Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more things wrong (or should that be right?) with videogames, another thirteen fresh irks rear their ugly heads. Try not to enjoy these too much, they must account for a lot of game related injuries:

1. Deserted Online Battlefields

You sit down for a game of your favourite online shooter. You’re hyped – you’ve got a massive urge to roll heads, to cause havoc, to devastate the opposition. You’ve got snacks, energy drinks and comfy clothes. The lobby is full. You are ready to roll, but the real question is, are your foes ready for you? 3, 2, 1… Eliminate enemy players. “Let’s Go Marines!”, and you go. You go far, you go wide, you go everywhere, but no one is to be seen but your teammates. Minutes pass and what starts as mere irritation becomes a genuine annoyance. You start getting frustrated – your teammates are having no problems out on the field, just what is the deal? You begin to frantically explore the map’s places of interest in the hope of finding and drawing enemy blood. You hear the rattling of gunfire, but when you investigate the origins of the sound, you’re presented with a nothingness you just can’t fathom. You long to hear “Enemy tango, spotted”, but those sweet words of insight never come.

And then the game ends. What? Better stick to singleplayer, son.

2. Boss Battle²

You walk into a new area, one that looks suspiciously empty and cage-like. The screen fades to black, a cutscene plays, a boss is introduced. After getting over the excitement of a boss battle, ahem, it’s time to show them who’s, er, boss? You start whacking away: pummelling them with your fists, slashing with your sword, firing with your uzis and rockets. They’re down. Wow, that was… admittedly a little too easy. A cutscene plays, it’s obvious that this opening fight was just a light test of skill. The boss suddenly removes their mask/injects themselves/drinks a potion/laughs for a minute or two before transforming into a new, grander form.

A new boss with new cycles to learn, and a much bigger challenge – it’s hard to get excited when you’re being beaten to a pulp. But you persevere, and eventually they fall to your greatness. Another cutscene plays: “ah, this must be the victory scene, then”, you say. The boss falls into acid/falls off a cliff/melts into a puddle. Your character celebrates and starts to walk off, that is until a large sound booms and they turn around, only to see an even bigger version of the boss you just beat, staring, laughing. You sit in disbelief, and begin the battle, only to die. You re-load and realise you must do it all again from the first form, this time knowing what’s to come.

It’s almost as bad as when a boss has multi-tiered health bars: purple, then pink, then blue, then light blue, then light green, then green, then red. Like fighting a boss made of onion.

3. Moonwalking like an idiot

First-person shooters are the main culprit here – third-person less so, but doing this will never fail to annoy. It usually, no, always happens when you see an enemy (or enemies) that either have insanely good melee ability (e.g. the deathclaws of Fallout), ridiculous speed or shooting skills that decrease with range. You want to keep shooting them as you run, so the only option is to run backwards. You think the enemy is toast, barely being able to touch you while you fire rounds into their torso. And then you stumble into a tree and get caught. You need to reload, you panic. The enemy catches up and makes you sorry you ever decided to run. Caves and other enclosed areas cause the most problems, as you get shuffled into finicky corners and crevices, and there’s always the possibility of falling down cliffs and other perilous hazards.

4. Swim until you can’t see land

Swimming in games is one of those things that no matter how good the mechanics for it may be, it still ends up being, well, a bit rubbish. More of a chore than a gameplay element you look forward to, swimming is rarely done well in games, and even the best games seem to include the ability just to make you realise how much better the rest of the game is. Case in point: Super Mario Galaxy. The game has near flawless controls, and even if the swimming is done better than 99% of its competitors, you still don’t embrace them. Perhaps it’s the loss of speed; the need to take air every minute; the heaviness of control or how tough it can be to exit in and out of it – games and water just don’t mix. Lever puzzles are a genuinely frightening prospect, and a bucketload of scuba diving enemies even more. Game developers take note: leave the ocean to boats, jetskis and BioShock. Not every character needs to be able to swim.

5. Timers

I don’t have much to say about timers in games because I’M UNDER A TIME LIMIT AND CAN’T RELAX OR DO ANYTHING WITHOUT RUSHING.

6. Too much momentum

Almost exclusively a by-product of a platforming game with exaggerated, floaty movement - realising you have made a jump with too much momentum swinging your way is a cold harsh lesson in death. You see the gap you have to clear, the distant platform seemingly large enough to take your momentum. You walk back a few paces and then dash to the edge. You jump. You jump high, fast and long. You jump a little too much with a little too much excitement. Your character lands, but with a heavy drop and a concerned face. You try to straighten up and hold back but you fear it’s too late. Your character is slowing but the edge of the platform beckons. Your character is a goner, falling off the edge with a meek whimper and a sigh at the realisation you have to do it all over again from the previous checkpoint. Probably should’ve been more careful – the platforms were made of ice, to be fair.

7. More and more peripherals

Steering wheels, plastic guitars, microphones, pedals, inflatable boats, golf sticks, lightguns, vitality sensors, bongo drums, plectrums, gaming chairs, gaming glasses, skateboards, balance boards, toilet seats. Okay, the last one is made up but I wouldn’t put it past an Eastern developer. When hardware like Kinect is proposing a controller-less world of videogames, it’s easy to forget that notion when companies are churning out new and generally useless peripherals. Unless it is significant to the gameplay, it’s hard to get excited about them, excluding anything the wonderful Harmonix make, of course.

8. Games can be serious, honest!

You’re playing videogames in the living room, because that’s where the big TV lives. You’re playing Bayonetta or Star Ocean: The Last Hope or Dead or Alive 4 or Fahrenheit or ‘insert potentially embarrassing title here’. You’re enjoying yourself – this game is pretty sick, you think. A cutscene starts. Bayonetta is in a helicopter, a drop of water falls down the tight cloth of her breast. Your mum walks in: “Dinner”, she says. You try to pause it but you’re not quick enough. She takes a glance at the scenes on screen – a man ogling a sexified Sarah Palin. She leaves the room. Damage done.

9. Forget trigger happy, we need to be save happy

Gamers can be assuming folk. We get so used to the way games work that when something happens, or does not happen that we expect, we get upset – especially if there are dire consequences to be had. Gamers have become so attuned to autosave that we can almost guess the points where a game will save, showing that animated icon as proof of our superiority. We expect a game to have saved at the beginning of a new mission; at the start of a new world; when we buy some gear; when we unlock a new track; when we complete a tournament; when we leave an area. So when this doesn’t happen, and we turn off our consoles out of frustration or fatigue, only to load a save to an area you beat hours before, it’s hard to hold back the tears. Games that introduce manual save routines are generally helpful, but it’s easy to take it for granted – you’ll see a save point and think “bugger it, I’ll save at the next one”, only to die a few minutes later. In games where you can save at any time, the same problem persists – you get cocky, and it only takes a cheap shot to the ribs and a re-load for you to become a save happy gamer. Dead Space 2’s hardcore mode (only being able to save thrice) can do one.

10. The unmentionables

You’ve been playing a game for a few hours now, but you feel like you’re missing something, or the game is missing something – but most likely you’re missing something. Why are these enemies taking so long to kill? Why are my powers taking ages to recharge? Why can’t I reload? You ask these questions yet you never follow them up. No, you’re too proud for that. And then it hits you like a bus, halfway through the game, by luck or by logic: so that’s how you holster! Now I can run properly!; Oh, so you can’t use your powers when standing in the light, your body needs darkness to survive, gotcha; The Pipboy has a light!?

11. Falling at the last hurdle

Arguably the most infuriating irk of this list, it is never easy to take falling at the last hurdle. Whether it’s the last note of a Rock Band song, missing the last platform or losing against a boss when you’ve got them down to a fragment of health, the anger and frustration that follows threatens you to shut off your console completely as you try and come to terms with your victory being robbed. You can usually see it coming – a boss is about to smash down on your character, your palms are sweaty, you try to evade their attacks but to no avail. Game over.

Of course, if you beat a part of the game against the lowliest of circumstances - beating a boss with little health remaining or beating a time by milliseconds – you get the opposite effect, a kind of ecstatic moan: nghhhhhhhhh yes.

12. Environmental lies

Wooden crates, glass windows, explosive barrels, fallen soldiers, tanks of water, you’ve got to love them, and you’ve got to love them even more if they’re destructible, or at least interactive. If they’re not however, it seems a bit naff. Part of being a gamer is seeing everything a game has to offer, which means breaking every crate, smashing every shard of glass and smacking every dead entity to see how much blood can be spilt. If a wooden crate doesn’t break under the harsh fire of an AK47, or an explosive barrel doesn’t, well, explode, it makes for a lesser game, and a less than enthused gamer.

13. Long numbers are not nice

You’ve bought some points; you want to renew your Live subscription; you want an Adidas tracksuit for your avatar. You scratch the foil, check out the code and stare. Twenty-five digits stare back and taunt, the process for putting them in even more unbearable if you put it in wrong the first time. Wii codes have sixteen digits to input, while Sony rules the roost with an encouraging twelve, the same number that applies to Nintendo’s bewildering friend codes. The day we get into single digits will be a very happy day indeed.

And with an irk on long numbers rounding off a long article, it seems apt to leave on an unwelcome thought: fantastic games come and go, but irks are here to stay.