5. Cheap Enemies
Nothing boils the blood quite like a computer controlled opponent that defiantly sidesteps the logic of a game to beat you time and time again. Particularly in racing games where your competition is made faster than you at all times. Another way enemies can suck is when they come at you in a continuous stream, making defeating them a futile and unrewarding affair. Any person who has been knocked off a platform for the hundredth time by a floating Medusa head will agree.
4. Difficult Jumps combined with Crummy Camera Controls
In platformers and side-scrollers the key element of game play has always been jumping, and when you are forced to make leaps of faith because you can't properly see everything, well, it's enough to make you kick your dog in the face. Maneuvering in a 3-D environment with an unfair and awkward viewpoint is like running an obstacle course moments after someone has jammed a lemon wedge in one of your eyes.
3. Time Limits
For as long as there have been video games, there have been time limits, and it is nothing more than a cheap way to add challenge. Getting a 'Game Over' screen is bad enough, but when the failure was because of your speed and not your performance, that is aggravating beyond reason.
2. Status Ailments
Each year the amount of energy exerted by players thrashing about in anger because their character was poisoned, is enough to power Austria for seven weeks. Games have been raising blood pressure averages around the world with these irritating hindrances. While being poisoned is the most common, your character can also be burned, put to sleep, turned to stone, confused, beserked, paralyzed, weakened, cursed, frozen, charmed, shrunk, buried, knocked out, stunned, silenced, or transformed into an animal. Police records will show that being turned into a frog is a rising cause for stabbings in America.
1. Sparse Save Points
Including any older game that had no save points whatsoever, this infuriating aspect of games tops the list. Nothing has filled more gamers with explosive rage than dying in a game and not being able to remember the last time their progress was saved. In a game without enough opportunities to save, you are constantly on edge about moving forward. And instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment for beating a challenge, you are dreading the thought of losing your progress at any moment. Then as you're nearing a save point, if you miss a jump, run out of time, or happen to be cursed by some asshole monster, well, you might not only hurl a controller, you may very well take a human life.
Nothing boils the blood quite like a computer controlled opponent that defiantly sidesteps the logic of a game to beat you time and time again. Particularly in racing games where your competition is made faster than you at all times. Another way enemies can suck is when they come at you in a continuous stream, making defeating them a futile and unrewarding affair. Any person who has been knocked off a platform for the hundredth time by a floating Medusa head will agree.
4. Difficult Jumps combined with Crummy Camera Controls
In platformers and side-scrollers the key element of game play has always been jumping, and when you are forced to make leaps of faith because you can't properly see everything, well, it's enough to make you kick your dog in the face. Maneuvering in a 3-D environment with an unfair and awkward viewpoint is like running an obstacle course moments after someone has jammed a lemon wedge in one of your eyes.
3. Time Limits
For as long as there have been video games, there have been time limits, and it is nothing more than a cheap way to add challenge. Getting a 'Game Over' screen is bad enough, but when the failure was because of your speed and not your performance, that is aggravating beyond reason.
2. Status Ailments
Each year the amount of energy exerted by players thrashing about in anger because their character was poisoned, is enough to power Austria for seven weeks. Games have been raising blood pressure averages around the world with these irritating hindrances. While being poisoned is the most common, your character can also be burned, put to sleep, turned to stone, confused, beserked, paralyzed, weakened, cursed, frozen, charmed, shrunk, buried, knocked out, stunned, silenced, or transformed into an animal. Police records will show that being turned into a frog is a rising cause for stabbings in America.
1. Sparse Save Points
Including any older game that had no save points whatsoever, this infuriating aspect of games tops the list. Nothing has filled more gamers with explosive rage than dying in a game and not being able to remember the last time their progress was saved. In a game without enough opportunities to save, you are constantly on edge about moving forward. And instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment for beating a challenge, you are dreading the thought of losing your progress at any moment. Then as you're nearing a save point, if you miss a jump, run out of time, or happen to be cursed by some asshole monster, well, you might not only hurl a controller, you may very well take a human life.
2 comments:
A favourite moment of mine is in Final Fantasy Tactics (the top of my list of most frustrating moments in video games) and needing only one more strike to finish an opponent in a battle wherein i am badly outmatched, having the game tell me i have say, a 90% chance of it landing, then MISSING and being slaughtered on the next turn. oh, the laughs.
which i am totally reliving right now. twelve years of this game and i've apparently learned NOTHING
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