Lame manuals
Seriously, nothing makes a game feel cheaper than having a no-effort manual printed on toilet paper. I'm not expecting a damn novel like the things that come with Blizzard games, but I'd like to see more than two slips of paper explaining the controls. And don't say that it costs more, because Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks had a beautiful manual while costing the same as CoD: Modern Warfare Mobilized, which had a shit manual.
I remember that one of the great joys of buying a new game was to read the manual on my way home, eager to get to try out the features outlined, or to be given an idea of the basic plot line. Now, I open the box and all I'm likely to see is a control scheme.
When They Give You a Map, Why Don't They Let You Make Permanent Marks?
Skyrim is the worst for this. Why can't I mark the locations of stashes, or places where enemies spawn a lot? Why?
That's one of the things I like about Silent Hunter. You get all these neat little tools for your map, so you can mark the location of the last known convoy location, estimate it's path, compare it to another map of known convoy routes, estimate it's destination, and then find a general area to head to in the hopes of interception. And the whole time you feel like an actual navigator, completely immersed in the experience. In Far Cry 2, you had a GPS and a pull out map, and while it did pull you out a bit to have a moving icon on it, it felt much more immersive having a map out while driving, trying to figure out which turn to take. But yet now all the maps you have are completely separate from the gameplay, with no given explanation.