We've all been there. Playing a nice video game, you might even be enjoying a whole lot. Then it happens. A moment that makes you stop and wonder what the designers were thinking. A moment that can turn a pleasant romp through a virtue world into a digital nightmare. You want to turn to someone and ask 'did they even test this part?'. Often games will pick up a popular feature for better or worse thinking it's a good idea. Almost no game is safe from this; there's usually one thing that can be found that ruins a gaming experience. Since no game is perfect (except Portal), I have compiled a list of these design features that plague gaming and hopefully go out of fashion before too long.
Before I name the worst, here's a few un-honorable mentions: bad camera (Mario 64), forced stealth sections (Crisis Core), horrid AI (too many games to cite), luck (RPG drop rates), infinitely re-spawning enemies (Ninja Gaiden glitch) and 3D sonic games (every 3D sonic game ever... ever).
Arbitrary Time Limits
A classic annoyance in platformers like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, the arbitrary time limit. Not too many games have time limits anymore unless it's to represent a bomb sequence during a daring escape, in which case, it's used to accent the excitement and thrill of the moment. However, it used to be a standard feature for no other reason than to add one more game over condition. Over the years, time limits have been able to cleverly disguise themselves as other game features. Most commonly, they now take the form of basic restrictions on a game that make no sense. Jeanne d'Arc, a strategy game, falls into the category by having a completely arbitrary turn limit for every single stage. The goal of the mission could be to make it from point A to point B, and you could've killed every enemy on the board, but if you don't make it to point B in the turn limit, you get a game over. Why? What killed everyone? Sometimes games even try to justify these limits by making them central to the plot like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which uses a law system. Every battle has some laws that restrict what abilities you can use, who you can kill, etc. The game starts off with very specific laws that really don't add up to much, but by the end of it, it becomes unfair. It's not uncommon to have a law like "cannot use the attack command" or "cannot deal damage to animals". Try entering into a battle where all the enemies are animals with the latter law.
Flying Enemies
Flying enemies are necessarily bad in games, it's how they're treated. Usually these are minor enemies that fly, take little effort to kill and are annoying. They are the obligatory annoying enemy of the game. And creators know they're annoying; case in point, the behind the scenes footage of making God of War, one of the designers admits to purposefully adding in an annoying enemy that eventually took the form of those flying harpies. This is another old trend that seems to keep showing up and shows no signs of going away. Castlevania had them with the Madusa Heads and No More Heroes had them with basically any normal enemy that had a gun.
Unskippable
It's amazing how some games still don't allow you to skip cut scenes or title sequences. Ubisoft is a big violator of this. Pop in their game, you have to watch their logo animation every single time... it's annoying. No one wants to be forced to watch a company's logo animate each time they boot up their game. But it pales in comparison to having to sit through every single cut scene in a game again. Zelda has been a major series that plays into the idea that if you're going to replay the game, you're going to experience the plot again whether you like it or not. A few games take this violation even further but putting a boss fight right after the unskippable cut scene. And its never an easy boss battle, it's usually one of the hardest in the game. The longer the cut scene, the harder the boss fight. So each time you lose, not only do you have to start the fight all over again, you get to watch the scene unfold as well. The big offender that comes to mind is Eternal Sonata. This game managed to combine one of the tougher fights in the game, before a painfully long cutscene involving in-game graphics, and to top it all off, the dialog is painfully bad in that game.
Escort Missions
For what ever reason, a great game will going along, you're having fun, but then it happens. A secondary character is suddenly attached to your gun-touting, one-line spewing death machine of a character, and you're supposed to look after them while hordes of enemies make it their business to only go after them. Almost every genre has its version, and almost all of them are a downer. It slows down the game play and adds an unnecessary level of annoyance. Very few games have managed to pull this one off well, like Ico and Resident Evil 4. Ico build its game around having a partner around all the time, and it worked to its advantage along with creating a very beautiful narrative. Resident Evil 4 had Ashely. A vocal, bratty annoyance of a character, but with one button command, she'll go off and hide while you viciously work your way through half the Spanish population with the Chicago Typewriter (Thompson machine gun). Jeanne d'Arc gets a second mention for having escort missions where you have to defend a character while the enemies surround your position. In one mission, you have to defend a character who moves on his own, usually right next to an enemy, and is one-shotted by every single attack, including archer fire and mage spells. Have fun.
(God Help Me) Quick Time Events
This one is relatively new. I don't know what game started it, but I do know it should've stayed there. Quick time events have managed to find themselves in even the best game titles like Resident Evil 4 and the God of War series. Just in case cut scenes were unskippable, now they basically have to be so you can follow this 'Simon Says' routine the game throws at you. Does it compliment the game play? No. Does it add anything to the excitement? No. What does it do? Annoy the crap out of people. A lot of time people aren't expecting it. The game throws you a cut scene and you want to sit back and enjoy it (or skip it). But then suddenly a representation of a game button pops up and you have 5 seconds to hit it or game over. Usually they're just unpredictable and will cause a lot of grief. The ONLY time a quick time event could be considered well-placed is in a rail shooter game. Rail shooters are based around you constantly paying attention to the screen so you're already on edge, waiting to react. Bayonetta is a particular offender since it keeps throwing them at you throughout the entire game and usually come out of no where, and failing to execute them results in death 90% of the time.
Instant Kill Moves
There's nothing wrong with a little challenge in a game. Some of my favorite games are as such because they provide such a satisfying challenge, like Devil May Cry. But some games decide to take the cheap route to create their challenge instead of relying on the skill of the player. Enter, instant death moves. These moves will randomly show up in a boss fight, or at worst, normal enemy encounters. They demand that they be handled perfectly, or game over. RPGs manage to have these via the "death" spell or the "stone" status effect. A perfect example is Tales of Phantasia with the Basalisk enemies. Their normal attack is enough to inflict stone status on you, which, if you're only 1 party member strong, will cause a game over. No More Heroes 2 has a particular boss fight which will end depending on where you're standing while it's attacking you. Without going into detail, it will cause more game overs than any other boss in the game combined.
And there they are, the worst video game trends. Some game designers out there look upon these and think they are acceptable, but any sane person would look at these and recall in horror.
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