Things that annoy me in games:

-Not enough attention devoted to the music/sound aspects of the game.

-Lack of progressive scan. I don' t understand why some games don' t have this. It' s like 6 extra lines of code and no extra processing power required. Lazy ass programmers.

-Lack of 16:9 widescreen.

-Save points that are few and far between. Like in an RPG you save, go through a loooong sequence of unskippable events, get thrust right into battle without the chance to save, lose, and then have to resume from your last save point and watch all that crap over again. Bad design! Suikoden III I am looking at you! That is the reason I quite literally stopped playing that game.

-Cheap enemies. Cheap is not challenging! It' s cheap!

-The " X-Treme" attitude of some games.

-Repetitive voices. Seriously, how damn often do I need to hear " Just go for it!" in Viewtiful Joe? Or how about " I' m fully airbooooooorn!!!" in Downhill Domination (which also goes hand in hand with the X-Treme attitude)? The people in charge of the sound for these games should have their skin peeled off, sprinkled with salt, and then shot in the groin. Amazingly, the " Get Ready" in Space Harrier doesn' t bother me. Maybe because I rarely die.

-Games that feature online modes and seriously underdeveloped single player modes. I get tired of online gaming rather quickly. Crimson Skies actually has a better single player mode than it' s online mode... and it' s online mode is great!

-Games that claim to be RPGs, but are nothing more than a)Battles b)Puzzles c)Buying crap in a shop d)" Missions" which involve nothing more than getting from point A to point B. Oh wait... that' s almost EVERY RPG! No wonder I hate the genre with a passion. It sucks!

-Fighting game moves in non-fighting games. Jet Set Radio for the Dreamcast is extremely guilty of this. If I want to do a Dragon Punch, I' ll play Street Fighter.

-Slow pacing in action games. I get quite bored in action games when I am on the same screen for too long. Viewtiful Joe I am looking at you. I still cannot understand what people see in this game. Graphics are nice but that' s where it ends.

What aspects of games annoy you?

Because I was just playing Prince of Persia again, I cannot STAND bad cameras. I know it' s not an easy thing to program, but nothing annoys me more than being attacked by 4 enemies at once and having nothing onscreen except for a canopy or some blocking object. When you can' t see your own character b/c the camera is stuck in a wall, something could have been done.

-Not enough attention devoted to the music/sound aspects of the game.

Yep, bad music or effortless music is definitely one of my major annoyances.. Sometimes you can tell that the composer made NO effort whatsoever in composing the music for a game and just slapped together half-a$$ed music. I got that feeling from the original Jak n Daxter. Music damm near put me to sleep.

I also hate truly terrible camera angles.

Bosses and Final Bosses that just sit there and don' t fight back. i.e. Gradius series and Bangaioh.

UNSkippable cutscenes.. Argh!! Those are soo annoying. The E3 demo of HeadHunter had a looooong uninteresting intro that couldn' t be skipped.

I am with Terry on the unskippable cut scenes and Joe on the few and far between save points. Infact save points in general irritate me, why can' t i just save a game when i want to save it?

I have to say the two that bug me the most are 1) save points - I want to save, when I want to and 2) characters that don' t speak outloud (for ex: KOTOR - the main character can have a conversation with other characters by scrolling through the choices given; however, she doesn' t have a real voice. The other characters talk. Why can' t she? Sooo annoying

I also wish the bosses in all games had life bars. I love life bars. I love being able to tell just how much progress I' m making in destroying a boss.

Another thing that used to bug me were 3D controls... i.e. Resident Evil games and any other games where the characters control like tanks. You press RIGHT on the D-pad or Analog stick and instead of running to the right, the characters spin around in place. Then you hold up to make them walk or run in the direction they' re facing..
I love 2D controls. Whichever direction you press on the d-pad or analog stick is the direction the characters move in.

Yeah! What Terry said. GWAH! It takes me forever to get adjusted with 3d controls.

Ah yes! Unskippable ANYTHING pisses me off. I mean maybe you would need to tap the button twice quickly just to make sure it isn' t accidentally skipped. But give us the option!

As for save points, I' m sure there are many that will say that saving anywhere makes the game too easy. Not so. I don' t think you should be able to save in a battle, but anywhere else, just like Phantasy Star, is cool. What happens if Grandma is starting to have a serious life-threatening stroke, needs to go to the hospital and you' re at least 20 minutes away from the next save point? You' d have to say " Sorry grandma, but I' m not playing through all of this bs again just because you are having a stroke. Hang on for 20 more minutes or so if you can." If you can save anywhere, you save your game immediately and get grandma to the hospital. The ability to save anywhere saves lives.

And yes, Resident Evil " tank" controls chap my ass as well!

Save points are my biggest problem with games. I' d just like to be able to save anywhere but like it' s already been pointed out, it sucks playing, dying then having to repeat 20 or so minutes of level to get back to where you died from.

I also don' t like games not ' working' , erm, not sticking to their rules and cheating. Well... take Splinter Cell for example. I' ve played it a lot and know how the game works. I especially know where to hide in it so the guards can' t spot me. But sometimes just while I' m crouched, waiting for them to turn round they' ll mutter something about hearing me and enter ' search mode' , or just blatantly shoot at me where they shouldn' t be able to see me.

Joe: First of all, the reason you stopped playing Suikoden III is because you suck at RPG' s. I thought we had already cleared that up.

As for length of time between save points, you should all thank your lucky stars you weren' t playing RPG' s way back when. Nowadays, there' s no more than maybe 2 hours at MAXIMUM between save points, where I happen to remember LOOOONG stretches without a way to save in some old-school 16-bit RPG' s. This generation, it' s even easier to save; of the dozen or so RPG' s I' ve played this gen., I can' t remember a one that had more than 1-2 hours between save points. Grandma can have her emergency...you won' t lose much anyway.

As for me, I' d REALLY wish they' d get rid of the " catch-up" phenomenon coded into just about every sports game in existence. The next person that tries to tell me it' s not there...I' ll kill ' em.

" But sometimes just while I' m crouched, waiting for them to turn round they' ll mutter something about hearing me and enter ' search mode' , or just blatantly shoot at me where they shouldn' t be able to see me."

Umm...I' ve played both Splinter Cells to completion and this never once happened to me. If it did, it was my fault. I was too close, I made a sound that they heard, whatever.

Hey now, I' m over 36 hours into Tales of Symphonia, and am on the last boss (which will magically live on after I defeat " him" and make me fight him 2 more times)! I hear you can' t even get past the title screen. See how awesome I am at RPGs? Also, I beat Sword of Vermilion on the Sega Genesis. My RPG skillz cannot be denied!

Blessed art thou, Fathoms, as you have beat me to my complaint. The " catch up" in sports and racing games. And, as someone posted earlier, no work in the sound department. Look at how much sound can add to a game (Call of Duty comes to mind). I understand that they want to make their games look good, but cutting into the sound budget is just rediculous.

I hear you can' t even get past the title screen.

Erm...did I ever play that game? And I' ve played and beaten Star Ocean 2, a game who' s engine ToS developers clearly used as a guideline for the creation of their game. Let me know when you' ve beaten that one...

Oh, and if you can' t beat those early major battles in Suikoden III, you' re simply incompetent.

Erm...did I ever play that game?

Obviously not because you can' t figure out quite how to buy a Gamecube yet. I figured it out.

quote:

Erm...did I ever play that game?
Obviously not because you can' t figure out quite how to buy a Gamecube yet. I figured it out.

Touche.

I hate the way some games have unskippable training at the start, telling you the very basic controls of the game. Why not tell us the complex stuff? I mean its pretty easy to figure out the basic controls by ourselves... If developers insist on training, i say either make it seperate to the story, or just have little messages to tell you what to do.

Hmm the most annying things in a game...here goes :P

I cant stand:

Bad controls: If I play a game I want to move ih the character, I want to feel like Im him and that the controls are smooth going. For exampe and maybe its just me..I guess its just me Im playing thru Splinter Cell again on the Xbox and I finished it when It got released on the PC. The problem im having is that in no way I can remember exacly what a butten does and totaly feel like a newbie while playing it. To me the controls are just bad and well I dont know how they could have fixed it but its annoying me. When Im playing a smilar game like MGS then it feels more smoother and like yeah if im one with the char.

Bad Sound and Music: I cant stand the music that EA games have, like uhh that punk music they always have or rap...bleh :| I have never really played a game that really irritated me with the sound but the biggest turn off is when they repeat the same samples over...and over. Or if your playing a shooter and the gun sounds like total sh*t and that happens also with car engines. I need to feel the power and not some whimpy sound. Bad voice acting is also a big no no (Sudeki...ugh) or lame jokes =P

Bad graphics: Well Im no graphic wh*re but I cant stand it if I see graphical glitches or bad animations. To me animations are very important in a game :) I cant stand characters that always have the same movement when you stand still...most of the times you see then in rpgs like ToS.

And I hate it when I cant skip a movie or cutscenes. Normaly I like trainings if they just show some basics and how the hud works but like movies it should be skippable.

I agree, i think the un-skippability of the cutscenes and the training really blog down the game.

Im not a big graphics freak, but when games nowadays look like a it should have been on the SNES, i start to question why the developers even decided to make a title that ugly. Graphics are in a way integral to the success of a game, especially if they are part of a popular franchise.

As for sound and controls, dont even get me started.

( tomb raider... )

good topic. let me think:

non responsive controlls, or the other way around: to sensetive controlls. to sensetive controlls just as in " daytona usa 2000" on the dreamcast. it can be adjusted so the game play' s better, so this means the developpers also could have done more playtesting, and then there' s no need for it to be adjustable. non responsive controlls i find in the game " parappa the rappa" on playstation. if they have to make a " press the button in rythem" then if the player press that button at the proper time, how can i still dive into " bad" ? and sometimes i DO make a error, and then my rap ratings wont dive down....... how lame is that.....

bad viewpoints/camera. it has been said before, but i' ll say it again: bad camera angles where you can' t even see your own character SUCKS ! and games like resident evil (first version on playstation) suck even harder, becouse enemy' s can stand just around the corner, where you CANT SEE THEM ! in result, you walk around that corner, and lose energy UNAVOIDABLE !. i see that as a big error in game design. either they should place the monster elswere in that room, or make it that your character could look around the corner before entering the room.

saving. also said before: depending on the game, some games does it right, some games do not. i like games on pc where you just can pause and save wherever you are. in platform games i find the best place to save right after finishing a stage. like seen in crash bandicoot " the wrath of cortex" . the first bandicoot game suced when it came to being able to receive a password. you had to end a mini game. if you failed, you could not get a password, and so you HAD to go on with the game to get to the next possibillity to save.

non skipable video. again told allready. if i want to watch a movie, i' ll start up my dvd player. some games did it right: metal gear solid on playstation is a good example. the first time you play this game, you want to see and hear everything. but if you finished it allready, then those long discussions can be skipped. so developpers, hear this: let the gamer deside if he wants to see all that video stuff you put in the game. video clips can be fun, but HAS to be skippable.

training missions. also said before. but indeed, why do we need to go trough missions that learn us how to jump, climb, shoot, walk (buffy the vampire slayer springs to mind) if the game is so simple ? is the manual not enough to see for us how to jump walk and shoot ?

clipping. i love 3D games, but boy oh boy do some developpers never learn. take tomb raider for instance. when i first saw and played tomb raider, i was impressed, and those clipping problems where never anoying becouse i knew the hardware could not cope yet. but even now, on a high end pc, or consoles like ps2 and xbox we see the same clipping errors we saw in tomb raider 1 ! for racing games the clipping problem is the " horizon that runs away" effect (or in the common language, popup). games like gran turismo or for instance project gotham racing 2 or rallisport challenge 2 shows us that there' s no need for pop up annymore. but some developpers love to put more detail in their game than the hardware can cope with. the result is buildings that appear way to late, or flashing and dissapearing pieces of road. it looks like rubbish.