Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Video Game Mechanics That Don't Make Sense

Water stages have been around since the capability to add them was available. At first, the mechanics of it were semi-close to reality. The characters would have to swim through the stage rather than walk, and if the character somehow did have to walk in the stage he'd go slow. And yet, there are games out there where the character can not only walk normally but he jumps three or more times higher under water than in the air.

This is supposed to be explained by buoyancy, that is, the fact that liquid is heavier than air and therefore can lift things that air cannot. The problem is: if anyone is heavy enough to stay BELOW the water's surface without effort he's not going to be lifted higher under water. While it is true you can float things on the water's surface, that's only because the only thing that's over it is air. If you're under water there's water above and below you. That being the case, the water above you is just as heavy as that below you, even more so the deeper you go.

Mega Man games are notorious for this. Game developers even add spikes to the ceilings to make the game more challenging. However, with increased pressure pushing down on something it becomes harder to lift things, not easier.

Even explaining it as something that's supposed to set apart a water stage doesn't work that well, because it would be just as easy to make it more accurate and have the character move slower and jump shorter distances. If you want long ones, make him swim.

That's my top ten list of things that don't make sense. I know that it brings real-world logic to games but a lot of these games are supposed to be like real-life in some capacity or another.

Probably more of a glitch than anything else having a lower than perfect hit percentage in just about any game that has this mechanic means you're going to miss… OFTEN. Granted, anything less than 100% means there is a chance of missing. However, anything over 50% means you have more of a chance of hitting than you do missing.

What makes this not make any sense is that there doesn't seem to be any real meaning to the numbers other than you won't hit every time. There are plenty of moves in hit percentage games that are as high as 95%. Statistically speaking that means your chances of hitting are astronomically higher than you missing. Yet, in these games you run into situations where you have moves with a 95% hit ratio that you miss several times in a single fight or even in a row.

Pokémon is a good example of this: the move Tackle has 35 uses and a 95% chance of hitting. That means that you should be able to hit 33 times out of the 35 uses. Even moves with a 75% chance of hitting like Fire Blast should hit more often than not because it means 3 out 4 times it should make its mark. However, it's not uncommon that you'll only get one hit out of five uses of the move.

What makes things worse with this is the fact that you will often run into opponents who will hit with a move with even lower hit percentages than yours and they will do so multiple times while you miss multiple times. That doesn't make sense unless you look at it as either a major oversight or first rate cheating.

This one is not about the enemies that come out of generators or hives or other things that are supposedly filled with these creatures. This one is about those enemies that you destroy then keep reappearing after you leave the screen and come back.

Numerous games that allow you to leave screens and come back have this problem. In some games it even makes backtracking impossible. Most of the time, enemies don't serve a purpose other than to hinder the progress of the hero character. But if they're just going to come back when you leave, there's no real point in destroying them. You can just dodge them and leave. If you go back, you find yourself in the exact same situation as if you never killed them.

It also leaves the question about where these regenerated enemies came from. They are in the exact same location as the ones who were there before them and they are the same enemies! There is just no way that they could have just appeared there again and if there was, why not just have them keep reappearing before the hero leaves?

Those creatures that do reappear while the hero is there also make no sense in games where the hero has limited ammo. The worst game for this was "Zombies Ate My Neighbors." Even the primary weapon: the water gun was limited in ammo but there was an endless supply of enemies. This being a game where the only way to kill an enemy was through use of a weapon it pretty much meant you lost if you ran out of ammo because there was no end to the enemies.

Nearly every fighting game has had finishing moves since the introduction of Mortal Kombat. And since the introduction of Mortal Kombat, this has made no sense. Yes, people are wired to want to see some kind of violence and the idea of killing your opponent after beating him senseless appeals. However, the moves that are used to kill the opponent often beg the question: why not do that in the first place?

Arguments have been made that the opponent has to be dazed and unable to defend in order for such a move to work but if you think about it, that doesn't really hold true. Take one of Sub-Zero's first fatalities: the freeze and shatter move. Throughout the entire match he's freezing the opponent, every time the opponent is frozen he/she cannot move, and most of the time Sub-Zero strikes the opponent while he/she's helpless. If he can do that, why not just finish the opponent right then and there? The opponent is frozen and Sub-Zero can make the hit, so why waste time and risk losing the match by NOT hitting hard enough to shatter the opponent?

Other games like Killer Instinct have the exact same problem. The character Fulgore can turn his head into guns and shoots his opponent dead. Bullets move at a rate much faster than any living being can move and most organic material can't block them so the chances that the shots will be dodged or blocked at that close a range are nil.

Even other finishing moves where the background is used don't make a lot of sense because the moves used to start them are the exact same moves used before but for some reason they just push the character a little more off to the side rather than straight up or down. Is there really a reason for that?

Adventure games and RPGs have this happen quite a bit. The hero is set to go through a stage or a dungeon trying to reach the boss in order to kill him or obtain some item he's guarding. Along the way there are enemies abound trying to get in your way and kill you. You also run into obstacles like closed doors, wide pits and heavy objects in your way. These things can be a greater challenge to get through than all the enemies combined. So, you go through whatever steps it takes to get past the obstacle and move on.

What makes no sense about it? Most of the time the EXACT thing you need to get past the obstacle is RIGHT THERE TO USE! How many times has Sonic the Hedgehog run into a closed door in which all he has to do is push a button that's on the OUTSIDE of the closed door? That makes about as much sense as having your front door with a reverse lock so that the people you don't want coming in can unlock or lock the door whenever they please and you who are inside and want to go out are stuck there if someone locked the door from the outside.

Link from Legend of Zelda goes into a dungeon where he finds a treasure that happens to be the most useful thing he could ever have in that dungeon and oftentimes all the rest of them too. But… does he have to use it in dungeons BEFORE he get's there? No… So, even if it makes a tiny bit of sense that the dungeon he gets the item in would be built to have it used, why would others have the same kind of use for it, and others not? Especially since they all do AFTER you get the item in question?

Finally, Mega Man X runs into a pit that is way too wide for him to cross alone. So what does he do? He goes back and rides his cycle which is conveniently placed right near that pit and the enemies who are proven to have the ability to destroy the thing just leave it alone. If you're trying to get away with something, and stop the hero from getting to you, why leave exactly what is needed right were it is needed? Why not just remove the needed item and low and behold: the hero's at a dead end!

Often times in side scrolling fighter games you'd run into a number of enemies who look different. However, you would also run into characters who look EXACTLY like each other except they are a different color. Sometimes they just have different colored hair, other times the clothes is different, and occasionally the entire body changes color. Okay, this isn't ENTIRELY out of reality but what happens when you find someone who's a different color? The power capabilities are RADICALLY different.

Double Dragon was one such game in which the character Abobo shows up in green and gray varieties both times gaining a power change with appearance. People have jokingly made up reasons for it including Gamma irradiation and cybernetic enhancement. But there were other things that just couldn't be explained. It was a common occurrence that you'd run into two characters who are identical in appearance except one is wearing red clothes and one is wearing yellow. Somehow, the phrase, "Clothes makes the man" becomes quite literal in that the characters have the same style sometimes even the same name but red clothing means he has a much longer life bar and hits harder than when he's wearing yellow clothes. Unless that clothes contained some unseen enhancements like a force field there was no reason wearing it should change anything.

This one is another one of those things that can be explained through just the lack of graphic capabilities for earlier systems. However, it doesn't make sense that more modern games still do this. So many games such as Time Crisis have several characters who look exactly the same and carry the same weapons but because one is wearing red and the other yellow, they attack different.

This one is a staple of many RPGs. While the argument can say that enemy movements are erratic and tend to come at moments when you aren't prepared that doesn't really account for the fact that the field is completely empty and suddenly, out of nowhere enemies that are usually depicted as being larger than the party members themselves show up and attack. That's where the sense disappears. How could anything that large suddenly appear out of nowhere? Even if the monster's size is exaggerated, there are more than enough times when the creature would have to be at least the size of a normal party member so there's really no reason they should not be viewable.

Most games don't even claim that the monster appears but just attacks. But the question is: where was the monster before it attacked? Most of the time the area has no obvious hiding places and it’s a brightly lit room or area so even darkness couldn't have helped the monster gain stealth.

While there are some games that try to explain things a little better, like Pokémon in which the creatures are said to be hiding in the tall grass, when something shows up it says, "Wild (Pokémon) APPEARED." I guess pokémon don't actually hide they just appear and disappear.

The games where this makes the least sense are games like Lufia II in which you have random encounters every now and then in the field but when you're in a dungeon, you can see the enemies right there in front of you. If enemies can be seen in these areas why on earth not others?

There are number of non-sports games that have your character be part of a team. The thing about these though is that all too often you are the ONLY member of the team to do ANYTHING in the game.

Taking things out of the rail shooters one of the prime examples is "Star Fox." There have been a number of games for the team of four that makes up the Star Fox Team and what happens? You always play as FOX! Then your other team members fly around and get themselves into trouble. Not once does any other member of the team ever actually bring down an enemy. They go for one and then something goes wrong. They would often come off as more annoying than anything else. Remember "Slippy?" More often than not he'd say, "Fox, get this guy off me!" Then if you go the right course, he ends up attacking a rather large robot and gets smacked onto a hostile planet. REAL helpful.

Of course, there are other examples where you are supposedly part of a team, "Mega Man X" for example. X is supposed to be the leader of a TEAM of Maverick Hunters. Yet, we only see them in cameo, and when they show up either they are destroyed, do nothing but background work, or turn out to be traitors.

It doesn't make much sense to work with a team if you're going to be doing all the work. Even the best of sports stars who hold up the team more than any other individual don't play alone and their strategies do involve the team to some degree. A true champion plays WITH the team, not FOR it!

A mechanic that shows up in most of the first-person-shooter games, especially those that are supposed to deal with real life situations. In these games, you often run into innocent people who come racing out in front of you. They don't seem to be looking for help and rarely are they doing this against their will.

In reality, when someone comes waving a gun around and starts firing, what do most people say to do? Get down! Now, realistically speaking that's not really what panicked people will do. Most of the time, they'll just run out of the area as quickly as possible.

But what will they NOT do? Jump out in front of people carrying guns for no apparent reason! The whole thing about it is that people are trying to AVOID getting shot and even a panicked person is going to know better than to jump up right in front of some trigger happy individual with no intention other than to stand in his way for a few seconds, look around, and drop back down.

Rail shooters such as "Lethal Enforcers" have this kind of thing happening. It's supposed to be a challenge because the player loses health if you shoot the civilian but it doesn't make any real sense that these people would be doing that. Even the people who pop up in windows don't seen convincing because they're almost never the first person to show up and it would be a heck of a lot more sensible to stay out of sight when you hear gunshots right near you than to put yourself into the line of fire!

Back in the days of 8-bit when you couldn't animate an attack very well into a game this made perfect sense. Your main character would get hurt just from contact with the enemy mainly because they couldn’t show the enemy attacking. There were also those enemies that really couldn't attack even when it was possible to animate it. These enemies where things like the Goombas. They don't have limbs, their not incredibly fast or strong and yet, they hurt you when you touch their sides or feet. Some of the RPG games have Goombas run up and headbutt the foe but most of the games even the newer Super Mario Galaxy games show no animation of how they attack. It's just contact with them that hurts you.

What makes this make even less sense is that even in games where you're capable of freezing time and the enemies can't even move contact with them still hurts you. Unless you're dealing with a character that's surrounded by an aura of fire or covered in spikes that doesn't make any sense. The enemy obviously can't attack if it's frozen in time and no one's so good and pure that touching something that's "evil" is harmful so it leaves people wondering: why would THAT hurt you?