Annoying Things in Video Games

Ahh video games, how I love thee. But, as they provide much sunshine in my life, they are also a source of frustration. There are a lot of common annoying elements that appear across games, so much so that I decided to compile a list in this post.

At first I wanted to make a “Top 10″ type of list, but then I realized - you the readers, can continue contributing your own experiences, making the list grow larger!

I want to make a list for what NOT to do in a game. I’ll try to mention annoying themes than a specific game annoyance. So without further ado, I’ll start with my biggest pet peeve…

In-game movies, cut scenes, text sequences, and training that cannot be skipped, no matter what.

I don’t care if it’s my “first time” playing - maybe I played the game somewhere else. It doesn’t hurt to give us the power to skip everything.

Okami - I had to rubber band the square button on the controller and go eat dinner because you won’t let me skip the intro story for a new game (and it is looooong). BAD Okami! BAD! At least you let me skip it once I beat you but…you offer little replay value to enjoy this feature.

While we’re at it, how about the summons from Final Fantasies? After I’ve called on you for the nth time, I sit there and watch…bored. FF8 at least gave you the ability to learn Boost and button mash to increase your damage during the cut scene, why wasn’t something similar incorporated for the later games?

For most of us that die many times before learning how to defeat a boss, watching the cut scene over and over again only adds to our frustration. Worried that players may accidentally skip a movie? Map it to a button that’s not commonly used that players have to reach for (usually the start button).

This annoyance includes the company logo sequence that displays before the game starts. EA is notorious for this. Let us skip it! Some companies are worried that players skipping the clips mean that they never see the company logos. Make it skippable, but display the company logo within 2 seconds - these days we have short attention spans, cater to us!

If you make it unskippable, players (on PCs) will locate the movie files and remove them so they don’t ever play. If you make it skippable, you’ll find that players are often too lazy to locate the movie files to remove them because they can skip it. It’s logical.

Any game that requires gameFAQs or guide books to progress or gain better items.

A game that is designed well will not require supplementary documents in order to play. When choosing a new race/class, do not force us to look at a manual, why not have this info readily available? Tutorials should exist in the game, either incorporated as part of the story, or make it optional.

Also, time and thought should be put into “why” players are carrying out orders or playing mini-games. At least explain the reasoning in the story, otherwise, it feels randomly thrown in for the sake of being thrown in.

Final Fantasy, I’m looking at YOU. You and your ridiculous “throw a rock at a monkey, turn around and clap three times in order to obtain an item to upgrade your weapon”, how’m I supposed to know to do that when you don’t tell me (in the game)? For shaaaaaame!

And now your mini-games are even more tedious AND ridiculous - dodge lightning 100 times in a row to get the ultimate weapon for Lulu. Can you imagine an old NPC that tells you about this task? “Legend says that if you dodge lightning 100 times in a row in the desert, the Gods will grant you an ultimate weapon.” Either way, you call this fun? Ah, screw you!!

Awkward camera controls/angles.

This includes no control over the camera when you direly need it. Basically, something is preventing you from seeing what you need to see.

Katamari Damacy, you’re guilty! When the camera awkwardly moves behind a wall, the wall does not become transparent. How can I see where I am?? And along the same lines, the King of Cosmos’ head shows up and blocks the screen to just…talk. Stop that! Go away!

In Half Life 2, if you use the gravity gun to pick up a large object, you’ll have to look around it because it’s not transparent. Add in the fact that it’s in first person view so the item is always in the middle of the screen (can’t move it to the lower corner) makes it difficult to see/aim at someone in front of you.

Resident Evil 4 is viewed in third-person, so technically you can control the camera by spinning the character. However, if my back is to a wall and the villagers are surrounding me, the camera is pushed against the wall and into Leon’s back, which fills the whole screen. This is only 2% of the game and it’s a small annoyance. Take away collision-detection from the camera, and if the wall is between camera and character, make the wall transparent.

Some of the older 3D games are guilty of this: one moment you have the third-person view of your character’s back, and in the next screen it pops into second-person view. Up becomes down, down becomes up, and you actually run back and forth between the two screens while the camera flips perspective until you slow down to a walk. I haven’t seen this happen in the recent games however.

Sparse save points, or a difficult game that offers no timely save points

Did you die at the boss? Congratulations! You win a free trip to the beginning of the level and have to fight through everyone again! At this moment, I can’t remember any new game that fulfills this, since most games now utilize quick saves at the very least.

However, there’s an old game out there where, after you reach the end, it says “Baha! Just kidding!” and sends you aaaall the way to the beginning of the game on a harder difficulty. You must reach the end (again) in order to get the real ending.

Ghouls & Ghosts! You suck!! And you did this many times!! When I played this on the Genesis, it was a long game without any saving capabilities. It would also overheat after an hour and freeze the game, so…I could never beat the game in time to see the end.

When you’re about to die/run out of time and this horrible thing happens to remind you constantly, in case you forget.

Katamari Damacy - When you’re about to run out of time, there’s a siren that sounds like “EEEE-YAR! EEE-YAR! EEE-YAR!” This game made it on this list twice? Double shame! Especially since the music is so good, I don’t want to turn the sound down.

Bad voice acting

This is subjective as some people aren’t bothered by this, but for me it ruins game immersion if the character does not sound convincing. Movies with bad actors annoy me, same thing with video game movies. At least give us the option to use subtitles and hear it in the original language.

Maybe it’s not the voice acting, but the voice itself that rubs me the wrong way. Maru Moro from Blue Dragon has such a voice. When I use his corporeal attack, I shudder at his “RAH! RAH! ROCKU ROCKU ROCKU ROCKU” battlecry.

Resident Evil - the first one for the PlayStation had such horrible acting, I could not take it seriously. I cringed every time people spoke.

House of the Dead 2 - something about their voices are stiff and hilarious.

Someone also told me that Star Ocean 2 and Valkyrie Profile had bad voice acting.

Games that are difficult and long that have bad/short/disappointing endings.

I think my most disappointing game ending ever was some of the old Genesis games that show a picture and say “Congratulations! You’ve done it!” Game endings should show effort, give us a treat for beating the game.

Diablo’s (first one mind you) ending was disappointingly short, to me. I expected more from the game as it took me a long time to beat. However, this was when the PC games were really new to me - I didn’t know how to play very well.

Bad controls/bad game play.

By allowing us to remap keys, the game MIGHT be able to avoid bad controls.

However, with Halo 3, the right bumper button is used for EVERYthing - reloading, picking up weapons off the floor, mounting a turret, and knocking off bad guys from their vehicles. Plenty of times I’m trying to grab a turret or pull a bad guy off of a wraith, but I stand there instead for a couple of seconds reloading.

Bioshock has randomly mapped plasmids so that you don’t know what spell you’re using. I’ve already complained about this in the previous post so I won’t go too deeply there.

So there you have it. Have another annoying theme to add? Let me know! Also, more video game examples that fall under these categories are always appreciated.