My Gaming Pet Peeves

It's the little things.

 

 Gaming Pet Peeves-- or just things in gaming that annoy us. We all have them, be it fast quick-time-events, unnecessary micro-transactions, long tutorial sections, or inverted controls. If you've been gaming for a while, you've probably came across a few aspects about the hobby that you don't like. I have a couple and today, I'll be going over my pet peeves in gaming. 

1- Putting in a disc and getting a download: This became prominent in the 8th generation of consoles where game patches grew bigger in sizes, which tended to ruin my excitement of instantly popping in a game and playing it. Worse yet, when you're planning on gaming for the night and greeted with a 20GB download for your game, it puts a damper on said plan. Yeah game costs ballooned over the years and things aren't like the old days, but it still isn't unrealistic to expect a game to be as bug-free as possible at launch.

 2- Boss fights where you're meant to lose: These often occur when the story wants to show you how strong a villain is by throwing you in an unwinnable battle-- like the first-battle against Sam in Metal Gear Rising or every other RPG where it's too early for the protagonist to fight the villain. I find these a waste of time since the outcome is already determined so what's the point in fighting? Having a simple cut-scene where the villain zaps the character with beam or something would've done the trick. 

3- Multi-stage boss fights with no saving or healing in between: Another boss-related gripe, these are present at the end of lengthy RPGs where you're a fighting a hard boss and JUST when you think victory is at hand and their HP nears zero... it gets refilled and you move on to the next phase! It's cool to have one hell of a final boss, but at least heal my injuries too. It's even worse when the boss whips out a more aggressive move-set that starts instantly killing your already weak party, forcing you to redo all that effort again. A notorious example has to be Persona 3's final boss that consisted of 13 stages where its weakness constantly changes and you must kill him quickly before the heavy-hitter skills wipes you out. It's time-consuming and draining if you're just a level or two below the boss, so you'll need to over-level to stand a chance.

4- Unskippable cut-scenes: I hate these when there's a lengthy cut-scene right before a tough encounter. If you are defeated in a battle, you'll need to rewatch the cut-scenes again, which was a bother when I was playing Final Fantasy X. I don't get the thought process of developers not including a button to skip them (unless they are super proud of their story or something) as it makes a second playthrough of a game less appealing at times.

5- Rubber banding AI in racing games: It's when an opponent's slow car suddenly matches up to your fast car or when your car is slow so your opponent's fast car slows down for you to catch up. The idea behind it is to make races more exciting for players but I found it annoying when playing the Need for Speed games where you're outrunning cops with a car that's clearly faster than theirs but they miraculously find a way to catch up to you. In Need For Speed (2015), one of the toughest races was against an old Porsche Carrera and I had a 1000hp Lamborghini Aventador. My car was obviously the faster one yet the AI mysteriously stayed on my tail and eventually beat me, which sucked until I luckily beat it.

6- Crappy controls in underwater/ice levels: In platformers, the controls take a dip with them feeling slow and sluggish when you're navigating an underwater level or way too sensitive and slippery in ice-themed levels. I always dread both since you gotta put extra effort in controlling your character just right while also jumping and beating enemies at the same time.