As fun as video games can be, there are often things - some small, some not small at all - that are in them that irritate us. What are some of the most annoying features you've come across in video games? Has there ever been something bad enough to put you off playing a game entirely?
The only thing coming to my mind is that stupid owl in Ocarina of Time. He goes on and on with his explanations of stuff that we already know, or will easily be able to figure out on our own, and then at the end of his explanation he says 'do you want me to repeat what I said?', with the top option being 'yes'. So if you're just spamming the 'A' button to get through his dialogue as quickly as possible, chances are you're going to make him say it all over again. It's really annoying.
On the note of Ocarina of Time, I'll add in: boring action. The vast majority of non-boss enemies in Zelda OOT are defeated by waiting for the right time to attack, then attacking. Don't attack now, the wolf is facing you. Don't attack now, the clam is shut. Don't attack now, the Gerudo elite will block. OKAY NOW. Just wait and attack, it's incredibly monotonous for an entire action game to be so bland and simple. The other main thing that annoys me is incredibly boring fetch quests. "Go all over town to talk to these five people and bring the thing they give you to me", or "go kill eight of this specific gagoo even though you slew eighty on the way here", or worst of all "collect five of this totally random random-drop that I won't tell you where to find it, and even if you do find out where, there's still only a narrow random chance of it dropping from an enemy, have fun not progressing at all in the story until then." One more-more thing that annoys me is when a final boss fight is badly designed in either of two ways. The first way being when the boss is disproportionately durable, like taking sixty crossbow bolts to the chest and still coming at you. The other is when the boss fight tests you on skills other than those you have been practicing, like when you've been playing a platformer and the final boss becomes an arcade jet shooter or when you've been playing FPS and the final boss is more of a physics puzzler. It really kills the climax of the game.
The most annoying thing in games to me is general across a lot of game: lame puzzles. I'm not really a puzzle person, and that's my biggest beef with Zelda, Pokémon, and The Elder Scrolls. I like going through dungeons/caves and beating stuff up, I'm not a fan of taking 5 minutes to solve a puzzle. I know that some of these games are designed to have puzzles, but I would rather have none of them.
Fetch and escort quests, especially the latter. Why are they a thing? The one you're escorting is usually too stupid to stay out of the way or get stuck somewhere or just get themselves killed.
Surprised nobody has mentioned unskippable cutscenes! Honestly I think this just bad design. For replays especially, I don't want to watch the cutscenes every single time, and having to wade through pre-battle dialogue if I fail a boss...ugh. Time, wasting away. Games that don't let you skip the credits are amongst the worst, though. Having the credits play with a cutscene is fine. Forcing me to sit through reels upon reels of names I don't get a chance to absorb is not. Maybe that's ungrateful and insensitive of me, but I am not saying to not have the credits play at the end of the game...just don't make me watch them if I want to save my clear data or see the end cutscene. Make it engaging. One for me and it seems only me is games that do not have an English dub. I absolutely HATE this. It's pure laziness on the developers' behalf - I'm afraid the "too expensive" defence doesn't cut it when small companies like Compile Heart can afford to give their games English voice acting, and always do. Developers like Koei Tecmo have no excuse. I suspect it is deliberate vilifying of voice actors since they now have a union and can demand actual pay for their services - perpetuated by a very loud and obnoxious minority on the internet who cry out for "dual audio" whenever a game is dub only but say nothing at all when it is Japanese voices only - but either way, it is unacceptable. You cannot call a title localised if you do not localise ALL of it...not only that, it's damn distracting, especially in combat situations. Trying to read subtitles in real-time combat is impossible, and I find that not being able to understand what characters are saying breaks immersion for me as I have to split my attention between the dialogue and the game, where previously the dialogue was part of the game. More and more this is happening, and I am growing steadily more disgusted by it. Also, RNG. RNG is the single most diabolical thing in any video game, ever. RNG is the catch-all excuse developers use for not designing their video games properly. I have wasted more hours and suffered more deaths than I care to count because the RNG decided it was going to screw me over, and I do not think random chance should EVER play a part in video games. There is no skill to it, and you can theoretically be trying to do something for YEARS before you actually manage to do it, if the computer is bloody-minded enough. The worst part of it is that RNG is a significant factor in nearly every video game, usually measured as painful percentage chances, and it basically means "this will never happen" but feeds you this tiny sliver of hope that it might. I loathe RNG-based mechanics in games....especially when it concerns item acquisition. Monster Hunter players will know where I'm coming from.
UNSKIPPABLE TUTORIALS! Starlow, I know how to jump! I know how to counterattack! SHUT UP ALREADY! I don't want to hear about this! I know how to throw a ball, Kukui! No need to demonstrate! THIS IS GETTING OLD!
When you can't save during an extended part of a game that if you fail you'll lose hours of progress...
This, this so much, I still have flashbacks from when I tried a Dragon Quest game, right in the start of the game no save point for hours and I got wiped so I had to start over from the very beginning, this is one of the worse things a game can do. I also didn't try it again because why would when I already wasted like 6 hours and got nothing for it other than a game over screen before I could save.
Argh, when I was little it was how no matter what I did I couldn't work a puzzle out. Example when I was really little I played heaps of Bratz games but I think they were meant for kids a little older than I was since in the final race against burdine I could never work out how even though I beat her to the first checkpoint she somehow beat me to the others... or Spyro when I had to get these kites down for these baby dragons and the first two were easy but since spyro couldn't actually fly I was stuck on the last one I kept gliding to it over and over and missing argh! Drove me insane! Now that I'm much older I'm able to beat those easily but now there are new games for me to get stuck on (Elder scrolls oblivion I'm talking about you).
Games where the level grind is monotonous. If I need to work for levels, I should still have fun doing instead of endlessly killing the same goons over and over and over. Blugh.
Games where the story is mainly the heroes trying to clean up the villian's mess while the villain always stays one step ahead of the heroes. Granted, this kind of scenario can work if written well. But I wish more games took a page out of Zelda, and start with the damage already done.
Things that irritate me in games... Simple and easy to answer. Long cutscenes not at all useful to the story of a game. They reveal no lore, give you no information as to what can come in the future, and don't look back on your past choices. Loud, obnoxious sounds. You know the squeaking doors from horror games? Yeah, that's okay so long as it isn't too loud or too repetitive. It just gets on my nerve if the same sound effect is used for, like, everything. Long tutorials/games that hold your hand. How often do I see this? Not very often, but it's still in my list of most annoying things in any video game ever. Unless it might actually be helpful, don't give us tutorials, and don't hold our hands. This is an opinion. Please don't get mad. Grinding. Who doesn't dislike staying in an area and doing the same thing over and over? Maybe a select group of people, but it gets on my nerves, especially in relatively easy games. So that's my list. Yeah... Not very big...
Puzzles in general, especially memory ones. I can't remember anything at all and they want me to memorize that?
When games throw you in and expect you to mess around until you can figure out what to do. I don’t expect to be guided everywhere, but it would be nice if some games just gave you an idea of what you’re supposed to do (Zelda 1 is the perfect example of this)
Bosses that you HAVE to lose to that don't tell you such. I once beat Grovyle in PMD Explorers and felt great, only to then see my characters still get knocked out.. that was when I realized you were supposed to lose to him.
