Biggest immersion killers.

[Skalman]

A few more annoying things in games:

Really weak weapons. (Halo and Battlefield suffers from this, as well as many other games)
Suspiciously placed items and/or environment. (A.K.A. bottomless-pit-in-the-deathstar syndrome)
Bottomless Pockets. (Mostly every game suffers from this to varying degrees. I shouldn't be able to carry 10 weapons and 10 clips for each. Or a sihtload of weapons and armors that are non-visible when carried, in The Elder Scrolls games for example.)

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. People rarely, if ever dropped crossbows, and Bach didn't drop his awesomesauce sniper rifle.

They fixed that in the unofficial patches.

 

[Valiance]

[quote="Skalman" post="9.9
Okay, so I too was a little disappointed in Mirror's Edge, but the voice actors weren't bad, nor was the lines spoken. I don't remember having trouble hearing dialogue, but I might've just forgotten. The music however, was spectacular.[/quote]

I loved the game since plot and storyline mean nearly nothing to me and the gameplay was awesome.

Maybe it's because I had 3D sound bullshit on, but the giant industrial fans were really loud during first-person cutscenes. The title screen and end-game music was very nice. The rest had some good industrial/electronica feeling to it, but felt pretty lackluster.

The voice actors...yes, I think they and the dialogue were cheesy. Not bad, but cheesy. Everything Celeste said was horrible.

 

[Elurindel]

A few more annoying things in games:

Really weak weapons. (Halo and Battlefield suffers from this, as well as many other games)
Suspiciously placed items and/or environment. (A.K.A. bottomless-pit-in-the-deathstar syndrome)
Bottomless Pockets. (Mostly every game suffers from this to varying degrees. I shouldn't be able to carry 10 weapons and 10 clips for each. Or a sihtload of weapons and armors that are non-visible when carried, in The Elder Scrolls games for example.)

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. People rarely, if ever dropped crossbows, and Bach didn't drop his awesomesauce sniper rifle.

They fixed that in the unofficial patches.

Yes and know. Some of them caused more problems than they fixed. On top of that, they also made Bach dissolve into dust, name him as The Tremere, and such.
VTMB was buggy as hell, giving me new bugs each and every time, sometimes old ones would appear, sometimes new ones. One that wouldn't even let me finish the game.
So why do I find it one of the most immersive games ever?

 

[Baelor]

The Halo Wars previews that instantly make me want to foam at the mouth and stuff a bunch of kittens into a home made version of Fallout's 3's Rock-It Launcher and go on a bloody gore-filled rampage through the developers offices. I mean, I sit down to delight in a bit of Yahtzee to make me feel like I might be somewhat normal in having expectations that some would call unreasonable.. Then like a sucker punch Halo Wars pops up.

In game immersion breakers would be any sort of advertisement. I don't give a damn if you had to sell your soul to McCorporate to get your game out.

*Bethesda's habit of placing a magic time machine paradox doo-hickey at the end of its incessively long and boring tutorial.

*Liam Nessan, he reminds me of the Star Wars prequals and it makes me feel uncomfortable.

*The fact that every woman in Warcraft looks like she's either just about to go on stage at a gentleman's club or their waiting tables at hooters.

*The fact that guards attack any poor schmuck who happens to be in a hurry to get some where in Assassin's Creed.

*Lego Games can never have my immersion as they will always be a hands wringing, black suit, evil, red eyed corporate attempt at shoveling more money into their pockets.

*Japanese games in general, you know the type, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, etc.

*Pop culture references

*Pretentiously long and complex stories (See: Japanese Games)

*Simple, dumbed down "family" content.

*Trying too hard to achieve a certain rating (M for Mature, E for Everyone, it goes both ways.)

*Claiming your game is sandbox and then making certain NPCs invincible.

*The inability to loot everything on a corpse, if I can see it I want it.

*Insane difficulty levels

 

[SSilverB]

Untimed "timed" events.

Most recent example(s) was in Star Ocean: The Last Hope:

Spoiler

Cardianon Mothership. The party disables the tractor beam, and the mothership prepares to warp into space "soon". You still have all the time in the world to collect any left over swag, fight some more robots, yet when you finally hop back in the ship you escape "just in time"

Or worse yet, escape from the alternate Earth. So bad.

Or for an older example as someone mentioned earlier, in Oblivion, it's awfully nice of the Daedra to delay their invasion just because I feel like becoming the Arch-mage first.

 

[Zani]

People...

 

[SecretTacoNinja]

Loading and invisable walls.

I'd like to put more into this but its clear why those ruin immersion.

This. Along with graphical glitches. Once when I went through a door in Bioshock, it opened to nothing but underwater. It was weird, and cool.

 

[Skalman]

A few more annoying things in games:

Really weak weapons. (Halo and Battlefield suffers from this, as well as many other games)
Suspiciously placed items and/or environment. (A.K.A. bottomless-pit-in-the-deathstar syndrome)
Bottomless Pockets. (Mostly every game suffers from this to varying degrees. I shouldn't be able to carry 10 weapons and 10 clips for each. Or a sihtload of weapons and armors that are non-visible when carried, in The Elder Scrolls games for example.)

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. People rarely, if ever dropped crossbows, and Bach didn't drop his awesomesauce sniper rifle.

They fixed that in the unofficial patches.

Yes and know. Some of them caused more problems than they fixed. On top of that, they also made Bach dissolve into dust, name him as The Tremere, and such.
VTMB was buggy as hell, giving me new bugs each and every time, sometimes old ones would appear, sometimes new ones. One that wouldn't even let me finish the game.
So why do I find it one of the most immersive games ever?

The only bug I can remember experiencing was the Society of Leopold bug which causes the game to crash, and that was before I had patched it. After I patched it, (this was 3-6 months ago) I've never experienced any bugs, only the occasional graphic glitch.
And yes, It's definitively one of the most immersive games I've played.

 

[Fizzlewinks]

As immerse as I thought Condemned was there is one part where rather than jumping across a 2 foot gap in the floor, your partner Rosa decides it would be better for you to jump down to the basement (because basements always mean good news.) and make your way back up. I actually tried jumping the gap but hit an invisible wall and fell down the gap anyway. Though it didn't take long to get sucked back into the game, i thought it was pretty annoying.

 

[Nokterne]

A HUD system

they always remind me that i'm playing a GAME !!

Really? Played Metroid Prime lately? The HUD in that game really adds to the immersion.

 

[elbryan108]

A big killer for me is something Ive noticed in several MMOs. You see a mob in the distance and go to kill it, it doesn't move and your attacks are useless against it, it just kind of stands there.

 

[Cylem]

Obligatory Family Dinner Time. Also, dying and having to repeat stuff you've already done is kind of a downer...

 

[Zersy]

A HUD system

they always remind me that i'm playing a GAME !!

Really? Played Metroid Prime lately? The HUD in that game really adds to the immersion.

Thats cause your in a suit and it makes sense because it takes place WAY in the future where there is a Full HUD system for sale at the local market for 15 dollers

 

[Sgt Doom]

Oblivion is an excellent example of this in my opinion. Corpses spazzing out and killing half the Imperial Guard, duplicating jailers, zombie-like NPCs, clones talking to each other about how much they like to shop at the shop owned by them etc.

 

[Ganado_Headshot]

Not being able to see your feet in a game really ruins it for me. like in a first person shooter.

 

[Skalman]

A few more annoying things in games:

Really weak weapons. (Halo and Battlefield suffers from this, as well as many other games)
Suspiciously placed items and/or environment. (A.K.A. bottomless-pit-in-the-deathstar syndrome)
Bottomless Pockets. (Mostly every game suffers from this to varying degrees. I shouldn't be able to carry 10 weapons and 10 clips for each. Or a sihtload of weapons and armors that are non-visible when carried, in The Elder Scrolls games for example.)

Killzone 2 is the worst when it comes to weapon balance. I would get slaughtered most all the time if I even thought about using something other than the knife. On the other hand once I had the knife I may as well have been playing a sci-fi slasher.

Never played Killzone 2, don't own a PS3.
But I've experienced something similar in Halo 3.
The one who gets the sword usually wins. or at least takes the lead.
I don't play online much though. If I do it's generally R6 Vegas 2 or CoD 4, since when I shoot people they actually die, compared to most other games where I can empty 5 clips of shotgun lead in their face without them so much as flinching.

 

[defcon 1]

Long loading times. By a longshot!

If you'll allow me to rant about Assassin's Creed (even if not, I'll do it anyways), I didn't like how it was about some some normal guy playing the game. The game would have played fine, no, better without that. The animus gives the game a sci-fi interface and genetic code appearing in place of invisible walls snaps me out of what would otherwise be a completely brillant example of an immersive game.

I also can't stand it when the dialog is retarded. If being stupid is part of the character than it works, but anything from redundant dialog, questioning things people should already know or just saying stupid things jars me out of my immersion.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Fallout 3 one of the most immersive games ever has one major flaw; in the ruins of DC the streets are fairly clear of rubble but at some points the streets are blocked off by mountains of stone, wich force you to travel through those annoying metro stations.

A real killer in a game that is so well made.

I agree, those endless metro stations were boring. I keep telling myself the super mutants got thier behemoth pals to shift all the rubble and block the way in... it's the only logical explanantion I can find in my head.

Ummm, remember that you're walking around in a city wich is nuked to hell more then 200 years ago. You think everything will be a-ok in those metro tunnels then?

Er... your point exactly?

That I don't see the difficulty in having a logical explanation for the fraked up metro system ;-)

Aha... however the logical explanation I was looking for was for why the streets were strategically blocked with rubble. I may be slow at this hour of the night but I do realise a subway system in a nuclear wasteland would prob not be the most fun hangout