ALWAYS ONLINE SINGLE PLAYER GAMES

Anything in a menu that you have to do a lot, but still requires multiple inputs to achieve. Think resource management in No Man’s Sky or Dark Souls. Crucial to the game, but breaks your flow over and over again.

-The save points just before a cutscene, so if you die, you are forced to watch the said cutscene again and again.

-When characters are discussing, they say what the player is supposed to do. Dude, i’m the one who’s supposed to do so, not the guy you’re talking with.

Not being able to pause and rewind cutscenes. I’ve got ADHD and my attention wanders even if I’m interested in something. Let me rewind to see what I missed when my brain seeking dopamine told me to check my phone.

And being forced to walk slowly in a scene for reasons. It’s not fun; it’s frustrating.

@daredevil not being able to pause a cutscene.
Especially since I’ve had kids and often need to leave a game quickly, this has become very annoying.

When you get two dialog options and neither is something anyone would actually say.

Super long cutscene based story telling right at the beginning of the game. I’ll rarely power through.

When I load up a game on just to see what it’s like and it has a bunch of story up front. I just don’t have the patience anymore.

Not having quick easy saves whenever it would be easy to do. There are times when it can’t be implemented for a good reason (a bad reason would be to make the game harder. sure ok but that’s such a boring way to do that) and it’s fine but i still might quit playing the game forever when i realize my cat launching herself on the keyboard somehow closed all my programs. there goes that whole pain in the ass boss fight.

A nice post prompt, OP. To start, and to riff off yours, I’d say games that don’t have a run option, and insist on a milquetoast in between of “fast-walking.” Here are mine that I can think of from some of the most recent games I’ve played:

–No third-person viewing option in an RPG; e.g., Cyberpunk 2077. After readily having the option in my hundreds of combined hours in Skyrim and FO, it felt preposterous not having the option to view my character at will. Crazy.

–Needlessly loud start menu music or fx leading to the title screen

–I’m doubtful there’s any sort of terminology for this, but, mission-style games that don’t make any attempt to establish a linear, interlocking world. E.g., Nioh. It’s very souls-like overall, but I really wish this aspect of the game was more like a From game in this regard.

Might edit in some more if this post stays active.

• Unskippable cutscenes and tutorials.
• Having basic features like split screen, or even the settings themselves, locked behind progression walls.
• This one is kinda specific to Bethesda games but fast traveling to a point only to have to load again because it put me right outside a door that is a load screen instead of putting me just inside that door so I only have to load once for the actual fast travel.
• Not having an FOV slider.
• Constant bullshit popping up on screen. Damage numbers, kill streak messages, onomatopoeias, etc. That shit is distracting as all fuck.
• Games with special currencies you can pay for with real money but can also be earned by playing, but limit how much you can earn by playing.

Sequels having less features than the previous game without being a complete enough experience that you could ignore it. If they got rid of a lot of shallow features to focus more in-depth on others, that’s understandable.

• escort missions
• press x to not die
• unskippable cutscenes
• long-ass mandatory tutorial missions (I can and do RTFM, fuck you very much)
• no subtitles for spoken dialogue
• shitty writing
• shitty voice acting
• non-union voice acting
• skinny dudes with huge fucking swords
• mandatory gacha/pay to win
• padding what could be a short, fun, memorable game with a lot of bullshit
• trophies/achievements
• a plot-relevant sidekick with an overly perky VA (gives Paimon from Gacha Impact the thermonuclear side-eye)
• characters who look prepubescent in outfits a grown-ass adult would think twice about wearing
• long, convoluted processes to find “ultimate weapons” that aren’t worth the effort

Things that are really hard to do with bad ping, like the Melody’s hair quest in Hypixel skyblock

@daredevil oh and also cutscenes every two minutes.
I tried to replay Max Payne 3 recently and it’s intolerable. You never get time enough to get into any kind of flow. Even though the actual gameplay is fun, I put it down after an hour or so (and about thirty cutscenes up to that point). 😩