Achievements/Trophies. I don't hate them but I don't care for them either. It always feels so cosmetic if they're part of a platform and not of a game.

In racing games, it seems like most people like to play with camera trailing behind the car, but I prefer to play with the camera from the driver's perspective. So I'm immediately put off a racing game when I find out that there is no cockpit view. If I still decide to try the game, then I'll opt for the hood view which at least gives a great sense of speed.

I haven't played a racing game in a pretty long time. The last one I played which had a great cockpit view was [url=http://Test Drive Unlimited]Test Drive Unlimited[/url].

Second that. It feels like playing with overactive mouse smoothing, the way the camera movement trails behind the movement of the car.

It doesn't necessarily keep me from playing the game. NFS : Underground 1&2 ; Most Wanted are some examples of really fun racing games without a cockpit view. Thankfully it seems like a lot of more recent racing games do have a cockpit view.

Optional difficulty levels.

There, i said it. I prefer games that offer only one difficulty level, and I am pretty sure this is an unpopular opinion.

Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you why. It all started when I was a little boy... fast forward to this day, to me having only one difficulty level makes sure that the game designers try to optimize the gameplay to that, making sure that all, or at least most, can still finish the game regardless.

Even if the game may feel challenging, still deep inside me I know it should be possible to finish because that's how they designed the game. I think many Bullfrog games had only one difficulty level, like Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper. They felt hard at times, but it gave me motivation to continue because I knew the game couldn't be impossible, as otherwise no one could finish it.

If the game has several difficulty levels and I try to play it on the hardest, then if I get stuck at some point, I can't really know for sure whether I should be able to proceed, or if the game designers and testers simply forgot to test the game on that hardest difficulty level, not realizing that they accidentally made it impossible.

Also, quite often the different difficulty levels are implemented in a lazy way. It is not necessarily that e.g. enemy AI is better and they are more cunning, but simply that you are made weaker and they are made stronger, or the enemies are more numerous or even respawning endlessly (Doom!), and that's that. It just means it will take you longer to kill enemies etc.

Also, when I am asking for hints for playing some hard mission, I don't want to hear suggestions of running the game in an easier difficulty level. To me, that sounds a bit like telling me to use cheats in order to get by the hard parts of the game. And we can't have that.

I know there are risks to my wish (like that some games really do become impossible for some people who are less able, or alternatively too easy(?) for others), but I just feel having one difficulty level makes the designers put more thought to the gameplay mechanism, how you can work around difficult parts (some more grinding to make yourself stronger, or ways to even avoid some encounters?) etc.

I recall this being mainly the case with some (older) console racing games, e.g. from the PSOne and PS2 eras maybe. If there was a "cockpit view", quite often it wasn't really that, but a view either from the hood of the car, or even between the tires, very close to the ground. There was no dashboard visible either etc.

I recall having an argument about this with one console gamer back in the day. In his view a "cockpit view" in a racing game is unrealistic because you lack the peripheral vision like you do when driving for real (ie. seeing also to your sides even if you are looking at the road ahead; racing games especially with 4:3 aspect ratio have a far narrower viewing angle).

In his opinion, changing to a "flying camera view" behind your car gives you that peripheral vision, making it more realistic, e.g. you get a glimpse of other cars who race beside you etc. I kinda saw his point, but I still felt a cockpit view is more authentic, even with a narrower peripheral vision. I think the game that we were discussing then was Gran Turismo (on PS1), and maybe also Grand Prix Legends (on PC).

Regarding 4, how about limited turns on a TBS? Ie. you must win the mission in nn moves, or else...?

I hate time limits in RTS games (like the 90 minute limit in Rise of Nations battles, that just doesn't make any sense and kills all the fun in that game for me), but it occurred to me earlier while playing M.A.X. that the turn limits in its missions aren't really any better. I am still not allowed to approach a mission in my own way, even by advancing slowly, but I am supposed to rush out before I run out of turns. If I am unable to meet the mission objectives in those limited turns, I lose. Why me, why doesn't the enemy ever lose for running out of turns (or time, in the case of Rise of Nations)?

I'd instead say, as you also mentioned, lazily implemented difficulty levels but that might not qualify since it certainly isn't something most people seem to like. Some games implement higher difficulty levels in a fun way, most notably for me, in strategy games. The worst cases of it being implemented lazily must be in first person shooters. For example in Unreal and Quake IV (and probably many others) a higher difficulty simply turns the enemies into bullet sponges, and it quickly becomes tiresome when you repeatably have to fight an enemy that now takes 4 shotgun rounds to the face instead of 1/2 :P


For me it's not about realism I think, but more about immersion and a sense of speed, which is why I always opt for the 'between-the-front-tires' view if the cockpit view isn't available.

Achivements - I just don't see the point in it. Take The Walking Dead from Telltale, you play the game and after every chapter you get an achivement for playing that chapter. The point is?
Take Payday 2: You buy a DLC that gives you new weapons and modifications, you payed for it but in order to access it you have to do wacky achivements. Why?
And kids cry for them on every game over on Steam. It's just little pictures. Do people really feel awesome when they get an achivement for starting the game or finishing the first level? Can people really not enjoy a game anymore unless a little picture pops up every 10 seconds?

Cutscenes - I played the last "Thief" game and it's filled with cutscenes for no aparent reason, especially since the story is so badly written, cliche and boring that the devs should've rather tried hiding it in a dark corner.
I hate it when games are more cutscenes than gameplay or the gameplay gets broken up for cutscene after cutscene. To go back to Thief there's a sequence that goes like this: Cutscene - Loading Screen - Cutscene - Walk 5 meters to a door - Loading Screen - Cutscene - Loading Screen - Cutscene. How is that fun? I can understands having cutscenes when the story is actually awesome or something like the beginning of Saints Row 4 which is just full of awesomness but most of the time it's just annoying. I wanna play, not watch a badly written movie.

Quick Time Events - I can't belive they still use that. Be it "press this button quickly and destroy your keyboard/Gamepad" or "Press a sequence of buttons". The worst offender by far is Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy where the Cutscenes have QTE's, so you can't even concentrate on the cutscene because you have to press buttons and if you fail, the cutscene ends, robbing your of some story (then again, that game was crap anyway)

Repeating dialogue - Be it NPCs on the street that repeat the same line over and over or, even worse, the game character giving you a "hint" and if you take your time, he repeats it and repeats it some more and more and more. One time is enough, give me time to explore the section of the level, let me look around.

Ugh, don't remind me. I've still haven't managed to get past the first campaign level because of that damn limit.

That said, I bloody hate when a game locks content behind achievements. Shove your progression systems up your arse, please.

War realtime simulations with micromanagment: E.g. Blitzkrieg, in the first real mission of Allied campaign, you have four tasks: Capture a small village, capture a bigger village, capture a (counter-attack?) point, capture the warehouse (= main base). It seems like you have approach them one by one. So I moved my recon to the first village, spotted an anti-tank unit, paused, set the artillery to fire on it (it doesn't really move despite being self-propelled), retreated and the repeated this procedure again and again. The snipper gets spotted easily when approaching the village.

In Soldiers - Heroes of World War II, you can set for each soldier if he should return fire, hold it or fire at will. Even with 'fire at will', they start firing late at an enemy who runs down the slope of the hill. The walkthroughs also recommend as strategy to damage enemy tanks and capture them...

I've never played M.A.X, but yeah, that'd annoy me as well. I've played games like Stars! where meeting certain goals within X turns can be set up to count as a victory condition, but the game never declared itself over if I failed to do so.

Dunno if it counts as a "feature", but...

Japanese style graphics: Lots of people love them, but I hate them with a passion. To me, it is a sign of a dev having no artistic vision of his own, and having to steal someone else's. The mere fact that you can look at one of these games and immediately conclude that it was either made in Japan, or deliberately made to look as if it was made in Japan, just grinds my gears. Do something original, FFS...

are you implying most people don't like shoddy PC ports?