"No, n.. NO! You can't play the game for yourself! See this NPC here? Guard her with your life. Now you have to manage the health of both yourself and this other person! Oh, by the way, because we're smart developers, if the escort NPC dies, you get berated and have to start all over again!"
The NPC might be able to lift some big boxes around, but they can't hold a weapon, as the vibration and texture of the metal of a gun is too threatening to the nerve endings. They also have restless leg syndrome, which is why they run in your line of fire.
Are you keeping them alive? Doesn't matter, the protagonist of the game is still not respected enough to not be insulted for firing his loud gun. Good job on not doing this, BioShock Infinite.
2. Uncontrollable Save States
Some games are actually better off this way, as it can prevent some cheap cheat-esque methods of progress.
This is even worse in games with extremely long levels/sections.
Did the Mexican Staring Frog of Sri Lanka kill you with it's homing tongue missile while you almost made it to the escape plane in Siberia? Too bad, you gotta start at the beginning, 40 years ago when your mother illegitimately conceived you. The worst part about this is, you know you might die again and do yet another restart. So you can find yourself in crippling fear of some hard parts in the game.
3. Horrible Collision
Wasn't it always interesting that the protagonist was a starved Nicaraguan child, but you had the hitboxes of an overweight man with 2 unnamed versions of diabetes? I mean sure, you can slip through iron bars with ease, but when a bullet passes you by and it was 2 feet away, the magic metal plate in your stomach made the bullet stop, turn around and hit you.
Your enemies however, are spherical seals with targets painted on them, but no matter good your aim is, you see the bullet physically pass through your enemy's 3D model without doing any notable damage. You have to aim in the dead center of that enemy seal to hit it. Because... game development.
I'm not angry that my bullets couldn't go through fences, and that bullet decal appear in the open spots of the fence.
4. Senseless Team AI
You're not thinking clearly. Those dialogue boxes you can bring up to order teammates around are only there for decoration. You didn't think they would do anything did you?
You and Sir McFartknuckle need to stealthily escape the evil water tubing plant. You bring up the team AI orders and you select "Silently crouchwalk to crosshair". McFartknuckle moves to the crosshair, but he doesn't do it silently, he tap dances his way to it and yells "OK BOSS I'M HERE WHAT NOW?!" The alarms soon sound, and both you and McFartknuckle meet your death.
It's a bonus when a teammate is needed to supply you to keep you alive. Do you need health? Sorry, McFartknuckle needs the extra kits as a paperweight, but I'm sure your natural healing abilities will fix that compound fracture in no time! Need ammo? No, Fartknuckle is not done staring at the shiny cubemaps on the RPG rockets.
4. Again... Senseless Team AI The way DaltonForce suggested this one... We'd be so angry together!
If anyone remembers the "Ramirez! Do everything!" meme, it fits quite well here. This sub-entry is not about AI that's stupid, but just doesn't do anything because game developers think that... that's a good idea?
It gets to the point where responsibility is solely on the player, which it always is and usually should be, but there are times where team AI could be very useful where there's too much burden on the player. Your bullets take enemies down instantly, but your teammates' bullets happen to be using much weaker and puff into the air the second they hit something.Just your teammates. No one else.
"Ramirez! Go get that Javelin from Burger Town!" Thanks for not covering me so I'm the lone soldier running into this rubble of a fast-food place, so in the meantime, everyone else is firing at things that aren't there instead of the Russians 10 feet from. I appreciate that.
5. Awkward Protagonist Limitations
Putting your crosshair on the knob of a door and mashing the use key does nothing, you need an adult half your size to walk over and open the door for you.
Can the protagonist catch bullets in his teeth and use his muscular fingers to mash any small metal scraps into bullets during cutscenes? Okay, then it's settled, the protagonist dies from 8-foot falls and can only sprint for 6 seconds during actual gameplay!
So you and 5 other allies are all wearing swat gear and using the same weapons, and you all have similar backgrounds and training? Well that's dandy, but it just so happens that the player character reloads his weapon 3 times slower and he can't carry more than 2 pistol clips. K go get em!
6. Unskippable Cutscenes
Any game with any attempt to have replay value needs to not have this. It's a pretty simple concept. It's even worse when #2 is a part of this, and you're condemned to watch the same pre-rendered videos over and over.
"Hey antagonist! I hate you! I will do things to stop you! Look what I can do with my thumb, I'm not actually pulling my thumb off, it's just a trick! You need to watch me do this for an extra minute! After that minute is over, we fight!" Never gets old.
This also includes game logos at the start of games, like that one in Borderlands 1 where Claptrap was trying to light up an nVidia logo. If people need to use configs and fixes or whatever just skip cutscenes, you're doing it wrong.
7. Senselessly Buffed Enemies
If I'm not able to get any headshots in a row because there's too much smoke or foliage in my way, why are my enemies able to do so? If my health is so low that I'm not able to run away from my aggressors, why is the guy in the wheelchair I almost killed able to throw that same wheelchair at me and knock my ragdoll through solid walls?
Soldiers wearing nothing but balloons don't seem like they would have infinite ammo, but... you know, they do anyway. I can see them pulling clips out of their thighs. I even saw one guy pull a grenade from his chest. Okay.
Sometimes this gets uncreative, as a boss enemy (who looks like all the other enemies but is rendered a different color) gets tripled health. Oh, and his gun does more damage than the other same SMG's in the game.
7a. Circle of Hurt Crimsollite married me just so I would put his entry up. Jokes on HIM! Wait...
I absolutely hate it when enemies are balanced and have very sensible attacks, I'd rather have them so that they're cheaper and more unfun. So unfun that I hate the entire game that they appear in! Logic logic logic!
We're talking about enemies that aren't only powerful, but are able to strip away every game mechanic away from you. This enemy taps you with his pinky toe, and all of a sudden you're unable to use your weapon, unable to sprint, unable to jump, unable to use healing items and unable to switch weapons.
Don't bother trying to inch away from the enemy, as he also vortex's you inward to him and steals your health! Doesn't this game sound awesome?
7b. Senselessly Buffed Racers Good call K4nye. It took way too long for someone to mention this.
Oh yes, I made a sub-section just for little trolls that appear in racing games. I'm gonna make a lot of references to Mario Kart because it's too easy. I don't know, we'll see how this goes.
So you're racing, and you're neck and neck against Chester Cheetah and the Quaker Oats guy. You're ahead, but those two are still very close to you. Chester hasn't collected any items, but he somehow shoots a missle out of the front of his car, where there was no cylindrical area on his car it could come out of.
Alright, that missile hit you, but you still managed to get back in first pl- Nevermind. The Quaker Oats guy a speed boost from absolutely nothing. Cool. I never saw a setting in the game that was "I Never Want to Win: Enabled"
Oh nice, if I finish last (or don't finish in first), the game shows an animation of everyone laughing at me. Woah, that gives me the positive energy boost I need to try again! I sure hope gravely depressed people didn't lose at this game.
8. Strange Invisible Borders
At least one person reading this thread thought s/he could make a jump or run through something because it looked wide open, but couldn't. It's understandable that maps can't let you go in any direction for eternity, but please don't put a whole invisible wall over some 3' 1" barrels that it looked like I could jump over.
See my flattened yellow Corvette in the garage? That was from the time I tried to drive through an invisible wall that was actually wider than my car was. I was doing a timed mission, and I wanted to take a shortcut, but that didn't work out so well.
9. Horrible Communities
There's no such thing as a perfect community, but some games have it waaaayy worse than others. Counter-Strike: Source. Rust. To some extent, Dota 2. Nearly every Call of Duty game.
It's like some of those games are able to rewire people's minds and replace their blood with concentrated douchey hate fluids. Those same games can even reshape a person's personality. How tragic. If you like overused terms such as "nub" or "newfag", then those communities are for you.
10. Badly Made Puzzle Solutions
I'm embarrassed, this whole time I wasn't supposed to use the red key on the red door? I was supposed to use my own body heat to melt the key into a different shape and then use it? Lmao stupid me. And this whole time I thought I was nailed my Software Engineering major.
A good indicator of games with these problems commonly show up in the google search bar, showing you that thousands of other people searched for the same solution.
11. Tasteless Violence, Sex and Profanity
I don't need a game that acts like my little cousin who swears constantly because he thinks it's cool and recently discovered those words. I know some games are based on this stuff, and they might even pull it off well, but if it's overdone, then it gets awkward and cringeworthy.
You don't need to shove exploding limbs and genitals in my face to make me like a game. There's a thin difference between Grand Theft Auto IV and Jerry Springer: Real Life Version.
12. Unbalanced Multiplayer
"Ummm derpy hurr you guys les um make it so um level 30 players can hold 4 guns and 10 grenades but only new players can hold 1 guns and 0 grenades and theHERP!"
I can think I can pass on a multiplayer that makes it excruciating to level up because the more seasoned players won't let me leave the spawn. Bonus points where many people point out the balance flaws but the developers just never listen because of Selective Reading Syndrome (or SRS).
Thanks, I'm glad I spent $60 on a multiplayer I was infatuated over, but come to find out it's a bullyfest where the only method of success is to play the game as close to the release date as possible. $60, if you're reading this, I still cry at night for you.
13. Wonky Moral Choices
If you played Black Ops 2, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You try to go for the good guy road and the game ends up kicking you for your compassionate choice and pulls a fake out. As if to say "lol you sparing these orphans made the game worse, come to find out they were nazi orphans that can shapeshift and turn all water into cancer ahhahahahhh!"
If I spare someone I wanted to kill for the longest time, I think people might want some sort of reward for that, instead of being spat on. No fake outs. Those are dumb. Unless the fake outs lead to something worthwhile.
14. The One (or Few) Annoying Character(s)
Slippy from Star Fox. Baby Mario from Yoshi's Island. John Madden in... every game that features him. Navi from Zelda, or also known as "Hey Listen! Stop Having Fun!"
The game would have been perfect to near perfect either without these characters, or if they just got some tweaks to make them less monotonous. A few less lines of dialogue or a change in vocal volume could have fixed but that would have been too convenient.
15. Long, Boring and Unavoidable Tutorials
Depending on the implementation, the tutorial part could one of the greatest parts of the game. But when they're way too long and pointless, it hurts.
"Press [W] to move forward. Good job! Press [Left Ctrl] to sneak! You're amazing! Press [E] to open a damn door! You're a good kid! Continue to breathe to stay alive while playing this game! Achievement Unlocked! Now let's go over all of that again so we can see what a big boy you are!"
I feel pain for those twitchy professionals who try to do speedruns, but have to sit through that crap.
16. Screen Watching
This one is something that almost all of us do out of instinct. It's not hard to do, it's all on the same screen is it not? It's not always so bad, but it can ruin some of your best tactics, and can cause others to copy you for eternity. The positive side is, ALL players are able to screen watch, so... the playing field is pretty balanced.
17. Self-Healing Enemies
There aren't enough Tylenol PM's in the world to reduce my bloodflow when I try to kill an enemy as fast as possible, and I have to think faster than humans are truly able to do just to perform that because they can regrow limbs and make their bodies go reverse in time to undo the huge gashes I've left them.
You guessed it, I'm bringing up trainer battles in Pokémon. Or those Trolls in Skyrim and Oblivion. Ever been in a situation where you couldn't tell if the healing was part of a scripted event or just you being too slow? Life can suck like that sometimes.
18. That One Overpowered Power-Up/Weapon
The thing that every player goes for. Like the Stopping Power perk in Modern Warfare 2. And even though the thing is cheap to use, you still go for it because your enemies won't do much different.
"Super Deathmatchy Dogs Pro" might be a good game if that 20-second-god-mode pill wasn't there, or that lightning gun that adds 2 days to a player's respawn time on death wasn't there, but hey, what're you gonna do?
Many maps will give you a burnt image in your head of many players converging on area of the map for that overpowered thing. While you never see those players pick up any other weapon or item.
19. Insane 100% Requirements
You might love a game so much that you'd want to 100% it, but you can't for the life of you find or do that thing that gives you 100%, so you're stuck at 99.5% for weeks. Perhaps you might know all the requirements, but might not have the skill to do that one last one.
Yeah, you found all the hidden crayons, and killed all colored pencil leaders of the 4th Crayola dimension, but you still gotta jump that pointless gap while wearing tennis rackets on your knees, and sing the entire Happy Days theme song before touching the ground again.
20. Cluttery HUDs
This is your Heads-Up Display. It displays your health, armor, stamina, hunger, muscle, sex appeal, shoe size, fetishes, likes, dislikes, facebook posts, colors of trees, colors of bushes, colors of shirts you've seen in your lifetime, favorite red meats, steps taken, jumps made, saliva swallowed, racial slurs heard, fairy tales believed, ice cubes chewed, yellow birds killed, cloud shapes conceived, abortions performed and most importantly, domestic violence reports caused by you!
21. Unbalanced Difficulty Settings I lost to Theriasis in a thumb war, and she punished me further by forcing me to post her entry.
When you select Normal difficulty, you would expect the game's damage values to be right smack in the middle, but sometimes they aren't, sometimes picking Normal or even Easy leaves you in a hellish Super Meat Boy-esque game.
Some games that have Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Mania should have them relabeled as Hard, Very Hard, Unplayable, Unplayable and Masochist. It's even worse when the difficulty selections have descriptions that throw you off.
Easy Mode - "For those more interested in story than combat" when it should say "For those who can't get it up by normal means, and need to resort removed medkits to come close to any kind of arousal."
22. Repetitive Easy Boss Fights I double dog dared 1TrollLtd for this entry, and he had to do it because I dared him.
Come on game developers, this isn't the 90's anymore. Bosses doing the same 5 attacks in a row isn't always fun. Oh look, I see a bandage on the boss, that must be where his weak spot is. It's a good thing this giant I'm fighting happen to put a bandage there at some point in his life prior to this fight.
"Hmm, the boss isn't hard enough. I got it! We'll leave the same boring attacks the way they are, but we'll jack up the health! So players have to do the same attacks and dodges over and over for 30 goddamn minutes! Why am I not a White House advisor yet! Augh I'm smart!!"
23. Microtransactions 0strichGuy11 suggested this. This proves he's a person and not an actual ostrich.
This isn't always the worst thing, but a game can be ruined when it lives off nothing but this. If the players need to find and craft stuff to survive and do more damage, well... fair enough. But don't give rich kids the easy way out by having them buy that Soul Stealer +35 sword while the not-so-money-having players have to spend 3,000 and craft 10 Soul Harvester cubes just to make one.
Think of the poor. Think of the gameplay.
24. Team AI Limitations CreeperCooperBlock gave birth to this entry. It's a boy! 5 and a half pounds!
So you managed to recruit Captain Bruisepunch to your team? Are you serious, you mean the same Captain that killed the entire Steroid Elf Movement and took down the armored Walgreens C.E.O.? Boy oh! The blood you two will spill?
Oh.. oh wait. He can't move very fast, so you have not sprint around so he can catch up to you? What do you mean he needs his insulin shots every hour? Wait, he can't carry more than one octopie grenade? Did you guys make up his backstory?
25. Uncreative, Repetitive Quests With this snakeskin vest, VIPERSSS slithered in and gave this entry. Are my snake jokes good? Hit and miss?
"Ok go kill 5 bears ok now collect 5 roses ok now the 5 missing diary ok noW UM GO KILL 3 SQUIDS OK LOL NOW GO SMELT 4 INGOTS OF IRON LOL"
You're crushing my spirits. Make me care about the quest, have me find interest in it. Don't send me on a collectathon and then have me fear you will send me on another one after the first is done. That's depressing. Real life has enough of those quests.
26. Limited Dialogue spartachilles just walked in and dangled his... entry... in my face.
As much as one may love silent protagonists, they don't work in every game. Here's an example:
Bombbot2000: "Bzzt - Error. Please speak into the mic to deactivate bomb. Hint: the password is dogteeth."
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Bombbot2000: "20 seconds left."
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Bombbot2000: "Dude, come on. Just give me a yelp and I'll turn this bomb off. Deal?"
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Games like Oblivion and Skyrim get away with this as your character could any race or gender, and there would need to be like a thousand recorded lines for each combination. In Grand Theft Auto 3 however, the silent is a more... unrealistic (not that it didn't work out in the end, but you get my point).
27. No Optimization
If the game looks like Super Mario 64 with some extra bumpmaps thrown in, my $3000 PC shouldn't be stuck at 25fps. If I turn the settings all the way down and now the game looks like the MS-DOS version of Doom, and I only gain an extra 5fps. Then the developers are the ones at fault, not my beefy PC.
Oh wait, it's my PC's fault still? Yeah, you're probably right. I mean I can run Crysis 2 at max settings on two monitors, but still, my PC is totally still crappy. You got me.
28. Bad/Delayed Controls
Have you ever played a game with the controls so bad that you kept thinking, "How the hell did this pass the beta testers?" When I want to punch someone, I don't want my buff character standing for an extra 2 seconds starting off into space, and then decides to swing his arm when his brain turns back on.
When I want to jump a gap, I don't want to have to press the spacebar 3 seconds in advance to jump over a river where the water instakills you because... Because.
29. Slow Movement
Turtle slow characters can make sense sometimes, like if you're wearing a butt-ton of armor or you're the Heavy from Team Fortress 2.
But then you have the guy who tiptoes everywhere he goes. And when he sprints, he moves only 5% faster and spastically sways his arms like he's running a marathon. Herpty herp. You find yourself never crouching because the you don't want to impede your speed any further.
It's even better when every single entity in the game moves faster than you. Making evasion near impossible, or when there's enemies that can slow you down with an attack, making you open for more free hits.
30. Painfully Slow Leveling Systems
Games that have this have things that keep you busy and keep you working toward your goal. However, people really don't want to play for an entire hour to move up one level. It's even worse when the perks/strengths/whatever you want to spend your XP on are useless, and you can't get that difference-making power until like level 20.
Oh neato! Level 10 unlocks the reflecting shield, but before I can get that, I need to purchase +10% Eye Glitter, +1% Running Speed, -10% Tripping Over Nothing Chance, -1% Hitbox Size on Self and +0.0034% Critical Hit Chance? Okay! And I only have to do 25 quests for each level up! That's brilliant, take my bank account numbers!
31. Things Everyone in the Game Can Have Except You Bow to Theriasis, and her angry creativity.
I noticed all of my squadmates are using those super choked shotguns that fire more accurate than sniper rifles. That's neat maybe one day I c- oh, those shotguns have heartbeat sensors in them too? That's golden. I mean all I'm able to use right now this pipe wrench and this pistol, but I can be patient.
Hoho! The enemies have them too? Perfect, I'll just kill one and take the shotgun then. Alright nevermind, the game won't allow me to pick the thing up. In fact, the thing is glued to this dead guy's arms. Okay. Why is the weapon fading away now? I don't get it!
Why did the guy I killed drop pistol ammo? He didn't have a pistol, he just had that shotgun...
32. Depressing Endings
It feels so warm and awesome when we overcome every single odd and got that feel good ending that gives us closure in the best possible way. Though not all games give us that luxury.
So, how does this story conclude? Wait, the protagonist dies at the end? And all those orphans I've saved don't survive? Thanks, that's depressing. Does anyone have some ambien and a knife I could borrow?
33. Slow Currency Gain The most famous entry giver, 1TrollLtd, delivered once more.
This one isn't so bad if there isn't too much needed stuff to buy, but if I'm not able to afford the lowest level shield and sword from the "Middle Age Miracle" vending machine. Then a game update is in order. What makes this more agonizing is when enemies drop little to no currency, making grinding not so possible.
This is the part where people use cheats, mods, hacks or a trainer. Perhaps the game developers are the worst kind of republicans who want to keep the poor people down, and the player character fits in that margin.
34. Bad Guys That Survive Theriasis lays down the law once more. She loses some bonus points because she's a girl and girls have germs. =/
You better as hell be giving us a cliffhanger, because I just played a 15-hour game where I disabled the antagonist's defenses and killed all of his henchmen. I didn't want to see Mayor MacBad Deathilson escape away safely on his spaceship while the credits roll.
No! Don't play that happy ending music! I wanted Mr. Deathilson to die at the end! Stop trying to make it sound cheery!
35. Some Flying Enemies orexx, please stop. You aren't allowed to be that good in suggesting stuff for the thread.
The flying Medusa heads in Castlevania 3. The heat-seeking masks in Super Mario Bros 2. To some extent, the dragons in Skyrim. Basically, any enemy that mocks you because they can defy gravity better than you.
You'll waste the most ammo on them, because you'll be like trying to shoot a fly with dart gun - and sometimes, even if you get them, the crappy hitbox system decides "nah, I don't really feel like making your bullet count today."
36. "Power-Ups" That Are Actually Downgrades
"Heya Jim! I wanted to thank you for helping me kill those bakery terrorists, so I'm giving you an upgrade version of the shotgun you already have. This shotgun now has a needle in the handle that extracts 10 health from you every time you fire it, so it adds... more challenge to your situations making them... more gun? Yeah that's it!"
How about a different scenario? So I'm trying to get through the forest to get to my grandma's house while dressed in drag as Little Red Riding hood (but my legs are hairy so dead giveaway there) because I need to get this ambien to my grandma real bad.
Oh look, I see a spinning, floating sugar bag power-up? I bet it makes me run faster, that'd sure be helpful! Oh wait, it makes me sputter and sprint in random directions without control and now I have type 2 diabetes. And the power up lasts for a whole minute... Wh... Why would anyone program that in?
37. The Code-Error Scorpionius, the only reason you brought this up because it's true.
These are not your everyday glitches, where an animation gets a little wonky or the physics of a dropped gun twitches for a bit. Oh no no no. These are glitches that punch the flow of gameplay right in it's crotchal region.
These are glitches that are so horrible, that you can't help but wonder why it wasn't fixed when the developers first heard about it. You might be one headshot away from getting that 100% accuracy achievement, but you couldn't because they forgot to give that enemy a proper hitbox.
You might have to collect 2 more pieces of paper in Looseleaf Lamborghini: Pencil Pushers, yet you can't because one paper fell through the ground and out of the world, and the other was knocked into a spot where you can't reach and collect it. Nope, don't try to load an older save, as the glitch will still occur for eternity.
Life can suck like that.
38. DRM Moranic, I'm gonna do that thing in the bed you always like just because you thought of this one.
"Are you connected to the internet right now? No? Well than you can't play this game! No, it doesn't matter if the cable guy f***ed up and screwed up the wiring to your internet, you can't play this game. Deal with it! Suck it! Be depressed!"
"Oh you do have internet now? Alright fine, you can play I gue- oh wait wait! Your internet flickered a bit, your back to not being able to play now! Your tears taste like butter to us! Your unhappiness is our euphoria!"
39. Breaking the Fourth Wall I prayed to Allah to give me a user who will add to this thread. mnecraft was created.
Some comedic cartoony games can get away with this, and those games might even pull it off so well that you might laugh at it, but this doesn't work for every game.
So you're playing Turban Turmoil IV, and right before you and your 3 allies blast away the Great Wall of Oppression, one of the characters points to the screen and says, "Alright player, be ready mash the X button to charge up your proton pack!" and it comes off so dorky and cheesy. Please stop.
If a game is trying to be serious, dark and atmospheric, don't try to reach out to the real world and awkwardly talk the very player of the game. I can't imagine a WW2 soldier ever looking at me and saying, "C'mon pardner, help me reload this gun so we can cream that Nazi party!" No... Just... don't.
40. Insane Loading Times
Jesus H. Derp, I'm not playing a Mass Effect game, I'm playing a damn PlayStation 2 game. Why was it loading so long? All I did was enter a small bathroom. I don't get it. Did the tiles textures have extreme bumpmaps to them? Did the developers make it that way to show off the artwork of the loading screen?
Was it to teach me to appreciate the humming and whirring of the disc inside the console? Oh wait I get it, it was to teach me patience in life, was that it? No? The game's just horribly unoptimized? I see. Money well spent on the game then.
41. Very Long Travel Times
Some games go for realism, I get that, but just because I have to drive down the most ghetto streets for half an hour to get to work doesn't mean I want that experience virtually replicated. With games like Borderlands, Oblivion or Skyrim, it's forgivable because you have horses/vehicles whatever and the maps aren't too ridiculous. I don't think.
But when I have to use a bridge to get from one city to the next to get someone a McGriddle for a mission, and then drive ALL the way back, then... you're doing it wrong. Game developers, know what's fun please.
42. Lazy Level Design
If you've played Outlast, you know what I'm talking about. If you can't make your virtual world look pretty, at least have the decency to make things look different and unique from each other so I recongize where I am.
Don't make the level some redundant maze where everything looks the same that I'm begging to get out of. That's just cheap. It's always fun to be in a hallway with a 20 damn doors and I have to try a key on all of them just to make a little sliver of pseudo-progess.
43. Unclear to No Objectives Explained
"Aayyyy yo Vinny, go down to da Shalom Shack and buy some pasta fazool, it's on da corna of that one street I never go to and something something bulvard. Make sure yous speaks da secret password so I get dat discount bcuz I'm a made man there. Don't screw dis one up or I'm gonna yous whacked."
Sure thing Boss! There's absolutely no way I can make a mistake there! I'm confident and understood all of that! R.I.P. Me.
44. Senseless Side Quests
The game developers are so desperate for longer gameplay that they slap in extra quests without any thought or interest.
"This is Captain Coprock speaking, could you find me some roadkill. The way it the mangled fur feels in my hand calms my nerve endings. I'm like Salad Fingers but with roadkill and not rusty spoons."
Objective A: Walk out of your house. Objective B: Pick up dead cat in front of you. Objective C: Send it through the pneumo tube to Captain Coprock.
That backbreaking quest is now over. Sleep well Prince, you earned it.
45. Rushed Sequels SoSoRandom doesn't seem so random when he makes entries, as this one makes sense.
Game developers, take a good hard look at Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life, The Elder Scrolls, Portal, BioShock and hell, maybe even The Walking Dead. These are games where the developers took their time and actually tried to be original and interesting.
"Hey, you all loved Jon Ron: Enchanted right? I mean it has a score of 92 on the metacritic and it got nothing positive reception as well a fartload of money! We'll give you what you want, we'll give you Jon Ron 2! In this game, the formula is the same, but you can hold 2 guns instead of one! Jesus H. F*** we're smart!"
No, no you aren't. You had the chance to make an awesome series of games, with each game being memorable in their own ways, but instead, you made one good game, and 5 depressing sequels with a different coat of paint. Either hire better writers or don't make the sequel. Please.
46. Overcompensation
"ZTick, what are you talking about?" I'm talking about games that lack something they need, the game developers are aware of it, and slap something else in the game to "make up" for it. However, the "make up" feature isn't always bad.
"Hmm, do we have the storytelling skills of a third grader? Let's give the game over 10,000 redundant weapons that do most of the same thing!" "We have such bad 3D modeling skills that our game looks like the first Deus Ex, so let's 'fix' that with adding bloom to every god damn thing! Yeah!"
"Does the terrain in this game look undetailed and single-textured? Okay, we'll resolve that issue by adding the same tree model spammed over and over! Smart smart SMART!
47. Money-Milking DLCs Scorpionius exacts his revenge with this heavy-hitting entry! It's not revenge though.
Oh man! NotTooSmart Inc. finally came out with an update that adds more than one type of vehicle and fixes that retarded reloading glitch! And they removed all of the exploits! My pants will never be the same again!
Alright, let me just open Steam and- oh. I... I have to pay $20 for it? Why did the company say it would be free this whole time? No I'm not mad or anything. That's not stupid at all.
Hey Activision! Did you think I wasn't going to mention you? No sorry, life isn't that good. Call of Duty alone so totally ain't a money grabfest, here let's make it so people have to shell out $15 for 2 new maps and an ALL NEW WEAPON! WOAH! ONE NEW WEAPON YOU GUYS! HERP HERPTY HURR! You're dumb Activision. Feel dumb.
48. Mindless Jumpscares Somewhat suggested by Scorpionius. Yeah...
Survival horror games get kind of a free pass on this one, because... How is a scary game not gonna have at least one? It might work or Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Outlast and sort of for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, but other games can really screw this up by making it spoiled and predictible.
Alright so I'm a barely dressed girl walking through this dark hallway and there's bloody handprints all over the walls. I'm gonna pick up this ammo for my- AHH! Oh man, that hanging body. Good one. But yeah, I'm trying to find the- OH! A wheelchair rolled in front of me all by itself.
So anyway, I'm still in this boring hallway and I just- Hmm. Yeah, a basketball came toward me out of nowhere. I kind of saw that coming. The jumpscares were so close together that it became a pattern and now it's not working anymore.
On a positive note, some scary easter eggs could be interesting. Or so horrifying that it makes you fear the whole game entirely. If even if the game was just about throwing rocks and ropes, then noting the wave pattern when the rope is hit.
49. "Random" Encounters Now we know why UnresolvedGamer has his username.
Don't worry guys, I will NOT mention Pokémon. Nor will I mention having to run into 800 Zubats when going through one cave. I'll also not mention all the Tentacruels you had to face when surfing the waters. I'm not bringing that up.
Random encounters could be nice for doing a bit of grinding and resource collecting, but even then, it gets old. Real old, and can damage the very replay value of a game. Especially if the encounters have no way of being avoided.
Oh, I ran into a gameplay stopping demon bat in Beezlebub's Cave? At this point, the depression digs into you deeper and deeper, because you know you gotta face 25 more demon bats going through this boring, linear cave. Stay classy game developers.
50. Copy-and-Paste Rooms That swell ZTick guy thought of this one. Which is me. I randomly decided to credit myself for no reason.
When Bethesda made Oblivion, they seemed to have this mindset of "we'll use the same damn caves over and over. But we'll change the enemies around, so that will fix the problem! Yup! It works that way!" lololol no it doesn't. Stop.
Ever play Mass Effect 1? If you answered "yes" in your mind, you're already picturing the same damn warehouses that appeared on over 100 planets. How convenient. Come on BioWare, couldn't you at least swap some barrels around?
51. Repetitive Dialogue
Remember in the first Half-Life game, when the scientists would keep saying generic crap like, "Fascinating, I could never have guessed such things could be..." or something like that? Wasn't it funny how you heard that same line in many labs, an elevator shaft, an underground railway and in the middle of a desert?
How about those mushmouthed enemies that only knew 50 words growing up? Let's jump back to Mass Effect 1. "I will destroy you!"... "I will destroy you!" from two angry women at once. That doesn't get cringeworthy at all. It's better when other people are in the room with you and it multiplies the cringe factor.
I get it though, you can't have an infinite amount of dialogue for a generic enemy, but still. At least spread it out or add some delay between the responses. I get it, "I'm gonna die, punk!" I get, "I will be destroyed." I get it, "You ain't gettin' past me son!" despite hearing that line from the previous 20 skinny punks I killed and... got past them anyway.
52. Stupid Achievements
Completing the game on the hardest difficulty or forcing yourself to not use that one overpowered weapon aren't the worst achievements out there, but when there are achievements for the simplest and excuriating tasks then... you might be doing it wrong. Examples:
RabbitLOL: Jump! (Achievement Unlocked) Open Sesame: Open a door FFS (Achievement Unlocked) This Achievement is Just Here For Show and Can't Be Unlocked: Supa Gamer: Feet: Look down and see them! (Achievement Unlocked) Invincubal!: Don't take any gun damage in "guns only" mode while never moving. (Achievement Locked) Enjoy this dumb game: I dare you. (Achievement Locked)
53. Ads *kneels down as 1TrollLtd descends from the heavens with another good entry*
You know, because it's mentally impossible to enjoy a game without an advertisement bringing up something else that I don't want to think about. When I'm playing Entrails & Entropy: The Reckoning, I'm not gonna care much for a box of "My Little Pony Cereal: Snap, Crackle, Clop!" when I want to jump into the game and attack some demonic fetuses.
No, please, I don't want to watch a cheesy video while the game loads. I'd rather stare at a silent loading screen instead. At worst, give me an ad that relates to the game somehow, I'm gonna be interested in real estate or banks with good interest rates when one loading screen away from playing a very gory, antisocial game.
Unless the game itself has real estate in it or something, then the ad will at least be somewhat funny.
54. Respawn Timers 1TrollLtd can't be a human. He has to be a god of some sort.
It's not the timers themselves that are the issue, but the length of them. A game could get pretty rushed and spammy with little to no respawn timers, but some games overdo the timers to a point where all they do is halt gameplay in the most unfun way without adding any balance.
Unless the game absolutely depends on it somehow, I don't want to wait 30 damn seconds just to spawn only to get spawnkilled all over again, so I'm doomed to the view of spectator mode more than I am... player mode. It's worse when a game is very fast-paced and gets you all antsy only to make you stare at "Respawning in 1:22". That's not depressing or anything.
If you want to add a penalty for dying, fine, but don't blow a load over it. I don't need extra punishment because some pimple-faced piece of life planted proximity mines all over our spawn and we can't leave. Who needs balance right?
55. Terrible Spawns
This is forgivable if a map is cramped and there's little place for spawns anyway but... oh wait? That's not the size of the map? The map happens to be the entire country of Isreal? We have only 35 players? Well, then we all got enough breathing room to f- Just joking lol, the enemy stills spawns behind you.
Now, you might be thinking "ZTick! Go sniff a fart! Those kinds of spawns are the greatest! When you're going for a weapon and an enemy spawns right in front of you and takes that weapon you were going for and kills you with it is the pinnacle of game design!" Is that right? Well then, let me tell you something, faceless nameless person who I used for that quote, disclose your address to me. I want to do horrifying things to you for saying that.
"No ZTick, I was joking. What I meant to say was spawns that happen inside of you are the best. So both you and the spawned person clip together and are stuck! I am smart and you need to acknowledge that!" Just give me your address, and I'll give you every ounce of acknowledgement you can fathom.
56. "Our overly huge world makes the game good!" Psycodragons is a doll for suggesting this. Could someone pay her? I can't right now, but could someone else?
No, a good game is what makes a good game. Sure, a huge world helps, but it isn't the final factor in what makes a game enjoyable. Well it can in some cases, but not all.
Psycodragons mentioned Daggerfall, and though I never played the game, she mentions the negatives so well that it makes me feel like I played the game myself and hated the same negatives.
Oh, the map is the size of Russia? Are you serious?! That's insane! *hours later* Every house looks the same. Every tree looks the same. I can't even enter the all of the houses. In fact, I've only entered one of the houses, and it had no helpful items. The world is crawling with these pedophile crab creatures and the weapon I found is an axe. Without the blade.
Yeah, I've been walking around hitting things with a stick like a renegade 8-year-old. I'll be sure to give this game a mediocre rating on the Metacritic site.
57. Not Having Something to Finish a Game I don't want anyone to know that Lonnehart suggested this, so for now, he'll remain anonymous.
You made it, after 3 hours of painful repetitive gameplay, you made it to the last door of the game. All you need is the green key that... you tossed out at the beginning of the game. Wait, if I needed it, why was I able to throw it away? Why didn't anyone tell me it was that important? I'm gonna assume that green key was important out of absolute nowhere.
Great, now I'm stuck staring at this door because there is no way to backtrack to the start of the game and I don't have a save that goes back that far. You game developers are smart, it's funny how a bunch of adults could come up with top dog graphics, but god forbid someone thinks about actual gameplay.
58. Terrible Ports
Grand. Theft. Auto. 4. Mother of god. There's always gonna be a bunch of angry gamers going "augh come hurry up and made dis gaem for PC already! Ragedy ragedy rage!" But you know what, those exact same gamers are gonna complain about how horribly unoptimized the game is.
Not every game can run beautifully, we get that, but nobody wants to lag while looking at a wall because the game decided "all u can see is this wall, but let's render things u can't see lol HURRPP!!"
"But ZTick, maybe it's not the game, maybe it's your horrible computer! Oooooh burn!" Please, let me walk over to you real quick and punch you in the mouth for that failed "burn". Oh come on, I didn't knock out all of your teeth. They'll grow back, I think.
Okay sure, my PC might be bad. Though it doesn't seem to have much trouble running newer games with beefier graphics and processes going on with the ALL of the settings on maximum. My $4000 PC seems to be running those games fine.
Wasn't that senseless and immature of me type out "BEEP" like that? You probably just skipped it. Yeah, imagine a game with those sounds that can't be skipped and can't be avoided. You think a bunch of game developers would reach the conclusion that humans don't like annoying sounds, but... Okay. They don't.
We don't need to hear the constant beeping of the low health in Pokemon. We don't need to hear Baby Mario wailing so loud that it overpowers any other sound in the game. If we need to be reminded of this stuff, do one of two things, either 1.) make the sound stop after a while or 2.) change the sound to something less mind-vibrating so we don't end up hating the game.
If gamers constantly mention an annoying noise in your game, and it becomes infamous, then... You did it wrong. I can't put it any simpler than that.
60. Dumb ESRB Ratings Read this in my voice: This is another of 1TrollLtd's yummilicious entries. Oh wait, you don't know what my voice sounds like...
I don't know why I'm mentioning this, since I'm older enough to be "immune" to any game rating, but I made a promise in a later post that I'd add more entries so... this is me doing it?
Ever been confused by an ESRB? Well I sure have by golly! Example would be WcW vs. nWo: World Tour for the N64. The rating for the game was "Kids to Adults". I wouldn't so quick to mention kids, because that game had quite a lot of painful wrestling moves that no kid (or adult) should ever perform on another living entity. (Unless you're a professional and being paid to.)
The game also had quite a bit of blood (if enabled), but no curious kid will go "Gee, I should leave the blood off! That's no good for my mental development!" lolno. We turned the blood on. I sure as hell did. I was in like the second or third grade. And I constantly pulled off the moves where I would choke and lift people, or skin someone's face with my bare hands.
So ESRB people, did you guys skip some of the games you were suppose to play. "Well, the cover looks harmless, so let's slap a K-A or Teens rating on it! Come on, who's gonna know the difference!" Lowlifes like me who make lists on forums. That's who.
61. Little to no Anti-Cheat
Notice how the smarter developers just leave it to VAC. While other games use crap like... *dry heave*... Punkbuster. You know, the Anti-Cheat that kicked back and puts it feet up and did nothing. Punkbuster is the equivilent to taking a towel and trying to dry a fish... while both you and the fish are 20 feet underwater.
Some developers don't have any anti-cheat at all, because they assume that "no one would ever cheat on a game like this ". If the only the human race worked like that, right? No it's alright, I'm not angry about that guy that noclips underground and rocket spams me. It's not that a big a deal.
Or that other guy moves around the map by simply typing "durr" and can give themselves infinite grenades by typing "hurr". I'm sure it's all in my head. Remember in that E3 interview when you guys said "We want to make the most balanced multiplayer of the year!"? Which players were and weren't allowed that balance? Because I noticed that not everyone has it.
62. Gameplay Stopping "Features" Somewhat indirectly given to me by Tuaam.
What makes a bunch of adult game developers ever have a thought of, "We need something miniscule to completely halt gameplay against the player's will. This is something that's both wanted and needed."
Let me get my thoughts-to-reality translator.
"We've been a members of the human race for quite some time now, and we somehow haven't determined what we, as a species, find annoying. Our minds haven't developed this much despite all of us being 25 or older."
The day/night transitions in Simon's Quest. Omachao in some Sonic the Hedgehog games. Some NPC's that you can't pass and talk for 8 days because they have a "feeling my own vocal cords vibrate" fetish. Derpy herpy.
These can also appear in the form of senseless game over screens. "You didn't high five your friend fast enough! Now watch as the screen fades black as we find and old savestate you have to replay. Next time, don't leave them hanging!"
63. Unchangeable Controls CAN_Archer should change his username to like... CAN_GoodAtSugges- too long. Nevermind. Just enjoy his entry.
"As you all know, every single member of the human race thinks the exact same way. When we play video games, all 7 billion of us use the exact same control binds for everything." - Some game developers who are unable to think.
Some games aren't ruined by this, but most of them still have pretty dumb key binds for some functions. "Press E to jump! Press L to reload! Press = to breathe! Press \ to swallow saliva!" No, these games have to torture us by forcing us to use keybinds we might never get used to.
Then once we get back to playing the better games, our minds are still a bit muddled from that game with the crappy unmappable controls.
64. Senseless Backtracking ShikiRyogi did things to me last night no one else would. In return, I put his entry here. He plays rough, I'll give him that.
You've been playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Humans for 2 hours now, and you finally got out of the annoying sewers. You don't have to chew through your medkits or constantly use your flashlight anymore. Your mind can now have a sense of peace.
"Oh, hey protagonist! I dropped a locket with a picture of my keyboard down in the sewers. Go back and get it please?"
Then you're forced to watch a cutscene of the protagonist derpily walking back into the sewers against your will, then after the cutscene ends, you're slapped right back into those sewers.
"Oh one more thing! My locket has game-hardening powers, so now there's no more medkits and you can't use your flashlight anymore! K good luck!!!!"
Kill me. Please.
65. Friendly Fire Me and Scorpionius were playing Mario Kart once and he thanked me with this entry, because I let him be Player 1.
You haven't lived until you played a game where a troll can eliminate his own team with a blatant intentional feature. Bonus points for them if they can use a powerful weapon, or if everyone is under the spell of a difficulty that affects health loss.
Now, one could say "But ZTick, you could also get revenge on said troll because you can easily hurt him as he can hurt you!" No, not so much, no. Chances are, the troll is expecting to be shot back. In fact, ANY troll with half a brain will know that retaliation will be made against them - that's kind of a given. Even if you can hit the troll back, it doesn't matter, the troll still ruined your good time.
Sometimes, realism is bad. Really bad. There's always gonna be greifers out there, but durr-dumb game developers still make it easy for them.
66. Wonky Physics ...and then I let Scorpionius hit me with a green shell only because I let him, not because I suck at the game or anything.
Ever been stuck on a part of a game because the physics won't give you a break? All you need to do is throw the basketball in the hoop, but the basketball moves around like there's a smaller lead ball inside of it. Every time you throw the basketball, it flutters and does these tiny loop-de-loops like multiple tornados are pulling it from different sides. How did that get past game testing?
Or how about vehicles? Sure, you can drive your 1990 Chysler Imperial off a cl- No, that's an ugly car. I shouldn't even talk about that. I'll pick a different car. Sure, you can drive your boring Dodge Stratus off a cliff and it tumbles and bounces like a rubber ball that has the terminal velocity of a feather-glue ball.
However, once that car gets tapped by another car, then NASA sues you because your vehicle knocked a satellite out of place and people still using 56k can't get their 200x100 videos downloaded.
67. To An Extent... Underwater Levels
I'm not dissin' water, yo. Some of my best friends drink water. There was a couple times where I was all thirsty, but then I drank water, and I didn't feel that way anymore.
In cases like BioShock 2 where you sometimes you have to leave the submerged city to walk around underwater, it's not so bad as there's no enemies or anything, but some games send many hazards and "baddies" after you while you're just out for a very deep swim.
It doesn't feel good control wise. Your movements are slowed. Your most helpful actions are delayed. Your momentum is greatly increased making turning and such much harder. Your enemies sometimes are unphased by the water while you aren't, but you are under a curse know as "being the player".
68. Bad to Near-Nonexistent Plots DismalAmoeba is the first user to have 4 consecutive entries added at once. If only there was a medal for that.
The first Super Mario games and Super Meat Boy. "Soooooo yeah there's this girl you like and someone kidnapped her so walk through these different biomes of lands that are all placed side by side even though the different climates in them would be impossible but uhh do it anyway..."
Come on man, we don't need to have the best yet most complex plot out there, but is it too much effort to try and do something plausible or original? "You're an unseen protagonist. You appear in this unknown place and omggg you don't know where u are!! It's okay, you're guided by blood-written arrows though!" And that's it, that's the game right there. I'm sure Stephen King would be proud of you.
69. Luck-Based Gameplay The second of DismalAmoeba's four entries.
Almost all games have a sense of luck to them, but some take it to a farther, unhealthier extent than others. Let's take Mario Party for example. You and Wario are neck and neck with amount of power stars, and suddenly Wario lands on a red space, the game decides to roll some virtual dice and sharts out "Ooooh ooooh oooooooh you found a hidden block, wats inside??" Oh, how convenient, Wario finds a power star in there. And now you lost because everyone was on their last turns. Now I have to play the whole board again. Awesome. I love that.
I'm gonna outright quote DismalAmoeba and then add to it:
Your Pokemon ever been frozen twice in a row by Ice Beam, even though the chance for freezing is 10% each time? How about getting paralyzed 5 turns in a row, even though the chance for paralysis is 25% each turn? Or getting hit by critical hits twice in a row, even though the chance for a crit is 6.25% each turn! ARGH!
Oh but don't stop there! Maybe you use your Ice Pokemon and manage to freeze one that belongs to the trainer you're fighting. Oh wait, he happened to have Aspear Berry and thawed it out. He thawed a frozen creature inside a block of ice with a berry? Nothing wrong there.
Oh ho ho! I froze him again, so you know what trainer? You can eat my a- Wait, that Pokemon defrosted the very next turn by random chance? I don't know how much a plane ticket to Japan costs, but once I get there, I'm gonna do the most sexually immoral things to the creators of these games.
70. Terrible Voice Acting The third, delicious entry of DismalAmoeba's four.
The character isn't bad, but their voices are. They might even have a voice that doesn't match their body at all. Or maybe they do, but the acting is so forced and cringeworthy that you skip everything they say.
I'm just gonna post a video for this one:
71. Awful Translations The final entry to DismalAmoeba's four-part plan.
Was it that hard to get an American for a Japanese game just to translate some words? Did the Japanese people have to quickly muster up some English themselves and go with it. I know that not just Japanese companies do this, but the mistakes are very easy to notice there.
If "ここで、このドアをお試しください!" translates to "Try door there, here!" in the game when it doesn't in real life, then you're doing it wrong and possibly need to feel a little bad.
72. Fake Outs Theriasis will forcefully be my bride for this.
You know, those senseless scripted events that bone you because the developers thought, "Uhhhh, well uhhh... This adds more interest to the story?" No, it does not. They need to feel shame over that thought.
After an hour of searching, you find the 4 keys to that door that... uses 4 keys to be unlocked? Okay? Not exactly top-dog architect planning there but... there you go. Do ho ho, but right before that one last key is inserted (the protagonist, for some reason, dips the last key in much slower than the previous ones, making the following scene more predictable.) the antagonist uses his lightweight RPG and blasts the door the beyond use. He blasts it just enough so it won't open, but isn't destroyed altogether. What luck.
Well I made it out of that fortress anyway. Now to cross this bridge where that stack of health kits are. Gee, this is a very long bridge. I can see the antagonist appearing again with his carry-around RPG. I wonder what he's gonna do to this bridge? In fact, I wonder what he's gonna do to every path I must cross?
73. Unwinnable Boss Fights The user "yourgarbage" rolled an 8 in the game we were playing. An '8' means you must give a good entry while you do... stuff to him.
I don't mean really hard boss fights. I mean ones where the player is meant to lose. Where you waste a ton of healing items and time just to lose in a scripted event anyway. Then you have a hard time with a battle after that because of all the items you wasted.
Sure, in the next playthrough you learn from this, but why not just have that in a cutscene? Why does it have to be a long, boring and drawn out pseudo-battle?
74. Crashing DismalAmoeba, the guy who once gave me 4 awesome entries at once, is back!
Let's assume that the crashing is more game-related than player-related. It blows, does it not? You're almost out of Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 and "HL2.exe has encountered a senseless problem and needs to stop your experience out of nowhere. Would you like to send an error report to invisible person who will do nothing?"
It's even worse when it's a fresh problem for all players and there's yet to be a fix. So you're condemned to not play an awesome game until someone farts out a fix. Is the problem completely error-less and seemingly has no origin? Then life blows, because it's gonna take longer for a fix.
You might be thinking, "ZTick, chill down dog. Maybe the error is rare thing and happens out of bad luck. That can happen!" ERROR 2230A - The game did something that it shouldn't have to begin with and needs to close. L8r!
Alright, it's a one time error, it happens and I'll live with it. I... I have to start at the beginning of this chapter? That error somehow deleted my savestates? Game developers, I have no revoked your right to live.
75. Timed Missions Me and SuperSanvichMan would be so angry together!
"We don't want to make this quest too easy and mundane, we need to push it to the other side of the extreme. Ooh ooh ooh OOOOH! Let's have a timer appear when the mission begins, and not only that, let's not give a reason for why the timer is there!"
I don't exactly have a fetish for having my body tighten up out of fear and forced focus because I have only have 2:15 to deliver a bird to an... old... woman? Okay? If the bird has a healing remedy and the old was dying of something that only the bird could cure, then maybe I could- No. That's stupid. Mankind is more clever than that. We'd extract the remedy from the bird first, or at least try to.
76. Pointless Nerfs DismalAmoeba, you're famous in this thread now.
Let's do some intimate roleplaying: RagePoster, "i hate the new shotgun, NERF IT ALREADY!" soreloser9200, "wat he sed" my_way_only, "yuuuuup" Game Developer, "Well, we got a thread with 2 agrees, so we're gonna nerf it! Curse you peer pressure!"
And then you come back to the game only to find that said shotgun is absolutely useless now. It takes an extra 3 seconds to pump the shotgun (yeah, slowing that hand animation down was very, very necessary). Instead of shooting pellets that do 9 damage each, they just tickle the enemy. Curse you peer pressure.
77. Some Quicktime Events Epicositys. That's a very unique username. His entry however, is less unique, as it's a very well known thing.
Tomb Raider. There, I said it. I mentioned that game and I don't have to talk about it anymore because logic works like that somehow. This is something that is an annoyance to both new and veteran players.
The new players suffer because they won't know when the seizure-inducing quicktime events are coming, and end up missing it because the player couldn't have prepared (or it was just poorly executed and timed). The veteran players suffer because such events become meaningless as they know they're coming, but have to pointlessly alert because they're need to pass the game, or to have an advantage.
Let's talk about South Park: The Stick of Truth, good game. You know what isn't good? "Mash S! Mash D! QuickquickQUICKQUICKclICKC left mouse and thenAND THEN PRESS D AND DEN A!! AUUUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!"
Thanks, I love being tossed around and trolled by the game's mandatory control mechanics. Knowing if I encounter 3 annoying quicktime events at the start of the game, there's most likely gonna be more much harder ones later in the game. Herp out of 10.
78. Too-Harsh Winning Penalties Unyobro was like "add this!" and I was like "no" but then later on I was like "alright"... So I added this.
There's nothing wrong with some balanced mechanics to help the losing players and skim a bit off the top for the winning ones so they don't get so far ahead that the game is hopeless for anyone else.
However, it helps greatly so racers who are too far ahead aren't permanently there, but there has to be a limit to this so it doesn't punish every person who touches 1st place.
You might even find yourself intentionally putting yourself in 2nd place for a while, and then bursting into 1st place at the very last second. That's some good game design right? Where both last and first place suffer? Or all places suffer? Sucks right?
79. Lack of Gameplay Mechanic Options SuperSandvichMan is the second person to give me 4 entries in a row. Here's #1.
My GPU is overheating and I have no way of turning off the stuttery unoptimized dynamic shadows or the "every single pixel is re-rendered 10 times over to somehow make things realistic?" option. Cool. That's a very smart thing to implement. Or not implement. Whichever makes more sense.
The music is blaring in my face and I actually flinch and crumple my face in pain whenever some songs hits specific notes, which is fine, but I can't hear the dialogue and the game has no option for subtitles. Wh... the music volume only goes from 100% down to 90%? Were the game developers playing a sick joke?
I'll just check the "Put the player out of his misery by suffocation" option. Oh come on, I can only pick that option if I have a 6-core processor?
80. No Choices When Choices Would Have Worked Fine SuperSanvichMan's second entry of his 4-in-a-row!
"I'm completely unarmed and about half your size, now give me your sword or else I'll be very angry! There won't be any further penalties, but I'll just be very angry. At you that is."
Well that's funny, but I'm gonna walk past you and not do what you say. Why is the cutscene still going? W-Why did I just hand him my sword?! I don't even understand this! I didn't even press any buttons and Link just hands this guy a sword.
Thanks. No really, thanks. Now I have to punch everything because I lost a good weapon for no reason. Can you at least redo the cutscene that shows me losing a sword in a much more reasonable and a "that could totally happen" way? Thanks random cutscene, for making the game unfun for nothing. Logic logic logic!
81. Useless Rewards This marks the first and unintentional dual-user entry. By both SoulEmpire and GoldWatson. Notice how similar their names are.
This can exist in two ways: a reward that's useless and is already outperformed by things you already have, or it's given to you by the end of the game and you're given little to no time to use it, or it's just senseless at that point because the game is being beaten anyway.
Example 1:
Thanks, but that's stupid. I already got a .44 magnum and a Benelli shotgun in a scripted event. Did the game developers forget that they put those two weapons in?
Example 2:
Those 3 years of yoga training paid off, and I seduced Dr. Monopolis to death. That's not a metaphor, I actually killed him that way. I finally get to take his prototype briefcase gun. Why are the credits rolling? Dude, are you serious?! You game developers put the effort in giving the weapon a first-person 3D model and animations only for that to be seen for 4 seconds. I ran out of stuff to say, that's how stupid that is.
82. Unknowingly Being Able to Bone Yourself in the Future AMPPL50 wedgied me soooo bad in middle school, but I forgive him because of this entry.
Not literally. I mean when you can permanently ruin your chances at completely a mission or performing an action because you erased/tossed out/destroyed something you need to have beforehand.
"I'm y'all, the name's Chester. Hyuck hyuck. If you want me to unlock the door to that gold mine for you, I'm gonna need to your 'Mine Pass' as the magnetic strip in there and bypass the door's code."
Y... You can't be serious. Ooooh wait, you mean that pass that I dropped down a cliff because I ran out of inventory space and had no idea that I would need it later? That pass shouldn't have been droppable then. I'm not gonna start a new game just to redo that part, I'm already level 50 and it took my 4 weeks to grind everything I have now. Life blows =(.
83. Needing a Guide/Wiki for Mandatory Things AMPPL50 gave this entry. I'll go easier on him in our next gang war.
Some games can get away with this, like Minecraft, Terraria, Cubeword and even Garry's Mod. But when I'm playing a non-sandbox with an actual story, there are some things I really need to know. If the sword I'm using can also shield fire, I need to know how to pull that off. If I can shrink myself and jump into someone's mouth to delay an enemy's metabolism, I need a little tutorial.
If I see a third-party guide on how to pull off needed things, that makes me depressed at playing the game, because now I know there will be much more vague things thrown at me.
84. Annoying Status Effects
This is the result of game writers not understanding what's a challenge and what's annoying because they think the two are the exact same thing. A common mistake seen in the Suggestions subforum of this very forum. Even the most annoying status effects can be managed and not the biggest of deals if there's a way to avoid them, but...
But because this list of satirical and depressing, let's focus on the negatives. I'm fighting the Queen Spider of Crayola Island. When the Queen hits me with a green colored pencil, I'm given the "Super Duper Herp Hurr Poison" effect, which drains 10 health every second, and makes my attacks do half damage, and makes my jumps 25% shorter, and makes my farts hurt 50% more. Wait, did I mention this effect stacks every time I'm hit with said colored pencil, and adds 10 more seconds to all of those debuffs.
After 3 hours of grinding items, I finally got beat the Queen Spider. I'm onto a new boss now. The Snow Globetrotter. Whenever he hits with me an unavoidable attack, my get the "Frozen" effect, where I can't move or do anything. Neat! I love a game mechanic that can stop me from playing a game altogether! Now I can finally face my suicide with less fear, as the anger this game gave helps me push past it.
85. Not Knowing What To Do Next
Personally, I found this problem quite common with some of the Pokemon games. And by Pokemon games, I mean ALL games that don't have any form of objective reminders, aren't linear and have nothing else in the game to tell you what to do next.
I just defeated DurrHar III, he was the same as the other two DurrHar bosses but had different colors and each had more health than the last. Creativity. I don't remember what Glockgod the Guide told me about what to do next, the last time I played this game was a month ago. Whenever I talk to Glockgod again, he talks about other senseless things, and never mentions the next task again.
Talking to Glockgod makes him say "I like sandwiches! I can't juggle 3 oranges, it's way easier with just 2. I like cats! R.E.M. for life!" So now I have to go search around on the internet with strange search terms to find out how to keep playing a damn game.
86. Artificial Difficulty
I already talked about too-buffed enemies and unbalanced difficulty settings, but in this entry, I'm gonna speak of the term a bit more generally.
If you don't understand what artificial difficulty is, it's when traps and obstacles are repeated and made extremely tedious, it's when that enemy you saw once before way back in Level 2 (but wears blue clothes instead of green) comes back, but has +400% health and his weapons do +300% damage just because, it's when a level's pathway is excruciatingly long to make up for how possibly easy it is. Et cetera.
So instead of using strategy and good timing to make progress, you might have to perform an unfun act for many times or just rely on some luck instead. Imagine that feeling when summer vacation is so close, and you care less and less about your school because your vacation is right under your nose. Now imagine game developers feeling that.
You don't have to 3D model new enemies when you can render them different colors. You don't have to have larger levels because you can make an uncreative door that takes 5 damn keys. You don't need effort when you can just reuse older outdated effort over and over.
I think AI in general needs to evolve. I can really care less about a dude's pimple actually having polygons rather than faking it with a normal map. I want AI that doesn't seem to be brain dead. Escort missions could actually be viable if the guy I'm supposed to protect knows the difference between the spot he's supposed to get to, and the spot that will easily kill him.
Also, most microtransactions. I really hope Fortnite won't be ruined by this, as it looks like a really cool game.
How about super-limited dialogue? Like in Skyrim. Mass Effect does it okay, and if there was voice acting for it, as far as I've heard, Morrowind's would have been awesome.
Also, how about those immortal characters? Oh, since you did some stupid thing by randomly slaughtering one of the most important people in the world? Nah, they'll just drop on one knee and get back up.
Everytime you found the person you where searching for, they had this epic fight scene where they would take down 10 guys with one gun shot. Where they would fight this giant worm and kill it with a few smacks, turn around and say "no biggy".
Then you took them on a mission a few moments later....and they couldn't even take on one person !
Also, how about those immortal characters? Oh, since you did some stupid thing by randomly slaughtering one of the most important people in the world? Nah, they'll just drop on one knee and get back up.
How about super-limited dialogue? Like in Skyrim. Mass Effect does it okay, and if there was voice acting for it, as far as I've heard, Morrowind's would have been awesome.
Also, how about those immortal characters? Oh, since you did some stupid thing by randomly slaughtering one of the most important people in the world? Nah, they'll just drop on one knee and get back up.
It's because they're essential characters, though I cheat and set them to non-essential.
Found in action-adventure and fighting games, this quirk in the gameplay occurs when an enemy's attack has the ability to hit you, prevent you from doing anything for a short period of time, and then hit you again before you have the chance to retaliate. Regardless of which opponent it is that can to do this to you, once you're in there's no way out. Some players will desperately try to block an attack or jump to the side, but all these attempts will be in vain. The only thing that can be done is to sit back and watch your character's life bar slowly shrink to nothing.
I played 15 hours to defeat Snootyvoice McRichguy and he somehow got away and made another $400,000 while doing so. Thanks writers of the game, that makes us feel very good.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
Unfinished "early access" games that are too early to be released to begin with. "This is Space War Death Fighting 3, but all you can do right now is stare at stars and collect ketchup packets!"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
here's another one: that annoying fairy from Zelda. I.E unstoppable, not fun, tutorials
I have "annoying characters" in the list. Same with the tutorials. Though I'm sure Navi has got enough mentions that I'll include him in the annoying characters description.
1. Escort Situations
"No, n.. NO! You can't play the game for yourself! See this NPC here? Guard her with your life. Now you have to manage the health of both yourself and this other person! Oh, by the way, because we're smart developers, if the escort NPC dies, you get berated and have to start all over again!"
The NPC might be able to lift some big boxes around, but they can't hold a weapon, as the vibration and texture of the metal of a gun is too threatening to the nerve endings. They also have restless leg syndrome, which is why they run in your line of fire.
Are you keeping them alive? Doesn't matter, the protagonist of the game is still not respected enough to not be insulted for firing his loud gun. Good job on not doing this, BioShock Infinite.
2. Uncontrollable Save States
Some games are actually better off this way, as it can prevent some cheap cheat-esque methods of progress.
This is even worse in games with extremely long levels/sections.
Did the Mexican Staring Frog of Sri Lanka kill you with it's homing tongue missile while you almost made it to the escape plane in Siberia? Too bad, you gotta start at the beginning, 40 years ago when your mother illegitimately conceived you. The worst part about this is, you know you might die again and do yet another restart. So you can find yourself in crippling fear of some hard parts in the game.
3. Horrible Collision
Wasn't it always interesting that the protagonist was a starved Nicaraguan child, but you had the hitboxes of an overweight man with 2 unnamed versions of diabetes? I mean sure, you can slip through iron bars with ease, but when a bullet passes you by and it was 2 feet away, the magic metal plate in your stomach made the bullet stop, turn around and hit you.
Your enemies however, are spherical seals with targets painted on them, but no matter good your aim is, you see the bullet physically pass through your enemy's 3D model without doing any notable damage. You have to aim in the dead center of that enemy seal to hit it. Because... game development.
I'm not angry that my bullets couldn't go through fences, and that bullet decal appear in the open spots of the fence.
4. Senseless Team AI
You're not thinking clearly. Those dialogue boxes you can bring up to order teammates around are only there for decoration. You didn't think they would do anything did you?
You and Sir McFartknuckle need to stealthily escape the evil water tubing plant. You bring up the team AI orders and you select "Silently crouchwalk to crosshair". McFartknuckle moves to the crosshair, but he doesn't do it silently, he tap dances his way to it and yells "OK BOSS I'M HERE WHAT NOW?!" The alarms soon sound, and both you and McFartknuckle meet your death.
It's a bonus when a teammate is needed to supply you to keep you alive. Do you need health? Sorry, McFartknuckle needs the extra kits as a paperweight, but I'm sure your natural healing abilities will fix that compound fracture in no time! Need ammo? No, Fartknuckle is not done staring at the shiny cubemaps on the RPG rockets.
4. Again... Senseless Team AI
The way DaltonForce suggested this one... We'd be so angry together!
If anyone remembers the "Ramirez! Do everything!" meme, it fits quite well here. This sub-entry is not about AI that's stupid, but just doesn't do anything because game developers think that... that's a good idea?
It gets to the point where responsibility is solely on the player, which it always is and usually should be, but there are times where team AI could be very useful where there's too much burden on the player. Your bullets take enemies down instantly, but your teammates' bullets happen to be using much weaker and puff into the air the second they hit something.Just your teammates. No one else.
"Ramirez! Go get that Javelin from Burger Town!" Thanks for not covering me so I'm the lone soldier running into this rubble of a fast-food place, so in the meantime, everyone else is firing at things that aren't there instead of the Russians 10 feet from. I appreciate that.
5. Awkward Protagonist Limitations
Putting your crosshair on the knob of a door and mashing the use key does nothing, you need an adult half your size to walk over and open the door for you.
Can the protagonist catch bullets in his teeth and use his muscular fingers to mash any small metal scraps into bullets during cutscenes? Okay, then it's settled, the protagonist dies from 8-foot falls and can only sprint for 6 seconds during actual gameplay!
So you and 5 other allies are all wearing swat gear and using the same weapons, and you all have similar backgrounds and training? Well that's dandy, but it just so happens that the player character reloads his weapon 3 times slower and he can't carry more than 2 pistol clips. K go get em!
6. Unskippable Cutscenes
Any game with any attempt to have replay value needs to not have this. It's a pretty simple concept. It's even worse when #2 is a part of this, and you're condemned to watch the same pre-rendered videos over and over.
"Hey antagonist! I hate you! I will do things to stop you! Look what I can do with my thumb, I'm not actually pulling my thumb off, it's just a trick! You need to watch me do this for an extra minute! After that minute is over, we fight!" Never gets old.
This also includes game logos at the start of games, like that one in Borderlands 1 where Claptrap was trying to light up an nVidia logo. If people need to use configs and fixes or whatever just skip cutscenes, you're doing it wrong.
7. Senselessly Buffed Enemies
If I'm not able to get any headshots in a row because there's too much smoke or foliage in my way, why are my enemies able to do so? If my health is so low that I'm not able to run away from my aggressors, why is the guy in the wheelchair I almost killed able to throw that same wheelchair at me and knock my ragdoll through solid walls?
Soldiers wearing nothing but balloons don't seem like they would have infinite ammo, but... you know, they do anyway. I can see them pulling clips out of their thighs. I even saw one guy pull a grenade from his chest. Okay.
Sometimes this gets uncreative, as a boss enemy (who looks like all the other enemies but is rendered a different color) gets tripled health. Oh, and his gun does more damage than the other same SMG's in the game.
7a. Circle of Hurt
Crimsollite married me just so I would put his entry up. Jokes on HIM! Wait...
I absolutely hate it when enemies are balanced and have very sensible attacks, I'd rather have them so that they're cheaper and more unfun. So unfun that I hate the entire game that they appear in! Logic logic logic!
We're talking about enemies that aren't only powerful, but are able to strip away every game mechanic away from you. This enemy taps you with his pinky toe, and all of a sudden you're unable to use your weapon, unable to sprint, unable to jump, unable to use healing items and unable to switch weapons.
Don't bother trying to inch away from the enemy, as he also vortex's you inward to him and steals your health! Doesn't this game sound awesome?
7b. Senselessly Buffed Racers
Good call K4nye. It took way too long for someone to mention this.
Oh yes, I made a sub-section just for little trolls that appear in racing games. I'm gonna make a lot of references to Mario Kart because it's too easy. I don't know, we'll see how this goes.
So you're racing, and you're neck and neck against Chester Cheetah and the Quaker Oats guy. You're ahead, but those two are still very close to you. Chester hasn't collected any items, but he somehow shoots a missle out of the front of his car, where there was no cylindrical area on his car it could come out of.
Alright, that missile hit you, but you still managed to get back in first pl- Nevermind. The Quaker Oats guy a speed boost from absolutely nothing. Cool. I never saw a setting in the game that was "I Never Want to Win: Enabled"
Oh nice, if I finish last (or don't finish in first), the game shows an animation of everyone laughing at me. Woah, that gives me the positive energy boost I need to try again! I sure hope gravely depressed people didn't lose at this game.
8. Strange Invisible Borders
At least one person reading this thread thought s/he could make a jump or run through something because it looked wide open, but couldn't. It's understandable that maps can't let you go in any direction for eternity, but please don't put a whole invisible wall over some 3' 1" barrels that it looked like I could jump over.
See my flattened yellow Corvette in the garage? That was from the time I tried to drive through an invisible wall that was actually wider than my car was. I was doing a timed mission, and I wanted to take a shortcut, but that didn't work out so well.
9. Horrible Communities
There's no such thing as a perfect community, but some games have it waaaayy worse than others. Counter-Strike: Source. Rust. To some extent, Dota 2. Nearly every Call of Duty game.
It's like some of those games are able to rewire people's minds and replace their blood with concentrated douchey hate fluids. Those same games can even reshape a person's personality. How tragic. If you like overused terms such as "nub" or "newfag", then those communities are for you.
10. Badly Made Puzzle Solutions
I'm embarrassed, this whole time I wasn't supposed to use the red key on the red door? I was supposed to use my own body heat to melt the key into a different shape and then use it? Lmao stupid me. And this whole time I thought I was nailed my Software Engineering major.
A good indicator of games with these problems commonly show up in the google search bar, showing you that thousands of other people searched for the same solution.
11. Tasteless Violence, Sex and Profanity
I don't need a game that acts like my little cousin who swears constantly because he thinks it's cool and recently discovered those words. I know some games are based on this stuff, and they might even pull it off well, but if it's overdone, then it gets awkward and cringeworthy.
You don't need to shove exploding limbs and genitals in my face to make me like a game. There's a thin difference between Grand Theft Auto IV and Jerry Springer: Real Life Version.
12. Unbalanced Multiplayer
"Ummm derpy hurr you guys les um make it so um level 30 players can hold 4 guns and 10 grenades but only new players can hold 1 guns and 0 grenades and theHERP!"
I can think I can pass on a multiplayer that makes it excruciating to level up because the more seasoned players won't let me leave the spawn. Bonus points where many people point out the balance flaws but the developers just never listen because of Selective Reading Syndrome (or SRS).
Thanks, I'm glad I spent $60 on a multiplayer I was infatuated over, but come to find out it's a bullyfest where the only method of success is to play the game as close to the release date as possible. $60, if you're reading this, I still cry at night for you.
13. Wonky Moral Choices
If you played Black Ops 2, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You try to go for the good guy road and the game ends up kicking you for your compassionate choice and pulls a fake out. As if to say "lol you sparing these orphans made the game worse, come to find out they were nazi orphans that can shapeshift and turn all water into cancer ahhahahahhh!"
If I spare someone I wanted to kill for the longest time, I think people might want some sort of reward for that, instead of being spat on. No fake outs. Those are dumb. Unless the fake outs lead to something worthwhile.
14. The One (or Few) Annoying Character(s)
Slippy from Star Fox. Baby Mario from Yoshi's Island. John Madden in... every game that features him. Navi from Zelda, or also known as "Hey Listen! Stop Having Fun!"
The game would have been perfect to near perfect either without these characters, or if they just got some tweaks to make them less monotonous. A few less lines of dialogue or a change in vocal volume could have fixed but that would have been too convenient.
15. Long, Boring and Unavoidable Tutorials
Depending on the implementation, the tutorial part could one of the greatest parts of the game. But when they're way too long and pointless, it hurts.
"Press [W] to move forward. Good job! Press [Left Ctrl] to sneak! You're amazing! Press [E] to open a damn door! You're a good kid! Continue to breathe to stay alive while playing this game! Achievement Unlocked! Now let's go over all of that again so we can see what a big boy you are!"
I feel pain for those twitchy professionals who try to do speedruns, but have to sit through that crap.
16. Screen Watching
This one is something that almost all of us do out of instinct. It's not hard to do, it's all on the same screen is it not? It's not always so bad, but it can ruin some of your best tactics, and can cause others to copy you for eternity. The positive side is, ALL players are able to screen watch, so... the playing field is pretty balanced.
17. Self-Healing Enemies
There aren't enough Tylenol PM's in the world to reduce my bloodflow when I try to kill an enemy as fast as possible, and I have to think faster than humans are truly able to do just to perform that because they can regrow limbs and make their bodies go reverse in time to undo the huge gashes I've left them.
You guessed it, I'm bringing up trainer battles in Pokémon. Or those Trolls in Skyrim and Oblivion. Ever been in a situation where you couldn't tell if the healing was part of a scripted event or just you being too slow? Life can suck like that sometimes.
18. That One Overpowered Power-Up/Weapon
The thing that every player goes for. Like the Stopping Power perk in Modern Warfare 2. And even though the thing is cheap to use, you still go for it because your enemies won't do much different.
"Super Deathmatchy Dogs Pro" might be a good game if that 20-second-god-mode pill wasn't there, or that lightning gun that adds 2 days to a player's respawn time on death wasn't there, but hey, what're you gonna do?
Many maps will give you a burnt image in your head of many players converging on area of the map for that overpowered thing. While you never see those players pick up any other weapon or item.
19. Insane 100% Requirements
You might love a game so much that you'd want to 100% it, but you can't for the life of you find or do that thing that gives you 100%, so you're stuck at 99.5% for weeks. Perhaps you might know all the requirements, but might not have the skill to do that one last one.
Yeah, you found all the hidden crayons, and killed all colored pencil leaders of the 4th Crayola dimension, but you still gotta jump that pointless gap while wearing tennis rackets on your knees, and sing the entire Happy Days theme song before touching the ground again.
20. Cluttery HUDs
This is your Heads-Up Display. It displays your health, armor, stamina, hunger, muscle, sex appeal, shoe size, fetishes, likes, dislikes, facebook posts, colors of trees, colors of bushes, colors of shirts you've seen in your lifetime, favorite red meats, steps taken, jumps made, saliva swallowed, racial slurs heard, fairy tales believed, ice cubes chewed, yellow birds killed, cloud shapes conceived, abortions performed and most importantly, domestic violence reports caused by you!
21. Unbalanced Difficulty Settings
I lost to Theriasis in a thumb war, and she punished me further by forcing me to post her entry.
When you select Normal difficulty, you would expect the game's damage values to be right smack in the middle, but sometimes they aren't, sometimes picking Normal or even Easy leaves you in a hellish Super Meat Boy-esque game.
Some games that have Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Mania should have them relabeled as Hard, Very Hard, Unplayable, Unplayable and Masochist. It's even worse when the difficulty selections have descriptions that throw you off.
Easy Mode - "For those more interested in story than combat" when it should say "For those who can't get it up by normal means, and need to resort removed medkits to come close to any kind of arousal."
22. Repetitive Easy Boss Fights
I double dog dared 1TrollLtd for this entry, and he had to do it because I dared him.
Come on game developers, this isn't the 90's anymore. Bosses doing the same 5 attacks in a row isn't always fun. Oh look, I see a bandage on the boss, that must be where his weak spot is. It's a good thing this giant I'm fighting happen to put a bandage there at some point in his life prior to this fight.
"Hmm, the boss isn't hard enough. I got it! We'll leave the same boring attacks the way they are, but we'll jack up the health! So players have to do the same attacks and dodges over and over for 30 goddamn minutes! Why am I not a White House advisor yet! Augh I'm smart!!"
23. Microtransactions
0strichGuy11 suggested this. This proves he's a person and not an actual ostrich.
This isn't always the worst thing, but a game can be ruined when it lives off nothing but this. If the players need to find and craft stuff to survive and do more damage, well... fair enough. But don't give rich kids the easy way out by having them buy that Soul Stealer +35 sword while the not-so-money-having players have to spend 3,000 and craft 10 Soul Harvester cubes just to make one.
Think of the poor. Think of the gameplay.
24. Team AI Limitations
CreeperCooperBlock gave birth to this entry. It's a boy! 5 and a half pounds!
So you managed to recruit Captain Bruisepunch to your team? Are you serious, you mean the same Captain that killed the entire Steroid Elf Movement and took down the armored Walgreens C.E.O.? Boy oh! The blood you two will spill?
Oh.. oh wait. He can't move very fast, so you have not sprint around so he can catch up to you? What do you mean he needs his insulin shots every hour? Wait, he can't carry more than one octopie grenade? Did you guys make up his backstory?
25. Uncreative, Repetitive Quests
With this snakeskin vest, VIPERSSS slithered in and gave this entry. Are my snake jokes good? Hit and miss?
"Ok go kill 5 bears ok now collect 5 roses ok now the 5 missing diary ok noW UM GO KILL 3 SQUIDS OK LOL NOW GO SMELT 4 INGOTS OF IRON LOL"
You're crushing my spirits. Make me care about the quest, have me find interest in it. Don't send me on a collectathon and then have me fear you will send me on another one after the first is done. That's depressing. Real life has enough of those quests.
26. Limited Dialogue
spartachilles just walked in and dangled his... entry... in my face.
As much as one may love silent protagonists, they don't work in every game. Here's an example:
Bombbot2000: "Bzzt - Error. Please speak into the mic to deactivate bomb. Hint: the password is dogteeth."
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Bombbot2000: "20 seconds left."
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Bombbot2000: "Dude, come on. Just give me a yelp and I'll turn this bomb off. Deal?"
Samuel McNonvocal: "..."
Games like Oblivion and Skyrim get away with this as your character could any race or gender, and there would need to be like a thousand recorded lines for each combination. In Grand Theft Auto 3 however, the silent is a more... unrealistic (not that it didn't work out in the end, but you get my point).
27. No Optimization
If the game looks like Super Mario 64 with some extra bumpmaps thrown in, my $3000 PC shouldn't be stuck at 25fps. If I turn the settings all the way down and now the game looks like the MS-DOS version of Doom, and I only gain an extra 5fps. Then the developers are the ones at fault, not my beefy PC.
Oh wait, it's my PC's fault still? Yeah, you're probably right. I mean I can run Crysis 2 at max settings on two monitors, but still, my PC is totally still crappy. You got me.
28. Bad/Delayed Controls
Have you ever played a game with the controls so bad that you kept thinking, "How the hell did this pass the beta testers?" When I want to punch someone, I don't want my buff character standing for an extra 2 seconds starting off into space, and then decides to swing his arm when his brain turns back on.
When I want to jump a gap, I don't want to have to press the spacebar 3 seconds in advance to jump over a river where the water instakills you because... Because.
29. Slow Movement
Turtle slow characters can make sense sometimes, like if you're wearing a butt-ton of armor or you're the Heavy from Team Fortress 2.
But then you have the guy who tiptoes everywhere he goes. And when he sprints, he moves only 5% faster and spastically sways his arms like he's running a marathon. Herpty herp. You find yourself never crouching because the you don't want to impede your speed any further.
It's even better when every single entity in the game moves faster than you. Making evasion near impossible, or when there's enemies that can slow you down with an attack, making you open for more free hits.
30. Painfully Slow Leveling Systems
Games that have this have things that keep you busy and keep you working toward your goal. However, people really don't want to play for an entire hour to move up one level. It's even worse when the perks/strengths/whatever you want to spend your XP on are useless, and you can't get that difference-making power until like level 20.
Oh neato! Level 10 unlocks the reflecting shield, but before I can get that, I need to purchase +10% Eye Glitter, +1% Running Speed, -10% Tripping Over Nothing Chance, -1% Hitbox Size on Self and +0.0034% Critical Hit Chance? Okay! And I only have to do 25 quests for each level up! That's brilliant, take my bank account numbers!
31. Things Everyone in the Game Can Have Except You
Bow to Theriasis, and her angry creativity.
I noticed all of my squadmates are using those super choked shotguns that fire more accurate than sniper rifles. That's neat maybe one day I c- oh, those shotguns have heartbeat sensors in them too? That's golden. I mean all I'm able to use right now this pipe wrench and this pistol, but I can be patient.
Hoho! The enemies have them too? Perfect, I'll just kill one and take the shotgun then. Alright nevermind, the game won't allow me to pick the thing up. In fact, the thing is glued to this dead guy's arms. Okay. Why is the weapon fading away now? I don't get it!
Why did the guy I killed drop pistol ammo? He didn't have a pistol, he just had that shotgun...
32. Depressing Endings
It feels so warm and awesome when we overcome every single odd and got that feel good ending that gives us closure in the best possible way. Though not all games give us that luxury.
So, how does this story conclude? Wait, the protagonist dies at the end? And all those orphans I've saved don't survive? Thanks, that's depressing. Does anyone have some ambien and a knife I could borrow?
33. Slow Currency Gain
The most famous entry giver, 1TrollLtd, delivered once more.
This one isn't so bad if there isn't too much needed stuff to buy, but if I'm not able to afford the lowest level shield and sword from the "Middle Age Miracle" vending machine. Then a game update is in order. What makes this more agonizing is when enemies drop little to no currency, making grinding not so possible.
This is the part where people use cheats, mods, hacks or a trainer. Perhaps the game developers are the worst kind of republicans who want to keep the poor people down, and the player character fits in that margin.
34. Bad Guys That Survive
Theriasis lays down the law once more. She loses some bonus points because she's a girl and girls have germs. =/
You better as hell be giving us a cliffhanger, because I just played a 15-hour game where I disabled the antagonist's defenses and killed all of his henchmen. I didn't want to see Mayor MacBad Deathilson escape away safely on his spaceship while the credits roll.
No! Don't play that happy ending music! I wanted Mr. Deathilson to die at the end! Stop trying to make it sound cheery!
35. Some Flying Enemies
orexx, please stop. You aren't allowed to be that good in suggesting stuff for the thread.
The flying Medusa heads in Castlevania 3. The heat-seeking masks in Super Mario Bros 2. To some extent, the dragons in Skyrim. Basically, any enemy that mocks you because they can defy gravity better than you.
You'll waste the most ammo on them, because you'll be like trying to shoot a fly with dart gun - and sometimes, even if you get them, the crappy hitbox system decides "nah, I don't really feel like making your bullet count today."
36. "Power-Ups" That Are Actually Downgrades
"Heya Jim! I wanted to thank you for helping me kill those bakery terrorists, so I'm giving you an upgrade version of the shotgun you already have. This shotgun now has a needle in the handle that extracts 10 health from you every time you fire it, so it adds... more challenge to your situations making them... more gun? Yeah that's it!"
How about a different scenario? So I'm trying to get through the forest to get to my grandma's house while dressed in drag as Little Red Riding hood (but my legs are hairy so dead giveaway there) because I need to get this ambien to my grandma real bad.
Oh look, I see a spinning, floating sugar bag power-up? I bet it makes me run faster, that'd sure be helpful! Oh wait, it makes me sputter and sprint in random directions without control and now I have type 2 diabetes. And the power up lasts for a whole minute... Wh... Why would anyone program that in?
37. The Code-Error
Scorpionius, the only reason you brought this up because it's true.
These are not your everyday glitches, where an animation gets a little wonky or the physics of a dropped gun twitches for a bit. Oh no no no. These are glitches that punch the flow of gameplay right in it's crotchal region.
These are glitches that are so horrible, that you can't help but wonder why it wasn't fixed when the developers first heard about it. You might be one headshot away from getting that 100% accuracy achievement, but you couldn't because they forgot to give that enemy a proper hitbox.
You might have to collect 2 more pieces of paper in Looseleaf Lamborghini: Pencil Pushers, yet you can't because one paper fell through the ground and out of the world, and the other was knocked into a spot where you can't reach and collect it. Nope, don't try to load an older save, as the glitch will still occur for eternity.
Life can suck like that.
38. DRM
Moranic, I'm gonna do that thing in the bed you always like just because you thought of this one.
"Are you connected to the internet right now? No? Well than you can't play this game! No, it doesn't matter if the cable guy f***ed up and screwed up the wiring to your internet, you can't play this game. Deal with it! Suck it! Be depressed!"
"Oh you do have internet now? Alright fine, you can play I gue- oh wait wait! Your internet flickered a bit, your back to not being able to play now! Your tears taste like butter to us! Your unhappiness is our euphoria!"
39. Breaking the Fourth Wall
I prayed to Allah to give me a user who will add to this thread. mnecraft was created.
Some comedic cartoony games can get away with this, and those games might even pull it off so well that you might laugh at it, but this doesn't work for every game.
So you're playing Turban Turmoil IV, and right before you and your 3 allies blast away the Great Wall of Oppression, one of the characters points to the screen and says, "Alright player, be ready mash the X button to charge up your proton pack!" and it comes off so dorky and cheesy. Please stop.
If a game is trying to be serious, dark and atmospheric, don't try to reach out to the real world and awkwardly talk the very player of the game. I can't imagine a WW2 soldier ever looking at me and saying, "C'mon pardner, help me reload this gun so we can cream that Nazi party!" No... Just... don't.
40. Insane Loading Times
Jesus H. Derp, I'm not playing a Mass Effect game, I'm playing a damn PlayStation 2 game. Why was it loading so long? All I did was enter a small bathroom. I don't get it. Did the tiles textures have extreme bumpmaps to them? Did the developers make it that way to show off the artwork of the loading screen?
Was it to teach me to appreciate the humming and whirring of the disc inside the console? Oh wait I get it, it was to teach me patience in life, was that it? No? The game's just horribly unoptimized? I see. Money well spent on the game then.
41. Very Long Travel Times
Some games go for realism, I get that, but just because I have to drive down the most ghetto streets for half an hour to get to work doesn't mean I want that experience virtually replicated. With games like Borderlands, Oblivion or Skyrim, it's forgivable because you have horses/vehicles whatever and the maps aren't too ridiculous. I don't think.
But when I have to use a bridge to get from one city to the next to get someone a McGriddle for a mission, and then drive ALL the way back, then... you're doing it wrong. Game developers, know what's fun please.
42. Lazy Level Design
If you've played Outlast, you know what I'm talking about. If you can't make your virtual world look pretty, at least have the decency to make things look different and unique from each other so I recongize where I am.
Don't make the level some redundant maze where everything looks the same that I'm begging to get out of. That's just cheap. It's always fun to be in a hallway with a 20 damn doors and I have to try a key on all of them just to make a little sliver of pseudo-progess.
43. Unclear to No Objectives Explained
"Aayyyy yo Vinny, go down to da Shalom Shack and buy some pasta fazool, it's on da corna of that one street I never go to and something something bulvard. Make sure yous speaks da secret password so I get dat discount bcuz I'm a made man there. Don't screw dis one up or I'm gonna yous whacked."
Sure thing Boss! There's absolutely no way I can make a mistake there! I'm confident and understood all of that! R.I.P. Me.
44. Senseless Side Quests
The game developers are so desperate for longer gameplay that they slap in extra quests without any thought or interest.
"This is Captain Coprock speaking, could you find me some roadkill. The way it the mangled fur feels in my hand calms my nerve endings. I'm like Salad Fingers but with roadkill and not rusty spoons."
Objective A: Walk out of your house.
Objective B: Pick up dead cat in front of you.
Objective C: Send it through the pneumo tube to Captain Coprock.
That backbreaking quest is now over. Sleep well Prince, you earned it.
45. Rushed Sequels
SoSoRandom doesn't seem so random when he makes entries, as this one makes sense.
Game developers, take a good hard look at Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life, The Elder Scrolls, Portal, BioShock and hell, maybe even The Walking Dead. These are games where the developers took their time and actually tried to be original and interesting.
"Hey, you all loved Jon Ron: Enchanted right? I mean it has a score of 92 on the metacritic and it got nothing positive reception as well a fartload of money! We'll give you what you want, we'll give you Jon Ron 2! In this game, the formula is the same, but you can hold 2 guns instead of one! Jesus H. F*** we're smart!"
No, no you aren't. You had the chance to make an awesome series of games, with each game being memorable in their own ways, but instead, you made one good game, and 5 depressing sequels with a different coat of paint. Either hire better writers or don't make the sequel. Please.
46. Overcompensation
"ZTick, what are you talking about?" I'm talking about games that lack something they need, the game developers are aware of it, and slap something else in the game to "make up" for it. However, the "make up" feature isn't always bad.
"Hmm, do we have the storytelling skills of a third grader? Let's give the game over 10,000 redundant weapons that do most of the same thing!" "We have such bad 3D modeling skills that our game looks like the first Deus Ex, so let's 'fix' that with adding bloom to every god damn thing! Yeah!"
"Does the terrain in this game look undetailed and single-textured? Okay, we'll resolve that issue by adding the same tree model spammed over and over! Smart smart SMART!
47. Money-Milking DLCs
Scorpionius exacts his revenge with this heavy-hitting entry! It's not revenge though.
Oh man! NotTooSmart Inc. finally came out with an update that adds more than one type of vehicle and fixes that retarded reloading glitch! And they removed all of the exploits! My pants will never be the same again!
Alright, let me just open Steam and- oh. I... I have to pay $20 for it? Why did the company say it would be free this whole time? No I'm not mad or anything. That's not stupid at all.
Hey Activision! Did you think I wasn't going to mention you? No sorry, life isn't that good. Call of Duty alone so totally ain't a money grabfest, here let's make it so people have to shell out $15 for 2 new maps and an ALL NEW WEAPON! WOAH! ONE NEW WEAPON YOU GUYS! HERP HERPTY HURR! You're dumb Activision. Feel dumb.
48. Mindless Jumpscares
Somewhat suggested by Scorpionius. Yeah...
Survival horror games get kind of a free pass on this one, because... How is a scary game not gonna have at least one? It might work or Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Outlast and sort of for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, but other games can really screw this up by making it spoiled and predictible.
Alright so I'm a barely dressed girl walking through this dark hallway and there's bloody handprints all over the walls. I'm gonna pick up this ammo for my- AHH! Oh man, that hanging body. Good one. But yeah, I'm trying to find the- OH! A wheelchair rolled in front of me all by itself.
So anyway, I'm still in this boring hallway and I just- Hmm. Yeah, a basketball came toward me out of nowhere. I kind of saw that coming. The jumpscares were so close together that it became a pattern and now it's not working anymore.
On a positive note, some scary easter eggs could be interesting. Or so horrifying that it makes you fear the whole game entirely. If even if the game was just about throwing rocks and ropes, then noting the wave pattern when the rope is hit.
49. "Random" Encounters
Now we know why UnresolvedGamer has his username.
Don't worry guys, I will NOT mention Pokémon. Nor will I mention having to run into 800 Zubats when going through one cave. I'll also not mention all the Tentacruels you had to face when surfing the waters. I'm not bringing that up.
Random encounters could be nice for doing a bit of grinding and resource collecting, but even then, it gets old. Real old, and can damage the very replay value of a game. Especially if the encounters have no way of being avoided.
Oh, I ran into a gameplay stopping demon bat in Beezlebub's Cave? At this point, the depression digs into you deeper and deeper, because you know you gotta face 25 more demon bats going through this boring, linear cave. Stay classy game developers.
50. Copy-and-Paste Rooms
That swell ZTick guy thought of this one. Which is me. I randomly decided to credit myself for no reason.
When Bethesda made Oblivion, they seemed to have this mindset of "we'll use the same damn caves over and over. But we'll change the enemies around, so that will fix the problem! Yup! It works that way!" lololol no it doesn't. Stop.
Ever play Mass Effect 1? If you answered "yes" in your mind, you're already picturing the same damn warehouses that appeared on over 100 planets. How convenient. Come on BioWare, couldn't you at least swap some barrels around?
51. Repetitive Dialogue
Remember in the first Half-Life game, when the scientists would keep saying generic crap like, "Fascinating, I could never have guessed such things could be..." or something like that? Wasn't it funny how you heard that same line in many labs, an elevator shaft, an underground railway and in the middle of a desert?
How about those mushmouthed enemies that only knew 50 words growing up? Let's jump back to Mass Effect 1. "I will destroy you!"... "I will destroy you!" from two angry women at once. That doesn't get cringeworthy at all. It's better when other people are in the room with you and it multiplies the cringe factor.
I get it though, you can't have an infinite amount of dialogue for a generic enemy, but still. At least spread it out or add some delay between the responses. I get it, "I'm gonna die, punk!" I get, "I will be destroyed." I get it, "You ain't gettin' past me son!" despite hearing that line from the previous 20 skinny punks I killed and... got past them anyway.
52. Stupid Achievements
Completing the game on the hardest difficulty or forcing yourself to not use that one overpowered weapon aren't the worst achievements out there, but when there are achievements for the simplest and excuriating tasks then... you might be doing it wrong. Examples:
RabbitLOL: Jump! (Achievement Unlocked)
Open Sesame: Open a door FFS (Achievement Unlocked)
This Achievement is Just Here For Show and Can't Be Unlocked:
Supa Gamer:
Feet: Look down and see them! (Achievement Unlocked)
Invincubal!: Don't take any gun damage in "guns only" mode while never moving. (Achievement Locked)
Enjoy this dumb game: I dare you. (Achievement Locked)
53. Ads
*kneels down as 1TrollLtd descends from the heavens with another good entry*
You know, because it's mentally impossible to enjoy a game without an advertisement bringing up something else that I don't want to think about. When I'm playing Entrails & Entropy: The Reckoning, I'm not gonna care much for a box of "My Little Pony Cereal: Snap, Crackle, Clop!" when I want to jump into the game and attack some demonic fetuses.
No, please, I don't want to watch a cheesy video while the game loads. I'd rather stare at a silent loading screen instead. At worst, give me an ad that relates to the game somehow, I'm gonna be interested in real estate or banks with good interest rates when one loading screen away from playing a very gory, antisocial game.
Unless the game itself has real estate in it or something, then the ad will at least be somewhat funny.
54. Respawn Timers
1TrollLtd can't be a human. He has to be a god of some sort.
It's not the timers themselves that are the issue, but the length of them. A game could get pretty rushed and spammy with little to no respawn timers, but some games overdo the timers to a point where all they do is halt gameplay in the most unfun way without adding any balance.
Unless the game absolutely depends on it somehow, I don't want to wait 30 damn seconds just to spawn only to get spawnkilled all over again, so I'm doomed to the view of spectator mode more than I am... player mode. It's worse when a game is very fast-paced and gets you all antsy only to make you stare at "Respawning in 1:22". That's not depressing or anything.
If you want to add a penalty for dying, fine, but don't blow a load over it. I don't need extra punishment because some pimple-faced piece of life planted proximity mines all over our spawn and we can't leave. Who needs balance right?
55. Terrible Spawns
This is forgivable if a map is cramped and there's little place for spawns anyway but... oh wait? That's not the size of the map? The map happens to be the entire country of Isreal? We have only 35 players? Well, then we all got enough breathing room to f- Just joking lol, the enemy stills spawns behind you.
Now, you might be thinking "ZTick! Go sniff a fart! Those kinds of spawns are the greatest! When you're going for a weapon and an enemy spawns right in front of you and takes that weapon you were going for and kills you with it is the pinnacle of game design!" Is that right? Well then, let me tell you something, faceless nameless person who I used for that quote, disclose your address to me. I want to do horrifying things to you for saying that.
"No ZTick, I was joking. What I meant to say was spawns that happen inside of you are the best. So both you and the spawned person clip together and are stuck! I am smart and you need to acknowledge that!" Just give me your address, and I'll give you every ounce of acknowledgement you can fathom.
56. "Our overly huge world makes the game good!"
Psycodragons is a doll for suggesting this. Could someone pay her? I can't right now, but could someone else?
No, a good game is what makes a good game. Sure, a huge world helps, but it isn't the final factor in what makes a game enjoyable. Well it can in some cases, but not all.
Psycodragons mentioned Daggerfall, and though I never played the game, she mentions the negatives so well that it makes me feel like I played the game myself and hated the same negatives.
Oh, the map is the size of Russia? Are you serious?! That's insane! *hours later* Every house looks the same. Every tree looks the same. I can't even enter the all of the houses. In fact, I've only entered one of the houses, and it had no helpful items. The world is crawling with these pedophile crab creatures and the weapon I found is an axe. Without the blade.
Yeah, I've been walking around hitting things with a stick like a renegade 8-year-old. I'll be sure to give this game a mediocre rating on the Metacritic site.
57. Not Having Something to Finish a Game
I don't want anyone to know that Lonnehart suggested this, so for now, he'll remain anonymous.
You made it, after 3 hours of painful repetitive gameplay, you made it to the last door of the game. All you need is the green key that... you tossed out at the beginning of the game. Wait, if I needed it, why was I able to throw it away? Why didn't anyone tell me it was that important? I'm gonna assume that green key was important out of absolute nowhere.
Great, now I'm stuck staring at this door because there is no way to backtrack to the start of the game and I don't have a save that goes back that far. You game developers are smart, it's funny how a bunch of adults could come up with top dog graphics, but god forbid someone thinks about actual gameplay.
58. Terrible Ports
Grand. Theft. Auto. 4. Mother of god. There's always gonna be a bunch of angry gamers going "augh come hurry up and made dis gaem for PC already! Ragedy ragedy rage!" But you know what, those exact same gamers are gonna complain about how horribly unoptimized the game is.
Not every game can run beautifully, we get that, but nobody wants to lag while looking at a wall because the game decided "all u can see is this wall, but let's render things u can't see lol HURRPP!!"
"But ZTick, maybe it's not the game, maybe it's your horrible computer! Oooooh burn!" Please, let me walk over to you real quick and punch you in the mouth for that failed "burn". Oh come on, I didn't knock out all of your teeth. They'll grow back, I think.
Okay sure, my PC might be bad. Though it doesn't seem to have much trouble running newer games with beefier graphics and processes going on with the ALL of the settings on maximum. My $4000 PC seems to be running those games fine.
59. Annoying Sounds
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
Wasn't that senseless and immature of me type out "BEEP" like that? You probably just skipped it. Yeah, imagine a game with those sounds that can't be skipped and can't be avoided. You think a bunch of game developers would reach the conclusion that humans don't like annoying sounds, but... Okay. They don't.
We don't need to hear the constant beeping of the low health in Pokemon. We don't need to hear Baby Mario wailing so loud that it overpowers any other sound in the game. If we need to be reminded of this stuff, do one of two things, either 1.) make the sound stop after a while or 2.) change the sound to something less mind-vibrating so we don't end up hating the game.
If gamers constantly mention an annoying noise in your game, and it becomes infamous, then... You did it wrong. I can't put it any simpler than that.
60. Dumb ESRB Ratings
Read this in my voice: This is another of 1TrollLtd's yummilicious entries. Oh wait, you don't know what my voice sounds like...
I don't know why I'm mentioning this, since I'm older enough to be "immune" to any game rating, but I made a promise in a later post that I'd add more entries so... this is me doing it?
Ever been confused by an ESRB? Well I sure have by golly! Example would be WcW vs. nWo: World Tour for the N64. The rating for the game was "Kids to Adults". I wouldn't so quick to mention kids, because that game had quite a lot of painful wrestling moves that no kid (or adult) should ever perform on another living entity. (Unless you're a professional and being paid to.)
The game also had quite a bit of blood (if enabled), but no curious kid will go "Gee, I should leave the blood off! That's no good for my mental development!" lolno. We turned the blood on. I sure as hell did. I was in like the second or third grade. And I constantly pulled off the moves where I would choke and lift people, or skin someone's face with my bare hands.
So ESRB people, did you guys skip some of the games you were suppose to play. "Well, the cover looks harmless, so let's slap a K-A or Teens rating on it! Come on, who's gonna know the difference!" Lowlifes like me who make lists on forums. That's who.
61. Little to no Anti-Cheat
Notice how the smarter developers just leave it to VAC. While other games use crap like... *dry heave*... Punkbuster. You know, the Anti-Cheat that kicked back and puts it feet up and did nothing. Punkbuster is the equivilent to taking a towel and trying to dry a fish... while both you and the fish are 20 feet underwater.
Some developers don't have any anti-cheat at all, because they assume that "no one would ever cheat on a game like this ". If the only the human race worked like that, right? No it's alright, I'm not angry about that guy that noclips underground and rocket spams me. It's not that a big a deal.
Or that other guy moves around the map by simply typing "durr" and can give themselves infinite grenades by typing "hurr". I'm sure it's all in my head. Remember in that E3 interview when you guys said "We want to make the most balanced multiplayer of the year!"? Which players were and weren't allowed that balance? Because I noticed that not everyone has it.
62. Gameplay Stopping "Features"
Somewhat indirectly given to me by Tuaam.
What makes a bunch of adult game developers ever have a thought of, "We need something miniscule to completely halt gameplay against the player's will. This is something that's both wanted and needed."
Let me get my thoughts-to-reality translator.
"We've been a members of the human race for quite some time now, and we somehow haven't determined what we, as a species, find annoying. Our minds haven't developed this much despite all of us being 25 or older."
The day/night transitions in Simon's Quest. Omachao in some Sonic the Hedgehog games. Some NPC's that you can't pass and talk for 8 days because they have a "feeling my own vocal cords vibrate" fetish. Derpy herpy.
These can also appear in the form of senseless game over screens. "You didn't high five your friend fast enough! Now watch as the screen fades black as we find and old savestate you have to replay. Next time, don't leave them hanging!"
63. Unchangeable Controls
CAN_Archer should change his username to like... CAN_GoodAtSugges- too long. Nevermind. Just enjoy his entry.
"As you all know, every single member of the human race thinks the exact same way. When we play video games, all 7 billion of us use the exact same control binds for everything."
- Some game developers who are unable to think.
Some games aren't ruined by this, but most of them still have pretty dumb key binds for some functions. "Press E to jump! Press L to reload! Press = to breathe! Press \ to swallow saliva!" No, these games have to torture us by forcing us to use keybinds we might never get used to.
Then once we get back to playing the better games, our minds are still a bit muddled from that game with the crappy unmappable controls.
64. Senseless Backtracking
ShikiRyogi did things to me last night no one else would. In return, I put his entry here. He plays rough, I'll give him that.
You've been playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Humans for 2 hours now, and you finally got out of the annoying sewers. You don't have to chew through your medkits or constantly use your flashlight anymore. Your mind can now have a sense of peace.
"Oh, hey protagonist! I dropped a locket with a picture of my keyboard down in the sewers. Go back and get it please?"
Then you're forced to watch a cutscene of the protagonist derpily walking back into the sewers against your will, then after the cutscene ends, you're slapped right back into those sewers.
"Oh one more thing! My locket has game-hardening powers, so now there's no more medkits and you can't use your flashlight anymore! K good luck!!!!"
Kill me. Please.
65. Friendly Fire
Me and Scorpionius were playing Mario Kart once and he thanked me with this entry, because I let him be Player 1.
You haven't lived until you played a game where a troll can eliminate his own team with a blatant intentional feature. Bonus points for them if they can use a powerful weapon, or if everyone is under the spell of a difficulty that affects health loss.
Now, one could say "But ZTick, you could also get revenge on said troll because you can easily hurt him as he can hurt you!" No, not so much, no. Chances are, the troll is expecting to be shot back. In fact, ANY troll with half a brain will know that retaliation will be made against them - that's kind of a given. Even if you can hit the troll back, it doesn't matter, the troll still ruined your good time.
Sometimes, realism is bad. Really bad. There's always gonna be greifers out there, but durr-dumb game developers still make it easy for them.
66. Wonky Physics
...and then I let Scorpionius hit me with a green shell only because I let him, not because I suck at the game or anything.
Ever been stuck on a part of a game because the physics won't give you a break? All you need to do is throw the basketball in the hoop, but the basketball moves around like there's a smaller lead ball inside of it. Every time you throw the basketball, it flutters and does these tiny loop-de-loops like multiple tornados are pulling it from different sides. How did that get past game testing?
Or how about vehicles? Sure, you can drive your 1990 Chysler Imperial off a cl- No, that's an ugly car. I shouldn't even talk about that. I'll pick a different car. Sure, you can drive your boring Dodge Stratus off a cliff and it tumbles and bounces like a rubber ball that has the terminal velocity of a feather-glue ball.
However, once that car gets tapped by another car, then NASA sues you because your vehicle knocked a satellite out of place and people still using 56k can't get their 200x100 videos downloaded.
67. To An Extent... Underwater Levels
I'm not dissin' water, yo. Some of my best friends drink water. There was a couple times where I was all thirsty, but then I drank water, and I didn't feel that way anymore.
In cases like BioShock 2 where you sometimes you have to leave the submerged city to walk around underwater, it's not so bad as there's no enemies or anything, but some games send many hazards and "baddies" after you while you're just out for a very deep swim.
It doesn't feel good control wise. Your movements are slowed. Your most helpful actions are delayed. Your momentum is greatly increased making turning and such much harder. Your enemies sometimes are unphased by the water while you aren't, but you are under a curse know as "being the player".
68. Bad to Near-Nonexistent Plots
DismalAmoeba is the first user to have 4 consecutive entries added at once. If only there was a medal for that.
The first Super Mario games and Super Meat Boy. "Soooooo yeah there's this girl you like and someone kidnapped her so walk through these different biomes of lands that are all placed side by side even though the different climates in them would be impossible but uhh do it anyway..."
Come on man, we don't need to have the best yet most complex plot out there, but is it too much effort to try and do something plausible or original? "You're an unseen protagonist. You appear in this unknown place and omggg you don't know where u are!! It's okay, you're guided by blood-written arrows though!" And that's it, that's the game right there. I'm sure Stephen King would be proud of you.
69. Luck-Based Gameplay
The second of DismalAmoeba's four entries.
Almost all games have a sense of luck to them, but some take it to a farther, unhealthier extent than others. Let's take Mario Party for example. You and Wario are neck and neck with amount of power stars, and suddenly Wario lands on a red space, the game decides to roll some virtual dice and sharts out "Ooooh ooooh oooooooh you found a hidden block, wats inside??" Oh, how convenient, Wario finds a power star in there. And now you lost because everyone was on their last turns. Now I have to play the whole board again. Awesome. I love that.
I'm gonna outright quote DismalAmoeba and then add to it:
Oh but don't stop there! Maybe you use your Ice Pokemon and manage to freeze one that belongs to the trainer you're fighting. Oh wait, he happened to have Aspear Berry and thawed it out. He thawed a frozen creature inside a block of ice with a berry? Nothing wrong there.
Oh ho ho! I froze him again, so you know what trainer? You can eat my a- Wait, that Pokemon defrosted the very next turn by random chance? I don't know how much a plane ticket to Japan costs, but once I get there, I'm gonna do the most sexually immoral things to the creators of these games.
70. Terrible Voice Acting
The third, delicious entry of DismalAmoeba's four.
The character isn't bad, but their voices are. They might even have a voice that doesn't match their body at all. Or maybe they do, but the acting is so forced and cringeworthy that you skip everything they say.
I'm just gonna post a video for this one:
71. Awful Translations
The final entry to DismalAmoeba's four-part plan.
Was it that hard to get an American for a Japanese game just to translate some words? Did the Japanese people have to quickly muster up some English themselves and go with it. I know that not just Japanese companies do this, but the mistakes are very easy to notice there.
If "ここで、このドアをお試しください!" translates to "Try door there, here!" in the game when it doesn't in real life, then you're doing it wrong and possibly need to feel a little bad.
72. Fake Outs
Theriasis will forcefully be my bride for this.
You know, those senseless scripted events that bone you because the developers thought, "Uhhhh, well uhhh... This adds more interest to the story?" No, it does not. They need to feel shame over that thought.
After an hour of searching, you find the 4 keys to that door that... uses 4 keys to be unlocked? Okay? Not exactly top-dog architect planning there but... there you go. Do ho ho, but right before that one last key is inserted (the protagonist, for some reason, dips the last key in much slower than the previous ones, making the following scene more predictable.) the antagonist uses his lightweight RPG and blasts the door the beyond use. He blasts it just enough so it won't open, but isn't destroyed altogether. What luck.
Well I made it out of that fortress anyway. Now to cross this bridge where that stack of health kits are. Gee, this is a very long bridge. I can see the antagonist appearing again with his carry-around RPG. I wonder what he's gonna do to this bridge? In fact, I wonder what he's gonna do to every path I must cross?
73. Unwinnable Boss Fights
The user "yourgarbage" rolled an 8 in the game we were playing. An '8' means you must give a good entry while you do... stuff to him.
I don't mean really hard boss fights. I mean ones where the player is meant to lose. Where you waste a ton of healing items and time just to lose in a scripted event anyway. Then you have a hard time with a battle after that because of all the items you wasted.
Sure, in the next playthrough you learn from this, but why not just have that in a cutscene? Why does it have to be a long, boring and drawn out pseudo-battle?
74. Crashing
DismalAmoeba, the guy who once gave me 4 awesome entries at once, is back!
Let's assume that the crashing is more game-related than player-related. It blows, does it not? You're almost out of Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 and "HL2.exe has encountered a senseless problem and needs to stop your experience out of nowhere. Would you like to send an error report to invisible person who will do nothing?"
It's even worse when it's a fresh problem for all players and there's yet to be a fix. So you're condemned to not play an awesome game until someone farts out a fix. Is the problem completely error-less and seemingly has no origin? Then life blows, because it's gonna take longer for a fix.
You might be thinking, "ZTick, chill down dog. Maybe the error is rare thing and happens out of bad luck. That can happen!" ERROR 2230A - The game did something that it shouldn't have to begin with and needs to close. L8r!
Alright, it's a one time error, it happens and I'll live with it. I... I have to start at the beginning of this chapter? That error somehow deleted my savestates? Game developers, I have no revoked your right to live.
75. Timed Missions
Me and SuperSanvichMan would be so angry together!
"We don't want to make this quest too easy and mundane, we need to push it to the other side of the extreme. Ooh ooh ooh OOOOH! Let's have a timer appear when the mission begins, and not only that, let's not give a reason for why the timer is there!"
I don't exactly have a fetish for having my body tighten up out of fear and forced focus because I have only have 2:15 to deliver a bird to an... old... woman? Okay? If the bird has a healing remedy and the old was dying of something that only the bird could cure, then maybe I could- No. That's stupid. Mankind is more clever than that. We'd extract the remedy from the bird first, or at least try to.
76. Pointless Nerfs
DismalAmoeba, you're famous in this thread now.
Let's do some intimate roleplaying:
RagePoster, "i hate the new shotgun, NERF IT ALREADY!"
soreloser9200, "wat he sed"
my_way_only, "yuuuuup"
Game Developer, "Well, we got a thread with 2 agrees, so we're gonna nerf it! Curse you peer pressure!"
And then you come back to the game only to find that said shotgun is absolutely useless now. It takes an extra 3 seconds to pump the shotgun (yeah, slowing that hand animation down was very, very necessary). Instead of shooting pellets that do 9 damage each, they just tickle the enemy. Curse you peer pressure.
77. Some Quicktime Events
Epicositys. That's a very unique username. His entry however, is less unique, as it's a very well known thing.
Tomb Raider. There, I said it. I mentioned that game and I don't have to talk about it anymore because logic works like that somehow. This is something that is an annoyance to both new and veteran players.
The new players suffer because they won't know when the seizure-inducing quicktime events are coming, and end up missing it because the player couldn't have prepared (or it was just poorly executed and timed). The veteran players suffer because such events become meaningless as they know they're coming, but have to pointlessly alert because they're need to pass the game, or to have an advantage.
Let's talk about South Park: The Stick of Truth, good game. You know what isn't good? "Mash S! Mash D! QuickquickQUICKQUICKclICKC left mouse and thenAND THEN PRESS D AND DEN A!! AUUUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!"
Thanks, I love being tossed around and trolled by the game's mandatory control mechanics. Knowing if I encounter 3 annoying quicktime events at the start of the game, there's most likely gonna be more much harder ones later in the game. Herp out of 10.
78. Too-Harsh Winning Penalties
Unyobro was like "add this!" and I was like "no" but then later on I was like "alright"... So I added this.
There's nothing wrong with some balanced mechanics to help the losing players and skim a bit off the top for the winning ones so they don't get so far ahead that the game is hopeless for anyone else.
However, it helps greatly so racers who are too far ahead aren't permanently there, but there has to be a limit to this so it doesn't punish every person who touches 1st place.
You might even find yourself intentionally putting yourself in 2nd place for a while, and then bursting into 1st place at the very last second. That's some good game design right? Where both last and first place suffer? Or all places suffer? Sucks right?
79. Lack of Gameplay Mechanic Options
SuperSandvichMan is the second person to give me 4 entries in a row. Here's #1.
My GPU is overheating and I have no way of turning off the stuttery unoptimized dynamic shadows or the "every single pixel is re-rendered 10 times over to somehow make things realistic?" option. Cool. That's a very smart thing to implement. Or not implement. Whichever makes more sense.
The music is blaring in my face and I actually flinch and crumple my face in pain whenever some songs hits specific notes, which is fine, but I can't hear the dialogue and the game has no option for subtitles. Wh... the music volume only goes from 100% down to 90%? Were the game developers playing a sick joke?
I'll just check the "Put the player out of his misery by suffocation" option. Oh come on, I can only pick that option if I have a 6-core processor?
80. No Choices When Choices Would Have Worked Fine
SuperSanvichMan's second entry of his 4-in-a-row!
"I'm completely unarmed and about half your size, now give me your sword or else I'll be very angry! There won't be any further penalties, but I'll just be very angry. At you that is."
Well that's funny, but I'm gonna walk past you and not do what you say. Why is the cutscene still going? W-Why did I just hand him my sword?! I don't even understand this! I didn't even press any buttons and Link just hands this guy a sword.
Thanks. No really, thanks. Now I have to punch everything because I lost a good weapon for no reason. Can you at least redo the cutscene that shows me losing a sword in a much more reasonable and a "that could totally happen" way? Thanks random cutscene, for making the game unfun for nothing. Logic logic logic!
81. Useless Rewards
This marks the first and unintentional dual-user entry. By both SoulEmpire and GoldWatson. Notice how similar their names are.
This can exist in two ways: a reward that's useless and is already outperformed by things you already have, or it's given to you by the end of the game and you're given little to no time to use it, or it's just senseless at that point because the game is being beaten anyway.
Example 1:
Thanks, but that's stupid. I already got a .44 magnum and a Benelli shotgun in a scripted event. Did the game developers forget that they put those two weapons in?
Example 2:
Those 3 years of yoga training paid off, and I seduced Dr. Monopolis to death. That's not a metaphor, I actually killed him that way. I finally get to take his prototype briefcase gun. Why are the credits rolling? Dude, are you serious?! You game developers put the effort in giving the weapon a first-person 3D model and animations only for that to be seen for 4 seconds. I ran out of stuff to say, that's how stupid that is.
82. Unknowingly Being Able to Bone Yourself in the Future
AMPPL50 wedgied me soooo bad in middle school, but I forgive him because of this entry.
Not literally. I mean when you can permanently ruin your chances at completely a mission or performing an action because you erased/tossed out/destroyed something you need to have beforehand.
"I'm y'all, the name's Chester. Hyuck hyuck. If you want me to unlock the door to that gold mine for you, I'm gonna need to your 'Mine Pass' as the magnetic strip in there and bypass the door's code."
Y... You can't be serious. Ooooh wait, you mean that pass that I dropped down a cliff because I ran out of inventory space and had no idea that I would need it later? That pass shouldn't have been droppable then. I'm not gonna start a new game just to redo that part, I'm already level 50 and it took my 4 weeks to grind everything I have now. Life blows =(.
83. Needing a Guide/Wiki for Mandatory Things
AMPPL50 gave this entry. I'll go easier on him in our next gang war.
Some games can get away with this, like Minecraft, Terraria, Cubeword and even Garry's Mod. But when I'm playing a non-sandbox with an actual story, there are some things I really need to know. If the sword I'm using can also shield fire, I need to know how to pull that off. If I can shrink myself and jump into someone's mouth to delay an enemy's metabolism, I need a little tutorial.
If I see a third-party guide on how to pull off needed things, that makes me depressed at playing the game, because now I know there will be much more vague things thrown at me.
84. Annoying Status Effects
This is the result of game writers not understanding what's a challenge and what's annoying because they think the two are the exact same thing. A common mistake seen in the Suggestions subforum of this very forum. Even the most annoying status effects can be managed and not the biggest of deals if there's a way to avoid them, but...
But because this list of satirical and depressing, let's focus on the negatives. I'm fighting the Queen Spider of Crayola Island. When the Queen hits me with a green colored pencil, I'm given the "Super Duper Herp Hurr Poison" effect, which drains 10 health every second, and makes my attacks do half damage, and makes my jumps 25% shorter, and makes my farts hurt 50% more. Wait, did I mention this effect stacks every time I'm hit with said colored pencil, and adds 10 more seconds to all of those debuffs.
After 3 hours of grinding items, I finally got beat the Queen Spider. I'm onto a new boss now. The Snow Globetrotter. Whenever he hits with me an unavoidable attack, my get the "Frozen" effect, where I can't move or do anything. Neat! I love a game mechanic that can stop me from playing a game altogether! Now I can finally face my suicide with less fear, as the anger this game gave helps me push past it.
85. Not Knowing What To Do Next
Personally, I found this problem quite common with some of the Pokemon games. And by Pokemon games, I mean ALL games that don't have any form of objective reminders, aren't linear and have nothing else in the game to tell you what to do next.
I just defeated DurrHar III, he was the same as the other two DurrHar bosses but had different colors and each had more health than the last. Creativity. I don't remember what Glockgod the Guide told me about what to do next, the last time I played this game was a month ago. Whenever I talk to Glockgod again, he talks about other senseless things, and never mentions the next task again.
Talking to Glockgod makes him say "I like sandwiches! I can't juggle 3 oranges, it's way easier with just 2. I like cats! R.E.M. for life!" So now I have to go search around on the internet with strange search terms to find out how to keep playing a damn game.
86. Artificial Difficulty
I already talked about too-buffed enemies and unbalanced difficulty settings, but in this entry, I'm gonna speak of the term a bit more generally.
If you don't understand what artificial difficulty is, it's when traps and obstacles are repeated and made extremely tedious, it's when that enemy you saw once before way back in Level 2 (but wears blue clothes instead of green) comes back, but has +400% health and his weapons do +300% damage just because, it's when a level's pathway is excruciatingly long to make up for how possibly easy it is. Et cetera.
So instead of using strategy and good timing to make progress, you might have to perform an unfun act for many times or just rely on some luck instead. Imagine that feeling when summer vacation is so close, and you care less and less about your school because your vacation is right under your nose. Now imagine game developers feeling that.
You don't have to 3D model new enemies when you can render them different colors. You don't have to have larger levels because you can make an uncreative door that takes 5 damn keys. You don't need effort when you can just reuse older outdated effort over and over.
87. Other Companies Screwing Up Franchises
Coming soon. I swear.
Unbalanced difficulty settings and unobtainable weapons that everyone in the world can use except you.
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
Easy boss fights with the boss having way too much health.
Instakill weapons/very unskillful one-shots
Extremely slow in-game currency gain
Long respawn timers
Poor business models
Unfinished Games
BUGS
Glitches/gamebreaking exploits
People you cant kill but everyone else can
Minimal developer support
Paywalls
Grinding for a single item
Spawncamping
Camping
Admin abuse
Bad ingame voice channels
Bad community
Wrong Audience targeted
ESRB
Low-Skill competitive gameplay
Oversimplified games
Brutally violent games (more sickening than annoying) (think Amnesia's torture chambers)
Spray and pray gameplay
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Also, most microtransactions. I really hope Fortnite won't be ruined by this, as it looks like a really cool game.
Also, how about those immortal characters? Oh, since you did some stupid thing by randomly slaughtering one of the most important people in the world? Nah, they'll just drop on one knee and get back up.
Adding all of this.
It's because they're essential characters, though I cheat and set them to non-essential.
I also hate GLADoS....
- C.C.
Found in action-adventure and fighting games, this quirk in the gameplay occurs when an enemy's attack has the ability to hit you, prevent you from doing anything for a short period of time, and then hit you again before you have the chance to retaliate. Regardless of which opponent it is that can to do this to you, once you're in there's no way out. Some players will desperately try to block an attack or jump to the side, but all these attempts will be in vain. The only thing that can be done is to sit back and watch your character's life bar slowly shrink to nothing.
Added that under 7a. Added some of 1TrollLtd's stuff. Added "Depressing Endings".
I played 15 hours to defeat Snootyvoice McRichguy and he somehow got away and made another $400,000 while doing so. Thanks writers of the game, that makes us feel very good.
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
Added. Also added "Power-Ups That Are Actually Downgrades".
Forums like this appear in video games? Hmm, how about that. Not a very good crack at insulting this thread.
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
I'm adding these. I'm so proud of you guys for taking part in the thread that I want to do pleasurable things to all of you.
Already in the list.
Adding.
I have "annoying characters" in the list. Same with the tutorials. Though I'm sure Navi has got enough mentions that I'll include him in the annoying characters description.
Also added "Overcompensation".