Each and every one of the series on this list are franchises that I respect with utmost certainty, but have one fatal design decision that really irks me to no end. Keep in mind that these games are in no particular order according to my tastes, unlike my last two lists. I'll put more stuff on this list in due time.
Showing 1-10 of 40 items
2 MECHANICS: CHANCE TIME & HIDDEN BLOCKS - It's not like Mario Party wasn't the most luck-oriented franchise on the market already, but these two events stretch the fabric of the games' random distribution to horrifying levels. Chance Time is dedicated to one space only, but when someone lands on it, the events that follow can be absolutely disastrous to any player. The person who landed on the space is forced, against his or her will, to hit two blocks that represent the other players and one block which determines what the players exchange. It wouldn't be so bad if it were just coins that you gave away, but both coins AND stars are vulnerable for exchange during Chance Time. So, basically, whenever somebody lands on this space, somebody's wallet is going to get a massive hole punched into it, and there isn't a single thing they can do about it but pray to God that their face doesn't show up on that block. And odds are pretty high, considering there's two blocks and only four characters. That's a 1/2 chance of getting involved somehow, and in a game like this, those odds are not pretty. The hidden block isn't quite as egregious as Chance Time, but can still be overbearingly frustrating. To put it in simple terms, the hidden block appears sometimes whenever you land on a non-green space, and it contains either a sizable amount of coins (usually 20) or a Star. The thing is, there's NO way to ensure that you will land on a hidden block space, because it happens completely out of nowhere. So yeah, that kid that's trailing behind on all the minigames and can't seem to get past the bridge on Pirate Land in Mario Party 2? He could very well end up with a Star on his next roll, and there's nothing you can do about it. At all. I know Mario Party is technically a board game where anything can happen, but these two features just rub salt in the wound. Let's hope you didn't actually put any money down on your next game!
ESCORT - Who even likes escort missions? Was this fad ever met with positive reception during playtesting? What kind of hallucinogens were those poeple on? I'm not exactly certain myself, but for those of you people who decide to take on this mission, good luck getting anywhere past level 3 without cheats. In this minigame, you must drive around a hooker and her clients while they have sex in the back of the car. Sounds fun, right? Well, apparently, since it's a great scoop for the news to report mobile prostitution, EVERY NEWS VAN ON THE STREET SUDDENLY WANTS TO RAM YOUR ASS OFF THE ROAD. The damage they do isn't the problem, though; you have 2 meters at the top of the screen, a "Pleasure" meter (indicates how... stimulated... your client is, and you win if the bar is completely filled) and a "Footage" meter, which increases whenever a news van drives around your car, causing your Pleasure meter to stop rising. If this meter fills up, the mission is unsuccessful, and there's NO way to drain it. If that wasn't enough, the clients might also ask you to perform certain stunts, like "Stay in the air for 1 second," which also keeps your Pleasure bar from filling up until you fulfill their demands. News vans randomly spawn out of thin air every 5 seconds, and if that wasn't enough, the first game had you do this IN A PAINFULLY-SLOW LIMO. So yeah, not fun.
THE GNASHER SHOTGUN - For the longest time, this was the only gun that anyone ever used in Gears of War's online multiplayer. In single-player, it was shit, as most enemies weren't in instant-gib radius and a lot of them could chainsaw you or easily down you with sustained gunfire. Multiplayer, however, is a whole different ballpark. The fast-paced, close-quarters nature of competitive Gears of War gameplay and the perplexing headshot range for a gun that was meant to be used as a last resort weapon in regards to the long-range automatic Lancer chainsaw gun boosted it up to broken tier almost instantly. With each successive installment, they tried to tone it down with buffs to other weapons and nerfs to its range, but even today, the Gnasher is regarded as one of the best guns to use against other players online, and it certainly shows. Gears of War 3 tried to balance it out by introducing the Sawed-Off Shotgun, an alternative that gibbed anything standing directly in front of you without using ADS. However, its range was absolutely pitiful, and to top it off, there was only one bullet in each clip, compared to the 8-round magazine of the Gnasher, and it reloaded a hell of a lot longer. I guess the Gnasher must've been named after the way many Gears players gnash their teeth when they get killed by one. That's the most rational reason I can come up with for it, anyway.
THE FRIENDSHIP SYSTEM - Go ahead, Roman. Call me up and ask me to play Darts one more fucking time. You won't like where those darts end up.
3 MECHANICS: THE BLUE SHELL, THE LIGHTNING BOLT, AND THE RUBBER BAND AI - I know, I can't believe it either. I'm listing THREE FRIGGIN' MECHANICS for one game series, but each of these completely speak for themselves. I'm sure you've already heard of the infamous Blue Shell, but I'll elaborate more on it anyways. When fired, it homes in on the lead player, can't be destroyed once it's deployed unlike other items, and EXPLODES ON HIM/HER, severely slowing them down. Do I need to say more than that? The game actively punishes you for being good, it's like Mario Party on friggin' wheels. Besides, how does this benefit the player in, say, 6th place at all? If anything, they'd want an item that would get THEM out of 6th place, not one that helplessly drags the leader back to 3rd. The Lightning Bolt isn't quite as frustrating, but it could be considered just as annoying. Upon activation, everyone in the entire damn race besides the user is shrunken, which not only slows them down but also allows them to be flattened by racers that regain their correct proportions, which slows you down even more. This rarely happens if you're in first place, which, by that time, you're already miles away from the computers, but it still sucks to get hit, ESPECIALLY in Mario Kart 7 and 8 where you lose 3 coins whenever you fall victim to the Lightning Bolt, and a lot of times it happens at the home stretch, where there are barely any coins to find (or worse, right before the finish line on your last lap). Speaking of the computers, they suck just as much as the aforementioned items. No matter where you're racing, what place you're in, or what game you're playing, the AI finds some way to tailgate you or cheat in some other shape or form. The first game just has them throw computer-exclusive items at you that they NEVER RUN OUT OF, which spins you out if you touch any of them. 64 just gives them mach speed, letting them catch up to you even if they get hit by a blue shell and thrown off the track 2 times in a row. And I swear, from every game on after 64, it's mandatory for you to get blown up by at least one Blue Shell or shocked by a Lightning Bolt once per race. In short, Mario Kart is ostensibly one-sided, and you're going to get the crap kicked out of you if you play it. A lot.
2 MECHANICS: NAVI AND KAEPORA GAEBORA - Yeah, yeah, moan all you want about how everyone complains about Navi and the giant owl, because that's not going to stop me from telling you how much they suck. Navi is an annoyance. Her audio quips 'HEY' and 'LISTEN' have been spoofed more times than one could count. But the one thing that makes me like Navi the least is the fact that she's Captain Obvious. Something in a cutscene could point out that there is some immediate huge danger happening at Death Mountain and Navi would chime in immediately afterwards and say "GEE, I WONDER WHAT ALL THAT RUCKUS IS AT DEATH MOUNTAIN?" Kaepora Gaebora is even more annoying. Every time you run into him, he has a Bible's worth of text information to dump on you, and at the end of each ramble, he asks if you want to hear it again. The game makes you pay attention to which option you choose, because the two options that choose whether or not he should repeat what he said are switched around EVERY TIME you run into him again. There's no point. There's literally no point in Nintendo doing that besides to be a massive troll. Would you like me to repeat all of that? Of course you don't. Go read the next entry or something.
FI (as a game mechanic) - Skipping ahead to the future, Fi is the spirit that possesses the titular sword, and swears her allegiance to you when you first find and remove the sword from its pedestal. Oddly enough, she acts as the polar opposite to Navi from Ocarina of Time. And she's just as bad. Why, you ask? She's a literal freakin' GPS, that's why! Anyone who purchased a Strategy Guide for Skyward Sword was legitimately ripped off, because Fi, and I'm not kidding when I say this, tells you EVERYTHING that you need to do in order to progress in the story line. If a door opens in the game world, she'll notice it and tell you that it's your next waypoint. If there's a plot coupon that needs collecting, she'll remember everything about said item's physical properties and let you search for it with the game's Dowsing feature. Trapped helplessly against a band of thugs? Fi will tell you how to rip right through their defenses with your sword. Seriously, including Fi into the game is like having a generic Star Trek extra sit beside you while you play and tell you where to go and what to do. It removes any kind of difficulty that the game's puzzles and enemies try to enforce on you, making more than half of the clues in-game seem pointless and your opponents a complete joke. I don't like being annoyed and frustrated like above, but how about letting me figure out how to progress for myself for once, Nintendo?
SAILING - The Legend of Zelda games are on quite a spree on this list, huh? In any case, LoZ Wind Waker was my first ever Zelda game (yeah, yeah, I'm not a real Zelda fan, bite me), and, to be honest, I was rather drawn in by the game's interesting art-style and adventurous gameplay. Then, about maybe a couple of hours into the game, I was introduced to the King of Red Lions, a talking ship that beckoned me to acquire a sail so I could travel the seas toward Dragon Roost Isle. And, once I did, it was just, so, boring. All you do is conduct the wind to travel in the direction you want to sail, press X/Y/Z, and wait for about 10-15 minutes until you reach the next island. Forget the owl, forget Navi, THIS is completely unnecessary. There's nothing to do at sea besides maybe look at how cool the camera feels, or whatever. Sure, occasionally, you'll find some enemies or some treasure to dig up, but that makes the game even slower, forcing you to bring out your equipment, slow to a complete stop, and kill everything onscreen/slowly move around and attempt to dig for treasure. Worse still, some of this is required to beat the game, like the stupid Triforce Shards quest, which requires you to obtain sea charts with the Triforce Shard's location, bring them to Tingle so he can charge you an absurd amount of rupees to decipher it, then sail ALL THE WAY over there to obtain the shard. There's at least eight of these things, by the way. There are lots of entries in the Legend of Zelda series that require you to travel from place to place, wasting valuable time, but sailing easily takes the cake as the most boring method of transportation.
NO MORE MOVES - Every game of Bejeweled eventually ends. That's understandable. What isn't understandable is why it's so random. Classic mode has you keep matching jewels until the board gives you no more matches, at which point the game is over. Here's my question: where's the strategy in this? What fun is it to play a game where there is literally no way to counter when it ends? I guess you could argue that matching and saving up certain Power Gems can help you avoid these situations, but even still, you'd have to get lucky enough to match those together in the first place, and they don't last forever, either. The Timed variant should have been the definitive Classic mode of Bejeweled. A mode where you're always timed, but you can always make a match, and making certain matches adds time to the timer. This is a mode in the game, but it isn't considered the 'Classic' mode, and it should be because it's the only one where skill is the most important factor as to when you lose.
POTION SICKNESS - Early on in Terraria's life, bosses weren't as hard to defeat because you could simply cheese your way through them and potion-spam, which healed you for a certain amount of HP. To counter this cheesing, the developers added a system where you could only use a potion every minute. This made the game phenomenally harder, and the regenerating health wasn't effective enough to counter it. I can understand this practice for higher-level healing items that can almost heal you to full health, but no matter what healing item you use, it's always the same 1-minute cooldown before you can use another. Even if you accidentally consume a Mushroom instead of the Greater Healing Potion in your inventory. If you ask me, the cooldown should have at least varied between the different tiers of healing items, but nope, I guess healing in general is akin to how you can contract poison ivy. No matter how small or big it is, it always ends up giving you the same amount of grief.