Things devs should be punched in the face and crotch for

[MrEco]

Making a game with multiple play styles available to the player, but only a fraction of them are actually viable.

Like when a game has a stealth option but stealth is nearly impossible because of AI with psychic powers. Or when an RPG allows you to dump all your stats into "Speech," "Repair," and "Science" type skills but then forces you into combat at every opportunity or makes quests which can't be completed without combat.

This kind of stuff has literally ruined games for me.

[Tanooki]

I am amused by the fact that all these complaints are applicable only to modern games.

True only one of mine applied, watered down lame ports snes/genesis or even systems too terrible for what was intended (Mortal Kombat gameboy anyone?)

But hey if you want retro there's plenty to piss and moan about.

- Horrible licensed movie/tv show cash in games with no basic thought towards fun or design.
- Brutal challenge from cheap moments put into games due to poor/lazy design over solid challenge from well crafted enemies, position, and environmental pitfalls
- Overly short timers in games causing repeated failures beyond reason just to cross some line or meet an objective which would cause even the more skilled gamer to get raged.
- Poor save mechanisms so you can easily lose 20-30+min or longer if you eat it say in an RPG with a dungeon that has no save spots.
- Artificial expansion of total game time with all sorts of garbage: Unskippable cut scenes or movies, having to re-walk areas over and over with no gain, getting multiple characters in a game you get to re-walk each area each time to get it cleared
- Annoying multiple paths with no obvious or even obtuse ways to figure out which door doesn't send you back 10 doors to the start to learn the pattern all over again and again...(or even adding a final room with a door that just does this as a dick move.)
- Say in a shooter, you die, and you lose every single ability back to the beginning, yet you're deep into the game with a challenge so high restart is the only option.

[Reseeded Hareline]

Respawning enemies.
Birds in old school platformers.
Treasure chests/item boxes with bombs in them or some other junk like poisoning you or something.
Weapons that break.

[marurun]

Respawning was originally a product of memory limitations, and to a certain extent unavoidable. Once it became accepted, it just never got repealed when memory improved.

[foxhound1022]

Fighting game bosses whose AI allows them to do things that are literally impossible to do in the game.

[alienjesus]

My biggest hate in retro games:

Maze levels.

Anyone who has played Stage 9 of The Lion King, or the final stage of The Revenge of Shinobi, should understand.

Shinobi is even worse because the symbols on the doors are basically useless to a western audience so everything looks the same even more than it would normally...


Things I don't hate that most other people seem to though:

- Water levels
- Ice physics
- Times when the game reverses your controls
- Boss rushes
- Escort missions (I certainly hate some, but they aren't ALL that bad)

[Exhuminator]

Fighting game bosses whose AI allows them to do things that are literally impossible to do in the game.

That description defines Ace Combat: Joint Assault's bosses perfectly. Oh man did that game make me RAGGGEEEE.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Fighting game bosses whose AI allows them to do things that are literally impossible to do in the game.

That description defines Ace Combat: Joint Assault's bosses perfectly. Oh man did that game make me RAGGGEEEE.

Don't feel too bad. It actually doesn't take a tremendously powerful AI opponent to defeat even the most seasoned fighter pilots, and I expect that we will see the end of manned fighter jets in my lifetime.

[Exhuminator]

Sure, AI doesn't have to concern itself with passing out from g-forces!

It wasn't so much AI though, Joint Assault's boss planes would simply defy the laws of physics which the player's plane was subject to. I still beat that game but I truly loathed it. The only Ace Combat I didn't like.

[foxhound1022]

Oh, I meant like actual fighting game bosses

Bison being able to do Psycho Crushers while walking forward is bullshit.