Editor's note: Evan's first point got me riled up. I've just about sworn off Capcom games after facing some bosses in Devil May Cry 4 three times! I nearly crushed the controller in my hands when I had to go through that last gauntlet of bosses that I've already killed! -Jason

Creators want to make their creations the best that they can be. But sometimes, whether due to limitations in time or resources or just plain laziness, they take shortcuts.

Most shortcuts aren't noticed in video games, and sometimes they even work out for the best, as in the case of Silent Hill’s iconic, draw-distance-concealing fog.  But for every overwise teen trying to get home before his parents, there's an unscrupulous electrical engineer creating a recipe for disaster.

Here are three shortcuts game designers take that they really shouldn’t -- and what they might try instead.

Bosses So Nice That You Fight 'Em Twice

I haven’t actually seen this one in a while, but it still bears repeating. Anyone who went through the uncompromising gauntlet at the end of Viewtiful Joe knows what I mean. Not satisfied with your ability to defeat these bosses once, the creators of Viewtiful Joe made you fight them all again -- right in a row. Without letting you save between them. It’s enough to you rage-quit -- which I did after my 17th failure. And now that’s the only thing I remember about the game.

It’s not just Viewtiful Joe, of course. Hell, even The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker fell victim to the Siren Song of "Do It Again." I suppose the point might be to build some tension toward the final boss fight, but isn’t that kind of what the rest of the game should do?

Then again, it might also be about artificially adding length and difficulty to a game considered to be too short, but that’s like putting extra potatoes in a breakfast burrito: It's bland, tasteless filler that only causes you to get fed up more quickly.

Alternative approach: Make the final boss harder. Or add one more boss before the final boss. Or hey, just cut out the rehash. It’s simpler, cheaper, faster, and nobody will miss it.

George Lucas Morality

Obi-Wan Kenobi once said that “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Well, not really; one of the cornerstones of Star Wars is that the Jedi are totally good and the Sith are pure dag-nasty evil. Light Side, Dark Side. A Gray Side doesn't exist.

And so it is in games. This has actually been discussed a lot lately, with the release of games like Infamous and the upcoming Mass Effect 2, and gamers seem to be in agreement: More nuanced ways exist to handle morality than making gamers choose between taking a box full of kittens to an orphanage for blind children, and eating the kittens, burning down the orphanage, and salting the Earth so that nothing will grow there again.

Alternative approach: The consensus seems to be make morality more fluid and less stark. Give players choices with actual consequences, both good and bad, that may not be immediately apparent. But also, let’s not forget about the object that has single-handedly kept realistic moral choices at bay: the Morality Meter.

Every game that employs morality as a play mechanic, at least in recent years, has had some kind of Morality Meter that reduces player choices to numbers on a scale. Did you give some money to a homeless person? The Morality Meter goes up three points. Did you blow up a busload of nuns? The Morality Meter goes down two points.

Not only does a Morality Meter oversimplify complex actions, it also ensures that each choice a player makes occurs in a vacuum in which a decision to stab an old lady can be “canceled out” if it's followed immediately by a trip to the park to feed the ducks. At the park, nobody says, “Isn’t that the guy who just stabbed your grandma? What does he want with those ducks?” They say, “Aww…he loves those ducks so much.” Kill a hundred innocent people in Fable 2 and then give a million gold to a beggar and you’ll see what I mean.

So, please…get rid of the Morality Meter. Give us something real.

Hobbit Game Design

Also known as "There and Back Again Design," Hobbit games don't just go from Point A to Point B to Point C; instead, the game takes players from A to C, then back to B to pick up anything they might have missed, and then returns them to C to deal with the trouble there, and then, seemingly for the hell of it, sends them all the way back to A to open that Mysterious Door they walked by during the tutorial. But only after a quick stop at the hitherto unmentioned Point D to pick up the key.

This isn't much of a problem in open-world games, which are all about exploring and becoming familiar with a persistent and well-trod environment. But some of the most beloved games in recent memory have succumbed to "Running Out of Levels Syndrome."

Halo has a lot going for it, but you can't deny that at a certain point in the game, it forces players to turn around and go back from where they came until they end up pretty much exactly where they started. Sure, some stuff's on fire on the way back that wasn't on fire on the way out, but they were the same areas, leading to the same places. For all their innovation, the makers of Halo only made half a map.

Metroid Prime 3 almost gets a pass here because it's a fairly open experience, but it's a bit much near the end when the proceedings grind to a halt while the player revisits every planet to collect hidden fuel cells. This isn't much different from having to fight all of the bosses again, except that it takes quite a bit longer and is, in several important ways, less fun.

Alternative approach: Trim the fat. There's nothing wrong with making a short, linear game if what's there is worth playing. If the world is small, fill the space between Points A and B with fun things to do. But keep it moving forward. Likewise, if a game is more open, let it feel that way. Don’t make gamers return to places because they have to -- let them return because they want to.

Thoughts? Additions? I’d love to hear them.