These Gaming Mechanics Suck! AGAIN!

Video game mechanics are like the muscle fibers that wrap over the bones of a digital experience, allowing the narrative femur to burst into action and carry the story along, or those knuckles made of emotion to hit with extra force.

In theory, mechanics are what makes a video game special, elevating it from the rest of its peers by showing off something unique or refining a previously used genre quirk into something outstanding. However for every outstanding mechanic like the web-slinging from the PS4 Spider-Man outing, or the ridiculously satisfying parrying mechanic from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you get about ten or twenty more god-awful decisions that make gamers around the world question what the hell the devs were thinking.

These weren't muscles to be flexed but ones in atrophy, stumbling Bambi-legged into the spotlight then collapsing in a heap. Some were even so bad that they almost became the Achilles Heel to even monster franchises, and when that happens it can be truly dangerous indeed.

And to really hammer this weird body/muscle gimmick home, I too have been training as this is why we're returning to this sore spot of the gaming industry to look at more gaming mechanics that absolutely SUCK!

So here we are fresh out of the gate and already I feel like I'm running out of energy, and I mean that quite literally as talking about how Free To Play video games use "energy" as a resource saps my very soul.

You see in the F2P genre, time is most definitely money, and it's this mindset that sees F2P titles abuse what little free time you have in your personal life in a desperate attempt to make you pay to remove the waiting period. As you try to build bases or muster forces for battle, that little energy bar (whatever guise it's under) will drain and drain until WHOOPS LOOKS LIKE YOU GOTTA PAY FOR SOME OF THAT NOSE POWDER BUDDY!

I understand that F2P titles have to recoup their costs and turn a profit but adding in such levels of bloat that Mr. Creosote got heartburn just by looking at it is an utterly gross mechanic indeed.

There used to be a time when titles would shy around the subject, offering players elongated but not offensive periods of downtime, and at least offered you other distractions in order to make the wait seem less arduous. Nowadays you're almost hit with paywalls right from the off, and are basically left to hang unless you pony up the dough like a good little piggy.

There are much less insidious ways to make money from F2P titles, such as cosmetic skins and non-gameplay affecting perks, but for a title to use time itself against you while clearly having no respect for your own, well that my friends is a mentality that we should all be kicking in the tip of its clock.