Stop Helping Me - Television Tropes & Idioms

Not. Right. Now.

Phileas Fogg: Watch out on the right! <Passepartout turns around to find nothing> ...No, no, my right.
<Passepartout gets ganged up on>
Passepartout: STOP HELPING ME!

— Around the World in 80 Days (the remade movie)

Zeetha: Are you sure they're trying to help?
Gil: It's my fault, really; I make it look easy.

— Girl Genius

It's taken you the best part of three hours to get to this stage of the game. Your mission involves skill and dexterity, but that's all right — you're a professional by now. A few more seconds and you're home free. Sneak behind the guard... good, he didn't see you. Now go left... move forward... you're almost safe...

"BE CAREFUL!"

Bang goes your concentration. You were so focused that the whiny voice that just screeched from the screen made you jump five feet in the air. Worse, you dropped the control and made your character bolt from his hiding place and fire the gun. Now every guard in the vicinity is beating you to a pulp. Game over.

Who was responsible for your last nanosecond failure? Was it The Dragon? A cunning mole? An agent of the Big Bad, programmed by the AI to be unbelievably skillful, with flawless timing? Nope, it was your Exposition Fairy, and it just couldn't keep her damned mouth shut for two more seconds.

It can't be simple coincidence that so many characters that are meant to "help" you sport irritating voices, social ineptitude and the worst sense of timing on the planet. It has to be a conspiracy. It's also sadistic — in the game manual, it says that this character is a loyal best friend or devoted assistant. He's there to help you. You wish he wouldn't.

The character that has you screaming "Stop helping me!" is usually an Exposition Fairy who either has an attitude problem or interrupts when you really wish they wouldn't. Sometimes it's a party member who's a master of the Useless Useful Spell — or who keeps getting overexcited and killing you with friendly fire. In extreme cases, it's the character the player is controlling, if they're annoying/inept enough; stupid catchphrases and idiotic behavior during cutscenes have resulted in many a player wasting a life by directing their playing character off a cliff, just for revenge.

Unfortunately, these annoyances are never disposable characters. You're stuck with them for the entirety of the game. The best you can hope for is that they do a Face Heel Turn and become the bad guy's problem. In fact, sending them to the opposite faction might be a good tactical maneuver on your part. However, in that instance, Murphy's Law will kick in and they'll be just as effective fighting against you as they were ineffective fighting for you. C'est la vie. At least you don't have to listen to their voice constantly and you finally have that excuse to kill them that you've been waiting all game for.

In fact, most "guide" characters will try the player's patience if they've played the game through a couple of times — like the tutorial levels, they're not really needed after the first play through.

This should go without saying, but try to avoid sticking AI sidekicks in here that are simply not perfect. If they can pull their own weight in a fight, but have different priorities and thresholds for doing things than a player might, then they probably don't belong here. (Complaining that the computer is trying to use its healing items on you earlier than you necessarily want it to, for example, does not put them in Stop Helping Me territory - especially in a game without a Hyperspace Arsenal.)

Compare Escort Mission.

Examples

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Clippit (AKA Clippy), the animated paper clip "assistant" in Microsoft Office.
- Zip it, Clippit!
- Parodied on an episode of The Simpsons: A python attacks a Springfield school computer, and Clippy springs up to say, "You look like you're trying to eat me. Need some help?"
  - Parodied again in another Simpsons episode. "It looks like you're trying to blow up the computer. Mind if I hug my kids?"
- Also parodied on an episode of Family Guy. "It looks like you're trying to take over the world. Do you need some help?" Stewie's response: "Go away, you paper clip! No one likes you!"
- Also parodied in a small spoof "advert" for Windows RG ("Really Good"), where typing anything causes Clippy to appear.
- Yet another parody on 2DTV - during a sketch in which Matrix characters end up inside the Windows system, Clippy turns up with a cheery "Hey, you look like you're trying to write a letter - want some help?" only to be smited away. Later, she reappears with a "Hey, you look like you're trying to beat up Bill Gates, want some help?", only this time she is left alone as she kicks the dustbin Bill Gates is currently sticking out of.
  Clippy: Hey! It looks like you're writing a letter! And if you're not, you should. Letters are neat!
- I believe this story is appropriate here. And also cathartic.
- As is this. Corruption blackmail, suicide attempts, Cthulhu... this story has it all!
- "It looks like you are trying to restore the station. Would you like assistance?"
  - "Oh crap. A pop-up."
- Clippy is just one of several assistants (including a dog and a wizard) which differ from him by animations and little else - i.e., they're equal on annoyance level. Clippy just gets all the sass because he's the default one.
- And to drive the point home, Microsoft cast Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of Clippy in a series of Flash shorts that were part of an advertising campaign for Office XP promoting the fact that he finally bit the dust.
  - Though despite this, Office Assistants were still there; they were just disabled by default. They were completely removed in Office 2007.
- Parodied in several freeware games, such as a Clippy Blaster shoot-em-up, as well as an intentionally-unhelpful assistent for Unix editor VI, called VIgor. This was first suggested as a joke in webcomic User Friendly, but the internet being the internet, somebody actually created it, sporting such gems as "You seem to be trying to move the cursor to the left. Are you sure you want to do that?"
- Also, the assistant Cuppit from adventure game spoof META.
- Clippy's "assistance" methods have since spread to Hotmail and Windows Vista, which will block various things without allowing you the option to manually override the block. To add to the problem, the false positive rate is astounding, to the point where the majority of positives will be false positives.
- Clippy is seen when The Matrix Runs on Windows:
  "Looks like you're trying to free humanity. Want some help?"
- Comedian Demetri Martin once did a joke about Clippy helping to write a ransom letter. "You should use stronger language, you'll get more money!"
Ever loaded up a website and heard "Congatulations! You've won!"? Yeah, that...

Theater

Video Games

Surprisingly subverted in Suikoden 2. 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.
The Cheshire Cat, from American McGee's Alice does not appreciate being asked for help, even though that's his whole purpose in the game. His advice usually takes the form of cryptic insults, such as "There's a nasty name for those who insist on doing things the hard way." However, he has to be deliberately summoned by the player, he has a sinister, suave voice rather than the usual whine, and he's the Cheshire Cat - anyone who's ever read Alice In Wonderland knows what to expect. As a result, he's less likely to induce homicidal rage in the player... unless you're really in a bind, and all good ol' Cheshire can say is "Alice, you really suck."
- As such, the Cheshire Cat is really more an example of "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.
- Navi's Jonas Quinn 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.
  - This Troper found Ezlo more irritating than Navi. His tendency to point out the obvious over and over again made her seriously wonder if he was related to a certain Owl... Also 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.
- Kaepoera 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 consist of tens of screens that you'll cycle through four or five times because mashing the A button to advance the dialogue quicker 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!
  - 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.
- 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...
- In the higher levels of the Gamecube 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.
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). And if you hang up on him, he calls you again and complains "Don't hang up on me like that! That's rude!" 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.
- Not to mention that, while answering his calls, Frank is completely incapable of fighting off zombies or even jumping, and will also automatically drop any weapon that is too big to store in your inventory. And did we mention answering all of Otis's calls is required for an Achievement?
- Also, if you're not using a high definition TV and aren't sitting two feet in front of it, you can't even read the fucking text. You have to select the mission and just follow the arrow to know where you're going. This method works if it's a simple escort mission or psycho event, but if it's more complicated than that, you're fucked.
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 traumatise 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.
- This troper found Otacon's explanation of controls in MGS2 incredibly annoying and I love Otacon. "Snake you have to presstheactionbuttongandthenblahblahblahtalkingtoofast". I had to figure out the controls on my own because the tutorial was about 2 seconds long. STOP HELPING OTACON. Because you're NOT helping. Except slightly in 4. But that was the MK 2 not you so...?
- 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 the single worst death speech in the entire series (Gustava), which, incidentally, is no mean feat.
  - 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").
- 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", and you think I DO!? GTFO my MGS3 experience EVA. I'd rather have The Cobras help me than you even if all they can apparently say is their own name and cheesy one liners they probably made up with 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.
- 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.
- 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 so hate him, there's even an entire series of Machinima on You Tube 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.
  - How have we not mentioned how much of a nuisance he is in Sonic 2's special stages?
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.
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 whom should be clearly visible to you on the screen right in front of you and also painfully obvious. GAH!
- 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...
- This Troper is a very patient individual and has been able to sit through the voices of near every entry on this list while maintaining his cool. Even Roll and Navi. This was the one that finally went far enough to break him. The last form of the final boss provokes Fuuka to say: "I sense... death! Nyx's true arcana is death!" Really, Fuuka? The Eldritch Abomination sent to exterminate all human sentience has the DEATH ARCANA!? REALLY!?
  - To be fair, Fuuka also goes "I sense death!" whenever the Reaper Bonus Boss begins stalking the halls of Tartarus, and Nyx journeys through the first 13 Arcana before. Plus, the Death Arcanum doesn't necessarily symbolize death itself, neither in Real Life nor in Persona. The player has the advantage of knowing this ahead of time, but SEES don't, so Fuuka is just making the connection for in-battle narrative purposes.
- Worse than what Fuuka says is how she says it, though. Her English voice acting is just... really, really bad. She alternates between talking too fast and talking too slow, has a habit of emphasizing syllables seemingly at random, and her general tone suggests she's on some fairly potent tranquilizers.
  - The tranquiliser thing would explain a lot, though.
- And it returns in Persona 4. Rise calls you Senpai. Every. Five. Seconds. *twitch*
  - 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.
  - Are we forgetting Teddy or is this troper the only one who wanted to lunge through the television screen and strangle that stupid bear?
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.
- Subverted, sort of, 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 the AWACS aircraft's communicator doesn't have an annoying voice, doesn't speak constantly (usually only in a hectic fight where the information is actually helpful while you're trying to keep track of everything) and above all keeps the comms SHORT, usually lower than five words. "In gun range", "Garuda 1, you've taken damage", "Garuda 1, Fox 2", "Enemy SAM launch" (from the sixth game).
- Also subverted in Ace Combat 6. You only have one wingman (ditto for Zero), but this introduced the Allied Support system. You can have your wingman go after an individual target or cover your six, but when you can get nearby allies to go after all enemies attacking you or attack every enemy in your view... can you say Macross Missile Massacre?
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!
- 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...
  - 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 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.
Bastilla Shan in Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic is your irritatingly whiny disembodied conscience throughout the game, condescending to you whenever you do even one tiny little Dark Side action. Damn good thing she gets turned to the Dark Side herself, near the end, but for the whole of the game, she is an annoying nanny's girl for anyone trying to get the Dark Side ending.
- You can just rotate her out of the party, you know.
  - True, but several plot points require her to be in your party, enough for her to fit in this trope.
  - There is also the fact that until you get Jolee, due the brokenness of Jedi in the game, there isn't anyone to replace her with that will do any where near as an effective job (except perhaps a Munchkin-built character, but these really only pick up speed late in the game).
- Bastila and Juhani don't just whine at minor Dark Side actions - they bitch at even the most innocuous infractions of the law, from dodging the docking tax to cheating greedy Czerka officers out of their money. It's Lawful Stupid to a ridiculous degree, and Jolee is the only Jedi on the team that can understand your reasons for needing more credits - like survival, a point most Jedi can't understand.
- I liked Bastila. She was trying to guide and be the Master to someone older, more powerful and dangerous than herself, constantly afraid that you would Jump Off The Slippery Slope, trying to seem more in control than she really was. And as she gets to know you she does apologize. But then, I always play on the side of the angels.
  - The girl's scared. She's a half-step from falling from the moment you meet her, and some part of her knows it. She got all this responsibility dumped on her way too young just because the war effort needed her Battle Meditation, and isn't even a proper Knight herself and now she's got her own Padawan and a really, really terrible secret to sit on. I find it hard to have anything but sympathy for her Dark Side rants when she's so obviously projecting her own insecurity.
- Well the game DOES let you tell her to piss off in character. There's even several dialogue options where you can make fun of her preachyness, ("Just give me a sign when I do something wrong. Blink twice for dark side, once for light") and she gets really pissed. :D
- Yahtzee once said that people aren't evil in games because it tells them to. They're evil because that's expressly what the game's telling you not to do.
If GLaDOS wasn'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?
- Wait... The cube never spoke to you?
  - It threatened to stab me. But it was my only friend...
- It helps that GLaDOS does give some geniunely 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...
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.
Truth In Television: Backseat Drivers and Backseat Gamers.
While not technically a character, the narrator from the Baldurs 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 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 picks just that moment to be very distracted by something else and doesn't hear it.) Seriously, did the programmers think people needed reminding that senseless slaughter is evil?
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 bright 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.
  - Bright side?
- 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 an advice, only to be snubbed by Wolf.
  "Keep your eyes to the front and your business to yourself, 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!"
The imageboard 4chan briefly gained a Clippy-inspired "helper" one April first. Asking Sticky the 4chan Assistant for help with 'trolling' emptied your post and name fields, and replaced it all with the words 'DICK BUTT'.
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.
- Averted in the third game, The Two Thrones, by turning Farah into an Action Girl with Cutscene Power To The Max.
- It was particularly memorable to this Troper in the first game when one of her arrows caused my demise right when I had no sand left. It's funny now, considering her cheerful "Sorry!" in response to me laying dead on the ground.
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."
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-dependant 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.
- 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 Time Shift. 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, 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.
"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.
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.
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).
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.
- Hurting him has its own pitfalls, though, 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 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 a BITCH.
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. I've had them actually push me into obstacles. And when you actually need them to help you, they do nothing but stand there.
- I personally think it's a scam to get you to buy a multiplayer cable and three extra copies of the game so you can play with your less stupid (hopefully) friends.
- On the other hand, don't underestimate the value of cannon fodder.
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.
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 Bad's 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.
An early puzzle in Myst IV has Atrus trapped in a thunderstorm in another Age while the player must activate his various gizmos. Atrus appears on a screen giving useless advice like "Try moving the sliders".
- He's fiddling with the imager on Tomahna, right across from you at the sound receiver. The Deus Exit Machina occurs as a result of your combined meddlings. And you actually need his advice to complete that stupid puzzle.
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.
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.
- 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?
Fallout 1 and 2, where your NPCs would either charge into battle, thus spoiling your attempts to use burst weapons, or use their own burst weapons with their teammates in the line of fire (thank you, Sulik and Marcus).
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!"
- 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^*
^{Okay, it's a magic slap}
, 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.
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.
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.
- "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?"
- 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
- This troper actually accidentally picked up a mine he thought was a discard item, only to be chided by this friend for screwing up his minefield while playing co-op RE5.
- 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.
- What's worse is her annoying tendency to empty her weapon into the back of your head. It got so bad that for a couple of boss fights I took away all her weapons and healing items so she'd stop wasting my ammo.
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.)
Mad World 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.
The AI in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is ridiculous in some cases. Say you're attacked by a bandit on the road and an Imperial Legion soldier comes along; his AI forces him to help you fight the bandit. It does not, however, prevent him from being a complete dumbass and running in front of your BFG of a warhammer when you're in the middle of a swing. And then the guards have the nerve to try to arrest you for "assault".
Recently, in the newest Team Fortress 2 update, in the King of the Hill gametype in overtime the announcer announces "Overtime" every time there's a status change on the control point (i.e. the opposing team trying to control the point, having members of both teams on the control point, etc.). This troper retains his sanity by remembering that the announcer is one Ellen McLain, who voiced GLaDOS.
- This troper seems to recall that the "OVERTIME" thing on KoTH mode was a BUG, and has been fixed.
  - It was enough of a Good Bad Bug, however, that Valve turned it into a setting that you could turn on or off.
- A player-caused example: It's common, especially in the setup period, for classes in Team Fortress 2 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 Medic who heals you in full-view of the other team.
Oddly enough, in Ghostbusters the Videogame 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 Sim City 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:
"Power Advisor": WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!!!!!!!
(You build one)
"Environment Advisor": The sky is missing because of the power plant.
"Power Advisor": WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!!!!!!!
"Financial Advisor": The budget is getting low!
"Power Advisor": WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!!!!!!!
"Power Advisor": WE NEED WATER!!!
"Environment Advisor": The water is polluted.
"Planning Advisor": Traffic is backed up, build a bus station.
"Power Advisor": WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS!!!!!!!!!
"Planning 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 Sim City 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 Sim City 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.
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?
Toadsworth from Mario And 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 Starow, 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.
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.
Taken to impossible levels in the PS 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 Mac Guffin 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!
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...
- 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.
- 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.
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. This troper could swear that her Moogle was trying to intentionally murder her. A few seconds outside the circle while running from monsters means certain, annoying death. Keep some phoenix downs on hand.
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 Sunkern and Rayman doesn't help things, either.
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*