On PC, often those are short videos. If you can find those files, you can remove the file and they won't play. Pcgamerwiki is helpful

Money changed hands, so they have to show them. It's advertising for the other companies that they worked with, or building up brand recognition for the publisher, etc. In the best case scenario, they mask a load screen, but I've found plenty where they don't even start loading until after the unskippable logos.

I’d really like to see a set of publishers/creators that take a hard line stance on this, and reject contracts with, eg, Speedtree, if they insist on a dedicated startup video.

Kudos to Arc Raiders. When I boot it up, aside from an EAC launcher logo, it goes straight to Speranza.

God, yes… it's literally an interactive medium… like, I AM the story, motherfuckers 😂

Been playing Monster hunter World recently and holy crap is that game obnoxious with the cutscenes, even mid-fight if a monster you've never seen before happens to wander past.

Unpausable is unforgivable in the modern age but I generally don't mind unskippable if and only if it's the first time the scene plays on a profile.

Games that offer stealth as an option over combat, but have mandatory combat bosses.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a great game, but this was a serious issue. The game has a (notoriously buggy) achievement for finishing the game without killing anyone, but every boss requires a loadout of lethal weapons to take down, leaving a minimum of slots for non-lethal alternatives. Very annoying.

I hate RNG so much 😂 I don't get it. Life has too much RNG, I play video games because it's a predominantly skill-based controlled environment.

It's like picking up a piano and there's a 35% chance F# is just F every time you play the damn note 😂

I guess it makes sense if you're role playing and want your experience to mimic real life, which is why they're mostly used in RPGs, but I also feel so immersed playing skill-based games without RNG, so I can't assess its actual value.

Point no. 2 is why I couldn’t get through Witcher 1. There’s only so many times I can fight 3-5 sewer monsters to get enough XP to not die in chapter..4? 5?

You've described like 90% of modern gaming.

Sounds like Baldur's Gate 3.

Skipping straight to action instead of main menu and options is annoying.

When I started playing [game name here, atm can't remember it, it's from warframe people] it immediately started a plot cutscene which wasn't available later on. I sure wanted to see that plot presented in a 720p medium settings on my large 1440p display.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things the plot in the game is irrelevant as it can be, but damn it, let me enjoy it full screen.

They have likely fixed, but holy hell, why was it like that in the first place. Abysmal new player experience.

Yeah, I don't like being shoved in an intro cinematic without being able to turn on subtitles.

Unless I missed it, Where Winds Meet forces you to do an entire damn boss-fight before you can invert the vertical camera! Unbelievable. I realize I'm the freak for learning "flight control" aiming where down is up, but I've been doing it for decades; can't change it now! It's unhinged to not let people access or change options until after you've beaten a boss...

I can't remember specific examples (probably because I didn't stick with any of them very long), but I've played several games that don't even let you touch the options until after you've finished some tutorial section... which is especially annoying for players who play with inverted y axis.

I had to force the PS5 glyphs by creating a Game.ini file and inserting the appropriate lines to get the ps instead of Xbox button glyphs for my ds4 in Clair obscur the other day. It was definitely annoying.

Thanks to searching for a solution to that I found a mod to remove the abysmal sharpening, uncap cutscene frame rate, and remove pillar boxes on my 21:9 display though, so it all worked out.

Yeah, but accidentally clicking the quit button when you meant to click options or whatever and the game just instantly dropping you at the desktop is equally as annoying. Two click exit is a good compromise. Four is way too many though.

Alt+F4 is your friend!

Or on Steam Deck, quit the game using the steam menu.

I do appreciate the games that give you quit and quit to desktop in the same menu.

Absolutely, especially with handheld PC gaming becoming more popular. Drives me nuts having to fiddle with settings just to get it functional only to realize I missed something that was critical for a game play mechanic

RPGs are absolutely terrible about giving you the ability to inflict status effects on enemies, but not giving random encounter enemies enough HP to justify inflicting statuses, and then also making the bosses immune to them.

Deus Ex Human Revolution's initial release was the worst about this. A bunch of people who took the skills and inventory for non-lethal/stralth/hacking gameplay found themselves at boss fights that were straight-up gunfights. If you were kitted out and skilled properly to face-tank while using explosives and big guns, you were just screwed and couldn't progress.

In subsequent releases, they added additional options in the arenas that allowed you to kill them using stealth and hacking skills.

Cyberpunk 2077 one of the quests in the expansion drops you into basically Alien: Isolation when up until that point you can beat the shit out of or hack the brains out of any other NPC you've come across. You go from being a cybered out demigod to basically a rat in a maze being chased by a giant metal invincible doberman.

This is why I’d almost rather linear games that teach one core mechanic rather than “Build your character the way you want them”.

Holy shit, action games and giant bosses you can't juggle… I love Bayonetta, but goddamn… Jeanne aside, some of the worst bosses in the genre.

Assault Spy was awesome for letting you juggle literally every boss in the game.

"Quick! A giant meteor is heading for our planet! Collision is expected in less than a week!"

...but if I sleep 7 times while doing all this level grinding and doing sidequests, nothing goes wrong...

I would add to this in game "cutscenes" where the game is doing exposition and the only thing you're doing is pressing move forward because you need to follow the character who is doing the exposition dump. It's fine and immersive the first time around but on subsequent playthroughs it gets annoying. It's essentially a cutscene that you can't even skip because technically you're playing the game, but really you're just holding down a button

Depends on the game. I play Jump Space that occasionally does this (not all buttons, but some). It is to ensure that you deal with enough enemies so they won't interrupt you while holding/charging the button. If you're interrupted, you need to start over. It ensures you don't simply sprint past everything while hitting the buttons.

A lot of those are just hidden loading screens. Same with those sections of games where you squeeze through a crevice.

Nintendo is infamous for this. Animal Crossing is a great game on the Switch, but it’s meant for one person. You can join an island, but unless the island creator has everything unlocked, you can’t progress the game. And even if they have, there are certain recipes you can’t get without cheating (treasure islands) for some reason.

Pokémon is the same way. They literally want you to buy a second Switch.

Hey have you tried Steam Family or whatever it's called? You can make a new user and they have access to all of your game library. Only one account would be able to play at a time but it would solve your save file dilemma - games files are in the common folder but save files are in the user folder

[EDIT] Steam Families

When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. [...]

Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.

Three first ones can also be game engine limitations. Im not saying its good desing and its always because the limitations, but there might be more happening under the hood that does not show to the end user. Things like quest stage flags or loading things behind the cut scenes.

Dialogue history i agree completelly. I love the way pillars of the eternity did this. I also loved how text refering to things like cities, characters and gods were highlighted and you could see short summary hovering your mouse over the higlighted text and clicking it opened the codex where you could read about the topic. This helped me immerse to game because my character would what the capital of the country is or what god uggapugga is. Also it helped when there was long times between game sessions.

About map markers. I like when i can add markers or text on the game map, but inherently i think game should do these things for you, either adding a symbol in the map, or adding something in to games quest log or codex. But on the other hand i lived in a era where if i wanted a map for game i needed to draw it by myself on the grid paper. The habit has stayed with me and in games like Dark souls, Remnant and blue prince i keep small notebook with me, where i write my notes and stupid theories. To me its really fun to read those scribles later and try to figure out what i have missed or how dumb i was.

Hollow knight, Project Zomboid, minecraft and Legend of Grimrock have all very different tools for you marking your map and in all of them the map system is part of the game desing and gameplay loop. While these games benefit from the map system to most of the games its just unnecessary. The ability to mark "digging spot #31" just is not necessary.

I love how in pillars of eternity and satisfactory you have in game notepads. And now days steam notepad is also great. You can even add screemshots to it, but i like my oldschool hand writing stuff more.

I wish more games did better sign posting too. I'm not a fan of following the dotted line, but I see too many games where there's no other way to do it. The NPC tells you to go somewhere, and doesn't actually give you directions.

Your example sounds like Ikaruga if it were deliberately designed to be annoying.

...We probably shouldn't give any mobile game developers any ideas.

This is why mages are hard mode in RPGs. You’re limited by mana in how many fireballs you can cast. The sword does more damage and costs nothing to swing even though fatigue is a real thing.

Personally I don't like having anything on stick press (at least for game controls, I can tolerate occasional use to open a menu or something). I think it feels terrible and I have no idea why this progressively became a thing on controllers since mid-00s.

Worst use of that I've ever found was Fable (at least the 360 version). The game wants you to push the left stick while also using it to move to sneak.

Yeah, playing Sniper Elite 5 atm, clearly the game was designed to follow your own path, however there are collectibles/things to find and/or information key to finishing optional objectives in basically every building. Then sometimes after finishing every main objective on a map, I'm resorting to running around like a madman slaughtering small pockets of remaining nazis because I've run out of patience after a 1-2hr mission - therefore ruining my otherwise perfect stealth run -_- .