My comments about bad ports in terms of game design was that it was often used as an excuse for bad control schemes- not catering to the existence of a mouse on the PC, and not thinking through keyboard configurations.

As far as the platformers up/jump issue, if a game has other actions (attack, for example), then it makes sense to have jump as up. But if there are no other actions (or infrequently used actions), it feels weird to have jump as up, because you'd only be using one hand for most of the time. Of course, it seems they never really figured out what to do with the up key (look up shifts the viewport up for a few seconds- who ever made use of that? Or to enter doorways, I suppose). Older keyboard-only games used up to aim up, which I suppose made more sense in a two-handed configuration, but honestly, after Abuse, aim-centric games that didn't use the mouse felt weird on the PC :D.
Best solution, of course, is to allow for remappable keys. That way, everyone is happy!

My preferred configuration kind of got ruined with the introduction of the windows key.
I had it as arrow keys for movement, Ctrl or attack, and Alt for jump.

This. I really can only tolerate up - jump in fighting games. Otherwise, the control just feels way too imprecise to me. Not to mention, if you're playing with a gamepad or controller in general, and it's not terribly accurate, you'll end up with unintended jumps, or other major irritations that you need precise, smooth control for. (Especially platformers/vanias, other 2D staple genres, etc.)

And the other face of the coin : Having functions entirely tied to the mouse wheel, with no keyboard equivalent. You have a nice turn-based game that you want to play on your laptop in the train/in bed/sprawled on the sofa? Well, sucks to be you, because you won't be able to zoom in/out or rotate the map...

Personally, I don't like "up for jump". Spacebar feels more natural in many case. Jump is often a sudden, brutal action, used for dodging enemies or vaulting over a chasm, and I prefer to have it tied to a big key accessed by a simple twitch of either thumbs, rather than squirming a finger of my "running" hand. the "thumb on spacebar" has more "oompf" to it.

The other problem of "up for jump" is when up is used for "up" (or "enter door") : If I need to jump over an enemy, I need it NOW. I don't want my character to slowly crawl upside and get munched because he was just next to a ladder/a door.

I thought of another one, one that plagues many JRPGs (even famous ones like Final Fantasy 6 occasionally suffer from this):
Having the player fight the same enemies over and over again, especially when it's the exact same formation.

Final Fantasy 6 suffers from this pretty badly in one specific spot: In the Cave to the Sealed Gate, there is one floor that is much larger than the others. On that floor, there are exactly 2 types of enemies in random encounters, and both are undead. On the entire floor, those are the only enemies you will encounter (excluding a couple (non-repeatable IIRC) events that throw ninjas at you), and it can quickly become quite annoying.

Final Fantasy 5 isn't immune to this either; I remember the forest dungeon being somewhat annoying, but not as bad as that one floor in FF6. (In FF5 and FF6, there are only 4 possible encounter formations per area, which isn't enough; they usually compensate by using a lot of small floors, so you quickly reach a place where there is a new list of formations, but every now and then a floor goes on too long.)

Checkpoint only save system, especially if there is ONE save slot. Do I have to explain this one?

Level scaling enemies and loot. Level scaling loot puts a damper on exploring, and never facing any *too* tough or *too* easy makes it feel like you're never really improving, in my opinion. Skyrim had decent level scaling for enemies, thanks to there always been a mix of both weak and really strong enemies, but it had really bad loot level scaling. I never found anything particularly "next level" type of power in the game, and even "legendary" items were scaled to your item, so a supposedly legendary sword could end up having the exact same stats as a weak starting dungeon tier iron sword. That made me stop caring about potential loot, which is a bad thing in a RPG.

"You've reached the halfway point of the game, let me go ahead and take away ALL of your items except for the (now) incredibly weak weapon that you started the game with". Self explanatory. Luckily that trend seemed to live AND die in the early 2000s.

"Press *Start Game*, Oh it's you, the chosen one who is going to save my kingdom! Go forth, chosen one! By the way all we can afford to give you is a cheap rusted iron sword, burlap sack clothes, two gold coins and a half empty bottle of water, and no I can't spare any of my men to go with you...Now go forth my champion and defeat the looming evil!"

Rune has unskippable cut scenes. :P

The more I play it the more of this thread I see in it.

Has anyone talked about instant death in QTEs? It really bothers me when there is a prompt I gotta click in order to progresss instead of getting an actual level or transition with actual gameplay that doesn't involve playing like hunky dory or kimi without being engaged by the actual scene, I liked Asura's Wrath for the fact that the QTEs are merely optional or for visual flare, too bad the game in question is because of it (and many other reasons) a mess in gameplay and with an identity of a guy who visited Tumblr and is buying into the idea of more than 2 sexes.

Can I at least get optional pathways to choose if I fuck one up or having a debuff for failing the QTE or the contrary if I don't miss? What is with 2006 and the rise of this facade and having no point to develop multiple paths or effects of a QTE? (besides Deadly Premonition, which forces you into it in order to immerse you into the ideas the world is presenting besides the lunacy of the events following that scene, and the ones in bosses....they aren't great per say)

How much time has been wasted on making this ideas work? Has anyone actually designed a game where that type of development in that feature is available? We are already stuck on an age of sequelitis with little innovation in fear of sales figures for the cost that usually is drived into the marketing department, but WHEN? I wanna have fun in different ways and essentially experience a game through all it's feature and that is rendered useless when I gotta click X to run repeatedly at the fear that I have to do the whole sequence again! I don't want to feel like that!

Levels that are too dark.

Splinter Cell and Amnesia.

I don't want to squint and put pressure on my eyes just to see where I am going.

Amusingly enough, game design cardinal sins may be the recipe for good horror games :

http://www.avclub.com/article/when-it-comes-horror-video-games-bad-usually-good-244389

I wonder how much of this applies to Deadly Premonition.

Games that think some keys are somehow very special and thus won't allow me to bind an action to it. What is it to them if I want to bind things to backspace, delete, tab, esc, semicolon and so on?

Well, from a technical standpoint, those keys are indeed special :) It could be a hassle to handle all such keys, especially with different keyboard layouts. Nothing you cannot work around, but I bet most programmers simply cut corners.

Anyway...

I am a bit surprised that some folks consider things like "having to replay boss phases 1 & 2 all over again when you fail phase 3" bad design. I mean, in the olden times, games used to be fun regardless of what part of it you played. Say, I could play stage 1 of Shinobi ten times in a row, and still have lots of fun.

It's not the GOGers who are at fault here, though. These days every section of a game is designed to be played and enjoyed exactly ONCE. It is not about playing anymore, but instead making progress. This is bad design in itself imho. (as always, exceptions allowed, e.g., for strictly story-driven games!)

I have been playing a game called Pharaoh Rebirth+. It is a decent game, but has one irritating flaw: Whenever you press UP twice, it activates a transparent map that obscures the gameplay. There is no option to set it to a specific button, despite plenty enough being on my controller to accommodate a dedicated map button.

The last thing that I want to see during a boss battle or during acrobatics is a map, so it has been annoying me for most of the game. A blemish on a otherwise good experience.

Heck, another thing that bugs me about it: On the main menu, there are three options: Continue, Delete Save File, and Quit. One of these don't belong there - it really ought to be located within the external configuration application that the game uses.

Not at all. They send a key code just like anything else. You don't need any extra code to recognize input from such keys, it works all the same.