There can be few things in life more infuriating and stressful than the ticking clock. The mere appearance of a timer in a game is enough to turn some gamers off completely and who could blame them? A timer is essentially an easy way to instantly make any given mission more interesting, and level designers aren't fooling anyone. The reasons that are given to the player are usually arbitrary and the amount of time that your given is either suspiciously convenient or just plain sadistic. If the latter is true, gamers will find themselves replaying the same timed mission over and over again, failing by the narrowest of margins with each successive attempt. It's a mission-type that comes bearing an inherent aspect of frustration in that every objective becomes centred around a capricious time limit. Where before a game has allowed you to explore its every nook and cranny, the jarring appearance of a timer forces us onto a bland and narrow path, where the means of completion are limited to whatever tools are most efficient.
