[noknowncure]

I loathe so many kinds of puzzles.

Items that you know fine well you'll need later on - Cameras, rope, poles, you know, the adventure game basics - that you can't pick up, or sometimes even interact with, until you have a particular conversation. See also places a character will refuse to enter/investigate/open.

"I have no reason to open that cupboard"

What?! You'll pick up bloody rags from a dustbin to fashion a rudimentary rope, but you won't open Doctor Thevillain's cupboard of secret plans and exposition, because you currently don't see the point?!*


I'm also not a fan of timing puzzles. Particularly ones where your actions have to coincide with, say, the direction that another character is facing, as they're seldom clear and, if your timing is coincidentally wrong, it's easy to think that a phrase such as "But they'll see me" means that you're barking up the wrong tree entirely.


Another hated - and for this example, theoretical - scenario. Despite being surrounded by the bountious wealth of mother nature herself, your character has their heart set on eating a coconut: Find an outrageously illogical way of opening it, all the while, ignoring the bananas, apples, roast suckling pigs, supermarket chains and 'free all day' five star restaurants that seem a much more feasible option to the player.

Not a puzzle as such, but that horrible feeling you get when you've completed all the objectives you can currently think of, and yet no new leads are presented to you. How are you meant to know that, to continue the game, you have to return and sit in your room?!

What else... it's fun, this... oh, characters who refuse to pick up things that are dirty/wet, when it's obvious they need to.

Those literal puzzle puzzles - sliders, chess set ups and the like - that offer no clue as to their solution. It's grim arriving at a point where a dull, static screen is all that awaits you, flatly refusing to offer up the slightest hint of what it is you have to do. The cookie puzzle in Still Life is a good example of this. If they'd had another clue somewhere in the kitchen it would have helped, but as it was you just had to mindlessly plough on, knowing that you'd probably have made a mistake, but never knowing until the whole damn procedure had been run through.

Click on the same hotspot 357 times to discover something, is another pet hate. In fact, I don't think I actually like adventure games at all! What have I been doing with my life?!


*This is a hypothetical game, fact fans. Don't start rushing out trying to find it. It's in my head.