It's still more for the hardcore. Final Fantasy XII reaches out to the hardcore and the average. Casuals would be turned off by the Gambit system and/or liscense board the moment they had to use it.

Nah..casuals still wouldn't like Oblivion and neither would your average gamer. It's still more for the hardcore. Final Fantasy XII reaches out to the hardcore and the average. Casuals would be turned off by the Gambit system and/or liscense board the moment they had to use it.

majadamus

I don't mean casuals as those playing Wii Sports, I mean casuals as those who aren't that familiar with the genre. Oblivion had many of it's core gameplay elements dumbed down until it was almost pure hack-n-slash and Final Fantasy XII had a horrible combat system until it was just target your enemy and kill them, fight a boss, you die, then go target enemies some more until you get leveled up then target the enemy until he dies while just curing your status once in a while. That's pretty much how I saw the entire game, at least in the older Final Fantasy's you had to find your enemies weakness and use tactics to protect yourself. Actually it could merge with #2 by following the "let's make everything real-time combat system" trend and the "let's make everything openworld" trend. Hell the game was butchered so much it wasn't even a JRPG anymore.

who ever invented the escort mission in games should be shot

and in rts 's not giving you a base and a realy small force that would get totally wiped out in sceonds C&C are bad at that but in age of empires 2 it was really good

I'm playing FFXII right now so my list may reflect that:P

- Boss encounters directly after a boss battle with no ability to save/heal in-between.

- JRPG main-character archetypes: what's with that stance every young anime-haired boy pulls when he's embarrased/ashamed in which he looks down at his shoes as he puts one arm behind his head and runss his hand through his hair.... seriously wtf? is this some Japanese gesture? Anyway I don't like it:(

- Level grinding for 4 hours to beat one boss and then discover you have to go through a new area that requires you to level for another 4 in the zone you've just spent 8 hours in just to stay alive in the new area. Too much for too little.

- spell/items/techniques that you will never get to use. Who uses 'break'? or 'disable'? Not me, that's who.

- caves/mines do not make for great dungeons as they are of nature boring and drab places. Square Enix, please take note.

-Escort missions. This is a popular one, I guess, and with good reason. Many games have done their best to frustrate you by making you escort characters who would sooner walk to their deaths than follow you. Dead Rising lets you skip them if you want, but there are still an awful lot of escort missions and most of the characters are gigantic liabilities. Guild Wars seems to have an awful lot of escort missions too, but at least those are a little more doable than the obnoxious ones in World of Warcraft (Jailbreak, anyone?). I'm not sure if I prefer leading around a dumb character or trying to keep up with one with a death wish so I can protect him from all the enemies he runs into.

-"Find the # pieces of _____ to restore order to the world." How many games rely on the tired mechanic of finding pieces of items to put them together for the sole purpose of hitting a plot point? How many evil items have been conveniently split into perfectly fragmented chunks and spread around the world in a variety of hostile locations? Every time a character tells me that we need some object to proceed with the story but oh wait it's broken in pieces and we have to retrieve them I feel like screaming. It's a lazy move on the developers' part.

-Inhuman achievements. Ones that require you to be top on a leaderboard, or ones that are (in all likelihood) physically impossible. Like Smash TV's achievement linked to beating the game with one continue. Yeah, right.

-Four-step user-input-required save menus. Autosave is an awesome feature, but when I'm forced to pick out my memory unit (or worse, the hard drive on the 360), select a save game, confirm, and then confirm again, I get cranky. Do it yourself! I can always go into the menu later on and switch save games if I have to. And games like Dead Rising and Ridge Racer on the 360 should be able to tell I have a hard drive and not pester me to select the only bloody storage device I have in the system.

-Unskippable prolonged logos before the main menu. Or Team Ninja's delightful copyright notice that pops up when you haven't played the game in so many days. I own the game, I've played it before, I know who made it, I just want to get into the game already and not stare blankly at the screen for a minute before I can do anything. This is also related to -

-Repeated, unskippable credits. I'm mainly looking at Meteos, which forces you through the credit sequence every time you beat star mode (and it's a ten minute mode, tops). Sure, you can hold start and fast forward through it, but it still sucks.

-I hate chicheed or disjointed storylines

-colorful and/or stereotypical characters,

-That a game plot takes the easy way out,

-Unconvincing graphics (from technical and artistic standpoint)

-Publicity and patriotism.

-The last boss turns out to be easier than all the ealier bosses
-Annoying inventory management (You're out of room, so do you drop the sword instead? oh, the horror!)
-Always having to protect the weaker people (at least defending Ashley in RE4 was made to be fun)
-Extremely overpowering characters (remember Marcus from FE?)
-Cheesy dialogue

1) QTEs. Well actually I loved these in quite a number of games over the years, from Die Hard Arcade and Shenmue to Resident Evil 4 and Tomb Raider Legend....then Spider-Man 3 came along. That game along has completely destroyed my love for them. really they're meant to be a nice bonus, something to kee you on your toes during a cutscene, maybe a short gameplay sequence, but Spider-man 3 pushed it way too far and now I cringe everytime I see one.

2) Unlockables. Again this is a feature that I once loved. Smash Bros Melee, DOA: Ultimate, both were a lot of fun due to unlockables, but then you get racing games and stuff where they push it too far. I liked the demo of Full Auto so I buy the game an drealize that you start with pretty much nothing, you have to unlock the whole game, tracks, cars, weapons, everything! It's bad in sim racers too because...well I suck at them. :(

3) Escort missions. Now this is something that I have never loved. It's not just the idea itself, it's the fact that everytime you have to do this you have to protect the most useless character ever! It's like the character is smart in cutscenes but then just happens to lose 100 points off their IQ as soon as they're in the game. They seem to be magnatized towards enemies and hazards and don't possess the intelligence to even try to run away.

The one thing worse than this is games where you're meant to have A.I partners helping you throughout the game and they act as useless as the people on the escort missions. It's their duty to fight the enemies, and yet they die just as much as the damsel in distress. Sorry but I don't play games to babysit.

4) Stealth - Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, Thief, Tenchu etc - All are fun games. However I have never liked a stealth part from any non-stealth game. For stealth it should be all or nothing. Games that are based around it are good, all other games seem to do poor jobs with it and it just ends up being frustrating. Call of Cthulu on Xbox was bad for this.

5) Poor choice of save points. Devil May Cry would be a ood example, unlike Ninja Gaiden the difficulty in Devil May Cry comes from a lack of save points. It just spreads them out too far int he hope that you'll get bored, give up and then go tell your friends how hard it is. I know some people said that Ninja gaiden had the same problems, but to me they were ok and are proof that a can be challenging without resorting to cheap tricks. It's bad in other games too where it saves a checkpoint right before a cutscene, meaning that you have to watch it each time. Gears stands out for this in recent memory.

The one thing worse than this is games where you're meant to have A.I partners helping you throughout the game and they act as useless as the people on the escort missions. It's their duty to fight the enemies, and yet they die just as much as the damsel in distress. Sorry but I don't play games to babysit.-Xeno-

The first game I thought of when I read this was Jade Empire. Your active party member was absolutely useless in that game, and only served to keep the attention of an enemy or two for a few brief moments. Then they'd die, and the enemies would come for you. I don't think I ever saw one of my party members kill a single enemy on their own, which is just plain sad. At least Bioware seemed to notice this, as they'd get resurrected automatically after every fight, fodder for another day.

There are so many pet peeves that everyone listed it makes me wonder why developers keep putting these horrible gameplay elements in their games. And I'm not just talking about once or twice but constantly. And some even repeat them in multiple sequels! :roll:

Anyway, I hope devs. read this thread to wake them up! Maybe this will show them that we as gamers and fans aren't happy with some of the things they do, in which ironically, they probably think we love. Here's hoping for some newer and innovative ideas for the next-gen stuff. We deserve it!

(1) Unbalanced characters in fighters- I'm pretty sure the developers don't mean to make their fighters unbalanced but it doesn't stop me from hating this with apassion. Have you played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 or Tekken 4? The amount of characters that can be played competitively is ridiculously small compared to other fighters such as Street Fighter 3: Third Strike or any Virtua Fighter game.

(2) Games being hard for no real rhyme or reason - Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins immediately comes to mind. Why is this game uber hard for no reason? The enemy AI isn't anything spectacular. You know what makes it hard? The developers decide to just randomly throw in enemies in every single nook and cranny into the screen. There's no order to this madness. There's no rhyme or reason. The developers just wanted to be jackasses and make a game hard just for the sake of it being hard. Just because a game is difficult doesn't mean it will be good.

(3) When a character suddenly has baditude - I absolutely detest when a character gets baditude in a sequel. If he or she didn't have baditude from the very beginning, why make them so in the sequel? Jak and the Prince are characters that easily come to mind. The only character I didn't mind it with was Leon from RE2 and RE4.

(4) Tacked on multiplayer modes - Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, you son of a *****! Why put in a multiplayer mode with a game that doesn't need one? It's never needed any before so why have one now? For a more recent example, pick up Sonic and the Secret Rings.

(5) Random battles in modern JRPG's -Point A to Point B is only 30 feet away. What could take me merely 30 seconds would actually take me about 15 minutes. Do any of you understand how excruciatingly painful it is for anyone to have to deal with that? From now on, please have the enemies on screen.

No particular order:

1. Rubber-band AI: I know it was mostly old racing games, but I can't stand it when you're playing and get basically a million miles ahead and then out of no where the cars behind you suddenly catch up which should have been virtually impossible. The early Burnouts and Mario Kart are some top offenders.

2. Escort Missions: A lot of people have said this already, but I have to agree with them! I seriously hate when you have to protect something, either a person, vehicle, object, etc from being destroyed from every direction. It's seriously a pain. Especially when you have to worry about saving yourself most of the time.

3. Artificially Increasing Difficulty: Either throwing in a ton of enemies, allowing them to do ridiculous amounts of damage, or just giving them an advantage that not even humans players could pull off becomes exteremly irritating. Puzzle Quest is one game that comes to mind. The computer always knows what do perfectly and scores huge chains. Sometimes I swear it knows what pieces are going to drop when I can't even see them.

4. Bad/Annoying Animations: Graphically, many games may have poor animation. However, I'm talking about when it affects gameplay. One of the worst things ever was playing Lost Planet and after you feel down it took forever for your character to get back up again because of the stupid animation. And then by the time you were back on your feet you were hit again and fall down only to repeat the same series of events.

5. Unskippable Cut-Scenes Before a Boss Fight: Or any difficult section for that matter. I'm sure many of you have run in to the same thing and it just gets frustrating when you keep dying and then have to see the same cut-scene over and over and over. It's enough to drive one mad! Seriously, you think they could just reset you after the scene, or at least let you skip it.

P.S: Awesome topic idea! I like it a lot.

1.In game advertising

2.In game ads

3.In game product placement

4.In game items that can be found in real life so it would entice us to buy them

5. err.....ads

5. Failure from the start. These games take you by surprise. You think you're doing well the whole game until you reach a point in the game where it tells you that you forgot a critical item, from there one of the 3 options happen, you instantly lose and have to start over completely. You can't go any further in the game, which means in the end, you'll still start over completely. Or the least painful of the three No 100% completion.

4. Bad translations/text- I know getting the Japanese language down to every word can be a hard task, or maybe it's just laziness on the developer's behalf, but whenI'm playing a RPG and the only clue to whatI'm suppose to do next is "Visit the river of at night."...yeah, run that by me again. Even worse is when they tell you certain things to do only to find out they made a mistake in the text andI'm really suppose to do the opposite or some other random task.

3. Glitch galore- Why and how? Do developer's just ignore these things on purpose? Do I even need to explain this one? Walking through staircases, being frozen for no reason, you get where I'm coming from.

2. Camera angles- These will make or break the game. Some are okay. Some are tolerable(only if you really like the game). And others have no excuse nor room for forgiveness? Sure, a jump on to some moving platforms, easy enough. i'll just jump right here and oh, what a surprise, the camera decides to be nice enough to go directly under me so I can look at my falling character and the ceiling instead of the moving platforms below me. Thank you camera.

NUMBER 1-POINT OF NO RETURN-This one goes out to most of the RPGs I know. So, you're at the final stretch before the fianl boss, and this is you last chance to save. Of course, you save to be on the safe side. After beating the boss, you may want to play the game again some other day. Well once playing again you notice, you have only one option, go through the last dungeon and fight the final boss over and over. Sorry, but you just saved your game at the point of no return. No going back to towns or anything, you either beat the boss or start a whole new file. Tough luck there.

1. long boss fights with breaks to save (almost all console rpgs suck with this)

2. crappy button pop ups that you have to hit when they appear (god of war, LSL 8!!!)

3. not many save points

4. really long cut scenes or spell casts that take forever which you can't skip (mostly ff9-present)

5. backtrailing through places that were boring enough the first time to go through

theres way more to list, everyones listed the other ones that piss me off... timed levels suck!

No particular order:

1. Rubber-band AI: I know it was mostly old racing games, but I can't stand it when you're playing and get basically a million miles ahead and then out of no where the cars behind you suddenly catch up which should have been virtually impossible. The early Burnouts and Mario Kart are some top offenders.

2. Escort Missions: A lot of people have said this already, but I have to agree with them! I seriously hate when you have to protect something, either a person, vehicle, object, etc from being destroyed from every direction. It's seriously a pain. Especially when you have to worry about saving yourself most of the time.

3. Artificially Increasing Difficulty: Either throwing in a ton of enemies, allowing them to do ridiculous amounts of damage, or just giving them an advantage that not even humans players could pull off becomes exteremly irritating. Puzzle Quest is one game that comes to mind. The computer always knows what do perfectly and scores huge chains. Sometimes I swear it knows what pieces are going to drop when I can't even see them.

4. Bad/Annoying Animations: Graphically, many games may have poor animation. However, I'm talking about when it affects gameplay. One of the worst things ever was playing Lost Planet and after you feel down it took forever for your character to get back up again because of the stupid animation. And then by the time you were back on your feet you were hit again and fall down only to repeat the same series of events.

5. Unskippable Cut-Scenes Before a Boss Fight: Or any difficult section for that matter. I'm sure many of you have run in to the same thing and it just gets frustrating when you keep dying and then have to see the same cut-scene over and over and over. It's enough to drive one mad! Seriously, you think they could just reset you after the scene, or at least let you skip it.

P.S: Awesome topic idea! I like it a lot.

Foolio1

haha...Rubber Band A.I. Mario Kart is notoriously known for that. A lap in front of the other racers, and out of no where you find one of the competitors right in back of you with 3 red turtle shells swarming around him waiting to put you into 8th place. :cry:

Escort Missions are bad as well. Final Fantasy XI has a lot of these. It's very difficult trying to sneak through those huge dungeons with monsters way above your level that can kill you with 1 hit. Even with a party it is pointless trying to fend the monsters off especially with undead around that come from all areas of the dungeon when your health is low to tear you apart.

1. Unskippable cutscenes, especially between the save point and a hard boss.

2. Endless battling in JRPGs to increase levels/skills/funds.

3. A huge spatial or time gap between a save point and an area I die in continually.

4. Enemies that just stand there, doing nothing for a long time (*coughWindWakeruncough*).

5. Fetch quests that take a long time (e.g. Wind Waker again) and result in little.

6. Useless items or ones that are impracticalto use.

Ok, that was six. I'm sure I have more.

1. Swimming missions. These always slow down the game's pace and are just plain annoying.

2. Escort missions. I'm sure enough has been said on this already.

3. Random battles in RPGs

4. Forcing you to go through a tutorial at the beginning of the game.

5. Having us die a few times in order to unlock the Easy difficulty. (Ninja Gaiden Black and DMC3)

Well, I'll start with Random Encounters: HATRED!!!

Then again, it's not random encounters I hate, it's just when those random encounters are frequent. In games like Suikoden, I can tolerate it, but in Skies of Arcadia, as an example, it's terrible. The constant random encounters hinder and discourage exploration, forcing the player to consider the value of every step he makes.

Another thing I hate is when games that don't have good stories seem to think they do.

Intolerable. For some reason, this is most common in japanese action games. There's always this focus on cinematics and storytelling, when the story is almost always awful. Even worse is when the cutscenes are unskippable, and you're forced to sit through the garbage. The most recent game that comes to mind is Lost Planet. I love that game, but for some reason it seems to think that it has an awesome story. There's this heavy focus on cinematics and long cutscenes, yet the story is mediocre in its very best moments.

When games make themselves too easy

I like to be challenged. Scratch that, I love to be challenged. When a game doesn't challenge me, I get bored, even annoyed. I can't stand easy boss battles, and I certainly can't stand it when a game goes easy on you. Shadow of the Collosus is another recent example, I just recently beat this game, and I like it a lot, but the fact of the matter is that it's easy. VERY easy. The only remotely challenging aspect is finding out how to beat some of the collosi, but as soon as you figure that out, it's pretty much a matter of time. The most disappointing thing about this is that the point of the game is pitting you, this weak, scrawny little kid, against these monstrous giants. Yet on a whole lot of the bosses, getting yourself killed is no easy task. I can forgive it, thankfully, since it has a hard mode, but this is only one example of how easy the average game is.

SHORT GAMES!!!

Actually, I don't hate this as much as I did before, since games don't hold my attention span as long as they used to, but when a game is short, it bothers me. Some short games feel complete. I'll point to King Kong, here. However, when I beat Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Wow...I'm starting to notice that I'm citing all the games I personally love) I was unsatisfied. I wanted more. I played through the game two more times before I had my fill, and started a third. TWO MORE TIMES with no extra content, no harder difficulty, no real solid reason other than the fact that I just hadn't had enough. This means that the game could have been three times as long as it was, or even longer, and it would have held my interest that entire time. In a cruel twist of fate, I couldn't wait for the sequel because I wanted more of the same. Then I saw Warrior Within. Speaking of Warrior Within...

When sequels have "drastic overhauls"

I cried. When I saw what my favorite video game character of all time (that's right, the Prince) had been turned into I will not hesitate to admit that I cried for humanity. It's not just that, though, the mood is a big thing, yeah, but it's the gameplay, too. Resident Evil 4 leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it's a very good game, (yes, "very good", not one of the best games ever, I don't know WHAT is so mind-blowing about it) but it leaves behind what made Resident Evil what it is. Change can be good, but when I buy the next game in a series, I expect familiarity. What's truly frustrating about this is that review sites (particularly gamespot) seem to love it when a series COMPLETELY ABANDONS everything that made it what it was in the first place. But sequels aren't meant to be different, original titles are meant to be different. And if I DO want something different, I'll buy an original title, or a game in a series I've never played before.