Very few games in the world get everything right, down to the last minute detail. Sure, we know that, and we often let a lot of things pass because the gameplay loops are either just so enjoyable, or the stories they tell are unforgettable. However, some games are so good that some of their decisions become downright baffling. I'm talking about games that do almost everything right — the world, the systems, the story, the gameplay — but then throw in one baffling feature that feels like it came from a completely different game.

They're not deal-breakers by any means, but definitely deal-benders. They make you sigh every time they rear their ugly heads, making you roll your eyes and wistfully imagine a perfect version of the game you're playing that wouldn't have one terrible mechanic.

5 Elden Ring's camera is one of the worst in modern gaming

Easy there — I'll take everyone's pitchforks in a calm and orderly fashion

Look, I've spent north of 200 hours playing Elden Ring, and I am a Tarnished, through-and-through. After all, what's there not to like? The combat is intense, the builds go deep, and the world is one of the most beautiful ever created. I left the game after my first hour, and came back to put in 200 more — I got good.

However, regardless of how fantastically well-made this experience is, and how it is arguably the greatest game of all time, Elden Ring has one huge problem. Let's start off simple — when everyone is trying to kill me, why is the button that makes me lock onto them, the same button as the one that makes me turn in the completely opposite direction? Next, why is it that when I lock on to an enemy, the camera is almost always looking down into the ground, to the point that I struggle to see anything above the enemy's head (god forbid they jump)? Fights with giant enemies are almost impossible to get through without yelling at the camera mechanics, simply because there are multiple lock-on spots, and when a simple flick of the right stick isn't making the lock-on target move from an enemy's knee to their chest by itself, it's busy moving to a dog 10 miles to the left instead of the knight brandishing his blade right in front of you.

For a game that rose up into my Mount Rushmore within my first week of playing it, Elden Ring sure has a camera that threatens to ruin the entire experience.

4 Far Cry 2's respawning guard outposts took years off my life

Double-tapping the trigger won't help you out here

I bought a boot-legged copy of Far Cry 2 back when I must have been eleven. The Dunia engine sounded like the greatest thing in the world, promising an open-world map of Africa in 31 square miles for players to run around in. I was immediately sold, and to this day, Far Cry 2 stands as one of my favorite games in the franchise, even above newer titles like the fifth and sixth ones (let's not even get started on New Dawn). Far Cry 2's world is one of the most memorable you'll ever visit — the constant Malaria threatening to kill you, the diamonds that call out to you on the live map, the jamming weapons, and the brilliantly-crafted feeling of being completely alone.

The one thing the game got severely wrong, however, was its outpost system. This was back when the quintessential Ubisoft opne-world formula was still in its nascent stage, and, of course, outposts are an integral part of it today. The problem, however, is that no matter how well you eliminated the guards at each guard outpost — and you'd run into one or two on your way to every objective — they'd just respawn five minutes later. No matter what you did, guards at outposts you cleared would always respawn very quickly, and just a single save later, you'd have to fight them all over again. For a game as brilliant and memorable as Far Cry 2, it took me a mod to stop outposts from respawning enemies to truly enjoy it and immerse myself in the experience.

3 The tacked-on puzzles in Spider-Man (2018)

Why even give me these if you let me skip them anyway?

Insomniac's Spider-Man in 2018 was one of the first games I ever pre-ordered. Such was my excitement about the game that I received it on day one and ran to my friend's house a mile away just to show him the disc — and he didn't even play games. I consider 2018's Spider-Man to be the greatest Spider-Man story ever told, and as someone who has lived and breathed the webhead, I can think of no bigger compliment. The gameplay was absolutely fantastic for its time, and so was the storytelling. The game was a love letter to all the Spider-Men that came before it, and it remains one of the best superhero games of all time.

Sadly, its puzzle mini-games threatened to unravel the entire experience. Every time Peter walked into the lab and was forced to play matching puzzles to move the story forward, the pacing came to a grinding halt. Why take the momentum of a beautifully-crafted, emotionally-resonant narrative and slam it to a halt with circuit puzzles from an edutainment CD-ROM?

In fact, these puzzle sections were so tacked on that Insomniac even gave you the option to skip them, which says it all, really.

2 The constant tranquilizations and abductions in Far Cry 5

You managed to get to outer space? Too bad, you've been abducted anyway

Great Far Cry games that have one mechanic sticking out like a sore thumb — that's not unique, even on this list. I wanted to love Far Cry 5 so badly. After all, Hope County, Montana is so eerily alive — the haunting cult propaganda and the stunning rural landscapes made for a terrifyingly believable and beautiful world. Far Cry 5 was so much like Ghost Recon: Wildlands in its progression system that I didn't even feel like trying to see the game through — take on the map in any order you like, clear outposts until the boss reveals themselves, rinse and repeat. Now, even that progression system brought down the fun quotient in an intricately-designed open-world map that was beautiful everywhere you went.

However, the worst part about it was the mechanic where the story bosses could abduct you at any given point in the game. You're flying in a plane? Boom, abducted. You just spent an hour unlocking a bunker that hasn't been opened in decades and nobody knows about it? Too bad, the boss is here and he's abducted you. Not only did these moments constantly break immersion, but they also killed momentum. This wasn't my story anymore because it was constantly being hijacked.

1 Star Wars Battlefront II's loot box disaster is unforgettable

I'll take the worst monetization implementation ever for 500, Alex

Star Wars Battlefront II looked like a dream come true for all the nerds of the franchise. The visuals were stunning, the sound design was straight out of the movies, and every single blaster felt punchy and iconic. Getting to play as iconic heroes and villains across the prequels, originals, and sequels was fan service at its finest. By all means, Battlefront II should have been the definitive Star Wars multiplayer experience — and in many ways, it was. The sheer scale of the battles and the quality of the maps was absolutely brilliant.

Sadly, all of that was buried under one of the worst monetization decisions in gaming history. The loot box system wasn't just cosmetic — it was directly tied to gameplay advantages, making pay-to-win a reality instead of a mere accusation. Every match became a grindy, unrewarding mess, and it made the game actively worse, souring the entire community. It took years for EA and DICE to repair the damage. Battlefront II would never reach the heights it could have, had the loot box mechanic been implemented better or just not existed. It didn't threaten to ruin the brilliant game it was in — it actually did.

Here we are in 2025, however, with a Battlefront II resurgence happening last month in May. Thousands of players jumped back in, making the game finally feel the way it should have from the get-go — no looting, just pew-pew.

Deal-benders, if not deal-breakers

These mechanics stuck out enough to be remembered.

Every great game has its scars — those moments where design overreaches or forgets what makes the rest of the game work. While none of these mechanics ruined their respective games entirely, they stuck out enough to be remembered, replay after replay.

Admittedly, perfection in gaming is rare, and sometimes the flaws just make the overall experience sweeter. Still... it'd be nice if the camera worked, or the enemies stayed dead. Just saying.