It’s hard to always get things right in making a game. They are not easy things to make, but there are times when gaming developers specifically design mechanics/features into games that make me cringe and say, “What were you thinking?!”. Here are seven of the most annoying self-inflicting game features that developers should change (and make me rage).
1 – No Difficulty Options
I could have titled this section “Returnal”! I get it. Some people like a challenge, and it feels all the more rewarding when you complete a specifically tough fight in a game. Good for you. The thing is not all of us are skilled or have the twitch reactions of a Formula 1 driver. Heck, some in the gaming world even have physical or mental disabilities.
So, why is it that in a world striving for accessibility, some games block out or make it darn near impossible for people to play and enjoy them? How hard would it be for, say, Returnal to lower some under-the-engine sliders to make the game easier for those that can’t quite play the game the way it was made?
If the hardcore gamers out there want to push themselves in the way the game was designed, good for them. Keep the original settings and play it like that. For the rest of us though, give us something a bit easier! It won’t remove anything from the game, and it will open it up to a wider audience to enjoy your game!
I can’t even get to the second boss fight of this game, let alone beat it. I find it hugely frustrating that there sits a game I think is excellent, but it’s beyond me and my abilities to enjoy it. Please stop doing this, game developers!
2 – Multi-Stage, No Save Boss Fights
This is mainly directed at JRPG games, but there have been many times I’ve faced the same in other genres of games too: the multi-stage boss fights. The problem here is, you don’t know they are coming, so it’s hard to plan for. Also, you don’t know how long this fight might take or how many different levels to this fight there will be.
Some final fights take 30 minutes, with the final cutscene, here are the credits, job done! Some I’ve encountered took 3 and a half hours with no save points and very late nights; looking at you, Heavenly Sword! It’s frustrating as hell not knowing just how long or how many stages these fights will take.
I suspect many out there, like me, have real-world jobs that mean if we start a final boss fight at 10 PM that goes on for 3 hours, then:
1. The missus is going to be annoyed at the noise
2. I’m tired for work the next day.
I’m so used to this now that when I get to the last fight in a game, I pack up and wait until I know I have 3 hours to spare. This could ALL be spared though if only there were mid-boss level save points! Why can’t you make games with save points mid-fight?!!!
Then there is the issue of when to use your best items. I played Tales of Graces f and remembered that I had one item only that would revive everyone with full health and full SP. It was a one-shot-only deal and an item I couldn’t find, craft or buy. I was fortunate enough to use the item at the right time with the right final boss. What I remember though was that if I hadn’t saved that item for that part of the fight, I would have never been able to have finished the game! Why do these developers stress us like this so?!
3 – Enemies That Walk Through Your Attacks
Although I can’t remember any specific game to hand, I do remember playing many hack-and-slash games where, if I was winding up for an attack, only to be hit, I would be staggered and open to further enemy hits. You would think the same applied to enemies, right? RIGHT?
You time your attack perfectly and land many blows in the combo. However, the very enemy you just hit walked through your flurry of attacks to then hit you, putting you into a vulnerable state. It feels cheap to be killed or injured this way and also highly frustrating that it feels like one rule for you, one rule for them!
4 – Narratives That Don’t Finish the Last Word of a….
This mainly feels like a Nihon Falcom-specific issue for their games, like The Legend of Heroes. What happens is there is some dialogue where a character will realize something important, only to leave you as the reader hanging on what that last word or thought was. You are expected to work it out.
For example, your character has just worked out who has betrayed you. In a conversation, they say, “I think I know who it is. It’s….“ cut to the next scene! I don’t know if there is a term for a writing style like this, but if not, I have one for it: bloody annoying, cheap, and lazy writing forcing tension into a situation that makes it more frustrating than satisfying!
5 – Quick! We Must Go Slow!
Another narrative issue is this one. This can happen at any point in the game but does happen a lot near the end. The main story and a character in it say something along the lines of, “We must be quick. We haven’t got much time!”. The game then cuts away, gives you a way marker, and makes you, the gamer, think you need to get there sharp-ish!
However, it then also gives you a lot of side missions or distractions between these two points. Again, that is fine, but occasionally, and AGAIN, looking at you, Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes series, if you DON’T complete these side missions or distractions and just do what your companions tell you to do, this means you miss out on either a great bit of gear or even the best ending the game has to offer! ARGH! Don’t make me rush games if I need to do something else first!!!
6 – The Good, the Bad, and the Boring Endings
Speaking of endings! I do like the idea of multiple endings to a game depending on the choices you make before you get there. It adds a whole new level of replayability to a game, and I love the value-for-money aspect. However, what I don’t like is spending hours on a game to then get a boring or, at worst, the bad ending simply because I didn’t jump through a gazillion hoops in a certain order to get anything better. I really don’t like developers who make you feel like you are being punished for playing their game.
There are many examples I could mention here, like Heavy Rain, Code; Realize, Detroit: Become Human, or some of the many other visual novel games I’ve played. However, the game that I’ll mention here is, again, the JRPG series The Legend of Heroes.
I spent nearly 500 hours playing the four games in the series, only to get the weak, pish, pathetic, what they called “good” ending (what I was hoping for was the True Ending). The ending I wanted to see was locked behind a whole series of tasks that needed to be completed and would have taken a huge number of further hours of gameplay to complete. Secret hidden things had to be found, secret bosses defeated, and all side missions completed in the last chapter (see issue number 5 again).
The issue here is, even if I did complete all that I could see, I would have needed to use a guide to find the stuff the game didn’t even tell you that you needed to get the best ending.
Yes, I could go back to the start of the last chapter and do it all over again, but surely, SURELY, after being with this team for 500 hours of gameplay, I already deserved something!
It honestly felt like a kick in the teeth and has put me off any other Nihon Falcom games. I felt cheated of the end I felt like I deserved. My reward for sticking with their franchise to the very end after all that time was to be punished for not completing tasks in the final chapter that objectively had no relevance to the final outcome. Irritated beyond all measure doesn’t cover it!
7 – Here’s a New Mechanic…and Ten More!
Finally, and not one just aimed at JRPGs this time, and thankfully not aimed at The Legend of Heroes series either, but the egregious gameplay design of “here is a new mechanic, and here are ten more all at once!”
I’ve played many games in many genres that do a really poor job of introducing you, the player, to what the game mechanics are all about. Some games throw too many mechanics at you at the same time, so you forget what they all are, or they tell you about a new mechanic, only to not give you a chance to use it before the next mechanic is introduced. The better games ease you into mechanics and give you a chance to use them before moving on to a new one, so you learn as you go.
It staggers me how many games can’t even do this. It’s like they are in a rush to throw everything at you all at once. The worst cases are games that don’t even give you a chance to try something, just a reading tutorial with stills of what they do, then bosh, there you go!
The amount of money invested into games and gaming, and yet some developers can’t even give you the time to show you how to play the game in easy-to-digest chunks. This is baffling.
So, there you have it. My list of seven self-inflicted game features from developers that frankly do my head in every time I come across them and make me think I could do a better job at a fraction of the cost. I’m sure there are many other gaming issues that other people could list here. If so, let us know in the comments section below.
