Annoying Features of Games You Enjoy

[PainInTheAssInternet]

This can also include the lack of (a) feature(s) that you wish was/were there.

I'll start, obviously.

In Driver: Parallel Lines, the game has a nasty habit of making the mission start and objectives on opposite sides of the relatively large map. It's a blatant game-lengthening tactic that only serves to annoy. Also, when you beat the game, you can't replay specific missions. If you want to do a mission again, you have to start the game all over and work your way to it. This resulted in me having a bunch of saved games on my puny 8 megabyte but expensive-as-hell PS2 memory card so I wouldn't have to redo the entire game for the sake of a single mission.



Fallout 3's 3rd person camera seems oddly stiff, though everything in this game is oddly stiff. Also weapon degradation. I have a feeling that this point might be rebuked because it's a feature of realism that adds tension. I'd reply that the game has mutants, zombies, giant flies and scorpions, Liam Neeson not *****-slapping the shit out of everyone with light sabres, etc. and games are meant to be fun. I just find weapon degradation annoying as it drains my resources and makes my weapons weaker than they should be really fast. I've never felt tension from this, just frustration.



Assassin's Creed 2; I despised the cutscenes for a few reasons.
1) There were a lot of them.

2) I thought everything could have been conveyed much better through gameplay, working your way closer to the person you're trying to hear. Your ability to act/react depends on how aware you are of the situation, which depends on how much information you receive, which would depend on how close you are able to get to your target.

3) They're low-quality. A lot of sound effects aren't there, often relating to the use of weapons. The models have low textures. It seems like a very low-budget affair when this is done by a premier game developer known worldwide. The voice acting is pretty reliable, though.

Feather collecting; there were a hundred of these things and after a while it was just too tiring to keep an eye out for them.



Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 & 2; the bots during offline mode. I really enjoy the concept and I am truly appreciative for it because it allows me to have multiplayer even if my friends aren't handy and I don't want to/can't go online. However, the fact that they are aimbots raises a bit of a problem. It would have been nice if they were programmed to have flaws in their accuracy, because they just lock on to you the second they see you and DO NOT MISS.



That's all I can think of for now.

 

[tippy2k2]

I've brought this up before but I'll do it again because F' it, why not?

In Madden, I really really really wish there was a way to give up your Quarter Back behind the line of scrimmage.

Let me explain for those of you who don't know what I just said:

There is very popular style of QBing in football right now; the running QB throws like a normal QB but usually is fast enough that they can run if they have to. In real life, most of them are smart enough to slide so that they don't get murdered by a 400 pound defensive player. However in Madden, you can only slide once you've passed the line of scrimmage (the line that everyone lines up on; once a QB crosses it, he becomes a runner and can't throw the ball). This is incredibly annoying when I scramble but the hole I saw earlier closes up, leaving me with the choice between taking a hit (which usually causes a fumble because QB's in the game can't hold onto the ball to save their lives) or I have to throw it away/run out of bounds (something I don't want to do if I'm winning and trying to burn the clock).

So the lack of sliding while behind the line of scrimmage is something that is really annoying in a game I greatly enjoy.

 

[Silvanus]

A Link To The Past is bloody frustrating in a great many ways. No map travel in the Dark World; no way down from Death Mountain in the Dark World; enemies routinely take off two (or even more) hearts, especially the ones who move in utterly random patterns at incredible speed, and cannot be killed... and as soon as you get yourself the Blue Tunic, which supposedly protects you from more damage, all the enemies begin doing far more damage, rendering the Blue Tunic a pretty useless addition as every hit is taking off the same number of hearts as before you got it.


But all that isn't the most irritating thing. The most irritating thing is that goddamn purple bat. The fortune teller told me to go into the well, so I did. I sprinkled magic powder into the (totally legit) bowl of blood I found there. My reward for completing this side-quest was for the purple bat to halve my magic meter, and then fly off, giving no indication of where he can now be found. The fortune teller will not help me any longer, either, as his "tips" are now simply lies.

Lots of frustration to be found in that game. I mean, Phantom Hourglass had me revisit the same central dungeon three (four?) times, but even that wasn't as irritating as A Link To The Past. Still enjoy it, though.

 

[scorptatious]

The races in Jak 2.

I don't know what it is with these races but I find them really difficult, stressful, and infuriating.You have to partake in four different races. Three of which have you going around the track five times, with instant death pits that also serve as shortcuts. You pretty much need to take these short cuts, which makes the races that much harder as you risk dying every time you use them.

Then there's the race across the city with Errol. Ugh...

Still pretty satisfying beating them though. If only because I didn't have to do them again.

 

[Sixcess]

Panic in XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I have a love/hate relationship with panic. I do like the fact that it's there - it emphasizes the feelings of dread that you could realistically expect even trained soldiers to feel going into combat against an unknown enemy with significantly superior technology (especially early on) and it's hard not to love such a brutal 90s game mechanic in a modern game.

But on the flipside it was way out of control in EU. It spread too easily and was - with friendly fire and acts that were essentially suicidal (like hunkering down next to a Chrysalid) - too potent, more like mind control and I get enough of that from Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals...

Thankfully Enemy Within does seem to have toned down the panic somewhat. The game would lose something if it wasn't there, but that doesn't stop me rolling my eyes from time to time when it hits at a bad time.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Random critical hits in TF2.

I really want to ask, why is this the default way how the game plays out? If you argue that it is to add randomness, why would you want to add randomness?. It's just stupid, there's a reason why a lot of servers and especially professional TF2 players use nocrits.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Random critical hits in TF2.

I really want to ask, why is this the default way how the game plays out? If you argue that it is to add randomness, why would you want to add randomness?. It's just stupid, there's a reason why a lot of servers and especially professional TF2 players use nocrits.

They're meant to encourage an aggressive playstyle; your crit chance goes up when you've done a lot of damage recently.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Can I be a smartass and mention annoying features that I enjoyed in games? Because the wonky as fuck Mako and Hammerhead sections from mass effect were certainly annoying, but goddamn if they weren't enjoyable. FUCK PHYSICS IM IN A MAKO.

 

[Evonisia]

Randomised puzzles in Survival Horror games. The way you figure it out is always the same so why bother randomising it? It's especially annoying with things like the crematorium puzzle in Silent Hill 3 where the solution is very hard to explain and (for me) very hard to figure out. When you look up how to do it the solution is different in the video so have fun looking through them!

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

I would like a game option in some rpgs (ones that I like the story, but can't stand the grind), that allows you to set XP earned. Combine that with enemies that don't fight game characters that are far above their level. I could get through with the game's story in five hours instead of sixty. I like your story, but a recolored frog is not really worth an extra fifty five hours. Being that you did not have time to give me anything more than a recolored frog, you should understand that I don't have time for anything more either. Let me enjoy your story. If you waste my time with different colored frogs, I might not ever finish your story. And definitely not buy the next one.

Just a standard difficulty slider would only make the game easier, not shorter.

 

[endtherapture]

A Link To The Past is bloody frustrating in a great many ways. No map travel in the Dark World; no way down from Death Mountain in the Dark World; enemies routinely take off two (or even more) hearts, especially the ones who move in utterly random patterns at incredible speed, and cannot be killed... and as soon as you get yourself the Blue Tunic, which supposedly protects you from more damage, all the enemies begin doing far more damage, rendering the Blue Tunic a pretty useless addition as every hit is taking off the same number of hearts as before you got it.


But all that isn't the most irritating thing. The most irritating thing is that goddamn purple bat. The fortune teller told me to go into the well, so I did. I sprinkled magic powder into the (totally legit) bowl of blood I found there. My reward for completing this side-quest was for the purple bat to halve my magic meter, and then fly off, giving no indication of where he can now be found. The fortune teller will not help me any longer, either, as his "tips" are now simply lies.

Lots of frustration to be found in that game. I mean, Phantom Hourglass had me revisit the same central dungeon three (four?) times, but even that wasn't as irritating as A Link To The Past. Still enjoy it, though.

The purple bat doesn't half your magic meter, he effectively doubles it because it now costs half as much magic to use items.

 

[Fireaxe]

Luck based mechanics (like critical hits and hit chance) in several Turn Based Tactics or Turn Based Strategy games, Fire Emblem being a particularly nasty offender. I didn't pick up a game based around making good decisions to lose because the random number generator decided to fuck up my day.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The stupid flashlight shaking in The Last of Us.

Seriously, why do game devs still attempt to use the SixAxis? Stop trying to make the sixaxis happen Sony, it's not going to happen.

I really hate every game that forces you to use the sixaxis controller for something completely random and inconsequential (like in Killzone, where you use it to turn valves and cranks), but it just felt so unnatural and forced in The Last of Us that it seemed like the developers put it in there almost like a joke. That stupid little prompt annoyed me every time I saw it.

 

[FPLOON]

The turret-related sections/missions in Jak 2 (especially on Hero Mode)

Yeah... I really don't like inverted controls, and these particular missions (good thing they're weren't that many, anyway) were proof of my hatred extreme dislike for both the inverted controls and the turrets in general... There's even this one turret-related mission in Act 2 that not only was broken up into three different "mini"-turret sections, but the first section just so happened to be the hardest, especially on Hero Mode (since I love playing this game on Hero Mode more than Normal Mode)

The fact that I can never get passed the first section of that particular mission on Hero Mode without pulling off a Giant Dark Jak maneuver before getting inside the given turret makes me RAGE WITH BURNING PASSION whenever I have to replay that section of the mission... Regardless, I would still want to replay this entire game again on Hero Mode just because I fucking love playing this game on Hero Mode...

 

[Megalodon]

Thankfully Enemy Within does seem to have toned down the panic somewhat. The game would lose something if it wasn't there, but that doesn't stop me rolling my eyes from time to time when it hits at a bad time.

Really? How bad was it in Enemy Unknown? Granted I didn't play on Classic before Enemy Within, but panic has been pretty common for me in the expansion. It does rather piss me off when three of my squad panic because one goes down, it tends to mean a restart as not being able to control what's left of my squad for a turn normally mens more deaths.

Although the most annoying is when Thin Men poison makes the same soldier panic 2 turns in a row.

 

[likalaruku]

Glitches. If they don't crash the game & I laugh, then it's all good.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I hate leveling systems in supposedly tactical games, like Disgaea. Sure, there are strategic elements, but if most of the skill and knowledge of the game mechanics can be replaced by a couple of hours grinding the previous areas, I hardly feel like the game has a right to call itself tactical.

 

[Gizmo1990]

Final Fantasy IX Chocobo hot and cold
Final Fantasy X Calm lands chocobo race and blitzball
Fable 3- being unable to set shop prices for all shops at the same time

 

[MrBaskerville]

The voice mail thingies iin Bioshock, it's a fun game but it just seems so silly that there are all of these vlogs scattered all over the place and it often leads to people talking endlessly while you are trying to concentrate about other things, like staying alive... Worst of all, it became a standard stable in modern game storytelling :/. It is better than people talking over radio though, atleast you have to activate it yourself. Which leads me to the worst feature in Ratchet and Clank, people talking over the radio while you are trying to combat robots, you can't hear what they are saying because your mind is elswhere and it's quite distracting.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I hate leveling systems in supposedly tactical games, like Disgaea. Sure, there are strategic elements, but if most of the skill and knowledge of the game mechanics can be replaced by a couple of hours grinding the previous areas, I hardly feel like the game has a right to call itself tactical.

I kinda agree with this, i played too much item world in Disgaea 4 and now the campaign is waaay too easy. Would be more fun if it was balanced as a tactical strategy game instead of a grindy rpg.