I particularly disliked it when I was playing Call of Juarez and already in the tutorial, the game informs me that I'm not allowed to shoot "innocents" OR dead bodies. Now, I'm not sure how shooting a bad guy a few times too many just for blasting off half your health from behind while you were admiring the view is an evil and sinful act that must be prevented by the game engine itself ("in this game we do not allow the harming of innocents or dead bodies", they preach), but what really gets me is their definition of innocents.
Now, for roughly half of the game's duration you play a young mexican boy named Billy, who for some reason wears native american-style feathers in his hair etc., despite the fact that his mother is hispanic and as it shockingly turns out near the end of the game, his father is hispanic TOO. But I digress; Billy finds himself on the run from a variety of unwashed shitkickers who want him dead for a variety of reasons (you play one of them for the other half of the game, but nevermind that), and sadly his main form of self defense is stealth.
I don't mean that as in "JC Denton's main form of self defense is stealth (but if things go toiletwards, he's got half a chance at shooting his way through)." I mean that as in "Billy can sneak and technically shoot, but you won't get to shoot much and even when you do, the game decides that the men who are trying to kill you are innocent and must not be harmed, so you have to sneak all around an extremely well-guarded ranch just because you aren't allowed to put a bullet in the brain of a man Billy has just explained is a complete bastard who most certainly deserves it more than the twenty or so native americans he just mowed through, who were doing exactly what the cowpokes are doing: protecting their home (except of course that the native americans were there first)."
Now, I applaud the game's attempt at a cinematic-ish experience. I do. But the first level has you sneak past an irritating old man to steal his gun, then surrender the gun to a sheriff, then sneak into a *cough* lady's room to steal HER considerably smaller gun, find out it isn't even loaded, run and sneak through the whole town to evade the subsequent stampede of irate cowpokes with shotguns who I at least would very much have liked to shoot in self-defense, steal some ammo, jump out a window, and run to a farm. That's it, you don't get to shoot a single one of the various bastards who have tried (and probably repeatedly succeeded) to kill you.
And the next mission? "Don't alert the camp!" Well, damn, guess you won't be firing that gun now either. In fact, by the time you get to fire it, you'll have found a better gun and be wondering why in the hell you had to go to all that trouble when you could have just murdered the sheriff and the swarm of cowpokes with your first gun (and the sheriff's gun of course), and avoided all the fuss.
If I want to experience a world where everything is a pain in the ass and I can't just kill people I dislike to vent frustration, there's one of those right outside the door... =__=