Skinning animals.

Stealth in games with places to explore. If you're going to create a place containing loads of fun nick nacks I'm gonna kill everyone so I can absorb at my leisure.

I'd quite like the health pack mechanic to make a return, because it's still more convincing than the alternatives. Recharging shield/health works in Halo because sci-fi, but seems dumb in other games. And the one where you have to wait for a team mate to inject you with something to stop you dying from gunshot wounds has never made any sense. I'd rather find a roast chicken in a barrel and eat it to restore full health, thanks (25% health if it's just a drumstick).

Running or driving around in 3D environments shooting at things.

Jumping in games where there's no particular reason for jumping. An arbitrary jump button. Who the fuck goes around jumping all the time? Eg Dragon Age.

Anything hard.

Also, anything too easy.

Is looking under stairs a mechanic?

Okay then. Stealth sections that involve sneaking up behind a totally oblivious, perfectly placed goon and knocking them out with one hit/strangle etc. 

Over and over and over.

Stealth sections in general.

Kow wrote:

Carpenters I'm done with: Karen.

Don't knock The Carpenters!! Grrr

b0r1s wrote:

Kow wrote:

Carpenters I'm done with: Karen.

Don't knock The Carpenters!! Grrr

That was their best album, yes.

No return for punching bins hoping to scrounge an apple please.

Any shoe-horned moral choice at the end of a game. The outcomes you've made up for me from making either choice are completely arbitrary, or so starkly presented as a good, correct choice and a bad one that there's no point in doing it.

Skerret wrote:

Rechargeable health is a perfectly valid mechanic if properly used.  Other games, like Dark Souls et al, work better without it as it would compromise the fighting mechanics.  It's FINE

Dark Souls lets you carry health potions doesn't it? I'd argue that's still a recharging health mechanic, it's just not an automatic one. It still avoids most of the tedious backtracking and choke points. I suppose it's arguable, when I think of health packs I think of instant use collectibles.

Besides, more broadly, if you and your opponent both have an automatic recharging health mechanic, then fighting mechanics tend to remain unchanged. Yes, you can back off and let your health recharge, but only at the expense of allowing your opponent to do the same and essentially restarting the battle from scratch.

And finally, I'm not sure why the fighting in Dark Souls is worth preserving. That slow, clunky combat is the very reason I never got into the game.

You just need to stick 20 hours into it before it gets good.

I gave up at 18, damn.

Escort missions. Especially ones where the 'escortee' is a brain dead AI that stands completely still at the checkpoint in a hail of bullets mewling like a child that they are getting wasted. You then have to run around like a suicidal idiot shooting goons as they spawn or learn the pattern that they spawn in.

That sort of mechanic has prevented me finishing a number of games on hard or veteran because I have better things to do with my time (I haven't really).