Wohoo! The big 4-0. Anyway, for this Roundtable our staff share those little, annoying things in games which grate at you. In short, our pet peeves.

We all have them. What are your pet peeves in games?

Vince: I don't like it when games are either so hard you will never finish unless you buy the $30 help manual, nor do I like it when games are so easy, that you feel like they think you're the stupidest person, since, if left alone, you would need getting help finding which door Luigi should now open.

It also peeves me when games that you feel ripped off by getting, even if they were free. Did no one really try Universal Studios before they released it? Why release it for $50 then?

Blackbird: I think games which are way to hard in the beginning are frustrating. You've just bought a new game, start playing it and after 2 hours you throw it through your room, because you couldn't figure out how to pull the d*mn (buzz please) switch, or hit that particular foe. It just makes me wanna go 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!'.

Another annoying thing (but that's my fault), is when a game isn't what you expected from it. Sure, you can read the newsitems, look at images, read some (p)reviews, view some ingame movies, etc. STILL, you don't know how the game feels. Would you really like it? Isn't that commercial just the best part of the game? *shouts* GIVE US SOME DEMO'S!

er-no: Within a game the most annoying thing can be the difficulty level. There is no set definition of 'easy' or 'medium' or 'hard'. Games companies don't sit down and discuss how hard they should make a game to a universal medium. What should be done is games should incorperate a feature where if a player is finding a boss or stage too hard, access is given to the player to change the difficulty level on that stage so they can progress further. Other things within games can annoy me. This is normally the visual elements like camera angles.

In this day and age companies are mass producing games with names to sell for profit. Which is killing the industry in such a way that good games go unnoticed underneath the every week EA branded games. More time, maybe even months should be spent on camera angles to get the things right. I hate playing a game and dying because of the controls and camera angles. Have you ever wanted to see around the corner, and you think you should be able too?

The Enigma: Most games annoy me these days, for many reasons. Some are just inexplicably crap, and one wonders why they are released at all. Some game are just incredulously easy, and the last game to truly challenge me since Perfect Dark has been Metroid Prime - in the last few days - but even after 2 days worth of play on that I'm already 70% of the way through using the hint system only once, and will probably have completed it by the time you read this (NB. I have now completed it after 15:23hrs of gameplay). Even so, it's still the best game on offer for any console at the time being *waits for Zelda*.

Mindless updates of dated sports sims annoy, countless offerings of the latest FIFA title or MLB or NBA. What's the point? Some games are repetitive monotonous junk, and I begin to wonder if these companies actually have play testers or not. Take for instance GTA3/VC. You drive around, you shoot people. Errr....Fun....

In conclusion I'd like to say that if I controlled every game that got onto the market, the videogames industry would quite probably go bust very quickly. The fact that so many terrible titles get released can be seen as a good thing, because it keeps the videogames industry afloat. I guess you could say that without the crap, the videogames industry would be nothing. And that's a very sad thought.

Link: The games that annoy me the most are games that are blatant rip-offs of other games. I won't name any names, but these games know who they are and it pisses me off when I buy a new game and find out that it's exactly like the last game I just played except in different wrapping.

I also get angry with games that are just too incredibly hard and then laugh at you for apparently sucking. I may not be the best games player out there, but there are some games that you just can't beat. Difficulty settings would be nice.

Kevin: Well for me the most annoying things about games is the constant rerun of certain un-orginal franchises on other platforms, I have to agree about the guide book thing above.

bjlangley: Games that feel that they have to incorporate a 'stealth' mode. Since the success of MGS loads of games have tried to put one in, when perhaps they'd be better off as all action.

Military types acting all hard in cut scenes.

Where luck plays a more significant part in progress through a game than judgement.

Slow text that cannot be sped up, and cut-scenes that cannot be skipped.

I think that's it for now!

Conor: One thing which really annoys me in games in when luck and time takes over actual skill. When it doesn't matter how good you are, only a)how lucky you are or b)how much time you have on your hands. Tony Hawks, for example, is all about skill, while all you need Starfox Adventures is chance and time.

What also irritates me are games that come out year after year, only having better graphics as an improvement over last year, something a lot of sports games are guilty of. And on the mater of graphics, it is definitely a peeve when games over-rely on graphics, rather than sticking in good gameplay *COUGH* Starfox Adventures *COUGH*. And of course, when piblishers pull a game half-way through development that looks to be a cracker.

But most of all, when games companies think we will shell out our hard-earned cash for tedious, unoriginal, shallow, dire games.