10 Deliberate Gameplay Features That Ruin Your Immersion
Just when a game was beginning to draw you in.
Technical issues are a constant risk in gaming. Whether rushed out for an early release or just plain poorly made, is there anything that takes you further out of an immersive game world than constant bugs, glitches and frame-rate drops?
Sadly, there is, and what really rubs salt in the wound is that these things are actually intentional.
It's one thing to be painfully aware you're playing a game because it doesn't work properly, but it's another entirely for your immersion to be shattered by a very deliberate and ingrained trope that's wormed its way into mainstream game development.
With each generation of video games becoming more and more focused on story and atmosphere, there's really no excuse for anything that pulls you so jarringly out of it - especially if the whole point of it was supposed to do the opposite.
There are likely way more than 10 of these infernal things out there. But were we free of these ones, at least, modern gaming would be a far more enjoyable experience indeed.
10. Mouse Cursor Menus
Immersion in gaming is affected a lot by a game's pacing. Fast or slow, it has to stick to what it's trying to achieve, otherwise you're either going to be left for dust or lulled to sleep right in the middle of your playthrough.
And in the case of a fast-paced action game, the last thing you need is a cumbersome menu you've got only a sluggish cursor to trawl your way through with.
This is something that works perfectly for PC games, obviously, as the mouse and keyboard setup is what free-roaming cursors are made for. But it really doesn't translate well to direction buttons and analog sticks. When you could be scrolling easily down a list of highlightable options, games like Destiny, No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 insist on making you drag your little icon from one corner of the screen to the other.
It's all time you could be spending playing the game and actually, you know, getting into it. And the more you have to navigate these achingly slow menu screens, the more detached from the game you're inevitably going to feel.