video game pet peeves

[Jrecee]

Unskippable Cutscenes or massive amounts of text that you had to pound a button to get through. Just let me hit start to skip it!!!

Unskippable tutorials. For the love of fuck, I do not need a tutorial to teach me to "Use the analog stick to move; try walking over to the marker!" This alone made me hate Assassin's Creed and Nights wii within seconds of starting the "game"

Games where you have to follow a specific set of motions to complete a task. Example: the new batman game. After dying or just replaying the game, you have to go through all the motions of going into detective mode, scanning the area, etc. just to continue on your way. This happens in a few different areas just in the demo. It hopefully gets cut down as you get through the game but I see this happening in a lot of new games.

[Hobie-wan]

I'm also bad at Dr. Mario because I sometimes get the blue and yellow confused. I've also had problems with other color-based columns-type games.

That's why good designers put not only colors, but distinguishable patters on puzzle things. Thankfully I'm not colorblind, but it would be nice if all designers would remember this consideration.

One of my friend sees most greens as brown. I didn't know it for quite some time, but he probably wondered why a such a large portion of my clothes are shit brown.

Oh, escort and protection missions. Nobody ever likes. If you think you do, you're either a liar or confused. Think about it, in most games that involve firearms the enemies are trying to defend something against your attacks. Eventually they always lose to you. They really hate escort and protection missions too.

[Ack]

Ok, I'll post mine.

1. Unskippable cutscenes bug me if I've already seen it. I just want to get to the fight. Asking if I want to skip is perfectly fine with me though.

2. Stickers on labels. I've got quite a few FUBAR labels because of this. Stickers on plastic isn't nice either...in fact, stickers in general suck. Stick it on a piece of paper and slide it in the case.

3. Sellers who do not care about the condition of their games, and don't take the time to clean them. There's a store here where I've seen SNES carts that were broken to the point I could see the PCB. No...just no.

4. Lack of screenshots on the back of the game box actually really annoys me. I want to see what the game looks like, not what your precious game art does. It annoys me even more when there's no description either.

5. Lack of a Japanese voice-over option annoys me, since I can't stand voice acting in most games.

6. Babysitting missions, or "protect the guy with the bullseye" jobs. This is always compounded with shitty AI, to the point they'll just run into enemies and take it to the face.

7. Reversing my controls as a means of making the game "challenging." Listen, you play over thirty levels of Arkanoid one way and then try to last when Doh switches the control scheme on you. That led to some screaming fits.

8. Ice levels. I don't like platformers much anyway, and now you have to go and make it so that I slide on all the surfaces? For the record, I nearly left teeth marks in my copy of Mario 64. Yes, I was so mad at the game, I bit the cartridge.

And I believe all men are considered slightly colorblind, at least when compared to women. I've got quite a few friends who are.

[MrPopo]

For me, it's definately unskippable cutscenes, especially before an annoying boss. Seymore on Mt. Gagazet (or however it's spelled) comes to mind. On the other hand, too easily skippable cutscenes also blow. Blue Dragon had you hit start to skip a cutscene, which I did on accident once (I wanted to pause and take a piss). Almost every modern game I've played goes with the press start, then confirm cancel or no cancel.

I can't stand quick time events during cutscenes. When you're actively involved in the game and they suddenly toss in a "Do <blah> for cool shit/to a void dying" it isn't bad, but when I'm watching my character get angsty with his long lost evil twin and suddenly I have to press A to not die I'm probably going to die the first time, since my controller is next to me and I'm not paying attention.

Unskippable tutorials get their own special mention. When I grew up our tutorial was figuring out how not to get your ass kicked by the bats in Ninja Gaiden 2. Now you've got the tutorial levels with someone patronizingly telling you how to open a menu and equip something. Oh, and that gives you an achivement.

Which brings me to my final one: meaningless achivements. Let me give you an example of good achivements. In Aliens vs. Predator Gold if you accomplish a certain task in a level you unlock something cool. It might be useful, like the spread speargun, or something just fun (can't remember off the top of my head, it was ages ago). Similar thing in Goldeneye. And the Rogue Squadren games give you a new ship if you can get all of a certain level of medal on every mission. This is called replayability.

But then you've got the standard Xbox achivements, which are all so much bullshit. Let me think of a few off the top of my head. First there's the "you know how to hit a fucking button" one, then there's the "you got halfway through the game" ones (both hitting a checkpoint and having a number of enemy kills that you'll always hit assuming you don't quit the game). Next comes the "you are obsessive compulsive enough to level everything to max" ones which come down to sinking X amount of time (or figure out some auto trick), and finally the "you were following a guide the entire time and as a result knew where every single little missable knick-knack that even Rainman wouldn't have been able to find" achivement. And what do you get for nailing all of these? 1000 epeen.

[nickfil]

I can't stand quick time events during cutscenes.

ditto. If a cut scene is up, i probably have food or drink in my hand, not the controller as i usually eat/game as a break from work.

Furthermore- i hate the quicktime events that change every time. Quicktime events are not a skill. Why the fuck would you want to randomize it. I play my playstation the least so i'm most unfamiliar with the face buttons on it. The worst is god of war. I never get any quicktime event right. I do all of them probably 3 or 4 times at the least.

Games where you have to follow a specific set of motions to complete a task. Example: the new batman game. After dying or just replaying the game, you have to go through all the motions of going into detective mode, scanning the area, etc. just to continue on your way. This happens in a few different areas just in the demo. It hopefully gets cut down as you get through the game but I see this happening in a lot of new games.

it doesn't. They make you do it all the time. For as much as i was entertained by batman, the actual mechanics of the game wore on me the more and more i played it. By the time i got to the end of the game i really didn't like it anymore. It does what it sets out to do very well, but then never changes making it pretty boring once you are like a quarter of the way through. All but like 2 bosses were big guys you throw your batarang at when they charge. Most even looked the same. *yawn*

I call it video game bullshit. The fact you can only do Y and Z if you already did X makes no sense. The lack of this is what made the fallout games so great. You can actually stumble into a quest right at the end sometimes.

[MaliceValentine]

This is where i come out as King of pet Peeves =D

1: people who complain retro games are stupid becuz the graphikzzzz!!! artn teh 1337zors!!11!!

2: People who hate anything old except Ocarina of Time

3: Not being able to pause of skip cut scenes at all!

4: Nintendo fanboys are by far the worst people i have ever dealt with

5: The over bearing amount of FPS games for godsake stop making so many WWII games "oh look we forgot some insignificant piece of land from Vietnam i think we shall make another game about that with awesome graphics"

6: People who complain about gaming unless there is a constant spamming on mario,Zelda and metroid games.

7: People who do not take good care of there old games then sell them to gametraders and game traders sells them and ridiculous prices (ONLY AU APPLY) claim everything is rare even if its trashed and slap up the price on any RPG or something with a japanese taste to it just because it looks rare.

8: Gametraders charging me 85 AU for super mario bros 3 -___-

9: Using casual or hardcore to describe games

10: People who bash the Wii and have no basis in what they say and claim it's not hardcore they sound like the Emo kids in town discussing who's hardcore music is louder and has more grunts

11: Emo kids who go to k-mart etc and pay 100 bucks for twilight Princess and dont shut up about ti becuase they once play Ocarina of Time the all proceed to play the game for 5 minuets give up and then go listen to parkway drive -__-

12: Big the cat Nuff said

13: Card board boxes wtf were Nintendo thinking my god!!

14: People who write 10 pages on why there game is so good compared to yours

15: Fucking stickers that used games stores put on EVERYTHING and i mean EVERYTHING!! Its on the box cover, the manual, the back, the side and last but not least the fucking disc i sit there for hours getting them off and trying not to ruin my game.

16: sellers who put **RARE** in there title for a game like Crash Bandicoot for PSone

18: idiots who think the N64 was the first console ever made and go why would you play old games they suck.

19: Level grinding in RPG's it pisses me off more than anything and RPG's that focus on level grinding its not a 60 hour epic story its a 10 hour story with 50 hour grind fest!

20: over charging on any thing thats a Nintendo product just because its Nintendo

21: Damn PAL release dates i hate them we still dont have a copy of Kingdom hearts: Chain of memories for the ps2

22: ignorant American gamers who go "LOL HAHA I DUN CARE IF U GET DAT GAME U WANT CUZ WE ALREADY HAVE IT LOLOL AMERICAZ11!!"

[Luke]

I'd agree with stickers on labels. Other pet peeves, hmmm...

People with pet peeves. Sorry, just kidding.

Games where the ending is based on pressing one button at exactly the right time. From Bionic Commando, all the way to Yakuza 2, there are plenty of these games out.

Wii games/ports where you can't use the classic controller. I'd actually prefer the Metroid trilogy with the classic control. Now of course you wouldn't want to use the classic controller for Wii sports, but I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.

Back tracking through countless levels for one item.

Games that freeze.

Exiting some games, especially on the PC. "Exit? Are you sure you want to exit? If you exit now, your files will not be saved. Did you save your files? Do you want to save your files now? You responded no. If you exit now, your files will not be saved. Do you still wish to exit? Do you want to exit to title screen? Do you want to exit to windows? You responded exit to windows. If you exit to windows now, your files will not be saved........"

Delayed attacks and jumps.

People who won't shut up during on line gaming.

That Evil Otto.




*On a side note, I have some useful info on pet peeves. Students, especially in undergrad/grad school, on the first day of class, ask your professor/teacher if they have any student pet peeves. I always asked this in their office prior to the first day of class. It's amazing that chewing gum in someone's class can get your grade lowered. I've heard:

twirling hair, chewing gum, using a laptop, not using a laptop, clicking pens, cell phones on vibrate, I've even had a professor who didn't like students who asked questions. No joke, and this was at the graduate level. It's just an easy way to avoid pissing off the guy/girl who controls your grade.

[AmishSamurai]

1. tutorials. Screw user-friendliness, if you're too lazy to figure crap out on your own or read the goddamn instruction manual (or if you don't have one look online), forget you.

2. Going with #1, unskippable tutorials, especially when you're playing the game a second time around.

3. Unnecessary gimmicky elements of gameplay inserted arbitrarily that interrupt the flow. think the only one I ever really liked was the Psycho Mantis battle in MGS

4. Excessive FPS games

5. Grinding. It's as annoying as crap when I have to drop 4-5 hours in order to face one boss instead of being able to beat them at a lower level strategically.

6. On the same note, when at the end of any RPG you can kick strategy aside and just spam "Attack" to win.

7. Ice levels.

[the7k]

Quick-Time Events. It doesn't matter when they happen or how "Cool" the result looks, I fucking hate them. They serve no purpose other than to take control away from the player. Plus, they're just fucking annoying. "Press X to Not Die", as it were.


Grinding. It's the biggest barrier to my enjoyment of RPGs. Oh yeah, when I think of fun times to be had in an RPG, it's definitely sitting in a cave slaying the same enemies for hours on end just so I don't get slaughtered by a boss.

Semi-Invisible Environmental Hell. As much as I love Soldner X, Stage 2 sucked the big fat one because you couldn't tell what was the background and what would kill you if you ran into it.

Unbalance. It's the biggest barrier to my enjoyment of 2D Fighters. It's the biggest reason I flat out hate some fighters, despite how popular they are. For God's Sakes, it's only the MOST IMPORTANT THING TO GET RIGHT.

Sellers who charged to damn much for NES games. Yeah, that's great - Mega Man 2 was a really fun game. It ain't worth $40.

Bobby Kotick. Seriously, this dude is a huge dick.
http://kotaku.com/5359567/bobby-kotick- ... ideo-games

Activision. They've been milking those cash-cows known as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk and Spider-Man so much, I think the teets have started to bleed.

Ubisoft. Jesus H. Christ, all the damn Imagine and Petz games. And why is everyone looking forward to Assassin's Creed 2, when the first was so mediocre?

Sonic Team. Just fire them, Sega. I'm also loving how everyone is getting excited about this 2010 Sonic project, due to them claiming it'll be like the classics. Remember Sonic Unleashed? They said the same shit about that game too.

Sega of America. Either say Yakuza 3 is coming or say it isn't. Enough of this "We have no plans, but maybe..." bullshit. And seriously - stop with the damn Genesis compilations. Remember the Sega Master System? The Saturn? The Dreamcast? What about them? I'd love an online-multiplayer Guardian Heroes. I'd have kept my Wii if the rumors of Jet Set Radio 3 turned out to be true. But no - it's nothing but Sonic spin-offs and Genesis ROM collections.

And I'm sick and tired of those little flaps on coffee lids! If you don't wanna spill your coffee, ya shouldn't be drivin' with it!

[Jrecee]

Actually I've heard rumors that yuji naka's prope company is the one working on the new 2D sonic game. If "Sonic Team" is working on it my heart will sink a bit.