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Top 20 Most Annoying Things In Modern Games

I like video games. Gamers love to play at home, on the road, alone, with friends or family. It’s part of our culture, but as often happens, even our love for video games has a lot of things that is annoying us. Why is there anything in games that annoys people? Are aliens being recruited into the testing department? A lot of them exist because of the technical limitations of the platforms. Many engines do not allow creating large locations and, more importantly, greater interactivity of the environment.

Annoying Things

Sometimes the developers are forced to remove something for the sake of balance, to direct the player to the right place, or simply increase the passage time. But it also happens that a rather strange or illogical solution gets into the release version of the game, which the developer simply did not notice because of the “blurry” look at his creation.

We have simple rules for selecting “diseases”. You can call it problems, bugs, or whatever. But I prefer the name “disease” more, especially since some of the points are signed really like a kind of illness.

There are many of them. Almost everyone who loves to play has come across them. This article will help you remember the most unpleasant things in video games.

First, there are no isolated cases. If we are to point the finger and criticize something, then replicated and not from scratch. Second, annoying factors should be not just a software error or a local bug, but part of the game developers’ intention. 

1. Wolverine effect

Why the hell did all modern protagonists suddenly decide to adopt Logan’s key ability (aka Wolverine from X-Men)? So we don’t know why the wounds of the fighters for justice are miraculously healed if they sit in hiding for a minute or two. Just don’t think bad: we are not in the least confused by the health regeneration mechanic itself. And in Halo, it was quite appropriate thanks to armor with self-healing energy shields. It is the complete (almost universal) absence of even a hacky explanation of why the character’s cuts half a meter long and numerous bullet holes are annoying. The writers for Half-Life, Halo, Crysis, and Resistance have done a great job of tying regeneration to the storyline, but is it so hard for the rest?

What could be better than plot-wise unreasonable health regeneration and a thick layer of raspberry jam on the screen?

According to the creators of Call of Duty ‒ nothing

Annoying Things

The notorious “Wolverine Effect” is aggravated by the abundant pouring of raspberry jam on the screen. This, according to the competent opinion of the developers, enhances the degree of immersion in the gameplay and better conveys the feelings of the character. So, dear programmers and artists, imitation of such a Tarantino bleeding in the interface is by no means the best idea. And the authentic atmosphere has nothing to do with it.

Examples ‒ thousands of them: all Call of Duty episodes, starting with the second, the last chapters of Battlefield, the Gears of War and Uncharted series, as well as all sorts of RAGE, Binary Domain, and Spec Ops: The Line.

2. Dual Personality

Sometimes the people responsible for the gameplay and the motivation of this very process disagree. The first ones want to flood the project with skirmishes, yes, such as in Gears of War (for the benefit of the mass audience, of course). The latter, in turn, are eager to tell a story full of drama ‒ with sincere tears, worries, and turning points. And if the impromptu swan and cancer from the world of interactive entertainment do not calm down in time, something like the latest Tomb Raider is born. In which, if you still do not understand, the actions of our protégé for a second did not correlate with her behavior during staged scenes.

Lara’s expression speaks for itself: she doesn’t care about murders, at least outside of the snotty plot scenes.

Annoying Things

In the plot videos, young Lara was whining, moaning, grieving, dissolving snot, and resembling only a pale shadow of herself. But during direct hostilities, she suddenly reincarnated into a massive (and cold-blooded!) Killer of all living things. And so it happened: a couple of minutes of whining in the cutscenes, and then a continuous meat grinder without any remorse. A similar divergence of story and gameplay was in Uncharted: the seemingly cheerful and good-natured Nathan Drake herds mowed down mercenaries and pirates, completely breaking the light image of modern Indiana Jones. And who to believe now: emotional scriptwriters or bloodthirsty game designers?

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3. Loss of Memory

It seems that the virtual characters were struck by a fatal illness: the pathological forgetfulness of the once accumulated skills. Let’s take a look at Kratos, the mighty Spartan, once the god of war, and now ‒ the poor fellow stuck in marketing copy-paste. In the first God of War, he was a mere mortal, albeit an incredibly strong spirit and body. He pumped, matured, killed Ares and… in the sequel he lost all abilities! Okay, learning again. But in the third part ‒ again the loss of all skills! And in spin-offs too! How long could it be?!

Annoying Things

The same was the case in the unpopular outside of Japan Yakuza franchise. There, however, no one tried to suck the strength out of the protagonist ‒ he just madly forgot more or less complex combos from release to release. The developers would only know how annoying this unhealthy trend is when long-learned strikes need to be rediscovered over and over again. Meanwhile, an elegant solution to the problem has long been on the surface: all you need to do is leave us an adequate (albeit not very wide) set of attacks and techniques, as the authors of inFamous 2 did. And there will be no complaints, honestly!

Examples: All God of War chapters and major Yakuza releases.

4. Boss Fight

When the boss fight is artificially complicated.

Classic: the hero travels through the huge game world, completing all sorts of tasks and getting valuable equipment and, more importantly, experience expressed in increased characteristics and cool skills or spells. There is enough money for the best “gear” in the whole game, and companions instill fear even in the guards in the cities. It remains only to defeat the last boss.

Annoying Things

“Let’s do that!” The hero enters the final battle with the main enemy, fully confident that he is perfectly prepared for the fateful battle. The beginning of the battle is quite nothing: a couple of hits here, a couple of hits there. Everything seems to be fine, but when the boss’s health drops to a low level, he enters a new phase and smears the character on the wall. Game over.

Many would agree that artificial complexity is one of the most frustrating things about video games. Especially when it translates into simple but very powerful bosses who kill in just a few hits. Most often, this mayhem occurs in role-playing games, where, in theory, bosses are generally extremely optional. Well, really, why is it always the same?

Many dungeon exploration games literally put the player in unhealthy hardcore challenges every few minutes, which are often randomly generated on their own. Whole hours of long and strenuous development of the character can fly into “Tartarus” because of the crookedly balanced random number generator.

Examples: The Resident Evil ‒ from the first to the sixth; most of the old school RPGs, both Japanese and Western.

5. Body-Guard Service

The most egregious cliché of modern video games is the accompaniment of a weak or defenseless character through adversity and hardship. As you can imagine, the escort missions of Ashley Graham, the long-suffering daughter of the President of the United States, are the worst thing that happened in Resident Evil 4. No help from her is a complete mess!

In every GTA, starting with the third, we pulled out of the scrapes and in every possible way protected the muscular men of the gangster appearance. Pfff, losers!

Annoying Things

However, before the blonde Ashley had its own feeble auxiliary heroes. For example, the ephemeral Yorda is the second protagonist of the ICO interactive parable. She, too, had to be constantly guarded and monitored so that the divine beauty of the virgin was not in trouble, i.e. so that she is not dragged away by dark entities. We, again, are aware: this was the intention of the authors, and the idea is quite logical and even talented. But how annoying such tasks are! Dear ladies, take up arms, as Farah did from “Prince of Persia”, and learn to stand up for yourself! Or, at least, become invulnerable, like Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite.

Examples: all parts of Grand Theft Auto starting with the third, Resident Evil 4, ICO, BioShock 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Shake Eater.

6. Too Epic Battles During CutScenes

When characters in cutscenes do something that cannot be done in the game.

Everyone loves cool cut scenes, right? But sometimes it becomes unpleasant that the character hides all his coolest abilities from the player. After all, it could greatly simplify life if it were different. In addition, many projects would clearly be more fun and even interactive. This is especially true for slashers and other action games.

Annoying Things

A striking example is the Devil May Cry slasher series. Gamers have already lost count of how many times Dante got up in the cut-scenes so that in the game itself it would be possible to go through the most difficult moments in a matter of seconds. In the hands of the player, his movements are similar to those of a disabled person, if you compare even with the seedy intro at the very beginning. How annoying!

7. Non-Existent Things

When it is impossible to pick up a weapon lying nearby.

Classics from the world of video games (and not only): the main character fell into a trap, being in an extremely unfriendly environment; somewhere nearby a maniac or a monster is wandering. The instinct of self-preservation literally trumpets that it is necessary to find a remedy. And here it is: a wrench is lying in the corner of the room. “This will be enough!” The hero approaches the instrument and realizes that he cannot pick it up.

Annoying Things

You can’t pick up a kitchen knife in the kitchen of an old mansion, or even a baseball bat from the table. And all because this is a horror game, and the developer simply did not provide you with any weapons, only stealth and running from corner to corner. This is a veritable plague of video games, which should cause fear in the player. In fact, they are often perplexing.

Of course, really good horror games are made in such a way as to avoid this problem, but even in modern AAA titles, you can often stumble upon elements of the environment that look like potential weapons, but in fact, are not. Perhaps one day the gaming industry will defeat this ailment, but so far there is little hope.

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8. Scenes Without Pause and Skip

What could be easier than pause the movie? Now let’s imagine that the players no longer have this feature. So you turned on the film and cannot be distracted, look from beginning to end. And if you missed something, then you should start from the very beginning.

Smells like crazy, right? However, what is considered a benchmark in one area is often overlooked in the next. So it happened with games: moving towards cinematography, the developers forgot about the possibility to pause the image. After all, everyone was in such a situation when you sit quietly, do not touch anyone, watch an important plot video, and then the phone begins to vibrate persistently. And while it is possible to find it, pick up the phone and send the caller far, far away, all the most important has already been said and shown. Restart, damn it.

9. Invisible Textures

There is nothing worse than when your all-powerful hero can kill an entire army, but he will never overcome the texture of a stretched 20 cm high barbed wire, or jump over an anti-tank spike that is in his knees. It’s worse when you just run into an invisible wall. Any game has its limits beyond which the player cannot go. However, if the game is built correctly, the player will not feel them!

Annoying Things

But very often the developers have problems with this, and players, in turn, exploring the game world may stumble upon an invisible wall ‒ a very unpleasant moment from which immersion in the game world suffers.

How often do we see the situation: a brave hero, covered with muscles even where they do not occur in nature at all, is not able to overcome a trifling obstacle. Only half a meter high, or even less. Hey, comrade, you don’t even need to jump over this fence ‒ just step over it! But, no, you can’t.

And such restrictions are literally ubiquitous. Sometimes it comes to the point of complete absurdity: one barrier can be overcome, and the second ‒ no. But why? They are visually identical! It goes without saying that the sin extends not only to small obstacles. Suffice it to recall the reference trilogy Prince of Persia from the PlayStation 2 era, where seemingly identical walls had different physical properties.

And if the Prince calmly climbed onto the first one, then the second turned out to be an irresistible Rubicon for a nimble jumper of the king’s blood. It’s the same in some Uncharted, and even inFamous. In general, the amicable “thank you” was deserved by the masters of scripts and invisible walls, who followed the lead of the entertainment and outraged common sense.

10. Impenetrable Doors and Insurmountable Obstacles 30 cm High

Oooh, those great locked doors! Guess what unites Dovahkiin, who can knock down Dragons from heaven with his screams, Batman with his liquid bombs that explode concrete and Isaac Clark with a plasma fucking cutter? True, they can defeat an enemy of any size and strength, but all as one are powerless against the almighty closed door for which you need to look for a key.

A hefty Space Marine stomps heavily down the hallways. He is clad in super-sophisticated exoskeleton armor, a huge blaster in his hands, and a heavy energy cannon behind him. 

And then an insurmountable obstacle stands in his way ‒ a super-powerful and mega-steep wooden door. Well, we all understand: the circumstances are stronger ‒ the thug must go and look for the key. Stop, but the situation is just masterpiece idiotic, right? But it is diligently repeated from year to year in not the worst “realistic shooters”.

Annoying Things

Or let us also recall the ally of the aforementioned barriers ‒ ordinary glass, which under a hail of bullets and shots from a grenade launcher go incredibly plausible cracks, but never completely fall apart. And all because they hide something that the eyes of a mere mortal should not see. Some kind of terrible programming secret, not otherwise.

11. Similar Teaching Modes

Who doesn’t get bored of that eternal “press W to go forward”, “press SPACEBAR to jump”? Are there really still people playing on the planet who do not know this? Many games today do not require training at all, and good developers make the controls intuitive.

Annoying Things

Intrusive, pop-ups with tons of text explaining which button to go to, how to move the mouse, and how to jump. You press “next”, and after 2 steps a new window, after 2 more steps another window!

Fortunately, some developers know that, and they use a minimum of graphic elements and text in training because the basic mechanics are so intuitive for players.

12. No quick Save at Any Time

When the game consists of going through a level from one checkpoint to another, it creates tension, but sometimes the moments when you can’t just save are enraged! For example, I played for an hour and then suddenly you need to quit the game and do other work, but screw you, the checkpoint is not close yet ‒ play it out or forget about all the completed missions and achievements in the last hour. This is the thing that pisses me off in games.

Or what about poorly thought out checkpoints? These are predefined points for saving progress, carefully arranged in levels. And sometimes they find themselves, just like Gordon Freeman, “in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

Annoying Things

Take the latest brainchild of Guerrilla Games. Killzone: Shadow Fall. It is not particularly difficult, even if the settings are set to “hard”. But this is true only if you have already known the terrain up and down, and you understand where the enemies will run from and at what point to react to their attack. But what if all these rooms and halls are new? That’s right: die and go to the last checkpoint, which was God knows when. This is especially infuriating in the final mission.

Another example is the Dark Souls series, where fires clump together at a distance of 200-300 meters, and sometimes, on the contrary, are located kilometers from each other. So it turns out: you just blissfully saved yourself every few minutes, and now you have to overcome giant distances through ghouls and monsters in search of vital fire. And why is this, one wonders?

13. Total and Absolute Linearity of Shooters

The phraseologism “linear shooter” already presupposes a complete absence of free walks in the fresh air and shootings in vast areas. However, the studios that release such creations to the human court, for some reason, believe that there should be only one “corridor” in such games. There are no forks, there are no alternative routes either: the players are forced to move along a strictly delineated path like horses on a race. Why not make several of these “corridors”? After all, in this case, it will become much more interesting to play, and we will have nothing to complain about.

Annoying Things

And by the way, where is the total next-gene promised many years ago, with open spaces and other sweets? Even in the first “Doom”, there was more variability than in the last multimillion-dollar “shooters”. Shame and disgrace, honestly.

14. Downgrading for Sales

Everything is clear here ‒ everyone wants to get more profit from sales by attracting a younger audience. But how absurd the same Battlefield 3 looked ‒ a game about a real war, where after a rating downgrade, absolutely nothing happened to a person after a direct hit from a missile.

Annoying Things

15. Bad stealth

The next thing that pisses us off in games is bad stealth. In some games, it is done well, and any shortcomings can be justified, as in Dishonored. But when, in a shooter that claims to be super realistic, like the last Metro, you breathe in the enemy’s ass for a minute, pressing tightly against him ‒ it’s absurd. Games that have stealth look the same, but the mechanics do not provide for its use. The question is ‒ why do we need it then?

Annoying Things

16. Terrible optimization on PC

The beauty of the computer worlds and, accordingly, the appetites of the engines on which they are created are growing before our eyes. And the systems that were top-end a couple of years ago are already good if they are strong middle peasants. For gamers, endless upgrades have already become a necessary evil. Progress is always a good thing, but there are some extremely negative aspects to it. In this case, it is appropriate to talk about the laziness and unwillingness of developers to adequately optimize the game. 

Annoying Things

A good example is the recent ROME II, in which the developers in every way praised the engine precisely for its modest appetites and quite an adequate picture. At the end of the day, an opposite situation turned out: with rather mediocre graphics, the game managed to slow down even on top configurations by today’s standards. What can we say about some inexpensive gaming computers! The situation was corrected only six months later and after installing tons of various patches and updates. And, it would seem, what was the problem to do so right away? No answer.

17. Artificial intelligence

How much is there waiting for the promised AI? 3 years? A little bit like. We are still waiting for adequate artificial intelligence …

Annoying Things

At this time, every second producer sings the praises like nightingale about the titanic work his team has done to develop algorithms for the behavior of bots. But then each player will be able to enjoy the “genius” of computer dummies, which run in droves at the main character in a straight line, occasionally getting stuck in obstacles.

But if such behavior of computer rivals does not cause anything but dull irritation and boredom, then when such “nerds” belong to the player (and undoubtedly very important in the plot), you want to naturally grab an ax and run to visit that nightingale-producer.

For example, the single company in Red Orchestra 2 at all exhibitions and in previews was presented by the developers as a realistic and clever shooter about the Battle of Stalingrad, in which the player will command a unit of almost real soldiers. As a result, a very miserable sight turned out, in which the same thing was repeated on each of the maps: the respawning bots of the two warring sides ran towards each other in an endless stream of stupidity, and the player looked at it all from the side. It was especially amusing to read after all this the comments of the developers, who suddenly came to their senses, and in one voice began to say that “single-player mode is just a kind of extended training before multiplayer battles, and nothing more.”

18. Errors and Long Downloads

Nowadays, all errors are conveniently corrected by updates. Therefore, developers who rush to the premiere do not always properly approach their elimination or postpone this process. Naturally, games are much more complex now than they used to be, but many are created by teams of several hundred people who also arrange alpha and beta tests. And many games at the start, even from the largest companies, are a lottery, because the number of bugs can go off the scale. You can recall enough cases when the game worked better before the patch than after, and the “improving patches” become “degrading” ones.

Not everyone likes the big patches at the premiere either. Yes, they fix bugs and add content, but they make you wait a long time for the launch, especially when there is little time for the game.

Another scourge of modern games is prolonged downloads. Staring at a monitor for several minutes before the next scene or location appears is not the most pleasant experience. Let’s hope that this item will be corrected at least to some extent on the new generation of consoles by using an SSD drive.

19. When Carrying Weight is Limited

A real problem that pisses me off from tens of thousands of cool games in general. It doesn’t matter that a character can carry a bunch of different items without having a backpack or even visible pockets on his clothes. But if you pick up one small flower, without checking the limit of the carried load, you can suddenly turn into a slow turtle.

Annoying Things

The most prominent examples are The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. They have inventory management and are sometimes inconvenient. There is nothing wrong with not letting the player carry too many things. But when he does not even carry alchemical ingredients and other crafting items, fearing to reach the limit on the journey, this is some kind of unhealthy thing.

20. When a Character Wastes Time on Meaningless Quests

Another typical situation in video games: characters tend to sometimes ignore their main task, engaging in a variety of side activities. Even if the love of your life is in danger, when the world is in the balance of death, a typical protagonist can easily “score” on his mission and do more fun things.

Annoying Things

For example, spending a few hours bringing a lost sheep back to the welcoming farmer in exchange for a piece of the pie. Is it so necessary that you need to be distracted from a really important business? However, in modern games more and more often, such orders are strictly optional.

Sometimes it comes to the uttermost absurdity. Passing the MAIN quests, you, the Dragonborn (for example), a person who kills dragons, fights simultaneously with units of enemy warriors and magicians, are asked to kill 10 fucking rats in the sewers to join the guild.

However, very often the passage of secondary tasks is taken into account when balancing large projects. Having started playing at the highest level of difficulty, the player is often forced to go through everything at all that can be reached. This helps to get resources, without which the game cannot be trite. Therefore, to some extent, meaningless assignments can stretch the pleasure of the game.

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