Feature: Top 5 Most Annoying Aspects of Games

Video games are a lot like a bowl of candy.  Pretty much everyone likes candy, in some form or another.  When you get down to the specifics, some people might go for the chocolate, while others prefer the fruity gummies.  Like games, there's a lot a variety, and there's usually something for everyone.  Some might reach for a Reese's cup, while others would pick up bag of Skittles.  However, no one would go for the Good and Plenty.

No one.

Good and Plenty is an awful, awful candy.  It spoils the entire bowl, and it almost makes eating the other candy seem unpleasant.  The aspects that I'm about to list off are the "Good and Plenty" of video games.  Next to no one enjoys them, and it's a wonder that they still even exist today.  



#5.  Save Points/"Save Zones"
The fact that I still see these sometimes in games positively baffles me.  It's as though the gaming industry hasn't come to the realization that most gamers are very busy people.  Most of us can't afford to spend several hours a day playing a game, because we often have other things we need to take care of.

...Most of us...

Modern RPGs are the most notable offender in this category.  They often only let you save at certain points or zones in the game, like the world map, leaving you to drudge through an entire dungeon in one go.  So, after trekking through two hours' worth of monster-ridden catacombs, if your team decides to bite the dust near the end of their journey, you have to start all over again.

"Son of a...!"

When this happens, a gamer doesn't think, "Well shucks, I guess I'll have to try to tackle this challenge another way!"  Instead, he thinks, "Jesus!  Why do I have to start all the way back here?!  I curse these designers for giving my free time the middle finger!"

It's also possible that a gamer just doesn't have the time to go from save point to save point.  As I said, most people have other things outside of games that they need to take care of.  After all, the average gamer is about 35 years old, so it's strange how the industry sometimes doesn't acknowledge the lifestyle of their audience.   If something important comes up, and the player is nowhere near a place to save, the person either has to put that sucker on a long-term "pause" or turn the game off and lose progress.  Neither of these options are as convenient as simply saving your game whenever you want.

"You broke your arm, honey?  Holy crap! 
...We'll go to the hospital in a bit, alright? "

For the sake of gamers everywhere, save points need to go die in a hole, where no one else can succumb to their heinous ways ever again.


#4.  Random Encounters
Yet another annoying aspect in games that just so happens to be prevalent in RPGs is the random encounter.  Ask any gamer you want, and you will likely never hear them tell you that they enjoyed the random encounters in certain RPGs.  Sure, some might have tolerated them, but very few have ever gotten a kick out of having their game interrupted with an out-of-the-blue battle sequence.

In truth, I feel as though random encounters are the laziest ways to go about battling in games.  It makes everything feel mechanical and unrealistic.  I'm sure the designers sometimes think, "Oh, this will make the player feel tense, as though he could get attacked at any time!  This suspense will make the game fun!"

While this first sentence rings true across the lands of gamers everywhere, the second sentence is a huge misinterpretation that could not be further from the truth.  Yes, it's true that random encounters sometimes put gamers on edge, always anticipating another battle.  However, few would classify this tension as "fun." 

"No means of healing or methods of escape?
Golly gee!  This'll be a hoot!"

 
Let me give you a personal example.  When I'm playing a game like Pokemon, and I see a long patch of grass ahead of me, I sometimes stand there in deep contemplation.  "Should I run across the field to get it over with?  Or should I walk it out?  Does running make it easier to trigger an encounter?  But walking would take more time...  Oh heck, I'm just gonna go for it."

Spoiler Alert:  None of those techniques work.

If a Pokemon decides to show its face when I'm going through, I instantly get ticked off.  9 times out of 10, that specific Pokemon is going to be worthless to me, and I just end up running away from it.  Once everything's said and done, my time has already been wasted, and I could've been running through the next grass patch already...

"Whyyyyy?!"

#3. Grinding
...Dang, now that I look at this list, there's a lot of things I don't seem to like about RPGs, Despite how much I enjoy the genre...

Regardless of this coincidence, when I say "grinding," I'm talking about the entire spectrum of games that waste your time with mandatory collectables.  Obviously RPGs are the easiest to target, as they are diabolical in terms of artificially extending the gameplay with horrifyingly overpowered bosses.

...Don't even get me started...

However, that doesn't put other games off the hook.  Ever gotten barred from forward progression because you didn't have enough of a certain magical plot device?  Rayman 2 did that.  If you didn't collect enough Lums during your travels, you were outta luck getting to the next world.  Thus, you had to scour the previous levels, looking for any shiny little balls you might have missed.  In the end, this just became a time sink.

Metroid does this sometimes too, though not in the same sense.  Instead of grinding for items in order to progress in the game, you're sometimes grinding for items just to survive. Going in and out of a room for the sole purpose of killing enemies in order to get health and missile pick-ups to prepare yourself for the next level.  That is grinding.

"Six more runs of this room, and I'll be all set!"

Grinding is one of the most artificial ways a game can extend its length.  A player feels like he or she is accomplishing something, but it's really just a way of killing time.  Fortunately, many gamers are starting to become aware of these clever tricks, and they are understandably upset by it.  Hopefully the industry will do away with the deception in due time.


2.  Unskippable Cutscenes
I simply cannot believe that some developers still haven't caught on to the fact that practically every single gamer in the world hates to watch a single cutscene over and over when it plays before a difficult boss fight.  I can kind of understand that the animators are usually very proud of their work, and would like the audience to view it as much as possible, but they're only shooting themselves in the foot when a cutscene is made unskippable.  Gamers will not marvel at a cutscene every time it's played.  In fact, they'll come to loathe it for the mere fact that it even exists.

This one in particular had to have stolen at least an hour of my time.

Your cutscene could be the most emotionally charged thing on the planet, and gamers would love it when they saw it for the first time.  However, after being subjected to it 8 or 9 times, the entire effect of the scene is lost.  Heck, it sometimes even hurts the initial experience of it. 

A brainwashed mother admitting that she intends to kill her daughter.
Powerful stuff, if it wasn't "revealed" to you 12 times in a row.

In short, unskippable cutscenes benefit no one. They're not only inconvenient, but they also wreck the entire flow of a game. So, game developers, please stop it.


#1.  Escort/Defend Missions
If you type in "I like escort missions" into Google, you will not find a single person who agrees with your statement.  Instead, you'll find quite a few forum topics complaining about escort missions.  Some of these topics raise a very good question: "Why are these still even around at all?"

Unfortunately, I can't think of an answer to that.  It is a universally accepted truth that gamers hate it when an escort mission comes up in a game.  No one likes to be put in charge of protecting an innocent NPC while it aimlessly waltzes right into danger.  It's infuriating to have to start a level over just because a computer wasn't able to protect its own stupid hide during an ambush.  You feel detached from the whole experience, because suddenly the person you're protecting becomes more important that your own character's livelihood.

Slap the man who says that escorting the Little Sisters was
the best part about Bioshock.

What I can't seem to grasp is the fact that game developers still haven't caught on to this seething hatred towards these missions.  They still continue to put them in games, and still nobody enjoys them.  In Mass Effect 2, I flat-out rejected a couple in need.  They were being persecuted by an alien race, and they wanted to make it to a designated safe haven before their hiding place was discovered.  But they didn't have any weapons.  Or armor.  Or battle experience.  Sorry guys, you're on your own with that one.

Above: Much more interesting, and less tedious.

In the end, I'm really just another guy in a sea of millions of gamers complaining about escort missions.  If an entire audience's complaints aren't enough to change a game designer's mind, I have absolutely no idea what will.  Maybe we could voice our opinions by sending the developers thousands of boxes of Good and Plenty.  Maybe then they will understand what would drive us to do such a horrifying thing.