10 Images That Completely Killed The Magic Of Gaming

6. "Warning: Return To The Combat Area" - Battlefield 4

One of the most irritating ways to kill the perception of a living, breathing gaming world is to create an invisible wall or artificial obstacle to stop players from proceeding outside the bounds of the developed world. Granted, all games have to employ this in some form or another, though developers these days have come up with a number of ingenious ways to hide their limitations and make us feel as free as possible. Some games, on the other hand, just don't care, and one such example is EA's visceral shooter Battlefield 4, which will bombard players with the obnoxious above message if they venture outside of the "combat area". Compared to this, invisible walls seem positively subtle and perfectly acceptable: do we really need our screen turned monochrome and a 10-second countdown imposed to tell us that we're reaching the bounds of the map? Given how fantastic this game is when it actually works, it's pretty silly that EA felt the need to interrupt the intensity of the action so brazenly should we venture "too far off track". If you want to box us in, just put up a giant fence or something...