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[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Oblivion is just a mindnumbing experience overall.

EVE Online is both wonderful and horrible for the same reasons.  The problem is that because they give people so much freedom, it makes other things they do pointless.

Like giving out a unique wormhole exploring ship to everyone for Christmas.  There are two type of people who will benefit from this.  Griefers who'll do anything for attention or a feeling of empowerment and will blow up every one they come across, and the people who'll keep them in their hanger for months waiting for the price to increase thanks to the previously mentioned group's actions and then sell them.  Explorers on the other hand get taunted with a ship they know will make them an instant soft mushy target.

of course this isn't really the game's fault as much as it is the players'.

[chaoticag]

It has been said, but Oblivion's scaling system is idiotic, because why on earth should I level up if it makes my enemies stronger? Isn't the whole point of leveling supposed to make you able to take on harder enemies?

Also, a lot of earlier RPGs simply fall under unplayable, when you put the game down for a week, and return to it only to find out that you forgot what you were supposed to do next. At least Fallout 1 and 2 had the Pipboy to help, so why don't Xenogears and the Final Fantasy games do.

Also, any game that has cover mechanics that makes chest high walls player magnets. Can get really frustrating really quickly.

The mag-charger from Time Splitters. For those of you not in the know, you could shoot through walls with it and see through walls with it. It doesn't do much damage, but it could still screw people like nobody's buisness.

Quick time events usually fall under this, at least if they are manditory.

Also, Dark Cloud had this game mechanic, where your weapon could break. Not a problem so long as you repair it, but then you find out that when it does break, it dissolves into nothingness. Dark Cloud 2 fixed that.

Also, any RPG with tons of characters and a non-shared XP pool. Yes, I believe you people were dedicated when you gave me 35 characters, but why bother when they simply need to be re-leveled. Final Fantasy Tactics was especially annoying with this. I did not go on a massive side quest just so that Cloud joins my party at level 1 (not that it matters, since he also sucks in other regards).

While on the subject of FFT, it broke the game halfway through the story with Cid, who was a one man army that does massive damage at no cost.

Resident evil had that funny mechanic that prevented you from aiming and walking. I would at least like to inch slowly backwards while the Spanish zombies came at me.

TESII:DF. Not their fault though, given executive meddeling was used to release the game sooner.

[Duke 2.0]

Radiata Stories: HOLY GOODNESS! Look Square enix your not getting it. There is NO point to collecting a ton of characters if the vast majority of them are going to be totally useless. Worse yet is your Newgame+ feature is next to useless.

Chrono Cross failed at this first. Damn you Korcha and Nikki! You are both totally useless!

 And on the subject of Chrono Cross they expect you to be a goddam sleuth to figure out where to go. Every time you would achieve a plot point you would be dumped back into the two worlds without any explanation as to where you should go next. You will often do the equivalent of "Talk to everybody to get the plot moving" strategy on the whole two worlds to find the goddam plot.
 I won't complain about the stupidly large number of bosses and minibosses(There is even a segment where you have to fight three in a row with another really hard one right after a small dungeon), as they are actually rather well balanced. The minibosses are rather easy and serve well to leveling when you see them. The main bosses are difficult enough to distinguish them.
 I will complain over the story. I'm still not terribly sure what happened. I know the references to the previous game, but many holes are left that I'm sure are filled at some point.

[Mephisto]

It has been said, but Oblivion's scaling system is idiotic, because why on earth should I level up if it makes my enemies stronger? Isn't the whole point of leveling supposed to make you able to take on harder enemies?

Don't forget that like the third story mission, going to Kvatch, becomes OMG, NAILS IN EYES hard if you level up a few times before going there. That's why I do enough to finish that before reaching level two and then go off and do whatever I want.

[Neonivek]

Possibly the best proof of Oblivions horrible scaling system is when the homeless start carrying around great and expencive equipment like Daedra maces which would require them to pass into Oblivion to obtain.

Kings Quest 6: No "Restart from before I died" option!?! Come On... How many games at this point had that feature? I know Phantasmagoria used it excellently (It could even bring you back before it would otherwise make the game unplayable) and that game isn't all THAT amazing. It wouldn't be so bad if Kings Quest wasn't made of death, to sum up how deadly this game is, you can die by walking on a beach!

Fatal Frame: An option to hide points would have gone a long way to making the game more immersive. Nothing snaps you our of freight like the words: "Fatal Frame: 1000 points"

Ugh, alright these arn't big deals are they? (well actually KQ6 is huge if your used to the restart button... but unless you play those sort of games you won't realise why it is a big deal)

[Blaze]

Those Sierra adventure games were downright horrific. And not in the good way.

If you missed something or dropped something you shouldn't have, there is absolutely no warning, no save-preventing measures, and sometimes no way to go back. Meaning you had to start from the beginning. Plus, "WTF do I do now?" is a prominent theme there.

I never really understood the New Game+ option in some RPG games. We already know the story, how to get past it, and what'll happen in the end. Not to mention starting with the best equipment at your disposal reduces combat in the beginning to meaningless mashing "X".

[Duke 2.0]

 Even worse: An ultimate weapon at the bottom of the 100 story optional dungeon that is the best in the game. You just need to kill the hardest boss in the game, get the highest scores on the arena and grind 1000 drops from the hardest mobs in the game.

 And then you get a weapon that would have been useful about 20 hours ago, and now you have nothing to use it on.

 DARK CLOUD 2! YOU BASTARD!

[Neonivek]

The problem is that I really love the death aspect in Seirra adventures. It really brings something that Lucas Arts never will.

The LARGER problem is Sierra is functionally stupid when it comes to what to impliment. Nothing Exemplifies this more then the Space Quest series where most start with several ways in which to lose the game, simply by doing or not doing something within the first fifteen minutes of playing. Which you may not notice until it is too late often AT THE END OF THE GAME! (like a radioactive rock that will kill you what? an hour later?)

They are simply entirely for "Unwinnable" situations...

Which is shame because if they removed these unwinnable situations and allowed you to restart from a point before you died they could easily pull ahead of even Lucas Arts.

Not having a "Restart from where I last died" is especially bad since some Sierra games have death served easily. Walk to close to a cliff edge? DEAD! Touch a spider web? Dead! Use a Genie's Lamp? Dead! Walk on the beach? Dead! Sometimes you just DIE for no reason (KQ5 randomly kills you)

[Virtz]

Unskippable anything - intros, cutscenes, dialogues, regardless of how highly the developers think of them, they should be skippable, because there's a pretty good chance that it's actually crap no one wants to see or hear. I really hate Ubisoft and some EA games for this.

Secret-based gameplay - how about if progressing in Wolfenstein 3D required that you find a wall among the hundreds on the map that actually reacted to being used? That's actual gameplay in some games, and it's mind-numbing. Most notably, I ran across such situations in Metroid Zero.

Scaling anything - what's the point of playing well when you're being punished for it?

[Neonivek]

Well it depends

Games with TONS AND TONS of secrets where it makes up 50% of the game is alright. In fact that is what I loved about Wolfenstien is the fact that the random picture of Hitler had a secret bunker inside.

Games where you need to find secrets to beat the game is horrible!

Also scaling isn't bad if done right. It just hasn't been done right almost ever. (some games try by having scaling limits)

[Blaze]

Let's not forget those old RPG games that force you to walk at a snail's pace.

Oh sure, you can get 70+ hours of gameplay from it, but 30 hours of that will be getting from point A to point B.

[Neonivek]

Let's not forget those old RPG games that force you to walk at a snail's pace.

Oh sure, you can get 70+ hours of gameplay from it, but 30 hours of that will be getting from point A to point B.

Lets just up the ante and add in the latest Nippon Ichi games that boast hundreds of hours of gameplay. Only for you to learn that it means hundreds of hours of grinding.
-I don't quite like them too much because they are in the style of a Strategy RPG, but strategy is completely uninvolved.

(Fatal Frame and Alone in the dark is excused by the fact that characters run SLOWLY! because it is horror

[olemars]

King's Quest 3 took the Sierra Death Machine to its extreme. Someone should document all the possible ways to die in that game.

I dislike mazes in adventure games. They're really nothing more than fillers. I remember Kyrandia had one where you'd die if you walked more than 3 screens without finding a fireberry bush. The only way to get through was to carefully map the whole thing out with pen and paper as you tried over and over and over again.

In Assassin's Creed 1 there's a bunch of flags you can run around and collect. Their sole purpose in the game is so you can run around and collect them. Seriously, that's the official reason from the developer on why they were added. It was done in the last minute and they just plopped a few hundred of them at completely random places around the game world. And you get absolutely nothing in return for collecting them all.

Assassin's creed 2 also has an item you can run around and collect but there it at least has a purpose:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To cure Ezio's mother of severe PTSD.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Hey there was a point to Ass Creed 1 flags.  To get the X-Box Live Achievement, increase your gamerscore, and consequently, the size of your E-Peen.

[Neonivek]

Hey there was a point to Ass Creed 1 flags.  To get the X-Box Live Achievement, increase your gamerscore, and consequently, the size of your E-Peen.

Later some people found out that if you make huge achievements REALLY easy to achieve, people will buy your game just for that!