Features That ALL Video Games Should Have (Part 1)

I am a realist, or as some people like to say, a pessimist, when it comes to video games and everything else. Sure, I have moments of happiness but the majority of my time in video games comes from criticizing them to the point where I never want to play them again. Nitpicking in particular is a big hobby of mine. I’ve compiled a list of seemingly small (but very major) things that ALL video games should have..

Separation of Sound

- Now this may only be an annoyance only to me but the first thing I do when I start a video game is change the sound settings. In-game sound effects go WAY down. Music goes down a little. Voice sound goes all the way up. I like to understand perfectly what the characters are saying in order to understand the story. Far too many games do not have a separation of sound which often leads to dialogue that I cannot understand. I can’t imagine this is hard at all to include.

Subtitles

- Most video games have subtitles but certainly not all of them. It is not just people with impaired hearing that need subtitles. Sometimes I want to understand what is going on when the music or sound effects are exceedingly loud. I am a person who really wants to understand the story and sometimes I just can’t understand the voice acting of certain characters. Assassin’s Creed made infamous headlines in 2007 when it released without subtitles. How could you forget them?? Heck, I would PAY to go up to Montreal and do the subtitles for the game just to get into the credits of one of my favorite games ever.

Short start up screen

- Listen, if I bought this game then I probably know who developed and published it. You don’t need to remind me in the form of an unskippable mini cut scene of what your company logo is. When I put in my disc and start it up I want to be at the game menu within 5 seconds. That’s right, 5 seconds is all it should take. Just imagine how much of your life you’ve wasted sitting and waiting for a game to start up. Well it certainly doesn’t need to take that long. If a company is worried about advertisement then post your logo all over the start menu…just don’t waste my time.

Pausable and skippable cut scenes

- You know the drill. You are watching a very important cut scene when something in real life requires your attention; your mother or girlfriend calling you, someone knocking at the door or breaking into your house. You have to pause the movie but you can’t. The reverse is also true: you want to skip a scene but the game won’t let you. Here is an easy solution: whenever you press the start button in any game, you go to a pause menu where you can choose to skip if you want. Games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Jak 3 had this. Easy solution. Problem solved.

Timers

- Some people (including myself) want to know how long a game takes to complete. HOW HARD IS IT to include a timer for your video game? IT IS NOT HARD AT ALL. There is no reason why 100% of video games should not have a timer to record time spent in the game.

Replayable levels

- Have any of you ever experienced the following?: Your friend is at your house and you want them to see the epic Cronos battle from God of War 3 or a certain awesome scene in Dead Space 2 when Isaac climbs out of a vent. Did you create a save right before that fight? No? Sorry, better luck next time. This is another feature in video games that doesn’t seem like it would be hard to implement. The God of War games (one of my favorite series ever) is well known for NOT having this feature. Listen game developers: We want to be able to play certain parts of your game without replaying the entire game.

Saving at checkpoints

- I remember playing Uncharted back in 2007 and being blown away by the entire game. One thing really surprised me. The game had a checkpoint literally every minute. Not only that, the game SAVED at every checkpoint. What does this mean? I can turn off my console and when I start the game again I will be within 1 minute of where I left off. This is extremely convenient. True, this would be bad for certain game types (such as RPGs) but I want to see more games that save for you, and often.

EDIT: I forgot two things

Skippable Credits

- Defeat the final boss. Watch the last cut scene. Credits roll. Skip in order to reach the end game save. Skip. SKIP?!! Seriously, are you REALLY going to make me watch a list of names go by? You think by making the credits unskippable that I am actually going to sit and watch them? Screw that. I'll unplug my TV and punch myself in the kidney until I think they're over. If you think about it logically, there is NO reason to have mandatory credits in a video game since you can't control what a person does...although, now that I think about it, there are a lot of gullible people in this world...

Text flowing in website age gates

- Video gamers know a thing or two about age gates. We have to lie about our birth date every time we enter an M-rated website. The problem is, when I type in the day, it doesn't always automatically go to the month. You know how some websites do this and some don't? Are you telling ME that I have to move the freaking mouse all the way to the next text slot??? Screw that! I'll just bring up 50,000 tabs of your website and lag up your server.

[GrieverSoul]

I COMPLETELY agree with everything you said.

I bought a 360 2 months ago and played Halo Reach. I needed to know why this is the most selling game in the system. First, the subtutiles werent present in certain ingame scenes. During gameplay the characters talked about things I couldnt listen due to the gun fight sounds. That severely affected my perception of the story. Thus, didnt thought it was that great. Its just an example, not bashing the game because, overall, its a really good one.

[TheDareDevil]

I agree with every point you said. Simple solution for cutscenes -
Press Start to pause a cutscene and press A or X to skip it

@GrieverSoul I agree with you about Reach, I can't understand the story because of the sound effects of the game.

[MidnytRain]

You need to rename your third heading. It sounds like you DON'T think video games need long start-up screens.

[The Matrix]

Thanks for pointing out one of the only flaws in an otherwise tidy blog and taking the time to make a post about it. You remind me of myself and are an inspiration to children everywhere.

[MidnytRain]

I agree with the pausable and skippable cutscenes. It was one of the many things that made me love Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I usually only use subtitles for military games because I find it really hard to follow their stories for some reason. Or like you said, when characters are talking and there are a bunch of explosions going off. I just don't get why some devs will throw in important plot points when I'm likely not paying attention to them.

[Paragon]

I agree with everything you said too, ESPECIALLY regarding subtitles. Most of this stuff should be in all video games by now, but instead you get a somewhat broken 'interface'.

[dinkeldinkse]

Especially the first point. It gets really annoying having to have subtitles on just to understand what is being said.

[MrAwesome]

Agree 100%! I'm sometimes surprised by simple mistakes like these that bring down a game experience and sometimes even ruin it.
Also costumizable controls, I've played games literally ruined by bad control lay out that the player himself could fix, I'm a ps3 gamer and hate it being forced to use R2 or RT to shoot, same with xbox players who can't use R1 or RB to shoot.

[Sprudling]

I hate it when games don't have camera settings. A choice between 'Normal' or 'Inverted' for both axes individually. Not having the camera work as I want it can ruin an otherwise perfectly good game.

[The Matrix]

Good call. I've never personally had a problem with that but some people do like inverted.

[therealminime]

Great list, I agree with everything.

The only thing I'd add is all games need to save when you exit the game. I hate having "all unsaved progress will be lost" pop-up when I'm quitting a game. It should be mandatory for the game to save when you quit.

I also think that forcing someone to sit through the credits isn't a bad thing mainly because there are so many people that work for so long on a single game, the least you can do is see their name go by. But that's just me and I certainly understand why you'd want to skip credits.

[jessupj]

I definitely agree with everything. Specially the skippable and pausable cutscenes. How many times does an important cutscene come on and you're annoying girlfriend can't take 2 seconds to look at the tv to realise there's dialouge, but instead start talking about crap and you're expected to listen because she can't get the fact that games are more then gameplay these days.

Fortunately my missus is really good about it, but I have a lot of friends who's girlfriends that just don't know when to stop talking.