10 Annoying Video Game Mechanics That Need To Die

It seems almost facile to point out how important video game mechanics are to a game, but they are. When doing their job, they're barely noticeable; an extension of the player and how they interact with the world. And over decades of gaming innovation, there have been countless examples of genuinely intuitive game design.

However, more often than they should, developers come up with some genuinely annoying mechanics. Fortunately, creatives are smart enough to wipe the slate clean in most cases, and are more than willing to ditch a dead idea.

Most cases, that is. Not all.

No, there are some mechanics that regardless of how annoying or genuinely frustrating they are, still cling to the industry and belabour good games. They are so fundamentally ingrained or are perceived to be popular that they are included for no other reason than tradition.

Either that, or they're considered the only way to provide a certain experience, despite being abhorred almost universally by gamers, or at least frowned upon in some respect.

Limiting a player's ability to sprint usually just means that players take longer to get from one place to another. Functionally, in gameplay, that is more often than not the single thing that sprinting affects. Very few games require sprinting mid-combat and even fewer do so well.

So, unless sprinting is vital and useful in moment to moment gameplay, don't limit it. All it does is make getting around more tedious. And even if it is, then have a separate combat stamina meter so that we don't have to start and stop when going from point A to point B.

Games like Dark Souls in which sprinting is a genuine tactic when it comes to fighting an enemy and is often utilised during combat? Fine. But Call of Duty? When the most sprinting your character is doing is from one piece of cover to the next? Don't limit it.