- Bad Controls. I mean honestly, is it that hard to PLAY the games to see if the controls suck? For example, I was recently playing Alone in the Dark's demo and found myself with the objective of knocking a door down in a room that was on fire. I have a fire extinguisher in my hand. They have one guy in the room telling me over and over "break the door down".. well, OK? So I try some buttons and start by using my attack button at the door, and he starts spraying it with the fire extinguisher. Well.. great. Good job. Way to spray that door. So, I try throwing it, and it doesn't do anything. I walk around the room trying to find something, and start throwing chairs and stuff at the door trying to break it down. After messing with the controls for a good five minutes I finally figure out that you have to pull the right stick back and then thrust it forward with awkward timing to swing an object. It's so slow it reminds of me of Colonel Sanders in Spaceballs saying "Prepare to Fast Forward" - "Preparing to Fast Forward" - "Fast Forward!" - "Fast Forwarding, sir!"
So, OK.. in most games where it's 3rd person with the camera following you, what does the right stick do? How about move the camera!? But no, instead of that they make it the way to swing stuff around, and they decide to use the stick just incase you need to swing side to side instead of backward to front. I mean, honestly.. why would you need two different methods to melee attack? Just have somebody press a bumper or something and beat the crap out of whatever they want to beat up. That way is way more satisfying than *pull right stick down* - *wait* - *thrust right stick forward*.. slowly.. aghh *hit*. I spent a good minute or two beating down one of the zombies later with those stupid controls. The controls are so slow and the animations are so sluggish, it's literally like he can't swing a 2-pound object faster than he can turn around. It's like you trying to hit somebody in the face in slow motion and they could have walked away and made a sandwich by the time you swing your fist. If I have a melee object, I want to beat the crap out of somebody by pounding on one of the buttons! Not by delicately moving the stick back and forth. What a joke.
Imagine if in Super Smash Brothers you wanted to punch the hell out of an enemy, so you walk up to them and try to hit all of the buttons to get them to smack this dude in the face, and it turns out you have to wiggle your controller ever so slightly and extremely slowly to get it to execute. You'd never play that game again. You don't have to wonder why Alone in the Dark bombed in reviews, either. It's like they didn't even play it to see if it's good, which is a shame because their method for creating weapons is a lot of fun.
Also games that suck with recognizing what button executes what command (as in, you press X to attack but X can do 10 different things depending on the situation) drive me nuts. Metal Gear Solid is a good example of it with their hand-to-hand fighting. Sometimes you'll flip them over your shoulder, and sometimes you'll grab them from behind to break their neck - it always did the opposite of what you intended to do and was particularly annoying in the final battle where if you screw it up (or, rather, if the game screws it up), you get your ass kicked and lose. - Boring cut-scenes. This is where the story of games can fail in the most excruciating ways. Cutscenes are where you're supposed to wow the viewer and instead they turn out to be boring sections of dialogue with two people standing still. It particularly bothers me in action games because there's no action going on in a lot of the cutscenes. When I imagine a war, I imagine absolute chaos, all the time. It's quite convenient that during this cutscene there's never an attack, never an interruption, never anything going on in the background. It's like the clouds part during a thunderstorm and you experience this strange aura of peace. Then when the cutscene is over, it's back to the grind.
Guild Wars was one of the games that suffered from really boring cut-scenes. The worst part about it is when they would start throwing terms/names out that mean nothing to you. It was not uncommon to hear something like "you must descend to the valley of Kurgon and find the sacred scepter of T'hromer, so we can perform the ritual of the fallen Gurgoynian Trolls in the temple of Drakkong the Great.", and you're sitting there thinking "what in the hell are they talking about?" Fantasy games are the biggest culprits of this mistake, as they're constantly throwing out meaningless, mystical terms or names that you've never even heard of and don't have any association with. The worst part is that they don't even explain it - they just name-drop and, I guess, expect you to be all blown away. "Whoa... the scepter of T'hromer!? Oh. My. God." Fortunately they have a "skip cut-scene" button in Guild Wars so you don't need to sit around and listen to them throw out meaningless names or talk about stuff that you have no interest in.
Imagine if you were playing a game and I walked into the room, took the controller away and started desperately talking about the principles of microeconomics and I wouldn't shut up or give you the controller back until you listened to what I had to say. You'd probably get pissed off and fight me for the controller, or try to tape my mouth shut.
Cut-scenes are supposed to be where you show off the big guns and basically say "watching this is better than playing the game" because they interrupt you playing to show you whatever they want. I understand story-necessary cut-scenes but there's very few times that those cut-scenes will be interesting due to either bad voice acting, bad animation or just uninteresting topics.
Mass Effect is an example of doing cut-scenes well, telling an interesting story and making you forget about playing the game due to the quality of the cut-scenes. Good job, BioWare. - Frustrating Battles. First of all, every game needs to be tested. It has to be - there's no way around it. So, along the way while playing games I fight some of the stupidest, most annoying battles and think "wow, did they even check to assure this is still FUN!?". I've been complaining about it on the Real Custom Games' Forums, saying it's mind-boggling how incredibly uninteresting the stigma of a Boss Battle is.
Most Boss Battles consist of doing hardly any damage every 10 seconds while you either run around in circles or hide. That's not fun. Imagine a boxing match where the two guys ran in circles for a minute, took one jab, then ran around some more. Not only is it tedious but it's easily the least fun parts of most games.
I understand where they were going with making the Boss Battles the most difficult ones, but seriously, I don't play video games with a main intention of getting frustrated. I play games to have fun. It's very rare to come across a final fight that is original and fun because they really do consist of running around in circles and barely damaging your opponent while you hope you don't die and have the patience to do this for another 10 minutes.
Memo to anybody making games: test every part of the game to make sure it's fun. Most Boss Battles aren't. Consider this before you make a game with an unbelievably difficult Boss fight. Long Boss Battles are fine, but don't make them a 10:1 chance of succeeding while you shoot him with your rubber-band gun, dodging rockets and warding off ninjas with katanas.
I'm sure along the way I'll come across more things that drive me nuts, but this is a good list of things that you have no excuse for doing in a game. Learn from previous mistakes. Srsly.
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