7 Time-Sucks that Should be Illegal in Games

video games are a wonderful way to pass the time why sit around board when you could be doing this this may not look exciting but you just wait until we get blue roses then they'll all see however some games don't seem to value the time we put into them they make us wait around we do boring things we don't want to do again or do criminally boring things that we didn't want to do in the first place oh my god if i have to slowly follow one more npc take a deep breath and some time for yourself as we go through seven time sucks that should be illegal in games but wear spoilers for the following or just skip past the spoiler crawl all together because we give you that option because we respect your time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] of all the criminal time sucks that need the immediate attention of whoever makes video game laws i'm looking at you interpol the most egregious is a bad checkpointing system specifically one that restores you after death to a point where you will have to slog through something difficult or boring despite having already slogged through it prior to your untimely demise however not all games realize quite how severe an infraction this is and waste our time by making us do the same things over and over terrible checkpointing systems can be found in kingdom hearts 1 and 2 and there are many many subsequent re-releases for example in the first game fail at a multi-stage boss fight and you're thrown right back to the start which considering these boss battles seem to last hours hurts more than watching your favorite characters getting naughted and if you had to retry a boss in the original version you couldn't even skip the cut scenes his heart belongs again to darkness all worlds begin in darkness and also and the heart is no different yes sorry to speak over you ansem but i've heard this a few too many times think this is a problem only old games have we wish one prime example released just last year is another square enix venture final fantasy vii remake in a massive deviation from the original you fight a bunch of horrible wiggly ink monsters at the end like the heartless from kingdom hearts took a wrong turn and wandered into the wrong game the ending consists of multiple battles against these foes and if you fail at any point you're kicked out and have to start over them again plus select retry from checkpoint and you could be thrown even further back into the game it does not care if you're 26 minutes deep into this fight that is somehow 10 times longer and more difficult than any other battle you faced in the game you got to do it all in one go or you have to replay the battle restart from the last checkpoint or more likely just rage quit and watch a video of the ending on double speed sorry citizens of midkar i've to do [Music] [Music] we understand that in games your character will generally move at a terrific speed that if you did it in real life would see you either drafted for the olympics or dissected by the feds to find the source of your incredible sprint powers but that just makes it all the more aggravating to have to play in a world where nobody else can keep up with you as i think we have all endured one too many times the curse of the slow-moving npc we could certainly use the extra help around here we've covered a lot of ground the last few months but things would go so much faster if we had more people with your training literally nothing on the planet will make you want to chew your own hands off with impatient frustration more than finding yourself constantly a short way ahead of your npc companion waiting for them to take their sweet time catching up to you as if they were the hero and not an enormous drain on your valuable time of course not every game is guilty of this many have mastered the art of having non-player characters elegantly keep pace with you ah but the fact that it provably can be done just makes it all the more eye twitch inducing when you encounter your millionth npc whose walking pace seems to be deliberately set at the exact midpoint between your walk and run speed [Music] i feel like there's probably a word in german for the distinctive blend of impatience and despair this is making me feel in conclusion it's high time slow walking was outlawed for all npcs except in exceptional circumstances like the grey beards i mean they're elderly the air is thin up in the mountains we'll have to excuse their torturous walking speed [Music] now your turn oh my god okay exception revoked now i know you're a busy woman so i won't take up much of your time time being um a precious commodity the very start of a game is important it's exciting to see how a developer has chosen to introduce you to the story they're about to tell and the world in which it takes place ooh exciting but then there's this hey you are finally awake you were trying to cross the border right walked right into that imperial ambush same as us and that thief over there the second third and fourth time you see one of these lengthy unskippable intros it gets increasingly unfun to be stuck in a cart you're not in control over for instance a nord's last anyone for i spy we've all played the opening of this game on like 50 different devices now why do we have to sit through it again oh no what's on this staircase i hope it's not i'll doing the dragon oh hello alduin see you in the courtyard downstairs in 20 seconds the idea of these lengthy introductions is to set the scene and get you used to the world you'll be playing in as well as the basic controls and mechanics of the game splendid splendid now let's see which is wonderful if this is your first time playing but all too often these once impressive sequences become a huge unskippable chore look fallout 3 i know you want me to become emotionally attached to liam neeson before i leave but i'm pretty sure you could do this in less time and without me having to live through the traumatic experiences of being born and getting bullied at my own birthday party i'm hungry and that stupid robot destroyed the cake give me that sweet roll you got from old lady palmer weirdly these long intro sequences tend to occur most often in games that have famously wide open worlds and promise non-linear freedom please rockstar we love arthur morgan and his cowboy chumps but just cannot with this unskippable snow dredging and while we're at it hey pokemon we all know how this works now just let me pick a starter and go no i don't care about hop [Music] oh my god just give me the fire rabbit and off [Music] there are some missions across video games you end up playing time and time again like the one where you're suddenly a sniper for some reason or the one where you must gather herbs remind me again why video games are good i mean i know they are i just can't bring it to mind right now but one mission we'd be more than happy to never ever play again is that one where you have to creep so so slowly behind a target avoiding detection for absolutely ages spanning console generations and genres what these missions all have in common is that they are hugely disrespectful of your time because you probably didn't fire up a video game to crouch behind something pressing literally no buttons while the character you're tailing practices for the slow walking world championships can't let them see me regrettably therefore the follow mission must be banned henceforth condemned as one of gaming's most painful time sucks with further sanctions to be levied in cases where it turns out the target knew you were following them all along rendering the whole endeavor futile or when messing up even once sends you all the way back to the start [Music] i'm sorry nintendo but you're going to jail yes all of you we've grown accustomed to dying in games much like in real life death is inevitable but there's one particular way to die in games that is always a real time wasting slap in the face and that is the unexpectedly unjustifiably instant death fall that send you right back to the beginning bump into an enemy as yoshi and you've got another shot but make one wrong move above this love a bit and you're losing an entire life god dang it yoshi it's harder to sink time into games that don't give you an extra chance to get back to safety if you whiff a jump especially in platformers that let you off with a single knock to your health if you touch a regular enemy but for some reason lava or spikes are an insta-kill okay spelunky but did you have to kill the dog too not all games treat you meanly when it comes to a serious fall see doom's generosity in placing you back where you fell or there's mario odyssey where inadvertently touching lava gives mario a chance to navigate his way back to safety suffering no penalty beyond third-degree burns all over his buttocks and anus so increasingly as busy people we have no patience for environmental hazards that will kill you in one go and yes we know this is part of the dark souls experience but you tell that to someone who gets this far into sen's fortress only for this to happen well there goes the last 20 minutes of my life and all my souls and my actual soul yup there it went nope it's gone it's gone [Music] playing all the way through a game is a significant time investment a typical aaa title for instance the last of us part 2 taking approximately 25 hours to complete in that time i could watch jurassic park in its entirety 11.7 times so frankly when i play a game i expect to be treated with the respect due to anyone who has sacrificed seeing dennis nedry get owned by a dilophosaurus 11.7 times one way a game can show it respects the time you spent with it is to let you quickly and easily replay levels or missions that you've already beaten because if you want to replay that one mission where you torch the weed fields in far cry 3 you should be able to do that without having to start the game all over again that mission of course famously uses a filthy thrashy and licensed skrillex and damien marley song so we've had to add our own music [Music] it's a little different but you get the idea sadly though you can't do that and there are so many more games that deny their players the chance to hop back into particular missions whether it be to hoover up a few more collectibles or simply to relive a precious memory like that time ukraine gamed a dragon right in its scaly face [Applause] precious memories it's such a shame to finish a game and find there's no way to hop back into a mission or replay a boss fight so we applaud games that do make the effort like red dead redemption 2 which lets you replay any story mission you like albeit with protagonist arthur morgan resets to his default appearance and outfit put the man down gentlemen which is a small price to pay you'll doubtless agree unless you're andy oh my god what have you done to my arthur where's his mustache you've got him dressed like a demo driscoll oh my god oh he's not even got a waistcoat on oh i can't i can't i can't look i can't look and here we are lovely just as you promised as soon as i am set up here we can return to the matter of your visions lots of video games have grinding in them heck for some games that grinding is the whole point and it's part of the reason their fans love them ah they're having fun i mean we have to assume if not why even in less grindy games some players will happily go and grind away at side quests or enemies skulls in order to ensure they get enough xp to be enjoyably powerful throughout their adventure also you can find all the enemies who murdered you the first time you met them and single hit kill them with a powered up hander ah i'm having fun i mean i have to assume but doing this repetitive work in order to raise your stats isn't for everyone some folks don't have the time or patience and understandably just want to get on with a story so it's pretty heartbreaking when games lock off the next chunk of an adventure until you've killed enough grunts that your in-game numbers are arbitrarily high enough in assassin's creed valhalla for instance before getting to play ival's story full of cool mythical norse badassery you first got to christ upgrade your settlement and of course unless you've already grinded your way through enough raids to put off the entire population from joining the local monastery you won't have enough resources to build everything you need so instead of visiting asgard you've got to slog your way through yet another bunch of raids that are exactly like all the other ones you've already done just because you don't have enough supply barrels what the hell does a viking need barrels for anyway did you not see what i can achieve with a single blade this is frustrating because when handled right blocking off a main quest can be a subtle and engaging way of nudging you into interesting side missions that flesh out the world for instance having to earn enough power to unlock the story in dragon age inquisition or spending a day solving random crimes for spider-man to unlock the next plot beat i've got time to check on the city yeah but there's an oh so fine line between this and another joyless grind please assassin's creed i just want to find out what happens to aval stop making me harass monks i'm sorry they made me do this so those were some of the time sucks in games that frankly we believe should be outlawed and made completely illegal can you think of any other examples if so let us know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video there's every chance you'll enjoy the other things we make on this channel we have a wonderful community here on on outside extra and outside xbox our sister channel as well as list videos we do let's plays we do live streams and we play tabletop we have a dungeons and dragons campaign that we've been running for ages we play blades in the dark as well it's extremely bingeable stuff so do check it out and thank you for watching goodbye

Channel: Outside Xtra

Views: 370,860

Keywords: Ellen Rose, Luke Westaway, Outside Xtra

Id: fkhgtEoY_k0

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021