One thing you love, and one thing you hate.

[Mantonio]

(Oh wow, we have Captcha now? Is nowhere safe from its hard-to-read claws?)

Anyway, yeah. This should be relatively simple. Post one mechanic or idea in games that you love, then post one that you hate. Mine are:

Love: New Game+

You complete the game, and suddenly you can start again but with all the gear and levels you ended your last one with. This extends playability, and also makes the game far more open into the 'Faffing About' category. Less worrying about basic survival, more about trying out new things and having fun.

For example: Dead Space

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Hate: 'Impossible' or 'Insane' Difficulty modes.

You know what these are. The ones you have to complete the game once to unlock. The ones that you need to do to unlock everything or get all the achievements. The ones where your character can die from a gnat breathing on them funny, while the enemies can suddenly take a nuclear missile directly to the face and not blink. This is not real difficulty or challenge, and it is not good game design. It is, to put it bluntly, complete BS.

For Example: Mass Effect 2, Dead Space (again)

 

[LaMer]

Love: New game+ as well, it is great fun to exact revenge on those who seemed like trouble in the beginning of the game, but are now small insignificant beings who tremble in their boots at the sound of my name.
Hate: Infinitely respawning enemies. It always seems like I'm not useful, and I'm not making a dent in the enemy force.

 

[Beryl77]

Love: Exploring
I like it when a game doesn't just tell me go there and then there but lets me explore the surroundings and I can find new stuff and quests myself.
Oblivion is such a game.

Hate: protection quests
For me, this are the worst missions. I order the persons I have to protect to stay back but the enemies still can get to them and kill them, without me even noticing that. Or I tell them to stay at my side but there are so many enemies that I can't defeat all of them before they attack the persons I have to protect. Sometimes they are so stupid that they run to the enemy and get themselves killed.
A good example is Fable.

 

[CroutonsOfDeath]

Love:
Games that allow you to have freedom and exploration, but instead of turning into a sandbox - every bit of exploration happens during your main mission and while it extends your missions length, it doesn't interrupt it. Once again - freedom/exploration that DOESN'T turn it into a sandbox, you can't just faff-about and find side-quests that are all unrelated.

For Example:Deus Ex, Mass Effect. Though Deus Ex is the bigger of the two.[/b][/u]

Hate:Games that simplify combat to tracks or simple, one press selections. Mostly in RPGs.

It annoys me when a game simplifies combat, especially the turn based variety, into single one press selections and have everything move on a track. When people call the combat in some of the Final Fantasy games "Tactical," my brain hurts. All you do is select, push button, watch result. Similarly, I am not fond of slashy games where there are limited combos and all you do is click around on enemies. I know I'm gunna get flamed, but event hough I DO like the game in some ways - I only consider "Diablo" an O.K. game, but not a particularly great one. All you do is click one mouse button, or maybe the other mouse button. Probably the only turn based combat system that appealed to me was early Fallout, and even then I had some issues with it.

(I listed my examples in my summary.)

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Love: Dating sim elements in RPGs.
It can help extend re-playability and lets you RP a little.
Examplesersona 4, Record of Agarest War, Mass Effect.


Hate: Missions or quests in games with a time limit.
I don't like panicking or rushing when I play a game.
Examples: Superman 64, SSB mini-games, Spyro.

 

[Dash85]

Love: Good Character Creation
Mostly in RPGs I love being able to create my character and maybe give them a personality while I play the game like in Dragon Age, Mass Effect or Fallout.

Hate: Stupid Friendly AI
Like in Resident Evil 5 or Mass Effect 2, I dislike my stupid allies walking into obviously dangerous obstacles and getting themselves killed. Or walking in front of me, while I'm firing my weapon.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Love: Hardcore/Insanity modes - that's right, shove off, TC

I find shooters to be much more fun and satisfying when they're difficult; running around being basically invincible (on the lower difficulties) doesn't really interest me at all. That being said, bullshit artificial difficulty like infinitely respawning enemies or absurd grenade spam (i.e., CoD: World at War) is indeed trash. Genuine difficulty like enemies with better aim, strategic movements, or multiplied layers of protection (i.e., Mass Effect) are hella fun to play.

Hate: Piss-poor inventory systems

Games like Mass Effect (again) and Borderlands are excellent, and offer great amounts of variety when it comes to weapon customization. That said, opening a box to find my 18th generic, half-as-powerful-as-my-current-gun SMG and 34th mediocre weapon mod sucks, and what's worse is that there was no meaningful way to organize it all. Yeah ME2 streamlined the whole thing and basically tossed out the inventory system, but I'd much rather see a proper inventory that can be organized efficiently instead of no inventory at all.

It's a minor gripe to be sure, but there aren't that many game constructs that I actually loathe (except maybe unskippable cutscenes).

 

[Sephychu]

Love: Crazy high difficulties

I like to complete a game, then do it again at a much higher difficulty. I love this in all games, and I think it increases the experience an obscene amount, especially on games like Mass Effect 2 and Kojima's games.

Hate: This done wrong

If I've done it once, give me all the difficulties, please. Don't make me do it once for each difficulty I want to unlock. Especially if I know I can do the difficulties above. Mass Effect did this with its insanity difficulty, not letting me even attempt it until I had completed the game twice before, once on the difficulty just below.

 

[Jedoro]

Love: Character customization

I enjoy playing as myself as much as I can, kinda putting myself in the situation. Helps with the immersion.

Hate: Invisible walls

It's not all that hard to create a legit reason you can't go that direction, like impassable cliffs all around or a locked checkpoint (Fallout: New Vegas). However, an invisible wall shouldn't keep me from going up a hill just because it's too damn high (Fallout: New Vegas)

 

[RollingThunder]

Love : Varied characters in story mode with good combination of serious/lighthearted stories.

I love it when developers create characters that have many sides, when many games now dwell in story as a serious business, I want something to balance it, for example Bad Company 1, as a player you will go faceplam every time you saw your teammates doing silly stuff, but you can't hate them because they're fun and silly.

Hate : Fake difficulty

So many games do this, they say it's a challenge, I call it a moronic padding.

 

[ParasiteGeek]

Love: Good battle systems. If a game has a bad battle system, no matter how good it might be in every other area, I just can't bring myself to play it for very long. For example, Dragon Age Origins felt unbearably clunky to me.

Hate: 'Impossible' boss battles. I recently started playing a DS game called Nostalgia, which has to be the worst offender I've seen yet. You'll be doing fine against a boss, when all of a sudden, the battle will just stop, and you'll be defeated in a cutscene or the boss will leave.
Disgaea is amazing in that there is no 'impossible' battle.

 

[Geekosaurus]

Love: Ice cream.
Hate: Getting fat.

Love: Stealth games.
Hate: When stealth games turn into crappy shooters.

 

[Taunta]

Ohhh this is going to be hard to pick one.

Love: Good storytelling.
Good storytelling has pacing, and has to be used in moderation. It can't be mindless action, but it can't beat you over the head with it to the point where it's more like a movie than an interactive medium. (I'm looking at YOU, Final Fantasies.) I like to feel like I am immersed in this unfolding plot.

Example: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mother, EarthBound, Mother 3

Hate: really long travelling between destinations.
While it's great that your world is big and all, and I appreciate you wanting to express this sentiment to me, I can't help but feel like taking forever to travel between plot points is just wasting my time and padding the length of your game. I mean, you could still make your world seem big and at least give me a faster means of transportation.

Example: Mass Effect, LoZ: Twilight Princess, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion 4, LoZ: The Wind Waker