Your gaming "kryptonite"

[Dimensional Vortex]

I'd have to say MMORPGs. More specifically: Fetching and grinding. I play a game to play it and become immersed in the storyline, and when absolutely nothing I do has a lasting effect on the world or advances the story any, I get pissed. It's not really an RPG if the world never advances, now is it?

You can't really play a MMORPG if you want a great story, thats just not fair. Story lines often make your character the center of attention while you do various activities relative to the plot, but trying to make it so that every character feels like that is frivolous. It would raise the average performance level to that of a super hero, and if you think you were special for retrieving the enchanted ax from the fish monster, that pride you have is doused when you see someone wielding the exact same weapon. It seems to be the World of Warcraft conundrum.

My gaming kryptonite would be annoying loading screens, thanks Fallout New Vegas for the PS3.

And also turn based combat, unless turn based combat has been done with extreme innovation it can leave me alone.

 

[Supraliminal]

AI that cheats.

Most RTS games I have tried, albeit that ain't many, are guilty of this.
The player can only be in one place doing one thing at a time while the AI does a multitude of tasks concurrently.

Just give me a pause function I could utilise to assign commands with.

 

[Suomimaster]

When sequel(s) can't even reach the same level as the original game. Fable for once. To me Fable: lost chapters is awesome, sure it has some flaws but I don't mind them so much. When Fable 2 was announcement and they told it had a Co-op I was hyped. But Molyneux had decided that there won't be the Guild of Heroes(it was funny and great idea that being a Hero was just another job), the co-op would blow(splitscreen would have worked better and trash the damn pre-made characters), plot would be boring and nothing would be as he promised. Oh, and the main story would be short as hell. I was first blinded by the return of Fable, but pretty soon I noticed that the game sucked. AND perhaps my biggest disappointment was the spells. There was ABSOLUTELY NO differences in the spells. And no self-arranged quick menu for items on the D-pad.

I could on and on, but I think I'll stop now.
WAIT! There is still Fable Thr...

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

The following two "gameplay"-mechanics usually don't completely ruin a game for me but they REALLY annoy the heck out of me:

1) Random Encounters in JRPGs - You explore a dungeon and at every second step you ecnounter a bunch of enemies that are, usually, absolutely no challenge. The only reason for their existence I can see is for grinding or for diminishing your health for the upcoming boss fights. Its absolutely boring, requires virtually no skill and its randomness really pisses me off.

2) Grinding - If I wanted to do mindnumbing work I wouldn't buy and play a videogame just to do so. Usual offenders: JRPGS, MMORPGS and Action-RPGs (Diablo et al.). Special award for outstanding annoyance: The Mass Effect 2 Ressource Harvesting minigame.

 

[holy_secret]

As soon as something doesn't go smooth (directionlessness, impossible bosses, annoying enemies that you have to fight all the time to get through an area, boring-patches of games, repetetivness and so forth), I always end up putting the games away. I've played a thousand games, but I can probably count the number of games I've actually finished. They are not so many.

Like I've played every single Final Fantasy game from I-XIII, but I've only actually finished VII

FFI: One of the super bosses in the water temple (whatever the correct name was)
FFII: In search of some damn mirror in Fynn castle (After re-taking it)
FFIII: Last dungeon (The enemies are not random. They are around every damn corner)
FFIV: That damn double-rainbow tower that shoots up to heaven (I do believe it's one of the last parts, but I'm not sure)
FFV: Right after Galuf umgebracht wird, when you get that annoying blonde thing. It just stopped being fun.
FFVI: At Kefka's Tower or whatever. Jesus christ the "random" enemies there are harder than every single boss you've met put together.
FFVII: In the northern crater at the last part of the game. But I actually finished it last year for the first time woho ^^
FFVIII: After coming down with rinoa from SPACE. I dunno it juts got boring from that point on.
FFIX: In Terra. I dunno what happened. It was just...meh.
FFX: I've played this twice, stopping at the same time. Right after the Snowy area after the calm lands. Both times, same place. Don't know why.
FFX-2: I wasted 1 hour of my life on this crap.
FFXII: See text above ^
FFXIII: I just quit playing this actually I don't know how far it is, but I am walking aroudn like a crazy person in som weird LCD induced corridor in Eden, right after getting back to cocoon again.

Yay.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Your avatar is delicious.

Here's my Top5 of things that are capable of breaking the game for me, you could consider the top one the real Kryptonite - but really, everything *can* work out, but these things almost never do for me:

Singelplayer:
5. Auto-saving only, only auto-saving at the worst possible moment.
4. Horrible "story" that is, in fact, just a patchwork of clichés and plotholes.
3. Grindtastic games or really repetitive missions.
2. Bugfests.
1. Stupid characters making stupid decisions and leaving stupid options only.

Multiplayer:
5. Tons of abbreviations and fan-made lingo you can't google easily and makes conversations illegible unless you're part of the core community that understand all that stuff. I have to DR the RM to KNA the BBB with an OTK or else I'll go BTSO?
4. Multiplayer-only games without any kind of training mode or ability to create an empty server for yourself so you can try out things instead of being dead weight and finding out how to access your inventory when the rest of the team is barely able to hold the line.
3. (Often old) games where there's literally a best strategy or loadout for each map and gametype and everyone that strays from this dull path has no real chance at being useful.
2. One-hit-kills or quick two-hit-kills you don't and often can't see coming, leaves you little space to fight ba-BOOM! Respawn Timer before you can walk all the way back to the frontlines: 20 seconds
1. Horrible community/ "D4rk1337Sh4d0wD34thz: lulz 0|V|9 pwnt n00b XD!!!!" (This is an actual quote) [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer]

 

[Extragorey]

Games that you can't manually save in (or at least, it only saves to the last checkpoint) and checkpoints are a long time before each extremely difficult boss or something.
Die on the boss? Don't worry, you only need to spend an hour playing up to the part where you get to die again.

 

[honestdiscussioner]

Horror. I just don't do it.

 

[En Row]

RPG-Adventure-Turn-based driven games. Like say..the Final Fantasy franchise...and oh MMORPGs

Why?
I just hate the slow pace of it and the fact that you have to spend hours killing something with a stick for several hours to gain experience so that you could use it to acquire skills that are required to defeat a certain mini-boss/boss to advance the storyline or to simply level up for some unknown reasons in MMORPGs...

I don't have the patience....and the attention span actually. It's always a habit of mine to fall asleep if I keep doing things over and over...and OVER AND OVER!! OH GOD!! JUST HOW MANY OF THESE THINGS DO I HAVE TO KILL?!?!?!?

Oh did I forget to mention Fighting games?
I suck at them. I mean I rarely win against anyone. The idea of memorizing specific actions and timing them correctly to get a long combo is a bit meh~ Or am I just lazy!?

 

[Mr Companion]

Low visibility. Any game where what I am trying to shoot at/drive around/solve/slash is shrouded in shadow I can't deal with. Except Metro 2033, where that is how its supposed to be.

 

[Elexia]

I have a bad fear of heights that borders on paralysing. Which is why I don't do well in platformer games - I'm scared, even in games, of facing a big void or not having safety rails around me.

As you can imagine, Portal 2 is probably not the game for me. This was in fact my first Portal experience and after finishing the game, my legs were like jelly, my heart was pounding and I couldn't move for a while afterwards with my body almost frozen in fear.

Despite this, I now plan on playing Portal 1 very soon as the story is enjoyable and engaging enough to face crippling anxiety at almost every turn.

 

[thatman]

What this is, is basically things that cripple either your gaming experience or the game itself for you. Mine would be multiple boss battles one after the other. Don't get me wrong, an epic boss battle here and there is a good thing, but if you have 3 or 4 bosses all lined up?

So tell me, Escapist, what is your gaming "kryptonite"?

Nah Man, I LOVE these bosses. Sure they can be a ***** to actually beat but a multiple stage boss offers a satisfying cap-off to a game when you finally beat it's ass down.
Casing point, final bosses on shin megami tensei games (at least the ones i've played) are nearly always like this and they're easily my favourite bosses (despite the crushingly hard difficulty level).

 

[Chiasm]

Gaming Vertigo

Any game that wants me to cross over a ledge or other huge height and pans the camera at a angle to show the vast distance to the ground; worst is if I do fall and the game shows the character falling to their death.

 

[sune-ku]

Two words instantly came to mind:

Cliff Racers.

Oh how I hate them.

 

[Frostbyte666]

In RPG's really, really bad voice acting (Star Ocean 4), I'm looking at you Sarah and Lymle (thank god for the switch to Japanese option, though Sarah's voice in that is horrible as well).
Also needing a guide to figure out how to collect an item or recruit an npc (Suikoden 3)
Games that try to portray realism yet give the AI an unfair advantage, i.e. I can take only one shot to the head, fine, they can take 3, what! (Operation Flashpointragon Rising).

Really annoying plot twists can sometimes destroy a game, like your actually a computer character, your in a time loop etc. Or we the main character is just being so completely thick headed for the sake of it, going against their previous character development, yes of course I'll hand you the doomsday device ms. nice lady who has run illegal experimentation on various people.

 

[Magus44]

Puzzles with specific turning of cranks/switches.
You know.. 3 switches. You have to turn them in the right order to move cogs or something...
I look at them. Sigh. And go do something else.
Something about them, I just cant get them. Give me Portal-esque spatial visual puzzles. Not some boring sequential one. Prince of Persia is notorious for these.
This and terrible escort missions.

 

[Russian_Assassin]

Escort missions with the subject being a hemophiliac NPC with brittle bone disease and underdeveloped leg muscles that make him move at a snail's speed.

 

[ZehMadScientist]

Boss battles where regular minion enemies infinitely spawn. It makes my my blood boil having to deal with those motherweeperrs while trying to damage the already annoying boss in front of me. I'm looking at you Dante's Inferno

 

[Cuppa Tetleys]

OOHHHH a big list I smell! These things might not make me never play the game again but I often don't play it for a while;

-As previously mentioned, bosses one after another or ones with regenerating health
-Extremely difficult timed missions
-Escort missions
-As mentioned, difficult puzzles (half life made me quit quite a few times, especially cos the answer's normally really obvious but I always overlook one detail and I end up walking round for half an hour not knowing what to do. Also that puzzle with Ashley in Res Evil 4)
-Lenghty, unskippable cutscenes, even if they're skippable they annoy me because games aren't films.

 

[WaReloaded]

Any game which has very difficult environmental puzzles.

Resident Evil puzzles were always my bane, especially the ones in Resident Evil 2, 3 and Outbreak File #2.