What are some of your game design pet peeves?

A few of mine are:

1. Unevenly applied difficutly: It is truly annoying when delevopers insert a super difficult boss fight in the beginning of a game or when the difficulty peaks early and then the rest of the game is a cakewalk. When I first play a game, I want to ease into it and I want the game to start to get harder and harder as I progress. 
 
2.  Bland environments: IMHO, the worst thing a developer can do make awesome game mechanics but then drop the player into a bland environment. It's a damn shame when this happens.   
 
3. Awful cameras: Bad cameras have the potential to ruin what would have otherwise been a good gaming experience. Ninja Gaiden 2's camera was atrocious and basically ruined that game for me. And that's a shame since I loved the first one.  
 
4. Ideas that don't mesh: Basically what I'm talking about here is when developers slaughter the pacing and flow of their game by inserting something that doesn't make sense in the context of the game. A good example of this is the Werehog in Sonic Unleashed. If the game had consisted of just Sonic levels, I think that it would have been his return to glory. But they just had to go and brutally murder most of the potential that game had with the generic archaic and clunky Werehog levels.   
 
5. Loading a game with cutscenes: As much as I liked Metal Gear Solid 4, the overload of cutscenes came across as a glaring flaw, a flaw that I'm surprised people defend. To me, the cutscenes in that game messed with the overall pacing of the game so much that I think its unexcusable. I mean, there were mission briefings that could go on for a half-hour. Not cool.
 
There was no reason that the cutscenes had to be as long as they were. Not all that shit is important and most of that technical mumbo-jumbo is not even interesting. It was begging to be cut IMO. Kojima wasn't thinking economically at all.  
 
And Metal Gear isn't the only one. I thought Bayonetta was awesome but it would have benifited from shorter cutscenes.

• Unskipable cut-scenes.  At the very least, you should be able to skip them after seeing it one time.
• Game controller settings that can't be remapped to your personal tastes.
• The "silent protagonist".  I'm a little tired of this even though I understand the reasoning behind it.  The truth of the matter is Mass Effect has spoiled me and now I want all my protagonists in RPGs to be voiced.  Dual voiced ~ one male and one female. 
• Locked in difficulties.  Okay, I can see developers linking achievements to specific difficulties, but I should be able to drop down or bump up the difficulty in any game at any point. 
• Limited save slots.  I can understand this on handhelds since there is limited space, but there is no reason for this to persist on consoles.
  

• Clichés. They annoy  me to no end...

• Escort Missions - Nuff said 
  

* The inability to pause a section of gameplay or cutscene, games need to realise that real life can sometimes intervene

I have to agree with the long dungeon levels, they're a bitch. When a game lacks real story, this doesn't really matter in the linear games, as the story is usually well written and is half the game (uncharted 2 for example), but it can be lacking in some the open world games, Fallout 3 for example, which I could never get into.

• I have come to hate the "silent protagonist" concept with every fiber in my body, i really hate it. it doesn't need to be fully voiced, the dude just needs to talk dammit!
• I also hate escort missions....they are truly the epitome of annoyingness!

for me, its either bad physics "ragdolls, debris, whatever"   or glitchy environments. 
 
huge load times also kinda annoy me

• No AI bots! Not everyone has onIine!! 
•  No spIitscreen! 
• Escort missions!
•  UnskippabIe cut scenes!!! Fucking hate them.. 

Silly little mini-games that are only at one part in the game, and are really hard/annoying to complete, making me ragequit and return later after calming down... :p 
 
Okay, I'm talking about the asteroid mini-game in Dead Space... that's the only example I can think of, actually.

Camera's over all. They've ruined potentially great games.

Mandatory sidequests. That is, things in the main game that are clearly meant to expand the 'official playtime' that  easily could have been optional sidequests, but some fool wanted "60 hours of gameplay!" on the box so now that bullshit is mandatory. Can't stand it. There is no quicker way to get me to give up on your game.

Online Achievements - They are difficult to do when nobody plays
 
Unaddressed glitches/hacks - When everybody knows of a glitch/hack and the developer does nothing about it.
 
Trees made out of TITANIUM - Self explanatory

Weight/carry limits - e.g fallout, oblivion

• Invisible/illogical walls - Invisible walls are obvious.  "Illogical walls" are barriers disguised as something that the player should easily be able to either hop over or get around.  For example... a double jumping Wolverine (from X-Men) can obviously jump over a god damn side-rail when on a bridge.
• Missable achievements/trophies - Why the fuck would you want a player to replay the whole game again because he/she/it missed a particular sequence that had an achievement tied to it?  Batman: Arkham Asylum/Assassin's Creed 2 - I'm looking at you.
• Repeating actions for bosses - These are when the play finds out how to damage the enemy, but then learns he has to repeat those same actions a number of times in order to defeat the boss.  Batman's fight against Bane and Uncharted 2's final boss are examples of this, with Zelda being repeat offender.
  

" * The inability to pause a section of gameplay or cutscene, games need to realise that real life can sometimes intervene "

Fucking quick time events during cut scenes
Having to mash on a button to open a door or chest 
Inventory limits 
having to walk up to ammo and push a button to pick it up.

-Limited Save Slots 
-The inability to pause, rewind, or fast forward cutscenes in games. With all this talk about control over your entertainment when talking about games, it's amazing that I'm forced to sit through a cinema without the ability to pause it for a break or rewind and fast forward, something that's been afforded us since cassettes. I can't count how often I've been in the middle of a cutscene when I get an important phone call or an emergency happens at my home that requires me to leave the screen for a while. Sure, some games can have their cinemas paused for the 360 by pressing the guide button but there's always that one game that decides to overwrite the ability to do so, baffling me in the process.

The only thing that really gets me is bad AI. I mean the kind of AI that just bullet dodges like Neo or reads my button presses and reacts so quickly that it feels like I'm controlling both my character and the NPCs.

Makes it feel more like the game's playing me instead of the other way around.

Hmm, let's seeeeee
 
~ Unskippable cut scenes, I REALLY hate ones that happen before you even get to the main menu, both story cut scenes and the developer logos UGH!
~When they copy a game play element from another game. At least be original!
~Bad camera angles!

Achievements obtained by completing the game on its hardest difficulty.  I hate that more than anything.

Pointless "Press Start" Screens. Why do they exist? 

"I am Ken Block, and this is Dirt 2!" - Gee, really?! I thought this was Tetris.

I don't like the way most games treat swords like big blunt hammers, where you have to hit a person a whole bunch of times to kill them. I mean, okay, if you could one-hit-kill everybody it would be stupidly easy, but compare Dead Rising (which I didn't even like, overall) where antique store katanas can slice through multiple zombies with one swing, to Darksiders, where you have this gigantic, kick-ass sword that you need to swing into ordinary demon minions seven or eight times to kill them.

• Press Start screens
• When next to each menu item it explains what it is e.g. New Game - Click this to start a new game. WELL NO FUCKING SHIT.

Personally I hate sections in a game that are cheap as hell. I'll give you an example.
 
Remember that fucking pillar in God of War you had to climb to get out of the Underworld, you know the one with the blades sticking out of it. I died so many times from that the game offered me the Easy difficulty. I got even more pissed when the game said only battle would be affected. 

" I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the cutscenes, they're parts of games that i look forward to the most.  Although in the case of MGS4, i somehow felt they weren't quite as awesome as some of the previous games...that whole game was a bit of a disappointment to me.  Setting the difficulty is hard, because they've been spending all their time on a game, they know how it works, so it's hard to judge.  I personally hate annoying long 'dungeons' or levels, which are just tedious and don't add much to games. "

Bad save systems.  Being forced to replay huge chunks of a game isn't fun.  Some
examples:

• Ninja Gaiden Black (and NG2, I've heard, but I haven't played it yet) - I just  beat the area boss.  Look, there is a save point on the other side of a  platforming section.  If you fall before you make it to the save point, you  have to beat the boss again. Not putting a checkpoint immediately after the boss doesn't make your game hardcore; it's just bad game design.
  
• Lost Odyssey - There are several sections that have about an hour and a half  of playtime between save points, at least one of which is has a boss fight at  the end.  There are at least checkpoints during that time which covers you if  you die, but if you have to shut off the game to go do something else, you're  screwed.

Backtracking.  That's why I don't get very far in Metriod games.