What's your personal pet peeve in gaming?

[KayJay]

Whenever games lock the ending behind unnecessary collectibles.


I got to the final world of Mario 3D World. Was about to do the final level, than it said that i needed a certain amount of green stars, AKA, those things that are supposed to be OPTIONAL.


I quit. i'm not backtracking & playing the same levels over & over again just to get the ending of a game. It's a cheap way to prolong a games length.

[KayJay]

Tutorials, games that are unnecessarily long, long cut scenes, even longer loading times, achievements, no manuals.

So, most of the games from the past decade.

Yeah, many of the pet peeves here are only applicable to modern games.

Play retro games!

I have some Retro complaints!

All of that 90's cheese. some of it is good, like Contra, but a lot of times it is annoying.

Fake difficulty by restricting lives, and cheap level design.

The plots weren't very good if it wasn't an RPG.


I do want to point out, that i do love retro games. Sonic 2, Super Mario World, & Mega Man X are in my top 10 favorite games. However, i can find flaws in pretty much anything. learning to accept those flaws is what makes me a fair & honest reviewer, IMO.

[Gunstar Green]

The plots weren't very good if it wasn't an RPG.

Or a PC game, where they could get away with more mature writing.

[KayJay]

The plots weren't very good if it wasn't an RPG.

Or a PC game, where they could get away with more mature writing.

Good point.

[Josh]

Another one that I find very often in older RPG's, no endless play. I hate having to save right before the boss, then backtrack all the way through the final area to get back to the hub. (I'm thinking of Paper Mario in this regard)

[J T]

It irks me that Dark Souls has become so synonymous with difficulty that game reviewers compare other games to Dark Souls that have absolutely nothing in common with it, other than both games are challenging.

Maybe this is just a byproduct of a younger generation who never played a hard game before Dark Souls because they were raised on easy corridor shooters where sitting down and taking a lil' rest to replenish your health is a valid gun fighting strategy and the biggest baddest enemies are defeated by a QTE wherein you only need to push A to be Awesome and then you get an "ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!"

I was thinking about this because Sarge was just talking in the Games Beaten thread about how confused he was that Momodora 4 was being compared to Dark Souls. Momodora 4! We're talking about a cute, side scrolling metroidvania with cats. OK, it's a little challenging, but it otherwise bears no resemblence to Dark Souls whatsoever.

This reviewing trend needs to stop! Yes, Dark Souls is hard, but it does not logically follow that because a game is hard, that it is therefore Dark Souls!

[Xeogred]

It irks me that Dark Souls has become so synonymous with difficulty that game reviewers compare other games to Dark Souls that have absolutely nothing in common with it, other than both games are challenging.

Maybe this is just a byproduct of a younger generation who never played a hard game before Dark Souls because they were raised on easy corridor shooters where sitting down and taking a lil' rest to replenish your health is a valid gun fighting strategy and the biggest baddest enemies are defeated by a QTE wherein you only need to push A to be Awesome and then you get an "ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!"

I was thinking about this because Sarge was just talking in the Games Beaten thread about how confused he was that Momodora 4 was being compared to Dark Souls. Momodora 4! We're talking about a cute, side scrolling metroidvania with cats. OK, it's a little challenging, but it otherwise bears no resemblence to Dark Souls whatsoever.

This reviewing trend needs to stop! Yes, Dark Souls is hard, but it does not logically follow that because a game is hard, that it is therefore Dark Souls!

As a huge Souls fan this all definitely bothers me too. People got so desensitized to regenerating health, checkpoints one foot from your death, or even mechanics that prevent you from dying. So here comes a game series where you actually die! So I guess it's harder? Or is it that crazy that a modern series still has boss battles in general? Since that's sadly not very common anymore.

On one hand it makes sense with how much hand holding a lot of modern games do, but on the other yeah it's annoying. I play the series because the combat, mechanics, and art design is absolutely amazing. I can think of plenty of games that were tougher than any of the Souls games for me. They aren't Zelda II.

[ElkinFencer10]

As a not-fan of the Souls series, that drives me insane, too, at least in reviews. I off-handedly call something "Dark Souls level of hard" on occasion - not even always video games - but saying that in a review is just sloppy and unprofessional. It's like writing - it's fine to say "Me and Popo went to the flea market to hunt for games" or "Yall need to check this game out," but you're an idiot if you try to use either in any kind of formal or even semi-professional writing.

[MrPopo]

The real problem is that they've conflated the normal meaning of "it's like X". Normally you'd say things like "It's like Doom" to give someone an idea of what to expect with Heretic as a total package. If they said "It's got trial and error based gameplay like Dark Souls" then you'd know it's hard but you don't expect it to be third person melee combat with horror overtones.

it's fine to say "Me and Popo went to the flea market to hunt for games" or "Yall need to check this game out," but you're an idiot if you try to use either in any kind of formal or even semi-professional writing.

Right, a professional review would say "Popo and I went to the flea market".

[Fragems]

Basically any game that has AI companions that are squishy, have bad pathing and/or do stupid shit when they get aggro, and it's especially annoying when either A.) companion death = game over or B.) they are required to physically reach a certain location to progress the story and fail to do so. Think most developers have figured that out since most companions anymore are invincible and most are actually competent now or at least stay the hell out of the way.

Oh and another which is rare but I've seen in a few games. Console games with no aim assist I used to hate aim assist thinking it was cheap. However Quantum Theory changed my opinion about that still don't know how I managed to finish that game, but I'm glad that I did since I'll never have a reason to touch it again . Still not the biggest fan of aim assist but definitely any console FPS/TPS needs some form of aim assist if they expect you to use a controller.