10 Secret Ways Video Games Totally Waste Your Time

Perhaps the most consistent time-wasting trick in the RPG genre is the inclusion of "random" encounters, in which players will find themselves waylaid by enemies totally out of nowhere.

While more modern RPGs typically allow players to immediately flee from incoming mobs, in decades past you'd typically have to wait for the fight to begin and pick the "flee" option, making the mere feat of escape a mini-slog in of itself. Again, looking at you, Final Fantasy.

Though there's the argument that random encounters help make exploration more unpredictable and also ensure the player isn't too under-levelled as they traverse the world, ultimately these fights often come across as unwanted hurdles thrown in the player's way. Hurdles that, inevitably, pad out the game's play-time.

Thankfully, those aforementioned Final Fantasy remasters came with another nifty gameplay modifier - the ability to disable random encounters entirely.