Your gaming "kryptonite"

[Nickompoop]

Bad voice acting. It catapults me out of the experience immediately.
Save checkpoints. I don't understand why some modern games don't let you save wherever you want to. Back during the rise of video games, the save checkpoint was utilized to save storage space. We don't really have that problem now, so it's really, really annoying when a game does this (see: Metroid Prime, an otherwise great game).

 

[Darby]

Being spawn-killed. Over and over. It's unfair.

 

[Juventus]

Being forced to frustratingly grind just to continue with the main story, not for some super special extra hard side boss that nets you bragging rights or a powerful weapon, but just to beat the actual game.

I'm looking at you "The Last Remnant"... /angryfist

THIS!

also to follow up on that, random encounters that happen every 2.3 seconds. actually random encounters in general. jrpgd games need to follow the yakuza/persona3/radiant historia style of battle encounters.

also, rpgs that are long for the sake of being long. i don't want to grind for an extra 10 hours just to make your game's length go from 30 to 40 hours. that is not good game design and it takes the skill out of the player's hand.

also, games (mainly rpgs) that don't have an in-game diary or summary book. it's very annoying when you play a game where you have to grind for 40 hours, lose interest because of maddeing random ecounters and boring long grinding, to come back 2 week/month and have no idea wtf you were doing or what was what and who was who.

also games that don't let you re-watch cut-scenes after you have watched in the game

 

[tombman888]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG sections of cut scenes and dialogue put me off really fast. If it's a game i REALLY want to play and finish, I'll bare it through sheer will, but if it's not, then i usually stop playing for good.

 

[elbrandino]

Games with camera controls that are unchangeable and the inverse of the settings I like them to be. I love the Sly Cooper games, but the camera kills me after not playing them for a while.

 

[JET1971]

just had a smoke and remembered another... invisible walls! i hate invisible walls! you can clearly see theres nothing there, not even a hill or anything and yet you cant go further. ill take COD get on the .50 over invisible walls anyday.

 

[jhlip]

Games that only autosave or have no juxtaposition of any kind.

 

[ilspooner]

Escort missions, even more so when the escortee has HORRIBLE AI. I'm looking at you, Oblivion, and especially you, Dar-Ma. D:<

 

[TheRobotandtheBeast]

Dead rising 2's loading times, i could build a real paddlesaw in the time it takes to load.

 

[EGtodd09]

Hmmm, quite a few things because really, my kryptonite is broken immersion. So all the things that break immersion; unreasonable/hard/unnecessary puzzles, poor clipping, graphical errors, game glitches and complete crashes obviously. Sometimes though, if a game is really really good, I can overlook these problems and still enjoy the game ie I loved Fallout 3

 

[aaronobst]

Freezes

 

[Therumancer]

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"?

I would either say any game that has a timed element (as much due to general dislike as the challenge) or mediocre players.

To explain the latter, I'm a pretty average game player in most respects, and have a lot of gaming experience from jumping around between so many games (it's rare for me to finish one). In games that wind up having a competitive element I tend to do surprisingly well against people who are "masters" of the game and operate on a very high level, and tend to devour most scrubs. However when I play against other players who are generally middle of the road I tend to have a much harder time. I've been told it's because I tend to overthink things surprisingly enough, but regardless of the cause it tends to give me problems. When I play fighting games for example I've broken some pretty impressive winning streaks people have lined up (and even gotten hate mail from achievement hounds once in a while, my XBL rating has still never recovered from playing Soul Calibur IV against random people) but when I run into people who are also in the same basic brackets or aren't toting any kind of impressive pedigree, and yet aren't newbs, I tend to wind up having a lot less success.

 

[aaronobst]

Goddamn System freezes and lockups

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Pointlessly timed sequences. Needless timers cause my blood to want to leap from my body to avoid my fury. And anything with a stun-lock-kill capabilities. Like the dragons in Dragon Age 2, if your fort is low. That was annoying.

 

[Sir Boss]

when a game can't decide between realism and fun, like halo

 

[loomis]

No save points or passwords.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Parts in pretty much every recent action game where instead of anything interesting happening you get to rock climb along ledges and do 180 leaps to more ledges to creep along yet another ledge.

Seriously, other than to pad game length by turning one lousy room into a wall climbing labyrinth why do games even have such in depth climbing mechanics?

In Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Prince of Persia, and Assassins Creed its pretty integral to the gameplay and defines the games in a way.

However, I think its pretty stupid that Lords of Shadow, Dante's Inferno, Darksiders, God of War etc. rely so heavily on climbing and swinging around with your weapon.

I guess it just annoys me that in otherwise action oriented games, where the characters aren't specifically supposed to be acrobats etc. you find yourself hanging from/sidling along a damn ledge for 3-5 minutes at a time trying to find another ledge or climbable surface usually with mobs taking easy shots at you.

One thing 2D action games have over 3D is that you usually just go left to right and jump or use ladders/ropes sparingly. You don't lift half your level straight from Donkey Kong Jr.

I love Deadspace and most other survival horror games because unlike "action games" you typically don't end up climbing around on walls like a spaz.

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

Any game with an 'Insane' or 'Hardcore' mode. Those impossibly difficult settings that you only do to get that 50 point achievement or bragging rights. I never do those.

 

[nondescript]

cheap games, like Call of Duty on veteran. A guy blind firing from across the courtyard and killing you instantly isnt hard its cheap. Also underwater levels, lost me a bit at DMC and GoD of War. And mario, just underwater=/= fun.

I have to agree. Water/ice boards, FPS (cause I suck at them), and anything where I sit there knowingly waiting for my death (I'm looking at you, God of nerdraging War.)

Oh, and slow death scene/game over cutscenes that you CAN'T skip. (I get that I died. Can I Puhleeese continue now?) I'm looking at you, LoTR: Two Towers.

 

[Gennadios]

Having my character do something horribly stupid or something that's clearly a setup for disaster.

Like loading your entire specialist roster into a shuttle and leaving your ship defenseless in Mass Effect 2, or going to sleep in a hotel where the guests are clearly planning on killing you like in Call of Cthulhu.