The Weekend Debate – What Grinds Your Gears?

what’s annoying about modern games is that most of them look and perform better on xbox 360.

The ridiculous amount of shooters and lack of good RPGs.

What annoys me the most about modern games is that sometimes the developers feel the need to attach a multi player mode on everything they create and therefore the single player part game suffers. Don’t get me wrong I love multi-player games and it does work but there shouldn’t be a compromise to the single player campaign because of it.

The 2 most annoying things for me in modern games:

1) Glitchers (especially wall-hackers in shooter games).
2) Very hard trophies.

the door rant sounds like metroid prime
i used to get annoyed by people playing some of the FPS games going lone wolf instead of working as a team in games where you need to work as a team, e.g. MAG or Killzone 3
also in killzone when you run to someone to revive them as a medic and they kill themselves just as you press the respawn.

not really had much annoyances in games lately

What grinds my gears?

Hmmm… online trophies.

game crashing patches.

and people that has music on why mic is plugged in….. arrrGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I really dislike when the suspension of disbelieve is obliterated. This happens when things fall together too convenient, like an action scene where a whole building collapses but there is still just one path for you to climb. Chesty-high cover walls and stuff like that are offenders as wellAlso, as mentioned in your post, invisible walls like doors or benches really pull me out of my gaming experience. Nothing to make me jump at someone’s gut with a blade screaming “THIS IS SPARTA!” though, but it can be really annoying.

Also, unbalanced multiplayer.

SCREEN TEARING and frame drops. Screen tearing is by far the worst thing ever though. Really takes you out of the immersion the game tries so hard to put you in.

It needs to stop. To the good people of the Sony EU blog. Make it so.

Thank you.

For me, it’s got to be the fact that 90% of modern video game chatacters, no matter their super human abilities or exceptional level of heroism, suddenly forget how to breath and/or function like a normal human being when faced with the relatively simple prospect of water.

If I could rescue a brick from the bottom of swimming pool, in my pajamas, when I was 6, surely some of the video game world’s greatest heroes can manage a few lengths to overcome a similarly small obstacle?

The lack of trophies (Res 4 n code v)

I’m a trophy geek n love them, even if I haven’t got many but love to hear the ‘ping’ but don’t know why they can’t be a set amount like xbox you get 1000 points for every full game n 200-300 (can’t remember how many exact) for ickle games why can’t ps3 be the same so doesn’t matter what game you play you get a platinum, so many golds, silver n bronze then for ickle games replace the plat with gold n gold with silver etc.

Ok moan over!!!! Lol!!!

i agree wiv 5 too re MAG!!!!

Modern games load way too quickly, blu-ray who needs it ?!

I preferred the good old days on the Spectrum when it took 5mins+ & then the infamous “R Tape loading error, 0:1″ occurred, leaving you to try again for the tenth time.

The thing I hate most about modern games is the fact so many of them look beautiful, but have no original gameplay, or have the worst voice acting / character animations in the world.

what really annoys me is when you have everybody in an online room for example with good connection, then one person with a bad connection shows up and screws it up for everyone, but the thing is the person with the bad connection is none the wiser.
This also works the other way, on your screen you could shoot someone, only for the to somehow to stay alive, then about a second later they have killed you! it would be nice if this could be balanced somehow.

Thanks Diane. You know what really grinds my gears?

People in the 19th century. Why don’t they get with the freakin’ program?

What also grinds my gears are:

Installing a game only to after having to install 6 patches before.

Playing co-op with someone who has no clue what there doing.

A game that resets your PS3 while playing!!!

Lazy devs rinsing collectible trophies over & over.

Lazy devs in general.

2011 and we still suffer pop ups in games. Really?

Shooters that add NOTHING to the genre. Apart from more killing.

Stereotypical characters in games today. YO!

Buzzcut/skinhead heroes with the same look.

Movie tie-ins… complete cash ins!

Wait… i got more.

On disk DLC.

I dislike bloody jam that covers the screen. Also, regenerating Health. Healthpacks rule!. I miss being worried about what was round the next corner before a checkpoint in Call of Duty, Now all I need to do is get close to a wall and give it a hug and I’m fine. Those 6 bullets I just took to the chest evaporated did they?

The things i hate about Modern Games? Actually it’s quiet alot.. Like the lack of potential in most games : Dissapointing stories, Or when they show off a million trailers and showing ‘it’s very awesome!’ When it sucks afterwards. Also the Combat System of most games suck to, they keep trying to improve it while it keeps going backwards (Final Fantasy 12/13). I mean we never complain about it! So why even change it!?!?!? The last but not least i hate about modern games is… THE SEQUIL (Or however it’s spelled)
Let’s say Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 1&2, Part 2 looked like i’ve bought a DLC pack with new story mode and characters…And that seriously dissapoint me in most games….

Getting into one fight or another, beating them down to 1 health, only to fall off the stage, or have them beat you in the comeback of the century.

A thing that’s really started to annoy me with PC gaming atleast, is the need to be online to play singleplayer campaigns. Since when was this a good idea?!? And also taking away the possibility of playing LAN games, without having to go through some server online… I hate that!

It also annoys me that so many games with co-op possibilities doesn’t let you use split screen or that you can play on the same screen. I just don’t see the point of co-op if you can’t also play it “offline” with friends that are sitting in the same room as you! Co-op to me is all about meeting up and playing it together in a room where you can talk without having a silly headset and laggy connection!

Lack of information for consumers when they purchase games on the quality of the game. For example Black Ops was a terrible port to PS3. If game cases had a symbol on them to identify them as ports we as the consumer can make an informed choice on purchase.

The thing that grinds my gears is excessive quick time events/button prompts. I think the game that makes the best use of QTE is Deadly Premonition because the prompts have visible timers.

Racing games online annoys me the most! They are filled with rammers who don’t know that a car has brakes. In almost every online race in F1 2010 the first corner is taken straight out of a Destruction Derby game!

On the other hand, when you do get into a clean and fair lobby, online racing is a blast

Two things tend to really irritate me in modern games:
- Unresponsive controls
- Badly placed camera

Of course, not all games are affected by this (thank god), but with the power of nowadays consoles, many developpers seem to get carried away making very nice and detailed animations, and forget to make the player character react promptly to the player’s button presses.

Heavy rain, for instance, tries to have “realistic” animation, but the downside is that controls are really slow and sluggish.

Just imagine if you played Teris or Super Mario Bros nowadays and the tetris blocks or Mario took ages to move right or left when you pressed the buttons. It would probably irritate you.

Thank god, many PS3 games do NOT suffer from this: the Uncharted series has really responsive controls and good cameras, same as Infamous… and God of War is a perfect example of reactive controls, great gameplay, and great camera work! (Therefore I’d be very happy to get copies )

Maybe quite a simple complaint, but not knowing where i’m going or getting stuck not knowing what to do in a puzzle aspect of a game. Fortunatly games like God of War you mention above make it pretty obvious, but I hate games where you seem to have gone down every avenue and can’t find the way or sat looking at the puzzle element, and nothing quite seems to add up. GRRRRR!!

There are several things about modern games that annoy me:

1) Patches – Not so much ones that add new features, but the ones that fix various bugs. Of course the fact that bugs are being fixed is good, but why didn’t the developer sort out all the bugs before release? I hate having to download a patch when I buy a game on day one – games like Fallout: New Vegas were rampant with bugs when released and I find it unacceptable.

2) Sequels – when they’re not done well. A sequel to a game needs to add something new, it needs to innovate and build off of its predecessor, NOT just reiterate the same thing with a new story. Games like Guitar Hero have loads of potential, but if there’s nothing new to add to the game, why release a new one?

I hate it when multiplatformers are below standard on a graphical and technical level..For instance, I just got Resistance 3 and because of a pre order malfunction I also got Dead Island (my mom picked it up so she didn’t cancel Dead Island), after playing Resistance I have to force myself playing a [Deleted] game like Dead Island.. Feels and looks like a lousy 360 port (can instantly feel this by how the joystick reacts to movement), sadly this is the case for many – if not most – multiplatformers..

When I look back at my ps3 collection now, I can say that every ps3 exclusive was worth getting : looked and felt better, had better replayability, higher production values, and so on.. I can say this only for a handfull of multiplatformers..

People always seem to be claiming that multiplatformers perform better on 360, I think this has nothing to do with the console, most of them are mediocre or bad games in general, especially when compared to the brilliant exclusives..

That doesn’t go without saying that there are amazing multiplatformers out there too, if only they could all be like that..

You’ve mentioned a few that really annoy me. Adding to your FIFA complaint those that constantly pause the game when in possession to try and throw you off really annoy me.

When playing single player games it’s most often cheap AI that winds me up the most. A lot of the time it’s when they pull off consistantly things that a human player just couldn’t do.

One game that did send me into a Kratos like rage was the Pool mini-game on Yakuza 3 while trying to get the platinum trophy. The Expert AI could without fail pot the required ball even when a double bank was required or a bank shot down the length of the table and the number of times did it when the cue ball was resting against the cushion and they aimed into the cushion! I spent 3 hours just trying to beat the AI once at Rotation. I was surprised that my controller didn’t have grooves where my hands had been gripping the controller because of how annoyed I was getting. In the end I got my Yakuza 3 platinum trophy. Who’s laughing now game!?!

Something that annoys me is the lack of split-screen in multi-player games. Many modern games doesn’t include split-screen and i really don’t like it because the most fun you have with a games is when you sit with your friends in the couch and laughing,yelling and fighting with your friends over some silly game. I know it’s hard for developers to implement it and that it takes time but it’s deferentially worth it! And now a days when so many games is coming out i only buy split-screen games because they have the most replay value.

Aah, too many to think of. A good one is the endless annoying people who tend to play their music down the mic or have a rant how “that was camping” or “not clean driving” and get kicked for no reason. Most lobby’s of online gaming suffer from this problem and i have to always mute every mic of each player as i join a game.
Also the hackers in lots of the fairly recent games (and the game developers whine that as it isn’t the most recent game in the series, we won’t bother to patch or update it), constantly either try and rank everyone up to the highest possible rank when you just would prefer to play the game fairly. Plus the endless amounts of patches that never seem to do much good! wastes my playing time, grrr.

The main thing I hate is the moment when the difficulty curve gets the better of me, and I remain stuck at that point, with no way to tune the encounter or whatever I’m stuck on, in order to progress.
Unfortunately this happened with Uncharted (didn’t stop me buying 2 though, and 3 will follow). I’m at the end of chapter 19, but can’t kill the creatures quickly enough.

So the issue then is, this is where I am every time I load the game up. After several attempts at this, it gets to the point where thinking about loading the game is a negative feeling, thinking about being stuck again, no fun, do something else.

It frustrates me that I got stuck like that, and then that I can’t tune it so there are less creatures to deal with for that few moments, so I can move past it, set the tuning back to normal, and go on to play the rest of the story.

One alternative however, also annoys me – when playing Chains of Olympus, if I was having trouble at a fight, it would ask if I wanted to turn down combat difficulty, the interruption was annoying. I like that the option was there, but being reminded periodically that I am rubbish and should turn down the difficulty is less than ideal.

Glitched trophies! Or ludicrously difficult ones, I love a challenge but when you have to repeatedly play through a game for different karma outcomes it really puts me off playing it in the first place.
Maybe I care about trophies too much but I get fed up having games on my profile at 91% because of a couple of trophies that are either stupidly difficult or would involve playing through the main story line again for the 4th time!
Gimme platinums!

- Not enough beta testing. You can’t find every bug and/or glitch, but get your game beta tested. Not only by your own team, but also by the public. They find most of the glitches/bugs.

- Cheap difficulties: There are actually hard difficulties and cheap difficulties, such as infinite amount of enemies etc until you reach a certain checkpoint.

- Unskippable cutscenes! I’ll watch them the first time, but once I play through the game again, I want to play and skip the cut scenes. Even worse, when an unskippable cutscene keeps repeating after you die.

- Long intro’s when starting up a game. There are 3 move intro’s, mostly 2-3 company logo’s, a health warning, a ‘this game saves info automaticly’ message and sometimes even an intro (or two)!

- Annoying camera angles (when getting close to a wall).

- I know there have to be barriers in the game somewhere, but don’t be lazy and add a few random objects which I should be able to jump over. Or just plain old invisible walls.

- ‘Enemy triggers’. When you set one foot forwards, suddenly enemies appear.

The indestructible worlds! No matter how many times you hit a building with an rpg or death ray of mass destruction, it still there!!.. Mocking you!

Babysiting missions where you have to take care of some dumb ass AI character who generally has no sense of self preservation and acts like a bullet magnet almost always ending up very dead and thus you fail the mission. These should be completely banned from all games!!

Rpg characters that keep repeating the same thing when you talk to them. That is until you put an axe through their head to put them outta their misery! Of course the doors too, ” it’s locked, what should I do? I will lockpick it of course!” never once do you think to use your mighty axe to smash it to splinters!!

When you suddenly fall through the floor of a game and die that’s always weird and frustrating. This goes with screen tearing, characters glitching and doing spazy things, oh, and characters that go all rag doll and lose weight once you kill/knock them out.

There are more but these are my biggest pet hates.

What realy grinds my gears is within online multiplayer shooters e.g. Black Ops, when:
The enemy is spawn camping. Honestly takes the fun out of the game. When its the enemy doing it, you can’t spawn. When it’s your teammates doing it, it takes the challenge out of the game.

The one guy on the team that sees your getting kills, and decides to stick to you like glue, either stealing your kills or drawing the fire and nades of everyone around.

You know what really grinds my gears? Open World games! Well not technically, the games are fun and will last you playing for a very long time, but having a huge map and having so little to do is very annoying. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause, Red Dead Redemption have a huge and fun world but its not fully perfect. The maps have lots of details, lots of buildings but not being able to explore them is annoying. The perfect game would be a combination of Grand Theft Auto (very good worlds) and La Noire (being able to enter lots of buildings) The perfect game should have lots and lots of activities to do. In Grand Theft Auto they put in some things to collect but its not worth it. Instead they should use the big maps to put in many activities. All buildings should be enterable, or at least most buildings. You can leave citizens houses away. Having a big, fun world is great, but its not worth making such big maps if you don’t have anything to do with it.

I find glitches really annoying that ruin leaderboards and game developers do nothing about them. Also games that have constant flow of enemies or too many enemies without checkpoints, making it impossible to beat the level on hard difficulties. That and poor control and camera layouts.

@34 Not really, some games allow you to destroy buildings, not many but I know a few that do allow you to destroy buildings. If you destroy buildings the map would become awful after a while.

yeah it really annoys me when Sony’s EU team ignores thousands of requests for information about White Knight 2 DLC and keeps brushing us off because you guys have no idea what you’re doing

Let’s see…
One thing that I really hate is when a game has DLC released either on its release date or pretty soon after. Bethesda are already talking about Skyrim DLC, the games almost 3 months away from release! Why not put it on the disc?

The biggest problem I have with modern gaming is probably games that don’t run well or are so glitchy that they become unplayable. I’ve been on the verge of breaking something several times while playing Fallout New Vegas. I discovered that my save file had become so big that my PS3 struggles to run it – almost 19MB!

I also hate escort missions, long load times and games that require you to play the “hard” difficulty to unlock an even harder one. Oh and games that add pointless multiplayer… And games that cost £40 for a 5 hour campaign.

Wow I didn’t realise so many things annoyed me… I might go sit down for a bit.

mmmm, this is tricky. most people actually disprove of the way gamers play, for example playing rush and all your teammates are snipers leaving one or two to complete the objective! i think the whole way games are made these days are annoying in the sense developers seem to play it safe! look at cod, its brilliant but nothing has changed! cod is the same old story theres a terrorist, you fight your way through and then a happy ending. does the hero always have to win!? games are to fixated on online game play, i really cant remember a game that had a long lasting story. star wars unleashed is good example of a short story it was super short but still epic, i was crying out for more when completed so played both again and again and still doing so to this day. o yea rdr was long but that was only due to riding up and down forever and little side missions, actual story was short.

What anoys me in modern day games:
first avall its the fact that develepers put more time into the online then the campain, mostly resulting in a small campain. The next thing that anoys me is the lagg in most online games: if one person in an online lobby has lagg then all other people suffer (in most online games)
also what anoys me is alot of games online mode dosnt look as good as the campain.
Next: non team work, not many people theese days uses headsets/mics and that comes down to people going off and doing there own thing, not working as a team while if most people use headsets/mics to communicate then the team will start working as a team.
Like James said, quiters are annoying, because in some games when a person quits the game it becomes verry laggy, i have noticed this with a few games.

i think what annoys most people theese days in gaming is the lagg that happens online due to someone having a bad conection but persenaly for me its the fact that most people dont use heeadsets or mics wich is needed for good team work.

While there aren’t any major malfunctions in modern games in my opinion. There sure are some pet peeves that I’d like to vent out.

Firstly one of the biggest annoyances is the recently surfaced news that Microsoft is holding progress back by not allowing publishers to have more content on PS3 than Xbox360. I understand business is business but you only bring bad karma to the table with sabotage.

Another one, tough not so irritating, is bad ports. Nowadays this isn’t as much as a problem as it was years ago, but you still see games being poorly ported to PS3.

Actually there aren’t any gaming trends that actually grind my gears so much, the game designers are doing their job well and imaginatively. Maybe this generation of shooters is a bit samey sometimes, but nothing that bothers me overly.

I think we are living/playing in the best era of videogames. Gaming as a hobby has never been more accessible, and more accepted. My only problem is with the “cinematic” approach of storytelling. Apart form a few notable exceptions they are just ruining the immerson and leaving no place for the player’s own thoughts. The games using different ways (Shadow of the Colossus, Demons’s Souls, Flower, and hopefully Journey) will be our time’s masterpieces for the generations to come.

part 1.

ill tell u 4 things that annoy me the most about mordern games and reasons for them

1. too many first person shooters. PEOPLE THEY R ALL THE SAME GAME ONLY WITH A FEW NEW GUNS AND SOME NEW STORY THATS CRAP i only have 2 shooters and i enjoy them a lot black ops and mw2 the rest….. well y should i get any more i already got a zombie mode in black ops and cool maps in mw2 and black ops has a interresting story but wat other shooters have good storys

2. camping. i hate it when people camp and keep killing everyone at that spot its really annoying

part 1.

im gonna tell u 4 things that really annoy me in modern games and number 4 will be wat annoys me the most

1. too mant first person shooters. guys im sorry to break it too u but ur buying the same game over only with a different crap story and different maps. i got 2 shooters and i love them black ops and mw2 but do i need anymore? no i dont i already got zombies from black ops and cool maps from mw2 and i think the story in black ops is good enough

2.camping. i hate it when people camp and keep killing people and i consister it cheating and im sure im not the only one who hates it

(sorry for the repeat comment. the last 2 r gonna be things that happens offline)

3. missions that get boring after a while. like many other people i like gta and saints row but we all got to admit that after a while the missions can start to become boring

and the thing that annoys me the most in modern gaming is……

4. really easy/really hard difficulty. ok now in mordern games there are a couple of games that get the right difficulty where its not too hard but not too easy plus they give u an way to change it to make it harder but there are other games that are way too easy and way too hard like prince of persia 2008 its inpossible to die in it or star wars the force unleashed 2 its way too hard plus the levels are soooo long it took me over a hour to get through level 1 and i could not play level 2 of it because i was so bored doing level 1

so there are 4 things wat really annoy me in modern games

How about having to unlock the hardest difficulty level in a game by completing it on an easier setting?

The Uncharted series is amazing yet I’d rather be able to play crushing mode from day 1 with the challenge of not knowing level layouts ect. By completing the game on hard I already know puzzle solutions and enemy placement which makes crushing slightly less… Crushing. Dead nation has to be completed twice before the hardest setting is available!

Of course all of this leads on to a bigger gripe I have which is how easy many games seem nowadays, I’ve seen the future and it’s called Demons Souls!

(sorry if this repeats but it does not show the last comment i posted. the last 2 r gonna be things that happens offline)

3. missions that get boring after a while. like many other people i like gta and saints row but we all got to admit that after a while the missions can start to become boring

and the thing that annoys me the most in modern gaming is……

4. really easy/really hard difficulty. ok now in mordern games there are a couple of games that get the right difficulty where its not too hard but not too easy plus they give u an way to change it to make it harder but there are other games that are way too easy and way too hard like prince of persia 2008 its inpossible to die in it or star wars the force unleashed 2 its way too hard plus the levels are soooo long it took me over a hour to get through level 1 and i could not play level 2 of it because i was so bored doing level 1

so there are 4 things wat really annoy me in modern games