What annoys you about games?

So I just completed Diablo 3, and I'm sitting here watching the credits. I don't know if it's some weird homage to the devlopers or just some form of OCD, but I can't for the life of me skip credits. That got me thinking about things that I find super annoying in games. Here are a couple:

• Credits: Why do games do credits the same way as movies do? Movies do them this way because movies aren't interactive. Games are, you should use that. Even if the interactive part is something as simple as a slideshow, it would still be one hundred times better than non-interactive credits. This is getting to be a problem because the dev teams are so huge, and it's becoming more and more often to have a post-credits scene. Come on developers, fix this.
• Doors: I absolutely hate it when developers don't take the time to animate the opening of doors. Especially now that games are starting to look really good and believable, it takes me right out of the experience when my character opens the door with his mind. A huge offender on this part is Bethesda. I absolutely love the games they make, but it bothers me that they don't add simple animations for opening doors. It just looks lazy, like they figured it was acceptance for this before, so it's nothing that needs to be fixed.

That's ones I can think of at the top of my head. I'm sure there are others, so toss out your suggestions, and discuss. You're up duders.

Personally, I wish every open world should have a logo up front telling you whether or not you can keep playing after completing the story. Ideally, there should be some metric of how many story missions there are left, so I can figure out the right mix of side stuff and story missions, to avoid having to do like fifty side missions in a row just before the end of the game.

Having a Story Complete % would be awesome for games like that. Some already do it but others just have a global % completed so it's always very hard to tell exactly how long in the story you are.

How goddamn cynical everyone is getting. Maybe biased as im enjoying it but the overly negative response to civ:be is kind of depressing to me, and then there's fun harmless stuff like sunset overdrive that just gets roundly shit on. Can people be positive and try to enjoy their hobby first before becoming all harshly critical and jaded? Oh well, at least i'm trying to have fun gaming and i suppose that's what counts.

E: and multiple cumbersome exit menus on pc games. Just a simple quit to desktop button would suffice.

Fall Damage. No thanks.

What's going on with the forums today? Seems like the front page is exactly the same as at least 12 hours ago.

I don't think it's unfair for Beyond Earth to get the reaction it has been garnering, it's a little too close to Civ V for me, depends how much you played that probably.

Right now there are three things that grate me about VIDS.

• When are Sony gonna give us what we want? KNACK on PS Plus!!! Duh.
• Platform exclusivity and pre-order deals for games, these things are so anti-consumer.
• People saying "as a white male I cannot really relate, but..." when discussing feminism needs to go.

Every game that has challenges, achievements, or unlockables tied to "do X number of this" or "kill X enemies with Y gun type", etc, should have a statistics menu option where they show you how many you got. Collectibles should be displayed too, preferably divided by sections/stages so you know where to look...

No pause.

I am now an adult. I can no longer tell my mom to hold on until I get to the end of this cutscene or get to a save point. I have to stop playing video games immediately and deal with the real world. Your fucking game better pause.

Tutorials.

Is that a thing anymore? Can't remember playing any games that don't pause when you just press the home button on the controller. Multiplayer games obviously don't count.

Game design hasn't advanced in any meaningful way in a long long long time

I hate bullet sponges. I like to be rewarded for good aim and tactics.

Getting caught on invisible geometry barriers or edges when I'm trying to traverse the environment drives me fucking crazy. I felt like this was a real problem in Shadow of Mordor.

No more instruction manuals. Screw tutorials, one trip to the shitter and you were golden.

Exp systems in multiplayer. I don't need a dumb hook to keep playing your game if its good, just let me have all the tools to do fun things from the start.

The lack of new Quake ripoffs in my life is sorely depressing.

I'm kind of into games right now and don't have much to complain about other than too cluttered collectibles.

Oh, and standardize where we find the subtitle option, please.

@legion_: Oh it's totes still a thing. It's in the Souls games, and granted that's kind of their point, but it still means they're unplayable in my life situation. This might actually be a last-gen problem, never to be seen again, because wouldn't the PS4's suspend feature at very least freeze the game where it is?

I played something recently that would pause if you paused, but not if you pressed the guide button. Was weird.

Edit: someone said they hate bullet sponges, I love a bullet sponge provided they flinch. I hate when bad dudes no-sell shotgun blasts to the face.

I'm down for some spongeyness. Eg I've always liked the amount of hits Gears of War and Halo (Elite) enemies take. They feel like pushing over a big obstacle in a good way.

Then there is stuff like a lot of shooter RPG enemies (Borderlands, Destiny, GoW horde enemies etc) that just feel like you're filling some sort of bullet bucket until the game designer is like "Ok, I guess that's enough man, it will die now" and I just leave feeling put out even after a victory.

I have this peeve with going through doors and stuff like small rocks or debris on the ground. I clearly am able to move through this door/over this 8inch rock. Make it happen games!

You nailed it.

With Mordor, I repeatedly encountered scenarios where the number of enemies in this tight corridor were just too numerous to address. I'd try to haul ass away from the mobs, only to get, like, hung up on the elbow joint of a corner hallway, or the edge of a vertical blockade. The character just stops in those cases until the game just sort of lets you move again. Really frustrating.

To try and sum up the thing that annoys me most: lack of restraint. It encompasses a lot of things. Whether it be sequences and set-pieces that overstay their welcome or enemy encounters that essentially boil down to "we're gonna throw a whole bunch of enemies at you without any rhyme or reason," I absolutely hate it when there's just too much of something.

And I don't mean the good kind of too much like "this game has too much fun, varied content" or something. No, I mean the bad kind of too much that turns the game from fun to annoying because clearly no one on the design team stopped and asked, "hey, do you think all this bullshit is gonna be fun?"

Notable offenders include:

• Borderlands 2 - Who the fuck tested the single-player for this game and thought it was okay?
• Almost every Platinum game before Bayonetta 2 - While the games as a whole are usually great, there's usually a boss fight or an on rails sequence that goes on about 27 times longer than it needs to.
• FFXIII - "No no no, they're gonna love the first twenty hours. Trust me."
• Project Sylpheed (well, it's "notable" because i just played through it recently lol) - Proof too much color can be a bad thing. Even in space.

How I feel like games haven't meaningfully evolved since like 2004. If anything we've taken a step backwards in terms of game design thanks to this all encompassing philosophy that embraces the idea that the player should never fail. As opposed to embracing the idea that it's OK to fail, and doing something with that. You can literally count on one hand the number of games that have done that. And outside of graphical advancements, I don't think we've really taken any major strides forward in recent years, we're still just chasing the coat-tails of film and television.

I think credits in movies and games no longer serve a good purpose. The amount of people that work on any major film or video game is the size of a corporation that is fully matured. It's increasingly become impossible to know who did what on a film (unless you're Quintin Tarantino apparently, but I wonder if he can do that with modern films- I've only seen him do that with old films).

I'm not saying credits should be gotten rid of, but there has to be a better way. The reason I sit through credits in games (I don't for movies anymore because movie theater seats hurt my legs, and I have to sit in them too long these days as it is) is because sometimes they give you achievements for doing so and all it takes is some time to pass when the credits end. Also sometimes they have ending stingers or whatever (I don't mean John Hughes text montages or whatever, I mean actually acted out "after the story ended this happens" conclusions)- games have done this longer than film for the most part. Some games have an entire epilogue of information conveyed throughout a portion of the credits (see AC4- watch those credits). Speaking of an Ubisoft game, Ubisoft probably has the longest credits in all of their games. They seriously seem to be listing every single person who works in games at any given time. Their credits go on for an hour or more (hyperbole; actually it's usually around 20 minutes- which is still insane).

This became a complaint about credits, and the questioning of their function in modern movies and games, sorry.

It seems like most of my other complaints have already been mentioned, but I just thought of one. It's 2014, ya'll. It's time all mirrors in any video game shows a reflection. Don't ya think? It's become much harder to hide the inability to double render an image by just making mirrors look like polished metal (or not having any mirrors at all where there clearly should be). It's starting to come off as lazy and incompetent.

- Poor multiplayer map design. Don't make a room/alcove with one entrance. That's like putting a sign up that says "campers welcome".

- That virtually every FPS these days is a chaotic, bullet-spamming twitch shooter with blazing fast superheroes and jetpacks and shit.

- Breaking the fourth wall. Whether accidental or intentional, I find it insufferable because it ruins the immersion.

- Memes and other contrived "let's appeal to what we think the kids are into" crap. Just, no.

- The very existence of things like weed skins/themes, and worse, that morons like "xxchronicbluntsmoka420xx" pay actual money for them.

- Forced/scripted attempts at humor. I'd seriously be okay if games never tried to be funny again, because it falls flat and induces eye-rolling 99% of the time.

- Explosions, bright colors, and other lame Michael Bay "cinematic" visuals that take precedence over quality gameplay/storytelling.

- Conditionally accessible areas in open-world games. Let me explore on my terms, not on your linear rail.

- Lack of interesting stories/characters. Writing/character development has taken a nosedive. Games now just tell you what you're supposed to be feeling instead of making you feel it.

Not being able to pause cutscenes.

I remember being blown away when Kingdom Hearts 2 let me pause cutscenes, but it's 2014 and there are STILL games that don't let me do it.

When you fail or die and have to replay back to where you were.

Real things, places, or people portrayed unrealistically. Give some thought to authenticity, or just make something up

Man, you aren't kidding. I sit through all credits as a ritual of sorts after beating a game (plus to catch any after credits bonuses that some games have). Ubi's credits are the worst. I half-expect them to start crediting literally everyone in future games.

Special thanks to:

Jimmy John's delivery guy who brought the catering to the August 24th meeting.
Mechanic who fixed the radiator on Jennifer's Toyota Camry so she got to work on time.
Office Depot for providing reasonably priced, ergonomic desk chairs for the building.
Etc., etc.

@frostyryan: Not just pause, but skipping cutscenes is something every game needs. It's kinda hard playing Final Fantasy X, watching a cut scene, getting a game over for whatever reason, then being forced to watch it all over again.

@ripelivejam: I think Sunset is fantastic and fun.

@notnert427: Office depot with affordable products? I'd love to visit your Office Depot.

For the OP, I don't like the blandness. Open world games are just "Go here, collect this, bring it back. Then go here, kill 30 dudes, come back. Then go talk to this person, do whatever task they want, then come back." these days. It's too boring. I sort of appreciate that Shadow of Mordor tried something interesting, but the Nemesis system still just works in tandem with typical open world "quests". I don't know how to fix it, because I'm not a designer and haven't really put much time into it, but it makes open world games become tedious after a couple hours and become unbeaten in my backlog.

I gotta +1 ridiculously long credits.

I'm all for crediting people who worked on the game but endless "Thanks to" lists, pets and whatever is stupid. But what's REALLY stupid is listing all the management on the publisher side. Ubisoft is particularly bad for this, they will list every person in every development team in every country who even TOUCHED a piece of code (which takes forever) and then they'll list production managers, marketing people, community people and general upper management people from every one of those studios. Which is INSANE.

In movie credits they don't list V.P. of Marketing in the Asia branch of Warner Bro's advertising dpt. They list the people that worked on the damn movie.

For example, Rayman Origins credit's were at least 20 minutes, easily outdoing any film ever made. And that was a 2d, sprite based platformer.

The worst part is I like watching credits if I really liked the game, y'know, for the people who made it. But treating them like that just kills the whole point.

SHAPE UP UBISOFT/EVERYONE!

Totally agree about credits. I've talked about it before. It says a lot about the dev's narcissism when they put them after the ending of an INTERACTIVE piece of SOFTWARE. Games should make better use of the menus that are in almost all of them.

Someone already said it, but the negativity. So many folks are all too quick to point out failures and ignore successes. I know, I know, my enjoyment is the only thing that should matter, but being someone who frequents websites that are centrally focused on games, I see a lot of it. It does eventually get to you, even if it's just for a little bit.

I agree with you, at the same time there should be room for criticism. I think Beyond Earth in particular isn't worth the asking price. It plays and feels like a professionally made mod for Civ5. Some of the systems have changed, but every core feature while playing the game is near identical. It's okay for me to say that I don't like it for that reason.

The "Subtitles" option ALWAYS belongs under "Audio" as it is an option that affects how you absorb the audio of a game (listening vs reading)

I don't think any one thing about games has bothered me this much, which I consider a positive! Games are rad!

Games that begin before hitting the menu.

Let me get to the options menu before doing ANYTHING, game. Let me turn subtitles on, let me tweak the settings. Especially if you're a PC game that doesn't max out on my machine or auto-adjusts detail well, so that I don't have to watch your ever-so-cinematic opening at 5fps.

Also, unskippable startup logos. Yes, you used Speedtree. I get it. I got it 15 startups ago. I haven't forgotten that my experience would be so much better if I had an Nvidia card. If I could put one into this laptop, I would. But I can't, so stop.

Quick Time Events, nobody wants them, you may accept them, or put up with them, but is there a single person reading this who is going "boy, I sure hope the next big game has QTE's! I love those things!" IS THERE? Its only an assumption, but NO, they add NOTHING to games, and no one wants them, just let the cutscene play out as any other would, I'm not some child who needs to think I'm still controlling the game even when I'm not. Quit it developers.
Games that are actually based around a QTE experience obviously don't apply, your rhythm games or David Cage games.
But everybody else stop, stoooooooop.

The general lack of statistics.

Sometimes reading lots of text (think codex in Assassins Creed or Mass Effect) bugs me, more often in console games than PC. Something about trying to parse through paragraphs of text on a screen that's across the room. And if you try to read them right away, as you collect them, you're taking frequent breaks from the story/action that can be jarring. If you don't read them right away, you end up with a bunch of unread messages that starts to feel like work.

I know games have talked about the second screen experience for a while, but I've never heard of any that pulled it off well. Seems like this would be a case where reading game text on a tablet, at your convenience, would be a better experience that doing it directly in game.

Fucking This.

You wanna know how many statistics Beyond Earth has? Fucking Nothing. I end the game and it doesn't give me any of the garbage numbers that don't mean anything but are intensely interesting to me because I'm an idiot. I want population figures. I want Production Graphs. I want food rates. I want Score-Over-Time. I want to see how the world's borders changed over the period of play. That shit is fun to me, infinitely moreso than just being booted out to the start screen and being told to try again.

Tutorials for children's games and the children never pay attention. It's called know your audience.

Yeah I think you're on to something. I remember when I was younger, I loved getting lost in the game worlds of Guardians Crusade and Chrono Trigger. And I remember thinking "this would be so cool if I could go anywhere I wanted and explore in detail".

Then we get games like the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed and a ton of other open world games. But as much as I love a lot of those games, they feel like they don't have the same kind of soul that older games used to have. They feel flat somehow. I think the game that probably has come closest to making me feel like that kid again is Fable 2. That game just loves you so much, it's hard not to love it back.

I can't wait for the day when the norm in open world games is that you can do simple everyday stuff with your character. Like sitting down, cooking a meal, making a campfire. Stuff like that. I know it's silly in a way, but the immersion of stuff like that is key to making a open world game with a soul. I mean, what reason do you have to play after finishing the story, if the only meaningful interaction you have with the game is killing stuff?

Oh Skyrim... I wish you'd let me set up camps in the wilderness. I would literally never stop playing that game.

Final Fantasy X is more than a 10 year old game though. Yeah the HD version should have let you skip scenes but right off the top of my head, I can't think of a recent game that doesn't at least let you skip...

A couple of silly things from Shadow of Mordor, which I'm enjoying greatly otherwise: Always forget the functions of the option button and the touch pad which pulls up the map. Been playing for almost 20 hours and I'm still forgetting which is which. Also, when I pull up the map, it's hard to see my little icon in all that space. Would it have been so hard to offer a 'centering' option so you could find yourself easily?

/nitpitcking

AC: Black Flag is THE WORST with this. You bring up the map with the touch pad, and naturally you would think that closes it to. Instead, if you hit the touch pad again, it sets a map marker. It's hella annoying.

But yeah, nitpicking.

That there are too many of them I want to play and not enough time to play them all in? That they make me want to spend all my time with them at the detriment of nearly everything else in my life?

Gaming communities. I all but stopped going to sites and interacting with people because they are all so terrible. Nothing but bad experience after bad experience. It's just not worth the effort going through the people to play some games. Also every time I try to read about the industry or listen to what's going on all people seem to talk about is terrible gamers are being, or how everything sucks. I'm at a point now where I think I might be done with gaming as I have had it in my life for the first 28 years. I think I will just stick to watching trailers and seeing what looks neat. Tired of knowing a little bit about everything. Even stuff I will never play.

Infinitely respawning enemies. Feels really lazy and is never fun,only frustrating.

multiplayer trophies or achievements that require some specific task to complete they fuck me off big style. When im trying to play a game online and you got the one guy on your team letting your side down trying to do ten pistol head shots in a game.

Actually, I recently played through Enslaved on PC and it doesn't let me skip cutscenes. This is really frustrating when I quit after starting a new chapter, I must re-watch the entire intro when I come back to the game. Or if I fail some some bosses, I must go through the cutscene again.

Given, Enslaved isn't THAT new either. But I think there's a couple games here and there that doesn't let you skip, still.