What are some things that just get under your skin about games?
For me, it’s games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don’t all work. If I can’t rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.
And on console, where I can’t refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can’t play.
unpausable cutscenes. Nothing bugs me more than getting interrupted in the middle of a cutscene and not being able to press escape to pause the cutscene. You’re forced to try to split your attention between what interrupted you and the cutscene or restart and see the cutscene from the beginning again.
Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it’s going to.
I never pause cuscenes, not because I don’t want to ever but because I’m always afraid I’ll skip it instead.
Another one is QTE in the middle of a cutscene, ugh.
For me, it’s cutscenes in general. I know there are people who do care in general, but for me a game where I care about the plot is very rare. And the examples I can think of (Outer Wilds, or Ico, for two examples) either have no cutscenes or very few brief ones, and tell the story in a different, more immersive way.
For me, a general rule is - if the game forces moments on me when I can put the controller down and wander into a different room, then that’s not what I’m interested in. I want to actually play the game.
All this. Everyone focuses on not being able to skip a cutscene but not being able to pause it is even worse for me, especially when trying to pause actually does skip the cutscene.
Being able to replay a cutscene would also be nice.
omg yes, I loved when games gave a replay stories or replay core concepts section of the menu, it’s not that hard to add but it lets you recap as well!
Feel like that used to be more common for games to have a “Movie/Cinematics” option in the “Extras” menus, treating cutscenes like unlockables, where you could go back and rewatch everything.
Really disappointing that more games don’t do this. It’s not like it’s a hard thing to add to a game code wise. It’s just a menu to the mp4 files with a “yes/no” check against the save file for if the scene has been unlocked or not.
It’s a sign of the times. When I was a kid the cutscenes were the reward for winning the game, or a portion of the game for those bigger games that could afford more than two cutscenes.
But for my kids cutscenes are the boring things that keep you from playing.
I mean I remember it being a thing all the way up to the OG Xbox before it started dying off.