Mine always is, completely forgetting what I was doing and where I was going after not touching a save file for a long time. This is happening to me right now with Stardew Valley.
I’m in Year 4, married Maru, have a decent farm going, I have yet to build the movie theater I just found out so that’s something I can do. And I know up until that point, I called it a conclusion of a game, but yet I forgot completely about there being some minor goals or things I wanted to do. Completely out of my head. It was a year ago since I last touched that save.
This happens a lot with old saves, because sometimes I have had something in mind as to how I was going to play the game or where I was going with a character.
Broadly, where the optimal path is the boring or tedious path.
Imagine an action game where you fight monsters and get coins for defeating them. Coins can be exchanged to buy new moves, advance the plot, and so on. Basic game loop.
Now imagine that you get triple coins if you wear the red shirt when fighting red monsters. Every time you see a red monster, you could go into the menu, into equipment, into body armor, swap on the red shirt, exit all the menus, and kill the monster. Then repeat all that for blue shirt and blue monsters.
This is a made up example but some games do shit like that, where you have to do something tedious for a big payoff.
Your example sounds like Ikaruga if it were deliberately designed to be annoying.
…We probably shouldn’t give any mobile game developers any ideas.
Purposely obtuse mechanics for the sake of “difficulty.”
Lack of gameplay options and cheats. I’ve never thought a game was worse because it had cheats. Quite the contrary.
My major pet peeves with games is that features available in a game are often absent in a sequel, or revamped for no reason. Unless a game receives critical reception these days, I often buy games that have been released a year ago to increase the chance they get fixed with patches.
Example: the notorious Civilization series.
When games have a designated button to show interactive elements in the environment
This just screams “we don’t know how to make an uncluttered game”
“A large open world to explore!” - by slowly walking or teleporting.
Since Steam implemented the notes feature, I can remember what to do, like if I don’t have time to explore a place but the game already marked visited simply because I went there, etc.
I’ve often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don’t keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A “previously…” kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don’t think it’s worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
Death Stranding 2 offers this feature. Useful, since the story is kookydooks.
I started the first one and really liked the little walking I did in the first hour and a half, but I just tapped out after that because of the ratio of cutscene to game. … I should play them.
With games like Elder Scrolls, they have the quest log that usually keeps track of things you have done.
But I have seen a couple games, not a lot, that have a thing very much like a “Last time on…” with dialogue/cutscenes telling you what the story is thus far that you either can optionally select from a menu OR, that just play as the loading screen whenever you load the game up instead of just a spinning widget and a static image/screen.
It definitely should be used more. I probably would not start an entire new game just because I stopped half-way through and didn’t remember jack shit when I go to play again.
Games that dont let you skip the tutorial and all cutscenes. Like I get that most people want to watch the story or read the dialogue but I dont.
Games that are to easy. Its so annoying when a good game spends way to long scaling up the difficulty and you have to play for like 10 hours before the fights stop being completely mindless. Its such a waste of time.
My last pet peeve is for sandbox games and myself. Its so annoying when I have built a thing that has a lot of intergrated parts and then I decide to do a massive redesign of some part. Then I remove the parts and dont finish building the replacement. So next time i log in im immediately hit with an entire system that doesnt work and I have try clean up my own mess.
So many games have like ~10-15 seconds of unskippable logos whenever you open the game and it pisses me off every single time. I don’t understand why they still do this.
On PC, often those are short videos. If you can find those files, you can remove the file and they won’t play. Pcgamerwiki is helpful
They’re almost always .bik files somewhere in the game directory. I have no clue why so many games still insist on using this specific format in particular even today, but at least it makes them easy to find. I have determined that quite a few games will barf if you delete the files outright, but if you just replace them with an empty text file with the same name it will still allow the game to launch.
Console players are usually out of luck.
I hadn’t heard of PCGamerWiki before, and it looks super useful. Thanks!
Money changed hands, so they have to show them. It’s advertising for the other companies that they worked with, or building up brand recognition for the publisher, etc. In the best case scenario, they mask a load screen, but I’ve found plenty where they don’t even start loading until after the unskippable logos.
I’d really like to see a set of publishers/creators that take a hard line stance on this, and reject contracts with, eg, Speedtree, if they insist on a dedicated startup video.
Kudos to Arc Raiders. When I boot it up, aside from an EAC launcher logo, it goes straight to Speranza.
Iirc Masahiro Sakurai (the guy from smash bros) openly stated to he refused to work with dolby in Kirby in the forgotten land because they insisted their logo be plastered before the title screen.
Unpausable and unskippable cutscenes
God, yes… it’s literally an interactive medium… like, I AM the story, motherfuckers 😂
Been playing Monster hunter World recently and holy crap is that game obnoxious with the cutscenes, even mid-fight if a monster you’ve never seen before happens to wander past.
Unpausable is unforgivable in the modern age but I generally don’t mind unskippable if and only if it’s the first time the scene plays on a profile.
- Games that offer stealth as an option over combat, but have mandatory combat bosses.
- games that have excessive grinding as part of the main gameplay.
- Games where randomness is the primary factor in winning and losing.
Sounds like Baldur’s Gate 3.
Games that offer stealth as an option over combat, but have mandatory combat bosses.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a great game, but this was a serious issue. The game has a (notoriously buggy) achievement for finishing the game without killing anyone, but every boss requires a loadout of lethal weapons to take down, leaving a minimum of slots for non-lethal alternatives. Very annoying.
I hate RNG so much 😂 I don’t get it. Life has too much RNG, I play video games because it’s a predominantly skill-based controlled environment.
It’s like picking up a piano and there’s a 35% chance F# is just F every time you play the damn note 😂
I guess it makes sense if you’re role playing and want your experience to mimic real life, which is why they’re mostly used in RPGs, but I also feel so immersed playing skill-based games without RNG, so I can’t assess its actual value.
The reason they’re in RPGs is the same reason they’re in any other genre. In a war game, you could be a tactical genius, but the RNG is there to simulate dumb luck, so the game is about forcing you to play the odds, because victory is almost never guaranteed. When the result is deterministic, there can often be a single 100% correct answer, and RNG throws a wrench in that. Something similar can be applied to loot games, where you’re rolling with the punches based on what you’ve found.
I’m just glad my favorite games don’t have any of this and are still infinitely replayable.
Would you mind listing some of those? Because that’s a tough bar to clear.
Ayyy, I love linking to Gamebrary: https://gamebrary.com/b/pUM4ceVfPR2l9K2qqLDN
I mean, character action games and score chasers do tend to fall in that optimal answer bucket. You’re free to freestyle and get a lower score, but without RNG, there will be one way to play that always works. If that counts as infinitely replayable, then so does any other game you enjoy. And for fighting games, that RNG is just substituted for your opponents’ decision making.
You’re free to freestyle and get a lower score, but without RNG, there will be one way to play that always works.
Most score you on style as well, not just efficiency. And massive breadth and depth of combat interactions yield more than one way that works, not just one. Even for shmups, routing can vary depending on the player, their skill, and understanding of the game. It’s not a timid sandbox wherein only one way works.
If that counts as infinitely replayable, then so does any other game you enjoy.
Keyword is enjoy. I don’t see myself replaying DMC5 for as long as I’ve been playing some of my favorite games because I enjoy it less.
And for fighting games, that RNG is just substituted for your opponents’ decision making.
Hmm… how does that work? I hit my opponent, they take damage, no Xcom bullshit. I don’t see any RNG-like behavior in this interaction.
I don’t mind RNG, I mind games that rely on it over proper design. Xcom has tons of RNG, but it’s generally still possible to win most maps with proper strategy. Most roguelikes have this problem where any given run is impossible to win regardless of play.
Point no. 2 is why I couldn’t get through Witcher 1. There’s only so many times I can fight 3-5 sewer monsters to get enough XP to not die in chapter…4? 5?
You’ve described like 90% of modern gaming.
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Games that jump straight into things without letting me see the options menu first.
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Not having the Playstation icons as a preset when I want to use my PS4 controller on PC.
Skipping straight to action instead of main menu and options is annoying.
When I started playing [game name here, atm can’t remember it, it’s from warframe people] it immediately started a plot cutscene which wasn’t available later on. I sure wanted to see that plot presented in a 720p medium settings on my large 1440p display.
Sure, in the grand scheme of things the plot in the game is irrelevant as it can be, but damn it, let me enjoy it full screen.
They have likely fixed, but holy hell, why was it like that in the first place. Abysmal new player experience.
Unless I missed it, Where Winds Meet forces you to do an entire damn boss-fight before you can invert the vertical camera! Unbelievable. I realize I’m the freak for learning “flight control” aiming where down is up, but I’ve been doing it for decades; can’t change it now! It’s unhinged to not let people access or change options until after you’ve beaten a boss…
Yeah, I don’t like being shoved in an intro cinematic without being able to turn on subtitles.
I can’t remember specific examples (probably because I didn’t stick with any of them very long), but I’ve played several games that don’t even let you touch the options until after you’ve finished some tutorial section… which is especially annoying for players who play with inverted y axis.
I had to force the PS5 glyphs by creating a Game.ini file and inserting the appropriate lines to get the ps instead of Xbox button glyphs for my ds4 in Clair obscur the other day. It was definitely annoying.
Thanks to searching for a solution to that I found a mod to remove the abysmal sharpening, uncap cutscene frame rate, and remove pillar boxes on my 21:9 display though, so it all worked out.
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Menu -> Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down - > Exit Game -> Yes
Scroll Down -> Exit to Desktop -> Yes
Exit Launcher -> Yes
Jackbox is one of the worst offenders of this. Have to exit 4 times to actually exit the game.
Yeah, but accidentally clicking the quit button when you meant to click options or whatever and the game just instantly dropping you at the desktop is equally as annoying. Two click exit is a good compromise. Four is way too many though.
Alt+F4 is your friend!
Or on Steam Deck, quit the game using the steam menu.
I do appreciate the games that give you quit and quit to desktop in the same menu.
Any game ported to the PC needs to recognize controllers that are plugged in after launch and need to have a “quit to desktop” option.
Absolutely, especially with handheld PC gaming becoming more popular. Drives me nuts having to fiddle with settings just to get it functional only to realize I missed something that was critical for a game play mechanic
