That little thing that ruins (or almost ruins) a great game

[cityside75]

Sometimes you love everything about a game, except for that ONE thing. That one thing annoys you every time you play and you wish so badly that you could just go back and get that one thing changed/removed from the game...

Here's mine: The original Starfox got me back into gaming after I missed the entire NES era. So naturally, I was greatly anticipating Starfox 64 when it was announced. I couldn't wait to see what they could to with the improved hardware. Starfox 64 was one of THE reasons I went with the N64 instead of the Playstation.

So, at the time Nintendo was trying to prove that carts could be just as good as CD's in terms of multimedia. Specifically, they were touting that Starfox 64 would have as much spoken dialogue as a typical CD-based game, and boy did it. To this day, I find the voices to be almost universally grating with Slippy being especially annoying. The game sounds like a Nicktoons show and I wish I could go back and tell them to lose the voices, they're so unnecessary to the game and didn't prove a thing in the cd vs. cart debate.

[Pichu]

Oh man that sucks.
I have a pet peeve like that:

MySims for Wii, and the loading times kill it.
I love it, because I can do all sorts of things,
but everytime I go into a house, I gotta wait 15-30 seconds.

Thankfully Kingdom removed that.

[gamedude45]

the glitches and the ending for Fallout 3 almost ruined the game for me. It seemed like every time I played that game i'd find a raider/super mutant stuck in a wall shooting at me man that's annoying. and the ending just sucked and you can't continue after you beat the game I'm just lucky I had a save from right before the end or I would have never went back to the game and I would have missed out on hours of exploring and weapon finding which was a truly enjoyable experiance.

also in Pokemon Blue I was pretty close to catching missingno once. thankfully I didn't cause i'm pretty sure that would have ruined Pokemon for me.

[Pichu]

Oh yeah, I hate games where you're stuck at the looping final boss.

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time anyone?

[Kiddo]

The various games that require multi-playthroughs just to get the "Good" ending?

Besides the Ghouls n' Ghosts line which tends to abuse this, I recall "Flying Dragon" annoyed me with this as well. (On TOP of the "Collect the items which have to be obtained through bizarre methods" thing...)

Poor English dubbing mangled a few games other than StarFox 64 as well. Sonic Adventure piled it on top of poor lipsynching which made cutscenes look amateur-ish, for example.

And, of course, any RPG that totally needs a strategy guide to get past without random guessing.

[Dangerboy]

Any open world game that doesn't allow you to save anywhere.

I'm looking right at you Borderlands, you heartless bastard. The game would have been amazing were it not for that little screw up.

[GameNinja]

Any open world game that doesn't allow you to save anywhere.

I'm looking right at you Borderlands, you heartless bastard. The game would have been amazing were it not for that little screw up.

I'm a bit confused, the game auto-saves constantly no matter where you are.

[Blitzwing256]

ff13 hope...blah

[Emperor Megas]

Escort missions and QTE's almost always blow. The quick time events in Resident Evil 4 and 5 REALLY annoy me. They were the only thing keeping RE4 from being a perfect game, IMO. Bad/glitchy AI is another one. Anyone who's played Dead Rising and has tried to save a large group of survivors knows what I'm talking about. Watching them constantly run into each other at the platform leading to the security room on the roof until you kick them or something....unforgivable.

One of my biggest (and oldest) peeves though are games that don't allow you to reconfigure the controller setting. And they're almost always the games that you actually NEED to reconfigure the controls on, too. Take Gun Valkyrie for example; the terrible controls rendered it completely unplayable for me, which sucked, because I really enjoyed the look/style of the game.

[Baloo]

How about long games that have no password system or way of saving? Yeah, I'm looking at you Kid Chameleon.

[exit]

Games that throw two boss fights at you back to back and don't let you save in between. It's acceptable when this happens with a final boss, but it's not when it's just regular boss battles. This happened to me with Enchanted Arms, a game I found to be rather enjoyable, until I got caught fighting a rather annoying boss and wanted to put the game down.

[ShinobiMan]

Mega Man X 5 on PS1 would be a great game if not for the constant interruption from Alia. For some reason, Capcom felt the need for this character to pop in mid-gameplay and explain to you how to play the game. We're talking basic things that every Mega Man fan knows. Especially if you're playing "X5", it's probably certain that you've played the other games. The worst thing about it is you can't turn her off.

Really, it might seem petty, but it ruined the game for me.

[Dangerboy]

I'm a bit confused, the game auto-saves constantly no matter where you are.

Except if you die, or save and reload later, you're brought back to life at one those 'life poles' or whatever its called. So if the last pole you auto-saved at was 7 minutes back and you die, tough titties, you walk the 7 minutes again; while missing all the ammo you spent.

In Fallout, you could literally self save *anywhere* sans in a fight. Half the time I played that game I'd save a few feet in front of a new character or what I figured to be a trouble spot. Instead of wasting 7 minutes each time I died, I only wasted 7 steps. Hell, you could freaking save MID AIR in Fallout.

[Ace]

Salamander for the MSX. Two things ruin the game for me:

-Reqiures Gradius 2 to get the good ending. WTF was Konami thinking?
-TOO DAMN HARD!!! You die once, and you might as well start over, as it's impossible to recover.

Speaking of games being so hard you can't recover after dying, EVERY R-Type game I've played up to R-Type Delta is just ruined because recovery is impossible after dying.

[Natty Bumppo]

1) The crappy hard to read letters in Addams Family Values that made saving a terribly dicey propostion. This (coupled with the release of the game with some rough (in terms of being unfinished) spots) really detracted from what would have been a very good game.

2) Not so minor but really really vexing - that very pathetic battle system in Vandal Hearts II.

[NostalgiaStench]

The extremely off-putting loading times on Smackdown 2 Know Your Role.

I wouldn't mind, but I love the season mode on the game, but I can never reach the first PPV because I get so irate about waiting for such a long time.

Oh, and in Driver, the very first mission when you have to do that list of things in the underground car park. Takes me such a long time because some of the stuff on the list just never happens.

Still one of my all time favourite games though.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Games that throw two boss fights at you back to back and don't let you save in between. It's acceptable when this happens with a final boss, but it's not when it's just regular boss battles. This happened to me with Enchanted Arms, a game I found to be rather enjoyable, until I got caught fighting a rather annoying boss and wanted to put the game down.

Or worse, games that have long stages that have no halfway points.

Like Sly 1's final battle. You have to beat a flying machine, then you have to cross an obstacle course. And if you fail at the obstacle course you have to fight the machine again.

The battle takes from 5 to 10 minutes, dialogue included.

That shit pissed me off and I haven't beaten the game because of it. ._.

[mobiusclimber]

When a game artificially removes characters from your party, it irks me. Particularly if it's the main character, or if they try to squeeze pathos out of what amounts to a simple party change that you know isn't permanent. Yeah I'm looking you, Final Fantasy IV, V, VII and Chrono Trigger!

[j_factor]

The fourth level in Battletoads Double Dragon pretty much ruins the game for me. Other than that one level, I love it. But that level sucks so much.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

The wall jump in Super Metroid.

There's a part where they force you to use it, where they have little critters demonstrate it for you. However, executing it is very hard. It seems like they didn't finish the wall jump controls. To top it off, that part is close to a save point, so if you save right before you do it, you can be stuck there for a long time.

The rest of the game is spectacular, which makes that difficult part stand out more (in a bad way) than it would in other games.