Game mechanics you hate for any reason

That tutorial is infuriating. Worse, some 15 or 20 minutes in I wanted to quit the game and didn't know how savegames work in this game. I hoped it would have autosaved at some checkpoints like most games do, only to find I had to do it all over again. I quit and uninstalled.

(I installed it again a few months later and played a few levels, but then quit for good because aside from the style I was really, really not enjoying this game. For some reason, I must have hoped that somehow it wouldn't be a Far Cry game)

I liked Far Cry 3 so this was, gameplay wise, more of the same. The setting and style is kinda cool if you're into it, but if you're not I can see how the humour would start to grate.

If you’re of an age where you grew up with cartoons like Mask, Centurions and perversely films like Terminator, thn Blood Dragon will hit differently as the kids say.

2 hour end game credits. Make them skippable or scroll faster

Halo when the Marines don't jump on the gun, or when the one who already has a rocket launcher does and leaves a sniper in the front seat to hit nothing.

Also in driving AI, and higher difficulties of Forza Horizon are terrible for it, just being rammed off the road at the first corner.

On Forza Horizon games, not AI, so should know better, but you know the public event where you race an AI team and it's all about 2 points each for finishing ahead of an AI or 4 points for first place?

It just becomes Mad Max with half the team actively trying to push you off the road so they can get that first place. But then they can't because they've shaved thirty seconds off their start time by playing dodgems. The game should penalise people for it.

God of War does boss fights right.

This is a film thing but I really hate when cinemas play a scenes from the film you’ve paid to see before the film actually starts. M&ms at the red carpet level of fuckery. Video games don’t do it often but some can’t resist showing the best pets of the game before you’ve hit start.

As already mentioned by far the worst design is cut scenes before hard boss fights!! Just let me run in the fucking room and fight. Looking at you from software

This is a problem with older games, but when you couldn't pause cutscenes, and start would skip them.

This was an utter joke in the MGS games.

I'm not an FPS guy but I tried out one of the recent Battlefield games when it became free on Plus. It was a WW2 one and it started like a playable trailer, seamlessly jumping from one battle to another, some of which you were a fucking fighter pilot. I bet it looked and played really well for genre veterans but it was a hot mess for me, and it was taking itself so seriously to boot. I didn't make it past the intro

Rubber banding in racing games. Ridge Racer was one of the worst offenders, the gradual realisation that your performance over the first 90% of the race was totally irrelevant. You can cover those first four laps in 5mins or 7mins, the only bit that actually matters is being immaculate through the last lap once the designated 'rival' car miraculously appears just in front or just behind to ruin your day.

Now admittedly the FIA did introduce a form of real-life rubber banding at the final round of the F1 World Championship last year, but that was bullshit as well!

Motorstorm is easily the worst AAA racing game in history for rubber banding. The races were long, like ten minutes each, and you could race an absolute blinder but one mistake at the end would have you coming in last.

I remember on the later missions you could literally post times that were two whole minutes apart and you'd end in a similar position. The entire race outcome was always determined by the last few corners.

It was done because the available vehicle types had wildly different performance profiles and the game was balanced entirely by rubber banding the AI.

Infuriating. I really liked those games otherwise.

Knee high walls. Unkillable NPCs. Cutscene impotence. All of them stop me from doing something very obvious.

Mario Kart 64 might have a say. Opponents got a speed boost not only if they were behind you but also if they were ahead of you--the further ahead, the faster, to a point where it was impossible to catch up even with constant stars and speed shrooms. I hope this was a bug, I can't imagine that was intended.