Modern Games Pet Peeves

[Yuki Senoue]

I think Skill Trees are fine as long as they aren't insane. You ever see the Assassin's Creed Valhalla tree?
View attachment 67070

Me, a Path of Exile player: pfff you call it a skill tree? That shoddy tree? /j

I refuse to buy games with Denuvo. It sucks and I hate it.
Forced tutorials.

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

I don't think a Video Game Crash is gonna happen. Everyone has to realize that casuals don't care. They are gonna buy games anyway. I'm one of them lol.

You're probably right in the sense it won't be a total destruction of the industry, and you're always gonna have "consoomer" types, or whatever you wanna call them, buying everything that comes out, but I do think developers are starting to see the real problems now of games having major Hollywood movie level budgets in this seemingly endless race for the most realistic looking games. Look at the latest Assassins Creed for example, wasted way too much time and money on another mediocre, forgettable game with an insanely bloated dev team to middling results to the point they're getting partially bought out by Tencent.

 

[Deleted member 525181]

Every button on the PS2 and PS3 controllers are Pressure Sensitive. And they used them heavily, especially in MGS2 and 3.

Like, a gentle push of the Square button would raise your rifle, a hard press would fire, and the R1 button would aim down the sight, and things like that. MGS2 and 3 are rough on the platforms that don't have access to them. I prefer emulating them. I was thinking about getting the Master Collection though.

This is crazy; I just noticed this some weeks ago when I bought a PS2 with an original Sony joystick. I was playing GTA San Andreas, and the car was going slow as hell until I noticed that I needed to press the button harder, lol. I never noticed this until now.
Really interesting about MGS2 and 3; I will try them out!

 

[TentaclesMod]

Games, including older ones, that HAVE subtitles, but don't turn them on by default, PISSES ME OFF!

I can read and hear JUST FINE, but I'm one of those people who thinks "wait what did he say? that's not what the subtitles said, WHAT DID HE SAYYY??" or I'm afraid I'll miss some important details that were being said in the conversation, or I'd miss on some context sensitive clues.

Hate having to de-rail the whole experience by digging through the options just to toggle them on. And heck, some titles don't even HAVE subtitles, and their dialogue can be a mixed bowl of "What did he say?" to "Uhhh....okay? Sure....whatever you say...."

Post automatically merged: May 8, 2025

You forgot Balatro, friend.

I mean, I could never complain about Balatro, it is specifically a card game. My peevee is games that are like, an horror fantasy and have no real reason to be a deckbuilder roguelike other than apparently that's what is 'in' now.

 

[Esidemoken]

That many classic sagas were left to die and those that are still alive are quite deformed to how they were before.
If you're going to deform a saga so much you'd better make a new IP or cancel the current one and make a reboot.

 

[moonbits]

I really agree about the control scheme thing. Encounter design is naturally going to be oriented around the controls so having a universal “best” control scheme used for each genre really does homogenize design I feel

that ain't a pet peeve that's a decade old decease that's been killing videogames. Either design the FPS for K&M or for controller, no in between bullshit accessibility cross platform crap.

 

[Tonberry]

Superficial "light RPG" mechanics in action games where there's no real choice.
I didn't like that Spider-Man 2018 (a game I love) had talent trees and levels because you ended up maxing the tree out in the end, it's just that the order in which you unlocked stuff was up to you. I think it's a pretty shallow system and they could probably have done something a bit more interesting, but it's whatever.

Also action games with tacked-on crafting systems. It doesn't seem nearly as common as it was a decade ago though, but it usually just felt like busywork to me.

 

[moonbits]

Superficial "light RPG" mechanics in action games where there's no real choice.

kratos sure needs the 3% frost resistance bracelet bro, its deep and intricate

 

[snes9x]

Button prompts you need to hold down. Death Stranding was really bad with this.

 

[Sinmenon]

Computer games with Denuvo are one of the banes of my existence

Games that think that the characters should always be quirping. Not many writers are good at those one-liners, and sometimes the voice actor also isn't ideal. Sometimes they end up being divisive at best and downright annoying at worst

When the game is 95% graphic spectacle with zero substance, especially when they go LOOK AT ALL THE FLASHY EFFECTS that even people like me who aren't photosensitive get bothered.

And I'm glad that most games learned that QTE are annoying. And nowadays you hardly see any escorting missions.

 

[snes9x]

Sacrificing detail for graphical fidelity has been a big sticking point for me. Maybe it's not a strictly modern phenomenon but it feels like it's gotten worse. UE5 games seem to be biggest offender. Like if you shoot a ream of papers and it merely leaves a bullet hole decal that's just fuckin pathetic.

 

[Gavin_McShooter]

I mean, I could never complain about Balatro, it is specifically a card game. My peevee is games that are like, an horror fantasy and have no real reason to be a deckbuilder roguelike other than apparently that's what is 'in' now.

Let's just hope that roguelike deckbuilders don't shift into the "live service" sector. I mean I suppose you could call Extraction games like Dark and Darker as that: a live service roguelike. At least it's not a suffocate you with micros live service genre...YET

 

[Deleted member 222172]

Don't mention the obvious things like microtransactions, bad optimization or always online, we all hate those, mention something more personal.

For me it's microtransactions, bad optimization, always online, and the general malpractice and psychological manipulation of the masses into spending as much money for as much crap as possible

 

[Deleted member 7989]

I don't think I actually answered the question. I think my biggest thing right now is oversaturation of formulas. Stuff like, how every Action RPG right now is a Soulslike, or how the big names all do the super cinematic stuff like God of War.

I think we just need to go back to focusing on gameplay being cool. I like super extravagant cutscenes and hard difficulty too but you at least gotta TRY to do it right.

 

[mohabme]

Action games are just action RPGs now and I hate it to so much.

Games like Elden Ring and Hades, where you get your depth from your build and not from your moveset, are the current face of "hack and slash action" and it sucks.

I need more hack and slash action like Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, and more beat'em ups like God Hand and Viewtiful Joe, and the industry is heading in the opposite direction.

Post automatically merged: May 9, 2025

kratos sure needs the 3% frost resistance bracelet bro, its deep and intricate

Passive stat upgrades are the laziest. I immediately lose respect for any developer who implements this.

 

[TentaclesMod]

Action games are just action RPGs now and I hate it to so much.

Games like Elden Ring and Hades, where you get your depth from your build and not from your moveset, are the current face of "hack and slash action" and it sucks.

I need more hack and slash action like Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, and more beat'em ups like God Hand and Viewtiful Joe, and the industry is heading in the opposite direction.

Post automatically merged: May 9, 2025

Passive stat upgrades are the laziest. I immediately lose respect for any developer who implements this.

While I agree with the over-generization of combat, what you are talking about is spectacle fighters/character action, and those have been always relatively few. In the ps2 era for example we pretty much only had Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and maybe God Hand. And the next generation only gave us Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising, then we got Nier Automata and some lesser stuff like Assault Spy. This has been always a limited genre, and it has not changed for the worse, just not for the better either.

 

[moonbits]

the problem with those games is that the average gamer doesn't have the brain power to understand what makes these games click so they mostly turned towards having "skill points", "skill tress" and 3% frost resistance bracelets to be more accessible.

like, most people didn't buy techniques in Bayonetta, or Viewtiful Joe, or knew Ninja Gaiden had combos in the weapon descriptions. These games also had some fault in this because most button smashed their way through it and called it a day.

but hey thats another topic do not let me derail this thread

 

[Ne0Griever]

The millennial writing, mind you am a millennial myself, games like borderlands 3 and much of the modern writing is atrocious, makes the old badly translated games look eloquent and deliberate.

 

[Deleted member 7989]

the problem with those games is that the average gamer doesn't have the brain power to understand what makes these games click so they mostly turned towards having "skill points", "skill tress" and 3% frost resistance bracelets to be more accessible.

like, most people didn't buy techniques in Bayonetta, or Viewtiful Joe, or knew Ninja Gaiden had combos in the weapon descriptions. These games also had some fault in this because most button smashed their way through it and called it a day.

but hey thats another topic do not let me derail this thread

Watching people play Ninja Gaiden for the first time and figuring out combos is so satisfying to me. I set my homie up playing Black and when he figured out the one combo where you take them up in the air, hit them a few times, and since you don't have Izuna Drop in the beginning I taught him to use shuriken. He got it down after like 2 hours of trying since he isn't that great at games like that, I swear to god I shit. It was so hype lol.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Watching people play Ninja Gaiden for the first time and figuring out combos is so satisfying to me. I set my homie up playing Black and when he figured out the one combo where you take them up in the air, hit them a few times, and since you don't have Izuna Drop in the beginning I taught him to use shuriken. He got it down after like 2 hours of trying since he isn't that great at games like that, I swear to god I shit. It was so hype lol.

Personally I still need to transition!! I’m stuck in the nes ninja ;cc

 

[Deleted member 7989]

Personally I still need to transition!! I’m stuck in the nes ninja ;cc

Man, i cant wait for Ragebound.

 

[SuperSaiyanTao]

Most modern games feel same same now, unless they're indie they don't really even try to have unique art direction which makes me pretty sad to see when comparing games from 20 years ago to now.

 

[mohabme]

the problem with those games is that the average gamer doesn't have the brain power to understand what makes these games click so they mostly turned towards having "skill points", "skill tress" and 3% frost resistance bracelets to be more accessible.

like, most people didn't buy techniques in Bayonetta, or Viewtiful Joe, or knew Ninja Gaiden had combos in the weapon descriptions. These games also had some fault in this because most button smashed their way through it and called it a day.

but hey thats another topic do not let me derail this thread

It's true: putting all their eggs in the universal RPG basket completely eliminates any learning curve—doesn't matter which game you play, stats allocation and skill trees are the same everywhere; whereas Bayonetta, The Wonderful 101, and Ninja Gaiden II play nothing alike and they all demand a high level of engagement to get through their learning curve.

 

[Deleted member 393056]

For me personally it's when games have ridiculously large file sizes (70+MB). Yellow spray paint level design, forced walking segments, forced stealth segments in games not designed around it and just cinematic games in general are good runners up.

 

[mohabme]

For me personally it's when games have ridiculously large file sizes (70+MB). Yellow spray paint level design, forced walking segments, forced stealth segments in games not designed around it and just cinematic games in general are good runners up.

Honestly, unoptimized files size period. Publishers have no incentive to push for this kind of optimization when buyers regularly pay for +100GB games.

Like, FR, The First Berserker: Khazan demo is 30GB… you know they do not try to optimize for size any longer.