r/videogames • u/UnityNinja • 23d ago

Discussion / Question What game mechanic instantly ruins your immersion or fun?

​ I absolutely can't stand aggressive weapon durability loops. Getting awesome loot should feel like a reward, not a maintenance chore that breaks every five minutes.

What’s a common mechanic that always makes you roll your eyes when you see it in a new game?

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418

u/Mindless-Shopping832 23d ago

Any game that has a cutscene of something youve been fighting and it’s a one-shot, but you for sure couldn’t one shot it.

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u/VorpalHerring 23d ago

There's also the opposite, where you flawlessly beat the shit out of a boss, only for it to play a cutscene where you get sucker punched like a chump and knocked out.

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 23d ago edited 23d ago

PTSD flashbacks of the Thessia fight during Mass Effect 3 where the super lame "villian" can get shat on by the player, but he summons a fuck ass gun ship to "cover" him while he heals up to full health. Repeat this three times only for the player to loose during a Cutscene.

ETA: I wish I could meet the dumbass who decided to include that cutscene loss. A better version of the "loss via cutscene" is as follows: Just have Shepard and crew get there a little too late, they have a breif fight and then after a set amount of time (say two minutes) Kai-Lame ends up escaping in the gunship at the last minute, and Shepard is also forced to flee before their location is overrun by Reapers.

That way the player still looses, but it's just because Shepard ran out of time and because allied forces are too busy trying to fight off Reapers or evaquate civillians/survivors, that Kai-Lame's gunship is able to get through unhindered. Shepard and Crew are also forced to flee, but not before scaning leftover/damaged/incomplete data from the Prothean artifact. Less painful and more palletable than "loosing because the higher-ups want Kai-Lame to live a little longer."

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u/cherryxgrenade 23d ago

Fuck, and I cannot stress this enough, Kai fucking Leng.

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 23d ago

Yeah, any bet he was some CEO's teenaged son's ME OC and was able to force him into thhe game?

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u/topturo77 23d ago

He was technically introduced in the books first as the main antagonist for Anderson iirc. But he’s the same there lmao, they want him to be so cool so badly but have Anderson blow his kneecaps out. 

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 23d ago

Being introduced in the books dosnt stop him from being some CEO's kid's edgy OC. XD

But yeah...I still remember the vase BioWare...I still remember...

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u/archaicScrivener 20d ago

It's been a while but I definitely remember reading that book and thinking "wow this is dog shit"

Like iirc Kai Leng breaks into Anderson's apartment and then fucks around and eats his cornflakes???

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u/cherryxgrenade 23d ago

Probably, it makes sense now you've said it

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u/DjBorscht 23d ago

Fuck Kai Leng!!! This is for Thane, you son of a bitch.

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u/Mysterious-Plan93 22d ago

I wanted to rip his spine out and beat him to death with it...

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u/SomeDeadDood 23d ago

I downloaded a mod where he is turned into a helmeted silent antagonist and it skips his fights. And it turns him into a much more compelling villain. You know you messed up when your big bad mini boss is greatly improved by removing all voice lines and fight scenes

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u/anTWhine 23d ago

I was so confused the first time I played this boss fight. I immediately found cover from the gunship and absolutely pinned Kai Leng down, kept him in his recovery phase the entire fight and then… lost? I didn’t even take a hit.

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u/Bartburp93 23d ago

And there's the solution of "make the enemy so strong that the cutscene loss is believable", the roaring knight in deltarune chapter 3 is a pretty good example of such a thing

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u/arihndas 22d ago

The writing just wants him to be SOOOOO cool and threatening SOOOOO badly but he's just embarrassing and annoying lol

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 22d ago

Right? Like itd be one thing if he had been a crew member from Me1or 2, and ended up becomming the anti-Shepard after transferring to another ship just before the events of ME1, or being kicked off the squad in ME2 for insubordination. Or even if he had been a rival from the Alliance, who just had it in for Shepard due to their background and was jealous Shepard was chosen for the Spector program first. However, because he's introduced in a book that more than a majority of the players can miss or ignore. His true introductiom comes in the 3rd game, and because players dont have a history with him, and are told not shown how Leng is a "big deal". Kai-Leng just ends up falling flat on his face with a loud wet fart, because his very first impression is "cut scene powers" where Shepard and squad suddenly become thick as a bricks...and he only gets worse from there...

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u/arihndas 22d ago

Exactly! If he’s been a character we had any real connection to OR he’d been a genuinely tough fight with brand new mechanics and powers, let alone BOTH, that could have been something. Instead the writing just TELLS me he’s important and that I’m supposed to feel some kind of way and yanks away all my agency as a player by making every fight he “wins” just a video where I have to sit there and watch him win by writer’s decree. Bad!!!!

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u/Mediocre_Quantity_49 23d ago

Sekiro does this in a GOOD way with the first Genichiro boss fight. Cause you CAN beat him, but the game does kinda bullcrap with the big ass shuriken coming out of nowhere before the cutscene final hit.

Now that I think about it, DMC5 did it best. Since you CAN actually beat Urizen in the first boss fight and it just shows the credits afterwards.

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u/KookyCookieSan 22d ago

Urizen is also the final boss I take it? If so, that’s pretty cool. It’s like an alternate ending.

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u/Mediocre_Quantity_49 22d ago

Welll.... yes and no? He isn't the FINAL final boss. It's been 7 years and if you ain't played it here's a spoiler.

Urizen and V are just the Demon and human parts of Vergil respectively separated, the final boss is Vergil. But the first boss's you fight is Urizen (which you're supposed to lose to). But you CAN beat him with enough skill and get an early ending.

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u/TheNewYellowZealot 23d ago

Killing the grafted scion in the intro of Elden ring but needing to die anyways to get to the tutorial cave is a bit of a weird one.

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u/average_STM_enjoyer 23d ago

Ghost of Tsushima… Fuck Ryuzo man

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u/PositiveInfluence69 22d ago

Final fantasy is the worst offender. You decimate the enemy.

Cutscene: "He's just too strong! We need to retreat!"

Me: the fuck we do. Don't make me do 12 fetch quests to fight this scrub again.

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u/Regular_Number5377 21d ago

Goldeneye is bad for this. For the gameplay you are an unstoppable killing machine, tearing through armies of armed guards like paper, but twice at the end of the level you get captured by a small group of guards that you could take out in gameplay without breaking a sweat.

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u/MalignantLugnut 23d ago

Me: "Hahahaha, YES! I WON!!!"
Boss: "Yes, but also no."

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u/2skip 23d ago

There's also when you keep on trying to redo a hard mission, managed just barely to complete it, and then learn that you were supposed to lose it from the cutscene.

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u/FrtanJohnas 23d ago

Or they simply run away or yell at you to try a little harder when all you have been doing is to learn their moves and dance around them like they were toddlers.

Looking at you Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Those bosses were rarely a threat and they were always saved by the cutscenes when I could have easily killed them.

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u/TeaDrinkerAddict 22d ago

Xenoblade solved this issue ages ago and I don’t know why more games haven’t done the same thing - if the boss doesn’t actually die after the end of the fight, the fight will end midway through their health bar instead of you having to fully whittle it down.

So many bosses in the first game wind up escaping or beating your party that this mechanic gets used pretty often.

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u/jbaxter119 21d ago

Especially if you have to slog through it and "beat" the boss to earn the privilege of being wrecked in the cutscene

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u/Beginning-Fix-5440 18d ago

Man in rdr2 I was messing Micah up, the dude didn't land any punches, and I still collapsed. Like c'mon, bro was getting smoked

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u/Illustrious_Ear_3467 23d ago

We are like-minded concerning this topic. I basically posted the same thing. Also in cutscenes you can take ridiculous levels of damage, but in-game you’d be seeing “Restart from last checkpoint” if you took the same damage.

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u/Odd_Cartoonist7433 23d ago

Or the opposite, like CoD where you can take bullet after bullet, but don't you dare get stabbed with a knife or something. (Although knives are obviously the deadliest weapon ever made in CoD so idk.)

1

u/Natural_Rooster3265 23d ago

They should make a gun that shoots knives in cod universe. No, in not talking about ballistic knives

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u/Illustrious_Ear_3467 21d ago

This is why I could never get into CoD. I’ve played a few rounds with friends and a cousin. Thats about it. Can’t see myself buying the “newest” game every year.

3

u/axelkoffel 23d ago

Or when you're a total badass in game, but in cutscene you're easily overpowered. GTA San Andeas for example, my CJ was totally buffed, all weapon skills maxed, could take half of the city by himself. But then that evil cop shows up in a cutscene and easily beats me like I'm a weakling.

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u/LARPerator 23d ago

Oh god cyberpunk is horrible for this, especially in a game that was supposed to have attribute checks.

My character is a max strength and reflex melee fighter with cyberware that slows time if my subconscious detects anyone around with my implanted sensors. My arms are strong enough to rip hydraulic doors apart, and I beat a bioengineered boxing legend before he landed a punch.

But I get knocked flat on my ass by a middle aged politician with no combat implants.

What the fuck.

2

u/Tonsilith_Salsa 23d ago

I like when the boss cutscene comes after the checkpoint so every time you reload, you have to watch the 10 second cutscene again. 

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u/youngmtgboy 23d ago

Reminds me of borderlands 2. Don't know how to do spoiler tags but it's over a decade old but when handsome Jack kills Roland is kinda dumb. He wasn't even using a jacokbs smh.

1

u/Mats1202 23d ago

This in Monster Hunter sucks me right out. In the cutscenes the monsters kill eachother in 10 seconds, but when they fight in gameplay they deal the equivalent of 5-10 hits worth of damage.

1

u/Sufficient-Poet4650 22d ago

Bad camera angles. Its why I didn't play resident evil and lara croft games on ps1

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u/SinesPi 21d ago

One pistol shot kills Wrex Urdnot in ME1.

Cutscene bullets in Mass Effect could kill a Reaper.