Topic: Video Game Nitpicks

Certain franchises absolutely Nerfing the difficulty of their games to have a wider mass appeal to kiddos always annoys me. Oftentimes, it just feels pretty condescending to the tiny humans. My main example is always comparing OG Pokemon to the newer versions. People heal you every 5 minutes and long gone is a time where you actually need items to help you through Gym Leaders and the likes.
I think a fair few games could do with just introducing difficulty options rather than frustrating people who don't want games to be solely enjoying the story.

First time I experienced the immersion break was in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when you get "trapped" inside the Uraya titan.

But despite the fact that the story tells you that you are trapped, you can literally fast travel anywhere you have been in the past.

Also, I've got another JRPG nitpick. Sometimes sidequest pacing does not work well with story pacing. Right now I'm playing Tales of Graces F, and the entire world just opened up to me... right before is what I assume is the final dungeon and boss. I've got a ton of stuff I can do that I'd have loved to do 5-10 hours of gameplay ago, but now I'm itching for story resolution. Tales is particularly guilty of this, as Vesperia does the same thing, throwing some of the coolest weapon skills at you around the last dungeon.

@iKhan

Yeah that was dumb. You could fast-travel back up to the titans when you were in the Land of Morytha below the Cloudsea too, even though you were supposed to be stuck there.

I wish more games, especially RPG/JRPGs had a recap feature. More than a few times I've gotten interrupted in a game, came back a month or so later and just started over because I couldn't remember what my characters were doing or why.

Just make sure it's optional, anyone else remember that nonsense in Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green where you had to watch a replay of the last few things you did every time you turned the game on?

@Heavyarms55

I never knew I needed this until I played Dragon Quest 11! This feature is SO useful, and really allows me to play more casually without forgetting what I’m doing next.

Alongside this, a helpful sidequest tracker is nice as well. They don't have to where you have to go necessarily, but they should allow you to watch any inciting cutscenes and review any steps you've done so far if it's a multipart quest.

Remember last gen when certain games would remind you of things and bring back tutorials every time you booted it back up? What a stupid idea that I hope never comes back. If people need a reminder on how to do things in a game, they can look that up on their own. Don't make that mandatory and interrupt the game to remind me! (Bioshock Infinite, was in fact guilty of this)

I actually think this is a really good idea - if optional (as with all tutorials, actually). Maybe if games automatically detected that it's been a while since you played, and on booting said "it's been a while...see story recap / turn on in-game tutorials?" it would be ideal.

@alpacatears I think the Super Monkey Ball series is a great example of that.

Lol that's pretty much every RPG.

Taking this to the next level in some other games is really annoying, and Nintendo themselves can be really bad for it. Like in some Zelda games, every frigging time you pick up a specific item that's common (like bombs/arrows/whatever), it stops everything to tell you every single time how to use it instead of just adding to your inventory.

1. When character's lip didn't move at all while talking and there was a voiceover on them (look at Hannah Montana The Movie games)
2. When the Western voice actors couldn't do better voiceover as the Japanese version.

Cutscenes every twenty seconds. Assassin's Creed 3 is probably the worst game for this (especially at the beginning). Walk three steps, cutscene, look at something, cutscene, open door, cutscene, walk forward and press button, cutscene, follow character for ten seconds, cutscene... Argh, either stick it all in one cutscene or just let me play the damn game!

Games not allowing me to have inverted controls - first-person games in particular, but the option would also be nice when controlling a third-person camera system. I'm so used to inverted controls my brain goes all Bambi on ice when the controls are "normal".

Game levels where you are presented with multiple routes and it's not obvious which one leads to story progression and which one leads to an optional area. It ruins the immersion when exploring and is annoying wanting/needing to reset if you pick the wrong one (even more annoying if a level reset isn't possible and some optional goodies are missed).

Talking of resets...

Frequent autosaves and not being able to disable them (some games save every time you collect something/enter a new area). Yes, they can be useful, but if devs are including what is essentially a save-almost-anywhere feature into the game then why not let me do it manually?

One of my biggest annoyances is games that only allow you to save at certain points (like having physical areas to save at - for example Dragon Quest XI, or in the case of Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, only letting you save in between missions: The worst of all IMO). It just feels very archaic at this point.

@Harmonie That's what I love about the Switch. Because the system is built so that sleep mode is the default and not power off, I can pretty much start and stop my games whenever I want to.

@iKhan Indeed that is one very nice thing I've noticed about the PS4 and Switch. They default to going to sleep so when you turn the system back on, you're right back where you left off. This helps make games that don't let you save freely more playable (Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon would be so much more playable on the Switch), but it doesn't solve the problem completely. You still can't save the game and switch to something else whenever you want. Plus, if something happens (like a power outage for the PS4, or you stop playing the Switch long enough for the battery to run out) then you lose it.

I just like the freedom and ease of mind in saving a game whenever I want.

@Harmonie Very true. When games limit when you can save it's extremely disrespectful of your time. I do understand that they don't want you to create a save state that you keep going back to and circumvent any checkpoint system they have, but I think there are more respectful workarounds to that, like making saves outside of checkpoints single-use only, and making it so those saves force you to quit (Majora's Mask ALMOST does this right, except you can't turn the game off of you'll lose that save).

That way you can stop the game whenever you want, and pick back up where you were. But you can't keep rebooting the same save over and over again.

I agree, but the entire point is that they made it mandatory for everyone for no good reason. I've done three playthroughs of Bioshock Infinite, and during the last time I booted it up to finish the game that third time, it would still remind me how to do several basic things with no option to...not tell me that. And yet N64 games for children I grew up with like Banjo and Glover knew tutorials could be optional. It's so weird. I'm also really nervous about starting Mario and Luigi Dream Team because I've heard bad things about its tutorials...

Compare this to a modern game I've played, Celeste, which is a game with many user friendly options and is less complex but it respects people's intelligence and relies on options that are...optional and quite frankly often are more useful for a wider variety of people who would actually need them. Just for one example.

Ah yes, personal gaming sins or pet peeves eh?

-Item degradation. I don't enjoy losing things I've earned.
-Low life alarms. Do I really need a noise repeating every few seconds to remind me?
-Unskippable cutscenes. I just died to the boss a dozen times, must I sit through this cutscene again?

"Master, the batteries in your Wiimote are depleted." ...And any similar messages in other games that break the 4th wall and reference battery life.