12 Infuriatingly Redundant Gameplay Mechanics That Need To Die

9. Needless Stealth Add-ons

Invisible Batman is awesome. We can all agree that clearing a room with minimum effort and without being seen is one of the best experiences a game can offer. Hitman did it acceptably, Batman did it really well and Black Ops 2... well, not so much. The crowbarring in of mini-games and extra features are barely tolerable on their own, but the trend of stealth oriented features found in most mainstream games is getting rather irritating. Moving into a room and seeing a bunch of guards spaced out for you to take down is all very well, but knowing that your only weapons with which to do so are an assault rifle and a handful of grenades is not. Stealth is fun, but having to blaze out of the shadows with all the subtlety of the KKK, knowing it's your only choice after a guard spotted you from a mile away is not. If you're going to place an emphasis on stealth, make sure your guards aren't patrolling areas that put them within whispering distance from one another, and a more fluid AI interface would be useful in all circumstances; but with stealth it would make the probabilities of body discovery and alerts etc more of a believable experience. Even a simple randomiser on whether or not an alarm will sound would be nice. Badly planned, blu-tacked stealth add-ons are found even in AAA mainstream games, such as Black Ops 2, which featured an invisibility kit, rendering the player invisible to others, unless an opponent had eyes sharp enough to detect a the sight of a gun floating at shoulder length hovering towards them - that's right, the player is invisible; the gun is not. Really useful. If in doubt, look to Dishonored.
 
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British writer, musician and misanthropist.