Ask Lemmy

I'll mention God of War and its final battle. You spend the entire game building skill with one set of weapons, then the end of the game pushes a brand new set of moves on you. I never did finish the game because of that BS.

Ah another one - Forced stealth sections where you can't be detected at all. Especially in a game where stealth is optional or not even a thing you can really do normally.

Progression systems that draw attention away from the core gameplay loop

Examples are season passes, archivements, minigames that took longer too complete then the main game

Quick time events.

Carry weight.

Hiding content in New Game Plus. Making me play a game twice just to artificially ass replay "value."

I've got a time-traveling kick in the nuts prepared for whoever invented wall-humping for unmarked secrets. I first remember this from Wolfenstein 3D but I'm not sure if it existed before then.

Underwater swimming on a game that wasn't built around it. Every single time it's a frustrating battle with poor camera angles and imprecise controls.

Oh I'm above the thing I need to collect but slightly out of grabbing range, all I need to do is go straight down... And now I'm 20ft away.

Souls. The clumsy roll and artificial difficulty spikes and losing all your shit because you didn’t do it all “just right” for the entire encounter.

Ugh.

EDIT: Honorable mention . . . Timers. I’m looking at you, current Bungie.

Health scaling as you level. Just ducking lazy.

Roll and move. Skip your turn.

Doom3 flashlight. It’s Doom. Not fucking 5 Nights at Freddy’s.

Missable or multiplayer-only achievements. Or the ones that force you to replay the game.

Ghost of Yōtei is doing it well. Everything is available at all times after the main story is completed in a single game. I could think of a few possible achievements they could have created that would be missable but I'm glad they didn't.

GTA5 has a lot of multiplayer achievements I could never get because I hate GTA Online.

Talos Principle 2 has at least two achievement that each needs a replay to the end and you have to follow a specific path of talking to characters that you don't know upfront if you're not looking online for it. So if you're trying this without a guide you might end up replaying it more than twice. That's shitty.

Taking control away from the player for stupid bullshit.

Dragon's Dogma 2 had this to the most extreme level I had ever seen. Random NPCs can initiate dialogue without you hitting a prompt (and they can appear anywhere, even in the middle of a cave full of monsters). Your companions will sometimes high five you, and it just forces you into an animation that it didn't prompt you for. There is an actual boss fight in the game that is literally a cutscene of someone else fighting it.

Dragon's Dogma? More like Dragon's Dogshit. 😬

MTX for customisation

Been playing Dark Deity (a Fire Emblem clone) lately and instead of permadeath, it reduces a random stat by 10% permanently. Can't say I'm a fan. Just have a permadeath mode and a regular mode.

Alien pods getting a free move as soon as you uncover them

Games that have long scripted sections you can't skip and sometimes even save. Next level, you'll have to move around and answer questions so can't even go take a shit.

Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk both had sections like that. Loved the games, hated that bullshit.

Often it's climbing.

I'm looking at you, breath of the wild.