Games are usually lighthearted and fun, designed to make you spend as much time as possible on them. Some games do it by throwing endless amounts of content at you, others are designed to be difficult on purpose so you don’t steamroll through everything, which is the reason why games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne are so popular, sometimes there are games that have a glitch that screws up your entire progress or makes it impossible to continue. So I’ve decided to make a list of the five bottlenecks you’ll encounter throughout your gaming “career”.
5. Misleading In-game Map
Deus Ex: Human Revolution for having one of the worst maps when it comes to objective tracking. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve gotten stuck because my objective was upstairs instead of downstairs or vice versa.
World of Warcraft is also a culprit in this matter. When completing a quest the map has no indication on where you have to go to deliver it. It has random pointers and you can read the quest log to find your goal, but for a game that’s 12 years old this should have existed since the beginning.
4. Purposefully Difficult Games
Dark Souls I’m looking at you. Now I understand that we’ve kinda become spoiled nowadays when it comes to game difficulty, but I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that Dark Souls’ claim to fame is how hard it is.
And it’s not even the hardest game. Ninja Gaiden is a lot more harder than Dark Souls for no apparent reason but to screw with gamers. I like both of these games, but getting killed over and over again is not my thing…
3. The Game is Long, but it’s Not
Assassin’s Creed games are infamous for having a good amount of story, but throwing endless amounts of collectibles and things to upgrade in your way, which is honestly dumb. I enjoyed collecting keys, scrolls and even the shanties, but with every new iteration there are more and more collectibles and even mini-challenges. Collectibles are great, but in moderation. When the game map is covered in tiny icons, then we have a problem.
2. One Bug to Bug them All
Bugs, glitches and every type of programming mistake ever are one of the worst things one encounter while gaming. Sometimes the bugs are small and almost non-existent, some are IN YOUR FACE like the facial glitches in Assassin’s Creed Unity. But the worst of all are the game-breaking ones. Subtle things that make the game crash, not boot up, or even have a point where it constantly crashes and you can’t progress forward.
Arkham Knight caused quite a controversy over this, on one hand it was a great open world game and ran great on consoles, however the PC port was nigh unplayable and the devs don’t know what to do with the game even a year later.
1. Premium Content in Premium Content
I bought your game once, why do you still want me to give money for it? Oh, but you don’t have to – these items are for the people that want to speed their progress. LIES! Supply drops, helix credits, silver, constant equipment DLC. These are all crappy ideas that were once akin to freemium games, but have managed to crawl themselves inside of AAA titles as well. I hate the fact that Call of Duty’s best guns come from Supply Drops or that I have the option to buy customization options and whatnot for my Assassins, or the fact that Overwatch has loot boxes which you can earn, but you’re heavily encouraged to buy them. I know that developing games is costly, but I’m starting to feel like I’m being nickled and dimed in every game.
And I hate the argument “It’s just for cosmetic purposes, it has no impact on your game”. First of all, buyable skins were the step before CoD got supply drops and secondly, IT’S STILL PART OF THE GAME! No matter how puny and unnecessary it may seem, there is an incentive to buy it, nonetheless. And I want it for goodness’ sake.
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