Design flaws feeding the annoyance meter

[delb3k]

I hate it when you cant go back in a game to pick up extra health or gain more expiriance to beef up your weapons. In a few games I have come to the final boss just a little shy of health pick ups or with weapons not quite strong enough and there is no way for me to go back to get more. This has lead to far too much saving using multiple files for my liking!

[lostn]

And also if we're talking Hideo Kojima length or greater, you should quite possibly have the option to skip them whenever you want to, never mind being forced to see them the first time through.

Hideo's cutscenes are all 100% skippable.

On the topic of skipping cutscenes though, Wind Waker... so many times you'll wish you didn't have to watch him dig up some treasure and open it, or blow the baton to change the wind. Like just get on with it, we've seen it 50 times already!

And of course long attack animations in RPGs should be skippable.

[Wild_Cat]

Yeah, long attack animations in RPGs are cool the 5 first times, after that they get tiresome. Worst offender here: Final Fantasy 8 (esp. PAL FF8). Not only do you have to wait for ages for the G-Forces' animations to complete, but on top of that you have to repeatedly bash the square button like in some crappy Track n' Field clone (I *hate* those games) while you wait for it to finish or it will do close to no damage. I still wonder who thought this could even remotely resemble a good gameplay addition.

[Ady]

To be fair though, the "cut scenes" you mention in WW are merely seconds long. Hardly precious time you'll never see again.

(FF8)...Not only do you have to wait for ages for the G-Forces' animations to complete, but on top of that you have to repeatedly bash the square button like in some crappy Track n' Field clone (I *hate* those games) while you wait for it to finish or it will do close to no damage. I still wonder who thought this could even remotely resemble a good gameplay addition.

The same bright spark who though SeeD tests and drawing mgaic from enemies for hours on end was a good gameplay addition, I imagine.

[Concept]

The revolutionary gameplay genius' at Squaresoft?

Rumour has it Final Fantasy XIII is going to be completely freeform and feature less than 2 hours worth of cutscenes. It'll be released when hell freezes over.