Video game pet peeves.

[Com Fox]

When console game makes you navigate menus by moving cursor with analog stick like a mouse.

Why.

Most of the time. The game is designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind and can't be bothered changing it when a console port comes along where a controller makes it incovient.

The best of both worlds would be a circle menu system which follows either the direction of your stuck or where your mouse curser is at

 

[ElectricNaz]

Iterative full priced updates. See most series sports games for examples. I won't even play Fifa until April each year when it's free or £13. If it was £4/5 a month to play maybe I'd be more keen, they get the same money for a full price game and I'd be more likely to subscribe if they did a good job.

Big games which pad out with fetch quests and stuff. Just make the game smaller, then you won't need to hire and then fire people so regularly. Keep a team and their expertise. And don't make us mess around on a horse for 5 minutes just to get from A to B. Yes it's great scenery but that scenery isn't worth my money if I'm just riding/driving/walking past it.

Any game where you can pay for better (more effective gameplay wise) stuff.

Console exclusives. I'm not buying a second console to play more games as I'm a casual gamer.

That's it I think

 

[Moglet]

When console game makes you navigate menus by moving cursor with analog stick like a mouse.

Why.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves too, I assume it's down to wanting to save time and/or budget but it's a really bad user experience. I can sort of understand it occurring on PC to console ports, but games that are launched on PC and console together really have no excuse IMO.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Being unable to view your current controls in-game.
This is something that has been bothering me with some PC games recently. Both Test Drive 5 and Re-Volt on PC have it where when you go to the controls section, you can't even view your current controls, it just asks you to remap them instead of just telling you what they already are. Okay, having the ability to remap controls is great, but this annoys me so much because I like to avoid changing my controls unless I absolutely have to, and in Re-Volt's case, you can't easily get out of that menu without unintentionally changing some controls. Being unable to see what they already are is a huge inconvenience for me and a pretty dumb oversight on the dev's part. Including a menu allowing people to see them can't be that hard to do.

 

[Moglet]

Being unable to view your current controls in-game.
This is something that has been bothering me with some PC games recently. Both Test Drive 5 and Re-Volt on PC have it where when you go to the controls section, you can't even view your current controls, it just asks you to remap them instead of just telling you what they already are. Okay, having the ability to remap controls is great, but this annoys me so much because I like to avoid changing my controls unless I absolutely have to, and in Re-Volt's case, you can't easily get out of that menu without unintentionally changing some controls. Being unable to see what they already are is a huge inconvenience for me and a pretty dumb oversight on the dev's part. Including a menu allowing people to see them can't be that hard to do.

So what happens after you've re-mapped them, does the re-mapped key not appear in the list? This seems like a hilariously bad way to implement things!

 

[Sonygamer455]

So what happens after you've re-mapped them, does the re-mapped key not appear in the list? This seems like a hilariously bad way to implement things!

With Re-Volt you can't even see the list apart from when you are configuring the controls, but the key will show up after you press it. Once you exit that menu though, you pretty much can't even view what you set afterward. I recently configured my controls for Re-Volt and it took me a lot longer than it should simply because of this. Even worse, our internet was down for a while, so I could not look up the default controls and I didn't have the manual either. If it just had a menu to let me view my current controls, it would have saved me so much time!

Edit: I looked at Test Drive 5 again and it's literally like you described here. When you go to the controls, it does what Re-Volt does and doesn't show you what they already are, instead it just asks you to set yours. What makes it even worse than Re-Volt is when you enter your controls, it doesn't even show what you entered on screen as you do it! You have no way of knowing what you even have in this game unless you just fiddle with all the keys on your keyboard until you find it because it tells you absolutely nothing about it! I don't expect much from Pitbull Syndicate, but this is ridiculous. 👎

 

[Moglet]

With Re-Volt you can't even see the list apart from when you are configuring the controls, but the key will show up after you press it. Once you exit that menu though, you pretty much can't even view what you set afterward. I recently configured my controls for Re-Volt and it took me a lot longer than it should simply because of this. Even worse, our internet was down for a while, so I could not look up the default controls and I didn't have the manual either. If it just had a menu to let me view my current controls, it would have saved me so much time!

Edit: I looked at Test Drive 5 again and it's literally like you described here. When you go to the controls, it does what Re-Volt does and doesn't show you what they already are, instead it just asks you to set yours. What makes it even worse than Re-Volt is when you enter your controls, it doesn't even show what you entered on screen as you do it! You have no way of knowing what you even have in this game unless you just fiddle with all the keys on your keyboard until you find it because it tells you absolutely nothing about it! I don't expect much from Pitbull Syndicate, but this is ridiculous. 👎

This sounds terrible, the re-binding function itself is by far the hardest part of this to implement. If there is a key re-binding section then the only reasons not to implement a screen that shows the currently assigned controls are lack of time or sheer incompetence.

 

[Sonygamer455]

This sounds terrible

Believe me, it IS terrible, especially with Test Drive 5.

If there is a key re-binding section then the only reasons not to implement a screen that shows the currently assigned controls are lack of time or sheer incompetence.

I have a strong feeling it's the latter.

If you need a more vivid idea of how it works, well here is a timestamped video showing how it is for Test Drive 5:

(couldn't find one for Re-Volt)

 

[shadow0460]

Games with no flexible "save" option, OK more challenging but can be so damn harsh unless you juggle your save files or use a manager...Minecraft pioneered this, and Ark: Survival Evolved has picked it up also. In essence you only save when you quit, but these are harsh, harsh games at times and you can lose hours, if not days, of progress, unless you cheat the system. Compromise is all, devs.

I know this post was made eons ago but it made me think of Enemy Zero. At the highest difficulty you had enough battery power in the voice recorder to save twice, maybe three times, and reload only ONCE. That game is extremely difficult even on the easiest settings, yet somehow I have managed to complete the entire 3 hour run on all four difficulty settings multiple times.
Enemy Zero is punishingly difficult but still fun to play.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Always online.
I have talked about features needlessly requiring the internet in the past, but something that bothers me even more is when an entire game is like this. This is something that has bugged me for almost 10 years now and that feeling isn’t getting any better either. While a few have talked about this already, I really want to give my thoughts on this. Some examples I have seen over the years are:

Spoiler

1. Call of Duty Black Ops. While the console versions aren’t like this, the PC version is and if I remember right, you can at least boot into the menus, but trying to actually play the game past that requires you be online. Fortunately, with some mods, I think you can enter console commands allowing you to bypass this, so it’s not the worst, but I’d certainly be happier if it wasn’t like this.
2. Call of Duty Black Ops II. Pretty much the same as the PC version of Black Ops 1 except theirs no easy way around it. This one used to bother me a lot years ago because when I had a lot of time to kill before class at college, I often played this game to keep me occupied and since the wifi at my college was notorious for not working at times, it meant I couldn’t play the game. Fortunately, I think Treyarch realized how stupid this was and gave Black Ops III an offline mode, something that its predecessors should’ve had from the start.
3. Need for Speed (2015). Easily the biggest offender for me. Every version of this game requires you to have an internet connection and be signed in because, without that, you can’t even get past the title screen. And it doesn’t just require you to be signed in on whatever client you use, you also need to have be signed in to your EA account too. On top of that, save games aren’t even local, they’re tied to your EA account instead. Even worse, when in-game it basically treats anything you do as an online session even if you’re alone, which means you cannot pause the game!
   
   This game really got a lot of backlash for being always online and rightfully so. Being unable to pause was a huge problem for me at times and the fact our internet and PSN weren’t always reliable didn’t help either. What annoyed me the most was when I wanted to revisit the game in recent years, I was eager to play it only to be reminded I needed to sign into my EA account, which I hadn’t used since at least 2016. So I had to spend about an hour trying to remember my login to an EA account I forgot I even had and then change my password just to play the darn game! It was all a huge inconvenience for me that I shouldn’t have to deal with.

Okay, in their defense, I understand piracy is a concern and it’s something they want to prevent, so it’s easy to see why they would put this in place. However, for the average person who just wants to play the game, it’s an annoying inconvenience because if you have issues with your internet, the service you’re using has issues or you get banned, you’re pretty much cut off from playing the rest of the game. And what makes it even worse is unless they do what GT Sport did by making an offline patch for it or someone figures out a way around it, that also means once the game goes offline, you'll never get to play it again.

 

[m355y]

I hate always online. Because you don’t actually own the game that way, you’re at the mercy of them turning off the servers when they decide to give up on it. By that I mean completely, 100%, don’t work offline games. Stuff like DIRT Rally 2.0 and even GT Sport you’ll always still be able to load up and play. I mean stuff like The Crew. I feel there should be rules against it really.

 

[Sonygamer455]

you’re at the mercy of them turning off the servers when they decide to give up on it.

You know, that was something I meant to touch on and I forgot to mention it. I'll edit my post.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

I have to agree that making games always online, including the single player aspect is a huge sin that imo ruins gaming more often than not. Sure, a company could later patch it to work offline later as evident by Polyphony Digital and GT Sport (I imagine GT7 will do this too), but not every company will do this. For instance anything published under Ubisoft.


With that said, I found 2 other things in gaming annoying me.

1. Not being able to do controller configs beyond the default options they give you. Kinda a common thing I'll run into with older games of obvious reasons, but it still annoys me. I could be playing Gran Turismo 2 where I can basically use whatever controls I want, but then pop in another title and no options available. Though the fun kicker is that this still happens with modern games, some giving you a set of control options, but no custom setup available. Which really sucked on The Crew 2 as the devs for some reason made shifting up/down the top shoulder buttons and acceleration/brake being the triggers. Playing that game with manual transmission is awkward.

EDIT: One kicker to this is when it happens within the same franchise and developers. In Test Drive 6 on PS1, I can do a custom controller configuration. In Test Drive: Overdrive for PS2, I can't do it. Both in the same franchise and developed by Pitbull Syndicate.

2. No single race option or hot lap/free run option in some racing games. One example I learned recently was PGR2 having no traditional single race mode for when you just want to drive around with the cars in the game. Kinda a shame if you want to just chill and do a regular race in some cases. Also annoying when other racing games don't bother with a normal free run mode, not considering the fact you might want to test out how some cars drive.