These qualify more as bad/lazy design:
1) Escort missions where you must run along and defend a character who is too stupid to defend themselves
at all. Plus all of the enemies suddenly go from attacking you to attacking the defenseless character with no logical reason given other than that's how the mission is designed. Escort missions suck and are a sign of lazy designers!
2) Missions where missing even one minor object results in immediately being pulled from the game and having to start over. The world doesn't cease because I missed one crate - grade the player on a scale, not a simple success/failure. The military doesn't cancel and entire invasion because a stray missile causes collateral damage.
3) An extention of above: calling a mission a failure before it actually is. The horrible "Driver" series of games were really bad for this. A car chase does not arbitrarily end after a minute and a half! Don't say "you lost them" when I can still see their friggin' car up the street!
4) Also as above: Arbitrary time limits - time limits are stupid! Create conflict through
gameplay not through a stupid countdown timer. Like I said about "Driver", a car chase can go on a lot longer than two minutes! Even Grand Theft Auto used lame ass time limits when they weren't necessary. If a character needs to be killed let
me decide when to do the hit, don't give me only 60 seconds to drive across town, kill the guy, outrun the cops and make it back to the garage! Lazy, lazy game designers!
5) Limited saves or worse
no saves. This argument has been going on since the save slot was invented. Lazy designers say "it creates tension". Hmmm...it's better to create tension using the save slot rather than actual
gameplay, huh? You suck, lazy designer!
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