Everyone has their pet peeves when it comes to games and what can make or break their experience. For me, it isnโt necessarily the biggest issues, but the small gripes that can totally turn me off a game. Here’s a look at my top pet peeves in the era of modern gaming.
1 Difficulty Just for Difficultyโs Sake
To kick things off, letโs start with one of the things I personally hate the most: games that are incredibly hard just for the sake of being hard (and, yes, I am looking right at you, Souls games). This trend of extreme difficulty in a game I would otherwise love to play can turn what should be a relatively relaxing game session into an exercise of pure frustration.
Now, I do understand the appeal of a hard-fought victory, and some of my favorite moments in games are when I finally figured out the trick to a boss fight or event. But not everyone has the time or desire to grind through astronomical challenges. And most of these Soulslike games have no option to make things easier or even pause. You either “get good”, and get several headaches, or you just skip the game and watch clips on YouTube instead.
Overall, the lack of accessible options for casual or new gamers ultimately limits the audience, alienating those who might otherwise enjoy the rich stories and environments these games offer.
2 Easy Lane Mockery
Speaking of accessibility, another thing that I hate is the stigma within the gaming community for those players who prefer to play on easy mode. I personally prefer to do so in games where I want to enjoy the story and really focus on exploration, but that sort of disdain that some gamers express towards said choice isโฆ off-putting, to say the least. This can create an unwelcoming environment when all you want to do is play at your own pace.
In my opinion, gaming should be an inclusive hobby, one catered towards players of all ages and play-styles at the most basic levels. This would allow everyone to enjoy immersive narratives without judgment. Some people might even argue that easy mode should be the default difficulty for games.
3 Ambiguous Difficulty Settings
Staying on the topic of game difficulty, another gripe I have is the often ambiguous nature of difficulty setting descriptions. Some games allow you to start a new game only to find yourself ill-equipped for a level of gameplay that is way harder than youโd have expected. Or there are just pictures and you are supposed to guess the actual difficulty level without any sort of clear, informative explanation.
On the other hand, what I would love to see more of is something like Shadow of the Tomb Raiderโs customizable difficulty options. The game allows you to actually pick how hard individual elements of the game, such as combat or puzzles, are in comparison to others, rather than sticking to a singular, overall difficulty. So, if you love puzzles but hate combat, just tailor the sliders to your liking and voilร โ a game that really suits your style!
4 Character Creator Inconsistency
For this next one we are going to talk about what happens when your character model doesnโt look quite the same in-game as it does in the character creator. I know I am not the only person to have spent hours in the character creator only to appear to have been hit in the head with an ugly stick as soon as you leave it. This lack of consistency between the character creator and in-game character was particularly prevalent in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
One of the biggest issues here is how creation models and actual gameplay differ, as well as simpler and more subtle changes like lighting differences between the two. That is why I was so excited to see that the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard game allows you to model your character under different lighting effects, which should (hopefully) help cut down on the number of visual jumpscares.
5 Making All the Adjustments
Super high default game settings are a major turnoff for me. I’m talking about complex menus filled with all sorts of intricate tweaks that can make that initial jump into gameplay take forever and feel more like getting a space shuttle ready for takeoff than just going for a raid with friends.
While there are some critical adjustments that can be made from the get-go, such as how dark or light the screen is and whether you want captions on or off, spending an age adjusting said settings just detracts from the core experience.
6 Unskippable Cut Scenes
Another notorious annoyance: those unskippable cut scenes, especially those that dump a ton of lore right at the beginning of a game. On the other hand, there are also cutscenes you can skip but, guess what, you are going to miss out on key elements of the game that wonโt be explained until they come back and bite you in later chapters.
While I appreciate narrative depth and crave more and more about the lore of most games, forcing players to sit through these extensive story elements is just another way of disrupting the gameplay flow. Instead, allow players to skip early without missing out, while littering the world with other means or learning what they need to without sacrificing narrative richness.
7 A Collectorโs Nightmare
For any of the completionists among us, the absence of an in-game way to discover (or, even worse, track) all the collectibles in a game is maddening. You should not have to rely on external guides to achieve that coveted 100% completion. It is yet another thing that detracts from the immersive experience.
Developers can easily improve this issue by integrating subtle in-game hints, like Ghosts of Tsushimaโs wind guidance system, along with better tracking systems. This would allow players to both indulge their ability to find and discover without having to leave the game environment and reach for their phone.
In the end, these are only my personal pet peeves and they could very well not cause issues with other players. But they are some of the modern trends that detract from the gaming experience for me.
