We’ve all got them, gaming pet-peeves. Maybe it’s the unskippable cutscene, or the poorly placed checkpoint that means you’ve got to sit through the aforementioned cutscene once again. Maybe it’s the end-game boss with a surprise second health-bar, or the random difficulty spike that doesn’t feel fair.
The most frustrating thing in gaming that has existed since the dawn of gaming and persists to some degree today: having your inputs just totally get eaten so your character doesn’t perform the action you expected when you hit the button.
From failing to jump right as you hit the edge of a cliff in Super Mario to ignoring a roll in Dark Souls, input lag/dropping is the biggest annoyance in any game of any style. Even those that timing isn’t important.
Having an issue with this right now. I’m playing a Soulslike called Thymesia and whenever I hit the heal button (Up on dpad) it’ll have to wait for the animation to finish before I get the heal. It feels slow at best and downright unfair at worst.
Jedi Fallen Order kept doing this with its healing animation. That and like grabbing a zip line are dependant on the animation of your little droid and sometimes he’s off doing something else so it won’t actually heal you or let you grab a zipline.
But even more annoying is when it starts the animation of the robot tossing you a stim, and your character catching it and then… You lose a stim but don’t actually heal. 😬
A lot of the ones in this thread cover mine, but here’s the one no-one has mentioned yet:
No subtitles.
Fuck this. I usually play a game and watch a show or movie. I need to be able to read the lore. Making me whack up the volume because you’re too lazy to add subtitles is beyond infuriating.
It’s also fucking disrespectful. I have some hearing problems, without subtitles I quite literally don’t enjoy the game, because I miss a lot of dialogue (not like half, but I’d say around 5-10%, which might not seem like a lot, but it truly sucks).
Shoutout to Telltale for making it so you could skip the credits but you’d get a “Telltale Games will remember that” message just like during the actual game.
Sunset Overdrive. You can’t just play the game, you have to be constantly moving, jumping, bouncing, grinding, even for objectives where it makes more sense to stand still and hold an objective point.
Trying to do anything other than constantly moving, jumping, bouncing, and grinding results in instant death for no easily discernable reason other than “the devs say so.”
When games take away control too often, or for really minor things. Unsighted, a great indie game, was terrible for this. It would constantly rip control from you to slowly pan to a door opening or enemy spawning.
I adore Subnautica for its PC experience, but it’s the worst offender for this. It says it supports VR, but what it means is that you’re supposed to sit in a chair with a mouse and keyboard while wearing your VR headset. WHAT. I spent 10 minutes trying to use my VR controllers before I googled the problem and found this out. Got a refund immediately. (I already got it free on Epic and bought the Steam version for VR)
I know they’re very popular and people love them, but I don’t like them at all! I hate the mechanic, in some games it feels poorly implemented (cult of the Lamb), and I just find them to be a boring chore.
When a game requires no arcade skills for several hours of gameplay, and then throws in some challenge/minigame that requires quick reflexes. Sometimes I only want to use my puzzle brain.
Not having a save/checkpoint immediately before a particularly difficult spot. Retrying a boss a couple times can be fun, but not repeating the long, tedious trek from the nearest checkpoint.
Hollow Knight was a bit annoying for this, I remember one boss where I probably died more times on the spikes than to the actual boss. I guess it’s part of the challenge though, and the harder the boss the better feeling once you defeat them.
Unnecessary dialogue, ESPECIALLY if that dialogue must be repeated ad nauseam in order to complete what should have been a bulk action. Animal Crossing NH, as much as I fucking adore that game, has got to be one of the absolute worst offenders in this regard.
Also, difficulty that isn't "tough but fair", and is instead "every enemy does 10x damage, has 500x HP, has their numbers increased by 5000x, and also you die in one hit." I'm exaggerating obviously, but my idea of a fun challenge isn't being given no room for error against overpowered enemies, it's the Souls approach; once I learn the patterns and flow of things, I should be able to almost play the game on autopilot. I still boot up DS3 all these years later just to relax, as I know the game THAT well now.
Peripherals (USB headphones, mouse, etc) that try to install software suites EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you plug them in. Razer products piss me off so much!
I consider it gaming shit list worthy because they target gamers.
Unkillable NPC’s, Bethesda style. Yes, yes I would prefer to miss out on content in favour of continuity and immersion.
Bosses that have almost heat seeking effectiveness with their attack. Meaning that no matter how far you go, no matter where you dodge, no matter if you’re behind, they are going to hit you if you didn’t hit the dodge exactly right to get the invincibility frame. Super huge and slow ass monsters that spin half way through a jump swing to get you behind their back is infuriating.
Menus inside of menus inside of menus inside of pause screens. I have the first Dragon’s Dogma as an example. You cannot quit this game without going through three intro screens and their associated music jingle and animation.
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