Us gamers play videogames a lot. They take us to fantastic new lands, let us drive the cars we dream of, and put us in the shoes of many a charming character. When all this good is happening, however, it’s easy to forget the not so bright parts of the videogame world - the parts that constantly grate, that never seem to cease. Of course it’s easy to play a flawless game of football online, but there’s always the chance of it all crashing, even if it’s a rare occurrence. So as a reminder of some of the irks that plague videogames, here’s a list with all your favourites, doubtless you’ll have experienced the majority. Hopefully next time one of these affect you, you’ll laugh and see the brighter side of the problem. It always could be worse, eh?

1. The unreachable save point

Arguably one of the biggest videogame irks, the unreachable save point is unbelievably annoying. Of course it is reachable, but you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. It usually rears its ugly head when you’re called for dinner, or have to leave for work. You carry on playing, wearing out your fingers so fast as you stumble through the level in the hope of seeing a glimmer of a save point – the drinkable water of Prince of Persia, the shiny diamond of Final Fantasy, or a shade of white fabric in ICO. Your Mum is starting to raise her voice, you start to sweat, “Where is this bloody save point!?!”, you ask yourself, knowing you’ve played so far up to now. The previous save point is miles behind, all hope is gone, and you seem to be running in circles, essentially getting nowhere. But then, it appears. Jubilation! You shout with glee, and can finally eat your dinner that has now become cold, and you can finally go to sleep now its past 4am. While you could always pause, there’s always that chance your parents, siblings or spouse will turn it off. Now that would be disastrous.

2. Premature menu selection

Depending on the game, of course, this problem varies greatly. It’s the menus with a slow selection process that cause the most pain. The player has a small part to play regarding this irk, as you accidentally select ‘quit’ instead of ‘restart’, or ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’. You’ll be too keen in choosing – you’ve memorised the pause screen, you hit start and immediately fly towards ‘options’, or ‘restart from checkpoint’, but the computer can’t keep up with your brain or your fingers, and by the time you’ve made it to the option you want, you hit select and realise it’s jumped and you need to go back - nightmare! Of course this is not to say these game developers can escape the blame, as intuition and ease of use is largely forgotten sometimes when they have been made. The menus that exhibit extremely slow movements are invariably the worst, however, as trudging through the options feels like a tortoise through thick mud.

3. Stupidly stupid suicide

We’ve all been there, and it never fails to - quite literally - hurt. Almost every game lets you kill yourself, and sometimes curiosity just gets too much for you – or maybe you’re just a little b0rked. “That explosive barrel looks tempting”, you say as it stands by your side, “I wonder what’ll happen if I hit it with this wrench”. Similarly, you’ll check in a game to see if it has invisible barriers when it doesn’t. You nudge your character to the edge of a cliff, only to plummet to your death. Other frequent suicides include firing a rocket launcher and it catching a nearby fence bar, or shooting it at your feet in a frantic panic. Misjudging a plane’s turning cycle and you falling into the sea in an unsatisfying ‘plop’, and finally those suicides that are witnessed by all online, whether it’s a terrible grenade throw that bounces back into your face, or a mistimed jump over a deceptively large pit. And that minus one that shows up on the scoreboard like an uninvited guest? Unbearable.

4. The system crash

The system crash is universally known as one of the true terrors of the videogame world. Usually occuring when too many things happen on screen, or you mash the buttons a little too forcefully, this particular irk is hard to take. If it happens after beating a boss it’s especially annoying, but after an online game of your dominance, resulting in lost points and ranking - it’s intolerable. The day videogames don’t crash will be a very sweet day indeed.

5. Lost backtracking

Nobody likes backtracking in games, especially when overdone or implemented badly. “Oh look, I’ve been here before, and there’s nothing new to see or do, what tremendous fun!” is a common thought, but it’s when you get lost in a game that especially grates. If you know what you’re meant to do, where to go, then the backtracking is easier to take. It’s like one of those things in games that you come to expect, and wilfully suffer through. When a game doesn’t tell you what you’re meant to do however, it’s hard not to grab your testicles in frustration. Assassin’s Creed is a great example of horrid backtracking. You’ll be stuck with what to do next and there are no prompts with where to go to progress in the game. You’ll spend hours riding to Jerusalem and back for just a whiff of the next mission - a sly bit of speech, a roll of text, but nothing comes your way. In the end you cave, and point your browser to an FAQ, defeated and weak.

6. The logically illogical puzzle

An irk spawning from a player’s inability to think properly, or ability to think too much, this problem usually only surfaces on adventure games that treat its puzzles seriously. You spend hours in the same room, searching every corner, every crevice, just hoping for something to get you to the next area.

But it never comes, and you once again look up the answer while cursing your own ineptitude. Take something from a Tomb Raider game for instance. The answer’s right in front of you, but because you didn’t know the game let you climb walls or throw objects, you try everything but the answer. You’ll get your gun out and shoot the surrounding statues thinking that’ll get you through, or try to vault to a ledge that can’t be stood on, when deep down, you know you’re a hopeless human being who couldn’t work their way out of a wet paper bag. When you finally discover the answer to the puzzle, the cogs in your brain click, and you release a loud “oooooooh”, followed by a self face-palm. Sometimes the easiest puzzles cause the most grief.

7. The unskippable cutscene before a boss

The games that have these really need to be slapped, and hard. It’s something that could be so easily avoided – either make the cutscenes skippable, or not have one at all. It’s completely infuriating, especially if the scene lasts more than thirty seconds, or worse, it’s not particularly decent. If the boss is a tough nut to crack, then the more likely you’ll have to sit through the same mundane sequence, and the closer you’ll get to self mutilation. Yes, you know the boss has three forms, just why does the game insist on showing you its transformation in a lengthy moment, when nothing can be done to skip? Well, at least the amount of fury builds up in impatience translated firmly to big boss slaughter, not so cocky now are we, that naff boss from Resident Evil 5?

8. The last collectible hell

Some games thrive on collectibles. Their beauty relies on the instantly gratifying mechanic of collection. For purists, having things to collect in a game must often feel torturous, as you just have to find every, single, one. There are videogames that offer slightly tepid collecting experiences, dotting only a few collectibles around each level, but it’s those games where collection forms almost a central part of its existence where the hell comes from. Crackdown, Prince of Persia and of course the GTA games, have a massive amount of collectibles, and while they may be a joy to search out, it’s when you get to the very last one where you need the patience of a saint, and the nose of a bloodhound. “Ooo, I don’t remember this area, maybe this is where that last orb is!?”, but no, your hope is false. You start to hallucinate while wandering the map in a bid to seek its whereabouts, but you start to give up, it’ll never turn up - or maybe you just keeping looking in the same places, again and again. Perhaps a worse feeling than this is when you’ve used a help guide online after already collecting a certain amount, but on the last few have no idea which ones have been found and which are to be found, essentially leaving you to check out every collectible location, sapping hours of time and leaving you a limp potato on the sofa, all shrivelled and degenerate.

9. The random setlist

A more niche irk, this, and one linked with the peerless Rock Band games. Within the world tour, almost hundreds of so-called ‘random setlists’ are available to play for money and fans. They’re almost a requirement, but as the name suggests, contain entirely random songs. Of course this means you’ll either get good songs or bad songs, fun songs or boring songs. Unfortunately, for some obscure reason that song you’ve hated since the day you were born always comes up, or that song that seems to be in every other setlist, and has the cheek to show its face. You’ll never get a downloadable song, because that’d be just too nice of the computer, it wants you to suffer through five songs of unrelenting misery. Sometimes you’ll get a fantastic random setlist, but these are less likely. Well, maybe.

10. Accidentally talking to someone twice

Specific to RPGs, this irk varies in irritability dependant on how many lines of dialogue is registered in the plank you’ve engaged conversation with. It’s random enough that they’re happy to speak to a complete stranger, but to top it off they’re even more happy to repeat the exact same words, with not even a hint of sarcasm. “Okay, this is interesting, this statue is of the great Lord Seymour, he lived for SKIP… SKIP…, wait, what?! Ah crap, here we go again”. Maybe we’re all just a little trigger happy with our buttons, or maybe we should just stop talking to random folk altogether - we bring it on ourselves. Why talk if you’re not even bothered to listen? But it’s just too alluring, they may have an elixir!

11. Auto-save/checkpoint when you have hardly any health

You could call them invisible checkpoints, and usually they help massively, but sometimes they backfire. Not a problem if your health regenerates, this irk is much worse if you need medi packs or suchlike to regain health. You’ve just scraped through a relentless battle with numerous soldiers, used up all your health and armour and supplies are running low. You walk forward, through a door. Click. “Checkpoint save. Dammit!” – you moan with despair, as your task now seems impossible. Unable to take more than one shot, you now have to play the level countless times till you can fight your way through like a true ninja. The consolation to this irk is that it improves your skill, but at the cost of a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

12. USB controllers

You boot up your console and go to plug the controllers in. You guess which way up the USB needs to be, but alas of course, it’s the wrong way, only for you to put it in the ‘right’ way, only for you to then realise it was correct in the first place and that you hadn’t tried hard enough to get it in the first time. Two minutes game time, wasted.

13. Inconceivable wire tangle

After finishing the last game of the night on Rock Band, or Gears of War with a wired controller, you throw it down by the internet cable, the other controllers, your headphones and the headset. The next morning you wake to game away another day, only to spend the first ten minutes sorting out the ridiculous mess of wires that in the night seem to have magically wrapped their way around three other cables. The headset also seems to have the ability to get stuck round numerous wires, and really be a bastard. “Just bugger off you vile headset”, you say as you hurl the controller with the wrapped headset across the floor in disgust.

So there you have it - thirteen irks, each as irritating as the last. Despite these we still game like there’s no tomorrow, and the fact we can look past and laugh at these shows how devoted one can be to the act of gaming. We can tangle our wires, unintentionally talk to people twice, search for days for the last collectible, and kill ourselves in the most embarrassing fashion, but one thing’s for certain - we’ll still have one hell of a time.