It’s a minor pet peeve but I’ve disliked it when games have multiple weapons that share ammo, especially when the game doesn’t explicitly tell you this. Some examples of games that do this are Doom and Half-Life. The reason I dislike this, is mainly because of how I play shooters in general. I always try to preserve my ammo by prioritizing my weakest weapons but in games that do this, I’m actually potentially wasting ammo because I’ll either have less ammo for the other, usually more powerful, weapon(s), or I might not even get to use that better weapon because I had no idea it shared ammo with a weaker weapon.
Totally agree with this one. I just posted about Quake Brutalist Jam 3, but it still annoys me that any use of the multi-missile launcher cuts into my time with the grenade launcher, and so on.
Dead Space 3 gave me an aneurysm because they just have one resource: “aMmO”.
I don’t even mind the oft-irritating “Ammo full for Pufferfish Launcher” notification, because it’s at least a reminder I should use the Pufferfish Launcher more often.
Mine is similar to yours in that it’s when I come back to a game after a while. My problem is that the difficulty of the game has increased in line with where I am but I’ve forgotten the moves.
You should play Policenauts. Its a visual novel adventure game from Hideo Kojimas early days in 1994-1996 following a private eye investigating a disappearance on a space station.
When you load a save file, the game gives you a summary screen of the events in the game that have happened so far (at least it does in the SEGA Saturn version that I played). Its the first instance I recall of this happening in video games, and I do wish it could return in more games. Its possible that other games had this before, but if there was a game that did, I dont know it or remember it.
One of the best examples of a game that did it right was Heaven’s Vault. The game was decent/mediocre (imo) but every time I opened it it summarized what I did last time and it had awesome timeline history
In Stardew valley no matter what you had done its so easy to just start doing something you like and the game smoothes you in. Its plot has zero time limits after all
Forgot to add my pet peeve: non adjustable time/turn/action/decision limits in single player games. I hate when I have to play a game with ‘perfect knowledge’/wiki to get desirable outcome because I wanted to schmuck around trying things instead of focusing the main plot/whatever the game wanted me to do. Games like Homeworld, FTL, Phoenix Point and some CRPGs I made an error early into the game and instead of giving me a way to correct my mistake the game just became unwinnable at the end. “I have to live with the consequences of my actions.” Some people love that but for me it ruins the feeling. Games aren’t real life. I just spent 10+ hours and I can’t continue anymore? Sucks.
Biggest pet peeve of modern games is when the game repeatedly nags the player to go to the next mission or solve a puzzle. I like to explore games, to take the time to appreciate well made environments and lore, but when npcs or even the pc keep chiming in every minute with “[x] is waiting for me at the lab” or “I think I should [y]”, it starts to piss me off.
It’s like they don’t trust the player to play the game “right”. Games are more than just sprinting from one objective to another. Can’t even take the time to fully look over a puzzle before the game starts telling you what to do next.
That’s a quirk of the medium I’ve learned to accept. Some games do it well by having chunks of “on-rails” bits and others of “free-roam” based on what’s happening in the story so that it makes more sense.
I love when a game makes me think. To figure out how to progress, or just how to beat an enemy or solve a puzzle.
What I don’t like is when you do the thing and it doesn’t click. Like you do it a second too fast or slow. Like come on, I did the thing, now let me move onto the next thing.
I once played a game that let you skip a mission after failing it so many times. Seriously, why should the game just end because you don’t have perfect timing? That’s not entertaining for me. Keep the thing moving, somehow.
I really don’t like when games intermix tutorial with story. Unless the story is the main attraction, I cannot get myself to care for it. And then having to click through tons of story texts to pick out the tutorial parts, that is just cumbersome.
I also have to say, though, that it really doesn’t help my immersion when the fairy, that just told me she’s from the clan Uhgaloogah, then tells me to press the X button on my controller.
If you put in a lot of effort, you can make it credible that the controller is part of the game world and the fairy would know the buttons. But most games do not put in that effort. And then, IMHO it is a lot less immersion-breaking when the game just shows an info box, where we both know that it isn’t part of the game world.
Speaking for myself, the average game got way better when the industry figured out it was better to mix the tutorial with the story. Bespoke tutorials felt like homework, and a lot of people are inclined to skip them, never figure out how the game works, and then come away with a negative opinion of the game. In general, and I’m curious to hear your perspective on this, you can make it exciting by starting the story en media res, so your character is using all of their usual verbs; then you can sidestep that immersion breaking moment by having the button prompts exist in a freeze frame thing, outside of the context of the story, that highlights the action it wants you to do. Do you prefer the bespoke tutorials that we got in the likes of 90s PC games? Do you like the way Gears of War does it, where it still keeps it contextual in the course of the story, but they very clearly give you an option to say that you know what you’re doing?
I’ve been playing V Rising lately and it does this weird thing where dodging and blocking are equippable spells with (usually) 8-second cooldowns. In return they also get powerful side effects, but I’d rather have a normal dodge or block button I can use at will than have them relegated to yet another move I use whenever I notice the cooldown has expired.
It doesn’t help that your basic movement speed is glacial. Winning boss fights come down more to your character’s stats than actual player skill since you can only dodge a few times a minute and bosses love throwing out a half dozen AOEs every few seconds, turning them into DPS races.
This is why mages are hard mode in RPGs. You’re limited by mana in how many fireballs you can cast. The sword does more damage and costs nothing to swing even though fatigue is a real thing.
Soloable games that are balanced for multiplayer. It almost always means that basic tasks take ten to a hundred times the resources they should, and arbitrary timers are added to crafting and upgrading to slow down progression.
It’s the bane of survival crafting games especially.
Single saves. Me and husband have one computer (we’re broke?) and too many games have a single save. So we can’t play that game trading off cause there’s only one save. Like Baldur’s Gate 3? Amazing. Billion saves, hell a billion for each character even. Heaven’s Vault? Wild Bastards? One save. Guh.
Hey have you tried Steam Family or whatever it’s called? You can make a new user and they have access to all of your game library. Only one account would be able to play at a time but it would solve your save file dilemma - games files are in the common folder but save files are in the user folder
When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. […]
Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.
Since they just have the one pc, they should be able to just make a second user on the pc then sign in to the single steam account. The new user won’t have any save files in the local user directories, so the game gets launched and you’ll only see the “second” set of saves. No idea how this would work with cloud saves on the steam side though.
This might have been the issue as well? All the saves were in the Cloud. But I’m not very techy. While I can follow instructions (I think), software seems to hate me. The hardware, we’re friends!
If that was the issue then doing two separate user accounts on the PC, then having a primary steam account (the existing one with all the games) and a secondary new one, and putting them into a Steam family together just like the person I replied to said would be functionally equivalent to yall having two separate PCs with your own steam accounts when it comes to saves and steam achievements and stuff, but you only need to buy and install the game once. It’ll also let you have separate config files so if one person like controls bound one way and the other another you’re not having to rebind each time yall swap who is playing and everything.
Edit - I, as an adult, took shrooms then accidentally overwrote my dad’s Skyrim save file on his PS3 back in the day and I felt terrible about it :/. I totally understand how annoying save handling can be.
Wait, so how does that work for games that store saves in ‘c:\users%user%\my documents’ and stuff? That’s why I assumed they’d also need a separate user account on the pc.
Nintendo is infamous for this. Animal Crossing is a great game on the Switch, but it’s meant for one person. You can join an island, but unless the island creator has everything unlocked, you can’t progress the game. And even if they have, there are certain recipes you can’t get without cheating (treasure islands) for some reason.
Pokémon is the same way. They literally want you to buy a second Switch.
Oh yes, wasn’t even thinking of that. Part of my twins gift to me of New Horizons was the promise they wouldn’t play the game as well because it’s one island and it’s miiiiine. So many other games on the switch, just use a profile and bam! New game! Bah Nintendo.
I really hate the trope of having a mission around the 50-75% mark where you are stripped of all your gear and unlocked abilities. I know it must be popular because it keeps popping up in games but I just don’t enjoy it personally.
Yeah, but accidentally clicking the quit button when you meant to click options or whatever and the game just instantly dropping you at the desktop is equally as annoying. Two click exit is a good compromise. Four is way too many though.
I thought of another one: shitty covers. OMG, The Surge? WTF is that Steam library cover? There are exceptions like Catherine: Classic, but most covers where the protagonist stares at the camera suck so much.
Specifically if it’s an action game: show the character in action, FFS. The Wonderful 101 has a great cover. So does Vanquish.
And when half the cover is the logo… just stop with that already. Or an atrocity like Scarlet Nexus… it’s just a cropped image… like Bandai couldn’t afford to commission a cover.
In 3rd-person games with a free moving camera, pressing the joystick not repositioning the camera behind my character. It’s so annoying in action games to have to manually reposition the camera while 5 enemies are happy to attack you from off screen.
Personally I don’t like having anything on stick press (at least for game controls, I can tolerate occasional use to open a menu or something). I think it feels terrible and I have no idea why this progressively became a thing on controllers since mid-00s.
Worst use of that I’ve ever found was Fable (at least the 360 version). The game wants you to push the left stick while also using it to move to sneak.
Hmm… I think for action games it’s somewhat of a necessity because there are so many actions the character can take at any given point, so you kinda need to utilize every clickable button.
That said, I agree it never feels great. No matter how good the controller is, it always somehow feels wobbly, specifically after long-term use.
I guess it would depend on the game, but I rarely play games where those are necessary.
I mean, we’ve reached a state where controllers have more or less been standardized as 2 sticks, 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, 2 triggers, usually 2 small buttons used for menus/map. Plus 4 directions on the D-Pad, if it’s not used for movement. That’s a lot already.
That said, every once in a while I do get a game in which they go absolutely crazy on stick press commands. No man’s sky use them all the time, including a baffling right stick press to sprint.
To clarify: by action games I’m specifically talking about Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, The Wonderful 101… etc. Among basic movement, combat mechanics, and weapon switching, they typically eat up the entire controller layout.
I don’t imagine Persona, for example, having any strong reason to utilize the sticks like that. Not sure why No Man’s Sky did that either; I haven’t played it, but it doesn’t look like a high-octane game.
I believe it is going to be a huge deal as the gamers are aging out. (And if you play on a Tv).
Give me a freaking texts size option! And not just size 6 to size 8! Big effin text!
It is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Game developers should add text size options to be big enough or at least legible enough at small resolutions like 240p. This can help scale UI design too accomadate for potentially huge text sizes.
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