Things You Hate In Video Games

[___]

Well, I'm wondering if this has happened to any of you...

 You're playing a great game, nearly flawless, when all of a sudden... WHAM! You're slapped across the face by a lackluster flaw that puts a damper on the rest of the game. I know its happened to me before, and it makes for some dissapointment, because not only did the game's Achelie's Heel keep it from shining its brightest, but it also may make people turn an otherwise good game down primarley based on that feature. Here are some of my game pet peeves.


1.) Bad Voice Acting: There's a series that almost no one has heard about in my circle of friends called Baiten Kaitos, an RPG for the Gamecube. It had amazing story, a very nice card-based fighting style, and had a lot of replay value. The main reason I think it didn't get its due attention (Well, other than being on the Gamecube, not too many people exclusivly looked at it, with the PS2 out, much less scoured the libary to find this gem) was the awful voice acting. I mean, when even serious, emotional parts could elicit a chuckle or two, you know there's a problem.

2.) Save Points: Well, its not really something that'll make or break a game for me, but having save points is a real pain in the butt. If I have to get up and go somewhere for a long time, I just want to save! That, and sometimes you're just tired of playing...  It wouldn't be too bad if games had a good number of them, or you could warp to them like in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.


So, what are your video game pet peeves?

[MrRazot]

1-no challenge whatsoever (call of duty)
2-predictable story line (call of duty)
3-lack of emotion/humor in characters (nothing worse than when people talk like robots)
4-linear gameplay (call of duty)
5-short game (dishonored -_-)
6-doesn't bring anything new to the table (copy and paste "ermahgerd new gunz" call of duty)
7-no replay value


all of these can be set aside for me.
particularly 5 as dishonored was an excellent game though 7 was very apparent in this game and really got to me.

[___]

1-no challenge whatsoever (call of duty)
2-predictable story line (call of duty)
3-lack of emotion/humor in characters (nothing worse than when people talk like robots)
4-linear gameplay (call of duty)
5-short game (dishonored -_-)
6-doesn't bring anything new to the table (copy and paste "ermahgerd new gunz" call of duty)
7-no replay value


all of these can be set aside for me.
particularly 5 as dishonored was an excellent game though 7 was very apparent in this game and really got to me.

I take it you don't like Call of Duty much, eh?
I don't like Call of Duty (Well, FPS in general), except for... Call of Rosen: Plum Ops! (Look it up on Youtube, kinda profane, but its funny. xD)

#5 is a big problem in the whole Trauma Center series, and #6 is sort of one for Trauma Center: New Blood and Trauma Team. I know that there's not much surgery you can show in an exciting setting without getting too gruesome, but I would have liked to see some different surgeries and modes in those two, however Trauma Team took care of that pretty well, so I can't complain.

Kind of branching off from #7, games that when you finish them, don't offer to save your completed game file, and make you reset the system. That kind of stuff should have been left in the NES days, it makes you feel like you're throwing away all of the accomplishments you've made; all in all its really anti-climactic. ;_;

Two others that I've thought of, or that a friend mentioned:

3.) Having a Town That you Can't go Back to:[/u] The bane of my existence, when you're trying to get 100% completion on something when all of a sudden you realize that the town was razed, everyone was slaughtered, and no, you can NOT deliver the package to a recipient in exchange for the last item you need for your Collector's Book. Happened in Tales of Sympohonia, and I'll never forget the anguish.

4.) Having a Team Member Betray You...:[/u] ...And steal all of your stuff. Especially if you like them and give them all of your good armor. ;_;

5.) No Sequel To A Good Game:[/u] And then they make sequel after sequel of the popular games that shouldn't be given the time of day... Its sad man, just sad.

[Nrein]

1.) Sequels that fix what isn't broken: I'm looking at Assassins Creed: Revelations here.
You're sat there, playing the first three Assassins Creed games, blowing through, used to everything to the T, and then BAM; new control scheme. The weapon wheel is *ok*, but the fact they changed everything else, total meh. AC3 sort of did this too, but they took what they tried to do in Revelations and made it better.

2.) *Too much* After-Game Play. My main culprit for this is Pokemon Black and White.
Pokemon has always been a great game for exploring and such. Each game let you go to all these towns and cities and such, finding all these Pokemon, Items and People. And usually, If you've played the game enough, you can go through it off the beaten path. Black and White, however, not only makes the series almost completely linear with story, *but* doesn't let you explore almost half the other region until you "beat the game." (Quotes for not showing spoilers.) Honestly, the only other Pokemon I can remember that held you off from this much of the world, was Gold/Silver/Crystal, but even then you didn't know you could go to Kanto up until you actually went into the game again, after beating the Elite Four the first time. And that, if you ask me, was more a special treat.
Now someone can argue "Duuuur if you beat Skyrim/Fallout/etc, you can go back and do tons more, that's the point of the game." You're both right and wrong. You actually *can* do everything else, before even touching the ending to the main quest.


3.) Forced Tutorial.
This goes out to *a lot* of games. You start up the game the first time, you get a tutorial. Sweet, I can learn how to play the game.
You go to play the game again after a few months, gotta do the tutorial again.
You loved the game sooo much, now you just wanna play for the experience again. More tutorial.
Be it one segment for a minute or so, or multiple ones for minutes on end. For people who are playing the game again, and maybe again, forced tutorial can just become a griping experience. Best example off the top of my head would be Pokemon Black and White 2. Like every one in the series, you have tutorial for catching Pokemon, no biggie.
Then you have tutorial for a new feature. And then another one. And then another one. And then another one. And then another one.
If you're going through it again in Challenge Mode, or with new Pokemon, or even playing one of the modded versions like Blaze Black/Volt White, all this senseless tutorial can get boring and bothersome. (Like making movies )

[WingedZephyr]

Many of the things you guys said:

Few save points.
Unable to replay past missions/go back to certain places to get 100% after finishing the game.
Bad voice acting.
Losing a team member that takes all of your good items with them.
Games that are way shorter than they should be.
Forced tutorials.

Also:
Game-breaking glitches - I learned to fear that one in Assassin's Creed III, but it can happen in a number of games. You can end up getting frozen or stuck or unable to complete a mission due to no fault of your own.

Boring combat - "Just keep hitting B!" ...Lame. Particularly if all of the enemies are practically identical.

Challenges that are so difficult you have to play them 50 times just to get through it - I don't like my games to be super easy or anything, but I also don't like wasting 12 hours playing the same level over and over. Eventually I get bored and frustrated and go do something else.

Level grinding - Because you always inevitably get to that point where you have to kill 2,000 of the stupidest weak enemies just to get where you want to go. Waste of time and boring.

Not having enough money for anything at all for the first half of the game (even for basic stuff like potions/medicine), but then having way too much money and nothing to spend it on at the end of the game - Pretty self-explanatory. The Assassin's Creed games have done this quite a bit, in my experience.

Unskippable cutscenes - Which are especially terrible when you have to watch them over and over after failing a level and restarting it.

Bad endings - Because there's nothing like spending a hundred hours in a game only to be sorely disappointed when you find out the end of the story is either really stupid or makes no sense.

[NovaAurora]

Definitely some of the things that have been said and others.


Improperly done cutscenes: I don't just mean unskippable cutscenes, which are especially a problem in many RPGs in my experience, and drive me crazy. I also don't like not being able to pause them, because hey, what if the phone rings or someone needs me for something, why can't I pause the cutscene like I can the rest of the game? Also, cutscenes that skip if you press ONE button. I hate feeling like I have to put my controller up on a bookshelf or something because if I accidentally hit a button it instantly skips the whole thing. It should be that one button press pauses it and brings up an "are you sure you want to skip?" menu, then another press skips it.


Long end credits with stuff after them: AC3, I'm looking at you. I don't want to be forced to sit through a half hour of credits because there's an easter egg or hidden story content at the end that enriches the experience. Please for the love of god at least make it so you can speed up the credits if not just outright skip them.


Escort missions: There's nothing wrong with them if they're done correctly, except they almost never are. Why do the people you escort leisurely walk everywhere?! Why are they usually incapable of fighting back in a meaningful way, yet they run into the middle of giant enemy groups and get themselves killed?! Why do they get stuck on the terrain one second, then yell at you to hurry up the next?! Often by the end of such missions I want to kill the guy I'm escorting more than the enemies.


Blind leveling: What I'm talking about is when you don't know what the higher tiers of skills/abilities do and you're just given a vague description, so you're forced to put in skill points in the hopes that they do what you think they do. Borderlands is an example of what to do instead, where you can see exactly what all the skills do before you dedicate any points and can plan out your leveling ahead of time.


Locked difficulty levels: I hate being forced to play games on a certain difficulty. I mean, maybe I want a real challenge the first time I play? But nope, only "easy" and "normal" are available, and I have to complete the game to unlock the harder difficulties, but often I won't feel like playing it all over again, so I'll never get the experience at all.


No subtitle option: This usually isn't a problem in modern games, but still. If you don't have the option to turn subtitles on and off, especially in cutscenes, then you're doing it wrong.

[George]

It's hard to make me hate something, but here's one that can ruin whole games.
Bad AI. For example, when the enemies in a shooter are clearly just "Follow player, keeping aimed at them. ->shoot when view is not obstructed." Not using cover, not fleeing when health is low, no punching. Just shooting at the player.

[Nrein]

What's worse is when that bad AI on Expert/Hard mode is just "Aim for head, no recoil, always know where player is."

It's also bothersome when in Stealth Games, as soon as the AI finds you out, they'll always know where you are until you kill them all. Regardless of seeing you still or not.

[___]

2.) *Too much* After-Game Play. My main culprit for this is Pokemon Black and White.
Pokemon has always been a great game for exploring and such. Each game let you go to all these towns and cities and such, finding all these Pokemon, Items and People. And usually, If you've played the game enough, you can go through it off the beaten path. Black and White, however, not only makes the series almost completely linear with story, *but* doesn't let you explore almost half the other region until you "beat the game." (Quotes for not showing spoilers.) Honestly, the only other Pokemon I can remember that held you off from this much of the world, was Gold/Silver/Crystal, but even then you didn't know you could go to Kanto up until you actually went into the game again, after beating the Elite Four the first time. And that, if you ask me, was more a special treat.
Now someone can argue "Duuuur if you beat Skyrim/Fallout/etc, you can go back and do tons more, that's the point of the game." You're both right and wrong. You actually *can* do everything else, before even touching the ending to the main quest.

I don't know, I really liked how much there was to do after the game compared to the other Pokemon series, and it wasn't just collecting things, though I'd have to agree with you on the way that they did it. wasn't exactly the best.

3.) Forced Tutorial.

Yes, forever yes. It would save a lot of time and frustration to be able to skip a silly tutorial, especially if you already beat the game. I like how Fire Emblem did it, and had the tutorials in the main menu to refrence whenever you needed to.

Not having enough money for anything at all for the first half of the game (even for basic stuff like potions/medicine), but then having way too much money and nothing to spend it on at the end of the game - Pretty self-explanatory. The Assassin's Creed games have done this quite a bit, in my experience.

I hate this, in Soulcalibur they do this a lot too. They could always have a few things in the shop that are perishable that you always need to buy more of, so it wouldn't be a problem, or even better, do what Super Smash Bro. Brawl did and make it so you can bet on matches or something like that to be a money sink. xP

[WingedZephyr]

Improperly done cutscenes: I also don't like not being able to pause them

Long end credits with stuff after them

No subtitle option

It's also bothersome when in Stealth Games, as soon as the AI finds you out, they'll always know where you are until you kill them all. Regardless of seeing you still or not.

Yessss. These. Add these to my list. Not being able to pause cutscenes sucks.

And for any game that's highly replayable, not being able to skip credits really sucks. As much as I love Heavy Rain, I really was not fond of being forced to watch the credits again and again while trying to unlock all of the 18 possible story endings.

[MrRazot]

3.) Having a Town That you Can't go Back to: my word that one got to me when i played Starwars: Knights of the old Republic at the end of the game.

Nothing can honestly be worse than a bad AI or stealth mechanics.
Long credits are tiresome but i sonehow enjoy reading them
long cutscenes can be annoying if they're long and can't be skipped and especially if they're right after a save point and you have to watch it before getting into the boss fight and watch it every single time you load your save from dying... DAMN that's irritating

What's also annoying, but more at the fault of the user, is when you play an rpg and you need to be a certain level to actually have a chance against a certain group of enemies that are, for example, level 30 and you're level 25 and if you want to do some leveling, you have to backtrack all the way back to easier enemies.

[Forever_Autumn]

For me, one of my pet peeves in games are people who cheat in Multiplayer. You know the kind, Can't get a good kill  on CoD, TF2 or unreal so they get a hack or aimbot that automatically kills anyone in their area or ones where they shoot one person and get 50000 points for the kill and get <X> Rank or even people who change their gamertag/clantag so it has characters that aren't allowed. Thesee things grind my gears. As for single player, annoying challenges that are almost impossible to do (For instance, Assasinate an Elite to save yourself from fall damage.)

[Nrein]

Checkpoint/Fixed Point Saves.

This is something that's only recently bugged me, that I forgot to mention. Sometimes, it's an OK thing. I never had a problem with it in games like GTA, since it actually had application. Go to your house, take a nap, save the game.
But then games like Call of Duty. I understand that perhaps on consoles... no, actually, I don't. Plenty of shooters have quick saving, at the most. And yet you get "modern" games like CoD, Halo, etc, that still use Checkpoint saves? =I
I can see that it *might* give a challenge aspect, but if that's the purpose, then just assume that if the player wants that challenge, they won't save

[George]

What's worse is when that bad AI on Expert/Hard mode is just "Aim for head, no recoil, always know where player is."

It's also bothersome when in Stealth Games, as soon as the AI finds you out, they'll always know where you are until you kill them all. Regardless of seeing you still or not.

Oh my. Stealth in Halo 3: ODST was very bad about that. You could snipe a guy from about 100 meters with your silenced pistol, and suddenly every Covenant soldier in the city is after you.

[anoni]

The things I hate in video games.

Bad Glitches:
  There are two types of glitches, good glitches and bad glitches. A good glitch is a glitch you have to look for, something like super jumps in Halo 2 or breaking through an invisible wall in a game after hours of work. A good exploit to a game is an exploit that takes actual skill to use. A bad glitch is a glitch that you don't have to look for, a glitch that isn't fun or an exploit that's super easy. Some bad glitches can completely ruin the gaming experience, like a game crashing or freezing, it can be very frustrating.

Lack of Checkpoints:
  A game that has fewer checkpoints is harder and more frustrating. Some of the most annoying things is going through a difficult 30 minute section of the game for the 100th time, it no longer becomes fun and becomes a serious drag, not even the sense of accomplishment you get from finishing that is enough to excuse the sheer annoyance of these super far checkpoints.

Restricted Freedom
  That part of the game where you're running through a house and everything is exploding, you feel like you having real fun, until you realize you can't move left, right or back, in fact, if you let go of the mouse you'll notice you'll still be running through the house. A game like that, cutscenes made not to look like cutscenes, tick me off quite a bit. Certain games that have committed these horrible crimes include societies favourite Call of Duty and Battlefield games.

Bad Lag:
  Like the glitches, there is good lag and bad lag. Believe it or not, good lag is a lot of lag, so much lag that the game becomes unplayable, you realize the game is unplayable and you go to a different server, or maybe you stay and watch all the random people teleport and game-breaking things happen like mounted guns slipping off their vehicles and random bodies flying all over the place. Bad lag, is just a little bit of lag, that little bit that means the game looks playable, but it's lying. You will be running around a corner and see an enemy, you shoot him and take him down, expecting him to go down, but OH NO there was a 0.1 second delay in your shot, so he survives, shoots you just fine, then calls you a noob. Lag is a gamers biggest troll.

Overpowered Items:
  Oh, OP weapons are very nice at first. You will pick up this weapon or vehicle and think, man I can kill anyone with this! THIS IS AMAZING! Oh, how wrong you are, because it may be so fun to be on the winning side, it is never as much fun when you're on the other side of that muzzle. When someone else has an OP weapon, you will know the true pain and anger for the weapon, you may decide to boycott the weapon, OH but that will fail you because now everyone else still has the weapon and you're at a disadvantage, this mainly became a problem with helicopters in GTAIV.

Hackers:
  One of the largest pet peeves of mine is a standard modder/hacker. Someone who copies a script someone else created in order to give them an artificial advantage over the game. Some hackers can be fun at first, they may have a pink gun and be in a banana suit and it's all fun and games, then they might start killing you so you try to kill them back, only to realize they're invincible, then when you try to kick them, your game crashes. Oh hackers, why do you have to exist? I don't understand what is fun about a game with no challenge. Single Player mods can be fun though.

The Community:
  My last pet peeve with games is the community, not all of it obviously but there are a few aspects of the community I like. With the aforementioned hackers, the very stupid trolls, the extremely naive and annoying squeakers and of course the MLG "professionals". All of them I try not to associate with, most of them for obvious reasons, the only one not obvious is the MLG professionals. They usually have such a smug and outlandish attitude about them that it boils me up to see them tell me what gun has the greatest bullet per second spread and how I'm a noob because I didn't go the most efficient route. At the end of the day games are meant to enjoy, if winning is the only thing about the game you enjoy then fine for you, but to some of us the experience of the actual game itself is fun as well.