Tropes are everywhere in media and video games are no exception. What are some of the video game tropes that annoy the hell out of you?
I’m talking about breaking crates to find guns and ammo, or food magically being able to heal bullet damage. Fruit for points. I’m also talking about the damsel in distress thing, or the silent protagonist.
What are some of the tropes that completely annoy you? Let us know in the comments below.
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133 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Most Annoying Video Game Tropes”
insurmountable waist high fences and chest high walls
Walks around corner.
Chest high walls line the corridor, with boxes just jutting out to provide standing cover.
Sighs.
Pulls out gun.
(Edit: I mean, at least make an effort to hide possible cover, or make it blend in, or even to make it make sense! Mass Effect was terrible for this. No explanation, bam, chest high walls in a research facility. Not a desk that you overturn. Not a desk that’s already been overturned. Just…chest high walls.)
By that same token, seeing a big pile of ammo, health and armor. Never a clearer indication that a boss battle is around the next corner. 😛
Boss Fountains.
Ehh, Mass Effect wasn’t that terrible.
Overall, no. But it was the quickest thing I grabbed from my memory to illustrate this point.
Essentially anything that doesn’t just flag, but shoves into your face “OI OI OI ENEMIES HERE OI OI”.
Yeah, Mass Effect was pretty notable for running through picturesque settings and then all of a sudden you’d see an empty killing field, populated by strategically-placed ‘random’ bits of cover. “NOTHING TO SEE HERE. TOTALLY ORDINARY PIECE OF TERRAIN, THIS. NOT A BATTLE ARENA.”
“OK, game. I will wander into this area and pretend to be surprised when you ambush me.”
“THIS IS HOW GAME.”
At least in Uncharted they subverted that once or twice by making you walk through that kind of area expecting the inevitable ambush, not get one and be a bit confused until you realise that you come back the same way and it all makes sense
Ohhh, that’s very similar to the one that annoys me… the mounted gun placement facing the wrong way. “You’ll be coming back here, and there’ll be a horde of enemies to mow down.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, level design!”
Interestingly, there were a few of those mounted gun parts in the recent Tomb Raider game where you have to get past it but there was no opportunity to turn it on your enemies. You could use it, but by the time you got up there there was nothing for you to shoot at. I automatically assumed I would have to backtrack and use it on some dudes, but I didn’t.
I wonder which one we’d objectively consider the more “thoughtful” design. The one where the turret is just an obstacle, or the one that is shown to you as a “remember this later” moment?
Or the Halo version, Option three! Where you just rip the mounted turret off its tripod and cart it around as a walking weapons platform.
Gears of War was more guilty of it. One point where you get into a fight and a chest-high catapillar with stone skin starts moving through for you to use.
Granted it was a clever way to do it though.
Hahaha, I loved that caterpillar part, and how you had to shoot down the fruit for it to eat. Gears of War gets excused from a lot of these because it is such a shameless “game”. It’s really not trying to be anything else.
This, so much this.
I remember Red Dead Redemption getting a bad case of this when I rode into a new area at one point.
Grey concrete pillars in the original Gears of War
Almost as though it’s a game and not a simulation of reality.
Escort missions. That is all.
silent protagonists, friggin annoying, crates in places where there is no way to put them into that room (doors to small) but the biggest…QUICK TIME EVENTS.
Ai being able to see through cover, when I watch my death through kill cam and theres like a giant palm leaf clearly blocking there view 😐
This. I hate this the most.
AI and general gameplay for future games needs to be greatly improved. How about devs stop focusing on the looks and make it PLAY better hmmm?
Xbox was claiming it would have some type of adaptive AI that would impersonate other real players….if this is the case field of vision and cover needs to play a role.
THEIR*
INVISIBLE WALLS.
SO. FUCKING. LAZY.
Which is funny because I usually get into arguments about invisible walls and return to battlefield warnings. Even getting into arguments over Halo: Reach with people saying that invisible walls should always be used despite the fact that making zones allow more creative freedom of map creations.
I always wanted to see a battlefield game with no invisible walls, or a sort of ‘anti invisible wall’ situation, where you get say 3 seconds to return, then suddenly your guy has ‘gone awol’, you see him running off screaming ‘NOPE! FUCK THIS! IM OUTTA HERE!’
In the first Call of Duty, if you’re Russian you get shot by your comrades.
I like the invisible walls in Splinter Cell – the camera just swings 180 degrees and Sam Fisher is forced to turn around because he’s on a mission dammit!
Codemasters were the pioneers and innovators in the field of invisible walls, starting in the 90s but they seem to have lost their edge in the last handful of years.
I don’t know if this is a “trope”, but scripted chase sequences where you can’t catch up with the target until a set point. These feel quite intrusive on the gameplay experience when the NPC is just clearly outpacing you for no reason other than they have to beat you to the showdown location. I feel like there are better ways to design around this.
Trying to kill Trevelyan in Goldeneye before the end of the level! The bane of my life.
Golden gun 🙂 I can’t remember if his lines still play if you do that.
*remembers Assassins Creed III*
UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE WHY CAN’T I JUST SHOOT THE GUY
My favourite gaming moment of 2014 so far was in AC4. It’s a chase, it’s rainy, there’s explosions and fire everywhere. I try it six or seven times, just can’t catch the guy. I’m not good enough at the racing, or I’m missing something.
Then it hits me. I have a gun.
Immediately after the chase begins, aim, shoot. Guy collapses. Chase over.
Seriously, the
Charles Leechase at the end of three would be over in 2 seconds if they let you actually use the tools at your disposal.
This was totally an example of Doing It Right.
I watched the Penny Arcade guys stream an AC4 session where they have to chase a guy through all kinds of shit, but I personally had never seen ANY of that chase scene because I was right up on the guy when it came time to kill him and simply put a bullet in the back of his skull before anyone knew I was there.
GOOD JOB, GAME. I know they probably are disappointed that I didn’t get to see their carefully-crafted chase scene with slow-mo sequences and shit, but being impressed with how clever they are would’ve come at the cost of being pissed off that they wouldn’t let me be clever.
When I wrote this I was actually thinking of a chase in GTAIV where I managed to get a shot off on a guy as he was supposed to go through a doorway and it caused him to get stuck against the door frame. I proceeded to switch to an SMG and empty a clip into him before he continued running Of course, he took no damage because I was supposed to follow him onto the roof and shoot down his chopper with an RPG.
Oh I hate that, Rockstar Games have been doing that for a while with GTAs, including not being able to damage the target/vehicle. However I enjoyed using a trainer to forcefully blow up that damn Super GT (The first time you see one) you have to chase in GTA IV.
And when you fall behind a bit so the target just decides to take a break, or get too close and he goes super-speed.
That you can walk for hours with your gun hand and arm held out far in front of you.
Try it for 15 minutes!
Maybe that’s why a professional soldier can only run for a few seconds at a time?
All that ammo and grenades weighs a man down. Makes even less sense in the old school shooters like Doom where you carry armor, a pistol, a chaingun, two shotguns, a plasma rifle and a BFG.
Relevant video.
I was thinking about rooster teeth in my head reading this and lo and behold thats the relevant video lol.
Music starts playing it means enemies are coming.
Music stops, youve killed all the enemies.
Too many games do this bs. Some try change the music, but it’s noticeable.
yeh I find games much more immersive when I turn the music down.
In a similar vein… “Damn, I’m lost in this map, I have no idea which way I’m going. OH GOOD! Enemies I haven’t killed yet! I’m back on track.”
Enemies means you’re in the right part of the map.
I’m getting a little tired of “knowing” which way to go in games, yeah it’s great game design, but if I can walk into a room on outlast, and say to myself ‘Those 4 doors are locked, downstairs is probably blocked off if I go down there, and upstairs leads to the one straight line through the rest of the game, how do i know? The lighting of the room screams at me which way to go.’ Then the only challenge left is hiding from enemies.
Shitty AI. Nothing bugs me more and makes me rage than fuckin’ AI.
* AI doesn’t follow game mechanics.
* AI cheats, e.g. in chase scenes as mentioned above.
* AI can see you no matter what.
* AI always aims for you no matter what.
* Just general shitty excuse for AI where that implementation wasn’t needed.
Have you played deus ex GOTYE? That has the worst AI ever, but its still my favorite game.
Only 1-2 hour, I need to play again.
Yeah, despite the AI its a brilliant game.
took me about 30 hours to complete it.
Even GTA Vs new ‘hiding from the police’ system is bulls***, they may not come right to you, but they follow you to the general area because they know you’re there, they never go off in the other f* direction…
I busted Company Of Heroes’ AI cheating too by the way, I could see into the AI shroud a bit at my front line (as everyone knows we can) and their units moved away and back again in direct response to the ones I moved around near my base. I noticed their stuff moving so I moved mine back and became disappointed.
I’m not going to play a strategy game where the opposing force will always be waiting for me due to cheating.
Using arcade style design for a story driven experience, example: Metro 2033. Don’t put in discrete levels with ‘exit doors’ and level scores when there’s a continuous story.
First generation 3D console level design. Here is a rectangular area. Fight the enemies. Progress to the next rectangular area. Fight more enemies. Slow sweeping camera shot to show area blocking off / opening up on enemy arrival / defeat. Example: Dante’s Inferno. So goddamn lazy. There are better design choices established now.
Remember Old Man Murray’s ‘Time to crate‘ scale…
Such a good site…
I’m going with unscaleable chest high walls…
Also, when did climbing over cover start being called mantling… instead of just climbing?
Mantling is a stupid term for climbing over cover… especially as mantling already had a perfectly good meaning of “to become covered or concealed”, the exact opposite of leaving said cover. Someone at Epic misplaced their dictionary that day…
I thought it was usually called ‘vaulting’ which is kind of more descriptive than ‘climbing’…
Exploding red barrels.
Hey, they removed that trope in Bulltstorm and everybody was too dumb to shoot them.
I thought that was just because everybody was trying to get nutshots rather than blowing up barrels.
I wonder how it was for Borderlands.
Health regen.
Let’s hide behind this crate whilst my health regens like I’m Wolverine.
It removes the sense of caution and panic of thinking “where the hell is the next health pack?!”
That’s why Halo: CE, ODST and Reach are the best Halo games!
AbsoFREAKINlutely. REACH is my favorite for this very reason. I was so happy to have a return to health packs.
Also the fact that even when you win you lose and if you were familiar with the halo story you knew it from the minute they announced the title
Yep exactly. There was that overriding fear of ‘I might just…. I may just…. I MIGHT JUST….fuck.’
I noticed how much of a difference it really made when Halo anniversary came out. In that game I was running and jumping out in the open against several Grunts and Elites and dodging their shots, knowing that I can tell when I’m about to die. But with Halo 2 and 3 I spent most of my time poking my head out of cover and then ducking back in like it’s Call of Duty. Where a couple of Grunts can kill you in seconds with no shields due to the lower health.
Yep indeed, they’re two *totally* different styles of play. One calls for skill, finesse and a level of actual grace to complete. The other calls for hiding behind shit.
It also limits your weapon loadout, basically forcing you to always and forever use the BR. A couple of years ago I tried playing through Halo 3 again on Heroic without using the BR or Carbine and it’s was too hard. You can barely get close enough to use the AR without your shields dropping and against Brutes they’re bullet sponges. Whereas in Halo 1 I can chuck the Magnum and complete the entire game only using the Plasma Pistol (Hunters are a real threat without the Magnum).
Hell, last week me and Batguy completeled half of ODST and I haven’t been using the pistol and instead been sniping Covenant with my AR or Spiker.
Because a small pack magically heals you instantly, that’s realistic.
In Halo, you’re playing in the future and Master Chief is wearing an advanced suit, so regen makes sense.
No, shield gen might make sense, but even then, would your power not run out at some point? Why should you not have to pick up batteries to ensure your suit keeps regenerating at some point? The excuse ‘you’re in the future, you’re the master chief’, I’m sorry, is just a lazy copout. They chose regen because it made the games somewhat easier. Halo and Halo Reach are infamous for being the hardest games in the series for a good reason.
Actually, the “reason” is because Chief swapped out to a new suit in Halo 2 that uses Nanomachines (Yes, this copout was done before Metal Gear Solid 4).
Although that still doesn’t explain why he can now only take 1/3 the damage or why they can’t revive him.
I totally get why you think this, but I wouldn’t be able to play most games as this is exact thing is great compensation for my lack of skill.
This is a more than fair point, I think it’d be cool to see a shooter that gave you the choice to play with regen health or with medpacs personally.
I actually thought that would have made Deus Ex 3 a whole lot better. Make your health regenerate up to 20% of your max and give the players the ability to increase this rate by 20% per upgrade. So some people might be comfortable with a Dudebro shooter where their inventory is just a big weapon while other people might be happy using that inventory for health packs.
I’m getting really bothered by regenerative health as of late. It really limits the game and forces you to play a specific way.
1. Take Cover.
2. Been damaged? Stay in cover.
3. Poke out and shoot everybody.
4. When shot duck behind cover.
5. GOTO 2.
I’m also getting really annoyed of explosive hallways. Where you’re running down a corridoor and everything is exploding for no reason. If you attach yourself to a zip wire then there will be even bigger explosions.
I also hate the “cutscene badass” where they’ve scripted someone being a total badass even though it’s unbelievable. Captain Price was awesome in CoD 4. After that he started defying the laws to be badass. The worst moment was when in MW3 he simply knocks on a door while sneaking through an enemy bass, and without looking through the eyepiece in the door let him in and you watch him instantly kill 3 guys with perfect accuracy.
Sounds like you just hate call of duty.
I liked CoD up until CoD 4. After that I had trouble enjoying the franchise until Black Ops 2 came out.
I know a US Police Department that could use Captain Price’s services
Zombies. Seriously. I’ve been a horror fan for over half my life, but just stop. Please.
Completely agree. It’s too much now cause thetes just too much.
Yeah gotta admit, I’m a huge zombie fan and it’s had its day(z) already. Seriously. There’s enough games out already and it’s been done to (un)death. Please, time to move on for a few years…
Still waiting for the perfect zombie game to followup the gems like L4D and Typing of the Dead. Too many promising contenders of late turned into DayZ clones, with the whole, “The deadliest foe is MAN!” PVP arena bullshit with zombies only being used as mildly-inconvenient environmental hazards.
ZombiU! \o/
The Walking Dead (Telltale) is the only good zombie game I have ever played.
Zombies are the new modern shooter, which was the new WWII shooter, etc.
Next big idea to come out, we’ll grow sick of that theme as well.
Underwater levels.
Escort quests – my patience doesn’t stretch that far
Chest high walls – because yeh
Angsty teen – jrpg designers need to get over this
Palette swap – new colour on same skin = new enemy
Controllable helplessness – think cloud during that memory scene or drake during the desert
Plot gating – your character based on his/her exploits should easily be able to pass a locked door or obstacle (because I can summon a fire demon or am capable of lifting 2 tanks etc) but the game says no
But I know this already – preventing you from passing a point (more prevalent in new game + situations) until you “learn about it” in game when you already know about it in detail
Brown and Bloom – because this clearly means something is more realistic right guys? the real world does not have beautiful things nor a varied colour palette.
Gravelmouth – gravelly voiced main characters just because, not that it doesn’t work but hell, some variety would be nice.
Among others but those come to mind
Blocked staircases. Such a dumb thing to whinge about but it just irks me.
Impassable iron gates get right on my nerves, especially when – more often than not – they are wide enough to just slip through. The God of War series is beyond guilty of this. Also, just recently when playing Outlast I was frustrated that I couldn’t scale a wall to gain access to a locked area of the asylum. Instead I had to search for the conveniently located ‘hole in the fence.’
Games like Skyrim where:
“You cannot unlock this door because you are not a high enough level”
But can I smash the fucking door in because I’m the goddamn Dovahkin and ruining DRAGONS is all in a days work, why should a *door* stop me?
Can I smash the window in because it’s just goddamn GLASS?
:\
Those push a block on ice puzzles (Pokemon/Zelda)
I hate them with a passion…
The latest Skylanders makes those a regular occurrence!
Russian, middle eastern and chinese bad guys in AAA FPS. Mix it up a bit. Homefront was a dodgy game, and its premise was a bit far fetched, but it was nice to have North Korea as the badguy and the USA as the setting. And while we are at it, the USA as the good guys all the time. Surely even people from the US might get a kick out of playing a different nation? Not saying the USA has to be the badguys, but they don’t have to be the good guys either – they don’t have to even feature.
There was a spate of movies over the last decade that were cool in some small part because they used britain instead of the US as the nation of focus (Children of Men, V for Vendetta, 28 days later), and its hardly like focusing on Britain instead of the US is that big a leap. I didn’t get into the game (not my thing) but I really liked that Far Cry 2 was set in Africa and its climate/landscape seemed a bit more novel for a video game as a result. And part of STALKER and Metro’s success were their post apocalyptic russia/ukraine setting – so cool until it itself started becoming a bit of a trope (with Arma and DayZ contributing as well).
Would US gamers really be that turned off by greater exploration of settings that didn’t involve American landscapes or Americans? Maybe they’d like the change too.
Possibly why I enjoyed Metro so much, playing as the Russians was rather cool 😀
By the same token, easily the weakest part of 28 weeks later was the infection of US actors/characters.
Forget simply ‘not being US-centric’… I really want to see something that might expose the US as the international assholes they are. Spec Ops was decent for that.
Farm Simulator 2014: Afghanistan DLC
*BOOOOOOOOM*
“I was just planting my crops and now you come and blow it up, kill most of my family and send me a note saying ‘Turns out your daughter’s boyfriend had the same surname as a guy we reckon might have been a terrorist because he said he wasn’t entirely happy about us bombing his relatives last week so we thought we’d better bomb him to be sure, have a nice day‘ What the fuck, Obama?”
You know what I’d love to see lose its american setting? Fallout. I know its a very specific pastiche of american culture and paranoia but how cool would it be to see how western europe fared after the war?
Definitely. I’d love to see a European setting. Infact, I’d LOVE to have it that you’re a survivor in Europe, who’s descended maybe from one of Europes version of the Vaults, called something else, and the Brotherhood of Steel is trying to now cross into Europe and stake a claim there too via old ships they’ve repurposed.
And being treated as invaders because everyone there still blames both America and China for the war & destroying the planet. Brewing war between an American & Chinese faction and you’re some random French person stuck in the middle of it
So let me get this straight… we play as cheese eating surrender monkeys!? SACRE BLEU!!!!!
It’d be ideal for destroying that imbecilic trope if a Frenchman turned out to be the biggest badass in Europe.
It’d be even better if you were given a choice of major european nationalities when making your character and the game adapted by bombarding you with the usual national stereotypes to subvert
Imagine if you were a german and had to fight against the invading american hordes of the flag waving BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL while allied with the European variant, who incidentally were… German…
Imagine that shit…
😀
waist high fences/rocks/bushes etc that your otherwise super hero-esque character can’t climb over…
Fixed camera angles. No excuses for not allowing it in this day and age. Contrary to what designers might believe it’s actually not fun trying to fight enemies when your fixed camera angle is staring at a tree in the foreground. 3D jumping is also difficult to judge if you can’t accurately line yourself up due to the camera positioning.
It’s especially annoying when they pop up out of the blue in a game that otherwise allows free camera, just because they want to restrict what you can see at some arbitrary point.
Your complaint on fixed camera angles sounds more like a complaint on the implimentation rather then the concept and mechanic itself.
Fixed camera angles can actually work amazingly well in games, especially games trying to present a sense of claustrophia like the original Resident Evil games, its just that the placement of the camera angles often isnt concidered enough when modern games do it
Games not letting you break the rules and come up with your own strategy.
GTA5 might be open world but so much of the action sequences are scripted so you can only progress a certain way from cutscene to cutscene. Conversely something like Dark Souls doesn’t hold your hand and you can approach challenges any way you choose.
Monster closets…
“Oh hey, here’s that health/ammo/gun you need… sitting in the middle of the room… for no particular reason… you should probably pick it up… go on… nothing will happen”
*walks in the opposite direction*
Not only ledges you ‘should’ be able to jump over, but small steps you should be able to walk over.
Eg: Battlefield 4, there could be a small step about 10cm high, but you have to jump to go over it.
Not being able to skip the game company’s intro screen at the start of the game. Not gameplay related but insanely irritating after a while.
True. If I enjoy the game, I find myself curious for more. I search up who did what and if there could be more. Having the option to skip feels like a bit of freedom.
Heck yes. Stuff like that is a disproportionately big mental barrier for me. What’s great about, say, Windows Solitaire or most mobile games is that you click the icon, and then within seconds you’re in the middle of actually playing the game. Knowing you have to sit through a full minute or two of logos and legal screens and menus and loading screens is enough to put me off playing a game a lot of the time.
“Wev’e got a bit of a lull in the action here, let’s just have a giant shootout.”
Amnesia as a character/plot device (JRPGs are the worst for this). Ugh.
Also the unlikely hero thing.
Stupid Ally AI. Nothing is more frustrating than allies that just run around getting killed or blocking your progress, or waiting around while you’re sitting in the exit, etc.
I cant attack that target. That right there is some of the most infuriating bullshit ever to crop up in MMOs. The bad guy is RIGHT THERE, but you know what? No, you have to let him go, to cause more problems, BECAUSE PLOT AN LORE DURR HURR. Get a f***ing clue blizzard.
When you shoot someone with a silencer-less gun, bang into a wall or even knife someone in a “stealth kill” and have them scream out in pain, and nobody else hears because sound only travels 10m in a game and they’re 10.1m away. Metal Gear Solid was one of them. Grab a soldier from behind and snap his neck, and you get a bunch of “UGH!” sounds, then a loud thump as you drop him on the ground. Do that behind another soldier and watch the soldier go on like normal.
Also, invincible items. GTA V was notorious for this. I could literally punch a light post and have it fall down, but run into a telephone pole doing 150km/h and you’re flung through the windscreen while the pole stands as if you didn’t even hit it.
Finally, terrible AI that interprets everything as a threat. GTA V again had this. Standing at the top of Mount Chiliad admiring the view, standing next to a guy. I press the crouch button and within 2 seconds flat, the guy was on the phone to the cops. They show up, I tear off down the mountain on my bike and get destroyed by a cop car who decided off the edge of the cliff above is a GREAT place to drive. For crouching and looking suspicious for less than two seconds.
Sounds fine to me. I nearly got arrested in real life in Vienna for taking photos on holiday. I was out for a morning walk, had a 3D camera and took some photos of a big intersection as it had great depth with the trams etc.
About 5 mins later I am walking back to my hotel and a police car pulls in in front of me, two minutes later a second one pulls over and I am trying to prove my identity (with my passports and everything back at the room) all because someone phoned in that I was indulging in ‘suspicious activity’.
So, yeah, thank god I wasn’t crouching at the same time, they may have just shot me on the spot.
The word ‘trope’ that suddenly became popular.
What about ‘stereotype’ that we were all content using?
games without a jump button, even if it serves NO purpose at all in the game in any way, just the ability to jump makes it feel 100% more immersive.
I cant count the number of games, ive installed, started…. “wait… no jump? Da Fuq?” /un-install
The only exception is isometric view games.
I imagine walking around places with you to be rather entertaining.
You must have hated The Last of Us then…
haven’t played it, dont own a PS3.
Kind of niche, and disappearing as of late, but…
The existence of a “crouch” button, but no “jump” button, resulting in being unable to step over small obstacles, like 6″ tall rocks, or small logs. The crouch button indicates I have knees, but apparently they can only be engaged simultaneously at low speed…
Also, escort quests – NPCs are stupid at the best of times. Why do they always get more stupid when we have to ensure their survival?
There’s a few games I’ve played – among them Bioshock Infinite, Splinter Cell Conviction, the GTA’s where if that was real life you would be in the electric chair after the first level.
The amount of wholesale murder in some of these games is over the top. Red Dead Redemption managed to keep it sane by giving you a setting where gun violence was a way of life and giving you non-lethal alternatives – any time you were forced to kill you were usually riding with lawmen hunting down bandits.
The portrayal of men in video games. Gruff, dark, white and they love saying “next time, the beers are on me”. The reality of sexism is that feminism at times paints these stereotypes as “positive” and “accurate” whilst the damsels are awful role models. How about we try and get rid of ALL stereotypes and tropes instead of endorsing racism and sexism by omission?
4-player co-op where one of the 4 characters (its always 1, never 2 or 3 or 4, and not often zero) is female and the other 3 male. She shall be named “token”. (looking at L4D1, L4D2, Borderlands1, Borderlands 2, what we’ve seen of Evolve so far).
Random battle encounters in JRPG’s. There’s no excuse for them anymore!
Combat music. It’s especially the case in RPGs and MMOs: You are running along through the wilderness, alert to danger, feeling a growing sense of dread…..and then this intense combat music, ominous strings and low brass starts up, you panic and start spinning in all directions, looking for the mystery assailant, tasting blood in your mouth as you bite your lip in fear, your hands numb around the hilt of your just-unsheathed 2h-sword…..
…actually no you don’t do these things or feel these things. You sigh, and prepare to one-shot a wolf or a boar or something that you accidently ran too close too thus triggering combat music, or maybe you just keep running until you are out of range.
How about this: combat music is dumb – it is atmosphere-creation for lazy, unimaginative developers. How about just some plain old sound effects. if there is a pesky wolf on my tail, a few dog barks should suffice. If it is a 4-headed, 35metre long argentino-dragon-hydra, then surely you can get my pulse racing with some loud dragon cries and ground rumbling footsteps and fire crackling around me, without the combat music nonsense. Hell, one of the first things i do in most new games is adjust the audio settings to turn the music down to lower volume relative to everything else.
Scripted action sequences. I’m currently playing through the new Tomb Raider game which is surprisingly fun but my big pet peeve is the scripted action/QTE sequence which is telegraphed a mile away. You can be running down a crumbling path, start climbing a rope and on the other side you see a climbable cliff face with no purpose, which means in a few seconds, an enemy is going to start cutting the rope behind you, so you can dramatically swing onto the cliff. He’ll be here in 3, 2, 1…. right on schedule. Yawn. I don’t know why they do this. The fact that it’s so transparent sucks away any sort of tension. At that point, why even bother having these dramatic action sequences.
Another pet peeve that annoys me obsessive collector/explorer in me is common in dungeon crawlers and JRPGs where they have some gated area which you can’t enter until some much later part in the game. So you start trying to ‘solve’ a puzzle that doesn’t exist to open the door, you backtrack, start looking for things you might have missed. Eventually you read a FAQ. Oh, you can’t go in there yet, which of course they just don’t tell you.
Being a strong or superhuman person and getting blocked by a flyscreen door that you need a key for
Middle Aged – Stubbled – Straight – Entitled – White Men as the main characters for the story line. I hate the fact that regardless of storyline the character design is boring and transparent.
*EDIT
In groups of main characters;
The Large/Fat/Muscular white guy
The token racial stereotype
The token female character (often poorly dressed or barely dressed at all)
And of course you, the middle aged white male…
Sports games such as the NBA ones where the game decides there will be some games that you aren’t allowed to, and cannot win, because the AI cheats the ball off of you.
Rejected.
Not being able to pick up the guns from a dead guy and use them.
Not being able to drive the damn car I want to drive after I spent my own time earning enough money to buy it- this experience/level system is what killed Gran Turismo. Not going to miss it though because it’s a stale dead environment game, only the cars move.
Also I realized there was only so many times in my life I was going to be willing to do the damn licence tests, and I hit that limit during GT4. If Gran Turismo ever becomes good again, there should be a way for people who were ‘there from the start’ to be given a free pass on all the licences, I don’t care how they do it, I just want results.
The need to throw in a female character.
Extreme railraoding, where the game requires you to do something incredibly obviously stupid to progress.
“I’ve been EVERYWHERE! I can’t find what I’m supposed to do! What the hell does the game want me to do next?!?”
“There’s this guy you missed.”
“Yes and he’s obviously going to kill me when I set him free, no thanks.”
Eventually in a fit of desperation and/or insanity you go and free him anyway and things go just as badly as you expected.
“You’re evil and terrible for freeing such an obviously evil person!” says the game. “Here, I want you to feel bad for doing this thing you had no choice but to do. Aren’t I just so wonderful and controversial?”
Meanwhile, your character is now trying to complete a puzzle to do with the sense of smell and having trouble because the obvioulsy evil guy has now cut off your nose.
Cracking out the good textures for usable doors and using bland ones for the ones that you can’t