Overrated features that show up in every game

[UberNoodle]

One thing that I don't really like is (A! A! A! A! ... A) quick time events. They seem pretty (X! X! X! X! ...X) cool at first but in practice they (L! L! L! L! ... R) gte anoynig *damn it!*. By using symbols for the buttons or keys they (X! X! X! X! ... X) pull the player out of emmersion. I mean, when we play, we don't really think "R,R,R!", we think (B! B! B! B! ... A) sohot shtoo shoot *stupid Windows QTE!*. And that's the problem really. The QTEs rarely appear to have any intuitive (R! R! R! R! ... R) connection to the action. When you think about it, regular gameplay is essentially just (A+B! A+B! A+B! ... A+X) qiuck tmie evetns aynway! *screw this!*. Perhaps if instead of flashing up non-sensical keys or buttons, it instead flashed up (R! R! R! R! ... R) gameplay actions instead, like "Run! Run! Run! or something like that. That would be much better.

No i belive saying "run! run! run! run!" instead of telling telling you what key to press would a whole lot fucking worce than just "Press R now"

Not at all. When you play House of the Dead and the game says 'reload!', does that confuse you? When you see an enemy on the screen which you have to shoot, are you confused as to what to do? Not at all because when you play you don't think about the button letters, you only think about the action those buttons cause. So a QTE in which I had to do logical things, such as run, crouch, shoot, sidestep, or even reload, would be no different than playing a regular game. It would work much better because those actions are already ingrained and second nature.

 

[Radioactive Bob]

I'll be the first to say it: Games that take themselves too seriously.
Don't get me wrong, I like serious games as much as anyone else does and some of my finer hours gaming have been spent on games like Halo, CoD etc. but there's far too much emphasis on nitty gritty realism and games that take themselves too seriously. I miss shooters like Serious Sam, platformers like Pandemonium or Crash (when the games were good). I've never owned a nintendo console in my life, but right now, the calls of Super Mario Galaxy 2, in all its rehashed nature, sounds like something that would really push my buttons.
A feature I would like returning to consoles is "pick up and play"-ability. A lot of games I simply don't feel like playing because I know that I won't progress past a certain point without a decent amount of play time. There are a lot of offenders for this one, but the biggest offender has to be FFX (outdated though it may be). Going through (I think it was called) Omega Dungeon, reaching the end and trailing all the way back with not a save point in sight.
All.
Of.
My.
Hate.

This. Very much, especially with the current games coming out. Like you said, serious games can be good, but sometimes it's nice to play a game that knows it's a game and has fun with it. My example being Just Cause 2, it's basically a proud physics parody.

But as others have said, unlocking and upgrading equipment i think is nice. But not when every. Game. Does it. o_<
I like how older games did it where when you got to a certain part in the game you got the gun. Not a wimpy gun you had to upgrade or buy. Just the gun, i.e. Serious Sam.

Oh, and cover systems are getting a little pointless as well.

EDIT: Forgot about one other thing that i think tops my list. Sprint buttons. Why do we need to tell out character to run fast? And when they do run fast, why can they only sprint a couple meters? I'd say the worst offender to that was Arkam Asylum (sp?). I loved the game, but honestly, did anybody REALLY walk anywhere?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Moral choices that comes down to either Leather face or Jesus.

 

[Berserker119]

For me, it's perks. Online, I only need my gun. I don't need a whole bunch of special goggles and grenades.

 

[Atheist Pope]

PRESS X TO NOT DIE!!! also the whole mas this button so fast that you are going to get a cramp for 2 minutes.

I personally think the whole health regeneration thing depends on the game, in a game like call of duty it is more pleasing to the gamer to be able to just take cover for a few seconds. Opposed to frantically scrounging for a health pack. also health packs would not make much sense in some sort of war zone or unknown area (uncharted.)

by health packs i can mean anything that restores health, not necessarily a pack with band-aids, ointment and PEELZ

 

[Wordslinger]

Gears of War-esque cover systems. Seriously.

 

[Mimssy]

Morality bars. I like the way Dragon Age (as opposed to Mass Effect and the Fable games) handled it; everything was relative to the morality of those around you.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

First Person Shooters.
While I give special privileges to those who know how to do it, there are TOO MANY OF THEM.
I'd prefer a game with different controls or goals than to "Shoot endless baddies through a first person perspective". Sometimes they're good, others, they are repetitive and have no reason to exist.
First person itself can be a brilliant perspective in gaming, as it offers unparalleled immersion and precision, but I'd love to see it used in different ways, much as Mirror's Edge was attempting to do. I'd love to see a new way for it to work, mysteries, stealth, punching stuff, etc.

Also on my list is Dialogue that freezes all time and space whilst you talk to some random dude. What if it was real time, and manipulated with, lets say, the same way you might scroll through an inventory, with the options displayed on a side, so you can point and shoot dialogue options at the npcs?

 

[StBishop]

No Health Bars.
It has been one of the worst ideas ever, how is having your screen looking increasingly fucked up better then a bar that clearly shows how close you are to dying?

This kind of thing really pisses me off as well. The games I'm thinking of in particular is Infamous and Uncharted, where when you are close to dying, the edges of the screen get a streaky blood pattern, the rest of the screen goes all black and white with excessive bloom, and the sound drowns out so all you can really hear is a heartbeat. In a moment of desperation when you are in the thick of a battle and you're trying to not die, having your sight and sound fucked up doesn't increase your chances of survival.

I'm actually quite fond of that system, it immerses the player into their character without needing to be in 1st person to feel like you ARE Cole McGrath, instead of simply being his handler.

As far as overused features I'm fucking sick of: Trophies requiring online play. Unlocking trophies is a fun and interesting way to keep me playing a game past when I normally would stop. However, I, and several of my friends, have our gaming stations set up in an area where it's very impractical for us to get online, and when we do, the connection is likely to give out half way through a game. I don't mind missing out on DLC and the online multiplayer anymore, I've kinda gotten over that, but most games with DLC set it up so you only get the DLC trophies added to your trophy checklist when you download the DLC. Why can't other games set it up so you get them added to the checklist when you go online to play a match, instead of constantly rubbing my face in my poor connection?

The online trophies/achievements is a point of much frustration in my house too. My girlfriend loathes online achievements/trophies. We both agree that they should be shown/unlocked only if you actually go online to play a game. For xbox customers this could be just as easily remidied by "Gold members' achievements" ie. online achievements.

I have to say that I hate QTE's and escort missions too.

Everything I was going to say has already been said so I'm going to say...

Games in 3D

Just wait.

Going to have to jump right in here and say that 3D games would be cool. Now, stereoscopic "3D" games are indeed bad. In fact for a number of people that I know they're terrible as those people are blind in one eye. Some games are like AVATAR (the movie) and are blurry if you only use one eye. Others (Dragon Age: Origins) are better in that they use normal display when not wearing the glasses.

 

[imagremlin]

Crates. Specially if you need to push'em. I really wish I did not have to push another crate again.

Also, bright red exploding barrels.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Playing Bayonetta again reminds me of how much I hate quick-time events.

The ones that come up mid-combat where you have to rapidly press a particular button are fine.

Whatever.

I'm talking about the fuckers that come up in the middle of cutscenes, ones that you'd never see coming on the first playthrough, whose windows of input are so tremendously miniscule that they will kill you far more than your enemies could ever hope to.

In short, fuck whoever thought Bayonetta's random quick-time events were a good idea.

 

[MrHero17]

Things blowing up after you shoot them enough times. Making a real car blow up is borderline impossible but in pretty much any game with guns, emptying a rifle clip into a car blows it a few feet off the ground and turns it into a bonfire.

 

[F-I-D-O]

, Far Cry 2 al least got something right with the health system. You get four segments in a health bar, and it only regenerates the segment your heath is currently at.

How did that work out? It sounds pretty nifty.
Edit: and to be on topic, unskippable cut-scenes. It really kills the replay value of a game when you've to watch a cut-scene you've already seen several times before. Again, main offender is FFX which has the same cut-scene twice in the game, three times or more if you watched it on the title screen too.

Basically, say your health bar is full. Then you get shot until it's nearly empty. Instead of regenerating the whole thing, it only gives you 1/4 of your health back. That way, while you still take risks without being ripped to shreds, going postal and trying to machete the enemies to death will just get you killed. It strikes a fine balance I haven't seen in a game since.

Transformers War for Cybertron has the same system. Online, depending on the class, it adds or subtracts a certain amount of the health chunks.
I hate QTE in cutscenes. They are annoying, unexpected, and a HUGE pain. If you want us to play in part of the cutscene, let us play the WHOLE cutscene.

 

[NewYork_Comedian]

Sidestepping a huge enemy you cant kill conventionally so that they run into a wall.

Batman:Arkham Asylum, Gears of War, Prince of Persia:Forgotten Sands, ect. ect. ect.

 

[Shameless]

I kinda made a thread about it a while ago (Audio Logs)

 

[Randomnaru]

Sidestepping a huge enemy you cant kill conventionally so that they run into a wall.

Batman:Arkham Asylum, Gears of War, Prince of Persia:Forgotten Sands, ect. ect. ect.

This.
And I believe Batman: AA to be the biggest offender. If your mini boss progression consists of having two of the same guy to fight at the same time, and then adding weaker baddies to the same fight, there is something wrong with you.

 

[NewYork_Comedian]

Sidestepping a huge enemy you cant kill conventionally so that they run into a wall.

Batman:Arkham Asylum, Gears of War, Prince of Persia:Forgotten Sands, ect. ect. ect.

This.
And I believe Batman: AA to be the biggest offender. If your mini boss progression consists of having two of the same guy to fight at the same time, and then adding weaker baddies to the same fight, there is something wrong with you.

But to be fair, the game itself, was in short, Fucking awesome.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Local Multiplayer/ Split-Screen or rather, the lack there-of. Especially on PS3 titles!

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

"Your every choice affects the world around you!"

You know, I wouldn't mind it so much, but whenever anyone claims this, it never actually works. Biggest, and original, offender was Fable. Now, I liked Fable, but I'm the first to call bullshit on its supposed choice system. The choices are so laughably obvious, and they affect precisely nothing, that it's just pointless to even keep them in.

Sadly, pretty much every RPG since has tried to implement this, and very few have even come close to getting it to work.

Nail head, meet hammer; hammer, meet nail head. What else can I say? Not a lot. Every RPG that I have recently played has done this. Fallout 3 would be the most recent one that I played. It made it out that if you were bad, things would play different, if you were good, things would play different. The ending certainly didn't change and the only thing that varied was the reaction upon talking to someone and occasionally a speech option.

Spoiler: Of course, Broken Steel promised to change the ending, depending on your choice.

I chose both, fuck all initial difference. The guy was all cheery that his daughter was dead and that I contaminated all the water. That got on my tits

But, I seem to have gone off onto a tangent here, other than this eating food increases your health. All GTA games use this system. Last time I heard, a Big Mac and chips (fries) didn't aid my health at all.