Things that annoy you about games

krudler

There's probably tons of stuff that piss us all off yet still manage to find their way into games these days, here's a few of mine:

1. Errand missions in free roaming games. sigh...
GTA and Assassins Creed, looking squarely at you, why oh why do we have to spend the first hour of these games driving someone to a club or bringing a letter to some family friend to progress the story, take AC2 for example, everything that happens up until

you get the assassins armour after your father has been killed

could have been summed up in a 4 minute cutscene, instead we have to plod through over an hours worth of meaningless missions, likewise in GTA, you never get to do anything remotely interesting until at least you get off the first island, and its been like this since GTA 3, surely by now Rockstar realise that anyone who likes games would have played at least one if not all of the previous titles? just let us get to the fun parts!

2. Stupid obstacles in FPS's
You can climb ladders, jump off stuff and carry enough weapons on your person to start a small army, yet get to a shin high piece of wall and you cant step over it, looking at you Killzone!

3. Stupid AI partners
The ones who either stand there shooting at everything but hitting nothing, or start shooting when you're trying to be stealthy (Elena in Uncharted got me killed twice doing this, grrrr) or the ones who run into a corner then spend ages faffing around meaning you cant progress without them

4. Insane difficulty
I'm all for a challenge, but those games that have incredibly hard/cheap sections and bosses deserve a kicking, yeah you get a sense of satisfaction battering the bejesus out of a boss thats beaten you a dozen times already, but not after you have to spend hours and every inch of you trying not to throw the controller through the tv first, oh, also add those games that make you fight all the previous level's bosses before you get to the final one first

5. Crap final bosses
We all know how annoying it is to have an amazing game cheapened by a shyte final boss, Bioshock, Uncharted 2, most fighting games. Bioshock is a huge culprit here, an amazing experience right up until the boss, which is like something from MegaMan, oh look, hes' using fire, i wonder if this ICE POWER will do something to him?:rolleyes:

6. Locked doors in survival horror games
Silent Hill has an excuse, you're usually not wielding more than a pipe or crappy 9mm gun, but in Resident Evil you usually have a shotgun or some small anti aircraft gun strapped to your back, yet wooden doors are a problem?pfft

7. Cheap scares in games
Remeber that giant tube with the barely visible horrible creature thats "asleep" in it you passed on your way through the lab/haunted house/underground testing facility? well whats the betting that once you pick up that blue gem you need to combine with the red one to open the seal to the library where you'll get the last gold emblem to unlock a door you could have kicked in by now, that the creature will suddenly be gone/burst through the glass on the way past it again? oh what a shocker

Lands Leaving

I'd agree with most of these. Especially the final boss problem. Tekken 6 was ruined by azazel to the point where I never bother with arcade mode.

One that drives me mad is too much going on that's too hard to see. Just started the MW2 campaign and in the first level I died about 10 times on the back of a truck shooting people on rooves because once I'd shoot it would get dusty and impossibe to see enemies. Then I'd be shot and blood spatters everywhere on my screen. Finally I'm near death and it changes to a weird semi-speia mess so I can't possibly survive. At least in most of the game it means get to cover, but in that damn truck there's no choice but to just die. over and over and over.

Another one is games trying to have a really good story but utterly failing. I don't mind the flimsy pretext for killing things, etc. Like Gears of War, which knows its a big dumb fun shooter, and gives you a lot of explosions and action with a simple plot that pushes you on. Or Dead Rising, you in mall. zombies. Go kill tnem with giant lipstick. But when they try to tell a story and it's just pointless and confusing/boring/convoluted, it drives me nuts. What the hell ios the MW2 story? What has the first level to do with anything? Why do the objectives become clear only AFTER the mission. Ie the second one, in the snow you get that ACU or whatever unit and it's only 4 levels later you get to know what it is. Fail. And then boom, here's an airport kill people. What? What's the damn context? Who am I playing as? What the hell is happening? Some context, character development or plot coherence could have made that a powerful piece of storytelling, but it's easily the most botched story ever in a game. At least bad stories usually know they're bad.

CombatCow

DLC that doesn't stand up to the quality of the original game, im looking at you Fallout 3 :mad:

NOGMaxpower

i think they do it like that so noobs can get to grips with game play

Redzer7

NOGMaxpower wrote: »

i think they do it like that so noobs can get to grips with game play

You should have an option IMO.

macpac26

Anything that ruins the flow of the game. MGS2 for example is probably the most irritating game for this. Constant interruptions with stupid, idiotic Codec calls about pressing the "Action" button to open a door or to get a lift, stupid cut scenes that show nothing of importance.

Key example of this is when you start as Raiden, after you watch the long opening, you take about 5 steps and its another Codec call. After you crawl through the gap in the fence its another Codec call. Then its a cut scene showing a guard and then another Codec call.

Im not an idiot, i dont want games to treat me like one.

NOGMaxpower

Redzer7 wrote: »

You should have an option IMO.

Agreed dude, defo "have you played this before?" Have you cleared the previous version "yes no"

Polar101

Pretty much the same as what previous posters said..

Games that assume I am a complete idiot, such as..
GTA4: "Drive your car to where the pointer is, and then shoot the bad guys who are trying to kill you" or
C&C3: "You are being attacked by flying things. You should now build anti-air defence. Do so by clicking here, here and here".

Or maybe I was just too stupid to figure out how to turn off the hints.

Nemanja91

Anything to do with Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona in Fifa

krudler

Pandering to people is a big gripe with me, games companies need to realise that the majority of people playing games, adult themed ones especially, have proably been playing games for a while, take Halo "we have to calibrate your suit, look at these 4 dots" FFS! its not like anyone playing Halo has just picked up a pad for the very first time

Games these days spoil people as well, take the days of the NES, did Mario 3 or MegaMan 2 have "training modes" or "hints" fcuk no they didnt, you just hit start and start running for your life, and if you die, its because you suck, nothing to do with Z axis calibration or any of that nonsense

All games should have this option when you start

"Have you played enough games to realise that the basic controls of the majority of games are very similar? Would you prefer to be thrown head first into a mission instead of 15 minutes running around on a training ground/simulator/firing range? you do !great, heres the game, have fun!"

pablomakaveli

Have to agree about the ridiculously hard games part. Scarface comes to mind. A few hours into that game the missions suddenly became incredibly hard. The mission on the boat was so hard i had to resort to using cheats in order to pass it and even then i barely got through.

Then there was the mission where you have to protect the restaurant owner who seems to be suicidal as he runs out into the open where he gets shot to pieces or i do trying to save him. I gave up on the game after that one.

Stupid AI also really bugs me particularily when an AI character gets stuck in a corner and you have to go back to them so they can follow you out the right way.

Lands Leaving

One more: Driving games where you can lead for the whole race, make a small mistake on the last corner and come last. All but the first Gran Turismo were like this, and it feels really unfair that a mistake like tapping a barrier ruins 5 minutes or so of perfect play. You should have a nice lead if you stay in first all the way. It should NOT be possible to end up last. I'd accept second or third if the race was close and I felt like I could lost, but jesus, 'realistic' driving games are just a pain. What the hell is realistic about losing cars being handicapped.

Rev. Kitchen

Driving games when you spin. Put the car in first then hit accelerate and because its on a 3 degree upwards slope nothing happens for a good 3 or 4 seconds until it starts slowly crawling up the hill.

End of level/game human bosses ! Whats the point in ruining a great game by making 1 standard human charater killable in 1 or 2 shots but the last guy takes 57 shots !! (Monsters can be excluded as they are big and scary)

Ditto for getting stuck on little bits of crap on the ground.

Ultra realistic games actually punishing real life tactics in favour of illogical tactics. Modern warfare im looking at you. Sitting in cover is actually harder to stay alive than running down the middle of the road jumping like a spa.

krudler

Ultra realistic games actually punishing real life tactics in favour of illogical tactics. Modern warfare im looking at you. Sitting in cover is actually harder to stay alive than running down the middle of the road jumping like a spa.

Ha thats a great one, i kept getting killed on the Favela level while i was carefully moving between cover, got sick of it so just tore down the main street shooting wildly and it worked like a charm!

End of level/game human bosses ! Whats the point in ruining a great game by making 1 standard human charater killable in 1 or 2 shots but the last guy takes 57 shots !! (Monsters can be excluded as they are big and scary)

The first Uncharted was like this, regular bloke with insanely powerful shotgun (since when can a shotgun kill you with one shot from 50 feet away?!) thats invincible up until the scripted moment where a few digs in the head sorts him out, at last Uncharted 2 had a reason for the boss being powerful

Oh i thought of another one, buts its for older games, any platformers where taking a hit means your character jumps 5 feet backards, resulting in fcuking ENDLESS lives being lost as you get twatted in mid air during a hard jump and have to repeat over and over, MegaMan being the worst culprit

L31mr0d

Delayed QTE's

You know, I've gotten to the point where I can stand the odd QTE's in games, the God of War series shows how they can be used to add to the game rather than detract from it.

I'm also happy with developers who choose to simply not have them and use just cutscenes instead.

What I can't stand are the developers that lull the player into thinking they are watching an automatic cutscene, then, 5 minutes into it, a button prompt suddenly flashes on to the screen before you are killed instantly from above forcing you to watch the whole cutscene again, but grip the controller, white knuckled this time, for the entirety awaiting that sudden button prompt, and then you don't know if you can relax, for fear of there being another one.

krudler

L31mr0d wrote: »

Delayed QTE's

You know, I've gotten to the point where I can stand the odd QTE's in games, the God of War series shows how they can be used to add to the game rather than detract from it.

I'm also happy with developers who choose to simply not have them and use just cutscenes instead.

What I can't stand are the developers that lull the player into thinking they are watching an automatic cutscene, then, 5 minutes into it, a button prompt suddenly flashes on to the screen before you are killed instantly from above forcing you to watch the whole cutscene again, but grip the controller, white knuckled this time, for the entirety awaiting that sudden button prompt, and then you don't know if you can relax, for fear of there being another one.

*cough* RESI 4 *cough*

Enter cabin, watch cutscene, oh look my head just got torn off because i didnt mash A+B together when the game told me to as i was drinking a cup of tea:D

L31mr0d

krudler wrote: »

i was drinking a cup of tea:D

Yeah, I usually put the controller down when a cutscene starts to have a drink or eat something... the Resi series are notorious for this, I guess they want you to fail the first time so that they get you to watch the death animation.

krudler

Not like MGS, where you could easily watch an episode of a tv show/read a few chapters of a book/build a shed during one of its cuscenes

Grayditch

Jesus, that reminds me, I left MGS playing a cutscene a few months back.

I must go an check on that. I hope I can remember the controls.

JangoFett

When you're playing online and some annoying bastard plays some really **** annoying song into his headset. I'm new to online play and don't have/want a headset and it's very irrtating.

And guys who are clearly 15 years old KICKING your ass and trash talking you afterwards. Little bastards!

Rev. Kitchen

JangoFett wrote: »

When you're playing online and some annoying bastard plays some really **** annoying song into his headset. I'm new to online play and don't have/want a headset and it's very irrtating.

And guys who are clearly 15 years old KICKING your ass and trash talking you afterwards. Little bastards!

Its allways something really terrible that they play too.

I also hate Disk read Error !!!!!!

L31mr0d

Rare one-time-use weapons: Why torture the gamer with these things. You find some rare OTT weapon in the game that fires 1 rocket that cuts through the fabric of spacetime but you never use it because... you don't know when you are going to get another one. It sits in your inventory for the whole game going unused.

Inclusion of mundane actions to make the game feel "real": Ok Far Cry 2 had the malaria, and Fallout 3 had the drug addiction and I'm sure some other games have these also. It doesn't add anything to the game. Yes real life is full of mundane, repetitive chores, but games are supposed to be an escape from this.

Vegeta

The tendency towards making games into inter active films

I got a PS3 for Xmas (thank you mam and dad, sweet present considering I'm a 26 year old, Demon Souls here I come) and Uncharted 2. Now the game is fantastically well made. Great voice acting, no bugs, looks great, Indiana Jones mumbo jumbo archaeologist plot, lovely.
Thing is that it is so linear and scripted that if feels more like watching a dvd series box set sometimes rather than playing a game.

CoD is the same (except for being way worse than Uncharted 2), I haven't even started the single player campaign of MW2 because MW was so badly done (bar one or 2 exceptions). Couldn't stomach another minute of that kind of tripe.

eddhorse

Well who's a thread of moaning michaels !

I think game developers do have a tough task of deciding how good a game player is when he starts a game.
Sure GTA tells your to follow the marker to get to your first mission, whats wrong with that, all players arent going to be at the same level and they never are, game developers have to say that you as a gamer are playing your first ever game so give you some tutorials on the controls or buttons.

If I'm wrong then you should all go and develop your own games and see what rating it gets.

Rev. Kitchen

eddhorse wrote: »

Well who's a thread of moaning michaels !

I think game developers do have a tough task of deciding how good a game player is when he starts a game.
Sure GTA tells your to follow the marker to get to your first mission, whats wrong with that, all players arent going to be at the same level and they never are, game developers have to say that you as a gamer are playing your first ever game so give you some tutorials on the controls or buttons.

If I'm wrong then you should all go and develop your own games and see what rating it gets.

I developed an awesome game in my head it got 99% :P

Its a proper FPS/3rdPS mixed with real time strategy squad commands on the head piece. A cross between Modern warfare/ghost recon and End war.

While your fighting you can talk to your AI team mates tell them to lay down cover fire, hold their fire, flank left, dont stand there in the middle of the road getting shot you idiot get into cover command or call in air support. etc

Now all i need is a couple of million dollars to get it going.

Lands Leaving

eddhorse wrote: »

Well who's a thread of moaning michaels !

I think game developers do have a tough task of deciding how good a game player is when he starts a game.
Sure GTA tells your to follow the marker to get to your first mission, whats wrong with that, all players arent going to be at the same level and they never are, game developers have to say that you as a gamer are playing your first ever game so give you some tutorials on the controls or buttons.

Back in my day the manual gave all that info and you read it on the bus home after buying the game. Tutorials are a new invention, for illiterate people.

monkeyfudge

Lands Leaving wrote: »

Back in my day the manual gave all that info and you read it on the bus home after buying the game. Tutorials are a new invention, for illiterate people.

Yep... used to love reading the old manual on the bus. Can't remember the last time I've looked in a manual now though... they could be calling me a c*nt in there for all I know.

One thing that drives me nuts is that subtitles are ALWAYS on by default in games.

What the hell is with that? I can understand 15 years ago when talking audio in games wasn't so good that you might want the subtitles on to clarify what is being said. But that's not needed any more...

So pretty much the first few minutes of any game I play now are me frantically searching around the menu system to try and turn the subtitles off... really takes you out of the game...

norrie rugger

monkeyfudge wrote: »

Yep... used to love reading the old manual on the bus. Can't remember the last time I've looked in a manual now though... they could be calling me a c*nt in there for all I know.

One thing that drives me nuts is that subtitles are ALWAYS on by default in games.

What the hell is with that? I can understand 15 years ago when talking audio in games wasn't so good that you might want the subtitles on to clarify what is being said. But that's not needed any more...

So pretty much the first few minutes of any game I play now are me frantically searching around the menu system to try and turn the subtitles off... really takes you out of the game...

I think that dragon age has them turned off, by default

milltown

monkeyfudge wrote: »

... they could be calling me a c*nt in there for all I know.

Ah, so you're that Monkeyfudge. I wondered who they were on about alright.

Leiva

I wish the makers of FPS should agree on a default controller button setup.
Fed up going from 1 fps to another ,and when I say goto reload only to throw a grenade and kill myself.:eek:

xanthor

'Crappy' AI in racing games. You're just ahead, then all of a sudden in the last 50 yards, 3 or 4 cars 'wooosh' past you.

Perhaps i exaggerate... but it really grinds my gears.

noodler

mixednuts wrote: »

I wish the makers of FPS should agree on a default controller button setup.
Fed up going from 1 fps to another ,and when I say goto reload only to throw a grenade and kill myself.:eek:

Think that is BS personally - why prevent innovation in the future?

Same sort of BS that came out when KZ2 was released - it didn't play exactly like MW so people cried until a patch was released.

Leiva

noodler wrote: »

Think that is BS personally - why prevent innovation in the future?

Same sort of BS that came out when KZ2 was released - it didn't play exactly like MW so people cried until a patch was released.

You got me wrong , I am no MW2 fan .
I just think the basics of every Fps game... Shoot , run/sprint , jump, crouch, frag , weapon change , should have common buttons on all games .
The extra innovations on each game can be assigned to the remaining button options.

Rev. Kitchen

When you are pearing over the edge of a railing with a rocket launcher and you shoot and it hits the railing blows up and kills you !!

Leiva

Rev. Kitchen wrote: »

When you are pearing over the edge of a railing with a rocket launcher and you shoot and it hits the railing blows up and kills you !!

Lol, just happened me earlier whilst playing UC2 co -op .
Went to kill that big fecker with the gatlin gun ... BOOM I'm dead !

krudler

In the Zelda games, where you have only 1 heart remaining and have to listen to that incessant beeping noise telling you to get health, which if you're stuck can go on for fcuking ages, WHY? surely the health bar is enough indication? even if it beeped twice and then stopped, but oh no, beepity beep until you've spent ages thrashing around in the grass and smashing every pot you can see until you get a heart


In games where getting hit while reloading interrupts the animation and the reload doesnt work, annoying!

smooch71

Halo

And the fact that it exists.

inFamouxe

Short campaign!!! :mad:

Vegeta

krudler wrote: »

(since when can a shotgun kill you with one shot from 50 feet away?!)

Meant to comment on this the last time actually but the answer is since the invention of the shotgun really, or at least since the invention of anti-personal ammunition for the shotgun



That's "000" or triple-ought buckshot, it's like being shot with six 9mm handgun bullets at once.

Very fatal at 50 feet (about 16 big strides away)

Just wanted to add, that ammunition is good for 100 feet accuracy wise. Have no clue of how far out it would stop being lethal

RAIN

cheapness. Like the favela level in MW2. Also semi broken game mechanics like when you hold the free run button in Assassins Creed to go faster but also makes you run up door frames. Or the matchmaking system in Halo 3, you end up playing people who are ranked much higher then you (unlike some games; rank is actually pretty accurate to your skill level in Halo, unless you have ''cheated'') its like bungie forget that people still shoot each other in playlists that are team objective. GAH.

Oh and any fighting system that dosent do what Batman Arkham Asylum did. What a great game.

krudler

Vegeta wrote: »

Meant to comment on this the last time actually but the answer is since the invention of the shotgun really, or at least since the invention of anti-personal ammunition for the shotgun



That's "000" or triple-ought buckshot, it's like being shot with six 9mm handgun bullets at once.

Very fatal at 50 feet (about 16 big strides away)

Just wanted to add, that ammunition is good for 100 feet accuracy wise. Have no clue of how far out it would stop being lethal

I meant in the game universe, in Uncharted you can take a good 8-10 shots before you die from an AK-47 at any range, but the boss can kill you with one blind fired shot from a shotgun from anywhere on the ships deck, just found it annoying

jenga-jen

Anyone playing CoD with a screaming child in the background :mad:

Hearing it during a game tends to lend an extra-special, frantic edge to the screaming/wailing/inept attempts to hush child while still knifing people in the face.

Thankfully haven't encountered that particular genius on MW2 yet

rizzla

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Unskippable developer logos/intros. Killzone 2 you have to listen to part of the intro speech, right up until you start to see the main intro. Must be about 40-60 second long. MW2 got it right, love how as soon as the disc is put in you can skip right to the main menu instantly.

As already mentioned too. Rubberband AI in racing games, Midnight Club LA and Wipeout HD are the biggest offenders here.

sarumite

I know its been mentioned....but QTE's in general annoy the hell out of me. While it was a mess of a game, Jericho constant use of QTE's is what eventually drove me to the breaking point....grr, I HATE QTE's.

RAIN

That bit where you have to listen to the first couple of seconds of the speech at the start of Killzone 2 drives me nuts.

pipeliner

Lands Leaving wrote: »

One more: Driving games where you can lead for the whole race, make a small mistake on the last corner and come last. All but the first Gran Turismo were like this, and it feels really unfair that a mistake like tapping a barrier ruins 5 minutes or so of perfect play. You should have a nice lead if you stay in first all the way. It should NOT be possible to end up last. I'd accept second or third if the race was close and I felt like I could lost, but jesus, 'realistic' driving games are just a pain. What the hell is realistic about losing cars being handicapped.

Cheating ai in racing games stopped me from playing them. I remember finding a short cut in mario kart 64 and gain a half lap lead on the opposition, you should have seen the speed their karts started to move to catch up on me.

I also remember playing 2 player grand prix in that game, and was a good five seconds behind my friend. The other karts breezed by me to catch him and i could nt get near them

norrie rugger

pipeliner wrote: »

Cheating ai in racing games stopped me from playing them. I remember finding a short cut in mario kart 64 and gain a half lap lead on the opposition, you should have seen the speed their karts started to move to catch up on me.

I also remember playing 2 player grand prix in that game, and was a good five seconds behind my friend. The other karts breezed by me to catch him and i could nt get near them

I have completely lost patience with Mario Kart and will never buy it again.
It was (I thought) as bad as it could get on the N64 but the Wii version is just silly.

sarumite

RAIN wrote: »

That bit where you have to listen to the first couple of seconds of the speech at the start of Killzone 2 drives me nuts.

I have a little steering wheel down there which drives my nuts....but I know what you mean.

Vegeta

krudler wrote: »

I meant in the game universe, in Uncharted you can take a good 8-10 shots before you die from an AK-47 at any range, but the boss can kill you with one blind fired shot from a shotgun from anywhere on the ships deck, just found it annoying

In FPS games, unrealistic weapon damage makes me go crazy. I like Hardcore on CoD MW and MW2 because they have it bang on really

I understand the need for paint gun style damage in games where the protagonist is some form of super human bad ass like in Uncharted 2.

WolfForager

Quick time events..

Dear god..

Lands Leaving

The fact that since Call of Duty got big every fps has had the system of having to zoom to be able to hit anything. I don't mind it in COD since it's done well, and makes sense. But it's in everything now and most other games don't have as good a control setup for it. E.g. clicking in the right stick to toggle zoom, totally counter intuitive. Playing the first Halo is a serious brath of fresh air after all the CoD clones.

The heartbeat sensor in MW2. But mainly because I haven't unlocked it yet because I'm terrible and everyone else I play is on level 60+. Getting to that level may actually take my whole life.