10 Needless Video Game Features We Could All Do Without

9. Lazy Difficulty Modifiers

Almost every game released in the modern era of gaming will have a choice of difficulty, unless it somehow doesn't apply to that kind of game. Thing is, there are several definitions of how exactly the difficulty should be lowered or raised, which generally varies from game to game. In combat orientated games, this could mean enhancing the AI of enemies so they're more strategic and aggressive, but most likely, the difficulty will reduce the amount of damage you deal, or upgrade the health capacity of enemies so they're harder to kill. The latter option doesn't really make the game more difficult, it just makes combat more repetitive and time consuming. Shortcuts are taken because difficult AI takes more time to develop, reprogram and configure, rather than simply changing the statistics related to the amount of damage you deal or take. A harder difficulty should test our skill as gamers, but more often than not it'll just test our patience.