Shadow of Chore-dor
Variety may be the spice of life, but some folks truly do like it mild - one player's fun is another's ulcer-inducing tedium. The likes of EVE Online may seem needlessly stuffy to some, but to its scores of fans around the world, this strategy-heavy space sim is naught short of a bureaucratic bonanza. Likewise Call of Duty. Where some see the pinnacle of adrenaline pumping gunplay, others observe a shallow and increasingly weary formula. 'Different strokes for different folks', 'to each their own' and all that. Making the case for why certain popular brands are bland, while others represent the height of adventure, is a biased, ultimately fruitless endeavour. But individual game mechanics? Well now we're talking.
Dragging/ hiding bodies
Whatever happened to 'painting the town red', to tiling the aisles with scores of the dead? Nowadays it's all 'hide this', and 'drag that', 'sneak over here', and 'duck under there'. There was a time, not so long ago, when most missions bore an uncanny resemblance to Call of Duty's own 'No Russian', as waves upon waves of oblivious enemies lined up like lambs to the slaughter. Mere targets in a shooting gallery they were, oblivious to their buddy's blood curdling screams and the ever-expanding stack of cadavers piled high in the corner. Bless those poor, dumb digital fools, they made life so much simpler.
Compulsory 'scavenger hunts'
Rocky Balboa may have pursued poultry with the best of them, but even he'd have a hard time contemplating some of gaming's wildest goose chases. 600 sets of this, a thousand shards of that - video games delight in scattering their lamest wares all throughout the land - ostensibly to encourage exploration, but also to pad out the experience. Where most titles are wise enough to feature these 'scavenger hunts' as purely optional excursions, some bloody-minded types continue to utilise them as mainline objectives.
Inventory management
Managing an inventory is a lot like playing buckaroo, except in this instance the donkey is you. But while the plastic buck bolts at the first sign of excessive weight, video game icons are much more likely to trudge on regardless, crushed ankles or no - shattered spines be damned! One tiny milligram too many and it's hello zimmer frame, goodbye Sunday football. The real trouble comes with knowing just which items to keep. Which troll skull will fetch the highest price? Is it worth my while to trade this fancy tome? Has the bottom really fallen out of the orcish genital market?
Completing lame/ uninspired puzzles
When it comes to video game design, establishing a killer mechanic is only half the battle. You see, in order to get the very best out of that swanky new system you'll also need to know when not to use it. By depending on one key feature, developers run the risk of overexposing it, thereby ruining its innate charm. You need diversions, asides, an occasional change of pace. Some games achieve this by inventing a second, equally polished play style, while others deign to dip into the industry's well-worn bag of tricks. One of the most popular of which is the 'set-piece puzzle'.
Enduring the same dialogue chain over and over again
Catchphrases! Everybody enjoys a good catchphrase. Some witty slogan, pithy comment or blithe remark, scrunched up and tossed into our collective psyches like a burning ball of napalm. You might be forgiven for thinking that they all originate with advertisers, but the truth of the matter is, it's all chance and repetition. As an experiment, try rewinding a tv show four or five times. Simply pick out a piece of dialogue and replay it every five seconds. Is it starting to sound like a catchphrase yet? Good. Familiarity can be a blast, though it often leads to contempt.
Reloading
Is there anything more irksome than replenishing a rifle in the midst of a massive battle? Its the combat equivalent of squatting down to re-tie your own laces, only without all of that 'sporting conduct' crap to stop the other team from blasting you into oblivion. Of all the chores on this list, this entry makes perhaps the most conventional sense. After all, how else are we to believe that our weapons just keep on going? "It's super-duper realistic, dude, you can't just fire on forever!". Well to that I say - what about fantasy titles? Why does plasma, or better yet, magic, need the occasional top up? Hell, if it's realism you're after why not include the other necessities of modern warfare, like cleaning up and maintaining your rifle, dealing with jams, and pooing in a ditch?
Stat grinding
As surely as if this were a how-to guide to nightclub douchebaggery, grinding was always going to appear on this list. However, in the interests of sparing you all yet another 'grinding = lame' thinkpiece, I've decided to set my sights on a slightly more specific type of grind. That's because even the most mundane of monster slaughtering objectives i.e. 'butcher these 16 cow-sharks', is infinitely more enjoyable than the kind of stat boosting blandness that pervades the average 'RPG-lite'. Take the sports genre for instance, with its seasons-spanning career modes, merrily thrusting players into the shoes of some aspiring Messi, Mayweather or Michael Jordan.
Travelling long distances
There's a reason most folks will gladly commit in-game suicide rather than endure a long and dreary walk back home. You see, the bigger games get, the harder it becomes for developers to fill up those vast and empty landscapes. And while it's certainly true that some titles perform admirably in this regard, no amount of shelters or minor points of interest can change the fact that there's still a whole lot of walking to be done. And while fast-travel mechanics can alleviate most of these issues, the player will still likely endure many an unwanted trek in the time it takes for them to become available.
I, tedious
Man, that was a painful to get through, huh? It's almost as if the writer made it purposefully difficult to read Like wading through treacle, while wearing a set of Forrest Gump leg braces and tethered to a bungee cord. Ah well. To suggest some horrifically tedious challenges of your own, head on down to the comments section below. Alternatively, just keep on living your life.
