10 Things Everyone Hates About Modern Video Games

10. Bloated Gameplay As "Value"

It truly does feel like video games are less respectful of the player's time than ever before.

Never have AAA games in particular felt more egregiously bloated out with repetitive copy-paste side-quests and substance-devoid collectible nonsense, intended solely to flood the map and present a massive time sink to completionist players who can't help themselves.

Ubisoft are far and away the most significant repeat offenders, their open-world AAA formula committed to turning a 20-hour game into a 100-hour slog.

That's without even getting to the many video games bogged down with unnecessary skill trees and needlessly convoluted progression systems that don't even fit the style of game - looking at you, God of War.

Ultimately this padding stems from an increasing desire for publishers to offer up "value" as time spent rather than delivering a quality, curated experience.

With services like Xbox Game Pass making the prospect of a day-one retail purchase less appealing than ever before, the desperation to justify that £60-70 price tag is bore out through hollow promises that a game will eat up at least a few weeks of your life.

Ultimately the industry needs to embrace the idea that games should be as long as they need to be, but also be priced to fit that length.

The death of the 8-10-hour single-player AAA game is a real shame, and with the industry pushing massive, empty worlds populated with boring, algorithm-created "content" so aggressively, they're likely never coming back in a major way.