Topic: Gaming's pet peeves

Sewer levels.

You just couldn't be bothered to render another landscape. We all know it. So just have a shorter game.

@johncalmc Woah. Steady on now.

@kyleforrester87 Let's not pretend that anybody enjoys exploring Midgar's underground sanitation systems.

And while we're on it, the sewer bit in Final Fantasy VIII just before you try to assassinate the sorceress is the worst bit of the game.

The below games I enjoy, but noticed some things that are just a little irritating.

Fixed storage boxes - Yakuza 0 - Ran out of room, so will store in any phone box....which leads me to

Fixed save points - Yakuza 0 - I know this has been fixed in other games in the series but still..grrr

Lore building through excessive readables - Horizon - Just so much and got a little boring. Plus at some points, speaking was happening in game anyway and playing the data logs just played over it.

Set Climbing Paths - Uncharted/Horizon - I can save the world and win fights against the odds, but can only climb places painted yellow.

That about it for now. I enjoyed reading the other points on the thread and agreed with many of them!

@johncalmc Nah, escaping the prison was the worst bit.

@KALofKRYPTON You could adjust it in God of War, but even with it patched, the text was still too small in some places for my liking!

@JohnnyShoulder I struggle in Bridge Crew - it's not loads better in VR, but the non-VR perspective essentially needs me to be sat within a couple of meters of the TV to play comfortably.

Loading, especially in games like Skyrim and Fallout. Does my head in when you fast travel you are faced with a loading screen, go into a building your are faced with a loading, go back outside faced with a loading screen. Repeat about 1000 times and it gets a bit tedious.

@kyleforrester87 Also special shout out to that bit where you have to run about in Esthar with a time limit.

There could be entire threads dedicated to the rubbish bits in games we like regardless of all of the rubbish bits in them.

@johncalmc for sure. FF8 has some really horrific sections to be honest. Yet I still don't hate it lol.

@Shellcore Agreed. Especially the part about excessive text reading to establish the lore and world building. Fantasy RPGs are particularly guilty of this (Skyrim, Dragon Age, etc). Honestly I just skip over the excessive logs, journals, texts, newspaper articles, books, emails, data files, etc, etc that are used to give extra filler about the game’s world and history. I figure the game will integrate the important stuff naturally into the gameplay and reading all that stuff about previous kings, wars, NPC’s backgrounds and whatnot is not necessary and it turns a 50 hour game into a 80 hour game. Now sometimes the text is presented in an interesting way or I love the lore so much that I will read it. It depends.

Gaming Pet Peeves...hmm

well Escort Missions are a big one especially when in most games they have bad A.I AND when it's a instant Game Over if they die or something

Walking and Talking, just show me a bloody cutscene if you want to tell me something don't force me to walk really slowly while another person yaps away AND sometimes if your a little ahead of them and get to the end point before them what they are saying is cut off

underwater levels, just play a Mega Drive Sonic, Ocarina of Time or an old Tomb Raider game and you will know why all they do is slow things down and give you a timer, so think about that it slows you down BUT it gives you a time limit, speaking of...

timed sections: they can go burn in hell

day one patches, you would think that if they were releasing a game it would actually be ready to play when it's released, now i understand some bugs getting through but it's getting ridiculous now a days, can ANYONE remember the last time they brought a new game and DIDN'T have to update it before playing?

Game of the Year Editions/Complete Editions/Whatever they call them: i think it's unfair to ask people to buy a game and support it through DLC and updates witch can go over £100 worth of stuff depending on the game only to then re-release the game with everything included for less than what the base game originally sold for, it's a kick in the teeth to everyone who brought the original release

Retail Exclusive content/Editions, NOTHING should be locked away behind a retailer, NOTHING, all content should be available to anyone no matter where they buy it from AND no Version Exclusive Content either, the PC version for example should NOT have modes or content the others don't (mods not included in that), if one version has it, they ALL should have it

Making noses in character creators. It can’t be fixed, it has to be done, but thing to make noses drives me crazy. Something about noses doesn’t sit right with me when I pay that much attention, only when I pay that much specific attention though.

@Jaz007 Lol, Yeah I would say even beyond just noses, character creation still leaves something to be desired in most games I’ve played. The latest I played was Bloodborne and honestly you barely see your character’s face anyway there.
But I remember spending a lot of time on my Commander Shepard trying to make him look just right — like what I might hope to look like if it were me (like a handsomer version of me), and I thought I had him looking as attractive as ever and saved and wouldn’t you know the first time I saw him in a cutscene he looked distorted and weird. I tried and again and still never got him looking right. A similar thing happened in Dragon Age Inquisition. For some reason it looks good on the character creation screen but when put in the game, they end up looking very different.

Haha I dislike character creation "tools" too. I did actually get my Fallout 4 character to look a bit like me, by in a primarily first-person game does it matter? Mass Effect was more challenging. In the end I just went with the default Shepard as he was handsome enough. On a replay I did make up my own and gave him blonde hair. He looked... weird.

Used to spend loads of time in character creation screens but used to get annoyed at myself for wasting so much time on them, so just spend a quick 5 mins on them now.

Great thread, I'm going to be spending a lot of time here I think!

Trivial tasks that serve only to allow a character some exposition time. We all know that crate is how we're going to reach that window. Do you really need me to drag it over there for you while you bang on about your dead wife or whatever? This could have been a cut-scene, you could have said what you needed to say and I could have eaten a Pringle.

Bits where you get imprisoned (or otherwise inconvenienced), and when you get your stuff back it's all just chucked in your bag rather than equipped in the slots you had it in. I've got six party members here, do you seriously expect me to keep track of what they were all wearing? I'm trying to assemble a team that is capable of saving the world - I expect them to be able to dress themselves upon release from incarceration.

Micromanagement, not to be mistaken by carefully tinkering with character builds, that can be fun. Worst recent example is Witcher 3. This killed the game for me, lots of lovely loot, limited by the weight you can carry (sic!). But hey, we'll give you a box you can store loot in and a way to teleport to it, which you will have to do every 5 minutes. In other words: games that feel like you're at work. No thanks.

FFVIII was brought up: that time when you tried to find that chocobo forrest in the time compressed world with camera at a really stupid, close-up angle. That drove me mad.

Unexplained, important game mechanics e.g. hidden/vague damage calculations based on something that isn't obvious etc. Not knowing what an accessory does because the description is vague etc. and requiring a guide to understand them. How many times was I surprised that this incredibly rare 'loop of luck' I found by chance and never wore fundamentally affected the damage calculations, and so on.

🤣 Oh brother, that cracks me up!
But on that subject — games that have an option to optimize your equipment or settings automatically with the click of a button, only to discover that the automated changes aren’t really all that optimized, so you still end up customizing the selections and spending the next 30 minutes in the menu screen.

It’s also a mild pet peeve of mine when equipment or items disappear from view when they are put away. This happens mainly in older games, but you have a sword the length of which is the equivalent to your character’s entire height and when he sheaths it — it ceases to exist! Well, until he pulls it out again. Or when you are give an item by an NPC, like a mcguffin of some sort like a tool, a book, or a computer and the player casually places it behind him, presumably in his back pocket and it spontaneously disappears and then he proceeds to run, jump, slide, fall, swim until he gets to where the item needs to go and when he pulls it out to hand off to someone, viola! here it is, magically pulled out of my back. Or worse yet, the character is handed something and the NPC is clearly holding nothing visible, even when said item is fairly large. Ex.: Here, take this invisible sandwich, it’s quite delicious.

Unskippable tutorials that drag on for way too long. Also, unskippable cutscenes if I'm replaying a game.

As much as I love Pokemon, those games are notoriously bad for these pet peeves. My heart always sinks whenever someone stops me and offers to show me how to catch wild Pokemon.