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When you’ve played video games for the greater part of 20 years, you start to develop a taste for what you like, what you don’t like, and what you absolutely fucking despise. So here’s my list of pet peeves in gaming:
Water Levels
This is the bane of every single platforming game ever made. I think it first started in Super Mario Brothers with World 2-2, and man I wish it had never happened. No one likes these levels; they suck complete dick. Your movement is thrown completely off, the enemies have weird movement patterns, and it slows the pace of the entire game to a crawl. And god fucking forbid they make you hunt down air bubbles. Does anyone else remember playing through Sonic the Hedgehog 2? What about Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple? What about Kingdom Hearts 3 where you have to fight the final boss underwater and it took me 2 hours to beat him? Yea, fuck water levels.
Turn Based Combat
IT’S ANCIENT. IT’S UNBALANCED. IT. SUCKS. ASS.
I don’t care how many times I have to say it, turn based combat sucks. You cannot tell me that fighting a difficult boss in Dark Souls over and over is worse than fighting Kefka or other similar bosses in Final Fantasy. He has godlike strength that can almost one hit everyone in your party, and he has a giant health pool. Hell, most of the time, beating bosses like him are complete luck of the draw. You just pray that he makes a mistake instead of spamming his most powerful attack over and over. This needs to become next genocide in gaming.
Quick Time Events
Thank god these are less prominent now, because back in the late 2000s, they were more common than homeless people outside a Greyhound station. I understand the reasoning; game developers wanted to make great cut-scenes but didn’t want to disengage the players. I appreciate the effort, but I think I speak for the entire gaming community when I say I’d rather sit back, put down my controller, and just watch. There’s some games out there that are like 80% quick time events, like Dead by Daylight. Play a horror game as the villain against your friends? Sounds great, until you realize that you spend the entire game waiting for the opportunity to hit the LB button in timed window. Because that’s the gameplay we were looking for…
Fetch Quests
Listen, at the root of it all, fetch quests are in every single RPG game. They’re a part of game design whether we like it or not, and they are strategically used to lengthen a game’s narrative or build character depth. And I’ll be honest, there are times that I actually enjoy a fetch quest here and there if it’s well made. But do I really need to help Sammie go to her ex’s house, pick up her shit, and take it back to her new boo’s crib? All while she explains to me why she really isn’t a hoe and that Jeffrey is so much better of a man for her than Tyreese ever was? And do I really need to do this 8 more times in Act 1 of 8???? No, no I do not. Stop being lazy and write actual missions Rockstar you cuckhole.
Getting lost for hours
Metroidvania is one of my favorite genre’s of video games. Get dropped into a world with almost nothing, and collect items and skills that unlock areas you’ve been unable to access in the past. It’s a ton of fun. But as is with many of these style of games, you spend needless hours of time looking for what the fuck you’re supposed to be doing and where the fuck you’re supposed to go. I’m playing through Hollow Knight at work, a 2017 2D Metroidvania with the difficulty of a Dark Souls title, and I’m more frustrated looking for the boss fights than the actual fights! Why am I spending literally an hour searching every nook and cranny for a way to cross a bubbly poison lake when could be spending that hour dying to the Mantis Lords over and over and wishing I was dead?!?
