Stop Helping Me!/Video Games

Now is NOT a good time, Otis!

• In the Super Mario Galaxy series, there is an on-screen indicator to shake the Wii-mote at incredibly obvious places (such as spinning in a launch star), even more in the second game. Three things make this extra annoying: It makes a sound which gets grating fast, it always pops up, even if you have already been to the level, and it has the tendency to pop up after you have performed the indicated action!
• Toadsworth from Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story spends the first battle teaching Mario to do things (even if you've already done them), and after you get inhaled by Bowser, Starlow (and to an extent, the Emoglobins) crank the tutorials Up to Eleven. It gets to the point where the tutorial for digestion is longer than the actual digestion, since you only do the digestion mini-game once.
  • It's worth noting that Bowser himself gets annoyed at Toadsworth constantly interrupting the battle. One can only imagine how Midbus feels when Fawful keeps breaking in and effectively telling Bowser how to beat him up.
  • Bowser getting annoyed at exposition becomes a Running Gag throughout the third game, especially with Starlow, or should I say 'Chippy'. It helps that for once, Starlow is portrayed as being rather annoying and in-your-face in-game, rather than well-intentioned ineptitude.
• The Princess occasionally pops up to shout "HELP!" and throw you a super mushroom in the final fight with Bowser from Super Mario World, which is nice as long as you don't have a more useful power-up in reserve that the stupid mushroom will cheerfully replace.
• Surprisingly subverted in Suikoden II. Apple, a returning character from the first game, offers her services as a strategist in your first few early engagements. She does a mediocre job at first, then flat out fails spectacularly at countering the enemy's strategy a couple times later on. The aversion comes when she apologizes, decides she's just not ready yet, and only helps if you explicitly ask her to from then on.
  • It helps that, without her, you and everyone else in the fort would be dog meat, and the help she gives later when you ask for it is generally helpful. Really, her only shortcoming is a lack of confidence in herself.
  • And keep in mind, she's a not-quite-as-bright-as-his-other-student student of a Silverburg, while her opponent is a Silverburg.
• Angie from Trauma Center: Under the Knife is a prime offender. One of the most frustrating games on the face of the earth is made even worse by her constant mewling of "Doctor!" or "What is that?!!" (It's a lung, Angie, you've seen one before). More annoying still is that when she starts talking, you have to stop what you're doing and press the "Call" button to move her monologue along so you can get on with that heart transplant. Extremely annoying when playing a mission that requires speed. Thankfully, she's a lot less annoying in the Wii remake, Second Opinion.
  • She gets worse in Under the Knife 2. Despite having performed the same operation dozens of times before, she feels the need to interrupt your intense concentration with repetitive instructions that don't serve any purpose beyond throwing you off. This is especially prevalent in the last few missions, where a single mistake can lead to immediate death. When your heart is racing and your fingers sore from gripping the stylus so hard, the last thing you need is Angie yelling "USE THE ANTIBIOTIC GEL" to mess up your focus.
• Teammates from any Battlefield game that allows you to revive your teammates. Damn... got sniped. Oh revived. Sniped again. Revived. STOP HELPING ME.
  • Averted in Battlefield 3. If you use a defibrillator on a downed player, they can refuse the revive and respawn instead.
• The Cheshire Cat from American McGee's Alice, while technically an aversion of the trope, is no less irritating. His "advice" consists mainly of cryptic insults, such as "There's a nasty name for those who insist on doing things the hard way." Granted, he only appears when summoned, and as such is less likely to induce homicidal rage in the player...unless the player is really in a bind, and all good ol' Cheshire can say is "Alice, you really suck."
  • "Start Helping Me"?
• Likewise, the Hintkeeper in the Sierra game Phantasmagoria could have done with a few lessons in proper social skills.
• Navi from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Memetic Mutation has somewhat exaggerated her annoyingness, but her incessant cries of "Hey!", "Look!", "Listen!" and "Watch out!" and habit of popping up all the time to remind you where to go next can still grate on a player's nerves.
  • Much like she was in the webseries There Will Be Brawl. And Link tells her what we were all thinking.

Link: SHUT THE FUCK UP NAVI!

• • Navi's Suspiciously Similar Substitute from Majora's Mask, Tatl, has a significantly less annoying set of audio cues, but the same frequency with them. Later games would have helper characters (like the King of Red Lions, Ezlo, and Midna) but thankfully you can choose when to ask them for help. (Phantom Hourglass went back to fairies with Ciela, although she is much more tolerable- and actually turns out to play an important role in the plot.)
    • Navi and Tatl were both an attempt to give an in-world explanation for the game's targeting system (the fairies would change color because of danger and fly to the source to help Link attack them). The games since then haven't bothered with making this a story element.
    • Ezlo is even more irritating than Navi. His tendency to point out the obvious over and over again makes you wonder if he was related to a certain Owl mentioned below... Also, his voice is far more annoying than Navi's. Also, the shock upon realizing that Link has been carrying around what looks like a 99 years old man on his head for most of the game.
  • You know that Navi's grating has made it when she became a victim of a Take That in The Powerpuff Girls of all things.

Mayor: Oooh, darn fairy!

• • The owl, by the way, is one Kaepora Gaebora. Unique in that he only shows up around three or four times, and that he's not of the "Hey Listen!" variety. He's annoying solely on the fact that his dialogues - which activate when you walk by certain places, whether you want them to or not - consist of tens of screens that you'll cycle through four or five times because mashing the A button to advance the dialogue quicker (which doesn't always work!) results in him reaching the end and giving a "would you like me to repeat that?", which you immediately accept because you've been mashing said A button! (Oh, everybody in the game but him defaults to "no" when it comes to asking if you want them to repeat.)
    • Yeah, but he also acts as a transport sometimes, which is cool. Even helps you reach a Piece of Heart.
      • Yeah, but he also acts as a transport sometimes, which sucks if you fail to sidestep out of his way in time when he offers this. Thanks, I really wanted to walk the entire distance from Castle Town's drawbridge back to Lake Hylia.
    • If you make him repeat it just hold down A or B and the text will go by quickly.
    • At least his music is cool.
    • This is referenced in Skyward Sword. A certain gossip stone found late in the game will give you a simple explanation of what your current goal is and then ask if you'd like it to repeat that. Say yes and it will loop endlessly. Say no and the stone will respond with "Rumor has it that you're some kind of genius who remembers things perfectly the first time you hear them."
  • Tingle (and as result, whoever you give the Game Boy Advance to) can very effectively become one of these in Wind Waker after receiving the Tingle Tuner. One can even press the A button on the GBA to make Link drop everything in order to look at that little green marker while it shouts "HAAAAAY" to catch your attention. This means even making you put away your sail at sea! Thank goodness you can at least turn off the volume on the blasted thing...
    • The Tingle Tuner can even cause the game to crash by being used mid-deku hop.
    • As said before, Tingle's entirely player controlled. If the person with the GBA is sadistic, they'll help you as much as possible because you have to pay for Tingle's services, one of which is a bomb that can be used on the player. It's either this trope or stop hurting me.
  • In the higher levels of the Gamecube The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Bonus-Game Tetra's Navi Trackers, Tetra (or Sue Belle or The King of Red Lions, depending who's the "anchor" right now) will sometimes make Tingle appear to "aid" the players... given her personality, she's probably actually (and sucessfully) trying to torture (the) Link(s) by doing that. Every word out of Tingle's mouth (the characters in Navi Trackers are fully voiced, except for Link) sounds like it was trying to tempt the player to shut down the game.
  • In a refreshing take on the whole trope, The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks lampshades it in a crazy way in the final battle. Chancellor Cole, upon Zelda taking her body back, asks Malladus - nicely - to wipe Link out and take Zelda's body again. The Demon King is damaged thanks to choking on a Light Arrow, Zelda's body and soul are reunited, and now this twat tells him what to do? He needs a body bad, Cole, and yours will do in a pinch.
  • Fi in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is at least as bad as all of these. The worst example is when you're injured; you've already got a Critical Annoyance going, and Fi adds her own alert that she wants to tell you something... she's noticed your health is low and you should find some hearts. Ya think?!

"Master, the batteries in your Wii Remote are running low." Thanks, Fi, we couldn't tell that from the flashing icon in the bottom-right.

• • • Parodied in this video, Fi not only tries too hard, she kinda becomes Captain Obvious, to which Link thinks she may be Too Dumb to Live.

Fi: Master Link, did you know you are low on hearts?
Link: Yeah, I heard that beeping.
Fi: That was me. I was beeping to remind you of the beeping.
Link: [Sigh]
Fi: Did you know you can replenish hearts by collecting more hearts?
Link: [Beat] You...can't be this stupid.

• Otis from Dead Rising always seems to pick the worst times to call you on the radio to inform you of a new mission that's become available or whatever (like when you're surrounded by zombies or in the middle of a fight with a psychopath). When you answer him, Frank becomes incapable of fighting or even jumping until the call is over, and will also automatically drop any weapon that is too big to store in your inventory. And if you hang up on him, he calls you again, complains "Don't hang up on me like that! That's rude!" and restarts his entire speech from the beginning! VG Cats explains it with style, as does Something Awful.
  • Otis was made even worse by the 360's controller. If you didn't press the D-pad just right, you could drop your weapon or bring up an in-game menu. Pressing the D-pad just right is a lot harder than it sounds in the middle of a zombie-infested mob. The annoying controller made the whole thing feel like it was Fake Difficulty.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the video game, had the option to ask for help at any time from Terry Jones. At first his hints are almost useful, but eventually he just gets more and more infuriated as the game progresses, tired of helping you. Eventually he stomps out of the game and is replaced by Michael Palin, who is just as useless. Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time, having no plot at all, had no help and no rules, except when you broke them. You were then sent to "The Penalty Box" where a nude Terry Jones played a taunting organ piece to mock you.
  • That does sound annoying, but to be fair, this is a game based on Monty Python. It was probably not meant to be taken at all seriously.
• Alia from Mega Man X 5 as Mission Control would suddenly start talking about something, and you would immediately have to stop and listen. Even if you were in the middle of a jump over a Bottomless Pit or spikes.
  • In X6, thankfully, you always have the option of ignoring her entirely and moving on.
  • Then X7 took a giant leap backwards.
    • ...then bounces back to X6's level in X8, though now there are three Navis, each one specializing in a particular game segment.
    • In a rare moment of payback, the Navigators in X8 can be unlocked as playable characters. Though they cannot receive any "help" at all. (Hell, when you play as one, all cutscenes are skipped. Then again, you have to beat the game first to unlock them.)
    • To be more fair, you can go through X8 without Navis at all.
• Roll from Mega Man Legends tended to ramble over the radio at you every time you go into a dungeon.
  • "Remember the last time we went on a dig? I wasn't used to being a spotter and you got trapped underground for three days." She goes off on this while you need to run (or jump) across platforms that break real easily and if you end up falling you have to do a U-turn and start over. I do admit I did enjoy listening to this tidbit as I was running to get the last security key but still...
  • And then there's Data, the 'helpful' little cyborg monkey who can't be killed. Ever. You can unload the ultimate weapon in his face and he just... keeps... dancing. In fact, at the end, he turns up planetside after everyone else has gotten trapped on Elysium, despite being up there with you at the end. It's somewhat satisfying to imagine the others trusted to his invincibility when they sent him back down, assumedly by punting him off Elysium and letting him deal with re-entry and the inevitable high-speed landing on his own.
    • Data's own brand of help is somewhat interesting, as it can often be targeted more to traumatize the player with such opening lines as 'Mega Man, let me tell you about girls...'
    • Someone on the development team HAD TO be aware of how annoying Roll was - in the boss battle with Tron's Crabbot, you get to hear such exaggeratedly UN-useful shout-outs as, "Just calling your name..." and "Don't forget to pick up the milk on the way home." They even go so far as to have Roll's little voice chime in with, "Behind You!" when Tron is attacking from the front or the side. Admittedly, this was because Tron was emulating Roll's voice with a synthesizer, but she did it TOO convincingly...
• Sparks, your operator in Enter The Matrix, has a habit of sending totally irrelevant IMs in critical moments... and to make things even more frustrating, when his IM screen is visible, you don't heal or restore focus.
• Several of the CODEC contacts in Metal Gear Solid act like this, but 99% of the time you're allowed to ignore them if it's not vitally plot-related. Unfortunately, it usually is. Damn you, Meryl!
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4, you can literally 'Stop Helping' and cause Otacon to almost have an aneurysm—in the 'Follow the Resistance member' segment, it's possible to reduce Otacon to sputtering, angry silence by shooting the resistance members you encounter. Otacon starts off with a warning, then a sharper warning, then a pained cry of "Snake!?!", and finally, he just sputters and hangs up on the Codec. Beware, though—shoot too many of them and it's a Nonstandard Game Over.
    • The Metal Gear Solid 4 cast usually lets you do what you want without interruption, except for Otacon. Not only is his advice spewed out at regular intervals, but his messages aren't relegated to CODEC calls anymore; they play over the regular gameplay. THAT'S RIGHT, YOU CAN'T SKIP THEM. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
  • Metal Gear Awesome gave us the following exchange:

Codec: -ring ring-
Snake: (rips off ear and throws it to the ground) SHUT UP FOR CHRISSAKE I KNOW HOW TO CLIMB A LADDER JESUS OW MY EAR.

• • SHUT UP ROSE GODDAMN IT I JUST WANTED TO SAVE MY GAME I DON'T CARE ABOUT HOW JACK DECORATES HIS ROOM AND I FIGURED OUT IT WAS YOUR ANNIVERSARY THE FIRST TIME YOU DROPPED THAT FIRST Anvilicious HINT ABOUT IT SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!
    • Allow me to illustrate. Apparently, Lampshading those guys is VG Cats' role in life.
    • Jack understands.
  • Rose and Meryl aren't nearly as bad as the painfully useless radio cast of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, though. Their roles are 1) tell you to call other people and not to bother him (the Colonel), 2) tell you that you have no chance to beat this game and you might as well curl into a ball and die (Kessler), 3) ramble at you about the number of species of pigeons that exist (Norden), 4) complain that 'now isn't a good time' and refuse to help you (Holly), 5) talk to you about the ergonomics of video gaming and dispense useless military trivia (Miller), and 6) deliver one of the first major death speeches in the entire series (Gustava)
    • To his credit, Miller comes up with solutions to all of the bizarre Kojima-logic puzzles Snake has to complete, and will give you hints before flat-out telling you the illogical answers, too. Also, towards the end, he asks Snake out to have a cheese fondue dinner with him, thus making himself the mandatory male-borderline-love-interest character of that Metal Gear.
  • Metal Gear was much more straightforward with this: Diane would tell Snake which weapon worked best on each boss (provided that her overprotective big brother wasn't monitoring her call), Schneider would tell you the locations of many important items in the areas where you needed them, and Jennifer was important enough for being the only character who can provide the Rocket Launcher and Compass. The only dead weight was Big Boss himself, who only provides useless obvious advice on items and weapons ("A Handgun? You know how to use it").
    • Of course, that was intentional, seeing as he was the Big Bad of the game.
  • You need EVA to fly the WIG. The only problem with needing her help? She gets impaled on a tree. Then you get to hear her bitch about how hungry she is. Not to mention her saying "Snake I don't want you to kill The Boss".
    • You can tranq her, though, and she'll start moaning in her sleep about... things. "Fido... that feels so good..." Yeah, okay. Oh, and if you don't tranq her, she can shoot people.
    • Therein lies the very problem with tranquilizing her to make her shut up: she fucking doesn't. The best solution to actually make her be quiet is beating her over the face with the M32 to render her unconscious, a bludgeoning she's very well earned by that point in the game. Of course, given that this trope makes you want to shoot her with the gun instead of club her, it's a limited success.
• Sonic Adventure: One word: Omochao. Give the game credit for one thing, though... you can pick him up and drop-kick him.
  • Sticking him underneath a weight that drops at preset intervals, and watching the little bastard groan and stagger to his feet just in time to have the weight fall on him again was one of the most deeply satisfying portions of the game.
  • And in Sonic Adventure 2, picking up Omochao and throwing him at bosses to be an incredibly easy way to finish off anything remotely annoying. He deals damage to enemies on contact!
    • Also in Sonic Adventure 2, there's a place in one of the stages in the space colony where you can open an airlock that sucks everything out into space. Including Omochao. And he respawns inside the area, so you can keep watching him die again, and again, and again...
  • Apparently as a reaction to peoples' negative opinions on Omochao, he appears in Sonic Advance 3, though you have to press up on the D-pad to pick him up and get his hints (he also stops time, but if your partner is nearby, his/her sprite still animates even though they can't move otherwise).
  • Keep in mind that later games paired you up with other main characters, so this concept ended up making Tails and Knuckles a lot more annoying than they needed to be. At least you could choose whether or not to bump into Omochao or Tikal most of the time.
    • In Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Heroes, you usually had to touch a "?" symbol to activate your partner's help, much like Omochao in the Adventure games. While it is still too easy to accidentally touch the help spot, no games in the series force you to hear the majority of help spots.
    • Sonic Unleashed also uses the "?" symbol in the Play Station 3/360 version, but in the PS 2 Version, Chip will stop the game to tell you something important if necessary, like how to turn a lever, even if you have already done that.
  • Sega was nice enough to provide a gun in Shadow the Hedgehog that let you fire Omachao's severed head at enemies. Once it was upgraded, the head would bounce off of walls and could easily take out a room full of baddies if applied properly.
  • A rom hack of Sonic 1, Sonic the Hedgehog OmoChao Edition turns Omochao into a Most Triumphant Example of this trope. Why? Because he stops time to make a Captain Obvious comment for most of the actions you can do in the game while the 1up jingle plays. The more stuff he says, the longer it takes for the jingle to stop. It's so irritating it becomes hilarious.
  • The Bioware spin-off Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood mostly plays this straight by making Tails the designated tutorial exposition character. It also subverts it by allowing the player to shut him up, with some dialogue options that make Sonic sound like a total A-hole.
  • Anyone who's ever played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or 3 knows just how much of a useless furry liability Tails is as your tag-along; while he can be used as a nifty little immortal Red Shirt against enemies, more often than not he gets in your way, pushes buttons or destroys enemies/collapsible areas that you were wanting to use as platforms, and stupidly runs into ludicrous danger on his own. Players hate him so much, there's even an entire series of Machinima on YouTube devoted to showing off all sorts of ways of torturing the little runt (and the guy who makes them likes Tails... as a character, at least).
    • Let's not forget all those times Tails has stolen your air bubbles... YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!
    • On the other hand, if Player 2 takes control of Tails, he has the potential to be a Game Breaker. However, he's a nuisance in Sonic 2's special stages, if there isn't a second player.
    • He also tags along in the Adventure games, picking up things you don't want (like animals that you can take into the Chao Gardens, if you're only looking for specific ones to give to your Chao so that they take on only the traits of those specific animals) and just being annoying in general.
    • And there's also the floating help tvs in the Chao Gardens, which use the button that's normally used for attack/pick up/put down as "tell me info I probably know already" if you're near them. This can cause such things as trying to put down the animal you're holding, only to be stuck standing there reading "Welcome to the Chao Races" or some such just long enough for a Chao to come over and grab the animal, thus altering its stats, appearance and behaviour in ways you didn't want it to.
  • In Sonic Generations, Omichao will start speaking once you pass him. In the challenge missions, this can be annoying. Oh, I'm facing off against a ghost of myself in a doppleganger race? No shit, Sherlock! Even the first level of the game, he pops in to say that he's there to help. Luckily, you can turn him off.
    • For the final boss of Generations, all your friends will warn you about the homing shot. It's so bad that it will drown out the one line of dialogue that is actually useful!
• The role of Squawks the Parrot in the original Donkey Kong Country is a variation on this theme. Appearing only in the darkness "Torchlight Trouble" level, his role is to illuminate a small portion of the screen... And to shine his little flashlight in the player's eyes whenever your character turns around. Stupid bird.
  • And ditto for Glimmer the Anglerfish in the second game. Possibly even worse, since it's a swimming level.
  • These issues were fixed in the Virtual Console releases of the games.
  • In Donkey Kong 64, Squawks also shows up to give you a brief tutorial whenever you first see something or use an ability. Normally annoying (yes, we know each new character has five bananas to find in each stage), but it gets even worse when you factor in that it doesn't stop the action around you. Dazzling Addar's Let's Play of the game demonstrates this, as such a tutorial directly costs him a race.
  • Tutorial Pig qualifies in Donkey Kong Country Returns. Die eight or ten times in one level, and he will appear at the beginning of the level and at every checkpoint jingling and waving his little flag trying to get you to use the Super Guide option. The only way to make him go away is by beating that level... and then, if you go back to the level to get items and die a bunch again, he comes back.
• One of the more potentially derailing features of Ace Combat 5 is a "yes/no" answer input when your squadmates ask you questions. If you're say, climbing in altitude as fast as possible to avoid being blown up by a heat seeking missile on your tail, it can be quite annoying to suddenly have your squadmate pop in and casually ask if you want them to provide you with some cover. NO, REALLY, YOU THINK SO?! Unfortunately the game lacks a "no shit" response to questions of that nature. And despite the "squadron based" nature of the game, in actuality you usually end up doing 90% of the important stuff since your squadmates aren't smart enough to concentrate their fire on the big fracking sub that's firing one-hit kill missiles at you and instead insist on picking off the insignificant little targets instead no matter how often you hit ATTACK! or tell them what to do.
  • Averted with the Mission Control in all the games. An AWACS aircraft constantly supervises you, providing mission and story updates as well as things like reminding you that you've locked on to an enemy or vice versa, that you or the enemy has launched a missile at the other, or you're in gun range, as well as whether a missile hit or missed. Amazingly, it's not actually as irritating as it sounds. Mostly because he doesn't have an annoying voice, doesn't speak constantly and above all keeps the comms SHORT, usually less than five words.
  • The worst offender for Mission Control is Hazawa in Joint Assault. She always ruins your concentration when engaging in intense combat. She also tells you if a missile is inbound when your HUD can do that in a less annoying fashion. Worst of all, she has the most annoying voice in the game.
• You wouldn't think Viva Pinata could be heart-attack-inducing, being essentially a farming game with a bunch of cute animals. Enter Leafos. She's your guide throughout the game, and starts out as being quite useful, giving you the tools you need to work the garden. As you level up, she congratulates you on your "improvement" in the way a nursery school teacher might praise a three-year-old's fingerpainting. Slightly annoying... in the "What right have you to comment, you were cowering in the house when thugs showed up and trashed your father's life's work" way. However, mild irritation isn't the last of it. Several species of pinata will fight if put in the same garden together. One solution, other than selling one of the warring parties or moving them to a different garden, is to build a fence. Which will probably need a gate. Which Leafos will wander through in her meanderings around the garden and leave open. The first you'll probably know of this is when the battle music alerts you to the fact that two of your pinata are kicking the living daylights out of each other. Call yourself an expert, Leafos? Any farmer or riding school instructor would kill you for leaving a gate open!
  • The icing on the cake? Leafos has a tendancy to lie. Considering that some of the rarer or more exotic pinatas require more obscure and/or bizarre methods to obtain, unless forewarned a statement like "I heard you can turn a Pretztail into a Mallowolf if it eats a Doenut" can sound legtimate, when it's nothing but a bloody lie.
  • Patch the doctor is annoying for a totally different reason. He heals your sick pinata (probably after they've gotten into a fight courtesy of Leafos). However, another character, Dastardos, will "euthanise" a sick animal if Patch doesn't make it in time. If both doctor and Dastardos appear at the same time though, Patch will stop what he's doing and let Dastardos kill your animal—right under the good doctor's nose. Feel free to beat Patch with your spade at this point; it's the least he deserves.
    • Which makes me wonder why I cannot hire farmhands armed with shotguns to patrol the property and (should an intruder not excuse themself when given fair warning) pop a load of buckshot into Dastardos. Oh, right, must rember, Lighter and Softer, Lighter and Softer...
    • Dastardos is invulnerable to everything except a certain shovelhead anyway...buckshot would go right through the guy!
    • If you can beat cute animals to death with a shovel you should at least be able to do the same to the bad guys.
• Janice Polito in System Shock 2 (and later SHODAN). Her speeches are much louder than ambient sounds. For example when main character leaves Cryo Recovery. Hybrids are groaning somewhere nearby. Player cannot see them, but hears their footsteps approaching. He sneaks, trying to find them... then Polito blows his speakers all of a sudden, telling about an elevator being shut down.
  • This is likely deliberate, though (like with the maybe-allies above). You're not supposed to like it.
• Parodied in this strip of The Noob webcomic: The PvP Paperclip. Microsoft Word meets MMORPG tutorials. If the idea of a cheerful "helper" popping up and announcing loudly (and cheerfully), "Hello! It seems that you want to kill that guy! Did you know that you could stealth to hit him by surprise?" doesn't give you nightmares, you're not fit to call yourself a computer geek.
• The Alliance Marine Corps, Citadel Security and several random aliens manage to keep the Mass Effect galaxy safe, despite the fact that they tend to aim straight at their target and blast away, disregarding any obstacles in the line of fire... like, say, walls, rocks, ship hulls, the back of the player character's head... Fortunately, this is easy enough to mitigate by simply ordering them to move away, and when they do have a clear line of sight at their targets, they do a lot of damage.
  • The "help" messages with the Cerberus logo in the sequel constitutes better proof than anything that the organization is inherently evil. "Press F to finish the mission. What's that? You want to explore and I'm covering up your Dialogue Tree? WELL TOO BAD!"
• The King of All Cosmos in Katamari Damacy; no, thanks, really, I can clearly see how big my little sphere of proto-star is, right now, you don't need to comment on it every five minutes.
  • Some of this is actually a disguised loading screen, to let the game reshape the world once your Katamari is big enough to go new places.
• If GLaDOS weren't so well-written, Portal would have been one of the most annoying experiences in the entire god-damn world. Trapped in a lab facility, your only companion a cube that doesn't ever speak to you and a passive-aggressive ice inhibitor... you're really lucky Old Man Murray wrote the script, you know that? It helps that GLaDOS does give some genuinely helpful information at times (mostly when the developers found playtesters had difficulty understanding concepts necessary to some puzzles, for example conservation of momentum) and is a gloriously funny Deadpan Snarker. Besides, at the end you do get to kill her. Unless she really is Still Alive...
  • Portal 2 similarly averts this by giving your AI companions absolutely hilarious dialogue throughout the game, but it plays the trope for meta humor during the third act in the form of the automated announcer who continues to insist, despite the villain's denials, that the facility is about to blow up. For bonus fun, when the reactor explosion countdown timer fails during the Final Boss fight, the announcer is so determined to be helpful that it activates a Self-Destruct Mechanism to remove the uncertainty of not knowing when you're going to die.
• Psychonauts has Crystal and Clem, two psychotic cheerleaders—sort of. They only appear in a few places, but when they do, they mercilessly cheer and scream for Raz, much to his chagrin. The first time you encounter them, they're rooting for you while you play a mini-game. Your reward for finishing said mini-game? Getting them kicked out of the level. In contrast, your actual Exposition Fairy, Ford, will generally only chime in with unwanted advice when it's really obvious that you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. It can still be distracting, though, if you try to listen in at the same time you're fighting off a giant lungfish.
  • It's much, much deeper than this with Crystal and Clem. You can (and should) interact repeatedly with every NPC in this game, as their dialogue is different in each area, and can change after being spoken to repeatedly. If pressed for more and more cheers, Crystal will eventually break down into tears, admitting that she is a godawful cheerleader and her life is a sham. They can also be seen mixing poison in glass vials they will hide behind their backs if the player gets near. It's pretty heavily implied that they're both extremely suicidal and cannot even stand themselves.
• While not technically a character, the narrator from the Baldur's Gate games for PC definitely counts. "You must gather your party before venturing forth." Fortunately, there's a mod for the game which removes the voice.
  • The sequel has one memorable occasion. You're deep undercover in the drow city, with only a flimsy illusion and some very careful acting to keep you from getting detected. If anyone finds out you're not drow, the whole city will turn on you. And at one point Phaere, a psycho bitch matriarch daughter who is considered Ax Crazy even by drow standards, order you to go and slaughter some deep gnomes just to remind the gnomes who's boss. If you're good-aligned, you probably figure there's some way to do this the good way, so just kiss the psycho's boots and go do it, right? But if you have Aerie or Keldorn in your party, she will interrupt the conversation to point out in no uncertain terms that you can't kill innocent gnomes because that would be EVIL. Thanks, Aerie, that never occurred to me before. Since you're still with us, I think we've established where my moral compass points, and incidently, why did you say something so patently un-drow-like in front of the psycho who would carve our hearts out with spoons if she even suspected there was something odd about us? (Fortunately for your survival, Phaere dismisses that sentiment as odd, but not suspicious). This is hardly the only situation in which party members weigh in on the ethics of a certain decision, but this is one case in which it is not a good idea.
• Your teammates from Star FOX. Between them getting in your line of fire and you constantly having to save Slippy's butt, you have to wonder whose side they're on. And in Star Fox 64, you have Peppy randomly shouting "hints" like "Do a barrel roll!" and "Try a somersault!" at you in the middle of battle.
  • Most notably, Sector X. Depending on which route you take, Peppy may end up with enemies chasing him twice, and if you don't make it through the warp gate, Slippy jumps in shortly after the boss hits half of maximum HP and immediately gets knocked flying into the desert planet unless you can take out that other half really quickly. On the "positive" side, the necessity of this plot point means you get Slippy back at the end of the level if you lost him on Katina/Fortuna or earlier in Sector X.
  • Spoofed in Super Smash Bros.. Melee:

Slippy: Hold A to charge up shots!
Peppy: Cut your way though with a boost!
Fox: Aren't you guys thinking of something else?

• • At least your wingmen respawn (eventually) in Star Fox 64. In the original, if your wingmen go down, they don't "get better". And while you can beat the game on its hardest setting WITHOUT any wingmen, they do tend to help mop up some enemies you might miss, allowing you to pass more missions with 100% of enemies shot down (and earn more continues). And the noises they make indicating their mortal distress is just plain depressing.
  • Also, it's alluded to in several games—Slippy's a terrible pilot and thus takes a more R&D-based role in Adventures, and in Assault, his stats reflect his poor handling of airborne vehicles (though he's amazing in a Landmaster).
  • Prince Tricky from Star Fox Adventures was doubly annoying in that you only need him to dig up stuff and to light stuff on fire, which he needs special blue mushrooms for. When he is low on food, he will constantly complain about how hungry he is. And then when you are trying to avoid some enemies, he will helpfully chime in with "BAD GUY!" and "COOOOOOOLLLLL!" And if you tried to vent your frustration by hitting him, he breathed fire on you.
  • Try going for a medal on Star Fox 64's Sector Z, where your wingmen will attempt to destroy the missiles for you; each of the six missiles is a major source of points, at 11 points each, and you don't get credit for missiles that are destroyed by your wingmen. If it weren't for the requirement that all of your wingmen be alive to get the medal, you'd be wishing for them to be dead.
  • Your own wingmen say something along the lines of this when you kill enemies they're after. Especially Falco.

"Back off, Fox!" "Go find your own target, Fox!"

• • This is subverted in Assault, where Fox gives Wolf advice, only to be snubbed.

"Keep your advice to yourself and your eyes front, pup!"

• Intentional example: In the video game based on A Bugs Life, the fourth boss fight is against Molt, the Big Bad Hopper's brother. The battlefield is surrounded by fellow ants who "help" the player by throwing him berries as ammunition—which the player already has an unlimited supply of—and worse yet, they're red berries, the weakest, most basic form of berry in the game that can not even penetrate a grasshopper's exoskeleton. Considering that Molt just happens to be a grasshopper, this is kind of a big deal.
  • Also, when you DO end up picking some up, Flik sometimes yells, "ENOUGH with the red berries!"
• Farah in Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time. She attacks with a weak bow that only inconveniences the majority of your foes, has an absolutely criminal firing rate, and is extremely liable to shoot you in the back (and when that happens, the arrows take out a significant chunk of your health bar). Lampshaded in dialog by the Prince:

Farah: (after Farah has accidentally shot the Prince during a previous fight) You go ahead. I'll cover you.
Prince: Please don't. You're liable to hit me.

• • Also, in the opening, where she shouts "useful" tips that replay, after one time:

Prince: I know! You already said that!
Farah: No, I didn't!

• • Averted in the third game, The Two Thrones, by turning Farah into an Action Girl with Cutscene Power to the Max.
  • The Epilogue DLC for the 2008 game has a boss you have to push into a throne. You know this because the Prince will not stop saying "Elika! The throne! Elika! The throne! Elika! The throne!"
• Thanks to the infuriatingly uneven AI of the game, your partners in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 2 are very much the embodiment of this trope; they make so many stupid moves that leave you at a disadvantage, one has to wonder if they're programmed to actively sabotage your game.
• Regardless of how many times you have played Battlefield 2 (and the game keeps track) every time you start a game you still get told how to use ALL of the basic game functions. With text boxes that block parts of the screen.
  • At least you can turn it off in Battlefield 2142. But you still have to contend with your teammates' voice commands ruining your sneaking raid.

"I can heal you!"
"Need a resupply?"
*BROOP BROOP BROOP*
"Medic!" "Medic!" "Man down! Man down!"

• • Carries a different meaning when you're in the middle of dying quietly, and some random medic decides he wants to revive you. Fine, except that the mook who killed you now has two targets in his sights. Or, is carrying the detonator for the pack of C4 he hid under your body. Bonus points if the medic and the killer are working together just to pad their stats.
  • Another thing that has reached massive levels of infamy, is the fact that while playing online, entering a vehicle of an ally as a passenger has a 50/50 chance of having the driver manage to somehow either get themselves killed within 30 seconds of entering, either through sheer stupidity or by deliberate teamkilling. The chances are even higher (somewhere up to 70/30) if you're entering any airplane or helicopter, which leads to the oft-mocked scene of a helicopter taking off, proceeding to do a barrel roll in mid air and crashing straight into the ground.
• Zyzyx in Sacrifice. "Your creatures are under attack!" "Your creatures are dying!" "Your building lies in ruins..." etc. He would be endurable if he didn't say those lines over and over again in the same tone, or if that last phrase didn't sound like it carried the subtext "and it wasn't a particularly good building either."
  • A patch for the game added, amongst numerous improvements, the option to disable Zyzyx's help.
• The announcer in Salamander, though he turns out to be the final boss all along.
• In Black and White, the villagers (for whom you are supposed to be the patron god) have a very, very aggravating habit of moaning about their needs. "We need more civic buildings!" "We must have homes!" "Must... have... food..." They make being a sadistic, human-sacrificing divine terror so... satisfying.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Worshipers Need Food. Worshipers Need Food. Worshipers Need Food. Worshipers Need Food. Worshipers Need Food. WorshipersNeedFood. WorshipersNeedFood. WorshipersNeedFood. WorshipersNeedFood. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. WORSHIPERSNEEDFOOD. We must have homes! ... Worshipers Need Food.
  • The sequel and its expansion pack don't improve on this one at all, especially since the voice of your conscience just has to reply to every looped comment by the antagonist in Battle of the Gods. "The undead are coming!" ...and remain completely harmless, just like the last twenty-five times.
• Medieval 2: Total War was essentially advisor-free (you could disable it completely, and even if you didn't it only gave you the advice once). Life was good. And then a patch introduced a fricking battle commentator giving you the play-by-play. "The battle is swinging in our favor! If we can press on, victory is ours! Our forces are badly blooded! KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF AND THE IMMERSION YOU RODE IN ON, YOU PATHETIC MORON!". And the worst thing ? The voice was in culture-dependent silly accent.
  • Making things worse is the fact that the battle commentator doesn't actually say anything useful. Due to the massive scale of a number of the battles, you'll hear him say that you've destroyed half the enemy force UP TO 3 TIMES!
• Bottles and his relatives from the Banjo games are something of an in-world example. Aside for the skippable tutorials at the beginning of each game, they only show up to the teach the bear and bird duo new movements; if they have collected the correct number of notes, of course. However, this doesn't quite stop the moles from being threated by Kazooie, who mocks and insults them on a regular basis.
  • Despite the fact that they don't actually help you in that fashion, the Jinjos might be a "purer" version of this trope—if there's one in the area, they incessantly cry "Help!" no matter what you're doing. If they're actual Jinjos, you can just go and pick them up, no problem—but if they're evil Minjos, they can actually attack you, and they'll respawn if you kill them—continuing that annoying yelp for all eternity.
• An out-of-game example: Some games which bundle all localized versions onto one disk don't let you to chose your language, but auto-select it via looking at the system settings of your computer. This is the opposite of for people who want to play the (usually much better) original version of a game.
  • If you live in Europe, regular consoles do this to you starting in the sixth generation. Equally unhelpful, especially since before that you simply picked the language in the options menu. They Changed It, Now It Sucks.
  • Stupid Youtube did this to me. Good luck changing the language when everything is in Chinese.
    • Protip: Look for 語 as this means "language", and choose 英語 as this means English.
• Particularly bothersome example in TimeShift. For 90% of the game you have freedom to take your time and experiment, but in latest portion of the game, where you're escorting the rebel leader, the guy will not shut up, constantly complaining about how you're taking too long to reach your next goal while you're in the middle of a fire-fight. Even using your time powers to move at super-speed it seems impossible to speedrun to the objectives without hearing at least one complaint from this guy.
• Double H from Beyond Good and Evil can sometimes get a bit... overly chatty. He enjoys screaming compliments at you in the middle of battle, when not continuously informing you of how he's "Awaiting your orders"—and if things have been quiet for too long, he'll throw in a "Carlson and Peeters!" just to break the silence. He and Pey'j both have the annoying habit of nagging you to do things out of the blue -- "Hey, let's go buy that Pearl Detector!" in the middle of a completely unrelated trek to a Looter's Cave.
  • Or Pey'j asking you to give him a PA-1 (extra hit point) when a) it's more efficient to give your sidekick a lot of Starkos (each healing one hit point) and keep PA-1s and K-Bups (healing all hit points) for yourself, and b) he'll soon get captured anyway.
• Your reasonably hot AI-ally from Sin Episodes had a rather annoying habit of finding more mooks to shoot at her, and then drawing attention to you, the not-invulnerable player.
• Cedric the owl from King's Quest V is a particularly infuriating example. Not only are most of his warnings about really obvious dangers ("No, Graham! Don't!"), they are generally given only when it's already too late to stop yourself. If you knew there was a hole in the boat, why didn't you tell me before I set off to sea on it, you little... For extra annoyance, you actually have to go rescue him a few times to continue on in the game - and he never does something remotely useful himself.
• Fable "Try to get your combat multiplier EVEN HIGHER!" "Hero, your health is low... do you have any potions? Or food?" "Your Will energy is low, Hero. Watch that."
  • Hilariously referenced to in Fable 2 where a loading screen shows there are rumors that the Guildmaster was found dead with "Your health is low" carved into his forehead.
  • Also referenced by the hallucinating boy in the first Fable. One of his random phrases is "Your health is low... What?! Who said that?"
  • The comments during jobs in Fable II. SHUT UP AND LET ME WORK DAMN IT!
  • "The Anvil doesn't need forging!" Look, I'm an evil hero who can single handedly wipe out this entire town between breaths and I am currently holding a hammer and a red-hot shortsword. Either shut up or run.
  • The dog from Fable 2 often borders on this trope as he barked and tried to alert you to treasure even when you can clearly see in right in front of you. This quickly becomes irritating.
• Zip and Alister from Tomb Raider: Legend. With their way of "hinting" in a way that pretty much revealed exactly how to solve whatever puzzle you were working on, as well as their babble ruining the atmosphere for many people. Lara even lampshades this a little, by telling them to shut up when she's concentrating on some particularly tricky acrobatics.
  • At least the dialogue isn't too terrible in Legend. In Chronicles Zip is pure Ethnic Scrappy.
• Ultima VII part 1 and 2 are notorious for the fact that your party members are unable to feed themselves, unlike in the previous games. Even if their backpack contains plenty of food, they will start whining about how hungry they are constantly.
• Aquaria has an annoying sidekick that moves slowly, has barely any firepower compared to the protagonist, and never says a word. You are nevertheless required to keep him around and even rescue him once, because the game author forces him to be a love interest for your main character, even if this is very badly written and doesn't make sense on several levels (such as that they're of a different species).
  • Mercifully, it's possible to dump the annoying useless guy and come back only when you actually need him to get past some point in the game.
• Descent 2 has the guidebot, which has a tendency to pelt you with (mildly damaging) flares whenever you're near a door that it tries to open. Thankfully, you can order him to stay away indefinitely, and he does.
  • You can also abuse him with splash damage weapons, or use a cheat code that turns him into an Attack Drone Of Doom.
  • In Descent 3, hurting him has its own pitfalls, because when he's damaged enough he'll retreat to your ship. By smashing into you at full speed and taking half an orb's worth off your shield.
• Minnie Mouse in Mickey Mousecapade. Remember Tails from Sonic 2? Imagine if Tails died, you died. You get the picture.
• Daikatana. A selling point of the game is another character would follow you around. Unfortunately, the AI is retarded and likes to run into walls and other useless things that you would be perfectly able to handle on your own if you didn't have to worry about your other character.
• Gauntlet (1985 video game) and its progeny: "Warrior needs food, badly!", "Warrior is about to die!", "Use magic to kill Death!". Not actually bad advice, most of the time, but usually obvious and unnecessary.
  • The announcements may be obvious to you, the Warrior, but as Gauntlet was designed around being played with three other people, they're a good way to inform the other players that you should get first dibs on the next healing item that appears. Whether or not this actually works, well...
    • SOMEONE SHOT THE FOOD.
    • You son of aBITCH.
• In Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, you get three other little vacuum blobs to "help" you out. In reality, they are Too Dumb to Live.
• In the "Getaway Driver" missions in Driver, your passengers are prone to shout things like "Do something! We got us a tail!" when up to three police cars are slamming into you from all directions. Thanks, guy. It wasn't quite obvious enough.
• Caesar II, a fun, if buggy, simulation game in which you play as a Roman governor working your way from the provinces all the way up to Rome, was plagued by an annoying man who kept telling you that "Plebs are needed!" every three seconds that they were.
  • Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, the same basic idea but in China, was better, but it had a habit of randomly "forgetting" to tell you important events (building collapse, lack of food) while the popups for, yes, lack of population would get spammed.
• Dungeon Keeper: "Your minions are falling in battle! Your minions are winning the battle! You need a bigger treasure room!"
• In the fifth episode of Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People, 8-Bit is Enough, one of Strong Bad's goals is to get Homestar to stop popping up give him useless advice.
• Fiona Taylor. She was okay in the first Mercenaries game, but in the sequel, it gets to the point where you're blowing up her car every time you walk out of the base, just to annoy her as much as she annoys you.
• The first puzzle in Myst IV has Atrus constantly telling you how to solve it. There is not one second of continuous silence from Atrus until you have solved it. His repertoire of helpful advice isn't particularly long, and it gets very old very quickly.

Atrus: (player has already solved half the puzzle) Try moving the slider... No, that one seems OK.
Player: *grumbles under breath*

• In the Brain Age 100 math problems exercise, an attention shattering noise occurs after solving a set number of problems.
• In Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the player character (Bishop) and his squad is "assisted" by an NSA agent who infiltrated the terrorist's penthouse. Later, when Bishop's squadmates are recalled back to replace Logan Keller's lost squad, Bishop decides to track down the apparent terrorist mastermind, Alvarez Cabrero to a oil facility; and the NSA agent shows up to accompany him. The agent's help mainly consists of him distracting you during tense situations, failing at giving you reliable intel, and generally being completely useless. Justified in that the NSA agent was The Mole, The Man Behind the Man, and the Anticlimax Boss all rolled into a convenient, easily hateable package.
  • The squad itself is terrible at their jobs. Keep them nearby and they will force you to stay in place as a grenade drops right at your feet. Send them up ahead and they'll let the enemy kill them. Tell them to rappel or fast-rope from railings and they'll immediately tell you they "can't do that". Try to strategically move them up from cover to cover and they'll get stuck on thin air.
• Halo had Guilty Spark, which made irritating comments, gave useless advice, and hummed slightly nasal tunes like fingernails down a chalkboard as it led you along. "Luckily" you didn't have to bear with it forever, as it turned out to be the Bad Guy at the plot climax and proceeded to try to kill you at every opportunity afterward.
  • Your Millage May Vary on that one. Personally I found if you listened closely enough to what Guilty Spark was saying you got the first hints that the overall plot for the series was deeper than it first appeared (not that it first seemed especially shallow mind you). In particular the fact the Guilty Spark talks as if you know exactly whats going on is very relevant to the backstory.
  • Also, it just feels like forever because you're slogging through the Library, a monotonous copy-pasted level, interrupted only by regular ambushes.
  • A less extreme case is in Halo 3 on the final level. As you drive up to the jump you'll need to make to get into the hangar, Cortana urges you to gun the engines, which would be good advice, except that anyone with half a brain would have already been gunning the engine for the entire level, thank you very much!
    • Actually, if you've been gunning it the entire level (particularly, the areas where sections of platforms get destroyed), you've got a good chance of falling to your death.
  • Sgt. Johnson, would you kindly stop shooting instant-death lasers into the area where I'm fighting?
  • Halo: Reach: Go look up any gameplay video of your Spartan allies on Youtube. Note how much are of them betraying the player. Case in point, Emile seems to believe his shotgun is a sniper rifle, Jun constantly snipes the player through several enemies, Carter repeatedly Armor Locks rather than fighting, and Kat... Kat can't drive.
• Arcanum, where there is NO WAY to get your NPC followers to retreat. Even as they whine about being on the verge of death or even begging for retreat, they'll stand there and keep bashing on the enemy until they bite it. At least Fallout's NPCs would stop fighting and follow you if you ran far enough.
  • And if given any consumables such as healing items, they'll gulp them as soon as anyone takes as much as a scratch.
  • Or Virgil wasting all his Fatigue trying (and failing) to heal your high tech-aptitude character with his magic.
• Kingdom Hearts, where Donald Duck would heal you at the slightest thing instead of saving it for when you're properly injured.
  • That said, you could alter his use of magic to "Only in an emergency"—in which case he will save his Cure spell until your Critical Annoyance alarm goes off.
    • Contrast that to in 2 where he would heal Goofy who had a little health gone but NEVER heal Sora. There was also Riku who would heal you literally a second before you'd just cast curaga. Thanks for making me waste my MP you bastard.
  • "GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK!"
  • The fight with Hades. Yes, thank you, I already know to use aura sphere, you've already told me ten thousand times and you're blocking the gorram health bar so I can't see how much damage I'm doing!
  • In Chain of Memories, the Donald card will make you bang your head against a wall. If you use it against a monster that absorbs Fire attacks, you can bet he will use not one but TWO Fire/Fira/Firagas on it. He'll also cast heal when your HP is full. One wonders if the programmers have a hatred for the character, because sheesh...
• Planescape: Torment, where, unless you maintain tight control over her, Fall-From-Grace would run up to the enemy and slap them,^[1] her default and only attack, when she should be hanging back and healing instead.
• Kinda stretching it, but in the climax of Crash Bandicoot 3, Aku Aku holds Uka Uka off while you take on Cortex. Only problem? Aku Aku helps form half the danger of the fight thanks to Friendly Fire.
• In Devil May Cry 3, when you get one of the later bosses to half health, your brother, Virgil, shows up to help you beat the boss. At this point, the battle becomes ten times harder, since they mapped the button you use to control Virgil (which is useless anyway since he mirrors your moves for the most part) to your style button, depriving you of many of your more powerful moves, which far outweighs Virgil's meager contribution.
  • Plus, you can't use your devil trigger; no healing or extra damage for you.
• Either you've never played Rayman Revolution, or you just want to wipe that damn grin off Murfy's face, preferably by feeding him to the Keeper of the Cave of Bad Dreams.
  • He's the same way in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. The good news is that you'll only see him for one level. The bad news is that he won't shut up for the entire duration of said level and you can't skip his dialogue.
  • It's really kinda weird; he was really tolerable in Rayman 2: The Great Escape, having his advice appearing briefly on screen without interrupting your action at all and only appearing in person when you either encountered his helper stone for the first time or called for it with a certain button while standing on said stone. One has to wonder why they went several steps back in the next game ...
• Petrie in The Land Before Time 9 spin-off game. Yes I can see the water is going up and I can see it's going down and therefore I assume I can use it to go up too, now shut up!
• In a game with otherwise great AI, Minion Master Gnarl from Overlord can get really annoying. Hinting on how to fight the beholders? Fantastic. Repeating the same hint over and over in the same tone of voice, even as I do what you tell me too? That's it, into the forge.
  • He gets even more annoying in the sequel, where the advice isn't even all that useful the first time. He says I need to get the Spider Queen down from the wall to attack it, but no hint as to how that can be done.
  • He actually does make note of the waterpipes around the arena.
    • He makes note of them once. Not that the waterpipes are hard to spot, since the buttons to operate them are clearly marked. But he never mentions how to get the spider to the pipes, which would be a useful hint. He then inanely repeats the same useless line about getting the spider down from the wall until you figure it out yourself.
• The Tales (series)' in-battle voice triggers can be cool, if not helpful, but Tales of Vesperia takes it too far. Other characters will warn a unit when his TP is getting low, which could be helpful for newbies, but aggravating to a player who knows how to watch his TP but, for some reason (say, holding a boss still) chooses not to. And all the more annoying when the player is put down for it, generally by Rita. Worse is when a character is berated for running away from an enemy for some length of time, again usually by Rita or Raven, since most of the times that situation will come up, it's because the running character is trying to kite the enemy - keeping its attention while not letting it hit himself or another unit. Show some gratitude, Rita.
  • There's also Estelle's "someone protect me while I'm casting!" meanwhile I'm using RITA to block as many attacks as I can so the bitch can heal us. Stop trying to give me advice Estelle because if you were smart and didn't try casting in front of enemies you could see I AM ALREADY FOLLOWING IT.
    • As someone else pointed out below, you could've edited her settings so she'd start and stay as far away from the enemies as possible. You could've even taken control of her, yourself, and manually moved her away from enemies. Also, why the hell were you using Rita of all people to protect Estelle?! Unless your other (two) fighter(s) is(are) dead or near dead, then Rita, while actually having some physical attacks, is a terrible choice to be using given her abysmal defense.
  • "I don't think going back is such a good idea." "Oops, made a wrong turn!" "We shouldn't be going this way." "Are you sure it's this way?"
    • To clarify, the game outright refuses to allow you to continue traveling too far off in a given direction on the overworld map if you're not supposed to be in that area yet. Hell, sometimes it even happens when you've already been to a place (or in specific locations within the game), though normally only when either your current task needs to be completed immediately or you're being pursued. This usually only happens earlier in the game, though.
  • Tales of Symphonia takes the .hack GU and Kingdom Hearts problem of overactive spell casters and healers to a whole new level. If your spell casters waste all their magic either healing 1 hp of damage repeatedly or attacking the boss/enemies... they bum rush that enemy and get wasted in under a second... thanks a lot.
    • ...just like in Kingdom Hearts, you can alter that behavior, there are many options like "save" (always leaves at least 75% TP) and stuff... at least for the offensive spells.
    • Which doesn't actually help, as then they'll just bum rush the enemy at 75% instead of zero.
    • You've obviously never tried using the "Spells/Techs Only" strategy setting. This prevents them from using melee attacks when they run out of TP.
  • No mention of Tales of Legendia? If it gets any closer... It interrupted the Eres!
• The three paladins that escort Princess Lachesis during her introductory chapter in Fire Emblem 4. Stop killing yourselves when you try protect her before Sigurd reaches for her, morons.
• Dwarf Fortress. *PAUSE* You have struck Microcline! I know already!
  • Hey, it beats alunite. Marginally.
  • Thankfully, in the 2010 versions it no longer pauses the game, and you even have the option to remove the announcement log spam entirely (which you'll want to, once you hit the caverns.^[2])
• Linu in Neverwinter Nights has a particularly frustrating form of this. It's called the "Harm" spell, and it's used to heal undead. Does Linu realise it doesn't seriously hurt undead? No. No she doesn't.
• In Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, you frequently have to fight oversized mechas. So when one shows up on your side for a change, seems like a sweet deal, right? Wrong. Turns out the giant mecha's Beam Spam and shockwave attacks hurt you just as badly as they hurt the enemy mooks. Even worse, you can't even get the giant mech to stop by killing it, because it's on your side!
  • Speaking of giant bosses, when it comes to fighting one, your AI allies idea of attacking one is to run face-first into said boss and hit it with only basic moves, usually getting their ass handed to them. This is particularly bad in missions where some ignoramus of a mission designer decided it was a good idea to make the mission fail if said ally dies.
  • Allies in pretty much any Dynasty Warriors game are generally good examples of this trope. It got particularly frustrating in 2, where enemy officers could recover health or get temporary power-ups when knocked down... which is what just about any fully-executed combo will do to them (and the only one which doesn't stuns them, meaning any subsequent hit will knock them down). When fighting alone, this could be avoided. When fighting with allies around... yeah, good luck with getting a quick win there.
• Burnout Paradise: Shut The Hell Up Atomika, I do not need your Forced Tutorials interrupting my high-speed stunt driving every 3 minutes.
• Inverted in Lifeline, where you are the helper telling an AI character what to do via a USB microphone. Unfortunately, voice recognition has never been a precise technology, and in getting Rio to do something you'll often end up repeating your instructions enough times to make Navi look like a mute. Also played straight, however, as Rio will repeatedly ask you for advice in a way that hints at what you have to advise her to do. Believe it or not, I like this game.
• Civilization IV regularly pops up messages suggesting that you build a particular structure in a city. This advice is rarely useful.
  • Even more annoying popups occur in the (otherwise awesome) expansion, Beyond the Sword. If you captured—by force or by culture—another civilization's city, it will periodically suggest that you return it to them as a nice gesture. In addition, it will often suggest that cities far from your capital also ought to be given away (or given their independence), even if you built them; while that often is an actually good idea, there are just as often reasons not to do it.
    • Fortunately, these popups can be turned off in the options menu.
  • The AI leaders can do this, too. They can repeat their trade proposals every few turns despite being rejected each time.
  • Civilization III. Six Words. Our treasury is running dangerously low! Every. Goshdarned. Turn.
• In Resident Evil 5, you may have set up this lovely minefield to blow any zombies that come along into little chunks. Then, you turn your back for one second, and discover that your AI-controlled partner Sheva picked up every single mine you laid down thinking they were discarded items.
  • Yahtzee complained that she would often use full healing items on him whenever he had taken a scrap of damage. He noted that this caused him to flee in terror from her harder than from any of the enemies.
• The Resident Evil series all-time champion helper is one Steve Burnside, from Code Veronica. In his spectacular Let's Play, The Dark Id takes Steve to task, noting that the game is made significantly longer and harder due to his screwing up repeatedly:
  • Claire needs a pair of decorative Gold Lugers to open a door. When she finds them, she gets caught in a deathtrap—which resets when she puts them back. Later, Steve finds them and takes them, and refuses to let go, making Claire run to save him. To top it off, once she saves him he refuses to hand over the guns unless Claire gives him "something fully automatic"—which sends her on a wholly unnecessary fetch quest.
  • When Claire actually finds the guns, it causes her and Steve to be dropped into the Big Bad's trap. Steve then takes the guns and shoots about ten zombies, a wall, and his zombie dad. He doesn't give you the automatic guns, and the Gold Lugers he does give you have no ammo.
  • Steve finally manages to get the drop on and disarm the Big Bad Alford, and has him at gunpoint for about 30 seconds—but does not pull the trigger, because he's freaked out about Alford being a transvestite! Not only that, but the pause gives the Big Bad time to run away and set the base's self-destruct mechanism. While Claire and Steve escape, the Big Bad is able to set the autopilot on their plane remotely, sending them to Antarctica.
  • While in Antarctica, Steve messes up operating a drill, flooding the room they're in with toxic gas—because he was busy staring at Claire's butt. This sends Claire all over the complex to find a gas mask.
  • After all that, Steve turns into a huge monster and tries to kill Claire, forcing her to use ammo and/or herbs to get away from him which really should be used by Chris instead, since he's the one that has to kill the final boss.
• In the old text-based game for The Hobbit, Gandalf and Thorin are necessary to help Bilbo out of certain traps (you're too short to escape on your own); Thorin also has to survive until the party reaches Smaug's lair so that he can use the key to the side door. And Bard must be waiting at the Long Lake to shoot Smaug when he arrives. However, all these characters are prone to wandering off, telling you "No" when you ask for help (even in time-critical situations), and being killed or captured by wandering enemies. (Played with in that one of the most annoying things they do is abandon you for no reason.)
• MadWorld with Agent XIII. Worse in the tutorial since EVERYTHING stops just to listen to him go on about how you can kill people THREE TIMES.
• Team Fortress 2 - Every time there's a change in the mission objective status, the Administrator has something to say about it. This quickly gets very annoying on Control Point maps with a highly contested CP. And then there was the "OVERTIME" bug.
  • A player-caused example: It's common, especially in the setup period, for the classes to spam some of their dialogue, especially that relating to where Engineers should put their structures. It can be pretty easy to hear nothing but "NEED A DISPENSAH HEAH" from all the Scouts in the area.
  • Also, every one who's ever played as a Spy knows the horror of having your cover blown by an idiot hilarious Medic who heals you in full-view of the other team.
• Oddly enough, in Ghostbusters the Video Game, the entire movie cast has moments of this. The 'busters never truly die if at least one is still standing and are capable of reviving each other if need be. Unfortunately, your teammates are incompetent and take their sweet time to walk over and save anyone, meaning that you will be forced to spend most of your time in tough missions running around and reviving everyone or risk quick death.
  • The shouted advice can be nifty at times if you haven't already checked Tobin's or used your PKE meter/goggles, but damn does it get annoying to hear the same advice being shouted to you when you've already been making use of that same advice for some time or already thought of it long before they started hollering it to you. Or when the Big Bad is spewing slime or other dangerous substances at you and you simply can't stand around in one place for too long lest you die. Particularly egregious when Rookie is the only one who can fight the level boss because the boys are either taking a break, or trapped several floors up.
• The advisors in SimCity 4 can be this way. Sometimes their advice is good ("You don't have enough fire stations to keep the town safe" or "Some random person's house has come ablaze, ya better put it out"), but it's mostly this:

Utilities Advisor: WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!
(you build one)
Environmental Advisor: The sky is missing because of the power plant.
Utilities Advisor: WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!
Financial Advisor: The budget is getting low!
Utilities Advisor: WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!
Utilities Advisor: WE NEED WATER!!!
Environmental Advisor: The water is polluted.
Transportation Advisor: Traffic is backed up, build a bus station.
Utilities Advisor: WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!
Transportation Advisor: No one is using the bus station, why did you think it was a good idea to build it?

• • Truth in Television then, considering this the exact role of advisors in nearly every form of government. Probably why being a totalitarian dictator is so popular.
• For SimCity 2000: "SimCopter One reporting heavy traffic. SimCopter One reporting heavy traffic. SimCopter One reporting heavy traffic. SimCopter One reporting heavy traffic..."
  • I'm hit! Mayday!
  • Don't forget how doing virtually anything in SimCity 3000 would result in sniffles from your Financial Advisor.
• In early builds of Left 4 Dead, AI characters could heal you with their health packs, which would freeze you in place for several seconds. When they pull this stunt during the last sprint to the rescue vehicle, it can easily get you killed. Valve thankfully patched it so you could cancel the healing.
  • Except that the only way to make them stop trying to heal you is by holding out your pills or first aid kit, which means you have no gun to use unless you swap out. Also, the AI will gleefully toss you pain pills while you are low on health, but they will usually do so while you are shooting and you will likely down the pills without even trying. Thankfully, this is still present in the sequel.
    • When being healed, you cannot move, as stated above. The sequel has a Charger, which will plow through you and the Spitter, who can spit acid on the floor and damage anyone standing in it. It can become quite common for an AI survivor to try to heal you and you see a Charger running towards you or a Spitter spits on you as you are being healed, forcing you to take damage until the AI either finishes healing you or is also hit by the spit and forces them to move.
• Even Riviera: The Promised Land has its quota of it. When the game starts you get a prologue chapter full of tutorials; fair enough, you just started the game. But when you're 5 hours in the characters (now the girls, when in the prologue were Rose and Ledah) are still giving you information about stuff you very most likely already know about. Heck, even the tutorial doesn't come as practical - do we really need a long text rambling about how the number next to an item's name indicates the remaining amount of them?
• Thankfully, the developers of The Gungan Frontier realized some players would react this way, so you can tell your Ninja Butterfly to "take a nap" indefinitely. Given that said Ninja Butterfly is Jar-Jar Binks, you'll probably do so very quickly.
• In Batman: Arkham Asylum, your Mission Control, Oracle, is never annoying; only chiming in during plot relevant scenes. Meanwhile, for the Mooks, their Mission Control is the Joker. Who's "motivational speaking" includes hyping up how they have no chance, threatening dire consequences if they should fail, and laughing as Batman picks them off, one-by-one. Unfortunately, there isn't a huge amount of variety in his lines.
• Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner. You will hear, "I suggest using (subweapon the game thinks is useful)," and "Damage level exceeding 50/75%," and, "Use Dash to move out of the way of enemy attack and then counter attack," so often that not having to hear it anymore will be your motivation for finishing the level after long enough.
  • Actually, you can press the joystick buttons to answer the AI, the Left one saying yes and switching you to that subweapon quicker. Whereas the Right one has answers more along the line of "Stop bothering me!". You can do this with most things that are said, even if its just tossing out a one liner when she's saying the Vector Cannon is charged.
• Taken to extreme levels in the PlayStation 2 game Tokobot Plus. Upon gaining a new ability, you will be paused each time for the following: your "helper", Ruby, will wonder out loud what the new ability does, despite having an obvious name; she will analyze the ability's MacGuffin so she can give you an in depth explanation of what it does; after her inane chatter subsides, a window pops up giving a visual explanation of how to use the new ability, then another window pops up and repeats everything Ruby told you, and in case you weren't paying attention the first four times, Ruby will pause you again when you first need the ability and give another explanation of how you use it. This happens for every new move you aquire.
  • Take the helicoptor jump for example. You've just gained it, put up with (skipping) all the dialogue, and are ready to go. You start spinning and approach the first cliff. Guess what happens?
  • In addition, Ruby will speak up about anything else you encounter and drop a hint about it, including: enemies, simple boss fights, obvious plot points, and puzzles. That's right, the game won't even let you solve its own puzzles without trying to help you even before you even start solving it!
• Half-Life: "Don't forget to reload, Doctor Freeman!" No really, Sherlock, because that wouldn't be what I'm doing right now at all. Or better yet, when I've got like half a clip left and they're still telling me to reload, or when I'm using the crossbow which I CAN'T manually reload...
  • Naturally, Concerned mocks the hell out of this, with Barney educating a group of citizens on the finer points of urban warfare, such as politeness, ignoring personal space and giving useless hints to the person most experienced with combat.

Resistance Fighter: Hey! Dr. Freeman! Don't forget to reload!
(Beat Panel)
Resistance Fighter: Didja see that? I just helped Dr. Freeman.
Gordon Frohman: He's using his frigging crowbar!

• • Intentionally averted in Half-Life 2: Episode One with Alyx. Originally she was to frequently tell Gordon (and thus the player) to hurry up/go faster/something similar, but when the developers realised that if players didn't like Alyx they wouldn't like the game, as she spends almost all of the game following the player, this was removed.
  • None of this is as annnoying as popping out of a room to throw a grenade into a sunken gun turret, only to find that when you moved outside, an NPC 'teammate' stepped into the doorway. Now you have to gently, politely push them aside and shuffle back into the room. While taking bullets.
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has that little furry Moogle that's supposed to help you out in single player mode. Thing is, he gets tired easily (every ten minutes to be exact!) and starts to lag heavily behind, even though he's carrying your sole protection from the miasma. The last thing you want to hear is "I'm tired, kupo! It's your turn!" when you've got two Flan and three Goblins after you, with two hearts left.
• Okami: Yes, Issun, I know that that's an exorcism arrow. You really don't need to repeat every plot-related hint three times in BRIGHT RED TEXT, you know.
• Pommy from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack is useless, useless, useless, USELESS!!! He can't attack an enemy without the attack backfiring and stunning him 9 times out of 10; if you're too close to him when he attacks he ends up stunning you instead; he gets in the way of your attacks and any objects you're trying to move, hindering your puzzle-solving and enemy-killing, and if left to his own devices, he'll wanter around aimlessly, usually away from where you need him to be. Oh, and every boss fight you get into, he just hides in the corner, leaving you to do all the work. The fact that he looks like an inbred cross between a Sunkern and Rayman doesn't help things, either.
  • At least Pommy has Evolutionary Levels that make him more useful.
• In all of the Bomberman multi-player games, you can harm your teammates with friendly fire. Cue bomb-spamming idiot buddy...
• In Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, the game feels the need to explain every minigame to you every time you play it and occasionally tells you to take a break and do something else. However, these are skippable. The really annoying thing is the mandatory three minute video that plays every time you put Wii Sports Resort into a new Wii. It tells you how to connect Wii Motion Plus... and how to disconnect it... and how to connect the nunchuck.
• Your allies in Blast Corps every time you try to destroy a building in a way you're not supposed to, usually by ramming it to death if you are not in the Ramdozer. "Try something else!" "Is this such a good idea?" Screw you! I got this giant missile on a truck riding down the tracks and--*NUCLEAR EXPLOSION*
• Obscure turn-based strategy game Deadlock 2 defaults to giving you a status report every turn filled with absolutely useless information. And whenever a status report appears, your advisor springs up and says useful things like "Everything is going fine", or "Something happened", or "Hey, look at this", or a thousand of similarly useless messages. Mercifully, an option is available to restrict status reports to appear when something actually worth of note happens, which reduces them drastically, but when they do appear the advisor is still there.
• Age of Empires II has an example that's a combination of Stop Helping Me!, Most Annoying Sound, and Stop Asking for Help From Me. Now, the normal You Require More Vespene Gas type messages in the game are okay, most of the time, because you really do require more of the resource when you get them. But in the Saladin campaign, you have to defend two allies, Aqaba and Medina. Theoretically, Aqaba and Medina will tell you when they're being attacked; one of the win conditions is that you need to make sure the Crusaders don't destroy Aqaba and Medina, so accurate messages about when they're being attacked are, in theory, helpful. In practice, you get pretty damn sick of hearing "Crusaders are attacking us", going over there and finding out that there are no Crusaders. It's just one of the reasons it's That One Level.
• The tutorial instructors in Call of Duty "Switch to your other weapon, it's faster than reloading!" Particularly annoying if you're trying repeatedly to get the achievement.
• The Standard Status Ailments in Dawn of Mana are bad enough, but your Fairy Companion will very unhelpfully ask "are you okay?" every damn time you shake one off.
• Ridge Racer: "Hey! Somebody's right on your tail!"
  • Likewise in Daytona USA 2: "Hey! Someone's drafting you!"
• In Deus Ex, allies and enemies can talk to you over your infolink, and for the entirety of their voice clip you cannot quicksave, which can be pretty tiresome at times.
  • This is referenced in The Nameless Mod where a character called Beeblequix exists purely to interrupt your platforming attempts with his inane comments about his favourite soaps, anecdotes about his dead rat, and even a long piece of music. He even lampshades how annoying this sort of thing was in Deus Ex. Fortunately you can turn down his help beforehand and kill him (and his cat) for revenge if you feel like it.
  • It's even lampshaded in the original game itself. After Tracer Tong drones on and on through the infolink about the Illuminati and the clues you've uncovered that point to them - all while you are desperately trying to escape both hordes of enemies and numerous environmental hazards - J.C. (your character) berates him for it when they meet face to face. Tong seems blissfully unaware that he has done anything wrong.
• In Dragon Age, city guards and other neutral characters whom one might expect to help out if a fight breaks out in their vicinity often do. This help is usually un-needed but not specifically unwelcome. However, you better hope there aren't any neutral mages nearby when you start a fight. Their idea of help consists of throwing a fireball into the middle of the battle and then repeating it as many times as necessary.
  • "Collateral damage? That's a good thing, right? The more the better."
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas features this in the San Fierro series of missions. Every once in a while, one of the villains sends minions on drug runs from San Fierro to Los Santos, and you are able to intercept them and steal their money. It wouldn't be so bad except that when it happens, the phone rings, CJ automatically answers it, and the following conversation has become ingrained in many a player's head:

CJ: The yay leavin' San Fierro, right?
Cesar: Yeah, but they're using bikes, CJ, and they're going cross-country!

You can then choose to either go after them or not, and given how far away you have to drive to get them, a lot of players don't find the monetary award worth it, so these calls become especially annoying.

Same game, Toreno's idea of helping C.J. get his brother back is sending him (C.J.) on insanely suicidal missions.

• Less plot and more AI. In Saints Row it's great when your followers pick up better guns...unless it's a rocket launcher and they try to shoot the car that's next to you.
• Dogmeat in Fallout 3 doesn't have any tactics beyond "stay here and don't move" and "immediately attack anything within range." This frequently leads to him leaping between the Exile and an enemy ... just as you're unloading several shotgun shells in that direction.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, the Old World Blues Sealth Suit Mk II becomes this. She/It will inject you with Med-X at the start of a fight (which can easily get you addicted to it if you let her/it) and will inject you with Stimpaks very frequently, even if you don't need it (possibly getting you sick AND burning expensive items when they weren't needed).
• Mission Control in Crackdown repeats various gameplay hints forever. Yes, I know the purple lights are road races, you don't need to say it every time I pass one. It still repeats the hints even when they're no longer relevant, such as explaining how to increase skills that are already at maximum.
• Maniac in the Wing Commander series is this deliberately. His A.I. is programmed to be aggressive, with no regard for tactics at all. Consequently, he will go up against capital ships in a scout-class ship, regardless of how ineffectual the weapons are, refuses to retreat when ordered to, even if he's clearly doomed, and, most egregiously, will lock on to your target and cut in front of you the moment you open fire, then yell at you for shooting him. It's clear he's meant to be this bad in an early mission briefing:

Halcyon: ... if Maniac gives you any static, you have my permission to shoot him to pieces.
Maverick: Should I use missiles, sir, or ship's guns?
Halcyon: Guns, Maverick. Save your missiles for important targets.

• In a team-based MOBA, like Dota and League of Legends, weaker players on your team can end up hurting you more than your enemies and are often worse than having an outright leaver because they feed kills to the enemy team making them stronger.
  • Then there is the guy that pings a spot on the map for 20 seconds to draw your attention to something you can't do anything about (until your ears are ringing and you can't hear the audio cue of Shaco going invisible in a nearby bush); the guy that attempts to fight against the odds forcing you to risk your own life to extract him; the guy that gives "useful feedback" like "omg noob wtf r u doin r u retard???" or "omfg y u not buy malady its teh best for xin u idiot"; the Twitch player that goes into stealth before a teamfight, does nothing while his now-outnumbered team gets destroyed taking the enemies down to 20% health, then emerges and uses his ultimate to smugly score a quadrakill; and the guy that says "annie missing" approximately 0.8 seconds before she appears in your lane and summons a teddy bear in your face.
• Golden Sun is completely free of this...except for one section. Lamekan Desert. It introduces a dehydration mechanic requiring you to find oases to keep from getting heatstroke and taking about a third of your health in damage. Which would be tolerable, except your party members constantly complain about the heat.
  • And Golden Sun: Dark Dawn now makes up for the lack of annoying allies, in the form of player characters periodically jumping out to tell Matthew how to solve a puzzle that he's been solving repeatedly for the last dungeon and a half. The biggest example is Amiti popping out at the entrance to the Ouroboros dungeon to prompt Matthew to use Arid Heat to empty a basin full of water—Amiti only joins the party after solving an entire dungeon based on using Arid Heat to empty basins full of water.
• In the game Kinectimals there's Bumbles. He's the guide of the game and will tell you every single time what to do no matter how far you get in the game! I know how to JUMP! You don't have to show me!
• The Suffering. The game encourages the player to help the other survivors they find on the prison island. Shame the other survivors tend to crazily wound the player while trying to destroy monsters. Only one apologizes.
• Scarface the World Is Yours. Careful in the trainyard when one of your employees is driving away. He will run you (or your lackey) over without a moment's hesitation.
• Cha-Cha in Monster Hunter Tri is actually pretty useful with the right mask and skills. Plus he also heals you and often serves as a distraction for large monsters, giving you the space to heal or ready an attack. On the other hand his habit of running straight forward in front of you when attacking the same monster makes him highly annoying for Gunners, especially when trying to use special ammunition that's usually very limited in count. Not to mention occasionally blowing you up in the middle of a combo when using the Feylyne Mask (thankfully, his bombs don't hurt you).
• Damn you, Fennel!. She pops up to give you a tutorial in the Pokemon Dream World...every time you reset your computer's cookies. Just cleaned out your PC? Switched computers? Cue Fennel blabbering on about how to plants seeds/water your garden/use the share shelf...even though your garden is ready to harvest and your share shelf is full. Oh, and did we mention you only have access to the Dream World for an hour, after which it boots you off until exactly a day later? If you then rush to the Tree of Dreams to collect the Pokemon you want to download, you'll be stalled by Fennel telling you how magnificent the tree is, and how to make a wish. Which may cost you the Pokemon if the time runs out, especially if you have your internet connection tends to lag.
  • Similarly, the original Pokemon TCG video game for the Game Boy made you sit through the long, detailed and complicated tutorial with every new character. No skip option. In fact, if you beat the game as fast as physically possible for the game, it eats up half the play time.
• In The Sims 2, the nanny NPC can be like this. She usually has two extremes. Not taking care of your children at all: Instead she will bake cakes (and ignore them if the baby starts crying, thus causing a fire) or watch TV. Or, she will pay too much attention to the baby, waking them up to feed and bathe them, and then putting them on the floor instead of in a crib.
  • This page details exactly how unbelievably annoying nannies can be.
• The Claptraps in Borderlands is similar to Navi from Ocarina of Time; they will keep bugging you about new missions that popped up, even though you already signed up for all of them or are in the middle of another mission. They will always repeat this every single time you go from one region to another. According to the developers, the Claptrap's Robot Revolution DLC is partly meant for players to vent their frustrations on the little buggers since they're the main enemies of the DLC.
• The voice of your Mission Control in Persona 3, who insists upon giving you by-the-action updates of how many enemies are left, whether or not they are knocked down by, or got killed by, or survived your latest attack, and whether or not an attack you've used against that foe a bajillion times already is super-effective or no, and your status effects, and so on and so on, all of which is already clearly visible to you on the screen right in front of you and also painfully obvious.
  • An example: at the start of one particular boss fight, on a floor which has no random enemies and a clearly visible and unique boss creature sitting in the middle of it (a setup you've encountered many times already, and which you've already been warned about on each floor on the way here), Mission Control's advice at the start of the battle is "I don't think this is a random fight. It seems to be guarding this area!" Yes, thank you Fuuka, I'm glad you're here to tell us these things...
  • And it returns in Persona 4. Rise calls you Senpai every five seconds. It's as if they wanted to compensate for the fact that her voice acting is a million times better than Fuuka's by having her talk a million times more. Though her predecessor, Teddie, can be plenty annoying in his own right, since both of them are, like Fuuka, repeating information you already have on the screen (and unlike Fuuka, they don't know anything more about the enemy's strengths and weaknesses than what you've learned by trial and error).
• Rune Factory 3: Any of your NPC companions who carry weapons that do elemental damage.^[3] Nothing is more frustrating than finishing off a tough ice monster only to have Kuruna or Carlos smack them with their water-based weapon and revive them. You can give them non-elemental weapons to eliminate this (all except Shara, who wields a watering can). But that still leaves those NPCs who use magic, smacking them with revivifying attacks. The only options are keep whacking away till it stays down or dismiss your NPC.
• Harry from Custom Robo. At the beginning of almost every fight he will give you advice whether you want it or not. Occasionally he gives you good tactical suggestions and what to do against certain enemy types, but most of it is useless or obvious. Furthermore, he also asks if you understood all of it, in case you want to hear it again. On a few occasions, you can confuse him with odd responses ("Wait, who are you again?" "Sorry, I was sleeping.") but those will always set him off advising again.
• Quistis in Final Fantasy VIII likes to explain junctioning and limit breaks in nauseating detail—at one point, she asks Squall something to the effect of "Do you know how to use your Gunblade?"/"how to junction magic?" ... after, storyline-wise, Squall has taken on his rival Seifer, the summon Ifrit, numerous monsters, the military of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and a gigantic robot; and now has graduated to being a full-fledged member of the most elite fighting force on the planet. ...it's not too outrageous to assume that Squall knows how to fight.
• Followers in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion have a bad habit of rushing any enemy they see. This can have one of 2 effects: (1. They rush an enemy that's way too strong for them or (2. They run in between you and the enemy just as you're using a power strike, killing or seriously injuring them. If their survival was important to the quest you need to restart from the last save now. Hitting your partner also has a tendency to cause them to attack you, meaning you have to yield to them to get them to stop. Thank the nine for "Essential" partners (who can't be killed, only knocked unconcious).
  • One horse, Shadowmere, is marked as Essential. She also has a bad habit of rushing every enemy in sight, meaning you need to worry about the above issue with your freaking horse, which is much easier to accidentally hit and isn't a very good fighter. While she won't turn hostile on you, hitting her sometimes counts as "Assaulting a Guild Mate" which will get you kicked out of 3 of the 4 guilds (you can no longer get kicked out of the Dark Brotherhood after the mission you get Shadowmere in).
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has the same problem with followers as Oblivion, especially the melee fighters. Their entire strategy is Attack! Attack! Attack! which causes problems for every fighting style. Fighting with them in confined spaces makes them easy to kill on accident, they act as meat shields for enemies (especially frustrating as heavy hitting, low mobility two handed fighters) and they can hit allies who will become hostile. Quest giving NPCs can be murdered by your followers after being hit by friendly fire during a fight with a mudcrab or something, causing you to fail the quest.
• The Elder Scrolls series in general has the starting chargen sequences. They are really helpful on your first playthrough, since they double as tutorials and introduce the game's plot. On your second playthrough, you start to hate the sequences. Mods abound that speed up chargen by removing the tutorials and plotplotplot events.
• The Assassin's Creed series makes extensive use of Puzzle Pan during platform-jumping sequences. The trouble is that in some places, the camera tries to be a bit too helpful in angling itself to show you the intended pathway forward; as the directional controls are relative to the camera, not the character, it can very easily result in missed jumps.
• The Netricsa from Serious Sam, with the stupid blinking mailbox icon forcing you to go out of the game just to shut it up. It takes almost every opportunity to do this, not just every time you kill an enemy and pick up a weapon for the first time, but in response to countless environments throughout the game. And the information is always something the player either already knows or can figure out almost immediately or something completely unimportant. It doesn't help that Serious Sam is a game DESIGNED for First-Person Shooter veterans who don't need ANY of this help, and can easily fool someone into recommending a game to an FPS newbie—bad idea.
• In The Godfather games, your allies' firepower can be annoying when you're trying to get a specific Execution Style.

1. ↑ Okay, it's a magic slap
2. ↑ Remove D_D next to STRUCK_MINERAL and STRUCK_ECONOMIC_MINERAL in init/announcements.txt.
3. ↑ Carlos, Kuruna, Pia and Shara have water-based weapons, Marian uses a fire-type staff