The single worst design feature in a video game ever

[Uosdwis_R.Dewoh]

In Crysis you’re playing an uber soldier with a multimillion dollar army super suit. You can run like a cheetah, become invisible, break cars with your fists, but you can’t keep your night vision on for more than a couple of minutes before the battery dies. Same thing in Half-life 2. The charge in your flashlight runs out in seconds. WTH!

@Captain_C

Different control schemes for practically identical sequels. I recently bought the first two Oddworld games off of Steam. They use the same graphics engine and have the exact same play style. The second game is more of an expansion than it is a sequel.

So when I plug in my USB controller, I would expect the controls to be identical. Nope, they remapped almost every single button for the second game and there is no way to change it. Fantastic.

I present to you… Xpadder! Show those non changeable buttons the finger.

[Claptree]

Not really all that terrible, but as it’s fresh in my memory: the camera in Witcher. I don’t remember what they called the view, but the one farther away. It moves whenever an object gets in the way of the camera, like a wall or a tree. Since I use WASD to move, that means my character turns when the camera moves. Especially annoying at an inn somewhere, where you would walk under an arch. About half the times the camera would react weirdly to the arch and I’d find my character doing an instant u-turn and heading back the way he came.

[Zeriel]

@Rin_Twisted

The single most frustrating thing I’ve ever encountered in a game is the cliff racer enemies in Morrowind. As in all Elder Scrolls games, you can’t rest when enemies are nearby, right? No big deal normally- either kill them, or keep moving until you get out of range. Not so with the cliff racers.

I guess because they’re like big, prehistoric birds, they could ‘see’ you with a far greater aerial range. Waaaayy before you could see them. You were then forced to wait as they awkwardly descended towards you with agonizing slowness, and you could finally sort of hack at the air until they died.

I don’t know how many hours of my total gameplay in Morrowind were actually spent staring at the sky, searching in vain for the cliff racer I just knew was there. They weren’t difficult, they weren’t high in XP- they were just frequent, and frustrating beyond belief.

The standard by which I judge Morrowind characters is “can I kill Cliff Racers from range with one-two shots max”? That’s practically the first leveling-up goal.

[Kobal2]

@GargoyleWB

Replaying Baldur’s Gate right now…

To start the game each time, you need to click-skip past endless producer-brand clips and video sequences. I think there are at least 8 separate ones. Quitting the game is almost as bad. I can’t believe that I was able to play this game back in the days of 2x speed cd-rom drives without smashing something.

quit
Are you sure? Progress will not be saved
yes quit
loads main menu
quit
quit

You, my friend, need to never approach Splinter Cell : Double Agent. The goddamn menus had 2 minute long loading screens. I wish to God I was kidding.
Fucked up in your mission and want to reload an earlier save ? Ooooh, goody.

• Escape (short load time, menu appears) ;
• go to main menu (no, you can’t load from the game itself, extra long load screen while the game unloads everything) ;
• go to load game (loading screen while the game takes you to the list of saved games) ;
• select your game and hit load. If it happens to be there, of course - the saving procedure is abysmally unergonomic and half of the time it doesn’t save
• 30 minute load screen while the game sets the level back up.

Did I mention Splinter Cell is one of those sneaking, all-in-the-timing, one-alerted-guard-and-you’re-fucked kind of games ?

I didn’t play it long.