10 Seriously Misjudged Video Game Levels That Almost Made You Stop Playing

Considering the sky-high budgets and enormous team sizes behind any triple-A game, the amount of quality testing that goes on - from conversations to early builds, reworked levels, mechanics, abilities etc. - is seemingly never-ending.

Listen to any developer discuss their work and you'll hear all sorts of "I wish we did this here or there" or "That really should've been there"-style ruminations on how X number of things could've gone. Of course, in the case of the following examples these maligned game ideas did far more damage than good, but it stands to reason that balancing artistic vision with a design geared towards mass market appeal can go south pretty fast.

Just look at the ongoing bilge of generic toss propping up the latter half of 2017 alone. Agents of Mayhem, Shadow of War, Assassin's Creed Origins, Star Wars Battlefront 2 - all games that have forgone the majority of their originality and innovation in favour of loot grinds, RNG weapon stats and microtransactions. Though, when the alternative is so facepalm-inducingly baffling as this lot, it's no surprise millions of dollars get invested into something that's at least a bit more playable...