Gaming Pet Peeves

[Benji]

What really annoys you in games?

For me it's the "Collect all these insignificant items for no reward other than completion and a tiny bit of EXP" quests, I find them so fucking irritating, and the worst part is that it's sandbox games that are most guilty, games that could literally have them anywhere and on many different levels of height, pisses me off.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I hate the random battles. I've been reminded of them since replaying FFVII on my PSP. Really annoying especially if you've gone the wrong way and you're just walking back to the right place again and BOOOOM battle. Grr.

[King Ellis]

Agreed.

The worst part for me is that the best way to go about it is to get a guide and just go through each one right from the start. But what's the point of buying a game and immidiately breaking out a guide?

So you do it normally, you go around and collect them as you find them and end up with only a few left that you cannot find. The game wont tell you where they are so you either have to give up or break out the guide and go to each and every location because you don't know which you've found and which you've missed.

Crackdown was horrible for this. I got to maybe 498 of 500 agility orbs and could not find the rest. I don't think I ever really tried to find the pigeons on GTAIV, maybe one or two that I came across whilst doing missions. I really loved the earlier GTA versions of hidden packages where you got weapons and stuff at your hideouts. I actually wanted to find them.

[Ruki]

I hate the stupid collect-a-thons. Also, invisible walls, those can go fuck themselves. Build a fence or something there!

[NotoriousGTT]

Invisible walls is a hate of mine too.

I dont mind random battles, its part of the charm of the early 3D final fantasys.

Spawn camping in online games!

[King Ellis]

The invisible walls of Bionic Commando are comical to me, probably not to anyone who bought the thing. I can imagine them being all

' Big open world for me to swing around!'

*Sets off in random direction*

'WTF? Biohazard symbol? Why am I fucking dead? '

[Matt]

The worst part is when you get to the end of a game, realised you've missed one or two of those collectibles, but the game forces you to play the entire way through that chapter/level to find it.

Lost: Via Domus is perhaps the worst example of that. :/

I agree about GTA IV's pigeons, San Andreas is pretty bullshit for that too.

[Kaney]

What really annoys you in games?

For me it's the "Collect all these insignificant items for no reward other than completion and a tiny bit of EXP" quests, I find them so fucking irritating, and the worst part is that it's sandbox games that are most guilty, games that could literally have them anywhere and on many different levels of height, pisses me off.

Still can't get those last blast shards?

Eh, I don't mind collection missions that much. As long as it's like Crackdown, where they're fairly visible, or inFamous where you can ping the radar to look for them, but in things like GTAIV, with the tiny absurd pidgeons, fuck that.

Things I hate are when the game makes goals hard to achieve by being a bitch about it, rather than making the goals themselves difficult. Using inFamous as another example, you get a trophy for doing kills in a certain way, by following a "stunt list". Only the entire list is unviewable in any form, the game only tells you one stunt at a time in the pause menu, so if you're stuck trying to blast three enemies off a high building at once, which you will be because the game rations out three enemies on one roof scenarious like fucking gold dust, and when you do find them they instantly run off in different directions, it means you're unable to continue with the list until you complete this one absurd stunt.

[alldaws1]

Agreed.

The worst part for me is that the best way to go about it is to get a guide and just go through each one right from the start. But what's the point of buying a game and immidiately breaking out a guide?

So you do it normally, you go around and collect them as you find them and end up with only a few left that you cannot find. The game wont tell you where they are so you either have to give up or break out the guide and go to each and every location because you don't know which you've found and which you've missed.

Or like me on X-Men Origins you do it normally, then use a guide and upon finishing the guide you realise you still have one left to find

94 of 95 dog tags and I have absolutely no idea where the last one is.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I hate the random battles. I've been reminded of them since replaying FFVII on my PSP. Really annoying especially if you've gone the wrong way and you're just walking back to the right place again and BOOOOM battle. Grr.

God, this, so much. I can't even play Final Fantasy anymore because I loathe random battles so much. I can't tell you how many times I've gone back to play IX or VII only to put it down in disgust because I can't fucking do anything without hitting a random battle. "Oh, I need to go back to this town and grab some RANDOM BATTLE RANDOM BATTLE RANDOM BATTLE UGHHHHHHHHH!"

It's why I now prefer games like Xenosaga and Disgaea. In Xenosaga's case the enemies are right there walking around on screen and I can choose whether I want to fight them or not (novel idea!), and in Disgaea you've got a map system that always has a predetermined, static amount of enemies on it. The only Final Fantasy games I've played and enjoyed lately are Tactics and Tactics Advanced; the random battles there don't bother me nearly as much as they do in the other games.

[Scott McFly]

Oh God, the GTA IV pigeons. I used a guide with map and screenshots to find them and it still took fucking ages. How anyone is expected to put in the time to scour the entire landscape to find them is beyond me, and it took so much longer because you can't beat them to death - you have to shoot them and obviously that attracts the police, which you then have to shake off and go back to where you were so you do them in the same order that is on the map in case you miss any! And to a lesser extent, the stunt jumps too. Some of those were hard enough to hit anyway without having to find the fuckers too.

I've probably got a whole lot more but I can't think of any off the bat right now. :/

[Ruki]

Retarded online achievements like "Win 537 times...in a row"

I also do not like the new "Demo Play" Nintendo is doing. Can't get past a hard part? Let the game play it for you! ...like seriously, what's the fucking point?

No pausing during long cut scenes

[Skummy]

Time-based achievements. Half the things you can unlock on the Sega Mega Drive Collection or Sonic Mega Collection or what have you are always "play Sonic 1 for six hours". Why?! I can finish Sonic 1 in under twenty minutes, why would I ever want to play it for six hours? Surely finishing it in less time is more worthy of an award?

[EddieRuckus]

I hate it when shitty games have achievements that require you to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, which you can only unlock by playing through the entire game. Thankfully Wolverine Origins wasn't like that, but there are many shitty games that I've not even bothered with achievements like that because it was a chore to play through the first time.

[Liam]

Multiplayer Trophies/Achievements......ok, they aren't so bad, but it means that if you don't get a game whilst an online community is still fairly active, you kneecap a good third of the trophies you can potentially get.

[Clawson]

Yeah online Trophies/Achievements really do fucking blow. Do I look like I have enough time to get in the top 1% of Killzone 2 players weekly?

Fuck no.

[SRN]

Yeah, I never understood the need for oneline achivements as well. Or, to phrase more accurately, the amount of online achivements in some games is unneeded. It would okay to have perhaps one to five or something to that extent, but having like one third of the achivements be online ones is ridicolous. I also echo the hate for random battles which is, in part, the reason why I sort of gave up with Final Fantasy and generally all JRPG's.

[Captain Kirk]

Online trophies/achievements I absolutely hate, mostly because I don't like playing online against random people who cheat which is the case in most games.

[alldaws1]

I don't mind the majority of online achievements, it's when they require you to be in the Top 100 or beat the developers or that kind of thing. Or like RSV2 when you need to kill like a bazillion people with an SMG with six players present.

[SRN]

Yeah, achivements that way to detailed are annoying too. Like how the fuck am I supposed to gun down twelve people online, with an SMG, at four'o'clock in the morning, wearing only one sock and making sure the sun has not risen yet? I mean, come on!