Most of the things that have come up this gen I'm pretty happy about. Online gaming in consoles is hitting full stride, downloadable games are opening up the market for indie and more experimental games like flOwer, the PJ series, and Braid, and (even if some developers are abusing it) the option for DLC has extended the life of a lot of games. but there have been two things that really piss me off this gen. Here are my pet peeves of this console generation:

1. Saves Locked to the System: Sometimes I like to play games at a Friends house, but when you lock my save file to my PS3 it makes that very difficult! I don't want to go through the process of unlocking all the characters in SF4 every time I bring the game to someone else's house nor do I want to carry my $500 behemoth of a system over there! Lock the save files to my user-name/profile if you must, not to the system.

The only game I can think of where this is okay is Demon's Souls. While still annoying, I can accept it given the nature of the game (auto-saves no redoing mistakes all decisions actions and consequences are final), being able to copy the save file would put a loop hole in the game that people would undoubtably expliot. I would still like to be able to easily backup that save data though.

This brings up another issue; locking save files means you can't backup your save files without backing up the whole PS3 system. If my PS3 where to die i would have 2 months worth of gaming lost, since thats the last time I backed up my data. It wouldn't be as big an issue if it didn't take nearly 2 hours to back-up my 400 gb PS3.

Developers, Stop locking my save files!

Offenders: Street Fighter 4, Mega Man 9, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Skate 2

2. The Death of Split Screen: A lot of games this gen that should obviously have some local split screen just don't. The worst offenders of this so far has been the racing games. Why do developers think that its okay not to include split screen in a racing game. Having online capabilities, while very nice, is no excuse. Some of us still like playing games with our friends in the same room.

Shooters I can let slide, but I would still prefer more games supporting it. most that do only support 2p-split screen, and while its better than nothing i wish it was 4p-split screen more often than not. The only shooters this gen I can think of that support 4p-split are Halo 3, Warhawk, and Resistance:FoM. And it's only Halo 3 and Warhawk that let you bring those extra three players online.

Offenders: Motorstorm, GRID, Dirt, Need for Speed Undercover, Pure, Midnight Club Los Angeles, Burnout Paradise City, Mod Nation Racers (has 2p-split screen but should have 4p-split screen, like mario kart), Unreal Tournament 3 (pre-patch)