Secret gaming pet peeves

[ManekiNeko]

We've heard all the major complaints about video games, like "I hate the way these camera angles sabotage your character!" or "what the hell? Limited continues?!"

Now, I'd like to hear some gripes that only you have about the games you've played... a complaint you've been carrying with your for years but have never shared with the world. Here's mine.

I hate games starring animated eggs. I'm talking specifically about the Dizzy series, but I'm not fond of anything else that tries to pass off an egg as a legitimate mascot. Eggs are dull, white orbs with edible goo inside. They're neither compelling nor endearing. Frankly, I have no incentive to lengthen an egg's life... I'd much rather hasten its demise, so I can scoop up the remains and serve them in a skillet with a little oil and some sausage on the side.

JR

[Bratwurst]

and some sausage on the side.

You flatter me, Dr. Maneki, but flattery will get you nowhere!

I hate it when a game character moves like a slug. I'm not talking about Methodical Mario (he can run with the B button at least), or those times where you have different characters with varying stats and the big bruiser's tradeoff is being slow. I mean when you're stuck with it for the whole game!

[Dahne]

Like in Parasite Eve?

That game made my thumb cry.

[evilmess]

Well I guess it won't be a secret anymore so here goes...

I hate it when people don't take the time to read the instruction manuals and then ask questions on how to do the most basic things that are clearly in the manual.

READ THE DAMN MANUAL! TWICE IF YOU HAVE TOO!

That was kind of a rant wasn't it. LOL

[ArnoldRimmer83]

I liked most of the Dizzy games, even if eggs aren't exactly the most compelling idea for a main character.

My own personal pet peeve in video games, is how in several games when you get a power up to freeze enemies, touching the enemy still damages you even though he is frozen and can't move. Very irritating.

[WiseSalesman]

And speaking of that, once I'm at a high level in a game, say, Castlevania: COTM for instance, and I touch a skeleton for the first level, shouldn't I be hurting THEM, and not the other way around?

[punkoffgirl]

I hate games that make you fall. I HATE FALLING WHEN I'M PLAYING!!
I've been falling to my death since SMB and hating every minute of it.

[KirbyStar27]

i hate some games that you have to get to the save points. Its really annoying when you cant just have a menu to save your game! :o

[§ Gideon §]

My pet peeve: poorly translated text in dialog-dependent genres.

[tholly]

Mine is games such as Metroid Prime. There are certain things for your scan book that you can only get at one exact time in the game. And if you didn't scan it at that time then you can never get 100% complete in the game and you can never go back and get it again without starting the whole game over again.

I also agree with the above comment about save points. I hate having to get to a certain place to save.

[Sotenga]

I really f#%$ing hate it when you are forbidden to continue in the last few stages of a game, particularly a difficult one. Three examples that come straight to my mind are Rastan, Shinobi, and Time Soldiers. I bet the programmers did that just to make you get to the final boss, only to lose your last life to it, then when you're taken straight to the Game Over screen, a look of wide-eyed, open-jawed disbelief is on your face, and you look like that for at least two minutes. Then, either you lose all emotion and just walk out of the arcade, (or bail out of MAME) not feeling anything, or you go on a typical berserk rampage. Either way, I hate it when that happens. :angry:

POG: Don't get me started on what I called "death falls" as a little tyke! There was this one game where I was ultimately fed up with losing all my lives to falling off the bottom of the screen... I think it was Castlevania III.

[gamergary]

Games that make you run around in a maze to move the plot along. Such as in Final Fantasy 7 but I just got rid of the game the next week anyway.

[Gamereviewgod]

No auto-fire in shooters. My god man, I'm getting old. My wrists can't take it anymore!!

[brykasch]

Well a few come to mind-

1. A character dying in a foot of water. I hate this and its used in so many games. If a guy can kill 10 feet tall guys with a tail, he damn sure better be able to swim.

2. Games that control when you cna use the game camera. If I am playing I better be able to use the camera everywhere, don't tell me when I am on this ass thin ledge, that I can't rotate the camera.

[mezrabad]

I hate games that make you fall. I HATE FALLING WHEN I'M PLAYING!!
I've been falling to my death since SMB and hating every minute of it.

Do you mean "Super Mario Brothers" or "Super Monkey Ball"? You must really HATE Super Monkey Ball, especially when they show your poor monkey plummeting over and over and over again, shrieking and writhing all the way down! I want to see what that actual land looks like, with all the little capsules full of little monkey corpses in various states of decay. I think I know what you mean, it's a little terrifying to me to have that moment when I go "oh, crap I'm going to fall, whew I saved myself, NO NO! AAAAAaaaagggghh!"

My pet peeve is the expression "beat" when used to describe a game one has completed. Mostly because I fail to hear anyone ever say that they've been beaten by a game. Usually they just "haven't finished it yet" but when they do finish it they're saying "Oh yeah, I beat that one."

How many times did it kick *your* butt? How many times did Pitfall Harry have to die before you actually collected all the treasures? How many times did Mario plunge to his death or eat a bad mushroom before you even saw the Princess? How many times did you have to reload your final save game in Baldur's Gate before you defeated Sarevok?

Just say "I finished it."

Anyway, that's my little pet peeve. I usually keep it chained up because I know it's a rare breed. Now I've let it out and it's taking a dump on someone's carpet. "Bad peeve! No peevey treat for you!"

[Cmosfm]

My pet peeve...

the so called "realistic factor" in survival horror games, ya know, you can only hold X amount of items in your backpack at a time. This PISSES me off, because yeah, maybe it makes the game more "realistic" but how realistic is it anyways cappin' off zombies in a haunted house? Seriously man, it's a game! If I want to have 100 health items, thats FINE, as long as I FOUND THEM! What about pockets? and why can't I just CARRY THEM? Jesus! ARRGGGGGHHHHH

I love my survival horror, but this has made me quit SO many games because of it...particularly Resident Evil games.

[evilmess]

Cmosfm,

On the flip side you have characters who run around with a pistol, shot gun, uzi, ak47, rocket launcher, ultra laser and enough ammo for all to wipe out hordes of demon-alien-cyborg invaders.

OH and if it's a third person they show you running around with one gun. Where are all the others? First person shooters are notoriously bad for this but even a game like Ratchet and Clank is guilty of this offense.

How lame is that?!

And on the topic of saving... I really dislike games with no save feature at all.

[MaRiNe]

The hell isnt donkey kong in Country 2&3?

Why'd sony let disk read errors occur?

RPGs that are about saving the world, falling in love, and stupid crap like that, if I've seen it once, why the fuck would I want to play that same role again ? I wanna be something diffrant for once.

What was the deal Vagrant Story, did anyone find it playable?

Whats with there being genre games, why can't people just be original like in the old days of games, everything was diffrant. Pac Man ate dots, Dig Dug had a pump, Jumpman jumped over barrels that a giant monkey threw at him, and up up down down left left right right aa bb select start meant something.

[punkoffgirl]

Do you mean "Super Mario Brothers" or "Super Monkey Ball"? You must really HATE Super Monkey Ball, especially when they show your poor monkey plummeting over and over and over again, shrieking and writhing all the way down! I want to see what that actual land looks like, with all the little capsules full of little monkey corpses in various states of decay. I think I know what you mean, it's a little terrifying to me to have that moment when I go "oh, crap I'm going to fall, whew I saved myself, NO NO! AAAAAaaaagggghh!"



I meant Super Mario Brothers, but Monkey Ball is another one of those DAMN falling games. That's why I hate the one player game, and only like the multiplayer versions. You still fall, but it's not as bad with other things going on, I guess.

[hu6800]

I hate it when you beat the game on its hardest level and they give
you the same ending as the novice level.

also

I hate it when you have one system and the game you want comes out
for the other system,, so you sell yours and get the other system to play the new game.. then another game comes out for the system you just sold...
so you sell the new system to get your old system back so you can play that one game.

MANHUNT for the psx2
TOEJAM AND EARL 3 for the xbox only
SOUL CALIBUR II For the gamecube because it has link...

why do they do this to gamers lol

[Cmosfm]

MANHUNT for the psx2
TOEJAM AND EARL 3 for the xbox only
SOUL CALIBUR II For the gamecube because it has link...

why do they do this to gamers lol

Because for every killer MUST HAVE exclusive game that comes out, another system sells, despite the fact that you traded in your old system for a new one, a system still is sold.

It's a cut throat buisness....thats why I own all the next gen systems

[Ze_ro]

Boy, I have a LOT of pet peeves... here goes:
Stealth scenes in games that shouldn't have them. For example, in Ocarina of Time when you're in that women's thieves camp... why the hell can't I just attack everyone? I've beaten a ton of bosses, I think I can handle a few female theives. "Stealth" in these games is stupid anyways, since the enemies are far too stupid to make "stealth" required anyways... most of the time, their range of view is abysmally low, or they only see what's in range of the light source they're carrying. It just degenerates into "fool the shitty AI, and it's lame patterns" rather than really sneaking around. If I want to run in with swords swinging or guns blazing, then LET ME. If you want to make sure I sneak past stuff, at least make sure to give me a real reason (for example, make sure that if I run right in, that the fight will be significantly harder than sneaking past. This also pissed me off a lot in Golden Sun on the GBA (I was so much more powerful than the guards at this point that it wasn't even funny), and Wind Waker on the Gamecube (Why should I hide in barrells when I can easily outrun those spear-toting Disney rejects?)
Any one-hit-kills enemy or object. Like in Megaman where hitting an enemy will only hurt you a little, while touching spikes will kill you instantly. I guess falling off the screen counts here too (especially in games like Super Mario Bros. where no other falls hurt you). I can't imagine how you guys can stand playing 2D shooters... At least 1941 let you take a few hits before you died.
Self-scrolling levels in platform games... especially when there's no reason for it. Super Mario World had a lot of these levels... at least provide an obstacle, like lava flowing, or some enemy chasing you or something.
Cliche storylines in Japanese RPG's. I don't know how you guys can stand playing what is essentially the same game over and over again. I just killed the boss, and he comes back in his "final" form? Wow, there's a surprise. Guess what Japan, we're not fooled by that anymore.
This isn't an issue anymore, but in earlier Japanese RPG games, they'd let you choose how fast messages were displayed. Why was this even an option? Just show the entire text at once and let me read it. Slowly typing the text to the screen at 300 baud modem speeds just slows the game down.
Unlocking stuff. I didn't mind this before when it was really hard to unlock things that were really fairly minimal anyways (like unlocking Ermac in MK3 or something, he's not an important character, but it's something cool to do once you've done everything), but there's way too many games these days where you only start off with about 10% of the game (if even). My favorite part of the Tony Hawk games is free skate mode, yet I'm forced to endure the "career" modes in order to actually free skate anything other than the first level. And don't even get me started about Vanishing Point. That game is completely ruined by the excessive maze of unlocking.
Video game commercials. At best, they show about half a second of gameplay at a time, so you really don't get any clue as to what's happening in the game. and what's with the FF10-2 commercial? Is the whole game a music video or something? Does that commercial actually show anything other than cutscenes?
--Zero

[Cmosfm]

Video game commercials. At best, they show about half a second of gameplay at a time, so you really don't get any clue as to what's happening in the game. and what's with the FF10-2 commercial? Is the whole game a music video or something? Does that commercial actually show anything other than cutscenes?
--Zero

Sadly, those commercials make me want to buy the game even more. Damn catchy pop tunes.

[crashdummycow01]

one of mine is when you're playing a 3rd person game and you're doing something where you have to be looking straight ahead like the character is looking.. but theres a wall behind u, so it wont let u view from that angle.. so u basically are screwed..

like in super mario sunshine.. i had to walk across this very narrow beam.. and there was a wall behind me, so i had to face my character and blindly navigate him across the beam, which caused me to fall off several times :angry:

[Ze_ro]

Actually, I thought Super Mario Sunshine had a pretty decent camera (as compared to Mario 64 at least). I liked how it would occasionally make things transparent to make up for poor angles. I definitely agree with you though.

On a similar vein, I hate when games let you control the camera, but then force it to move in certain spots. The most obvious example I can give was in Sonic Adventure. There was one level that was like a stone temple or something, with these giant snakes that you had to use as platforms to make it to the top of a giant room... Well, trying to jump between these snakes was almost impossible, since the camera forced you to make the jump "into" the screen, which made things almost impossible to judge. You could attempt to move the camera, but it would always be forced back.

--Zero

[hu6800]

MANHUNT for the psx2
TOEJAM AND EARL 3 for the xbox only
SOUL CALIBUR II For the gamecube because it has link...

why do they do this to gamers lol

Because for every killer MUST HAVE exclusive game that comes out, another system sells, despite the fact that you traded in your old system for a new one, a system still is sold.

It's a cut throat buisness....thats why I own all the next gen systems

I knew this i was just kidding, im 33 and been playing since i could sit on the toilet by myself and go poo..

BUT
they do it.. and i hate it..

[Daniel Thomas]

Here's something I'm sure I've mentioned before, but it bears repeating. Tony Hawk 3 online: everyone, and I mean everyone, skates the same damned line on every stage. All the trouble that went into designing large, complex worlds, and all anyone can do is just grind -- clockwise, always clockwise -- the outer perimeter. It just about completely ruined the game for me; it got to the point where all I wanted to do was create a monster-sized skater (with a nice, large "Fuck You" decal on the shirt) and just spend all my time crashing into everyone.

Heck, all you have to do is just start skating counter-clockwise.

[Darth Sensei]

Any one-hit-kills enemy or object. Like in Megaman where hitting an enemy will only hurt you a little, while touching spikes will kill you instantly. I guess falling off the screen counts here too (especially in games like Super Mario Bros. where no other falls hurt you). I can't imagine how you guys can stand playing 2D shooters... At least 1941 let you take a few hits before you died.

I have the opposite Pet Peeve. I can't stand fighting games and FPS which don't have a 1 hit kill. If I come up behind someone in a game and shoot them in the head, they should die instantly. Period.

Also, it really bugs me in fighting games where you can break your opponents arm, leg, etc and they get up perfectly fine and functioning at the same speed. Arrgh. I just broke your arm. Why can't the programmers make it hang limp for the rest of the fight or something?

Incidentally, the best dog I ever had as a kid was named Peeve. She was my mom's Pet Peeve.

D

[Retsudo]

Some games where you have to use stealth to beat. For instance, Socom. Most of the missions you have to use stealth to complete certain objectives. But still they give you a bunch of loud ass weapons to choose from in the game. So you're stuck using the default weapons in the armory. That blows!!! :angry: