The Most Frustrating Things in Video Game History

As someone that plays a lot of games, and as someone that is terrible at most of them, I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot to be frustrated about in games. Whether it’s something in games of the past or modern frustrations, games are always going to find new and exciting ways to make people angry and annoyed. So right now, I am going to go over a few of the worst.

8 Million Random Battles in an RPG

I pretty much want to die whenever I’m playing any RPG with random battles, and you can’t take two steps without entering battle. Exit a battle, and enter one right away. Then walk another three steps, BATTLE. And oh man, nothing’s worse than when you are JUUUUST about to exit one room and go into another and you have one last battle before that. And then there’s when you see a save point up ahead, and get like three battles in a row before you hit it, and then die. Ugh. Luckily random battles are dying a slow and awesome death, but the games that still have it still have that problem.

Escort Missions

Snake, protect me even though before this point in the game I have proven myself to be totally capable of taking care of myself in battle!

Nothing is worse than having to babysit another character in a game. You’ve got yourself to worry about, and then some other character comes along who is weak and powerless, and you have to take care of them too? AND they’re controlled by AI, a technology that has yet to prove itself after being in games from the beginning? NO THANK YOU. The above image is from Metal Gear Solid 3, where you’ve got to protect Eva, a woman who has proven herself to be quite powerful in battle. She may be injured a bit when you have to take care of her, but still, it’s the worst. You have to give up all your food and items to heal her, she gets weak really quickly, and she is painfully slow. All escort missions are the worst, but that one always sticks out because it ruins an otherwise amazing game.

The one exception to the rule here is Ico, where the entire game is an escort mission. But the game is such a beautiful work of art that it’s exempt from being annoying.

Inventory Management

This would be a lot easier if I had room in my inventory for a shotgun, but NO, I have 7 different types of ammo and an egg taking up all that room.

I am all about games shooting for realism, and trying to make you feel like you’re in the game, but come on. I want infinite inventory all the time because nothing is worse than having to shift around objects and items to accommodate stuff. The Resident Evil games are the worst with this, ESPECIALLY the first one. Having to get rid of stuff and drop stuff and move stuff around and sacrifice stuff is beyond frustrating, because you just want to have everything. I know there’s challenge and strategy there, but it also presents itself with a ton of unfair situations that make the game entirely impossible to enjoy. Resident Evil 5 fixed this a bit, with tons of space to store stuff that you can’t access until the next checkpoint, but you’re still stuck with only nine items when you play. And if you get a fancy new gun but have no place to store the ammo, well, have fun with your paperweight.

I could go on for about 20 more years of frustrating things, but I am already in a horrible mood from writing this article. Thanks a lot, games industry. Maybe I’ll bust out another installment when I have nothing better to write about.

Add comment August 21st, 2009