Most Annoying Sound / Strategy Games

• In Syndicate, whenever someone was engulfed in flames from flamethrowers or explosions, they will run wildy for several minutes, screaming annoyingly in pain. That's why mini-guns were far more populars.
• In Dune II, the most annoying sound gotta be the computer shouting "UNIT LOST!" repeatedly when your retarded infantries shot each others while trying to kill the enemy.
  • <Orders units using the starport> "Arrival in T minus five. T minus four. T minus three. T minus two. T minus one." GYAARGH.
• Freedom Force isn't as bad as some games, because each of the main characters has its own voice, and you can switch between characters. However, they acknowledge every time they're selected, every time they're given a command, every time they recover from a Status Effect... Mooks also announce status recoveries, and often quip as they fire on you, e.g. "Feel the frosty chill of your DOOM!" This gets old after a few hours of playing levels with the same type of mook.
• The Pikmin series:
  • The scream Pikmin make when they’re attacked.
  • The low health beep.
  • The sound of the Treasure Radar in 2. OO-WEE! OO-WEE! OO-WEE!
• The purpose in "under attack" warnings in most RTS games is to draw your attention to an area you're not currently watching. Sacrifice always takes place from your wizard's point of view but it doesn't stop every battle from being filled with Your creatures are under attack! That spell is not ready. Your creatures are under attack! Your creatures are dying. That spell is not ready. Your creatures are under attack! All of your manahoars have been slaughtered.
• In Worms Open Warfare 2, characters speak near-entirely in James Brown quotes.
• Warlords Battlecry:
  • The series has a heartbeat that increases in rate and volume as your hero loses health (and gradually fades into silence once he's either not under attack anymore or has been healed), which can be incredibly irritating, especially in the way it gets the player's own heart beating faster either sympathetically or with panic because your hero is about to die. This can be turned off, but if you do, your hero tends to die without an inattentive player even noticing he's under attack, so it's unfortunately best to leave it on.
  • The loud "kuh-WANK" noise of a Floating Sword being constructed is pretty grating, too.
  • And the period of cheering or booing at the end of a battle before you can move on to the recap screen, made even worse by the fact that it used to cause actual crashes. Luckily, there's no reason not to turn this one off.
• Shining Force:
  • "Hot stuff, coming your way!" (As made famous by X-Play.)
  • And (almost) by the abridged version of Naruto.
• Impossible Creatures:
  • GU Comics demonstrates exactly why.
  • Not that Rex himself is any better. "Alright." "Sounds like a plan!" "I'm on it." 'No Problem" "Sounds like a plan!" "No problem!"
• Halo Wars: "All units. Local units. Base under attack.". ARRGH!
• Dawn of War:
  • In the original, the hilariously long and unforgivably redundant unit responses. Every time you attack, the Librarian says "Through the destruction of our enemies do we earn our salvation" EVERY SINGLE TIME. And why, oh why is every single building "Build Routine 721, initiated" Servitor. Really? Every building?
  • Soulstorm has the same problem with Sisters of Battle, especially Missionaries and their own Servitors (one of his repsonses is a twenty second long drone that bleeds into other units' responses). "EEEEEEEEIN THE EMPERAAAAH's NEEEEHM!"
  • Any long battle will feature units repeating their warcries, audible by all players (it's 40K, what did you expect?), like the Grey Knights' "This is the judgement of the Righteous, scum!" or Khornate Berserkers' "BREAK THEM IN 'ARRRRRF!!!" and of course, the ever-popular and easily memorized "WAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
• Heroes of Might and Magic 5:
  • The dark elf mistresses look and sound like porn stars. The constant whip cracking and breathy moans were probably intended as Fanservice. They aren't.
  • The elder druids go "YAAAAARGHHH!" after they kill a unit or at the end of every battle. Funny the first time you hear it, really annoying ever after.
  • The Arcane Archers have a really, really, really annoying cowboy-like yee-HAW as a victory clip.
• In the mafia-themed RTS Legal Crime, every sound was the Most Annoying Sound. Just ordering your units around would result in a continuous, snarling cacophony of gangster talk.
• Theme Hospital:
  • 'Doctor required in Gee PEE's Office! Doctor attend in Psych-IATRY pleeeeeeeeease! Doctor required in In-FLAY-tor Room!' Most. Annoying. Receptionist.
  • Annoying she definitely is, but her inflection is correct in British English.
  • "The Hospital AdminisTRAYtor is CHEEATING" Granted, the Admin was.
• StarCraft:
  • "You must Construct Additional Pylons." SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS! You Require More Vespene Gas! Not enough Minerals!; Additional Supply Depots required. NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED. Our warriors have engaged the enemy. Our forces is under attack. We are under attack! The hive cluster is under attack! Mineral field depleted. Vespene geyser exhausted.
  • In the final Terran mission in Brood War, there's a hypercharged Ultralisk called a Torrasque that keeps spawning from the brown Zerg base. Every time he's spawned/reincarnated, you hear that roar, and you know that big, ultra-armored fucker (800 HP, 7 armor points, 50+ damage, takes forever to bring down and tears through your troops and buildings like wet tissue paper before you manage to kill him) is on his way to wreck your shit again.
• StarCraft II:
  • Units will now announce if they're being attacked offscreen, which is quite useful. They will do so in a way that makes it sound like they're two seconds away from being overwhelmed, however, and it gets really old, really fast. A Protoss Zealot facing the massed forces of the opposition: "We cannot hold!" Protoss Zealot facing a single Zergling: "We cannot hold!" Way to maintain morale there, Skippy.
    • The Terran Battlecruiser is just as bad when it goes all "Abandon ship!" against a single Zerg Mutalisk.
  • (Snake woman voice) "Spawn more o-ver-lordsssss! We re-QUI-re more MI-ne-RAAALSSSSSSSSSS! The hive cluster is un-der-at-tack! Our DROWNS are un-der-at-tack!" Worst voice acting in any Blizzard game, ever. And that minerals sound was even worse during beta.
  • The worst would have to be Egon's, who screams "GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER! Done, I don't wanna play anymore!". Then again, it is entirely your fault if you allow him to be attacked offscreen in the first place (he has no attack).
  • During the story campaign for Starcraft II Wings Of Liberty, Matt Horner is particularly irritating to listen to as the repetitive Annoying Video Game Helper in the last level, "All-In." Every time the Artifact has charged up enough power to fire off a powerful energy nova that kills all surrounding Zerg in the area, Horner will constantly 'advise' ya to use the artifact, even during moments where you feel safe enough not to use the nova. Matt sees a single Zergling attacking a structure: "You're being overrun! Use the Artifact! Go nova!"
• Command & Conquer:
  • The training/building sounds: Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready. Training. Unit ready.
  • Warning: Ion Cannon Control / Temple of Nod / Rift Generator detected!
  • Though they all pale in comparison to "Unable to comply; building in progress" whenever you have the speed setting at fastest in any Westwood RTS without a queue.
  • And in the first game, buying a vehicle with the Nod airstrip would result in two completion sounds.
  • So many units are cloaked in Tiberium Wars, that once you get in a battle, you're going to be hearing "Cloaked unit detected." so much that you'll want to switch back to EVA '95.
    • The Mobile Sensor Arrays of Tiberian Sun can detect cloaked/underground units but EVA/CABAL will constantly announce "Cloaked unit detected" every few seconds.
  • In Tiberium Wars, "Cannot deploy here", because of the game's wonky building mechanics (Red Alert 3 would at least return to the grid-based building system).
  • If you modded your game, but have a unit with broken prerequisites (you have what is listed as required to build the unit, but, either due to it not being available to your side or you not having anything that can build them, you can't), then every single time you purchase anything, EVA/CABAL chimes in with "New Construction Options", and that's very annoying. It's gotten to the point where, even if the modders have taken care to prevent such a bug, they still dummy out the "New Construction Options" entry in sound.ini. Presumably, it's because they've heard it so much in other mods that they never want to hear it again.
  • EVA and CABAL in Tiberian Sun will, at the fastest game speed, warn you of an incoming missile about 10-15 seconds after it's already hit (or sometimes not at all).
• Stronghold: Wood needed m'lord. Stone needed. Pitch needed. People are leaving the castle. Your popularity is falling.
• Warzone 2100: "Structure under attack", "Laser Satellite firing"(if it's not yours), "Power Resource"(if one of your oil derricks gets destroyed).
• Age of Empires:
  • "Not enough food!"; "Not enough stone!"; "Not enough gold!"; "Not enough wood!"; "You need to build more houses!".
  • That extremely irritating sound Priests/Monks make when they attempt to convert enemy units to your side in the first and second games, respectively.
  • Also the annoying trumpet whenever something is attacking you. Or even whenever ANY of your units are so much as poked by a villager.
  • The 'Shikkashikkashikka' that a depleted farm makes. If you had a somewhat developed farming industry, it happened all the time, and especially when you tried to coordinate troops abroad. Thankfully, the developers remedied this with the Farm Queue in The Conquerors, which allows you to automate farm reseeding and avoid that godawful sound.
  • Crusaders are attacking our trade routes!
• Rise of Nations:
  • The 'PLAONNNNNGGGG!' that indicates you have reached the gathering cap of a given resource.
  • The trumpet that indicates you have reached population cap.
  • The loud bang that signals an enemy attack on a building.
  • The treble siren that indicates an incoming cruise missile.
  • The siren that indicates an enemy attack from the air.
• Black & White:
  • The first game, where, in the first level, you can assist several boatmen who need lumber, grain, and meat. Each time you click on their quest, they sing a folksy tune that will tell you what they need. Thankfully, this is the only time it happens.
    Boatsmen: "OHHHHHH We're not keen on sinkin so we're all sittin' here a thinkin', 'cause we simply can't leave until we get some wood."
    Boatsmen: "OHHHHHH We've got this notion that we'd quite like to sail the ocean..."
  • The game shipped with a bug that meant that no matter how much food you gave your worshipers, it would run out after approximately 5 seconds. And they would let you know. Constantly.
  • Panicking worshipers were far worse: "WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT"
  • Everytime a villager dies, there is a creepy voice that whispers "DEATH". It is really annoying considering that your villagers, though important to your economy, are easily replaceable. Even worse is the Dutch language pack: it was not a whisper; a female voice over would tend to SCREAM the word. Thanks to EA wanting to localize the game for the Dutch market. It was a... not so very happy situation when your town was being attacked. EA made the English voice-overs available for download after massive complaints from pretty much every country with a localization. Mind you, this was 2001 when most people still had 56.6k dial-up and the file roughly 110MB large.
  • If you put in a common name, like Jake or Sam, it whispers, late at night, YOUR NAME.
  • The same creepy voice can also say the name you typed in at the start at random if it's among the game's list of common names. It is by far more creepy when you don't know about it. It's easy to avoid if you type in something nonsensical into the prompt though
  • More annoying still were your consciences, particularly the good one, who would constantly But Thou Must! you into arsing around with the interface during a lengthy unskippable tutorial.
• Rock Raiders:
  • Lots of landslides. Guess what Chief says for every single freaking landslide? "A landslide has occurred!" Sure it's useful, but in unstable caverns where there's a landslide every five seconds...
  • "Your air supply is running out!", quoth Sparks whenever your air supply drops by 5%. If you try to be conservative with your air consumption by having as few Rock Raiders working as possible, you can limit its recurrence, but when you've got nine down without a Support Station consuming air at a ridiculous pace...
• The "your weapon just broke" jingle in the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem installments. Most other games in the series have a much more low-key, far less annoying jingle for that purpose.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the merchants only have one voice clip each for entering the shop, selecting an item, paying for it, and for when you leave. So, if you're buying a lot of items at once, be prepared to hear them over and over again. The ones from Anna in the preparations menu's Marketplace and her Secret Shop get particularly grating.
    WELCOME! IS THAT THE ONE? THANKS A BUNCH! IS THAT THE ONE? THANKS A BUNCH! IS THAT THE ONE? THANKS A BUNCH! IS THAT THE ONE? THANKS A BUNCH! COME BACK SOON!
  • Fire Emblem Heroes has the sound that immediately signifies that you're getting a 3* Hero (aka no smoke and it immediately goes to summoning the hero). While a few are useful for merges if you put the time and effort and some have decent fodder, it can be heartbreaking spending the last of your orbs only to be greeted with another 3* Raigh, Jagen, Arthur, or Wrys, and even more annoying if they have two text-boxes you have to read through before you can make them into manuals or feathers.
• In The Settlers II, you would order prospectors to an area to survey natural resources to find suitable locations for mines and quarries. Every time they found something they would announce it by shouting "YIPPIEE!!". And to speed up the process, you would usually send a dozen or more of them at once and they would check every single hex in the area. Which usually would be the same area into which you are currently expanding, so they would be on the screen to hear them during the whole time. Being an economy simulation, you would need them a lot.
• Battlezone's attack warnings produced a loud BEEP-BEEP! BEEP-BEEP! BASE UNDER ATTACK! klaxon noise repeatedly, alongside your bitchy betty, every time any of your structures (for units, omit the BASE UNDER ATTACK part) came under attack. The sequel, thankfully, spaced out the warning noises and made the noise quieter. This is even worse when you rush back to your base to find it's being assaulted by nothing more than an ejected pilot with their over glorified pea-shooter.
• Ground Control:
  • The units' accents. It mostly works well, but the feedback of some units is just unbearable.
  • Also, units don't wait to finish their current voice clip if you are adding targets from them, resulting in something like "Adding to the destruction list, adding to- addin- addin- adding to the destruction list!"
• Your units in XCOM: Enemy Unknown have a terrible habit of yelling things based on the aliens' movement. Problem is, they say this almost every single time an alien moves, regardless of whether the alien actually moves in the way that is yelled. Not only is it annoying being told that an enemy charging you is retreating, but being told in the loudest voice possible is just painful. To a lesser extend, Bradford's pre-mission dialogue is very repetitive and unskippable, due to taking place in the loading screen.
• Warcraft III: While most unit's lines are thankfully short, there are some whose death lines are heard by all players, like the Troll Batrider's "The ends, justify da means!" and the Flying Machine's semicomprehensible "They came from... be-hind!"
• Plants vs. Zombies:
  • As if the Bungee Zombies weren't annoying enough just stealing plants, they also screech "YEEEEEEEEEEHAW!" whenever they fall.
  • The Pianist Zombies from Plants Vs Zombies 2 override the normal level music with their piano tune when they appear. Kind of funny and catchy when it happens when it's occasional, like in normal Wild West levels, but when there are several Pianists one after another. You will quickly grow to despise that "DA-DUN-DA-DU-DUN-DO-DOH-DA-DUN, DA-DUN DA-DO-DUN, DA DA DA DA!" tune and clamor for the old music to come back.
    • The Chinese version in particular is particularly infamous for its poor sound balancing. Some noteworthy examples include the "WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" the Gardener Flower makes when using her attack, the sound the Monkiwi's staff makes when it makes contact with something, and ESPECIALLY from the laser the Laser Crown Flower shoots.
• Civilization: Maybe it's the enunciation in the audio. Maybe it's the way she calls you up every few turns with repeated new offers. Either way, Civ players generally cannot see the game's artwork of Elisabeth I without hearing 'Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?'.
• Star Trek: Armada: The third Romulan mission (The Gauntlet) has you running from a Borg fleet that wants to take the Omega Particle from you. And every single time they catch up with you, you'll hear this:
  Borg Collective: Relinquish Particle Zero-One-Zero and prepare to be assimilated. Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own.