Pet peeves in games?

[Turnikman228]

When simple games have an "epic" backstory and lore all the sudden.

Like Half Life had no story, just survive the aliens and government forces; it was GOOD!
Whatever happened to fun games where the only story was "This is BAD GUY, This is also BAD GUY: GO KICK HIS ASS"
Now make way for the Orwell/Terminator/Bladerunner rip-off with a diatribe of a backstory that makes DeviantArt blush; cue my distaste for Half Life 2. (One of the several issues I got with it) All those new details pulled straight from Valve's rectum and in most cases, the fandom's where they just play a game of "Pin the Tail on the Dystopia Cliche." Making college hipsters squeal in excitement. (At least that's the vibe I got)

Another example is the modern Sonic games that try to be 3EDGY5U and end up looking like Final Fantasy table scraps. To think it started from a game about a Hedgehog running fast.

Let's give Pong a backstory with orchestral music, princesses, palaces and emo monologues alongside the birth of the Pong race after the epic battle of WHOGIVESACRAP.

(Exhales) Damn, that felt good.

[RetroRex]

Overly long tutorials that point out even the most obvious of things. Thinking about Fi from Skyward Sword still makes me cringe a little.

[Majestic Boer Goat]

When a developer refuses to write an ending for a plot/storyline, usually in the interest of keeping the same main character coming back in the sequels, and introduces loads of convoluted BS to justify keeping it going. The Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid series are notorious for this.

[Vort]

Here's something:

- DLC's
- Micro-transactions
- hastily written or non-existent background stories
- Bugs that cause games crash or savegames break down
- Clunky console ports with horrible controls on keyboards

[ThyToaster]

I think my current biggest pet peeve is probably ammo types in shooters. I absolutely hate how every gun class has a different ammo type. Take Far Cry 5 for example. You can have what's basically an AR15, or an M4. They call it an AR-C in game. You can also get an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). Both weapons fire a 5.56mm caliber. It's the exact same round. Or just as well, you can get a 1911 pistol and a Vector, which is specifically stated to fire a .45 caliber. Both the 1911 and the Vector fire a .45 caliber. However, the game insists on making you buy "SMG ammo" separate from "Pistol Ammo" and "LMG ammo" separate from "Rifle Ammo" despite them being the same rounds. I'm just now starting to see in very few games like PUBG or Ring of Elysium that recognize AMMO TYPE over WEAPON TYPE in games. It makes no sense.

[Garrett]

There is a justification for that, but it's not present in that game. 5.56x45mm in an AR-15 are stacked in a 30-round box magazine. The same caliber in an M249 are linked on a belt. A game where you have to load magazines and link belts yourself should let you put the same ammo in both weapons, and should require you to pick up ammo separately for both if you want to pick up pre-loaded magazines and belts. But the Far Cry games spawn magazines and belt links out of thin air.

With the Kriss and the Colt it's a bit more stupid because both simply have a box magazine, but you'd still have to transfer the .45ACP into each magazine. You can't just pick up a single-stack 1911 magazine and replace a long dual-stack Vector mag with it.

And I wouldn't take Far Cry 5 ammo too seriously anyway. In that game, a rifle round traveling at 900m/s cannot penetrate plywood. In fact, Far Cry 5 is so filled with problems so much worse that ammo types are the least of your problems.

[Goldenfoxx]

• Walls preventing total exploration from the beginning. (Zone unavailable! Desynchronization imminent!)
• Rubberbanding in racing games or racing sections of non-racing games. I get why its there, but I maintain that unless it's a kid's game or confined to an easy mode, it's the laziest of lazy game mechanics. I'd just like to challenge game devs to maybe work on that crutch in the future and maybe suggest that if you just absolutely MUST include it, maybe the section doesn't belong in the game to begin with. Honestly, I don't know if anything annoys me more than working hard to build up a significant lead in a race only to have the AI come flying up on my tail twice as fast as they've ever gone at any point in the race prior. The inevitable result is either you wind up having to game the geography of the track to work for you, or you don't actually race since you know if you dare to pull so far ahead that you can't see them behind you that it's ultimately to your detriment. That last part? That's the fundamental opposite of racing.
• Games that give you gadgets and upgrades that are ultimately only defensive or useless except in rare circumstances (looking straight at Arkham Knight here).
• Escort quests. Doesn't matter the genre or how useful the person is. I really hate it. For the record, I'm not counting games where it's part of the entire gaming concept, like Bioshock: Infinite. Just RPGs and open world games that include them.
• Also, fetch quests. Like rubberbanding, I would like to challenge devs here, too, to maybe find ways to not do this, preferably ever again or for a long, long time. Make us wonder when you bring them back why we ever thought we needed them.
• I would like to reiterate rubberbanding because I just really fucking hate it.
• Any section in a game that only exists because some type of game mechanic suddenly got popular in another game. Oh, tower defense is popular? Let's throw em into AC: Revelations! Oh, Horde Mode is popular? Let's put them into a bunch of games that don't need it! Oh, Battle Royal is popular? PUT IT IN EVERYTHING! No. Stop. Please? Work with your strengths, not someone else's.
• But my REAL pet peeve in gaming isn't even a feature. It's game developers who have forgotten the nut of what made their series franchises popular in the first place, or who make sequels so different from what came before that people who love your franchise are left scratching their heads after months of anticipation for the next entry. I started noticing this with Arkham Knight. At launch, the peripheral modes were so bare-bones that they made all of us wonder what the hell. It wasn't the proper challenge and campaign modes we were expecting and looking forward to, just single maps tied to a single character, and that was only changed after fan complaints. It still doesn't feel like a must-play mode, and despite being hardcore into the Arkham series, I don't think I ever bothered to beat all the predator maps with all the characters to this day. And it wasn't just that, it was little nuances and major features alike. At least they were willing to listen to us, though. A good many companies have clearly never learned how to do that (which goes without saying on a site like this that exists as a direct result of that).

[scottypops]

Knee high fences my character can't get over

Dragon Age, lol.