What are some things that just get under your skin about games?
For me, it’s games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don’t all work. If I can’t rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.
And on console, where I can’t refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can’t play.
The fact that games act like climbing doesn’t exist. You reach a path blocked by a small rock that any normally able bodied human could climb and it just pisses me off.
Like Pokémon games with a rock you could easily just walk around but noooo you gotta travel to this other town to get a special item or learn a special skill to get around this thing you could easily climb over or walk around.
It’s even worse in VR games. As much as I love Half Life Alyx, there were certain barriers that are literally just a pile of rubble or a chain link fence.
Games that wont let you quit to desktop in game.
I’ve noticed this is especially bad in Japanese games for whatever reason.
PC Gaming market in Japan is treated like Second Class Gaming Citizens, sadly
Alaternatively, PUBG lets you quit to desktop from the in-game pause menu, and I’ve hit it accidentally so many times.
*flashbacks to The Forest pause menu having the exit game button in the same place as the back button*
So many times I backed out of settings by double clicking and accidentally closed the entire game and thus the multiplayer lobby I was hosting
May I introduce you to my good old friend:
alt+F4😬in old dos games “boss key” was usually ctrl+b or ESC
I never understood the point until I grew up a bit.
Honestly this is my favorite feature of the Steam Deck and SteamOS. I can (and do) even shut down the entire PC in the middle of a game.
Invisible walls. And I’m not saying the ones that are like way up out of the way that you have to nearly use glitches to get to. I’m talking the “walking down a city street and then you’re stopped in the middle of the road for no reason” kind. Like, you put area there that I can see, I want to go there. If you don’t want me to go there at least put something there to indicate it’s the edge of the map.
I want to GIT GUD but I’m not the kind of person who can dodge and parry while managing a stamina bar. ER and DS games look awesome but I really can’t do much sightseeing in them. I tried Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 3, and Elden Ring and in all of them I hit a wall against the first miniboss who I should be learning to parry on. I’ve always leaned toward dodging taking priority before parrying and a stamina bar limits that.
I recently played through Ghost of Tsushima and parried a thousand cuts. The game doesn’t have stamina though. I understand stamina as a game mechanic but find all it adds is tedium. There’s what I believe to be some good games hiding behind a stamina bar. I can enjoy the games until the stamina bar runs out and then I’ll be thinking about enjoying a different game.
The thing I hate about parrying games is that there’s rarely ever any consistency about what you can and cannot parry and also never any way for you to learn if you’re parrying too early or too soon or what.
Parrying is not mandatory in any of those games, maybe try approaching them differently? Also, invest in endurance, problem solved!
Odd take. Resource management is key in a lot of games to the entire design of how they play.
I play heavy tank builds in those games and block/dodge instead of parrying. It’s just a different mindset I guess to enjoy that level of resource managing to know when to commit and when to back off and get defensive, especially when my attacks take a chunk of stamina and are slow to wind up. It forces the player to be strategic so you don’t leave yourself winded mid string.
I guess what I call strategic playing you call tedium. To each their own.
Showing a long plot-explaining intro right after start, before I have a chance to get to “options” and set the resolution, subtitles, etc. I also “love” unskippable short logo videos at start. And a few screens with only “press any button to continue”.
Unskipable splash screens are the worst.
Luckily, at least in my experience, most of those are just a .mkv that you can either rename or delete and the game will just skip it entirely. Unfortunately that can’t be done on consoles
*cries in console*
unpausable cutscenes. Nothing bugs me more than getting interrupted in the middle of a cutscene and not being able to press escape to pause the cutscene. You’re forced to try to split your attention between what interrupted you in the cutscene or restart and see the cutscene from the beginning again.
Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it’s going to.
Another one is QTE in the middle of a cutscene, ugh.
I never pause cuscenes, not because I don’t want to ever but because I’m always afraid I’ll skip it instead.
All this. Everyone focuses on not being able to skip a cutscene but not being able to pause it is even worse for me, especially when trying to pause actually does skip the cutscene.
Being able to replay a cutscene would also be nice.
omg yes, I loved when games gave a replay stories or replay core concepts section of the menu, it’s not that hard to add but it lets you recap as well!
Feel like that used to be more common for games to have a “Movie/Cinematics” option in the “Extras” menus, treating cutscenes like unlockables, where you could go back and rewatch everything.
Really disappointing that more games don’t do this. It’s not like it’s a hard thing to add to a game code wise. It’s just a menu to the mp4 files with a “yes/no” check against the save file for if the scene has been unlocked or not.
It’s a sign of the times. When I was a kid the cutscenes were the reward for winning the game, or a portion of the game for those bigger games that could afford more than two cutscenes.
But for my kids cutscenes are the boring things that keep you from playing.
I mean I remember it being a thing all the way up to the OG Xbox before it started dying off.
Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it’s going to.
Rage inducing absolutely.
I’m up-voting as hard as I can…
For me, it’s cutscenes in general. I know there are people who do care in general, but for me a game where I care about the plot is very rare. And the examples I can think of (Outer Wilds, or Ico, for two examples) either have no cutscenes or very few brief ones, and tell the story in a different, more immersive way.
For me, a general rule is - if the game forces moments on me when I can put the controller down and wander into a different room, then that’s not what I’m interested in. I want to actually play the game.
My wife has the unique ability to always want my attention during cutscenes.
Overly-long, unskippable credits.
Chaotic good:
Make it skippable but “Let’s put an achievement for watching the whole credits”
Something something Kairi’s heart something something Riku! Something something
My particularly niche gripe is bad dialogue tree options. There are so many games where the mechanism is selecting an option and watching it play out, but so many of them are shit when it comes to the difference between what you see as the option and what actually is said/done. Heavy Rain did it. ‘What should the character say next? Unreadable zalgotext option A, or unreadable zalgotext option B?’ Or ones where the options on screen are ‘A) I thoroughly agree. B) I thoroughly disagree. or C) What?’ but selecting C means the character isn’t just asking for clarification because ‘What?’ actually points at the voiceline, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you piece of inhuman filth? I bet your a murdering rapist.’ If I can’t have some idea of what selecting an option will do, I’m not actually playing a game at that point. I might as well be trying to play Mario with a controller that remaps itself randomly.
Not being able to jump in a first person game.
Then coming across a knee high wall or something you can easily just walk over blocking progression but, nope, can’t jump and the game isn’t treating it like stairs.
It’s such a small thing but can completely take the wind out of your sails when playing.
Too many games are “survival” games now which really means they will make you do a bunch of chores to get to the sub par shooter or adventure game the chores gate you from. No, I don’t want to chop wood and get rope or whatever for the 50th game that never innovates on any of these mechanics to get to the “good part”
Also lots of fun games seem to be ruined because they are battle royales.
Survival mechanics only work when the elements are the main antagonist like in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (the zombies are just obstacles blocking my path to the fridge)
Games with abird sounds. This wouldn’t be too bad if i could turn them down or off but because of this I can’t play some games or spend time in specific areas of some games because it make my birds go crazy because they think there’s another bird in the house.
I wish we could individually turn up or down all of the different elements if sounds not just music/sfx/voice etc
Headphones?
Abuse of quick time events. Some overrated games are horrible about it. I think it should never be used.
Multiple un-skippable product and company credits at the start. Show a blinking “Loading…” if that is what is going on but let me skip this stuff on the second start onward.
Quests that demand that the player finds X of an unimportant item in a world which has exactly X instances of said item. Thankfully most games nowadays will offer up more of said item than needed to complete the quest, so that one doesn’t end up scouring the map over and over again, in search of that elusive last bottle/scroll/pigeon, because nobody got time for that. And not even talking about optional collectathon quests for those who want that sort of thing, some games would have this sort of quest in the main storyline.
To add, give me some way of tracking these collectables.
If I’ve collected all of the trinkets in a given area, mark that area in some way. If there are 100 trinkets, number them and give me a list. Give me a map, hints, thing that beeps, something.
I don’t need any of the above to be unlocked from the start. You can add it in the post game or after I’ve collected some percentage of them or make it a side quest.
It’s annoying going online and someone has posted “I found 99 of 100 things, where else to look?” and basically no one can help them. It’s annoying being that person, to be so close and yet so far.
It’s OK. You can say crimson nirnroot.
Why must you remind me of this repressed memory? The reward wasn’t even fucking worth it.
Gawwdan preventing rebinding is so annoying! Or it’s monkey paw wish cousin, letting you rebinding but the on-screen prompts are hard coded to display the default key.
In a simmiliar accessibility vein, I’m hard of hearing so when a game has no option for subtitles then at best I catch 1/3rd of the story.
