Irritating Game Mechanics/Subgames

[FuckedUp]

Spinoff of the Biggest Bullshit thread: post things that didn't threaten your perception of the whole game, but still pissed you off.

I'll start: Big's story in Sonic Adventure, and (to a much lesser extent) the tea in Professor Layton.

 

[Snekposter]

The Cabaret in Yakuza Kiwami 2.

 

[Juke and Jam]

Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain with its Motherbase management hassle. Skyrocketing development costs for everything didn't help either. It's just not the kind of game where fun can be found grinding for resources.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Rule of thumb is that a subgame is bad if it's not only not fun, but is also time consuming and is either required or gates other, better, content.
So I'd put Blitzball (Final Fantasy X) though I wouldn't be surprised some people liked it.

 

[Peru oso donas]

Everytime a game that isn't stealth based decides to shove in a pointless stealth section, with what i think is the biggest offender being the stealth sections in Skyward Sword.

 

[anti SJW]

Games that put in levels that aren't designed for the type of game you are playing. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance for PS2 had a couple of platforming levels in a action RPG game.

The loans in Animal Crossing New Horizons. First loan for your house is like 20 grand. To add a single room to your house after I think is like 200 grand, 10 times as much.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The Pipe Dream hacking mini game in the original Bioshock definitely gets old after the 50th time and it says it all that all of the sequels skipped hacking minigames.

I think hacking/lock picking minigames can be fun, but Bioshock's was too involved, they should tend to be somewhat simple.

The Cabaret in Yakuza Kiwami 2.

The random fights in the Yakuza series get really irritating, I'm not saying they shouldn't be there at all, but they happen way too frequently.

 

[MoffAlbert]

I really hate when card battle games appear in RPGs, especially if they're mandatory. I dislike card games irl, so my bias is probably to blame for that, but if I need to play a card game in a turn based or action RPG I get sucked out of the game.

 

[{o}P II]

Everytime a game that isn't stealth based decides to shove in a pointless stealth section, with what i think is the biggest offender being the stealth sections in Skyward Sword.

Scripted stealth sections suck

 

[Made In China]

Any game that makes traveling boring and makes you have to run back and forth across large areas a lot, and any game with slow combat animations. Luckily emulators have turbo and PC games have cheat engine so these games actually become bearable.

 

[Snekposter]

Everytime a game that isn't stealth based decides to shove in a pointless stealth section, with what i think is the biggest offender being the stealth sections in Skyward Sword.

Oooh, I still get steamed about the stealth level in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident whenever I think of that game. Warships are not meant for sneaking around asteroids.

 

[BOONES]

Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain with its Motherbase management hassle. Skyrocketing development costs for everything didn't help either. It's just not the kind of game where fun can be found grinding for resources.

This i actually had no problem with as i was always fucking around with the shipping containers. So I just had such an excess from using shipping containers as a weapon to crush enemies that this never was an issue.

 

[Xerxes IX]

The Nose/Pollen minigame from Mario&Luigi Bowser's Inside Story. I got stuck on that as a kid because the controls are awful and it's a difficult segment in general.

Alphadream is (actually WAS ) a pretty great developer, but when designing gameplay around the Nintendo handhelds' unique features they had an unfortunate track record of the controls being unresponsive (touchscreen on this minigame, 3DS gyroscope in the sequel game)

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Everytime a game that isn't stealth based decides to shove in a pointless stealth section, with what i think is the biggest offender being the stealth sections in Skyward Sword.

Worst one for me was in Red Faction. I think the trick was that important thing was looking at enemies, so if you glance the layout and then walk through it sideways staring at a wall you spare yourself frustration.

 

[Cyclonus]

That turn based strategy minigame in Final Fantasy VII. Most of the minigames in that were pretty good, but that one sucked balls. And you had to complete it at least once, and win it too if you wanted the phoenix summon materia.

 

[Elysian]

I need several nails to progress in my copy of The Sims 2 Castaway on the Nintendo DS but they’re one of the objects in the game that you can’t craft or trade for, you just have to keep playing the game and hope that the RNG will work out in your favour and some will wash up on the beach at some point.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

That turn based strategy minigame in Final Fantasy VII. Most of the minigames in that were pretty good, but that one sucked balls. And you had to complete it at least once, and win it too if you wanted the phoenix summon materia.

There's a really easy way to cheese that one. Basically all you do is before you start, you put a basic soldier as far down as you possibly can. Then you start the actual mini game. If you keep putting basic soldiers at the red line, it goes lower and lower until it's somewhat close to the bottom. Then you send the soldiers down to the enemy spawn points and kill them before they can get a chance to ascend. If you manage to kill all the initial enemies before any more spawn, you automatically win. You can end every match in less than a minute this way, and it's what I always do when I play the minigame.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Worst one for me was in Red Faction. I think the trick was that important thing was looking at enemies, so if you glance the layout and then walk through it sideways staring at a wall you spare yourself frustration.

The newer Wolfenstein ones would get my vote, there was no way of knowing whether you were visible and how far enemies could see, if spotted you had a few seconds to take out the commander otherwise they'd keep calling in reinforcements, so unless you were right next to them at the time then forget it.

They've also thankfully died out now, but QTEs. Resident Evil 5 was probably the worst offender, the infamous bolder punching scene was physically painful to get through.

 

[Uncle June]

They've also thankfully died out now, but QTEs. Resident Evil 5 was probably the worst offender, the infamous bolder punching scene was physically painful to get through.

This may sound autistic, but Chris vs. Boulder was one of the most entertaining, out of left field, exaggerated badass scenes I've ever seen in a game. I always viewed RE5 as an over the top, "MGR: Reveangeance-esque" copy of RE4 with a tone that felt more in line with Dead Rising than a RE game.

As someone who has never really cared about the lore/story of the RE series and played it for shits and giggles it gave me a hell of a laugh. I could definitely see why people who do care about the tone of the series would hate it though.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Several things actually.

The boat sequence in AC Liberation Remastered. Controls worked like absolute dog shit.

Endgame bosses that are neigh impossible (see King of Fighters, Tekken 6)

The goddamned Mako in Mass Effect