7. Early potions – Any RPG
Most RPGs offer levels of potions, with the earliest and most common forms offering a very modest health top-up for the low levelled adventurer. Whilst this makes perfect sense, it clashes with the sensibilities of the average gamer. Us gamers are hoarders, hell bent on stockpiling everything we receive for the time when we’ll really need it (a time which seldom comes ironically.) As a result of this, you often find yourself halfway through a game realising that you have 47 normal potions that restore a pathetic 2% of your current max HP. Some franchises use potions that offer a percentage of restoration based on you maximum hit points, but these are few and far between.
6. The flame thrower – Dead Space
Dead Space should be considered a modern horror classic, but it managed the impressively poor feat of messing up the flame thrower. How the hell can you mess up such a classic weapon? Legions of zombie and action films and games have held fans in awe with an amazing flame based weapon, and Dead Space just failed to do this. In a game where enemies are damaged via dismemberment, fire is already at a disadvantage, but the amount of ammo required to kill even the smallest of enemies is ridiculous. It all adds up to create one of the most useless weapons in gaming.
5. Junk – Most games
Enjoy your gold while it lasts before the junk takes it away
Just as so many games task players with acquiring coins, gold, gil etc. many titles give you junk as a form of loot. This should just be discounted immediately as, whether it be a separate item type or a complete category of items, the term “junk” identifies the item as being waste. A waste of space, time and programming skill. Some games even go so far as to make it detrimental to your progress. Curse you Gauntlet Dark Legacy! How many times must your junk drop my mighty stash of gold!
4. Eyedrops – Final Fantasy 6
Just don't bother equipping anything that prevents blindness if you're playing on a SNES
Glitches are one of those things we just accept about gaming but, in the case of Final Fantasy 6’s original incarnation on the SNES, it managed to bring one of the classic mechanics of the series to its knees. An evasion glitch in FF6 (or 3 for our US readers) rendered the blind status effect impossible to achieve, making all blind related cures and accessories subsequently pointless to gain. You’ve gotta love careless mistakes.
