Top Five of: Most Infuriating Game Design Choices

Videogames can have brilliant concepts. Concepts which break all traditions and create scenarios completely unseen (and... unplayed).

But executed in a poor way, through poor game mechanic choices or some dated, frustrating design documents, even the most incredible concepts can be utterly annihilated and relegated to being practices in utter tedium.

So here, I state Turbo Toto's Top Five of: Most Infuriating Game Design Choices!


MOST INFURIATING GAME DESIGN CHOICE NUMBER FIVE: OBLIGATORY SEWER LEVEL



Y'know, I can endure the obligatory fire level that probably takes place inside a volcano and has insta-death lava all over the place. I can even endure the infuriating obligatory ice level, where traction is reduced to a slippy, sliding nightmare. I can even make my peace with the obligatory crap warehouse level, simply because you're assured the presence of crates, and breaking crates is at least a diversion to boredom.

But WHY do game designers insist on using the obligatory sewer level? NOBODY wants to be traversing through a sewer. No matter which game, this is likely to just be a long series of dark corridors, a canal of shite punctuated by gratings. The laziest, most boring of places conceivable used as the canvas to convey the artful entertainment that should be enjoyed within a videoGAME. GAME.

Y'know. Game implies fun. What's fun about being as bored as being in a dentist's waiting room with the only thing to look at is a shit-slathered corridor?


MOST INFURIATING GAME DESIGN CHOICE NUMBER FOUR: FORCED ON-RAILS SHOOTER SECTION



"Get on that Turret, Rookie!" shouts your AI partner.

Uh-oh. Methinks that we're going to jump into a car or a spaceship or something, a checkpoint will activate, and I'm going to be needlessly locked into this seat for a nice, heavily-scripted FORCED ON-RAILS SHOOTING SECTION.

Stripped of mobility and unable to do normal stuff like heal at will, the on-rails shooter section merely sends swathes of enemies your way, breaking the pace and gameplay flow of the overall game and often causing an unnecessary difficulty spike inconsistent with the other levels.

The frustration is heightened knowing that in real life (or in fact, if it was during the game at any other point and you'd hopped into the turret), if you sustain damage you could dive out and run for cover in order to heal up. But in the forced on-rails shooter section, no, someone has stapled you nice and tight into that seat and you WILL sit and be ripped to shreds.


MOST INFURIATING GAME DESIGN CHOICE NUMBER THREE: FORCED STEALTH SECTION IN A NON-STEALTH GAME



If there's one thing worse than a forced on-rails shooting section which may last a few minutes, it's a damned FORCED STEALTH SECTION. Now, I don't mean Tenchu or Splinter Cell where stealth is actually the game, but I'm referring to forced stealth missions in NON-STEALTH games; where up until this point you've been happy-blasting everything in sight and now, if you get seen once, back to the start of the level!

Completely game-flow-breaking, who on earth thought, "hey, y'know what I'd love? See this action game we made with all this action in it? Wouldn't it be nice if one level, we had no action whatsoever and if the enemy sees you all your progress is for nothing? Also we could have the AI glitch now and again to deviate from their normal programming paths so sometimes they can cheat and see you through things."

Honestly. STOP CREATING THESE SECTIONS. Slowing down plus zero action is like saying "How do we make chocolate better? Okay, let's take out the sugar and the cocoa. In fact, take out everything and just put some lovely gruel in the wrapper there."


MOST INFURIATING GAME CHOICES NUMBER TWO: QUICK TIME EVENTS




I won't even vent about how lazy, frustrating nor entirely un-fun these are. "They're so you can be involved in a cool cutscene!" they cry. Well, I can't fucking watch it, can I? I'm watching the middle of the screen for what button I have to hit so the last twenty minutes of this boss battle aren't for fucking nothing.

Whatever happened to performing the satisfying last blow yourself?

QTEs, basically flashing button icons on-screen that require you to press the corresponding button on the pad - these were fun in Shenmue. Because there were little to no repercussions; effectively, you just started the QTE scenario again (and they often had humorous consequences like Ryo being hit in the balls by a football).

Nowadays, full battles can be fought in QTE format, lasting several minutes, with one mistake causing you to not only have to restart the QTE section but the ENTIRE real-time action section you'd endured prior to it.

Lazy, frustrating, utterly devoid of fun.


MOST INFURIATING GAME DESIGN CHOICE NUMBER ONE: PROTECT, DEFEND, ESCORT MISSIONS



Hands down, the single worst game design choice you can make for your game is to have a Protect/Defend/Escort mission.

The problem is, you rely wholly that the AI will be compliant with you and not be a total dick. But inevitably, they will run into danger, actively cause issues, and generally be a pain in the arse snagging on scenery as the enemies corner-rape them and you fight for the next twenty minutes whilst they path-find their way out of the most trivial situations.

There're the survivors in Dead Rising that think they can fight, and so target one zombie in between an entire horde, run for it, push it gently, then screech for you to help as he's torn to pieces. There's Gohda in Tenchu, where if he gets hit even ONE TIME, you fail the entire mission. Did I mention he can only hobble like a sedated peg-leg tortoise?

Then there's the inevitability that only the AI character can open certain doors. SO FRUSTRATING. I can blow up walls, but I can't proceed until that AI character walks beside it to kick it in? Where is he right now? OH THAT'S RIGHT. He's spotted an enemy glitched through the next area and is still in "alert" mode, and refuses to follow his game logic now. Great.

Only one health pack left? Oh nice, I see you've taken the initiative to run into a group of enemies and stand still, using the T-Rex mentality of "I assume their vision is movement-based."

No, AI partner, they are Al-Qaeda. And they are shooting you in the neck.

*Uses last health pack on AI*

*AI Character stands in same place shouting inappropriate taunts such as "Hardly a scratch!" and "Did you see that!" just to cause teeth-gritting fury*



So, how do these stack up compared to your own list of Most Infuriating Game Design Choices?

Let me know, chap-a-raps!