Game mechanics you hate for any reason

The way no one admits that pre-rendered backgrounds, or at least a fixed camera, actually allows for a great more visibility than a third person camera

Bosses with 2nd or 3rd phases.

A fair few mentioned here like instafail forced stealth missions. However one of my biggest pet peeves are when the game decides to hobble you about 2/3 of the way through by removing all your abilities that you spent the whole game earning in an effort to pad out the play time. Oh and games that lock out basic abilities that really should be standard that you have to unlock.

This.

You can revisit completed stages in 2016's campaign mode though

I don't like having completion of a game, or the "best ending", gated behind doing meaningless side stuff. Arkham Knight was the worst for it, but there's probably loads of other examples. If you want me to do "challenges" and collect dodads, fine. But it should be 100% optional.

I also don't like the "best ending" being gated behind impossible platform hell challenges and/or superbosses. I'm looking at you, Hollow Knight. If you want to have that kind of stuff, put it in as a post-game bragging rights reward. But I want to be able to finish the game I paid for, even if my skills aren't always up to it. (I have a small exception for roguelikes, where coming back from failure is a valuable experience for me)

On that note, one thing I really support, and wish more games would do, is modifiable difficulty. There's a bunch of games now that have really detailed accessibility and "assist mode" options. Celeste is a good example, though it's not really my kind of game. I even support it for roguelikes; Darkest Dungeon and Invisible Inc. had great options in this regard.

Let more people enjoy your games!

But you can put that limit on yourself by dropping the thing you just picked up, or a different thing that you need slightly less. If I’m in the Dwarven Halls place under Skyrim and I find a heavy weapon I want more than anything else in my inventory, and there’s an item limit rather than encumbrance, all I’d do is drop other stuff to pick it up anyway.

With encumbrance I can pop a potion to temporarily boost the limit and fast travel. Or crawl to the nearest safe place. Or, and here’s the kicker, do the exact same thing I’d have done if there was an item limit and drop some other stuff. The absolute last thing to do is go “oh I’ve hit the limit, I’ll just leave this cool thing here because I can’t pick it up now”

Boss fights in general.

God yes time limits. I spend all day at work with too much to do and too little time to do it in. Don't put that into my leisure time.

Bosses who summon 'helpers' - if your that of a 'boss' do it on your own FFS. I hate boss battles anyway - tedious and archaic mechanic.

My wife walked in when I was playing TLoU2 in the dark with headphones on. Just as .

She thought I was playing some weird porn game.

Jump scares. I just want to have a nice time.