What are your gaming pet peeves?

Above: Captain Picard has just lost 20 minutes of his life due to spaced-out checkpoints on the Holodeck.

Yesterday I mentioned that one of my three biggest pet peeves is a bad game camera. In comments, Quinn wondered what some others were. In a bit more detail, here are the 3 things that drive me nuts in any game.

A bad camera. This problem has largely gone away in recent years, as most games let you control what you're looking at. And some games, like God of War, implement an external camera pretty well. But nothing's worse than when you're running along and the point of view suddenly shifts, completely throwing off your sense of direction. Well, maybe one thing's worse: staring at a giant wall between your eyes and the action.

Interminable opening cinematics. When I start a game, I want to do something, anything, right away. I don't want to sit there for 20 minutes watching a movie with the controller in my lap. I would be happy enough to walk my character across the room and then watch the cutscene. Better still would be for the game to tell a story through in-game actions. (An example of a great game that still bugged me for this reason: Okami.)

Sparse save points and checkpoints. It's not so much about the difficulty factor, although it does bug me to lose 10 minutes or more of progress because I've failed to reach a checkpoint. This stuff really bugs me because I want to be able to start and stop my gameplay session according to my own whims. I don't want to traipse across a level for 20 minutes looking for a save point. I don't want to have to keep slogging ahead, waiting for the little "checkpoint" message to appear, before I can go to bed.

That's not a comprehensive list by any means, but any time I come across any of these problems it's like hearing the needle scratch off the record, even in an otherwise good game. There's just no reason for any of them.

What about you? What in a game drives you absolutely batty?

Dark Sector has got me stumped

Immediate Update: So the first time I tried after making this post, I figured it out. It turns out you have to go back out into a particular hallway, where an otherwise nondescript portion of wall has magically opened up to reveal a hidden passageway. I don't know whether to blame myself or the game for this, but at least you've gotten a rare insight into just how terrible I am at video games.

The game is probably too new for anybody to be able to help me yet, but I figured I'd ask. I am stuck in Dark Sector. Hopelessly stuck. As in, I've replayed the same part at least fifteen times and still don't even have the slightest idea what I should be doing. If anybody could possibly help, I'd appreciate it.

Here's the scenario: I've just gotten the glaive's shield power. There's a cutscene where I'm introduced to a character named Nadia. Immediately following the cutscene, I have 60 seconds to either escape the room, defuse a bomb, or maybe even do something else I'm not thinking of. There's a door that looks like the probable escape route, but there's no prompt to open it. I've searched for switches or buttons that might open it and come up empty. I can't see anything that might interact with the glaive. The route I took into this area is blocked.

I don't have any idea what to do. I can't even tell you how much time I've spent replaying this part. It's probably something obvious, but I just have no idea at this point.

Sins of a solo game reviewer

I need some advice. I'm reviewing Sins of a Solar Empire for the Phoenix. You may have heard of this game -- it combines elements of real-time strategy and turn-based strategy in an intergalactic setting, on what the box promises is an "unrivaled scale." It's been reviewed well elsewhere, with a Metacritic score of 89.

And I don't have the slightest idea how to review it.

I've argued before that an encylopedic knowledge of games is only part of the equation for good games criticism. But obviously a writer needs to have a solid foundation in the genre he's playing if it's to be an informed and balanced review. When I play an action-adventure game, I'm drawing on decades of experience with that style of play. I can zoom right up the learning curve, without getting hung up on the basics.

That's not the case with strategy games like Sins of a Solar Empire, whether we're talking about real-time or turn-based. I've never played a Civilization game or a Command and Conquer game. I've spent about five minutes each with Warcraft and Starcraft. I know so little about strategy games that I can't even think of any other ones off the top of my head. And I'm spending my time not on comparing Sins of a Solar Empire to other strategy games, but on learning how to play it.

I see from the Metacritic page that Sins was streamlined compared to its brethren, but you could have fooled me. The instruction manual is novella-length. For people steeped in the genre, it might feel like the most user-friendly interface ever designed. For me, it's like learning a foreign language. My biggest fear is writing a review that comes off as dumb and uninformed -- to write the RTS equivalent of a review of an action-adventure game that sounds baffled that you press the A button to make your character jump. And yet... I am uninformed.

So what do I do? It would be unfair to the game to review the genre by proxy in place of a detailed discussion of its unique characteristics. But it would also be unfair to the readers to pretend I'm an authority on strategy games, or even that I would have paid any attention to this game if I weren't getting paid to do so. I'm thinking it'll take some combination of a forthright admission that I'm not an expert with a focus on those things that I really do like about it, even if they may not be intrinsic to what most strategy fans are looking for.

But I'm not sure. How would you approach it?

Recommend gaming blogs

Hello there, Insult Swordfighting readers! I have a question to ask of you. What are some gaming blogs I should be reading? My blogroll is woefully thin, and I'm starving for new content. I'm looking specifically for blogs that traffic in commentary and analysis moreso than straight news or reviews, but anything you enjoy is welcome.

Please leave any suggestions in comments, and, if you're so inclined, a few words about why you recommend those sites.