I hate hate HATE realism in games. ANY form of realism. I play games to escape reality, have some fun. I do NOT play games expecting to find a reality simulator. I hate it when they pull out that bullshit.
Can you imagine how fast the movie making industry would go downhill if they implemented "realism"?! Why can't game developers see that?
(On the topic of "seeing", maybe developers can only see in tones of gray and brown? Maybe too much overtime on shadowy offices made them daltonic?)
As for physics engines, i realize a gaming world needs some constraints, but low gravity jumping is still funny to me.
When it comes to characters, the worst character there can ever be is a character with shinji syndrome (i'm talking about shinji, from evangelion). They want us to sympathize with the character but they don't realize they've created a whiny *****. Also extremely annoying is the "hidden power" twist. I can't recall many examples of it happening in gaming, but in anime you can instantly see that, if the main character is a happy-go-lucky weakling, he has an hidden power.
Coincidently, this 2 character types show up mostly in JRPG's.