Which single feature has made you want to avoid a game?

[Petruccis Biceps]

No Y invert. Most modern games have this, but I remember when Beyond Good and Evil was released on XBL arcade, I believe it only had a "flip axis" option instead of the individual X and Y options. So I could never get used to the camera since one of the axis would always be wrong.

Somebody also mentioned time limits for certain games like Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. I hated that in those games. Not really about anxiety for me though, its more like I want to explore the world, leave me the fuck alone.

Also, I stopped playing Alien Isolation because of the old school save system + always being stalked/insta killed. Sure it made the game tense, but all I wanted to do was explore the cool environments. So I dropped it after feeling like I wasted a ton of time. I loved RE7 up until I noticed that there was a regenerating enemy that stalked around the area similar to Nemesis in 3. I cant stand that shit because by the time you notice the enemy comes back, you wasted a ton of ammo. I dont know if thats only for a specific section and I always mean to go back to it, but it really turned me off at the time.

 

[wbloop]

Mirror's Edge Catalyst being open-world.

The first game is still in my top 3 of last gen. The linearity and pacing were two main reasons why I loved it so much. ME:C becoming tedious with an open world and backtracking made me not play it. I bought it a year ago for five bucks, but I haven't touched it.

 

[Fushichou187]

Grindy online multiplayer trophies shoehorned into a predominantly story-driven single player game. Yuck.

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

DP

 

[Haze]

Tower Defense formula. Examples: Brutal Legend, Sunset Overdrive.

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Man Brutal legend started off so cool as an open world action adventure game but then went full convoluted RTS out of nowhere

 

[GymWolf86]

the rts parts on brutal legend.
the strong "more of the same" aura from gow4, rise\shadow of tomb raider
the past quantic dream titles for detroit
the combat system with gambit on ff12
the shitty gunplay for watch dogs 2
combat system in AC saga except the first game and odissey\origins

 

[rochellepaws]

I even won't play Monster Hunter because of the hunting. I want to play Monster Photographer and Carer.

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Yep! Monster Hunter is a series I've just avoided completely as I didn't feel comfortable with its premise and wouldn't want to do any of the missions. I'd love a mode with some other role like photography since the landscapes in World especially look really nice to explore.

 

[whiteninja]

Time limits, whether its real time or something like most Atelier games where you got a limited number of days.

 

[Deleted member 41271]

This. I've tried to give this a chance several times and it's never not been lame compared to hand-crafted level design in my experience. Hard skip for me every time by now which seems to mean like 50% of all cool looking Indie games at this point.

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case in point: Bloodborne. Good game, with some flaws, and the random dungeons in the chalice area are one. They were *utterly* boring. The leveldesign repeated itself quickly, exploration was uninteresting, and I lost interest. I loved the designed content, but the generated one left me completely cold.

A lot of indie games seem to use procedural generation badly here, as you say - and it's rarely fun. Take Chasm, a metroidvania. The idea was to have an always-unique map layout, but the end result was a *random* map layout that felt really boring and made maps feel like reskins of each other, instead of individual maps that had actually individual layouts.

 

[chirt]

Excessive gore. I really want to play REmake2 but good lord it looks so gross lol.
I can't hardly handle horror games as it is, much less when they employ such excessive and realistic looking gore!

Hoping there's a gore filter but I won't hold my breath.

 

[JusDoIt]

The ghost in Spelunky. I really enjoyed the tutorial mode and once I got past it, I was ready for a great treasure hunt... until I saw the ghost for the first time, read on it how it's always there if you spend too much time on a level, and immediately uninstalled the game. Such a shame as it felt like a nice treasure hunter game kind of like Steamworld Dig.

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FAM. FAM. That ghost is your best friend. That ghost GIVES your treasure hunting ass more treasure. You make it chase you over some gold, and you get gems. This is why kneejerk reactions are bad.

 

[Leviathan]

I will not play turn-based RPGs that still use first-person perspective. There's just absolutely no reason to be cutting out that character visibility, especially in a game with a real budget. It's not like it's an immersive decision.

 

[cowbanana]

Timed missions and forced stealth in games that aren't built for it. If I want stealth, I'll play a good stealth game like MGS. The only game with timed missions that don't bother me is Monster Hunter because the time limit is mostly ample.

Micro-transactions, booster stores in single player games and games as a service garbage are the biggest turn-offs though.

 

[Rei no Otaku]

Forced stealth sections with insta-fail are the worst. If I hit one in a game I will almost instantly turn it off and sell the game. I hate them.

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

No Y invert. Most modern games have this, but I remember when Beyond Good and Evil was released on XBL arcade, I believe it only had a "flip axis" option instead of the individual X and Y options. So I could never get used to the camera since one of the axis would always be wrong.

Somebody also mentioned time limits for certain games like Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. I hated that in those games. Not really about anxiety for me though, its more like I want to explore the world, leave me the fuck alone.

Also, I stopped playing Alien Isolation because of the old school save system + always being stalked/insta killed. Sure it made the game tense, but all I wanted to do was explore the cool environments. So I dropped it after feeling like I wasted a ton of time. I loved RE7 up until I noticed that there was a regenerating enemy that stalked around the area similar to Nemesis in 3. I cant stand that shit because by the time you notice the enemy comes back, you wasted a ton of ammo. I dont know if thats only for a specific section and I always mean to go back to it, but it really turned me off at the time.

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Especially the bolded. I strongly dislike the immortal stalker/insta-death style of Horror. I really just think it's annoying and ultimately incredibly tedious and boring. I like to explore and take care of things on my own time and not have to constantly worry about some cheap-ass gotcha death. It's not tense, it just makes me dread having to reload at the drop of a hat due to some janky 'hide' mechanic not working the way it's supposed to. See SOMA's crappy enemy encounters.

 

[Monster Zero]

Time limit in Majora's Mask.

 

[Gusy]

RAIN BOTW


Almost made me stop playing- Glad I didnt

 

[Tesser]

I've avoided (and still haven't played) plenty of games marketed as being roguelike/procedurally-generated - even games I was interested in prior to a developer/studio stating their game being procedural was its USP. I understand its popular and it sells, but I'll always prefer hand-crafted worlds/levels/environments over anything an algorithm spews out. There are some exceptions that I've thoroughly enjoyed of course, but generally speaking I'm just not a fan of it.

 

[Demacabre]

Microtransactions in Shadow of War.

Bought the game after they removed

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Same here.

Pre owned.

 

[wafflebrain]

There are a few exceptions (mostly older games for nostalgia purposes) but turn-based anything I just can't get into anymore, which is frustrating as some of my all time favs were turn based (Fallout 1 and 2, FFVII). I feel like I'm sorely missing out on the X-Com alike resurgence of games but I just don't have the patience for that kind of gameplay anymore. Real-time with pause ie Pillars of Eternity is the best I can manage. Though for some reason I don't mind watching them being played, case in point seeing my gf playing the recently 'remastered' FFXIII on our One X was downright relaxing, same for DQXI. Controlling it myself for long periods is another matter entirely.

 

[Fredrik]

Low framerates has made me avoid a ton of games, mostly during the PS2 era when surprisingly many action and racing games ran at 60fps but I still avoid fast games with low framerates even in this generation, like Spiderman and the Horizon serie until the X came along and saved the day with 60fps in FH4.

Online multiplayer focus is another red line I don't cross, only played the demo of GTS, never even touched SF5.

I have big issues with too difficult games too, when I was younger I loved those games but these days with kids taking up so much time I just don't have the time to "git gud" anymore.

 

[Pla-pla-place holder]

Rougelike or Rougelike elements, its like telling straight up that you dont want me to play your game. Kept me away from breath of fire dragon quarter for years.

 

[Saint-14]

I haven't played Persona 5 because of all the dating shit.

 

[PrimeBeef]

Most of the time it the roguelike features. Some do it well and I do enjoy some, but most if the time I get excited for some indy title then find out it's a roguelike and walk away.

 

[Akita One]

Nonsensical skimpy outfits and nudity for no reason, especially with underage girls. So, every Hyperdimension game and anything that resembles that (visual novels/dating sims). Literally the reason I haven't continued to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and also one of the reasons why Cyberpunk 2077 went from day one to wait for review.

Also, the PS2 era cookie-cutter 3rd person cover shooter combat with bad AI enemies. I'm looking at you, Just Cause series.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

I keep notes on skipped purchases that I might reconsider later so I know why I passed on them the first time around, or check for updates if the relevant deal-breaker might be patched. In recent memory, the one that has stuck out the most is the swapped A/B button configuration in the Switch port of Dark Souls. On a Nintendo platform I should never even have to acknowledge that the backwards Xbox layout and conventions exist. It may seem like such a small thing, but with me they lost a sale.

I will only play shooters with KB+M or motion aiming and am conclusively done with dual sticks as the only option. I've blissfully avoided dual-stick aiming for about the last 15 years.

Ever since BioShock Infinite, two-gun weapon limits in FPS, where you can only swap your arsenal with pick-ups on the field, have also been added to the list. No more.

I will generally pass on games with hideously gory player deaths, not so much out of squeamishness but because they're trite and annoying to sit through and discourage experimentation, a significant hindrance to players like me who don't just play to overcome challenges but like to poke around with game systems. I disliked this "feature" enough already in RE4, which was at least solid enough as a game that I could bear to sit through it, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back with Tomb Raider 2013 (which I refunded; I wanted my $5 back). This is also why I accepted that I'll never play TLoU, which freed me to catch up on the highlights and cutscenes on a stream. Now I know that it's not my kind of game for all sorts of reasons, but most of them I would be willing to accommodate, for the right game and under the right circumstances; not this. In contrast, I never had this problem with Mortal Kombat (which is not to say I think very highly of Mortal Kombat), as the violence there didn't interrupt the flow of the experience in quite the same way as a QTE fail-state in a forward-moving adventure.

 

[theotherMittens]

I couldn't think of any until the post above mine mentioned the XBC2 outfits.

Similarly, I haven't bought Bayonetta 1 or 2 because I find it hard to look at the character. I get what they're going for but her proportions look so strange to me and I can't dig it. Fortunately she looks much better in Smash IMO.

 

[Flipyap]

Haven't played Far Cry Primal nor the last two Ass Creeds because I don't want to use a goshdarned drone in a period piece.
I'd actually have an easier time tolerating the gimmick if they just made it an ancient alien device instead of those stupid RC birds. At least it would feel honest.

 

[Prophane33]

The building in Fortnite made me drop it and swear never to touch it again. Otherwise, it wasn't a bad game.

Any game with "runs" (i.e. rogue-like) I stay away from; when I was in my teens and twenties I had patience for them, now in my mid 30s I just want to play a nice story and/or become godlike.

Any games with instant-fail stealth missions are an instant-fail with me.

Not so much an issue these days, but back in the PS2 into the early 360/PS3 era if your (obviously) Japanese game had English only dubbing I was either going to ignore it or just buy a Japanese version (Koei's biggest mistake to this day is English dub only Samurai Warriors 2).

Edit: Someone above mentioned "Time Limits" and I had to totally chime in that I absolutely loath that shit. I want to love the Dead Rising games, but I bought and promptly dropped DR1 and 2 because of the stupid time limit stuff.

 

[Gitaroo]

Too much grinding like mmo or pay to win mechanics.

 

[JigglesBunny]

A gameplay loop based on loot. I'm so over that shit that I am honestly considering avoiding all RPG and RPG-lite games that release in the next few years.

 

[CRIMSON-XIII]

The junction system made me avoid FFVIII (i will try again if it ever comes to ps4).

i am hardcore FF but i just disliked the progression in VIII. I also dislike the enemy scaling levels.

 

[OrangeNova]

Witcher Sight/Vision whatever made me unable to play the game due to nausea.

 

[Bakercat]

Lootboxes

 

[GymWolf86]

Excessive gore. I really want to play REmake2 but good lord it looks so gross lol.
I can't hardly handle horror games as it is, much less when they employ such excessive and realistic looking gore!

Hoping there's a gore filter but I won't hold my breath.

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the gore is limited to zombie and some cinematics, the other enemy doesn't have a gore system if i remember correctly.
if you aim to the head without limb dismemberment maybe you can handle the game...

(sorry for my english)

 

[AmericanKirby]

As others have said, microtran$actions.

Pixel art games that have poor technical implementation. Like just assuming everybody has a 1920*1080 screen, using pure nearest-neighbor scaling and doing nothing to addapt to different screen sizes so all the pixels are different sizes and character movement looks "jiggly", vaseline-ass shaders, things like that. Hack Unity developers claim nobody can tell, but they're full of shit.

Too much "anime." It's hard to describe what this is or when the line is crossed, but you know it when you see it.

 

[Socivol]

Anything with first person perspective. I have never liked the first person perspective for some reason. Any game with it is a no -buy unless there is a 3rd person option. Makes me really sad I will miss Cyberpunk, but I know being in first person would make it where I wouldn't enjoy it anyway.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Astrobot's 'tooth extraction' boss battle really makes me want to avoid that game, because I just can't deal with creepy dental torture nomatter now cartoony.

Hat in Time's creator decided to keep Jontron, hate speech buffoon, in the game, and there are a number of complaints levied at the developer too.

Which games have you effectively blacklisted because of one small detail?

Are there any games you have played in the past that you regret. I regret buying Shadow Complex because it was written by Orson Scott Card ('arrest LGBT folk'). That is probably why I stopped playing.

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Orson Scott Card didn't write that game, Peter David did. The game is pretty loosely based on a series of novels which Card was writing at the time, but Card's involvement with Shadow Complex has always been pretty overstated.

 

[Deleted member 2620]

A lot of the posts in here seem to be about huge design decisions and not small details.

 

[dock]

Orson Scott Card didn't write that game, Peter David did. The game is pretty loosely based on a series of novels which Card was writing at the time, but Card's involvement with Shadow Complex has always been pretty overstated.

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Regardless, at some point the developers decided 'hey let's give money to this monster'.

 

[Gundam]

RPG elements in Souls games.

Ridiculous! Could you imagine if they did that for Castlevania?

 

[Deleted member 1594]

Weapons breaking after 10 hits in Breath of the Wild.

 

[mhayes86]

Time limits are mine, too, and it nearly kept me from playing Majora's Mask back when it released. I haven't played Lightning Returns or even the first Pikmin.

However, for those also saying time limits and naming MM, what about being able to manipulate time? The worst of it is dungeons, but once you've unlocked the dungeon, you just go back in time and then slow it down before attempting it. It's intimidating at first, but is actually very manageable and still allows you to take your time and explore.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Regardless, at some point the developers decided 'hey let's give money to this monster'.

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you are not wrong and it's a shame

 

[chirt]

the gore is limited to zombie and some cinematics, the other enemy doesn't have a gore system if i remember correctly.
if you aim to the head without limb dismemberment maybe you can handle the game...

(sorry for my english)

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That might help! I'm gonna give it a shot eventually, I'm just such a big baby.

I really want to play RE7 too but I'm afraid I might have a heart attack. Even watching someone else play it (EZA) I felt so anxious just due to the atmosphere and jump scares. I need a Huber blood transfusion or something. Dude has nerves of steel.

 

[dock]

A lot of the posts in here seem to be about huge design decisions and not small details.

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Yeah... smaller details and specific games would be interesting.

 

[Deleted member 19742]

Forced stealth sections with insta-fail are the worst. If I hit one in a game I will almost instantly turn it off and sell the game. I hate them.

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I'm not fond of them either. Breath of the Wild has one (and sort of another if you get the DLC) and I simply cheesed it by equipping Ancient Arrows (which insta-kills anything they hit, although you have to kill Guardians to get the materials for them) and picking off the threats. It felt SO GOOD.

For other games, microtransactions are a pretty big no-no, and any interest I had in Hat In Time dwindled when they kept JonTron. Also, less a "feature" but I guess it still counts: I'm really not fond of the composer of Dragon Quest and, until he passes on or he's replaced (the latter is almost certainly never happening ever), I only plan to buy future games if I find them used.

Oh, and any games with unavoidable permadeath. Hearing the word "permadeath" is the quickest way for me to not buy a game.

 

[Hu3]

First person view.. can't stand it have tried dungeon crawlers, a lot of fp shooters and i can't it makes me want to puke. I know it supposed to be for inmersión but hell I don't find that immersive at all.

 

[Weebos]

"Requires PlayStation Plus"

 

[Deleted member 41271]

FAM. FAM. That ghost is your best friend. That ghost GIVES your treasure hunting ass more treasure. You make it chase you over some gold, and you get gems. This is why kneejerk reactions are bad.

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That doesn't solve the problem that user had, which is the chasing. That one can use the chasing for positive aspects is besides the point.

Hack Unity developers claim nobody can tell, but they're full of shit.

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The irony is that there's a standard asset that greatly helps with this. Even I can avoid the pixel jank in my crappy hobby project - all one has to do is do the actual movement in pixel units, and the problem is just solved, easily, no fuss at all.

There's really no excuse to mess this one up.