There are many things I dislike in games. Some of them are as simple as the dialog or story, then there are some that drive me absolutely crazy. I don’t know what they teach in video game design schools but some of my pet peeves keep popping up. I can suffer through a bad story if the gameplay is fun, but poor gameplay designs can become inexcusable, only a couple of hours into the game.

You may agree with some of my choices, you may not. Either way, you can my top 5 picks for worst game design fads, after the jump.

1. Quicktime Events: There are two categories of Quicktime Events: The ones that allow you to do cool moves, and the ones that are essential to survive. I can’t stand either of them. Look, my reflexes are pretty good, from my years of gaming, but having an event pop up out of nowhere, asking me to hit ‘A’ as quickly as possible, then hit both triggers to survive is just irritating.

Examples: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Bourne Conspiracy, Resident Evil 4.

2. Unskippable Cutscenes: This one is pretty self-explanatory, but there are some worse than others. If you’re going to have a boss fight directly after a 3 minute cutscene, you need to be able to skip it. It’s one thing to have to sit through the cinematics your second time through the game, but it’s another to watch the same one five times, because the boss killed you.

Examples: Metal Gear Solid (any of them), God of War: Chains of Olympus and Okami (PS2).

3. Broken Controls: This one is the bane of many gamers around the world. There are poor controls, and then there are the broken ones. If you can’t get the character to move the way you need them to move in order to finish the game, there’s a problem. If the A button has two completely different bindings to it that are context sensitive, the player may find himself doing things he didn’t want to do. Also, the Shift buttons (pushing the stick down) should not be used for anything where you might need to hold them down while moving the stick for extended periods of time.

Examples: Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Kane and Lynch, Warhawk

4. Auto-Aim: If there’s one thing I learned in my years of playing console FPS games, it’s that I absolutely hate it when the game decides to move my crosshair for me. Maybe if I was a complete newbie, I would welcome the little bit of help, but as a seasoned veteran of Call of Duty 4 and Halo, I don’t need the game to decide my targets for me. This is especially annoying when sniping in CoD4, or using the Rocket Launcher in Halo 3.

Examples: Call of Duty 4, Halo (all of them), Most console FPS.

5. Invincible Enemies / Objects: If I’m a super soldier in the army that has been genetically developed to be a master of killing with every type of weapon known to existence. Why can’t I blow a door up with a rocket launcher? I can understand it in terms of gameplay, story progression, and technology – but that doesn’t make it any less irritating. That moves us on to the invincible enemies, especially in RPGs. They don’t let you know that the enemy can’t be defeated until you die and the story continues. There were times when I used up plenty of supplies trying to kill an enemy that I didn’t know couldn’t be defeated, this has also caused me to allow myself to be killed my seemingly impossible enemies only to have the game over screen pop up.

Recent examples: God of War: Chains of Olympus, Final Fantasy (all of them), Blue Dragon

I’m sure that you don’t agree with all of those, or maybe you have your own suggestions. Head on over to our forums and discuss.