Most overused game mechanic?

Well almost every game has some sort of a leveling mechanic, whether it be the player's level, the game levels, difficulty levels, and anything else you can think of that revolves around levels. Usually they mark the checkpoints about another aspect of the game, whether it be the story line, or something required of the player in order to access another feature to the game. Not that its a bad mechanic, its just used a lot in video games.

 

Save points.
Can't we just save in the menu? It makes things a lot easier, especially in JRPG's.

 

How about too many cut-scenes, if that counts? We have too many modern-day games that suffer with this problem. I'm trying to play a game, not watch a movie! I guess in a sense, this would be an overused... film mechanic? Kingdom Hearts 2 suffered big time with this. It's especially bad if the cut-scenes aren't skippable. I love Skyward Sword as a game, but there are so many cut-scenes at the beginning, and unless you're playing Hero Mode, you're forced to watch all the cut-scenes when starting a new file.

 

As far as Mobile games go at least, the fusion technique is pretty over used. Most games don't even try to cover up siphoning souls into another being. sketchy stuff

 

Pressing the start button.

 

Level-grinding, certainly.

I am not inherently against the idea of a level system, but when it becomes required to raise your levels to a certain point simply to progress or not die in a game, it means that the game's difficulty is scaling faster than yours, which I find displeasure with. It is what has turned me off to many RPGs, though Dragon Quest is by far the worst offender of such.

Though, when level-grinding is easy to do in a game - or even unnecessary - that is ideal. Of course, in the end, that just means that a level system should be abolished entirely, but then that ceases to become a video game, and instead becomes an interactive visual novel. A tricky dilemma indeed.