Gameplay Features That Make Me /Facepalm

In some video games, there are certain elements of gameplay that are downright frustrating. I’m not talking about bugs. I’m talking about legitimate features in a game that are working as intended, but are really freaking irritating. They make you wonder what on earth the developers were thinking when they decided to include such features.

Is this nothing more than a rant? Of course it is. But some of you have to admit that these issues have also gotten under your skin at least once.

Developers, please do us a favor and get rid of these things when you create your next games. Seriously. They’re annoying.

Saving Only at Checkpoints

Nothing pisses me off more than the inability to save any time I want. What if something suddenly came up in real life and I had to book it? It sucks knowing that I have to lose say, 10 minutes of progress because I didn’t find the save point in time. Pausing it isn’t a good idea either, because who knows when you’ll be able to resume playing?

Obviously, in certain types of games (e.g. platformers, sports, racing) saving at any point wouldn’t work out because of their fast pace. But games that are slower and encourage exploring the environment (e.g. action-adventure, RPGs) need a method for the player to save at any point. You’re in no hurry, so why is there a need to get to the next checkpoint just to save?

Timed Missions

Timed missions make my blood boil. Unless it’s a racing game, I don’t see the point of needing to complete a task before the time is up. At first I’m able to talk to everyone and checking everyone, leaving no stone unturned. Suddenly I encounter a timed mission and I feel like a chicken with its head cut off. I get sloppy, knocking over old women and babies as I rush to finish before the clock ticks down. It’s aggravating when you fail a mission because you were a nanosecond too late in completing it, and you have to do the whole thing all over again.

Unforgiving Camera Angles

In a 3D environment, I expect that I can turn the camera at any angle I choose. This particularly makes sense if I’m playing an action-adventure game and have to explore every nook and cranny of a room. In most cases I like having the camera from the standard, third-person, slightly top-down perspective with the camera behind my character’s back.

Now, if I were running up a flight of stairs and the stairs curved sharply to the right, I should be able to adjust the camera such that it’s still behind my character, right? In some games, this is not the case and I suddenly find that I’m looking at my toon from the side, unable to return to my proper viewing position. Why do this? Why suddenly take away camera controls from the player? I don’t understand.

Unskippable Cutscenes

This really should be a non-issue. One should assume that these days, all cutscenes can be skipped by hitting Select or some other button. But no. Oddly enough, for some reason, some games still force you to sit through their cutscenes. Let’s face it. Most of us tend to watch a cutscene just once — the first time we encounter it. If we die and respawn, we prefer to skip the it and get back to trying that stage again as quickly as possible.

I don’t care how long a cutscene is. It could be five seconds long. But that’s five seconds of being forced to watch something repeatedly. That’s five seconds taken away from my gametime. Furthermore, those five seconds add up if you’re at a particularly difficult level and have to repeat a stage several times, and thus watch that cutscene several times.

We get it — those cutscenes are really cool and purty, and you guys spent a lot of time creating them. But don’t force it down our throats.

Well, there you have it. Whenever I run into one of these features, I can’t help but shake my head in bewilderment. They seem like such minor inconveniences, but encounter them enough times and they inflate into something that can potentially negatively affect your gameplay experience. And we don’t want that now, do we devs?