Irritating Game Mechanics/Subgames

[Wonderful Id]

At a certain point in Shenmue 2, you stay at a temple and have to help them air out books every day you stay there. That means that every morning in the game as long as you are at that temple, you have to do an aggravating and boring minigame each time. I spent a while here if I recall and man I got tired of this.

 

[Wonderful Id]

Also, Harvester is one of the greatest games ever made, but all of the combat in it is garbage and the last 1/4th of the game is basically all combat.

Sadly, a bunch of adventures game from around that time started doing that. Adding in action or stealth sequences to spice up their adventure game. Sadly, they are almost never good.

 

[Pissmaster]

I fucking suck at puzzles in general, so the Fallout hacking minigame is a nightmare for me, and I usually avoid it whenever I can. I get what I'm supposed to do, I'm just not smart enough to actually follow through on it. I end up save scumming and throwing myself at the terminal until I get it right.

You are actually playing it the exact same way you would if you knew the process.

When you pick a word, you’re told how many letters you got right, as in, the right letters in the right place. So if the password is FUSE and you pick MUSE, you’d get 3/4 right, and if you pIcked MARS, you’d get 0/4 because the S isn’t the third letter.

Of course, you only get a few tries, so it all comes down to trial and error most of the time anyway, and it’s always best just to back out and try again on your last shot so you don’t get locked out.

 

[Bread Fetishist]

The Bentley whack-a-mole minigame in Spyro 3. I don’t know if it was better in the original version, but it’s a pain in the ass in Reignited.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

I've never quite fully understood how the Fallout hacking minigame works either but it's a good example of a minigame like that feeling like you're doing something but not taking too much time.

And I've heard people throw theory around before that Chris gets super pumped up in order to help fight Wesker and I guess that makes sense.

I just wish Resident Evil 5 didn't suck so much shit, I've tried and failed to play it twice, I couldn't even make it through a Youtube let's play of it, I find it that boring.

It had nothing to do with Resident Evil and is peak "identity crisis" era for Japanese developers.

Fallout's hacking game is even easier; I literally never failed those across all the games they were in. Just pay attention to the amount of letters shared between words.

I'm like a monkey looking at the alphabet, picking the letters to spell the word shown in the picture and gets a peanut if it's correct. Monkey doesn't actually understand alphabet yet monkey get peanut almost every time.

I fucking suck at puzzles in general, so the Fallout hacking minigame is a nightmare for me, and I usually avoid it whenever I can. I get what I'm supposed to do, I'm just not smart enough to actually follow through on it. I end up save scumming and throwing myself at the terminal until I get it right.

How to hack in Fallout

Step 1: Pick a word, preferably one that ends with an "ing" or some common lettering.

Step 2: If right then profit, if wrong check how many correct. If it ends in "ing" and 3/* are correct then your word probably ends in "ing" so you can narrow down the possible choices. Now pick one that has similer letters in proper numbers so with our running "ing" example, pick another word that has that.

Step 3: If right profit, if wrong try one more time.

Step 4: Now that you have one attempt left before lockout, start hovering over every ( and [ you can find until a string of them light up Example [@#%&], click all that do. Each one will either remove a wrong answer or refill your attempts back to 4, which is why you use 3 before doing it. This makes it so you potentially have 7 attempts before risking lock out. Continue to narrow down the words, which should be a shrinking list by this point.

Once you get a high science skill its possible to remove all duds leaving only the right answer. My energy weapon build on new vegas frequently eliminates all duds with glitches.

Never use your last attempt, just hit B/Circle/TAB to exit the console to try again with a fresh set. This even works in 76, which means that the perks removing terminal lockouts are entirely useless.

That being said, and with this long winded post finally over, I find the mini games in bethesda games irritating. I like my role playing games to play like role playing games, I.E. I want my characters skills to matter more than my own. Morrowind did lockpicking right, where your characters skill level with lockpicking gave you a percentage chance to unlock the lock. I prefer this method because I want to have a reason to build a characters skills in a certain way. In Skyrim not only is the minigame still as anoying as it was in fallout, but not quite as in oblivion, but a character with no skill or perks in lockpicking can pick the highest level locks with ease by player skill alone. Thats a bad roleplaying mechanic.

/end rant

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

The Bentley whack-a-mole minigame in Spyro 3. I don’t know if it was better in the original version, but it’s a pain in the ass in Reignited.

It is just by sheer virtue of the camera not being glued to Bentley's shoulder. The original had a top down camera which gave you a better view.

It wasn't great mind you, but certainly better than the remake's.

 

[Cheese-Loving Citizen]

Gang territories in San Andreas, specifically attacks on your own. It would have been fine if territories being attacked spawn near the player, but no, gotta go to Ganton or Glen Park for that shit. I'd rather just save and not deal with it.

The lockpicking in Oblivion. I know how to lockpick, but goddamn can it be inconsistent. A tumbler can fall fast like a nuke, but it's always a coin toss whether or not your lockpick breaks on the next click. One moment it works, another it doesn't. It's stupid. Thank God for the Skeleton Key.

Backtracking. Fuck you especially if you put backtracking in the blandest, same-iest level in the game. It's confusing enough having to go through the level normally, now you're gonna have me go through it again? Yeah, no. Thief TDP's Thieves' Guild is fucking horrible because of it. It's designed in a T-shape, and you're gonna have to go through each end of the T to get the stuff you need to progress. All of it cobbled together with endless hallways of red bricks and sewage with no notable landmark whatsoever, and I'd rather sprint through it than play sneak man like I should be.

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

Ending your well-dressed-demon-waifu collecting rhythm puzzle game with a sans boss fight.

Thief TDP's Thieves' Guild is fucking horrible.

Or when you return to the Hammerite Chapel, kill one of the monsters, the objective changes to "kill all monsters" and you cannot find the last enemy because it's thief the level is huge and mostly dark and it's probably a small spider chilling in a black corner.

 

[Idiotron]

Quick Time Events
I hate them, all of them, in every game.
It makes me not want to play/replay otherwise fun games.
Resident Evil 4, for example, is a fun cheesy game but I can't get through it because of the overabundance of QTEs.
Fuck you, Sega or whoever else introduced them (I think it was Sega because I remember them being present in Sega's Die Hard Arcade from the 90's).

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Turn-based RPGs can be annoying.

All the fighters do is stand there exchanging blows - calculated with really nerdy statistics - as you select options from menus. Then there's the random encounters, the level grinding, the tedious upgrading of equipment, the bullshit luck-based stuff...

Also 2D "platformer" games that are overly difficult and require constant split-second thinking and reactions can be annoying too.

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

I hate ragging on Hollow Knight as its fantastic, but boy oh boy does it do a shitty job of teaching you how to approach the mid game.

Basically, the game starts becoming much more dependent on tricky jumps - this isn't an issue in a platformer, but unless I missed something the game never teaches you that using a downward attack on enemies and environmental objects both gives you a height boost, and resets cool down on your movement abilities such as dash.

I was smashing my head against certain areas until I looked this up, and going by comments I saw I wasn't the only one. It's a massive flaw in an otherwise polished game.

 

[I can't imagine]

I think the worst is when there's side tasks/subgames that are mostly unnecessary, but suddenly become essential many hours later without any warning. For example:

I know a lot of people really loved it, but I never got into the ship combat in Assassin's Creed 4. Which is mostly fine, you don't need to deal with it very much for the vast majority of the game. Until the very end. You have to either beat or sneak past some really strong ships that are defending an outpost/fort kinda thing. Not having done anything to build up my ship, beating them wasn't an option, and I didn't have enough experience maneuvering around ships to effectively sneak past them. Cue me banging my head against the wall for 3-4 hours until I finally managed to luck my way into sneaking past them.

 

[ShortBusDriver]

 

[Friendly Primarina]

View attachment 1574345

The fact that you cant scroll the text on the right to see previous attempts makes me think they were trying to piss people off.

 

[TFT-A9]

Any minigame in any Bethesda title
The car-dancing minigame in GTA: San Andreas
The driving and flight schools in GTA: San Andreas
Zero's missions in GTA: San Andreas

 

[FuckedUp]

View attachment 1574345

Alright, I'll explain what I'd do so people stop claiming it's impossible:

Spoiler: somewhat long

First off, I'd ignore the "I" in the fifth place because every word has it, meaning it's always one of the correct letters.

With that set of words, I would've first picked "LENDING" because of how many letters it shares with others: nearly every word is "-----NG", and of those, many also share a "D" in the fourth place; of that set, "LENDING" has the most letters in common with the most words—it's just one letter away from "SENDING".

Suppose the answer's "POURING". I'd get 3/7 correct, in which case I'd not only know that every "---DING" is incorrect, but every "ING" that shares at least one other letter with "LENDING": this knocks out "RUNNING", "WINDING", "READING", "MEETING", "LEAVING", "HOLDING", and "SENDING". In addition, words that share less than three letters with "LENDING" are also eliminated, crossing out "CARRIES", "VERSION", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY". Out of these, the words left are "POURING", "MISSING", and "SHOWING"; the number remaining is the same or less than the number of attempts left, so each one can be tried individually.

Now suppose it's "TRINITY". I'd get 1/7 correct, meaning all but "CARRIES", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY" are eliminated; once again, these can all be tried with the attempts remaining.

Suppose it's "SENDING": I'd get 6/7 correct, meaning the answer has to have all but one letter in common. Of these, "SENDING" is the only one that fits this criterion.

Finally, suppose it's "HOLDING": I'd get 4/7 correct, meaning all but "RUNNING", "MEETING", and "HOLDING" are eliminated: once again, these can be brute-forced.

There could be some scenarios where I couldn't do this (and potentially actually have to rely on random guessing), but I can't recall a time when I wasn't able to narrow it down like this.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Alright, I'll explain what I'd do so people stop claiming it's impossible:

Spoiler: somewhat long

First off, I'd ignore the "I" in the fifth place because every word has it, meaning it's always one of the correct letters.

With that set of words, I would've first picked "LENDING" because of how many letters it shares with others: nearly every word is "-----NG", and of those, many also share a "D" in the fourth place; of that set, "LENDING" has the most letters in common with the most words—it's just one letter away from "SENDING".

Suppose the answer's "POURING". I'd get 3/7 correct, in which case I'd not only know that every "---DING" is incorrect, but every "ING" that shares at least one other letter with "LENDING": this knocks out "RUNNING", "WINDING", "READING", "MEETING", "LEAVING", "HOLDING", and "SENDING". In addition, words that share less than three letters with "LENDING" are also eliminated, crossing out "CARRIES", "VERSION", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY". Out of these, the words left are "POURING", "MISSING", and "SHOWING"; the number remaining is the same or less than the number of attempts left, so each one can be tried individually.

Now suppose it's "TRINITY". I'd get 1/7 correct, meaning all but "CARRIES", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY" are eliminated; once again, these can all be tried with the attempts remaining.

Suppose it's "SENDING": I'd get 6/7 correct, meaning the answer has to have all but one letter in common. Of these, "SENDING" is the only one that fits this criterion.

Finally, suppose it's "HOLDING": I'd get 4/7 correct, meaning all but "RUNNING", "MEETING", and "HOLDING" are eliminated: once again, these can be brute-forced.

There could be some scenarios where I couldn't do this (and potentially actually have to rely on random guessing), but I can't recall a time when I wasn't able to narrow it down like this.

Yes, but what if you always guess right on the first or second try and still have no idea how the game is supposed to be played? In the Fallout fiction meta it's kind of cool.

 

[JektheDumbass]

I'll be honest, I mod the hacking minigame in Fallout to show only the correct answer. The way I see it, my character has paid the skill/perk tax so they shouldn't be held back by my stupid brain. I still don't know how to pick locks in Oblivion other than use the skeleton key and jam the auto-pick button until it works.

 

[ShortBusDriver]

Alright, I'll explain what I'd do so people stop claiming it's impossible:

Spoiler: somewhat long

First off, I'd ignore the "I" in the fifth place because every word has it, meaning it's always one of the correct letters.

With that set of words, I would've first picked "LENDING" because of how many letters it shares with others: nearly every word is "-----NG", and of those, many also share a "D" in the fourth place; of that set, "LENDING" has the most letters in common with the most words—it's just one letter away from "SENDING".

Suppose the answer's "POURING". I'd get 3/7 correct, in which case I'd not only know that every "---DING" is incorrect, but every "ING" that shares at least one other letter with "LENDING": this knocks out "RUNNING", "WINDING", "READING", "MEETING", "LEAVING", "HOLDING", and "SENDING". In addition, words that share less than three letters with "LENDING" are also eliminated, crossing out "CARRIES", "VERSION", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY". Out of these, the words left are "POURING", "MISSING", and "SHOWING"; the number remaining is the same or less than the number of attempts left, so each one can be tried individually.

Now suppose it's "TRINITY". I'd get 1/7 correct, meaning all but "CARRIES", "MASSIVE", and "TRINITY" are eliminated; once again, these can all be tried with the attempts remaining.

Suppose it's "SENDING": I'd get 6/7 correct, meaning the answer has to have all but one letter in common. Of these, "SENDING" is the only one that fits this criterion.

Finally, suppose it's "HOLDING": I'd get 4/7 correct, meaning all but "RUNNING", "MEETING", and "HOLDING" are eliminated: once again, these can be brute-forced.

There could be some scenarios where I couldn't do this (and potentially actually have to rely on random guessing), but I can't recall a time when I wasn't able to narrow it down like this.

I figured it out eventually, I just felt it was annoying as hell because it was never explained, at least in Fallout 3.

At least the lock picking felt very innovative and I could take on some really high level locks because I could make fine movements with the controller.

 

[FuckedUp]

This is probably more of a "me" thing, but still:

Only played Katamari Damacy and Forever so I have no idea what the others are like, but at least in the first game there was no sort of "S" rank for reaching a certain size in the "main" levels nor performance in the constellation levels. IIRC, the king always says whether you did poorly, average, or great, so the underlying performance thresholds were already there. Yeah, you can see the exact stats for every level, but just beating my own high scores for the sake of doing it isn't fun for me.