Videogame pet peeves...

Mr Durand Pierre

Mr Durand Pierre

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I decided to start a list of videogame pet peeves. I"ll start with a few of my own and everyone is welcome to add some of theirs.

- Voice acting. 90% of the time it's terrible. Even if the actors do a good job if they're reading bad dialogue it sounds a lot more ridiculous than if you're just reading it. Ex: No one cared that Secret of Mana had poor writing, but it sounded much worse in FFX. And also, Mario just seems wrong with voice acting.

- Cutscenes that cannot be skipped. Far too many games these days are guilty of this.

-Bad dialogue. I'm basically used to this since it's hte norm, but it would be nice if developers could hire half-decent writers. Ex: Resident Evil games.

-Metal or techno music where it doesn't belong. Ex: Prince of Persia.

-rapid button mashing where you simply have to press a button very fast multiple times. Star Fox Adventures had a couple parts like this. (note to anyone like me who lacks the reflexis to do this... use a pen. it works like a charm).

-save slots that only save over previous saves and don't give you the option of saving under a new slot. (i exempt metroid games form this simply because the save slots replenish your energy in those games and there's never any points where you can't go back).

- Games where you can't go back after a certain point to collect whatever small things you may have missed. Ex: Beyond Good and Evil and Starfox Adventures were both great games that were guilty of this.

-text that cannot be skipped, or is written slow. Ex: finding treasure chests in the Zelda games.

-arbitrary goals with no reward. Ex: The shines in Mario Sunshine. They do nothing.


That's all I can think of for now. I may add more later as I notice them in other games.
 
For me it's unbeatable battles as plot points. I hate not being able to win a fight. If I have no chance don't make me go through the motions just to taunt me, game!
 
Mine is when they're a great thing like ragdoll physics and people 2 years later are coding with the same motions when people die
 
[quote name='punqsux']lava levels[/quote]

Yeah, I hate those too. Especially when added in where not logical. Such as into Call Of Duty for the Xbox:
917587_20040608_screen001.jpg

I'm pretty sure there was no lava in WWII. Not in Europe, at least.
 
Inappropriate cell shading. In JSRF, Zelda: WW, and a select few others, it was great. In many others...not so much.
 
i hate it when you're playing a good 3d shooter or action game when all of a sudden you have this gay stealth level....they may belong, but i just hate it...i hate having to wait 5 minutes to sneak around one person, when i could've just put a few rounds in him and be past that part in 10 seconds
 
Mine carts. I hate mine carts sooooooo much! I think the only mine cart level I've ever passed without dying at least once was in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga... and I still don't want to do it again.

Also, innappropriate use of technology. Right now, the biggest offender to that one is Transformers. Why the hell does Optimus Prime, a huge metal robot, flail about like a sock monkey when he gets knocked down. Misuse of ragdoll physics, that's why. Bad designers! Bad!
 
[quote name='jmcc'][quote name='punqsux']lava levels[/quote]

Yeah, I hate those too. Especially when added in where not logical. Such as into Call Of Duty for the Xbox:
917587_20040608_screen001.jpg

I'm pretty sure there was no lava in WWII. Not in Europe, at least.[/quote]

where's the lava?

the city is on fire
 
I hate when enemies don't have a realisitic field of vision. I hate it when you're moving around stealthily and there's no way that a real person would see you, yet, as soon as you walk around a corner, shots fired.
 
the worst thing about stealth levels are the ones where if your spoted you die instanly. Beyond Good & Evil had this and it blew. Damn laser beams.

Also jumping puzzles, thankfuly your starting to see less of those.
 
For me, I like to play RPG's in which you have to level up your weak characters. But as you level up, towards the end of the game, your characters can kill the enemies without even trying. I wish that the newer games would implement the Earthbound (SNES) style fighting in which you can win the fight without the whole battle sequence if your party is way stronger than the enemies. :twisted:

Another pet peeve is when you have to do something to progress in the game, but the game's not specific in the quests/tasks needed to be done (Old school RPG style)
 
[quote name='jmcc'][quote name='punqsux']lava levels[/quote]

Yeah, I hate those too. Especially when added in where not logical. Such as into Call Of Duty for the Xbox:
917587_20040608_screen001.jpg

I'm pretty sure there was no lava in WWII. Not in Europe, at least.[/quote]

Actually, Italy and some other regions where WWII battles were fought have some pretty serious volcanic activity. Eruptions may not have figured prominently in the war but the potential was there...
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Italy/description_italy_volcanics.html

The PTO wasn't any less dotted with active volcanoes. Imagine if Mt. Pinatubo had pulled one of its major burps while the Philippines were contested.
 
There is a certain connection between translations of Japanese video games and anime. For quite a long time both suffered from amateurish efforts to translate the text and perform the resulting dialogue. Both have improved massively. IMHO, FFX was quite good in the dialogue department. Compared to many effforts where the voice cast is recruited from family and friends, this game had a group of solid professionals, including Bender and Cornfed!
http://imdb.com/name/nm0413996/

Ten years ago, nearly all of the English dubs of anime were painfully bad. (In some case it turned out the original Japanese dialogue was also pretty awful.) As the market grew the budgets for localization allowed for a better class of performer to be hired. Nowadays I no longer feel the compulsion to watch anime with the Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles just to see if part of the story got clobbered.

In the short time since optical media has made voice a significant part of video games beyond samples from movie soundtracks or the robotic utterings of 'Berzerk' things have come a long way.

The shines do nothing? As I recall they were critical to proceeding through the game. They served essentially the same function as the stars in Mario 64 and orbs in Jak & Daxter. Were these goals largely artificial? Of course they were. Everything about the premise of most games is entirely contrived. It's an excuse to frame the gameplay. It makes things a bit more interesting than just having obstacle courses 1 through 100.
 
My own list, some already listed:

-Being unable to obtain items/secrets/what-have-you after a certain point in the game. Especially bad when that point comes before the time a normal player would have the skills to obtain said items in early levels/areas. By the time they know to look for item X or talk to person A, the opportunity is gone. Try again on next play through. This sucks worst on 40+ hour RPGs.

-Jumping puzzles, especially in games that aren't platformers. Half-Life anyone?

-Out of place levels/missions. This goes for those stealth missions in action games, and those levels in RTS games where you only get a limited number of units (you aren't allowed to build buildings and troops).

-Obstacles that you MUST die or lose to. Then you get to replay the level and be on the lookout for them. Example: floor pits in the first Metal Gear. A first time player, with no prior knowledge of the game, will always die to the first floor pit.

-'Cheating' computer controlled opponents. Blanka walking forward and hitting a Beast Roll at the same time in SFII. Guile walking forward and firing off a Sonic Boom in same. In Rise of Nations, blowing the living hell out of a country with nukes and concentrated air strikes, only to see a fully rebuilt city, military production facilities and troops less than a minute later from that same area.

-Cameras that rotate around your character and end up behind a wall.

-Training stages that don't allow you to skip text or fast forward through any segment. I usually don't have to learn how to make my character walk around.

-Infinite Enemy Syndrome. I hate seeing any point in a game where you can kill enemies over and over and over and they continue to come at you. Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it's just a weak attempt to get you to move on or something.

-Always having the odds against you no matter what side of a quest/mission/level/etc you are on. Think Dynasty Warriors. If you play, say, Battle at Wu Zhang Plains as Shu, then the odds are against you. The Wei army will have tons of troops and the catapults they use to assault your HQ are well protected. However, if you play as Wei, your catapults come under attack in about five minutes. I know this is done to keep it challenging, but sometimes I wouldn't mind crushing my opponent with less effort.
 
I have just a few main ones

-Not being able to skip intro screens. Not many games are like this. But there are a few that don't let you skip the developer or publisher houses nifty animation... Every dang time the game loads up. Yeah, I might watch them once or twice to check them out but I don't feel like sitting there for 30 seconds every time I pop in the game watching the same dumb thing.

-Not being able to skip cut scenes. I can understand if they lock this out the first time it plays, but after that you should be able to skip.

-Artificially limited save ability. Main game I'm pointing at here is Tiger Woods 2004. You can only save four profiles. Totally sucks. I have my own and three buddies on there leaving me no extra for one to play around with. I don't have much desire to buy a memory card simply because this one game is retarded. With the HDD I could easily have thousands of these suckers no problem.

-Inability to change difficulty level mid game. Quite a few games are like this. So if it turns out the game is too difficult for you a few hours in, you have to restart at the beginning to ratchet it down. If the game tracks the difficulty you beat it on for bonuses it should simply warn you that changing to a lower difficulty level will cause the game to treat your entire playthrough as having been done at that difficulty, even if you bump it back up later.
 
My biggest pet peeve...bad camera angles. I hate this. I would rather play a good 2D game than a 3D game that doesn't get the camera right.
 
no check points or save points during a level. in which case if u screw up, ur going to have to repeat the entire level again.
 
-licenced music in inappropriate games. it worked in vice city, but in madden it makes no sense.

-the word "kiddie" and the people that use it. how many people prefer gigli over the goonies just because of it's mpaa rating? just because something is marketed towards adults doesn't mean it's better, kids.

-advertising in games. sobe in munch's oddysey and bawls in run like hell stick out the most.
 
[quote name='wubb']

-Inability to change difficulty level mid game. Quite a few games are like this. So if it turns out the game is too difficult for you a few hours in, you have to restart at the beginning to ratchet it down. If the game tracks the difficulty you beat it on for bonuses it should simply warn you that changing to a lower difficulty level will cause the game to treat your entire playthrough as having been done at that difficulty, even if you bump it back up later.[/quote]

Related to this...early levels or missions that are insanely hard, when those are the levels that are supposed to familiarize you with the controls and the game. Admittedly, this in some cases may be a product of my suckassness.
 
"Stupid Plots that no one care about"
Ex. Splinter Cell, Mario, Tomb Raider, Quake

"Licensed game released prematurely to coincide with Licensed property dates"
Ex. Tomb Raider AOD, Matrix, I guess you can say most licensed games in general...

"MMORPG that you need to spend 23 hours a day to get anywhere"
Ex. ALL of Them

"Games that TRIES to copy a best selling title"
Ex. True Crime, Dead to Rights, all those 3D mario clones back in the day, all the copy cat mediocre (at best) racing games

"$49.99 as a MSRP"
Sorry, we are CAGs, you expect us to pay $50 for a game? NO Way! Not when the game will be $20 in about 3 months.

"Yearly updates to sports games"
Ex. Madden, madden and more madden, and every other sports franchise out there.
 
[quote name='paean']"Yearly updates to sports games"
Ex. Madden, madden and more madden, and every other sports franchise out there.[/quote]

I disagree. While I don't think $50 is a fair price for the yearly update, I think it is an essential step in the evolution of the genre to make yearly updates. Also, who wants to play with old rosters? Each Madden is better than the one released the previous year - I would pay $50 every year if we got a yearly Zelda or Mario that kept improving the one that came before it...
 
- Respawning enemies that are just there to make you waste ammo (Red Faction II)
- Pushing crates around to solve puzzles (Pretty much every platformer out there)
 
Annoying ice, water levels

slow-text, unable to skip text, poorly written dialogue, repetitious text

Hidden items with no logical way of finding them or just randomly searching to find key items (square PSone games especially had this problem), and inversely items that are way to obvious to see (i.e. Resident Evil)
 
[quote name='wubb']-Not being able to skip intro screens. Not many games are like this. But there are a few that don't let you skip the developer or publisher houses nifty animation... Every dang time the game loads up. Yeah, I might watch them once or twice to check them out but I don't feel like sitting there for 30 seconds every time I pop in the game watching the same dumb thing.[/quote]

Ugh, I meant to mention this. Some games show four or five involved animations just for the companies associated with making the game. There was one I played recently like that. I actually yelled at the TV "DAMMIT! Get on with it!"
 
[quote name='PsyClerk'] My own list, some already listed:

-Being unable to obtain items/secrets/what-have-you after a certain point in the game. Especially bad when that point comes before the time a normal player would have the skills to obtain said items in early levels/areas. By the time they know to look for item X or talk to person A, the opportunity is gone. Try again on next play through. This sucks worst on 40+ hour RPGs. [/quote]

Can't stand this, I am a completionist, and like to get everything and don't want to have to replay to do it.

[quote name='PsyClerk']
-Out of place levels/missions. This goes for those stealth missions in action games, [/quote]
The Hulk comes to mind.

[quote name='PsyClerk']
-Infinite Enemy Syndrome. I hate seeing any point in a game where you can kill enemies over and over and over and they continue to come at you. Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it's just a weak attempt to get you to move on or something.[/quote]

I like to explore levels so I don't like respawning. Metroid Prime was one of the few games where I could take respawning.

[quote name='PsyClerk'][quote name='wubb']-Not being able to skip intro screens. Not many games are like this. But there are a few that don't let you skip the developer or publisher houses nifty animation... Every dang time the game loads up. Yeah, I might watch them once or twice to check them out but I don't feel like sitting there for 30 seconds every time I pop in the game watching the same dumb thing.[/quote]

Ugh, I meant to mention this. Some games show four or five involved animations just for the companies associated with making the game. There was one I played recently like that. I actually yelled at the TV "DAMMIT! Get on with it!"[/quote]

Yeah thats just annoying, although it seems to happen less than I remember in the past.

I think this has been mentioned but I can't stand watching the same animation over and over in a game (ie. Link opening a chest, the same camera pan every time a character enters a room/opens a door).
 
games that rip off other games and act like they dont care also collision detection when you get stuck on something far in a level and its a hard level and your health. is high and then you have to restart and you die like 50 times then finally beat the level
 
Too many games do not use cel-shading when it looks a million times better than regualar polygons.

Trying to look realistic when video games can look better than real

m rated games

stealth levels
 
In the survival/horror games when you go from room to room and the perspective keeps changing. Sometimes I would have no idea where I was in a new room. I like killing zombies as much as the next gamer, but this is too annoying for me. If they've improved any of this, let me know. I have stayed away from the genre for a while.
 
[quote name='MrBadExample']In the survival/horror games when you go from room to room and the perspective keeps changing. Sometimes I would have no idea where I was in a new room. I like killing zombies as much as the next gamer, but this is too annoying for me. If they've improved any of this, let me know. I have stayed away from the genre for a while.[/quote]

I hate going up through a room, then get to the next run where you are supposed to press down, but instead I'm still pressing up. Therefore my character reenters the room where he just was.

3-D games without camera controls, ala Castlvania: LOA, also really peeve me off. Finally, places where you have to follow another character to a checkpoint, but the character walks ten times slower than you do, so it takes 5 minutes to get to a place that you could get to alone in 30 seconds.
 
I'm not sure what you would call it but in Max Payne when you have those drug induced dreams and your running around basically on a tightrope and if you fall you have to start all over. I think this might fall under annoying gimmicks category but it made me hate Max Payne 1 and not even want to touch the sequel.
 
Levels that are so fast you miss out on important stuff, such as in sonic adventure 2 I missed out on a few upgrades due to this.
 
[quote name='RedvsBlue']I'm not sure what you would call it but in Max Payne when you have those drug induced dreams and your running around basically on a tightrope and if you fall you have to start all over. I think this might fall under annoying gimmicks category but it made me hate Max Payne 1 and not even want to touch the sequel.[/quote]

W0rd, I got the second one but because of those dream levels man did I hate the first.
 
I hate having to fight all the boss battle at the end of the game, when you've already beaten them before (Viewtiful Joe, Megaman). Its not so bad when its done right though (Wind Waker).
 
1. Stealth levels
2. Stealth levels
3. Stealth levels

If it's the point of the game (Metal Gear, Splinter Cell) fine; otherwise, I don't want any part of them.
 
[quote name='coolz481']1. Stealth levels
2. Stealth levels
3. Stealth levels

If it's the point of the game (Metal Gear, Splinter Cell) fine; otherwise, I don't want any part of them.[/quote]

I agree for the most part, because usually if there is a stealth level in a game that isn't strictly stealth it usually just has very shitty play mechanics. But I wouldn't make a blanket statement though. I personally loved the Princess stealth levels in Paper Mario.
 
not to mention stealth levels that end immediately if you are spotted. its a little more bearable if you are spotted and end up just getting shot a little and you run away and hide again, but I HATE it when you are spotted and someone comes up on your radio or something and says, "You weren't supposed to be seen, mission failed!"
 
[quote name='coolsteel']Stealth missions when the character is packing a dozen weapons[/quote]

Listen up, Fisher. Sneak through this heavily populated city street. You must not be seen by any police or civilians because they will instantly blow your cover. On the other side of town is a brand-new million dollar prototype assault weapon. You must get it, even though once you do I will continue to order you not to kill anyone.

SCREW YOU PEDRO CERRANO
 
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