Game mechanics you hate for any reason

The thing with Mega Man is that the levels tend to be quite brief, even more so as you learn them. Even if you do run out of lives, the only thing you're really losing is a chance to immediately reattempt a boss. And because they're non linear, you can just try a different level anyway

The stages in Shovel Knight are so long I just found it to be a slog. It's a game I feel I should love - it draws from things I like and most of the various elements are good but, ultimately, I just found it boring and a chore to get through

I was surprised to read you'd bought it again recently actually as I didn't think you were a fan

Sorry I missed your response the first time. Yeah I'm not a huge fan but I don't have the DLC and I was still curious enough about them. Now I was desperate for as new game and it was on sale, so I caved in. Haven't played it yet though because I also bought Elden Ring.

Wii games were often 'hold A and B' to start, which I guess was supposed to feel more tactile. 

I'd always forget about the B button because it was on the back of the wiimote, so I'd always spend ages pressing A like a moron and going 'why isn't it starting??' 

For Switch I'm guessing it's the joycon connection thing, what with joycons being made of string and sticky-tape and therefore disconnecting every bloody 5 minutes. 

Or not being able to pause at all... grr @ Elden Ring

Point of no return cut scenes that trigger automatically

And then the endless backtracking between the 2 paths if they don't get closed off, because it's still not obvious which one is which.

The Plague Tale games were bastards for that.

I may be being unreasonable, but I feel like there should be a specific portrait for all main characters, and then a repeatable collection for random scrubs, AND a separate set for the player to choose from.

I agree there's little more immersion-breaking than creating your dude to find yourself speaking to Bim (or whatever the heck he's called) in tutorial room 1 who has your exact same face.

With AI these days you could probably get the game to pump out nearly infinite character portraits, all based on a set of base portraits, but with variation added either randomly or based on the stat/job of the particular character.
Might be kinda cool.

*as long as they hide the hands
** but prepare for all the ladies to be minimally dressed and have boob armour.

Made me think of the Shadowrun games, which already did a pretty good job providing a good amount of variety by simply offering a number of variations on each head/face. Which did often make a fairly significant aesthetic difference.

Checkpoint systems that don't remember what the player has done, like having collected some things or having done upgrades. This always led to confusion with Far Cry 3 for me. It also rips the player out of the experience in open world games, where a save might only occur at some random spot in a very large map.

Another variation of the problem is games that show you the same cutscene again and again after being killed in a bossfight.

And just yesterday in Alpha Protocol I had quit the game after doing some upgrading, going through the Mail and such. But as it turns out the game doesn't actually save unless there is a checkpoint. That leads directly into another pet peeve that I'm sure must already have been mentioned: A save feature that doesn't actually do anything. Or at least it never becomes clear what it does do exactly.

Automation of player actions, as in the player character does more actions than there is player input. Like climbing objects, jumping, grabbing and climbing ledges, crouching, auto-targeting enemies and so on, all without specific player inputs, doing all of that just by holding the stick in one direction or whatever. It feels like I'm not in control, just giving suggestions. Contrast old-school platformers where the player character does exactly what you tell them and nothing else. There's a 1:1 correlation between inputs and actions and so I feel like I'm in full control, and I like that a lot.

Or doing different attacks without different inputs, Witcher 3 was egregious for this. When I press "fast attack" I just want a quick sword strike, Geralt will sometimes do that but most of the time he will do his circus show with random rolling and jumping and pirouetting around instead, all while auto-targeting enemies and without me having a say in any of this. It's horrible. That's the main reason why I think W3's combat is even worse than Skyrim's, because in Skyrim at least your character does just what you fucking tell them to. At least I'm in control of my own actions. Is that asked too much?

I’ll mention Jusant again, just for its lovely climbing mechanics. You use the analog stick to aim, the trigger buttons for each hand and a face button to leap. It’s so simple and yet so satisfying.

I get why games simplify mechanics like this, but I would much prefer something mechanically more engaging and intuitive.