Have You Hit a Gaming Wall?

Stephen Totilo, at MTV Games, has hit a gaming wall. At the newly un-flashed Multiplayer site he talks about the bane of gamers everywhere, what developer Jamie Fristrom calls a 'shelf-level event': a gaming wall that makes it hard if not impossible to complete a game. While a lot of gamers can overcome difficulties to reach the end credits, there are some frustrations that can suck all the fun out of play. He cites the bosses from Final Fantasy X and Super Paper Mario as dealbreakers. I personally am playing through God of War again, and the incredibly frustrating spear trap in the 'Paths of Madness' section of the game never fails to provoke hysterics. Have you run into any such obstacles lately? What game obstacles have caused you toss away a controller in frustration and swear off a game entirely?

Comments

Painkiller

[tedgyz]

Find all secret areas in some levels to gain a tarot card.

So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Broken scope]

the cheats in games. They have made gamers weak.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[MeanderingMind]

I completely disagree.

I don't cheat myself, but I have friends who do. Some of these friends wouldn't even play games if they couldn't cheat, simply because it wouldn't be fun for them. That's not how I have fun, but it's how they have fun.

They'll also slap a friendly sticky grenade on your back when you aren't looking and laugh.

Cheats have a place in video games, and I honestly miss the days of the "Unlock everything" codes for Gameshark or just the game itself because it provided a failsafe for when something goes wrong. Nothing kills a game like having your savegame corrupt, and having no recourse but to resign yourself to fewer characters, levels and features (especially after it took 60 hours of play to get everything you did).

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[cowscows]

It's hit or miss for me. Some games I probably give up on because they're getting pretty hard, and I'm not having that much fun anyways. Some games I have trouble with, but I'll play them until I figure it out, or until I get every item and find every secret room because I just enjoy the game. I'm a pretty casual gamer, I seldom have a whole afternoon to really dig into a game and get in the flow and perfect my technique to the level that some games seem to need.

A good example is the GTA games. I don't enjoy the missions nearly as much as I enjoy just cruising around and exploring the game world. Unfortunately, the missions are required to unlock various things, and I don't have the patience to do all of that. I might just want to spend a half hour blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher. And so I turn to cheat codes, which GTA:SA fortunately has in spades.

While I respect that some people enjoy things that are difficult just for the sake of difficulty (some people like rock climbing for pete's sake), that's not how I prefer to spend my time, and a game that wants to force that sort of playing on me is not something that I'm interested in. Things like cheat codes can sometimes make a game like that enjoyable and appealing to a wider audience.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Xaymot]

True. The fact that most people use strategy guides and walkthroughs is pathetic as well. There's no dignity in gamers anymore. If I ever did look up a solution to a game you better believe I didn't brag about beating the game, instead I would carry a veil of shame around the game's completion.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[PrinceOfStorms]

Perhaps rather than cheat codes per se, what you want is an "Explore" mode a la Nethack? If you use cheat codes, there is no reason for your score/rank/achievements to count as valid, and if all you want to do is play around with the game, why would the score/rank/achievements matter?

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[drinkypoo]

A good example is the GTA games.

Dingdingding! So true. Last time I played GTA:SA I was trying to beat that mission where you go to the club, and you have to chase the guy down and kill him without blowing up the car, or something like that. I've done it about 50 times. Literally. Just can not beat it. No idea WTF I'm supposed to be doing differently. This is the first mission I've had to do more than twice.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[theStorminMormon]

I think it also depends a lot on the type of difficulty. I played Halo (the original) all the way through on regular, heroic, and legendary. I felt that the enemies got faster and smarter. The experience was more intense, but the challenges were over all the same. Halo 2 was a completely different feeling. I felt that instead of making the experience more challenging, they just hyper-inflated the stats of your opponents. I never beat it on legendary. I remember one level in particular near the very end of the game where I restarted from the same checkpoint probably near 200 or 300 times. Not all at once! I would play for an hour or two, surviving for only about a minute, a couple of times a week for a couple of weeks until I finally gave up in disgust. Spawn, lob a grenade at the enemies coming out of a door, try some variant of running for cover and searching for ammo, get wasted, spawn...

I think a lot of old-fashioned turn-based strategy games (like BattleIsle or AdvancedWars) follow the same strategy. Rather than a smart opponent, they just increasingly stack the resources in the opponents favor. This doesn't just make the game hard, it makes it hard and boring.

-stormin

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[geminidomino]

Depends on your definition of "completion." If you mean going through the story, then sure. But these days, "completing" everything in the game REQUIRES a strategy guide a lot of times. Final Fantasy has become one of the biggest offenders since FF7 and that damn chocobo breeding.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[corky842]

He will get out of the car when it's on fire. Just know when to stop shooting.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Anonymous Coward]

...This is the first mission I've had to do more than twice.

Hehe...I'm guessing you've never know the utter frustration of "Supply Lines" then...

(BTW...If you're talking about the mission I think you're talking about, there's a trick you can use to make it easier. Shoot out the tires of his car before you go into the club. Then, when you have to chase him around, he goes slowly and spins out all the time...very easy to chase.)

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[cowscows]

Sure, I'd be happy with that. I don't care about my score/achievements/whatever. I just want to have fun.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[evilgiu]

Yup. I'll agree to that. My time on the PS2 is quite limited and sometimes I just want to finish the game up. I'm not really worried about the score/rank or such. I'm not fond of cheats though (invulnerabilty, infinite lives and such), but give me a walkthrough to get me past that one annoying puzzle I can't seem to get through after an hour or so and I'll take it. Also, I have no practical time to run through a game several times in order to unlock stuff, a la Tekken. I'll finish it up once or twice at most, but then, by all means, I want those unlock codes to even consider putting the disc back in the console. Not lazy, but practical gaming. Of course, online games are something completely different.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Furry Ice]

I didn't think Supply Lines was *too* bad, but what really annoyed the hell out of me was getting all the gold medals at the driving school in San Fiero. The one where you have to race to the other end of town and come back without damaging the car was totally maddening!

All golds at the flying school was super annoying the first time, but I just did it again a couple weeks ago and it wasn't nearly so frustrating the second time, and the attack helicopter is totally worth it!

The one I still haven't gotten anywhere close to doing well is the motorcycle stadium in Las Venturas. I hate Hate HATE that mission.

Good thing you don't actually have to DO any of these things to advance in the game, so it's not really hitting a wall, and mostly off-topic.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[mwvdlee]

I'd propose the opposite; more cheats (and more fine-grained), so people can skip past the "impossible" areas.
Game developers should realize they aren't designing to challenge the players, but to entertain them.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me sum this up in different words for you.

"Games are too hard? Let's make em harder, that'll definitely solve the problem!"

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[GeckoX]

What about those of us that are entertained by challenges? There are more than a couple of us kicking around you know.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Animedude]

Then don't use the cheats? Or do you want others to not enjoy the game, just so that you can gloat "but *I* beat the game!" ?

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[gstoddart]

I don't cheat myself, but I have friends who do. Some of these friends wouldn't even play games if they couldn't cheat, simply because it wouldn't be fun for them. That's not how I have fun, but it's how they have fun.

I find myself in that boat sometimes. I'm pushing 40, and not a hardcore gamer. I used to buy games for my PS2 and hope that I could get through them. Then, I eventually figured out that most modern games are way overly complex for me to successfully play. For some of the FPS games, I'd just get a cheat and try to practice without dying 10 times in 3 minutes -- cause after 30 minutes and 100 deaths, I'm just not going to play the damned game anymore.

Now, my PS2 sits idle, and maybe when I get my tax refund, I'll pick up a Wii. I'm really looking forward to really simple gameplay, with a focus on fun and not having mad skillz (which I don't).

For some of us, the cheat codes make the difference between trying to get some mileage out of a game, or putting it down after the first hour and never playing it again. Most games I've played in the last 5-10 years have led me to hit a huge gaming wall, whereby I was stuck, and increasingly frustrated and not enjoying playing at all. Probably the last 10 games I've bought have been wastes of money as I quickly discover that I just don't stand a chance at playing them.

I am firmly of the opinion that is a huge factor in the success of the Wii -- people who haven't been able to really make much headway with games in the last decade want to have something to play with occasionally, and not feel like a total doofus in the process.

Cheers

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Firefly1]

If you're talking about the mission I think you're talking about, there's a trick you can use to make it easier. Shoot out the tires of his car before you go into the club. Then, when you have to chase him around, he goes slowly and spins out all the time...very easy to chase.

I'll endorse this trick (it's quite amusing) and share a couple of others:

• 'early' weapon mastery: stock up on ammo for the gun(s) in question and head to Los Santos International Airport (use a car as a stepping stone to get atop the guard shack), then proceeed to keep shooting the tires of the baggage hauler until you get bored. And while you're there, get in some stick time... enough of these sessions and you'll not only be on your way to Hitman level with one or more weapons, but have the airports 'unlocked' well before flight school. Doing this is requisite for the next tip:
• Easter Hill Airport is home to a missile launcher (not RPG) spawn. Said launcher comes in very handy for 'Toreno's Last Flight' and a couple of other ops which require shooting down helicopters.
• Coming to 'Grey Imports' (wherein you have to crash a Ballas arms buy) with Hitman level for the sawed-off shotgun means you can kill the arms dealer before he gets into his Banshee... and claim said car for yourself.
• Once you've purchased Verdant Meadows, you have a relatively safe way to score FBI Ranchers. Simply take the bike which spawns there and head down to Area 69, then let one or more of said vehicles chase you into the hangar. Dismount and quickly save your game. Too bad there isn't an emergency vehicle fence like there was in GTA3...

Two of the 'missions' in Scarface: The World is Yours - specifcally, those associated with Chi Peso Trattoria and Coco's Lounge and Disco - can easily become walls if you try and play them 'straight'; however, utilizing vehicles to block off entrances makes things much easier. Conversely, the fact of the game using Everything or Nothing-style targeting (lock-box with adjustable fine aim) whether you're on foot or in a vehicle, and letting you fire from vehicles in 360 degrees (thank you Saint's Row for bringing that to the table), makes certain other things easier than their GTA counterparts (hint: boat drivers are always exposed)...

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[GeckoX]

Um, no one was trying to get all holier-than-though as you imply.

Read what I replied to again. The insinuation there was that people don't even want to play challenging games, and that games that are challenging are flawed in design.

Comment really had zero to do with cheating except as an indicator that that is how they remove the 'challenging' aspect from these 'poorly designed' games to make them entertaining again, for the GP anyways.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Abso-freakin-lutely!
Halo's difficulty was well designed and while I spent a lot of time getting my hindquarters handed to me, I never ever once felt it was unfair.

30 seconds into playing Halo2 on legendary and I am like, "WTF!! That was a COMPLETE rip-off!!"

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[mwvdlee]

Read my post again.

The insinuation is that too many developers are still bent on opposing the gameplayer, trying to keep the gameplayer from completing the game "too fast". The problem with this is that I'd like to decide for myself what is or is not "too fast".

Besides the point that not all players are of identical skills, "so "too fast" is a rather inaccurate metric no matter how you measure it; you may play through 4 hours of game in a day whereas the same section would cost me 12 hours spread over a few weeks.

So that end-level boss you'd beat in an hour or so, could frustrate me for hours. Does that make me a crappy player? Perhaps it does. It doesn't matter. It frustrates me and turns me off those types of games, whereas a cheat that would let me skip the boss would keep me hooked.

Games aren't challenges, they're entertainment.

Trying to dodge bullets in a war is certainly a challenge, but it's hardly entertaining. Watching a movie isn't a challenge at all, but it's most definitely entertainment. Which one would you choose?

Strip away the entertainment factor from a game and, no matter how challenging, you're left with something nobody wants to play.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[KDR_11k]

Ideally there'd be games of all kinds of challenge levels so people who don't find challenges entertaining can still find games simple enough for them. Unfortunately the industry tends to think a game has to appeal to everyone so every game is designed for the same demographic (with only a few games deviating from that). This means if the majority of players want games that they can play through without any real challenges that leaves almost no games to the people who can't find enjoyment in a game if the only interaction is how you beat the enemies, not if.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[mwvdlee]

Obviously there is a middle-ground somewhere, and decent difficulty settings should help a lot (difficulty levels are rarely done in a good way; easy mode is rarely ever easy to complete).

Currently the trend seems to be going towards "pure challenge" as opposed to "pure walk-through", what with cheats becoming things to be purchased and limited.

Would it really be that difficult to insert a bunch of cheats in the game in a user-friendly way (i.e., not using arcane D-pad/button combo's) and just zero the score (or subtract points) for people who do this?

Those of us who prefer to just see the game from start to finish without having to go through the "try & die" cycle numerous times generally don't care about their final score anyway; chances are they'll just treat the game like a reader would treat a book he has just finished reading.

Currently game developers seem to see this as "wrong" somehow; as if their game wasn't meant to be completed without significant effort by the player. But why assume a player wants to invest that time and effort into a game, when these same players have the option of finding such relief in so many other ways. If I want competition, I'll do real-life sports, if I want entertainmant, I't like to be able to pick up a game that doesn't force me to compete.

Most games I've played have this problem. In particular there was Jak & Dexter 2. I bought part 1, and loved every bit of it. I bought part 2 and ended up facing an end-boss I just couldn't get past; tried if for an hour, then just didn't care any more. Needless to say, I didn't buy part 3. Now you might say that trying for just one hour is "giving up easily", but that single hour got me nothing that I wanted. If part 2 had allowed me to skip past, I'd have probably ended up buying part 3. Final score for this case; no cheat = lost sale.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[KDR_11k]

Currently the trend seems to be going towards "pure challenge" as opposed to "pure walk-through"

Yet I feel that many major games are way too easy for me. I don't think there's a middle ground that'll satisfy everyone, what a seasoned gamer would consider a simple warmup exercise may be an unsurmountable challenge for many casual gamers. I mean, somewhere in this discussion people got stuck in Zelda: Twilight Princess yet I found that game to be damn easy and I'm really bad at combat in the 3d Zeldas (can't even beat a stalfos in OOT without dying 5 times).

I think one flaw is that games don't make failing fun anymore, there are some games where failing doesn't mean much, you just try again but there are others where failing even two or three times can already create frustration. A part may be the speed of the game, if dying means redoing the boss fight and the fight doesn't last longer than 2-3 minutes and retrying is almost instant it's much more motivating than having a 1 hour boss fight with an unskippable 15 minute cutscene before it at each retry. I've given up on a boss of the latter kind after maybe 2-3 tries (in FFX) while I've wasted over 50 tries on some bosses of the former kind (especially in Bunny Must Die, an indie game where e.g. the Dracula boss can instakill you* if you haven't learned his pattern yet). Generally I'm willing to put up with much harder games if losing doesn't mean much. Learning how to beat a hard boss can be fun but the game design has to help you with it, not punish you for not recognizing it at first glance.

*=The attack he uses is removing his clothes... Makes your character drop dead immediately if you don't look away.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[ajs]

Yep, get rid of all the cheats. And get rid of those silly 3D graphics. Take these modern gamers down a notch: give 'em rogue and let 'em prove they're good enough for nethack.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[profrs]

If you're talking about Jizzy, just shoot the tires on his car before you enter the club. When he tries to drive away he won't be able to control the car or go very fast.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently abandoned Diablo II because an "upgrade" from the server trashed my best character -- the one I primarily use when playing directly with friends. I sent a complaint to Blizzard clearly stating that their upgrade had corrupted a _local_ character, and that they might want to look into improving their testing practices.

I got back a response informing me that if I don't tell them the name of the character on Battle.NET they can't possibly help me.

After the _next_ upgrade, the game will now crash after 0-30 seconds of play.

With this sort of braindead coding from Blizzard, I have almost no desire to play WoW at all. With such disdain for their customers (they probably refer to them as "marks" or "consumers" internally, for all I know), it seems the height of folly for me to continue giving them any of my money.

With an "unlocked" game, I might be able to restore my character, or find a character editor that would let me recreate my character.

Oh well. I guess I'll check out Neverwinter Nights or something.

Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the

[jagdish]

I thought the flying school medals were quite impossible. Especially on a PC.

Wall my ass

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Stuck?

Then it's time to either grind levels or get better, depending on the game.

Alternatively, hit gamefaqs or bust out the cheat codes, if you lack fortitude.

Re:Wall my ass

[wiggles]

Yeah. Try using cheat codes to get past the Grim Reaper in the original Castlevania. There aren't any! The FAQs I've seen won't do it either.

I've been trying to beat that game for twenty years.

Re:Wall my ass

[karnal]

I even tried using Save States on my GBA (emulation) and I can't kill him....

Sucks that I can't even cheating.

Re:Wall my ass

[poot_rootbeer]

Try using cheat codes to get past the Grim Reaper in the original Castlevania. There aren't any!

Unless you have a Game Genie, and what dedicated NES gamer didn't? I even imported mine from Canada, because the US release was held up by Nintendo filing a lawsuit to block it.

Re:Wall my ass

[Verteiron]

I sympathize. I actually got past the Reaper once. The original Castlevania was the last one I played, after I'd beaten 2 and 3. This was when I was 10 or so. Anyway, after I'd beaten him somehow, I forget why, I had to shut off the NES, or I had it turned off for me... can't remember which. I had managed to get to the third form of Dracula, too, but couldn't quite beat him. Maybe I ran out of continues. Anyway, I've never been able to beat the Reaper since then. Bastard.

Re:Wall my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

To beat the Grim Reaper use the boomerang. Max it up to level III by killing a whole bunch of minor baddies with it. (If I remember, you kill 10 baddies..then bust a candle and it will give you a powerup.) The Grim reaper is fairly easy with the boomerang. Also, Frankenstein use Holy Water. You have to get it early in his level and hold onto it.

And holy water works well on Dracula as well.

Re:Wall my ass

[default luser]

Grim Reaper? That's nothing. Here's how you do it:

1. You need the cross (boomerang). Lucky for you, it is available on the way to the reaper, even if you die and restart.

2. You need to build up hearts, at least 40-50 of them. On the top of the staircase that leads to the hall full of axe knights, there is a large heart in the candle directly above the stairs. Grab the (5) hearts, go down the stairs and come back up and repeat.

3. You need triple-shot crosses. You can get this by killing the axe knights with crosses, then afterwards hitting candles with the cross. The candle should drop double, and later triple shots. IF you fail to get the triple shots, go back down the stairs and come back up to face the axe knights again.

Strategy for killing the reaper:

1. Saturate the space. Fire crosses even if they're going to miss the reaper. The primary purpose of the crosses is to kill the reaper, but the secondary purpose is to kill the flying sickles. Try to fire crosses at multiple levels of the screen so you get more coverage. This works well with the next technique, which is:

2. Always keep moving. You can't see the sickles appear under you if you stand still - you have a chance of dodging them if you see them fade in. Jumping from level-to-level makes this strategy easier to pull off, and also allows you to saturate the whole screen with crosses (see above).

I did spend quite a bit of time learning how to beat the reaper hen I was a kid, but compared to the count he's cake. Still, until I came up with this strategy he usually kicked my ass, so I'm not surprised you're stuck on him.

Re:Wall my ass

[Bloomy]

I always beat him with the triple shot boomerang. I could usually get to Dracula without losing a life, and I used the boomerang the whole way (once I got it, of course). I've seen speed runs that make good use of the holy water against the later bosses as well.

Re:Wall my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel his pain. I've hit the wall on Nethack; I been playing for a week and I haven't beat it yet.

Re:Wall my ass

[default luser]

Best weapons for bosses (obviously get at least double-shot for best effect):

Giant Bat - holy water. Hide under the block on the right side of the screen, then throw the holy water on the block when the bat flies at you. Once he is caught, you can burn him to death.

Medusa - holy water. Even kills the annoying snakes on the floor.

Mummy Men - cross. Slip into the far left as the men appear and fire your crosses. Not only do they take out all the stuff the men throw at you, they do quadruple damage because each cross hits both men twice.

Frankenstein - holy water. Throw it directly on Frankenstein, and ignore Igor. You can kill him quickly with that. Try not to die, because you can't get the holy water where you restart.

Grim Reaper - cross. I've discussed this above.

Dracula - I know a lot of people like the holy water route, but I like the cross (triple-shot, of course). You can use it to ward off fireballs in his first form (got to get the timing right so you throw the cross right before you jump up and whip him in the head).

For the second form, just smother the screen at dracula's head level with crosses. Keep jumping up and firing a cross towards the other side of the screen. Every time he comes down from a jump he will get whacked multiple times. You have to hope and pray that he will high jump when he gets to you, but it usually happens enough times for you to win.

Re:Wall my ass

[Jett]

My best friend and I both had a Game Genie - we would daisy chain them together so we could enter twice the number of codes. It didn't always work and sometimes had really weird effects but it was still totally awesome.

Re:Wall my ass

[Omestes]

Years. And years... and... years...

I've known geeks who have played NH for longer than me, and never beat it.

Seriously. I'm at the wall in "Twilight Princess", I got sick of the "save the caravan" one, previous to that was the first time (early on) where you had to follow the Orc guy, and beat off his armor, on horse back... I through my Nunchuck, and stopped playing for a week. Now I'm on another week without playing, its not hard, its just tedious. Everytime I get ready for some hot Zelda lovin', I put in Warioware or Wii Sports instead. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy the challenge of the impossible. If it is anything like Diablo 2, some night I'll get smashed, pull an all-nighter, wake up and realize I beat the game.

Oddly, I did this in WoW all the time, beating critical quests and raids at 3am while hammered on Jim Beam. I think my guild must have thought I was permanently sauced.

Re:Wall my ass

[CrazyJim1]

You're right boomerangs FTW. I keep boomerangs from the moment I get them until the Dracula where you practically 'need' the timepiece to beat the Dracula level. So far on 1 life I've defeated Dracula on MARP, but not his second form. A kind Slashdotter told me to use holy water on the 2nd aspect of Dracula, and to watch that his 3rd jump is always the high one. I haven't got back to trying to beat the game on one life though as my computer with all my roms suffered a terrible handling at the airport luggage :P Castlevania 1 is some serious gaming fun that I don't get with many of the new games that come out.

Re:Wall my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

Re:Wall my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait for the reaper. Throw holy water down on the ground where he drops down, before he drops down. Keep doing that while whipping.

Re:Wall my ass

[cluke]

Yeah - if you play WoW late any Friday or Saturday night, just about everyone is drunk. Doesn't say much for the skill required that you can play it effectively while sozzled, but it's fun and that's all the matters I suppose!

Re:Wall my ass

[Masque Noir]

Yeah, grim reaper is a pain to beat... I personally use the triple shot boomerang and jump and throw them non stop at different heights so you can kill the flying sickle right away. There is a lot of timing practice to do with this, but I found it works really well like that. Keep moving helps also as it was mentionned in other posts. Dracula is more of a technical boss, the way I do it is: wait until he opens his cape to shoot, you basically want to jump over the middle fireball and whip the top one and his head at the same time. It's a long fight, but unless he appears on you it's a very safe trick and if you keep moving, it should be ok. The second form now for me is just spam holy water and jump whip, I never found that part as difficult as the reaper or dracula though.

Re:Wall my ass

[mikael]

Try playing 'moria' instead :) I only played this game once - The game started as normal - haggled with some shopkeepers over the price of a two-handed sword, some armour and food, then began going down level by level, expecting a long exploration through the mazes. Everything changed when my character fell through a trapdoor, landed on the bottom level, walked into the balrog by accident, killed him, and won the game.

Re:Wall my ass

[CommieSmurf]

I beat World of Warcraft, on expert. That crap takes a really long time. BTW, PvP is so much more fun if they are =39 :)

Re:Wall my ass

[I(rispee_I(reme]

I seem to remember that holy water does the trick on Death in the first Castlevania. He's quite a challenge in the new DS castlevania on Hard Mode, too. (Playing as Richter, of course.)

Re:Wall my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

If this MTV guy thought Sin was hard (FFX) then, well, maybe he should have spent more time developing LuLu. Sin was nothing compared to BongoBongo.

I don't quit.

[Dr. Eggman]

I cheat. When I can't win, I pull out my last advantage over a computer and start trying to pick it apart. If I can't have fun and win, I try to break the game instead and make my own fun out of it.

Of course, this doesn't apply to multiplayer games. In those cases I just call everyone H4X0RZ and log off before they get a victory.

Re:I don't quit.

[SatanicPuppy]

Heh, I've played you before.

I'm just the opposite; I never fricking quit. I'm the guy who's building random photon cannons all over the map, just to piss off the guys who are beating my ass...And I've pulled it off before, where I've been in an "unwinnable" situation and ended up winning, because the opponents slacked off. I was in a 3v3 in Warcraft III once, and had two of my teammates quit, and managed to footy rush and wipe out two of my three remaining opponents, and then just outplayed the last guy. It ain't over until it's fricking over.

Re:I don't quit.

[Dr. Eggman]

Heh, I'm (in reality) very similar when faced with a losing situation online. I like to make a defeat as fun as possible, I was into Counter-Strike for a while and I've been in some pretty 1-sided situations. I remember once where I was on the terrorist team in the office level. We were completly random strangers and the CT team was a tourney clan. Whooping us bad, to say the least. So I made it fun next round, I stabbed the hostages just enough to keep them alive, tagged the wall with a spray, and stood there in between the hostages. They always came to the hostages last, and there I was. They had one guy left, we had one guy left. They're guy the shot gun, I didn't have the money to pay for armor. He came up, saw me standing there and ducked back. Then ran at me, and killed me like I was afk. I hit the ground and so did the grenade I had been holding the entire round. BLAM! There went the hostages and there went the knifing CT! The whole server had a good laugh and called it a draw!

Re:I don't quit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a similar situation in StarCraft :) Playing with some friends, I was terran and my base was on an island in the middle of the map, they ganged up on me and blew most of my base to bits... except I had already sent all flying buildings away as well as quite a few battlecruisers, I just left all other units behind to cover their retreat. After that, it was just a matter of hiding my flying buildings and sending the BCs to their bases to wipe them out, they thought all they had to do was mop up, so they had not prepared to face BCs. A very satisfying win :D

Re:I don't quit.

[SatanicPuppy]

I think my favorite ever was in Warcraft III...It was 2v2 and me and my teammate screwed the pooch early...We did one attack which was half-assed, and the other guys counter attacked so hard that they wiped out my partner...Almost.

So I forted up (was playing humans), built a second hero, and just sat in my little base mining, and killing everything that came at me, while my partner slowly, quietly, built back up...I think they just assumed they'd wiped him out completely, and he was just hanging around to watch. They were smack talking me like no tomorrow, not even bothering to expand because they had me "trapped".

The only thing nastier than a group of knights, priests, and riflemen with a wizard and a pally, is that same group joined up with a group of taurens, shaman, and spear throwers...We chewed their asses apart. I sent a single peasant to every resource dump on the board, and whenever they tried to expand, I teleported there and crushed 'em. Super satisfying win.

Re:I don't quit.

[bogjobber]

One of my favorite gaming moments was playing some crappy Starcraft match (3v3 BGH!!!) where everybody was pretty bad (myself included I was fairly young and inexperienced at the time). My teammates sucked and got killed after about 20 minutes, but I managed to stick around and make it competitive. I was pinned inside my base with a crapload of tanks and bunkers/missile turrets and they couldn't break in (like I said they were pretty bad). Occasionally I would get an expansion up for more resources and slowly move my defenses over to the new base. We literally used up every resource on Big Game Hunters and I won because I successfully kept them from expanding. The game probably lasted over an hour and a half and it was unbelievably fun.

Whenever I play Warcraft 3 I play FFA's. At one point I had an absurd FFA record (something like 30-30), partially because I would never quit on large maps. I would always run away in a corner away from where the real fighting was taking place and build up a main base with one or two expansions and then try and strike at opportune moments. I've won many matches where most people would've just given up.

Re:I don't quit.

[murdocj]

I don't play much player vs player, but many years ago I got into a 3 person FFA Warcraft 2 game. It was obvious early on that the other two players were ganging up on me, but fortunately they weren't all that good. One of them was going strictly for dragons, which I love because they are easy to kill and cost a boatload of gold. So I was gradually pushed back but was still holding my own.

One of the players kept lagging and a dialog would come up asking if I wanted to boot him. After 30 minutes or so I finally decided to toss the lagger, and then proceeded to wipe out the other guy when it was even odds. Very satisfying.

Final Fantasy VII

[AceCaseOR]

I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.

One of these days, I'm going to play all the way through the game again, and at least make it to the Sephiroth fight... one of these days...

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[king-manic]

If you level enough, you can beat sephiroth in about 12 min. and thats almost entirely watching 3 knights of the rounds do 120,000+ dmg to him. you can also solo omnislash/mimic/auto pheonix him in about 3 min. summon, mimic, mimic. doen game. I had max str with slash all so 9999 each hit with each char to every enemy. end game is boring if you munchkin like a mad man.

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[AceCaseOR]

Keep in mind, this was my first play through, and I was trying to go through without using a walkthrough. Consequently, I did not have any of the Ultima Weapons. None at all. (Well, okay, I found Aerith's, but that doesn't precisely help me).

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, I did it both ways. He's beatable without any of the super-sexy stuff...in fact, it's a much better fight, but it's truly special to go in and crush him with a couple of consecutive limit breaks.

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[poot_rootbeer]

I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.

I had a similar experience with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, on the Gameboy Advance. I played all the way through this RPG, having a great time, and then found myself in the final battle without enough attack points to defeat the enemy, even after a solid half hour of the same combo-attack/counter/replenish-HP sequence over and over again. So I gave up.

I suppose if I were to step back from the final battle and spend a couple days leveling up battling small enemies, I'd get powerful enough to unlock the ending of the game eventually. But why would I do that? Grinding isn't fun!

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[Anonymous Coward]

The fucking ultima's in FF7 can eat a dick. (its been a good few years since i've played this game)

I beat the 1 under water (its been years) with a combination of pheonix-final strike and x4-knights of the round attack combinations. Took me the better part of 5 hours to beat it (maxed out everything, all ultimate weapons, etc)

The desert ultima finally did me the game in for me. The end game is a complete joke compared to these guys.

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[Darkinspiration]

funny thing, ruby weapon is vulnerable to a couple status. Try hades on him, you know the summon that's compleatly useless.... and laugh all the way. The best part was trying everything on the bastard and going "hey, he's confused, asleep and silenced.... cool"

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[MasterGwaha]

pffffft KotR summon takes too long i never use it. just use morph on the triceratop-tanks at the exploded mako refinery on one of the southern islands. they turn into a power potion (cant remember the name) give you permanent +1 to strength. they are really weak too with like just under 300hp. morph does 1/10 damage so if you can do at least 3k on him youre good. and hes the most frequent enemy in that sector. level up some counter attack and magic counter materia on any 10 double slotted weapons and armor, and your characters fight the battle and win for you (counter attacks once for each counter materia, and with quad slash too!). just put the controller down, or make them all use potions every turn, they will just slaughter all the enemies. i never even mimicked or used KotR on any of the ultimate weapons. but then again i was a hardcore gamer like that heh.

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[bunuel]

I had a similar experience with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, on the Gameboy Advance. I played all the way through this RPG, having a great time, and then found myself in the final battle without enough attack points to defeat the enemy, even after a solid half hour of the same combo-attack/counter/replenish-HP sequence over and over again. So I gave up.

the same thing happened to me... i did go back and level grind for a while, but that's just because i'm compulsive about finishing stuff. though i never finished the incredibles (VG) or labyrinth of evil (horrendous star wars book)...

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[oc255]

Ah, FF7. There's the game that I've beaten to the fullest and never anything beaten so much since. I was level 99, had my KotR materia split (yes) and when I fought Sephiroth, I won the battle in one round because I counter-attacked and killed him on his last attack. Really Sephiroth was nothing compared to the Ruby Weapon (which was omg wtf). The Emerald Weapon was hard but not too bad once I surfed for the materia strategy (auto-raise or something).

I think in about 10 years I'll start it again. *sigh* I want to forget more of it. Oh, also it helps to be in college not working over the summer. Maybe that won't happen again after all ... :D

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[king-manic]

Ruby weapon: omni-slash + drain mp/hp + mimmic. kill the other two members intentionally and then just mimic until dead.

Re:Final Fantasy VII

[Chmcginn]

5 hours isn't that bad. In FFXII, the similair optional boss has 25,000,000 HP. And you're still limited to 9999 per hit.

He wasn't even that hard, really. I mean, once you've got the right attack pattern set up, it's only running out of stuff that makes you possibly lose.

Donkey Kong 64

[pluke]

Played the entire game, a little disappointed. Must have put 30+ hours in, then got to the final boss failed a few times and never played the game again. Same happened with Diddy Kong racing. An experience like that can sour an entire game for me and I have no regrets not finishing them, the idea that i must finish something because I've wasted X many hours of my life on it doesn't click. If the story is good I'll persevere but otherwise no.

Re:Donkey Kong 64

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea. I'll stop reading a book at the last chapter if I don't feel like continuing. I don't get the urge to plough on.

Re:Donkey Kong 64

[pluke]

Yup I get that as well if the story tales off towards the end. You can probably tell I'm not an achievement collector 360 style.

Re:Donkey Kong 64

[Anonymous Coward]

I had almost the exact same experience with Banjo-Kazooie. Played it through, enjoying it immensely, then just hitting a brick wall with the final boss. Luckily I found some cheats, but without those I'd probably just have left it.

More recently, the final level (on second-highest difficulty) in Ouendan. Evil.

Re:Donkey Kong 64

[DarkJC]

That was like me on the final level in Elite Beat Agents. I just recently (finally) beat it and am now concentrating on S ranking the levels.

Nope!

[Lumpy]

Because that is what cheat codes and gameshark is for. I break it out when the game is kicking my arse for days on end at that point or like in FF-X the save points are too damned far apart and you just died in a minor battle right after a damn SIN fight that takes 1 hour.

Quake 4 was quite fun after I started throwing in the "give all" and undying" cheats. (note last boss undying does not work, the boss get's an undying if you get it. It made the game way more fun when I could start lobbing rockets around like candy everywhere.

Re:Nope!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that is what cheat codes and gameshark is for.

Oh yeah? Let's see you Gameshark your way past Touch Me from Atari. Now in Wii Opera Browser flavor:

http://java.dnsalias.com/touchwii

Re:Nope!

[blincoln]

I agree - a Gameshark/Action Replay was the only reason I didn't shelf Devil May Cry, for example.

It's annoying that it's the *only* way sometimes, though. When Metroid Prime 2 came out, I got to the end before there were any Action Replay cheats discovered for it, and had to wait a few days because the final boss was stupidly difficult and I wasn't having fun.

The only gaming-related thing that annoys me more than overly difficult games are developers that refuse to acknowledge they're a problem. Hey guys, I'm the one that bought the game. If you're going to put in something ridiculously difficult, add a difficulty setting or at least cheat codes. I am looking at you, Capcom (for DMC), Relic (for Homeworld 2), and whoever made the Red Odyssey expansion to Battlezone.

Re:Nope!

[bunuel]

It's annoying that it's the *only* way sometimes, though. When Metroid Prime 2 came out, I got to the end before there were any Action Replay cheats discovered for it, and had to wait a few days because the final boss was stupidly difficult and I wasn't having fun.

I'm playing this right now. I'm at the Torvus Bog, about a third of the way through, and I've already wondered if I should just give up a few times. Nice to know it's going to get harder... I was hoping it would be easier than the first Metroid Prime, which was a little bit too difficult for my tastes. At least some of the boss battles.

Doom 3

[SeeManRun]

I played through some of this game, not sure how far I got.. but it got too scary and I couldn't play it anymore. I just couldn't handle the stress of chainsaws and stuff popping up behind me!

Re:Doom 3

[Generic Guy]

I just couldn't handle the stress of chainsaws and stuff popping up behind me!

Actually, that's what did Doom 3 in, at least for me. It got very repetitive and cheap, to the point where you'd walk into a place and pretty know that something was going to pop out of a hidden door as you walk past to attack you. Then there was the magical spawn-from-thin-air enemies which made it even worse.

All in all, Doom3 seemed more a tech demo and less of a full-fledged game.

Re:Doom 3

[Korvar]

What surprised me is when I installed the "Classic Doom" maps - the original DOOM shareware maps converted into DOOM3 maps. They were so much more fun than the actual DOOM3 maps.

Futurama on PS2

[dextromulous]

When you need to make Bender jump from girder to girder. I always end up falling :-(. Haven't picked up then game in months because of that spot.

Runner-up.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What game obstacles have caused you toss away a controller in frustration and swear off a game entirely?"

The later levels in farcry. The runner-up is silent hill 2 and the last boss battle.

Re:Runner-up.

[Ford Prefect]

The later levels in farcry.

Is there anyone who managed to get past the final battle in the volcano without cheating?

I tried my best, then eventually gave up and enabled a god-mode cheat. Which helpfully counted how many times I 'died'. I played as well as I could, and still ended up with about seventy consecutive deaths.

Previous difficulty spikes I'd got past through excessive use of the almost-disabled quicksave function...

Re:Runner-up.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't have to cheat per se, but when I finally hacked the quick save feature so I didn't have to repeat the first part over and over again, I hit the new quick save feature once, and didn't even have to use it.

I still recall, vividly, the two grenades I launched into the room to take down the punk villain. Most satisfying ending I've experienced in a game ever.... mostly because of the 2 weeks of trying it took to get through the volcanoe - compared with the 2 minutes it actually took to run the gauntlet.

Re:Runner-up.

[Some_Llama]

I did, I seem to remember hiding behind a ramp and poking out to blast at the evil dudes.. it's been a while since I played it as it seemed boring the second time around..

Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[Scrameustache]

I don't know anyone who passed that hurdle by themselves, everyone I asked checked out a walkthrough on the net.
I blame the translation, the instruction for the puzzle can't be followed to solve it.

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[TechnoLust]

I played thru Silent Hill with no cheats and don't remember the piano puzzle being that difficult, but I've played musical instruments since I was 5. I remember when Myst was out, one of my friends that was not a gamer got a call from a tone deaf friend wanting help with the organ puzzle. He listened to it over the phone and told him which keys to hit. It worked. You just need some more music geeks in your life! I just finished Twilight Princess on the Wii and I loved the Howling Stone sections where you have to howl (As the wolf of course) the same tune the wind is making blowing through the stone.

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[stoolpigeon]

dude - even with the little blue lines to help, it drives me crazy getting the howling right. my kids get really frustrated with me. 'come on dad! do it right!' and other helpful comments. the puzzle with the two statues that needed to go back to their original spots was one of the harder things i've done yet in that game though.

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[|/|/|||]

I thought the howling was a pain in the ass too, until I tried just doing it by ear. It seems easier to just go high, middle, high, low, etc - but I had a difficult time doing that with the more complicated ones. It was actually easier to just listen to it and play back the right sound.

Your mileage may vary. :)

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[Beefysworld]

After using ocarinas, pianos (FFVII) and numerous other in-game musical tests, I didn't really have a problem with the howling either.

And apparently I got lucky with moving the two statues as well. Once I figured out how they moved, I think I nailed it in about 2 minutes.

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[TechnoLust]

Moving the two statues was hard until I figured out they wouldn't commit suicide by jumping off the edges. Oh, and I'm glad you mentioned Ocarinas, I'm thinking about buying one and learning to play. I need to check pricing.

Re:Silent Hill's ??%%$&?! piano puzzle

[ravenshrike]

Even though it's not hard once I got the hang of it, the first two i did by going up and down really quickly. If you get part of the howl on each line, it'll let you complete.

Long wait, short play, repeat

[dazedNconfuzed]

I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes.

Re:Long wait, short play, repeat

[AceCaseOR]

I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes. For me, the most frustrating part of Max Payne wasn't the combat, it was the jumping puzzles during the drug-induced fever-dreams. Those were a royal pain in the ass.

Re:Long wait, short play, repeat

[SeeManRun]

Max Payne sticks out in my mind as a game that has a really fast quickload. I used it constantly. Loaded in about 2 seconds if I remember correctly. Level loads took much longer. Try using the quickload feature after you die instead of letting it load automatically.

Re:Long wait, short play, repeat

[triffid_98]

I guess you haven't tried Gothic III then. It's a hard game, players tend to die frequently, that doesn't bother me. What bothered me was getting to stare at the loading screen for another 3+ minutes every single time it happened.

I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun

Re:Long wait, short play, repeat

[mobby_6kl]

I'm surprised Max Payne gets mentioned here (and again by another poster down the thread). Not only did it load in a reasonable amount of time on a PII-350 level system, the quickloads were very fast and I don't remember being frustrated at that at all. I also found the whole game quite easy, and even the walk-the-thin-line, jump-over-there puzzles, which I normally hate, didn't cause me much trouble.

And now that you bastards mentioned Max Payne, I'll have to dig it out and finish it twice today, thanks!

Re:Long wait, short play, repeat

[Chris Mattern]

I'm surprised Max Payne gets mentioned here (and again by another poster down the thread). Not only did it load in a reasonable amount of time on a PII-350 level system,

I bet the guy complaining about the load times was playing on a PS2. Having to load from the DVD is much slower than loading from a hard disk.

Chris Mattern

Gamers today have no spine

[Eideewt]

Bah. Everyone knows that a true game doesn't have an ending: it just gets harder. I don't see what everyone is complaining about.

Re:Gamers today have no spine

[__aaclcg7560]

Not many of us have mastered Missile Command, young grasshopper.

Re:Gamers today have no spine

[BlackSnake112]

missle command maxed out too. well it did for me on the atari 2600 (dammit again i tell me age)

Re:Gamers today have no spine

[__aaclcg7560]

The arcade version didn't max out. Which put me in an awkward situation when I was the lead tester on "Atari Anniversary Advance" (GBA) at Atari. How do you finished a game that was designed not to be finished since it was about nuclear war?

amen!

[MarcoAtWork]

The GameCube version of "F-Zero" includes a race set on a course full of 90-degree turns and expert opponents. I'll never beat it. I'll never see the rest of the game.

same thing happened to me, no way I'll ever be able to beat that mission in story mode, or beat all the cups in diamond to unlock AX, and due to the fact that for some bizarre reason there are NO CODES for f-zero-gx I just stopped playing it, and basically stopped playing my gc altogether due to the huge amounts of frustration f-zero gx caused.

Note to Nintendo: if you sell a game, make sure that there is some sort of code to use to unlock all the game has to offer, or a reduced difficulty level, I paid for the whole game and to be locked out of 1/5th of the tracks (likely among the best ones) and 4/5ths of the story mode does not feel right.

Re:amen!

[Erioll]

I agree. That game was really fun (not QUITE as fun as N64 version, but close), with great visuals (better than N64, obviously), but the frustration of knowing that there was more that I'd NEVER touch was something that always really got to me.

Re:amen!

[MeanderingMind]

Agreed.

I'm one of those crazy gamers capable of unlocking everything in F-Zero GX, and I did. However, my greatest fear is save file corruption. Can anyone explain to me how I'm supposed to recover the work I did unlocking tracks when crap happens to my save files?

Quite simply, game companies need to catch on that any game requiring more than 5-10 hours to unlock everything useful for multiplayer need to include some method of cheating to unlock it all instantly.

Re:amen!

[sam_paris]

I totally agree, I got to that mission in story mode and too and played it for literally hours and never came close to beating it.

I also got incredibly frustrated knowing that I would never see all the AX racers or tracks. That game put me off my GC for months.

Re:amen!

[Jim Hall]

I'm playing Jak X for PS2 right now, and I hit a similar thing on the final grand prix event. They throw a new opponent at you (I won't spoil it here) and he's really hard. To top it off, the 3 tracks happen to be the ones I suck most at, yet the opponent drives like his tyres are glued to the track. It makes me very frustrated to play the same grand prix over and over and over, yet not come even close to winning. I don't know that I'm going to finish this game, and it's the last event. Grrrrrr...

Re:amen!

[PrinceOfStorms]

Note to Nintendo: if you sell a game, make sure that there is some sort of code to use to unlock all the game has to offer, or a reduced difficulty level, I paid for the whole game and to be locked out of 1/5th of the tracks (likely among the best ones) and 4/5ths of the story mode does not feel right.

I know exactly how you feel. I brought this movie once and it got really hard to understand about 80% of the way through. In the end, the symbolism and the recurring motifs were just too much and I couldn't work out what was supposed to be happening. I'm a busy man and I don't have time to sit through repeated viewings just to work out what it all means. Now, I paid for the whole movie, so I reckon they should have included a simplified version on the DVD. Maybe they could tone down the symbolism a little and provide some commentary so I can understand the damn thing!

Re:amen!

[illegalcortex]

Cute, but a bad analogy. This would be more like if there was a test 20% into it that you had to pass before you could watch the last 80%. And all the questions were essay questions. And you had to come up with the essay answer that was word for word, letter for letter the same as the official answer. While being kicked in the nuts.

Re:amen!

[PSXer]

I haven't played F-Zero GX in a while, but I seem to recall that master difficulty really isn't that hard if you have a good car. Unfortunately it won't help with story mode.

Try the Acro Lynx G4:

Body: Sky Horse
Cockpit: Super Lynx
Booster: Titan -G4

Re:amen!

[Peter Amstutz]

Arrgh! If TFA is talking about the Casino map in F-Zero GX, the reason why that map is impossible is because you're stuck using the craptacular Captain Falcon car. It's bad enough you can't choose your car in story mode when the rest of the game gives you a bounty of cars to choose from, but being forced to do it with a car with all the acceleration and handling of a dump truck just adds insult to injury. Don't people playtest these things?

Unlocking can be a clever method of extending gameplay a bit, but many games seem to fall off the cliff into sheer grinding. Unlike MMOs, where grinding at least serves the purpose of differentiating your character (if it's hard to do, not all players will do it, so you have an advantage), making the player grind to unlock features in a standalone console game is just stupid. For some reason this is especially egregious with some fighting games, despite the fact that players are more likely to be playing with their friends (thus they would be playing the game regardless of whether there is content to unlock or not).

Unlockable systems work best when either a) it lets you go back to stuff you've already played (beat it, and get to return to it) or b) trophies that have little or no bearing on the game and are just ego items. Hiding major features behind gameplay locks is just a waste of time for the designers (because a lot of players will never see that content you put so much effort into creating) and a waste of player time because they have to go do some other repetative thing over and over again in order to see a new track or level or character.

The best done game for hidden stuff I've played is Super Smash Brothers Melee. Doing practically anything in game counts towards unlocking stuff, and you can unlock most of the characters and levels just by bringing the GameCube out for a few parties. Also, most of the extra characters are just variations on the base set of characters, so you arn't missing that much (unlike some games where the hidden characters have completely new and different gameplay.)

All in all though, this trend towards forced grinding to get the entire game you paid for has seriously turned me off towards console gaming.

Re:amen!

[thos_thom]

Solution!

In that vertical GC shooter whos name eludes me right now (the one with the black and white energies) you unlock the special modes by EITHER finishing the game with some restrictions

finish game : special bit 1
finish game without getting killed : special bit 2
etc..

OR playing the game for a set number of hours

there is no way I could ever complete that game but I could still get access with enough commitment. Play the game a few times as far as I can go and then I get rewarded for trying.

Re:amen!

[MBGMorden]

Why not get an extra memory card and make backup copies of your important saves to that card? Or even 2 cards? With the price of the things being dirt cheap now you could probably afford to keep an extra in your house to guard against regular old corruption, and another in your car incase of the house burning down (this assumes that your care is not parked in a garage and that you actually care about your save games if your house burnt down :)).

Re:amen!

[carnivore302]

You will give me a million dollars

Re:amen!

[Phisbut]

Why not get an extra memory card and make backup copies of your important saves to that card? Or even 2 cards?

Because, for some strange reason, F-Zero GX save files cannot be copied (not the traditional way at least). I guess there's a way for developers to "lock" the save files to prevent duplication, and the guys at F-Zero used it. I even tried with my Wii, hoping they might have lifted the restriction for Gamecube memory cards, but I still get a "This data cannot be copied" message.

Re:amen!

[MeanderingMind]

Sadly, I was not going to give you a million dollars, and as you have predicted wrongly I can not in good conscience give you such a sum.

Re:amen!

[MeanderingMind]

That's a solution, but it's not an optimal one for the following reasons.

1. Money: While losing 60 hours of work is difficult to put a price on, buying more memory cards when I already have 2 near-full 255 slotters on my Gamecube alone starts to go beyond "dirt cheap".

2. Backups: I'd have to start a fairly regular backup regimen for this to be effective.

3. Principle: The solution doesn't address the problem that to unlock the features of a game takes more than a full day's worth of time. This simply shouldn't be the case for multiplayer-centric games.

It's certainly a thought, but sadly it won't bring my deceased save file back, nor does it provide the unlocked features I lost.

Two Recent Examples

[Colourspace]

Gears Of War I loved, I don't usually play most games that far through, but I hit a bug with the second berserker where I was trapped by a fallen wall behind me (so I couldn't return) and I didn't have the Hammer of Dawn required to kill the berserker. Now this perhaps is more of a bug, but it frustrated me no end, as the save system doesn't allow for multiple saves. There was no way I was going back to the beginning because of that. Result - shelved. Resident Evil 4. Towards the end, the minecart section. If you haven't got enough ammo you are screwed. My other last save points were far too back to contemplate. Shelved. Also Lost Planet. Ridiculously difficult boss only a few levels in that just nails you as soon as you start, and with the character stumbling about and leaving you vulnerable.. Hugely frustrating. I'd spent a good few nights playing to that point and making steady progress.. Once I'd spent three nights just trying to beat that one boss and progress - Shelved again. Look I'm not saying games should not present a challenge (and I admit I am not the worlds greatest game player although I have been playing games for a good 25 years now so I must have some sort of a clue), and I suppose in the case of RE4 I perhaps should have saved more different save points. However, I pay my £40 (yes $80), and if I want to choose the easy level so I get to see all of the awesome graphics, hear the surround sound to as well as get some entertainment (not sheer bloody frustration) out of it I should be able to. These things are supposed to be playtested - doesn't anyone look at the difficulty curves/bugs that need fixing?

Re:Two Recent Examples

[p0tat03]

Gears of War has a "Load Last Checkpoint" option in the menu. Try that to reset yourself to before the bug.

Re:Two Recent Examples

[Anonymous Coward]

also, the hammer of dawn is placed at multiple locations. Chances are there's one you can get to, you just haven't looked hard enough yet.

Re:Two Recent Examples

[Monkey]

Assuming you're talking about the Berserker in the greenhouse/solarium sort of room, there should be a Hammer of Dawn in there on the dark side of the room towards the entrance end.

Re:Two Recent Examples

[Kelbear]

They plant the hammer of dawn right where you need to use it, you never have to carry it with you in single player since they'll provide one within the zone of movement around the spot it needs to be used. In that second beserker encounter I believe it was in that hanging garden area. Just keep going forward and get the hammer at the end. You don't need to use the aim-to-walk slowly method either, just strafe around at normal speed. The beserker is pretty harmless.

After you get your hammer, you might not realize what to do, took me a few minutes. Gamefaqs probably has your answer(I don't want to put a spoiler here).

Lost Planet only has unavoidable damage at the end boss. The rest of the game focuses around preventable damage. When a threat arrives, you're too slow to dodge. But all the threats give warnings or use patterns. It's only impossible to dodge when you wait until it's too late to dodge. There are unavoidable stumble attacks in more than one place in the game, but the bosses that do it also follow it up with a pause allowing you to recover and dodge. (For example, the snow worm featured in the trailers).

If you're looking for unfair, try Dead or Alive 4 against CPU. Skill is involved, but arbitrary countering by the CPU is also involved. So if the CPU decides to go on a counter-streak, there's nothing you can do but accept defeat and hope it won't do it again next round. That's why the key is to make the longest and most varied combos you can to limit the CPU's ability to fight back. Arbitrariness is incredibly lame in gaming. Theoretically you can memorize every possible attack for each character so you can predict the next step in a CPU combo, but that's more like work than playing a game.

I have hit them with OgreBattle games

[antifoidulus]

but the story is impossible to get back into the story and really know what is going on(it's hard enough if you don't stop). Tactics Ogre was the whole reason I bought a gba and it took me 3 years and 3 continents to finally beat it. I bought it in North America, took it with me and got to the boss while I was living in Japan, and then a year and a half later finally beat it when I was in Europe. Tried playing through again and well, I'm lost in the story again. I know you can replay all the events, but that is just annoying.

Re:I have hit them with OgreBattle games

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm sorry, but if you had trouble beating Tactics Ogre for the GBA it's because you suck, not because the game was too hard. I could understand getting frustrated with Tactics Ogre for the Playstation, but Knight of Lodis was dead easy, up to and including the last boss. One of the only downsides to the game, really.

Re:I have hit them with OgreBattle games

[beyowulf]

He might not actually have had trouble with Tactics Ogre for GBA, he just might've gotten bored with it. The problem is, everyone has too much HP, and weapons don't do enough damage. Its like playing the game with everyone equipped with NERF weapons.

Starfox Adventure

[bky1701]

This exact thing happened to me in it. I got to one of the levels (I forget what one it was) that was almost impossible to beat. I don't know if I tired cheats, but I ended up passing it only with a slight hardware mod (gluing a stick onto the control stick).

I am hardly lame when it comes to gaming, and this type of thing happened to me in other situations as well. Some well designed games normally don't have walls, but they are in a lot of them (mainly console adventure games), normally unlikely places.

Just another example of lack of gameplay testing.

Three recent examples - I can't count

[Colourspace]

And actually I meant to add a fourth - Dead Rising. But I wouldn't know where to start with that one...

Re:Three recent examples - I can't count

[twosmokes]

I had a lot of trouble with Dead Rising at first. I was trying to complete the missions while saving all of the survivors my first play through. I was getting very frustrated until I'd played several times and restarted with a level 12 Frank. After that, I decided I'd only pick up survivors if I had nothing else to do and it wouldn't be too difficult. It made the game much more enjoyable for me.

Once I beat the insane clown and picked up the chainsaws and the three books that go with it, it was like playing with god-mode turned on.

I might actually play through it again to try and do everything on one run now.

Re:Three recent examples - I can't count

[Colourspace]

I'm glad you posted - I might go back and have a look again - it's not a bad game at all. But my original point was that the difficulty curve should allow for that in the first place. I shouldn't need to find a 'god mode' to enjoy it. Or should I?

Re:Three recent examples - I can't count

[twosmokes]

The game really is good, but the curve is steep. I'm sure you can get by without the mini-chainsaws, but they can be had fairly early on and are quite fun to use.

I think Capcom intended for the game to be restarted at an increased level (I can't imagine anyone being able to do it on one run), but you're right. They should have slowed down the missions and survivors until you can get to an acceptable level and familiarity with the game.

A tip for when you do find the clown (ignore if you don't want any tips):




Keep your distance and shoot him with a gun while he's blowing up balloons. It makes that fight much easier.

Virtua Tennis!

[LibertineR]

Not the most popular game, true.

But I played that bitch for a solid month trying to win the title in 'Hard' mode, only to be defeated in the finals about 100 times. Had to toss the disk.

Re:Virtua Tennis!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Virtua Tennis may be a good example to broaden the scope of discussion.

I haven't played it. In this sort of game, shouldn't there be a level that you are not necessarily going to win?

This would be so you can always play against players who are better than you. You get a tennis game that retains variety, rather than becoming a game that you've "beat" once, and replays become a form of tetris, with the only real challenge left being speed runs.

That would be different than a wall in a racing game where tracks and cars are locked off, so you never get to see what you bought.

Could you comment on that LibertineR? Or anybody who's played this or similar games where it would apply?

Re:Virtua Tennis!

[LibertineR]

You make an excellent point.

Beyond the 'Hard' level, there is a 'Very Hard' level, where it is near impossible to win even the first round. There are people who have beaten the computer controled players, but it is damn, DAMN hard. The game has incredible variety, no game is the same, and the computer actually learns from what you do, and then adjusts to your game. Pretty soon, the computer is hitting behind you, forcing you to back from the net or get lob'd over, and basically kicking your ass to the point of embarassment.

It took me a week just to win the tournament on the 'Normal' level, and it felt like a major accomplishment when that happened.

I wish games like Madden were like that, so that you couldnt get 1000 yards of offense per game after mastering the plays and the computer tendencies.

Someone should mod you up.

Zeliard

[mnmn]

DOS-era game, one of the best sidescrolling games. At a certain fiery stage I think level 7 out of 10, it gets just too confusing and difficult.

I felt that way about prince of persia too. You just run out of time and need to play better all the way from the start. But I finished that one.

Neither I nor anyone else I've known who has attempted Zeliard has completed that game without cheating.

Gaming walls are deviously planned

[Vacardo]

I remember hitting the gaming wall through Animal Crossing: Wild World after picking fruit over hours on end to pay off a mortgage loan to Mr. Nook.
 
Only recieved a "Thanks Much!"
 
I think my reaction was "What... NO giant golden statute this time?!"

Battletoads

[Deluxe_247]

If you havn't played the little racer levels, then you don't know what hitting a gaming wall is. All this talk about FF games and Gears of War and Doom 3 and stuff?

Please. Fire up your NES Emulator of choice and see how far you get with Battletoads (without cheating of course..)

Warning: You may want to go shopping for a hairpiece first, because you'll look funny once you pull all your hair out.

Re:Battletoads

[tarlos25]

Oh do I remember that one! I could get through all the way to stage 11, the one where you're racing the disc through the maze. I only managed to get through that once, and then the stupid disc killed me at the end.

Re:Battletoads

[richdun]

Darn you beat me to it. I still haven't beat that thing. While we're on the NES tilt, anyone remember Jackal? Had nice replay value, but the whole one-hit-you-die life system nailed me every time. Kids these days, with their fancy save games, and strategy guides, and cheat codes. Why, in my day, we had to go hunting for the issue with the right section of Classified Information to get past the "gaming walls!"

Re:Battletoads

[Requiem]

I was just about to post that. There's this stupid racing level I can never pass. You have to time your jumps better than the damn NES controller allows.

Re:Battletoads

[default luser]

I actually beat Jackal. ONCE. I had to do it two-player, there were just some spots in the game you couldn't avoid dying, and that means you need TWO people who are good at the game.

That flame tank is a bitch.

The ending sucked, so I guess you didn't miss anything. Still, it was one of the best party games ever: if we weren't trying to beat the game, people just handed off the controller to someone else after they died.

Re:Battletoads

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, those racing levels are insane. One of the few games where having a second player actually makes the game exponentially MORE difficult. We couldn't pass it even with cheats.

Re:Battletoads

[DrJonesAC2]

This used to be one of my favorite games for the NES. I used to be able to beat it without losing a life, but it took me MONTHS to get there.

Re:Battletoads

[jchenx]

Yup, I totally agree. Talk to any hardcore gamer during the NES era, and just mentioning "Battletoads" is likely to incite anger and rage. Total pain in the ass.

Funny thing is that I was finally able to get past the stupid racing level by memorizing all the jumps exactly. However, I always gave up after the next level (which involved a bunch of snakes and more jumping), because after dying, I didn't want to go back through the blasted game again. Talk about being burned out ...

Re:Battletoads

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will believe me, fair enough. However Battletoads is not impossible. Or at least not the NES version. But I did beat the game, took about 45 mins I think. The racer level which everyone complains about is not that hard, especially if you use the "warp" on the 10th wall.

I used level 2 to rack up a whole bunch of lives and used them. Level 12 was the hardest, although it's not that hard really. Just a lack of practice. Level 11 is the toughest in my opinion. Not sure what it's like on an emulator since emulators tend to suck.

Don't bother though with two player because using two players only makes it easier to kill enemies, which isn't that hard. The hard part is jumping about and not dying, and if one player happens to die, both tend to be held back (unless you get lucky and just happen to pass a barrier or something).

Anyway, just thought I'd chime in, that this game isn't impossible. Although I did have difficulty with Battletoads in Battlemaniacs -- the SNES version.

For the record, the hardest game I've had to play so far was Timelord, also on NES. Could never get past level 4 -- world war 2 level.

Re:Battletoads

[Vacuous]

There is a warp very early in the snake level that is easy too hit. I don't recall 100% where it is, but I know it takes you to level 8, which is also retardedly hard:D

Re:Battletoads

[BendingSpoons]

Hah, I remember skipping the snake warp once or twice, just to see what I was warping through. That snake level got ridiculously hard towards the end. Mistiming a jump and landing on spikes? Ugh.

But that level where you had to outrun the gear took the cake. It was seriously impossible to beat. All this time, I just wanted to get to the end so I could fight the brunette in the bikini that had been trying to kill me and Zitz ^_^

Re:Battletoads

[BigDogCH]

Exactly! My little brother (20 year age difference, adoption) is a game junkie. He loves his Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon games, and thinks they are "hard". One day I got sick of him complaining how hard they are, and I drug out Battletoads. He hit that level and was just inspired at how difficult it was. Funny thing, I don't even remember passing that level as a kid, but I did when he was watching. Now he asks me to help him with every game, even though I have never seen most of them.

Then came the snakes...........ahhhhhhhhhhh! I couldn't believe it got harder! WTF, I wanted more levels like the first few! I can feel myself getting angry just thinking about it!

Later on, I had him try some of my other old favorites. Now he agrees with me, that games are much easier now. Spyhunter almost killed the poor little bastard.

Re:Battletoads

[ShadowsHawk]

I would agree, but I actually did manage to get past it on the original NES. Granted, I did toss the controller more than a few times, but very satisfying in the end. I really don't have that sort of patience anymore.

Re:Battletoads

[Vacuous]

Ah yes, Dark Queen, the patron hottie of the NES.

I personally never really found karnath's lair that hard myself, it's like level 3 I guess, it's hard until you know how to do it, then it is easy.

I never got to try the gear myself unfortunatly, maybe I should swallow my pride and use a game genie sometime.

Re:Battletoads

[HarvardAce]

I remember being so frustrated with Battletoads, which is why having two players was great -- you could just take your frustration out with a giant foot or fist to the other player! Most of my games were played with my cousins and we usually ended up just beating the crap out of each other!

Re:Battletoads

[KuNgFo0]

Jackal was probably my favorite NES game of them all, I played it so much that even to this day I'll catch myself once in awhile huming the music to the ending credits. In fact a few months ago I fired it up on an emulator for old time's sake (hadn't played it in probably 10 years) and beat it all the way through single player without having to use a continue. God that felt good ;)

Re:Battletoads

[scot4875]

I never played Battletoads when I was younger, but I started collecting NES games in the mid-90s and came across a copy. One of my friends was a huge fan of the game (and a skilled gamer) who had played it to death when he was a kid, and told me how ridiculously hard it was.

So we fired it up in 2-player mode, and got to the first racing level where I quickly died. I watched him go through the rest of the game up to the last level, but he was too out of practice to get through it.

I'm no slouch when it comes to games myself, so I spent the next week or so memorizing all the timings on when/where to jump (which is really all the game is, for the most part) and beat it once.

We decided to give it another shot with 2 people, and this time we were able to make it to the gear level before dying. It was just too difficult because your margin of error for 2 people was almost nil. We gave up on it after that play, and that was the last time I ever played Battletoads. Maybe we should've practiced a little more to try to beat it with 2 players just for the bragging rights...

--Jeremy

Re:Battletoads

[AEton]

lol, is this battletoads?

Re:Battletoads

[Conception]

The race level actually wasn't impossible. I found that if you jump at the top of the screen, it's a lot easier to land. Then its just memorizing the level. Of course, this won't help you finish the game in any sort of way, but it does help you get past that level.

What wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, every video game these days has some cheat features, so it is not really an issue.

Intelligent difficulty

[Aldur42]

Good games will often take these brick wall scenario's in mind. For example, in halo, after wandering around aimlessly for half an hour a way point will lead you in the right direction. Other games will ask if you want to reduced the difficulty after you died 10 - twenty times. Brick walls in games is just laziness on the part of the developers. There was a great article earlier this week on slashdot http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/24/ 1821238 that asked whether mathematical tuning made games better, in my opinion, Yes.

Three recently

[tulmad]

- The battle against Sephiroth in the first Kingdom Hearts. Yah, I know it's an optional battle but when you're trying to complete the whole game that's just impossible.
- The large antlion in HL2: Episode 1. I tried about 5 times and just gave up. I'm glad that wasn't an expensive game.
- The first flying mission in GTA:SA. I don't know what it is, but I simply can't do that. You can't do anything in the game after that because of the stupid agent repeatedly calling you to tell you to learn to fly.

Re:Three recently

[jshackney]

Yeah, that first flying mission in GTA:SA was much, much harder than it needed to be. It took me several days just to get through it--I almost gave up. I fly for a living. I thought the computer couldn't be _that_ hard.

Then again, flying that stupid dodo in GTA3 was/is like flying at minimum controllable airspeed in the real thing. Just ridiculous.

Re:Three recently

[Greventls]

The antlion took forever. Treat it like a bull. It can only charge straight at you. Just strafe out of the way.

Re:Three recently

[chavo valdez]

For the flying missions in GTA:SA make sure your using a game pad. I'm assuming you're talking about the PC version of course and are using keyboard and mouse. It's impossible to fly with the keyboard. Just hook up a gamepad and pick it up when it comes time to fly.

Re:Three recently

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently beat the Antlion in HL2-E1, it was a real bitch to be sure.

I used the gravgun to throw every expoding barrel at it I could while it was taking out the marines, then plugged as much ammo into it as quickly as possible after, while running around for dear life.

The real trick is learning to avoid it when it charges you... Sprint is your friend here.

Re:Three recently

[fluxmov]

I can confirm this. I even bought a PS2-style gamepad with analogue sticks for those flying missions.

Re:Three recently

[prezkennedy.org]

It's really easy when you remap the keys. I love flying in San Andreas... with the keyboard.

Re:Three recently

[Dan Slotman]

Also, it will be easier if you cover the holes with cars to prevent the small antlions from respawning before you even try to fight the big antlion. It took me about five tries too. Shotgun and SMG secondary-fire (grenades) worked the best for me. Use the magnum if you have ammo for it.

Also Return to Zork

[dextromulous]

Because I suck at those slide/shuffle puzzles.

Re:Also Return to Zork

[Number14]

Man, I forgot about that thing. I had a friend come over and solve it for me. It was just easier that way.

I love Zork, but that was a pretty awful game. Who wants to have to listen to every conversation in the game 20 times as you play them for every other character?

Re:Also Return to Zork

[soft_guy]

Want some rye?
'Course ya do!

Re:Also Return to Zork

[vapspwi]

Ahhhh! Bringing back painful memories with that "want some rye?" quote. I loved the old text Zorks, but after a LOT of effort trying to get "Return to Zork" to even run on my old 486 (how I DON'T miss the days of manually shuffling TSRs into various memory blocks to get games to run), I couldn't muster the motivation to actually play it.

But my roommate did, while I was in bed trying to sleep. I think I heard "Want some rye? Course you do!" about 10,000 times, and to this day I still don't really know what the context of the quote is.

JRjr

Do fighters count?

[zyl0x]

Cause if they do, any fight with Dr. B in Tekken3 gave me a heart attack.

Re:Do fighters count?

[brogdon]

Yeah, tell me about it. There was this one dude that used to play Street Fighter II down at my local arcade. He was insanely and (I maintain) unfairly good, and I must have spent a couple hundred bucks in quarters trying to beat him. Eventually I just had to give up and have him cryogenically frozen.

One of these days I'll probably get nostalgic, thaw him out and give it another go.

Corrupted saves

[dazedNconfuzed]

The PlayStation2 seems prone to corrupted save data.

When I've spent hours working my way thru Harry Potter, DDR *, or other games only to be forced to start over thanks to a corrupted save, there's just no desire to start over only to do hours of what was already achieved, and hesitation to start anything else thanks to perceived inevitability of the same stupid waste.

The player works hard to get to a saved point. That data better be there when he comes back.

Re:Corrupted saves

[typobox43]

Luckily, you can zoom through DDR games pretty quickly on the controller. It's a slightly different angle on the game, plus it lets you get back to where you were before quickly.

Re:Corrupted saves

[Anonymous Coward]

> The PlayStation2 seems prone to corrupted save data.

It's just the games you're playing that are buggy -- those cards have good error detection built right in. Maybe you've got a bad card?

The Same thing Happened to me in EVE Online

[popo]

I have been trying to overthrow the leader of an enemy corporation,
so I've been camped outside his house with a can of mace and a box
of Chips-Ahoy for 3 days now, but I think he went skiing.

God this game is frustrating.

Re:The Same thing Happened to me in EVE Online

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, MOD PARENT UP you humorless mod cretins.

Quickload

[dazedNconfuzed]

Will do. Thanks. You may have just save the hours I've already put into it, and was reluctant to follow up.

(...would have been nice if that was the default...)

Evil Wall in FF4

[the dark hero]

This one is a literal wall that proved to be extremely difficult. Not only was the dungeon difficult but if you didn't beat the evil wall by the time it reached you it would start one shotting your party members.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[MeanderingMind]

There's also the boss which pretty much requires the Wall spell. Good luck trying to beat it if you haven't leveled enough for it. Trying to outdamage its constant healing is a nightmare.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[Entropius]

She healed herself in response to certain attack forms; I forget, but I found some way to damage her that wouldn't trigger the heal-in-response.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[Safiiru]

At least she isn't a mandatory boss, so you can continue the game and perhaps come back later. Although I always recommend getting all the summons as soon as possible.

Evil Wall isn't mandatory either, assuming your version of the game has a certain bug. Not to spoil the game here, but you can get the item you're looking for in that dungeon well before you even enter it, at least if I'm correctly recalling how this trick works.

Calbrena (or however you choose to translate it) and the subsequent "coming back from near defeat" fight have always been my least favorite parts of that game. But I do echo the sentiment of others in that if you want really hard games you need to look a bit earlier. People have already mentioned the first NES TMNT game, but I haven't seen anything about the Japanese version of Mario 2 (the Lost Levels on Super Mario All-Stars); I've recently been reintroduced to the unrelenting combination of hammers, wind, fire, and a notable lack of solid ground that is that game.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[FusionDragon2099]

You're thinking of Asura. Yeah, that was annoying. Made the battle after it look easy, though.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[Anonymous Coward]

Evil Wall was suspect to Reflect. You knew who it was going after because it scanned that person right off the bat. Just cast reflect on that party member, then sit back and wait for Evil Wall to fire the killing shot. Poof! No more Evil Wall!

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[Omestes]

Don't forget the X dimension desert in FF5, or at least the rom version. If you don't have the proper jobs, and the proper levels its a complete bitch, since you really can't go back, resupply, and the encounters are 10x harder than in the regular overland map.

Re:Evil Wall in FF4

[ShadowsHawk]

I'm playing FFIV:Advance on my DS and I found that fight to be quite a bit easier than I remembered. I'm probably quite a bit more higher leveled than I was when I originally played it. Good times.

Max Payne

[deuterium]

Who can forget those maddening mini-levels where you had to literally walk a thin red line, along with making precise jumps, all while some diseased baby was wailing in the background. I barely managed the patience to see that through.

Re:Max Payne

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hated those mini-levels. I was tempted to quit the game. If the rest of the game had been one iota less fun, I would've asked for my money back. Was there an actual red line? I just wandered around using the tried and true "turn right whenever possible".

Re:Max Payne

[arevos]

Maybe it's just my experience with platformers in my youth, but I don't recall finding those Max Payne mini-levels particularly hard.

Guitar Hero 2

[mypalmike]

Expert level. I managed to get through 1 song and ended up with my wrist in a cast.

Re:Guitar Hero 2

[I Like Pudding]

GH is one big series of walls, and I love it for that. I've beaten both on expert, but the Buckethead unlock will vex me basically forever. That dude's fingers do not inhabit the same plane as my own.

Super Mario Bros

[Nimey]

The giant leap in the middle of World 8-2 in NES Super Mario Brothers. In probably 20 years I've only gotten over it once, then died to something silly before ending the level. I ended up using a Game Genie code in the emulator to beat it.

Agree with the other person about Battletoads. It's a fun game, for the very short period before it becomes INSANELY HARD.

Doom 3, because I just got tired of not being able to see anything.

NES Ikari Warriors. I can't see how anyone can beat it without cheating, because you move so slowly that you can't dodge bullets well and there are so so many ways to die.

Re:Super Mario Bros

[toleraen]

The giant leap in the middle of World 8-2 in NES Super Mario Brothers.

That one isn't bad. Basically, you gotta inch over to the left on the first little pillar. You get mario positioned so that one foot is off the left side of the pillar. Then do your running jump. Works every time.

Re:Super Mario Bros

[Scoth]

Never had a problem with 8-2. Like the previous poster said, inching over on the left post and doing a running jump will do it every time.

What gets me in SMB more games than I care to admit is the last hammer brother in 8-4 just before the last Bowser. If I make it through 8-4 with a fire flower, or even big, it's cake. But if I make it there small, it can be hard to get past. I've spent 10-15 extra lives to a Game Over trying to get through that. On the other hand, on a good game I can beat it in 6-7 minutes without taking a single hit. Still a fun game to play when I have a few minutes here and there.

Re:Super Mario Bros

[physicsnick]

To beat that hammer brother, the key is not to try to actually kill him; just jump over him and wait. What you do is, immediately as you exit the pipe, run towards the right, jump up onto the second pipe and jump as high as you can over him, then land directly to the right of him. You have to do this as soon as possible so that there are no hammers threatening the second pipe. Then stay standing a couple squares to his right, and don't move. He'll turn to face you, but he won't be able to hit you, because he'll throw his hammers too far. You can stand there all day if you want. Inch closer to the right to activate the lava fireball, then simply wait for a gap in the hammers and go.

This works 100% of the time. It never, ever fails.

I can beat the game pretty consistently (I'd say about 75% of games) in 6-7 minutes, and about 10% of those times without losing a life. I've also beaten several marathons (whole game without warps), but I've never beaten a marathon without losing a life. This is one of the things on my to-do list before I die; I still play my original NES regularly trying to beat this.

My turn to ask a question. In World 5-3 (possibly 6-3), there is one part where there are two tiny platforms in succession and you need to jump from one to the other. Now if you run through the level at top speed, sometimes the second platform just DOESN'T SHOW UP. You jump off the first platform, the second one is just not there, and you fall to your death. What's the deal? Even if you notice the second platform isn't there before jumping, you're screwed, because you can't actually jump from the first platform to the solid mushroom cap. It's too far; at that point you have no choice but to suicide and hope it's there when you come back.

What triggers this? I haven't been able to figure out what causes it other than 'running fast'. Right now I've resorted to slowly making my way through the level up until that point, and that seems to summon the second platform, but it's a huge inconvenience when it already takes 25-30 minutes to marathon the game. If you guys know how to avoid this, let me know!

Re:Super Mario Bros

[Bender0x7D1]

Doom 3, because I just got tired of not being able to see anything.

In an odd turn of fate - I just finished replaying Doom 3 earlier today... The secret is to turn up the brightness setting on the game. I turned it up to ~80% from the default of 50% and it becomes FAR more playable. The other secret is to play it in the dark - even a bit of screen glare can cause problems.

Hope that helps.

Re:Super Mario Bros

[Night Goat]

The Internet rules. Who would think that we'd be having a discussion about Super Mario Bros. twenty years after it came out. And we all know exactly the part that's being discussed, and can discuss strategy! Super Mario Bros. is such a cultural touchstone.

Re:Super Mario Bros

[The-Bus]

I think I remember this one. I think the trick to is to just run and jump right before the beginning of the gap. If you don't use turbo, it works out perfectly. (I may be forgetting and you might need to use turbo: either way, there's a very specific way you can jump that requires no mid-air adjustment and is very easy to execute once you figure it out).

A more appropriate gaming wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are my two biggest 'gaming walls':

1) Most PC games ship full of bugs that can even stop the game from being completed. There is a very sad state of testing and QA in the PC gaming scene.
2) Games are too easy. Maybe its because i've been playing games for way too long. Oblivion - skip through conversations, bring up the quest and run to the quest marker. Rinse, repeat. There were very few dialogs you actually had to pay attention to. Splinter Cell/Hitman series etc - $90 for 6 hours of gameplay? No thanks. And the puzzles in games are almost non-existant - the few puzzles in Oblivion for example basically told you the answer instead of actually have to sit there and figure shit out.

I hit this wall a year and a half ago and have been stuck ever since. I actually installed Linux and mainly use that now since my desire to play games is almost nill. I still have my XP partition though, if only something decent can get released. Now days I typically fire up my snes and play through games like Lufia, Terranigma, Breath of Fire, Secret of Mana - these games wipe the floor with most of what is released these days.

TMNT on the NES

[Routrout]

I managed to beat every single NES game i put my hands on. But not Teenage mutant ninja turtles on the Original NES. I would always get lost in the airport area, never to find my out. This game really got me insanely frustrated and I eventually gave up. Only recently did I found out on a Youtube video, that I had to jump into a ravine that looked exactly like any other death trap in the game to continue the level. That really was idiotic level design.

Re:TMNT on the NES

[Leviance]

You missed out.. The next two worlds (especially inside the technodrome) were insanely hard (but fun).

I only beat the original 1 or 2 times in my life though... Very very fun.

Re:TMNT on the NES

[Bloomy]

I think I remember a drop or two like that in the game, but I thought they were in the 3rd level and weren't part of a necessary path through the level. There were a couple ways through the airport level, I usually took the route in this tool assisted speed run, though much slower of course. The airport level is from 8:50 to 13:30, and there are no out of place falls.

Starforce

[LoofWaffle]

Yeah, ok it isn't a game but the things that it does to the rest of my system make me feel like I'm facing a Super Mega Pit Boss with super speed, quad damage, and invisibility as its normal abilities. Therefore I have sworn myself off of most Ubisoft titles. Which is a shame because I really liked skulking around in the shadows in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

Re:Starforce

[UtucXul]

I'm very disappointed. When I read the title of your post I was expecting some cool story about the NES game Star Force which is in the rare group of games that I think may actually be impossible. And yet I think if it came out on the Wii's virtual console, I would probably buy it again.

Painkiller-Jumpin Jackrabbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're complaining about Painkiller. The sequal is a pita with all it's jumping/timing puzzles.

---
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment."

TRM (Taco Rights Managment) strikes again.

Re:Painkiller-Jumpin Jackrabbit.

[tedgyz]

Speaking of the sequel - how about the fact that the first level is the hardest?

TMNT

[toleraen]

Yeah, this one. I can't think of a single game that had as big of a wall as that one seemed to, after you got to the city level. Only nes game I've ever owned and never beat.

SUPER Paper Mario?

[StocDred]

Super Paper Mario isn't out yet. He's talking about Paper Mario 2 for GameCube. And it is very sad that he couldn't beat one of the most linear RPG experiences of all time. Jeez, how can you screw that up?

Re:SUPER Paper Mario?

[MeanderingMind]

The only Boss I can think of as debilitatingly hard is the one at the bottom of the pit of 100 trials, simply because most everyone finds out the hard way he's stronger than they're prepared for, not to mention the horrible attrition you face trying to get to him.

However, another point to make is that any RPG, including linear ones, can have slow phases where one becomes quite bored. That can kill a game.

Re:SUPER Paper Mario?

[prockcore]

And it is very sad that he couldn't beat one of the most linear RPG experiences of all time

What does that have to do with anything? Ghosts & Goblins is linear too.. doesn't make it any less of a bitch to beat.

Re:SUPER Paper Mario?

[JoshDM]

You forgot to mention the 5-minute unskippable cut-scene before the big game boss.

Re:SUPER Paper Mario?

[StocDred]

Just that the game is pretty much as non-RPG as it could get. You level up more or less automatically just by doing everything you're supposed to do. The only user-controlled element is the badges... and if he walked into the end boss without equipping useful badges, he's an idiot. I'm not saying it's easy, just that, as far as RPGs go, the game does everything it can to help you win.

Re:SUPER Paper Mario?

[Blueskied]

Yes, i gave up on the game at the endboss. The cut-scene is totally annoying, the boss ultra-hard and i think you can't go back to get some items for battle.

Gaming Walls I have known

[MeanderingMind]

1) LoZ: WindWaker - Sailing around to pick up all those triforce pieces, it all just slowed down there and I never beat the game.

2) WarCraft III - I bought the game when it first came out, back when Demon Hunters could burn you for 300 mana, and Huntresses were the key to winning. Things changed, patches fixed imbalances, but I kept playing and had lots of fun becoming more skilled and enjoying myself. Then the first DC hack hit. What was frustrating wasn't so much that I went from a winning record to abject mediocrity so much as the complete inability to finish and sometimes even start games before I was inceremoniously DC'd. The number of times this happened after a dramatic turnaround was more than suspicious. I couldn't play it for months after that, and when I returned I felt left behind. There was no motivation to play competitively again.

3) Beyond Good and Evil - Sailing again, sort of. Once I got the power boat and could explore, I ended up getting very bored and stopped playing.

4) Goblin Commander - After getting through the campaign and defeating the fourth goblin, I simply lost interest.

5) Time Splitters 2 - Awesome game, beat the ever-living snot out of it. Then a friend accidentally corrupted my profile, simultaneously wiping out everything I'd done. Given the huge number of hours it took to unlock everything, that was utterly heartbreaking and I've never played the game again. This is the single greatest reason for an "unlock everything" code.

6) Final Fantasy X - I got stuck at the first, whatever that sport thigy was, match. Or shortly thereafter.

7) Azure Dreams - Fun game as all else, but I keep dropping off once I actually get in range of winning it. Excellent game despite my inability to finish it.

8) Wii Sports - I can't play this alone, not after playing it with people.

9) Evil Genius - For some reason, I can never bring myself to beat this game, despite my evil machinations and plans. I devise traps, complete objectives, silence my enemies, and then stop everything and never return. Apparently the reason why out Evil Genius Overlords haven't conquered the world yet is because they get bored with our childish strategems.

10) Crystalis - There's something about RPGs which dictates I get 3/4ths of the way through and lose interest. However awesome they are.

11) GTA3 - I have too much fun running from the FBI to further the plot. In fact, my only motivation to do any missions is so that I can get people even madder at me.

12) Advance Wars: Dual Strike - It's a fun game, but a long one. I got a fair ways through, but for whatever reason interest died in doing anythign but firing up a random battle map rather than going through the story.

13) Contact - I'm an idiot, and that's all. Best RPG since earthbound and I can't even play 2 hours before I broke for WoW. Shoot me now.

That's the best I can do while at work and away from my gaming collection.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[karnal]

6) Final Fantasy X - I got stuck at the first, whatever that sport thigy was, match. Or shortly thereafter.

I played through X, and found out how badly I suck at that stupid BlitzBall matches. Tip: You don't really need to compete in any to get through the game; had I known that the first time I wouldn't have wasted ANY of my time on it. Felt like I was swimming through slime, the controls were so bad....

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[_xeno_]

1) LoZ: WindWaker - Sailing around to pick up all those triforce pieces, it all just slowed down there and I never beat the game.

You didn't miss much - as I recall, all the major dungeons were already complete by that point and completing the Triforce essentially sent you straight to Gannon. The thing that annoyed me the most about that part was discovering that you had to have the Ghost Ship map to get on the Ghost Ship. They dropped clues left and right about where the Ghost Ship would be, so I was following the damned thing around for an hour before looking it up online and discovering that you had to go to an island and loot the Ghost Ship map, which provided a nice bright red circle indicating exactly where it was. Then simply being near the ship would pop you onto it.

6) Final Fantasy X - I got stuck at the first, whatever that sport thigy was, match. Or shortly thereafter.

You didn't have to actually win the first game. Just play it. And if you hadn't gotten the secret Jecht Shot move, it was essentially impossible to win.

On the other hand, if you had gotten the Jecht Shot, it was incredibly easy to win, and you got some fairly useless trinket for winning.

I never found FFX to be that challenging - possibly because I found out about Clear Spheres and the Monster Arena before attempting the final boss, and went after Sin with everyone except Wakka having their unlocked ultimate weapon. (Wakka's required playing Blitzball, which I despised.) Break Damage Limit and Break HP Limit were nasty - Yuna had around 20,000 HP when I stopped playing, and Tidus and Auron both did 99,999 on a normal attack.

You have to love easily abusable systems.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[nuzak]

I'm surprised it was Wakka's weapon that stymied you. You had the patience to dodge 200 lightning bolts and fight the controls for the goddam chocobo races but got stopped by BB?

Blitzball is easy if you recruit a good power forward (like Brother) and TWO good goalies that you switch out every few games so they can level. Then you just play a bunch of games where you just pass, pass, pass, pass, don't even try to score. Increase passing skills first. You level up like mad. I kept Tidus just for the roleplay value ... I wanted to keep Wakka oon the team but he really does suck. No wonder the Aurochs always lost.

What it is however is crashingly tedious and boring. Nothing even resembling the exciting FMV at the beginning of the game. Largely-turn-based water polo. I think the collection quests were more fun, at least you got to stare at something different once in a while.

And I could buy the idea that BB players had technology or genetic engineering to give them the water breathing ability, but whole teams of backwater natives and primitives in a technology-suspicious era? Oh well, I guess the world of FFX always did demand suspension of disbelief...

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[StikyPad]

Civ 4 - The part where you have to click things.

Seriously, I've only beat the game once, by accident, with the space race, the very first time I played (and had no idea what I was doing).

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[HappyEngineer]

Really? I found every Blitzball match after the first one to be trivially easy to win. The very first match I had trouble winning. But, after the first one you just grab Brother and then it's all gravy. I played numerous matches over the course of the game and I think I might have lost one or two matches total out of probably hundreds of games.

The strategy is easy. You get Brother on your team. You toss him the ball right away when you get the ball. He's a fast swimmer, so you just swim around in a circle avoiding the other players. Eventually all the opposing players will bunch up behind him trying to catch him. You then swim to one side and toss the ball to a teammate.

All your teammates will be completely open. Just swim up to the goal and kick it in. Sometimes you beat the goalie and sometimes not, but as long as your own goalie isn't too bad then you'll always win.

Get a good goalie as soon as possible and it's practically impossible to lose even if you try. In some tournaments I wanted to win second place in order to get the second place prize. But, I found that I couldn't actually do it. I couldn't figure out how to lose with my players.

Then I realized that I just needed to recruit some terrible players and put them onto my team when I wanted to lose.

In short, the AI in that game was incredibly stupid. I sometimes played poorly in some ways in order to make it more challenging.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[CronoCloud]

I'm surprised it was Wakka's weapon that stymied you. You had the patience to dodge 200 lightning bolts and fight the controls for the goddam chocobo races but got stopped by BB?

Fucking lightning! never did get Lulu's utlimate weapon. About threw the controller with the chocobo training but I did it. I also did it for a friend who couldn't do it, but he beat the lightning.

I was having problems with Blitzball, replaying the first game until I realized it was almost impossible to win because the Aurochs suck. The secret to winning after that is dumping the aurochs for some real players. there's some good free agents that will be good enough to get you some wins until you can recruit a good goalie and defense people. The best player overall is Svanda, IMHO, I use her as my center with Tidus and Vilucha as the forwards (you'll want to Keep tidus for his shots) even though there's another forward with higher stats. my two defense people were on the Guado team, yes Nav and Auda Guado. My goalie I think was on the Al Bhed team, Nimrook. you have to wait for them to leave their teams and recruit them quick. There's another Free Agent with stats similar to Svanda that you'll also might to recruit even if you never use her because she's so good you'll not want anyone else to have her. Can't remember her name but IIRC she's the reporter with the moogle ball on her head. I just played a game, final in a tournament, got Good Morning! for Tidus. score was 7-0 in our favor. Nimrook never even had to defend the Goal once.

My save was in the Thunder Plains. :-) Fucking lightining.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[CronoCloud]

Aaaaaah Azure Dreams. For those who haven't played it:

It's kind of like a roguelike crossed with pokemon/monster rancher. You job is to eventually make your way to the top of a tower. But if you leave the tower you go back to level 1 so you have to do it in one shot. So the real focus is on building up your weapon and shield with sands, and finding monster eggs to breed tough enough monsters to fight along side you. But you don't want to pull them out to early, coz they only have so much MP.

And you have to woo the ladies and rebuild the town and find items.

And did i tell you if you die in the tower you lose your items you;re carrying, including any leveled up shield/sword, or any other goodies. And you can't leave the tower unless you have a wind crystal? And you can only take 5 items into the tower with you when you go in and two of them are monsters? meaning you only get three, oh you have to have a sword and shied so that leaves one? And that one pretty much has to be a wind crystal unless you want to chance finding one in the tower? Which you might not. So you spend most of your time, trying to stockpile items and then leaving the tower, besides trying to level monsters.

Tedium tedium tedium. Which means those nethack players with a 100 acenscions who play crazy conducts for fun will love it.

Now I've got that town tune in my head and am tempted to load the game up and play a little. You are so evil.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[FunkSoulBrother]

did the game actually hint at the dodging of lighting, etc, for these weapons? I went through the game and never stumbled across any of that! Or are they just assuming everyone uses FAQs these days so they can be lazy about game design?

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[CronoCloud]

Well there was that flower thingy that basically said, bring me items and I'll upgrade your weapons. And in the thunderplains the guy there said if you doge a lot you get something good. But I don't think they specifically said, "Oh yeah doge 200 times get the thingy for Lulu's weapon"

I think they assume everyone uses the books and faqs these days, because I think only the most anal retentive gamers would find some of this stuff.

  For example who would ever think of going back to the beach near costa del sol in FFVII and manipulating the beach plugs to get one of the best Enemy Skills in the game, Big Guard (casts Barrier, MBarrier and Haste on all three characters for only 54 MP)

In fact unless you actually ran around on various out of the way places you might not even see some enemies. You'd have to be anal, oh lets check this spot to see what enemies show up, oh lets move to this different terrain and check it out.

So yeah it's lazy game design. Fucking Lightning.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[SamSim]

Super Monkey Ball. The original GameCube game. Level E7.

Some of you will have no idea what I'm talking about. The rest will be nodding sagely.

That and E22. And M3. And M6 to M9.

SMB is among the hardest games in recent history.

Re:Gaming Walls I have known

[smeagols_ghost]

Amen, i haven't played that game for years. I might have to d/l an emulator, my org copy is sratched to hell

Fire Emblem for me

[Valdrax]

I've gotten stuck in two Fire Emblem games where the main members of the party are maxed out on levels (and gain nothing further from experience) and the rest of the party is too weak to level up without getting killed. Since the games offer no random, non-story battles to strengthen your party with, I'm stuck unable to advance the plot without having to sacrifice low-level characters (who then die permanently, losing you their elements of the story).

Re:Fire Emblem for me

[amrust]

I thought there was some sort of 'tower', near the beginning of "Sacred Stones", that you could go in and basically level all day, if you wanted. Like a torunament-dungeon, sort of thing?

Been awhile, maybe I'm wrong on that.

Re:Fire Emblem for me

[Astarica]

I remember buying a guidebook for Fire Emblem 4 that showing you how to beat the game. In the final battle, where the only person who can attack Julius without commiting suicide is Julia, but the guidebook shows a picture of a level 12 Julia (max is 30) attacking Julius which means even whoever wrote the guide book neglected to level her up and is about to get killed. This isn't too surprising since unless you knew Julia was the only person who can hit Julius you would never have a reason to level her up. Or you can just throw everyone at Julius and probably kill him somehow and lose 20 guys, and the game will remind you that you totally sucked when you do beat the game with a F survival rating, because you never leveled up the useless character when you had the chance!

Re:Fire Emblem for me

[GhaleonStrife]

Try Super Robot Taisen: OG 2. Now THAT gives you some seriously unfair odds. 3 mass-produced 'bots (Think GMs from Gundam, Leos from Gundam Wing, or Generic Bad Guy/Grunt #465 in any action movie) against 13 superior units and two bosses.

Re:Fire Emblem for me

[bunuel]

I thought there was some sort of 'tower', near the beginning of "Sacred Stones", that you could go in and basically level all day, if you wanted. Like a torunament-dungeon, sort of thing?

There is one of these in the Sacred Stones, but not in the first (American) GBA Fire Emblem.

Presumed experience

[dazedNconfuzed]

My wife dearly wants to play video games. Unfortunately, they all seem to expect the player already has hundreds of hours of experience. Run-jump-twist-shoot-land type movements expected at the start of games are certainly a wall to someone who can barely make the character go thru an open door.

There's a small but potent market of games for adults who have practically no video game skills, but want a grown-up gaming experience.

Re:Presumed experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Ratchet: Deadlocked for the PS2 is a very shooty game, starring a cute fuzzy animal type creature wearing heavy sci-fi armor. Kind of has that general appeal thing going for it.

The game has a "Couch Potato" difficulty level which is exactly what it sounds like. You can start there, at embarassingly easy, and ramp it up as you go.

Re:Presumed experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Sims 2 ... if there's a game out there that I believe can hook a woman it would definitely be the sims 2. She has no need of jumping, no need to shoot, no need to do anything like that. The game seems very easy to learn to me. It's fairly mature in some ways. It has some unusual things to do compared to other games.

After that... you might want to watch for episode 2 of halflife 2. The extra game that comes with it, "Portal" I think? Is more of a puzzle game but with first person shooter controls.

Lastly, get her hands on a versus style fighter. Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur or something similar. (Or smash brothers :) ... The reason I suggest a fighter is because it gets you used to action games but you can start at extremely low difficulty levels and there is a minimal amount of 3d rotation/movement. The controls for new players can often be as simple as pushing left or right and hitting one or two buttons.

(I suggest VERY little 3d movement when trying to interest women in games as the biggest complaint I hear in my own life when trying to do so is that 3d video games make them dizzy. Even mmorpgs where you always have direct control and there's rarely a lot of camera movement that you don't cause.)

For anyone new to video games, remind them that part of the fun is that it is a challenge and insist that, given time, they will gain acceptible ability in movement and basic skills.

Finally, my own example in introducing older folks to games. My father bought ataris when I was younger but he hadn't tried games in the years since. He loves reading and I encouraged him very strongly (grin) to try final fantasy 8.(which at the time and even now, it's a game I really love) He put me off time and again and eventually I said,"Just play until this part and if you STILL don't want to play it, I'll stop bothering you." (for anyone who knows the game, I was telling him to play until squall had gotten back from his first mission... which I believe was part/all of the demo... and probably the most exciting action packed part in the game lol ;)

To keep it short.. he finally agreed, played it and never stopped. He played through more than once. When ff9 came out he was ready and to be honest I've never finished that game but he finished it more than twice. FFX he finished although it took him longer than it took me. He's stuck in ffxii though.

I also got him interested in first person shooters. His current favorite is F.E.A.R. and counter-strike: condition zero. He refuses to play online but he has played through every mission in cs:cz probably more than 300 times. maybe as much as 600 as he's been playing it for more than 2 years and beats it about once per day.

(recently, his shoulder started hurting far too much to continue to play and he was forced to sit out a few days.. boy was he bored :)

(sorry this wasn't very on topic compared to the original post)

Re:Presumed experience

[Hakubi_Washu]

Might I suggest trying some no-twitch-games first then? Most adventures don't require trained reflexed for example (I personally would recommend the Myst Series (It is marketed as "A games for adults, where 'mature' doesn't mean blood and gore, it means 'sophisticated'"), which has also got its own MMO, "Myst Online: Uru Live" http://www.mystonline.com/ starting)

Re:Presumed experience

[SamSim]

This is PRECISELY the market that Nintendo have been trying to tap with the Wii. With, I would say, some success...

Re:Presumed experience

[ni42]

I know what you're saying... games are far more complicated than they used to be (heh, flying in Super Mario 3 used to seem so tricky...). Sometimes, even as a somewhat experienced gamer, reading about all the fancy features on the back of the box seems intimidating. (BTW, I am female.)

But I've also realized that lately, there are many games which do a good job of easing you into things. I have never played any of the Civ series, and recently I picked up Chronicles (which includes 1 to 4). I figured I'd just start with 1, since 1 is the first number, and I didn't want to deal with learning a lot of nuances or reading the manual. The interface fell far short of modern games. I certainly couldn't figure out what to do or how things worked. So, I tried Civ II, which had an interface that was a little bit better. Civ III was an improvement on Civ II, but I found Civ IV the easiest of them all.

Most of the time I've found I can trust that the game designer isn't going to toss me in blindly, as I stumble my way through town until I find myself in the field, at night, with poor vision, and a level 4 skeleton comes and kills me. (Ah, the old days of Everquest.)

Don't lose hope; I think things are improving in this area.

Re:Presumed experience

[Nyall]

I suggest lego star wars.

Re:Presumed experience

[Razed By TV]

If you have a PS2, you might want to check out Katamari Damacy. The controls are fairly simple, relying only on two joysticks which provide tank-like movement, yet the game is still loads of fun. I don't know if that qualifies as a grown-up game or not, though. Same goes for Lego Star Wars, which is fairly simple but again loads of fun, though I could still see some parts being frustrating (but then again, thats what cheat codes are for!).

Commodore VIC-20 Dracula Text Adventure...

[__aaclcg7560]

There was an old text adventure game for the Commodore VIC-20 where you come to this door in Dracula's castle. I typed in the command, SMASH DOOR WITH FIST (or something like that), and the response was, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT? Since the instruction booklet said that your commands must follow a certain pattern, I could never get past that part of the game and got died after the third day.

The command was YES, but the booklet didn't mention YES/NO situations. Plus being a dummy before the Dummies books came out didn't help and the VIC-20 gaming scene died when the Commodore 64 came out so there was no walk-through in a gaming magazine.

Since everyone else is doing it...

[despisethesun]

I'll mention my "gaming wall". The spider-ball battle in Metroid Prime 2 was one of the most frustrating gaming moments I've ever encountered. Any of the multiple-bomb-jump parts in those games are a little bit of a pain in the ass, but this part was so unforgiving it took hours to pass. I eventually beat it, but I haven't gone back through the game at all since, whereas I've played through the first MP several times.

Also, the "stealth" part of Metroid Zero Mission for GBA was annoying, but not a show-stopper.

Re:Since everyone else is doing it...

[edwdig]

The spider ball boss is easy once you figure out the trick. There are 4 bomb slots - 2 on each side of the way up. The more damage you do, the faster the boss attacks. The trick is to hit the outer bomb slots first, as they're much harder to get to than the inner ones. If you do that, you can usually rush up to the inner ones without much difficulty.

Re:Since everyone else is doing it...

[Rycross]

Metroid Prime 2 was one of those games for me. It was when I got the invisibility goggles and realized I was going to have to crawl all around the entire map looking for some invisible platform that I couldn't see before.

Lately, I'm very quick to drop games. Its pretty rare for me to actually finish a game these days.

Devil May Cry 3

[Reason58]

I don't think I have ever been more frustrated by a game in my life than I was with Devil May Cry 3.

Re:Devil May Cry 3

[MasterGwaha]

i said the same thing and quit it because i couldnt even beat the first boss (hell guardian/ reaper). months later i picked it back up and since my body remember the moves it seemed more intuitive and have since beaten it on dante must die mode with the special edition. (loved it so much i had to play as vergil). they give you a serious challenge, but give you serious control too.

H2G2

[Anonymous Coward]

The best "hit-a-wall" game EVAR!

Re:H2G2

[UncleRage]

SPOILER

That's only because you're supposed to steer towards the spire, not away from it.
 
/SPOILER

The Grim Reaper

[LionKimbro]

It always hangs, RIGHT as I'm about to knock the last two hit points off the Grim Reaper in Castlevania...

ARGH!

It's always a strategy game for me.

[SatanicPuppy]

Anyone remember the original Homeworld? There was this one damn mission where you basically had to move your whole fleet down this effing "tube" of asteroids in order to avoid "solar radiation" which would basically pwn your ships if you weren't perfectly in the goddamn "tube". First time I got to that mission it was a deal breaker; I'd wasted too many resources early in the game. So I went back and started over; got to that point with (literally) every ship I could possibly have, and it was still a huge pain in the ass. Theoretically you could waypoint your ass down the "tube" but in practice it was nearly impossible, and forget trying to do it by eyeball.

How about Sacrifice? I can think of more than a few missions in that game which made me chew on things.

How about the last mission in the Warcraft III expansion? Pain in my ass...And there was one in the original Starcraft...One of the last Protoss missions...Wasn't hard to beat the enemy, but beat them without them managing to kill one of your goddamn heroes? Good luck. I'd literally put them in a shuttle (can't let them roam around on their own...goes without saying), and put the shuttle on "hold" over a pile of photon cannons, and they'd send one damn capital ship in to specifically kill that fucking shuttle.

I think "walls" are a good thing, in some ways, because they challenge your ass to go to a new level...On the other hand, a poorly designed "wall", where the designers are basically just fucking with you, that's no fun. Why bother to play the damn game when they're basically just cheating to annoy you?

It's especially annoying in a "strategy" game (real-time strategy is generally far more about tactics than strategy, and most turn based strategy isn't mission based), because you're left in a situation where only a fricking moron would have attacked, and you've got to deal with it.

Re:It's always a strategy game for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh? I don't recall that homeworld mission as being particularly difficult, I guess you're not too good with 3D. Or maybe you chose the wrong types of ships to send out of the protective cloud (I don't recall how it worked exactly, but smaller ships were much more vulnerable, if you were too fighter-centric, I see how you would get screwed).
  As for StarCraft... I recall heroes having much more health than a shuttle, not to mention higher armour, so your tactics were wrong.

Re:It's always a strategy game for me.

[Chris Mattern]

Anyone remember the original Homeworld? There was this one damn mission where you basically had to move your whole fleet down this effing "tube" of asteroids in order to avoid "solar radiation" which would basically pwn your ships if you weren't perfectly in the goddamn "tube". First time I got to that mission it was a deal breaker; I'd wasted too many resources early in the game. So I went back and started over; got to that point with (literally) every ship I could possibly have, and it was still a huge pain in the ass. Theoretically you could waypoint your ass down the "tube" but in practice it was nearly impossible, and forget trying to do it by eyeball.

The main deal here is that smaller ships are much more vulnerable to the radiation. So don't launch them. Before hyper jumping to this scenario, de-select the auto-deploy option so they stay in your hangars after you jump. Go through the tube with only your capital ships, which you'll find much more forgiving, not to mention easier to handle.

Re:It's always a strategy game for me.

[SatanicPuppy]

That's exactly what I did, actually. The first time I played it through, however, I took too long winning individual fights (still learning the game) so when I got to this mission I confidently believed that I could just swarm the enemy under with relatively small ships, like I'd done every previous mission...Which was completely impossible. I didn't have the resources, and I didn't have any carriers.

But if you had carriers and battleships, you could send them through, dump out your fighters, and crush the enemy...That game was a great example of "starcraft blindness" for me, because I assumed that the enemy had a solid defensive setup as soon as the scenario started, so I didn't try to rush 'em the first time around. The second time I did, and it turned out that it would take MUCH longer to mine all the minerals on the field than it did to wipe out the opposing force.

Re:It's always a strategy game for me.

[SatanicPuppy]

The difference is, damn heroes would try to fight (whereas the shuttle wouldn't), and the enemy spent the whole mission sending in reaver tanks against me, so the heroes kept attacking the goddamn tanks and getting killed. Leaving them out in the open was a lose lose situation. Putting them out of the way was the best way to win, and with the protoss, the only way to do that was to "hide" them in a shuttle, and then make sure the shuttle was defended.

And with Homeworld, it was a ship issue. I had mostly fighters and other light ships the first time I got to that mission, and not enough resources to build the capital ships that could have made it through the "tube". Didn't stop me from trying to beat it for a fricking week before I gave up and restarted the game from scratch.

Re:It's always a strategy game for me.

[Firefly1]

Anyone remember the original Homeworld? There was this one damn mission where you basically had to move your whole fleet down this effing "tube" of asteroids...

Is that 'Supernova Research Station'? On the flip side, there are lots of missions that become easier than one might think by application of three words:
Grand. Theft. Starship (see also: Fun with Salvage Corvettes).
'Bridge of Sighs' (the next-to-next-to-last mission) is a grand example. Objective: destroy a hyperspace inhibitor. Major opposition: the 'sphere' of ion cannon frigates surrounding it (if I recall right, there are over a hundred of the things!). The best way to deal with this is to use something small and fast to draw some of them out of position, then swarm them with salvage corvettes; rinse and repeat until you have a nice big hole to push through (or you've captured them all). The only capital ships that are truly difficult to steal are missile destroyers (this is also the case in Homeworld 2, although the missile battery on Vargr battleships can be temporarily disabled).
Homeworld 2 has some nasty potential walls as well: an early example involves navigating through a massive debris field while being beset by Movers (corvette-class vessels which are ridiculously effective against larger things). Turns out that the AI regulating these will attack strikecraft over any other target, so the smart thing to do involves using a scout squadron to 'wake up' the various groups of Movers and lead them on a wild-goose chase all over the map...

I thought you meant bored of gaming...

[amohat]

Because I hit that wall a while ago, where the games were static and similar and uninteresting. Another WWII shooter, yay. How many incredibly stupid AI opponents can keep you entertained? Just a handful, as that's all that will ever be on screen at the same time. Increase the difficulty, and you just get weaker, the computer doesn't get better. Halo 2 came out and was such a massive disappointment I stopped until these so-called next-gen games came out and AI is still stupid.

That leaves me with online play, and I can only run around the same little levels for so long playing tag with foul-mouthed, homo-phobic and racist 13 year-olds for so long. And don't get me started on the modders, which is fancy for little cheating ass bitches.

Yeah, I know, there are better games out there, and better ways to team up online, and I'm just being grumpy. I'm getting a little old, I guess, but why aren't any of these games drawing me in, keeping me awake all night and forgetting to eat anymore? I can't have changed that much over the past few console/pc generations.

And so I wait for the shooter where the goddamn bodies stay there, and might even stack up and block the doorway if I kill enough of them. Or the non-botched Sim City game. How about a sports game that doesn't require the same investment as a certification to be mediocre? I liked the first person view in Madden, nice gimmick. How about being able to be a lineman or tight-end, let another human, Live or local, or even computer do the passing? So few co-op games, even fewer good ones. I practically raised my boy doing co-op in Halo 1, waited in line for Halo 2, but now unless Bungie publicly apologizes, I might not even rent Halo 3.

(and more bitching, whining and moaning, c'mon, you old schoolers know what I'm talking about!)

Re:I thought you meant bored of gaming...

[TobyWong]

I thought the same thing when I read the blurb.

Console/handheld games no longer interest me in the least. Wii held my attention for about 15 minutes. You couldn't pay me to play a ps3 or 360.

Once in a while I will play some Battlefield 2142 and despite the fact it's essentially the same game that I played to death when it was called Quake/Teamfortress it can at least hold my attention for short periods of time. It helps that I have a few friends who hop on with me and keep things interesting via voice comm.

None of this would be out of the ordinary since there are plenty of non-gamers out there who have no desire to play games at all except I have been a capital G gamer since a very young age. From Dig Dug all the way on up. It's like a junkie picking up a needle and feeling no desire to use it. It just feels strange.

Re:I thought you meant bored of gaming...

[Dunbal]

but why aren't any of these games drawing me in

2 words.

EVE Online.

You'll either love it, or hate it. But you should try it ;)

MEGAMAN

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it. The series' subtitle should be "Gaming Wall after Gaming Wall after Gaming Wall..."

I take that back. That's not it - anyone here ever play Stuntman?

Every Megaman game....

[Anonymous Coward]

with those stupid vanishing-reappearing platforms, the latest offender being the path to Omega in Megaman ZX.

That was bad design 20 years ago, enough already Capcom!

Re:Every Megaman game....

[FusionDragon2099]

I feel your pain about disappering platforms, but the ones in ZX aren't that hard. Try using Model HX.

Re:Eat the cheat!

[MeanderingMind]

I'll bet you that many of these people have similar lists of accomplishments.

However, the point of this article isn't to talk about how some of us bothered to grab the Scarab gun in Halo 2, or discovered Trixie in Toe Jam and Earl without a guide, or have never looked at a FAQ for a Zelda game before already getting everything (and then some). The point is to discuss the games you couldn't finish because of boredom or poor design.

We appreciate your input, but I think you have the purpose mixed up.

You're not an astronaut, are you?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

You're not an astronaut, are you?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/244870,CST-NWS -astro06.article

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[amrust]

I don't know what level you have to be, to beat the final boss and her 2 totemas. But I've played through the game at a little about the 'standard level', with pretty decent jobs and weapons.

And I can't even come close to beating her, barely able to get 50% of her HP down. The match laws always preclude me from being able to do my best attacks, and she is still somehow able to do area damage with seemingly endless MP.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[paladinwannabe2]

You need to be level 30+, and have good anti-laws cards to fix your law problems. The first time she killed me, the second time I got a red card for killing the boss and lost, the third (or maybe forth) time I finally beat her down.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Prien715]

I had a much different experience. I found the game way too easy, beating most battles before enemies moved. I didn't even level or anything. As for the last boss, it was the only battle I fought twice. On my first try, I forgot to equip skills, but managed to get to the second form anyway.

Then someone told me the enemies autoscale to your lowest level character. My lowest level character was level 4. Ooops.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[amrust]

Lowest level character in your clan overall, or just your battle party?

Viewtiful Joe 2 Reel 7 act 1

[pecosdave]

This level never fucking ends! I love this game, it's great, I've learned how to beat nearly every part of this act, but there's just to damn much of it. It's like running a marathon while being pelted with rocks and having people fresh and pumped mugging you every couple of feet. From the F.A.Q. "Frankly, way too many enemies" The F.A.Q. in no way sums up what you have to do to defeat this act. I bite it once I make it to mission 6, unfortunately you have to beat that to save progress. I've had it shelved for months, I'll resume it eventually, but I just got tired of fighting through the first five missions over and over to bite it on the 6th, mission 4 is an especial pain. No one part of this act is to hard to beat, it just never ends.

Could be worse.

[Thad Boyd]

I think things are actually monumentally better now, on the whole, than twenty years ago. Ninja Gaiden, anyone? (Okay, maybe a bad example -- I haven't played the new installments in the series, but I'm given to understand they're as ruthless as the originals.)

Again, there are exceptions (and lots of them, I'm sure), but games in general are more balanced than they once were. I haven't played Super Paper Mario yet, but I'll be very surprised if it's as difficult as the original Super Mario Bros.

The last time I can remember really hitting a wall was Suikoden 5. Overall I liked it, and I played probably some 50 hours in and was right near the endgame, but finally the absurdly high encounter rate just sapped my will and I put it down. (And it bears noting that the high encounter rate is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY -- the game is absurdly easy even without grinding; I only saw two "Game Over" screens in the course of playing it: one from a battle that required 3 6-man parties when I really only had 1 6-man party sufficiently leveled, and one army battle where I beat an opponent squad and it conveniently "retreated" right onto my base and automatically won. Great design, guys.) Frankly if I'd been able to get a Game Shark and a code to reduce the encounter rate, I probably would have finished the game.

Common Theme

[TranscendentalAnarch]

It seems a common theme among most of the "gaming walls" that /.ers have experienced is an issue with save systems. Personally I've run into some issues with saving at inopportune moments, or the autosave feature doing so, forcing me to either load a save game from hours or even days ago or give up.

I've run into this problem in the Metal Gear series before, but since the game was still so great I went ahead and started over from my older save.

Now in another scenario, with a game that I found far less attractive I would have just shelved it. In fact, I've done this with a few less than noteworthy games.

Twilight Princess - Rollgoal

[Tim_sama]

I finally beat Rollgoal after much yelling and cursing, but then my gamesave got deleted. I doubt I'll ever use the frog lure again because of that unless I use a cheat code.
I guess what really makes that game so frustrating is that it's harder than the final boss fight!

The Worst parts of Super Paper Mario

[JoshDM]

I'm not ashamed to admit that I beat the game, but I know what point the original article writer is discussing, and I don't believe it's the end guy. There is a dungeon where you have to grind to the bottom level after level, and then you have to kill a (D&D) Dracolich. Which is impossible, but not a game-breaker. You don't have to kill him to win.

Here are the two points that stuck out as sucking with that game (beyond the chat with a stupid Koopa that makes you press the button 100 consecutive times):
1) Chase Grind: There's a quest where you have to chase around an antagonist to every corner of the game that you've already been to, and everyone will tell you "he just left". Great way to waste time.
2) Unskippable Cut-scenes: The end cut-scene, right before the main villain is very nice and touching; GO MARIO. Unfortuantely, it's 5 minutes long and you have to view it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And it's unskippable. So if you die, you have to watch it again. That is disconcerting.


In other news, hey gamer! Somehow help get Rocket Jockey produced for the Wii!

so what's the news?

[hjf]

So, what's the news? I have lost faith in games lately. All I see are new releases of FPS and the newest MMORPG, I'm just tired of that. I guess I'm a kid, I love playing third person console games, but there aren't that many games worth it. Last one I played was the latest "Harry Potter" game. Nice graphics (when you press "black" and "white" together and everything lights up... very cool effect), and an interesting way of playing (the ability to switch players, etc). Problem? Too short. But better short than shitty. Read on:

Yesterday I picked up the "Narnia" game. The first few levels were easy, but fun nevertheless. Nice graphics, combo hits and team-up hits (remember the Simpsons arcade?) The completion counter quickly reached 44%. Then I got to the "The Great Battle" level. Cool, THOUSANDS of enemies walking in the background. Really cool. Then come waves of enemies. First 2 of them, then 3 of them, then 6 of them, etc. Each takes 6 to 8 blows to beat. And they all come to you at once. So what you have to do is press all of the buttons like crazy. It's just stupid, boring, and it hurts after a while.

Then.. 50% completion, wtf? Next level: the witch. Guess what: hit the witch, then a wave of enemies. Hit her again, then a greater wave of enemies. And so on. Oh, and you can't save. It only reaches checkpoints, but you can't resume later (and it's a long level).

But not everything is lost. I had the opportunity to play Okami a few weeks ago (I don't own a PS2). Sweet! Finally. A game that's innovative (the paint effect is really good, and it also brings memories of Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island). The character is easy to control. Oh, and that celestial brush... great!. But not only that. It's a LONG game. DAMN long. You have enemies here and there, beat 'em up, and carry on. No stupid "impossible" levels (Psychonauts!).

So, the answer is simple. A videogame needs a lot of development. Okami had a lot of development, innovation, etc. It's a jewel. Narnia needed to be ready NOW. Get typical prefabricated engine, a few textures and get the cast to donate their voices. That's it. But it's so short it would disappoint anyone. So they made it hard instead of longer, and that's what gaming industry has become. Promotion for commercial products (I'm pretty sure there must be a Paris Hilton videogame).

Well. I guess I'll have to get used to it. Just a couple of great games a year and nothing else.

Most often boredom hits first

[grumbel]

It doesn't happen often that the difficulty becomes the problem, most often I found that the game starts to get uninteresting first. Those games that I didn't finish, I didn't finish for most part because I simply didn't care about them, when there is no interesting story to be told, no interesting characters to interact with and the gameplay the same for the last ten hours without anything interesting on the horizon there is little reason to continue playing, so once quit I never come back to those.

There are of course also those where the difficulty gets insane at some point for no good reason. Viewtiful Joe was one of those, while the game itself was not very difficult, the bosses where quite hard, at the end of the game then, one was then required to refight all the past bosses directly one after another, that was just insane, I didn't made it on the first try, not on the second and then it was clear that I would never make it without some serious boss-pattern analysis and training, I stopped playing, never came back.

Another case was Advance Wars, basically the same story, the game itself wasn't all that difficult, but the final battle was insane. After reading some FAQs I found out that my team probably wasn't the best, changing it would have required to replay the game. I tried the final battle a few times, but it was just way to annoying, while I managed to not lose for quite a while, I neither won. So it ended up as a half hour battle where I build new units, while the enemy destroys them, rinse and repeat till forever. I gave up, never came back.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance just again the same story, game itself not so hard, last boss impossible. All my characters where powerful enough that no enemy in the game stood a chance against them, yet the final boss killed them without problem over and over again. Look in the FAQ revealed that it might be a good idea to have a healer with me, which I didn't, didn't needed it for the rest of the game. I gave up at this point, since there just wasn't any fun in killing dozens and dozens of enemies just for leveling up purpose, heck, the fast way to level up was by actually attacking your own teammates, then healing them, then attacking them again. That was just to stupid, I gave up, never came back.

It kind of sucks to quit a game at the last boss, but when the difficulty jumps from easy to impossible, its often the only reasonable thing to do. I have more interesting things to do than to fight impossible boss battles.

Re:Most often boredom hits first

[Xenographic]

> Final Fantasy Tactics Advance just again the same story, game itself not so hard, last boss impossible. All my characters where powerful enough that no enemy in the game stood a chance against them, yet the final boss killed them without problem over and over again. Look in the FAQ revealed that it might be a good idea to have a healer with me, which I didn't, didn't needed it for the rest of the game. I gave up at this point, since there just wasn't any fun in killing dozens and dozens of enemies just for leveling up purpose, heck, the fast way to level up was by actually attacking your own teammates, then healing them, then attacking them again. That was just to stupid, I gave up, never came back.

Try Damage > MP for your reaction ability.

NWN Underdark pre-finale

[greyfeld]

There was a spot in Hordes of the Underdark just prior to the finale where you run into some of the henchmen you could have adventured with as well as some of the notable bad guys you killed. They had all ended up on the plane of hell you were stuck on and wanted to exact a little revenge. I think it took us 20 hours to figure out how to get past them over the course of a month. Very frustrating, but ultimately a few Time Stops smashed through that wall.

Re:NWN Underdark pre-finale

[Petrushka]

Oddly enough, I never had to reload more than a couple of times for that battle -- I think I must power-game a bit too much. (I'll tell you one thing, high-level bardsong makes things an awful lot easier.)

One battle in a DND game that did annoy me for several days, though, was in BG2 Throne of Bhaal -- the fight against the demi-dragon Draconis, outside the front door of one of the Bhaalspawn lairs. It took forever to work out a strategy that even stood a chance of beating him. And then I hear a lot of people find battles in BG2 too easy and use mods to make them even harder than Draconis ... it makes me shudder. (Anyway, after Draconis, his dad was a piece of cake.)

OOPS - I meant Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

[JoshDM]

See post this responds to.

Yeah, I'm at a wall... of SOUND!

[rjung2k]

I've been stuck on "Jumping Jack Flash" with the normal difficulty in Elite Beat Agents. That third verse is a killer, and I can barely limp along to the fourth...

Re:Yeah, I'm at a wall... of SOUND!

[tepples]

I've been stuck on "Jumping Jack Flash" with the normal difficulty in Elite Beat Agents. Just be glad you aren't stuck on Max 300, where you have to do this.

Re:Yeah, I'm at a wall... of SOUND!

[DarkJC]

You mean the verse where it's a large number of fast taps in a row followed by a spinner x3? Yeah, just wait until you play it in HARD ROCK mode ;)

The damn helicopter in Ninja Gaiden for Xbox

[Indomitus]

The helicopter you have to shoot with arrows in the Xbox Ninja Gaiden has stopped me from moving on in that game for months. It's the fault of my poor aim with the arrows but man, it's tough. Someday...

Most frustrating wall

[Ryan Monster]

Most frustrating wall in my gaming career was when I was 10 or 11 in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game on DOS. I couldn't get off Zaphod's ship. I just kept wandering from room to room taking wild stabs at the right actions to take. Maybe I could figure it out now if I tried, but as an 11 year old I spent probably 3 months stuck and finally vowed never to try the game again.

Ninja Gaiden for XBOX

[temolate]

The only time I have ever stopped playing a game because it was hard was Ninja Gaiden for the XBOX. I don't have anywhere near the amount of time needed to get good enough at this game to beat it. If you haven't played this game, I recommend getting it (I got it for $4 at EB), but I doubt you will finish. Most other "walls" I've ever encountered have been because I'm not good enough at the game and I can play a few more times and figure it out. Last, speaking of God of War, in the challenge of Atlas, if you pull the lever 3 times (hey, I was trying to figure out what it did) before moving the big rock atlas is holding, it gets stuck. Little did I know this, so I saved. I went forward a bit, saved again. Got the crank thingy and saved again (over my last game save from before the lever got stuck). So, I go back and can't progress. I had to restart the game from the beginning... that sucked. That's not really a "wall" though, that's just the game being a buggy piece of crap.

MOD PARENT UP - INFORMATIVE

[JoshDM]

See Subject. Battletoads - fun platformer + O-CRAP, HORRIBLE RACING!

I haven't been able to finish Dead Rising

[maynard]

It's the crazy game save locations and the ridiculous time constraints for each of the missions. Gears of War was a snap in comparison.

some games should be hard

[Goldsmith]

15 years ago, I could beat games like the original Ninja Gaiden, which I simply don't have the reflexes and patience for anymore. At that time, there were a few games I just couldn't figure out how to beat. I've played some of those old "thinking" games again (Koei's Liberty or Death comes to mind) and find them to be much, much easier.

Don't feel bad- Contact is REALLY DULL

[JoshDM]

I break for life for that game. It is like staring at a wall.

7th Guest

[Myria]

"Shy gypsy, slyly spryly tryst by my crypt." I figured out "shy gypsy" from the book clue but that's it. It wasn't until years later that I saw the solution online.

Then there's the microscope puzzle: it punishes you for having a fast computer. If you could get the game to run on modern hardware, you wouldn't be able to beat it.

Re:7th Guest

[physicsnick]

I also hit a wall in 7th Guest. I could never beat the damn canned food puzzle. But I refused to look it up, because I didn't want to cheat.

Hmph. I still have the CD on my shelf. Maybe I'll beat it someday.

Re:EVE Online

[slfnflctd]

r. o. f. l. m. a. o. !

Remember the original X-Wing?

[magical_mystery_meat]

Those training missions, getting all of the ribbons? Trying to get a Y-Wing through those courses in what, 120 seconds, was impossible.

Re:Remember the original X-Wing?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes especially on my 386-SX20 with 2MB RAM.

It was still lots of fun.

Metroid Prime

[goetzAThome]

The Metroid Prime itself. I pick the game up every 6 months or so just to try again. After two to three days of consistant failures, put it back on the shelf.

Re:Metroid Prime

[smbarbour]

I'll admit that I'm a cheater (I own an Action Replay MAX). I had tons of difficulty playing the first Metroid Prime without the AR-MAX. It is downright impossible for me to beat Metroid Prime 2: Echoes EVEN WITH the AR-MAX. Even though I can't be killed, I run out of time before finishing the boss.

(Un)fortunately, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I haven't repurchased the game since I was robbed.

Re:Metroid Prime

[goetzAThome]

I hope too see the Action Replay for Wii soon, sounds like I'll need it for the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. :-/

Re:Metroid Prime

[Ravenger]

I've been stuck on the same boss on Metroid Prime for a year now - The Omega Pirate. I know *how* o beat him, but I just keep dying. Love the game. Hate the bosses.

Re:Metroid Prime

[m3gtr0nix]

heh...I got stuck on the very last level of Metroid Prime, where you in the radioactive room with all the little metroids keep harassing you as you have to make through a jump puzzle area. You can't kill them off, they just keep coming back. An extremely frustrating level that sucked the fun of out an otherwise great game. I never did finish it and never had a desire to fire it up again. That last level was the opposite of fun for me, and didn't feel a need to subject myself to that pain just to say I "beat" it.

Embarrassingly enough -- Pikmin

[Purity Of Essence]

Pikmin for GameCube is my Achilles heel. The final mission is just so much more difficult than everything that leads up to it. The main issue is the controls. I've gotten so close to beating it so many times but I finally gave up. I really liked Pikmin, too. Oh well.

In Metroid Prime the final couple of battles were pretty difficult too, I thought I'd give up but I managed to finally get through them.

I gave up Skies of Arcadia pretty early because the boss battle in the Valua Colosseum. That battle is ridiculous. Beyond that I hate the tedious random encounters, and grinding away for hours to advance just a little in a game (the single worst trend in CRPGs) is bullshit. A shame, because there is a lot to like in Skies of Arcadia.

The old 8-bit and 16-bit games kick my ass regularly. They seem so much harder than today's games.

This game called WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

"a 'shelf-level event': a gaming wall that makes it hard if not impossible to complete a game. "

I know what they mean! About a year ago I picked up this game called "world of warcraft" and I think I hit one of these walls! It seems that no matter what I do, I cannot advance passed level 70! It used to be I couldn't get passed level 60 but I somehow overcame that (I think I was drunk), only to get stuck again!

And don't get me started on how hard MC is! It seems like one person could not possibly do it!

POP

[mattpointblank]

In Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (PC) there was this bug at the end. You have to follow the Empress through the portal, and it gives you a video clip of her jumping through. It then switches to your view. When I tried to go through, nothing happened. I reloaded and tried again. When I still couldn't do it I went on the Ubisoft website and checked out the support forums. Turned out it's a random bug in the game and when it happens, it also corrupts all your saves so if you go back and reload, the bug is there too. The worst part is that this comes at the very end of the game, because after the portal is the final boss. In the end I had to download some dude's save game and play that, which sucked because he'd developed his character in different ways to mine so it wasn't really "my" Prince finishing the game.

I was so mad at Ubisoft for letting the game ship with such a bug present. I mean, the fact that it wasn't an isolated case or anything just makes it so much worse. Their official FAQ basically said "Try doing X, Y and Z [a ton of crap that did nothing], and if this doesn't work, restart your game from scratch". This is as extreme a "wall" in gaming as I can think of.

Re:POP

[ivan256]

I hit that too. It sucked.

I got stuck in PoP:TT too... I got to the last boss, but I had a nasty case of Tennis Elbow from holding down the shoulder buttons so much that I couldn't beat it. Now, after six months of NSAIDs and an ulcer, the pain is gone but I'm afraid to finish it.

Getting old sucks.

Re:POP

[Nyall]

The wackamole combo style of PoP:TT killed me so many times when fighting the giant ogre boss.
For the uninformed it works like this: figure out how to initiate the combo. For the ogre boss this meant climbing up a wall and jumping at him. Once initiated you have to watch your sword and listen. At the right time when the sword glows you press [attack] (can't remember which button it is right now). Then wait for the next glow. And the next.

Unlike other combos when fighting ordinary peons (where you only have to press [attack] and then you can release x till the next time your sword glows) you actually have to keep [attack] held down, then when the sword glows you have to release then press. Should you release [attack] the camera zooms out and you can't even see the stupid sword glow, thereby ruining the combo, and the ogre counters.

I had to google several forums before I found a solution

Re:POP

[aztektum]

The FIRST Prince of Persia pisses me off to no end. I simply CANNOT get passed one of the timed puzzles where you have to avoid the boobie traps before the door closes. I have sworn off that game as well as the sequels.

Re:POP

[Petrushka]

I'm guessing you're referring to Sands of Time (rather than the old 80s/90s games)? If you can bear it, it's worth the persistence. If you can get to the point where you face your character's father in combat (about a quarter of the way through), it stops being annoying and starts feeling exhilarating. There're still one or two tricky puzzles later on, but by that point you know what to expect. It's one of the few games where after I finished I felt compelled to restart and play the whole thing through again -- it's a game that really makes you feel like a hero by the end.

Can't recommend the sequels though.

Re:POP

[Hrodvitnir]

I feel for you. I hit the same type of wall in Beyond Good and Evil. Roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through the game there is a point where you are supposed to meet up with someone after finishing a level and they never show. And there is no way to get them to come back (at least on the console versions). Luckily a year or so after quitting the PS2 version I found out my sister had the game on her GC and borrowed it. I was able to get all the way through on my second try. It's too bad some of the great games like these have such terrible bugs.

Re:POP

[ivan256]

Unlike other combos when fighting ordinary peons (where you only have to press [attack] and then you can release x till the next time your sword glows) you actually have to keep [attack] held down, then when the sword glows you have to release then press.

What? That's not how it worked for me... The combos were just like in the rest of the game, only longer (more times to hit X). The window of time when your sword was glowing was also very short...

Unfortunatly, I kept getting killed climbing up to his third form.

Re:POP

[Nyall]

I'm sure it would have worked like normal if I could have seen the sword glow. The dumb camera kept zooming out to encompass the entire giant, so the prince and sword was too dinky.

I was playing the ps2 version. I can't find the original thread, but I found another on gamefaqs explaining this:

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?bo ard=926985&topic=33245273

Re:POP

[Nyall]

P.S. Found a better forum thread

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/647109687 3/m/7571027493

Re:POP

[Korvar]

For me, it was the bit in the prison where you have to pull two levers to bring out two walls that you then walljump up. Only the levers (and walls) would then retract, such that you only have so much time to get up. For the longest time, I was unable to co-ordinate pulling lever 1, manoeuvring myself to pull lever 2, and then actually bouncing between the walls to get to the horizontal bar. Okay, this was because I was crap, but, it was a wall (or close to).

What I ended up doing was keeping the game running, then each day after work I'd turn the TV to the PS2 channel, have a go, fail, and then turn the TV off, until I felt like another run through. I was very deliberately not allowing myself to get frustrated.

That technique came in very handy for the last big acrobatics puzzle, the one you get when you've not got the dagger any more (no do-overs!). As soon as I lost the dagger I knew that there was going to be some huge long sequence that you would have to go through without timing it. I think it took me a week of five-minutes-every-time-I-was-bored to finally crack that...

Sorcerer

[MWoody]

My worst - and most embarrassing - gamer "wall" was the chest puzzle early on in the game Sorcerer, an Infocom text adventure. About half an hour into the game, you find a chest in the basement of the first building with different-colored buttons on the side, each with a corresponding shape such as a crown on the purple button. Pushing the buttons only returns a message about it making a "click." Nowhere in the building was there any mention of a series of colors or shapes, or indeed any real mention of the chest at all.

After weeks, off and on, of frustration, my 14-year-old temper had had enough, and the box went on the shelf. Several times over the next few years, I came back to the game, and each time I was forced to rediscover why I'd put it down as I hit that goddamn chest.

So flash forward to my 18th year and, bored one afternoon, I'm going through my old games and I decide to finish that stupid puzzle once and for all. But again, I get stuck on that chest. Frustrated, I start to thumb through the manual accompanying the game, thinking maybe it's mentioned offhand there (a long shot, and one I'd tried before). It's not, but it's when I'm looking through another included little pamphlet in the box - the "Field Guide to the Creatures of Frobozz," a small color book of illustrations and descriptions of monsters in the gameworld - that the text at the end of one entry finally, FINALLY catches my eye. "Bloodworms are usually white and grey and black and red and black." "A common house rotgrub is gray and red and gray and purple and red." And it goes on, with this weird color description at the end of every entry.

Elsewhere in the small area of the game explorable before the chest, one part that had always bugged me was a note that discussed the current "password" and mentioned a monster type. It was different every playthrough, and was the only thing that was. So, firing up the game, I found the note, which mentioned "Bloodworms" this time, and proceeded quickly to the chest. Referring to my guide, I pushed "white, gray, black, red, black" on the buttons and BAM! It's opened. After four years of attempts, the bloody thing was OPEN. I actually started cheering and dancing around the room like a madman, exclaiming to my surprised parents down the hall that "the damn chest is OPEN!"

Those of you paying attention have probably already realized my ultimate shame. That's right, folks, I was defeated by the $%@#$%@#$% COPY PROTECTION for the game.

I've hated DRM ever since.

Re:Sorcerer

[seebs]

I had the same problem in Bureaucracy, where the paranoid's questions (all of which can be answered only by reading the glossy insert) stumped me for some time.

Tie Fighter - Mission 7.1

[default luser]

This is the hardest mission in the whole game. You have to fly in and destroy cargo containers near Harkov's Star Destroyer, tangle with some Tie Advanced (T/A) fighters, then move your ass to intercept a dozen waves of Z-95s spouting heavy rockets at your VERY VULNERABLE Interdictor. You have to keep the Interdictor intact, or you lose and the Star Destroyer escapes.

If you don't take out at least half the T/A force, they will overwhelm your pathetic wingmen and hunt you down and kill you later, right when you need to focus all your attention on those heavy rocket waves. Unfortunately, you only have about 5 minutes from mission start before the cruiser with the Z-95s appears, so you have to close and kill the T/As quickly. When you consider that you want to save a few missiles if you REALLY need to stop a heavy rocket beyond your range, it becomes even harder to tango with those T/As because you have to do most of the damage with lasers.

Man, that is incredibly tough**. I remember spending weeks flying it over and over.

** For those of you who bought the "Collector's CD" of Tie Fighter, you may think I'm crazy, because that mission is easy...and you would be right. For the CD release, the difficulty for that particular mission is toned down considerably (I think the number of Z-95 waves iscut to a quarter that of the original, so that you only haveto take out a couple and the Interdictor will survive). This challenge can only be found on the original floppy disk version of the game.

Re:Tie Fighter - Mission 7.1

[Frumply]

They may have fixed that one, but on the CD version I hit a wall at Mission 9.4 or somewhere along that line; can't remember the mission sequence anymore, but you were stuck on your lonesome on a Tie Defender, with T/A's firing advanced missiles at you like there's no tomorrow.

Re:Tie Fighter - Mission 7.1

[FishWithAHammer]

You had to pick off the missiles as they closed if you wanted any chance to win that one. That one was rough.

Then again, I used to MAKE ridiculously hard maps just to see how far I could get (T/I against wave after wave of Top Ace X-Wings...).

Re:Tie Fighter - Mission 7.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno. I never had much trouble with the Tie Fighter missions, and I had the original floppy disk version. Of course, it's probably the best I've ever been at a game. I actually cleared the minefield in the one mission (don't remember the mission #, but I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about) where you're sent to clear the laser-minefield in an unshielded ship.

I went through 5 joysticks beating that game (literally wore them out). I was good enough that I could take out a Star Destroyer with a T/I without using missiles. (There's 2 'dead-zones' in a SD's turbo-laser barrage, but getting to them is pretty damned tough, and they do you no good if you haven't already blown up everything else that's shooting at you first. I could literally skim the entire length of a Star Destroyer at 0 distance, skipping off it repeatedly (on purpose) at full speed.

I just liked the challenge of destroying my own SD because as soon as you tagged it, it would start shooting at you, unlike in X-Wing, where you could blow up your own capital ships, and they'd ignore you. It *was* a bit annoying when you'd accidentally tag your own capital ship trying to defend it from an enemy, and you'd spend the rest of the mission dodging *everything*, and then have to dodge your way into docking distance to finish the mission.

Oddly enough I always had more trouble with the (supposedly easier) X-Wing game than with TIE Fighter.

Get a GC Action Replay

[blincoln]

The AR codes were the only reason I finished that race. It's also worth buying one because you can use it to unlock parts that are not accessible any other way. IIRC, you had to bring your memory card to some special event in Japan to get them legitimately, and they let you build some cool vehicles.

Got one acronym for you...

[JoshDM]

RTFM. :-D

We need cheats, but we are weak.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The cheats are nice so that games can actually be sold to people like the guy who wrote this article. Come on, Final Fantasy X? Personally, I think the end was worth any boss frustration, but that's just me. But still, he didn't specify when he hit the wall. Of the few ones I can think of, it took maybe a half hour or an hour running around a save point -- not backtracking at all, literally running in circles, triggering random encounters -- to build up the stats I needed. That may sound like a long time, but this is a GOOD game that I doubt can be reasonably beaten in less than 30 hours, and you could easily spend 60 or more -- so one hour of grind isn't bad at all.

Any others, chances are I just needed a different technique -- just remembering things like how attempting to heal a zombie damages them; you can actually kill a boss with just a couple of Pheonix Downs. Or going into a fight with every single Aeon in Overdrive -- some bosses (not spoiling it) can Banish your Aeons (one-hit them), but you always get one attack, so you can simply go through your Aeons, one by one, throwing their overdrives and watching them die the next turn. If it's a boss fight, chances are you'll have a save point shortly after that anyway (which fully heals your party, including Aeons).

By the end of the game, both times I've played it, and the time my roommate played, we ended up ridiculously overpowered for the final bosses. I never bothered with Omega, but my roommate one-hit him -- BY ACCIDENT, I was kind of annoyed at not actually seeing him attack...

I mean, I could offer an argument for why hard games are good -- certainly most games need a hard difficulty level -- but seriously, he's listed a Final Fantasy game which is entirely turn-based, and probably one of the easiest even if it was real time (FF7/8/X-2 style).

I get that a gentle slope is usually much better, but ultimately it comes out about the same -- a well-designed game will have you good enough to beat the final boss by the time you encounter him (or her, or it). A poorly-designed game simply means you'll hit a "wall" and spend an hour or two trying over and over again, getting practice each time, until eventually you beat it -- the only difference is, with a good game, you spend those hours actually progressing through the story, instead of playing the same level. But it's ultimately the same thing -- practice, and you get better. If it's possible, especially if it's a required part of the game, you should be able to do it.

If anything was hard about FFX, it was the Chocobo training, which is insanely difficult and also largely luck. It's not required, thankfully, because it took probably 3 or 4 hours of trying, pretty much nonstop, in the wee hours of the morning, before one of us -- my roommate, actually -- finally managed it. That's the kind of thing that would piss me off if it was required -- nothing else in the game took even close to that long to master.

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[FishWithAHammer]

Personally, I think the end was worth any boss frustration, but that's just me.

Yes, it is just you (and the other legions of people who'll play any bad Japanese RPG they can). The fact that you had to run circles around a save point to level up is a joke.

I'll let you in on a secret: It's possible to beat a real RPG like Fallout at level 1.

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[Canthros]

I gave up on FFX because it took me 40 hours to reach the area where you can train chocobos (mentioned as a landmark; I don't recall where this was), and I was bored stiff: the story failed to grab me, most of the characters were jerks or were crushingly stupid (in fact: Auron was the only character I was able to sympathise with, and he's a raging asshole through most of the game that I played). So I stopped.

Granted, I've had difficulty with most of the recent FF games: 7 was fun enough; but 8 was depressing and, although I loved 9 right up to the end, I never did beat the last boss after he managed a one-hit-kill on his first attack: removed the disc from the PS2, have not bothered to put it back in yet. The thought of spending ten hours grinding my way to a level where I could actually beat the last boss simply turned me off.

I spent hundreds of hours building up all the characters in FF3/6 ages ago, when I was in high school and had not a thing better to do. I no longer care to do that sort of thing. There are better ways for me to spend my time. (That said: FFXII was awesome.)

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[geminidomino]

Wow... you were about 90% through the story at that point. :)

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The fact that you had to run circles around a save point to level up is a joke.

Had to? Nah, it was just the easiest way to go. As someone else said, it is possible to beat the game without using the sphere grid -- I was just pointing out that a reasonable person can always fall back on running around a save point if it ever gets even close to something resembling "too hard".

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[FishWithAHammer]

Newsflash: it's possible to beat FFX without using the sphere grid (read: leveling up) once.

I played FFX (friend's copy, I'd never buy another Square game). I am aware. Yet grinding levels is what is always suggested when things get hard.

Take your xenophobia and shove it.

Xenophobia? Yeah, because I just hate them Japs! I only own a PS2! I only have games such as Soul Calibur, Tekken, Suikoden (I-III; anything newer's a joke), and Resident Evil. I'm not saying that all Japanese RPGs are bad. I'm saying that drooling Americans will play anything, instead of spending their money on games that are worth it.

A professor of mine (and a Canadian liberal, surprisingly enough, to boot) said it best recently: "Americans, as a whole, are overly critical toward themselves--and look at everybody else in the world through rose-colored glasses."

Guess what, numbnuts? Just because it says Final Fantasy on the box doesn't mean it doesn't suck. (Examples: X-2, FFXI.) The horse of Final Fantasy is officially dead, despite Square's attempts to flog more and more out of it. But of course I'm xenophobic for thinking that Final Fantasy sucks. The idea that I have a bit more taste than to play RPGs that are the gaming equivalent of oatmeal is, of course, impossible.

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[ravenshrike]

Your point? Grinding levels in F1 as well as F2 accomplishes the same thing. Mind you, both games were quite honestly much better than any final fantasy after 6. FFVII, while fun, didn't have the same impact. For that matter, you can pretty much one shot the boss in F2 even at extremely low levels.

Re:We need cheats, but we are weak.

[FishWithAHammer]

Exactly. But to win under those conditions in Fallout, you have to use your noodle. You have to think. Puzzle-solve. Do things other than randomly cack enemies. Even if you play a no-sphere game of FFX, you're still doing the exact same thing someone with eight billion levels is doing--you're just doing it with a slightly different set of conditions, whereas in Fallout it becomes a whole new game.

(It's also interesting to note that if you do go grinding in Fallout, it's considerably more entertaining than hitting X through menus in Final Fantasy.)

I completely disagree

[laxcat]

I feel ripped off when I can beat the whole game, and there is nothing left offered. Do I get mad that I can't beat Ninja Gaiden Black on master? No, because I can beat it on normal, and given enough time, probably even on hard.

Games these days are unequivocally too easy because they want to appeal to the largest audience possible. But a game that doesn't offer more to an advanced player above and beyond the standard game, THAT'S the game that's ripping you off, not the other way around. A game should offer enjoyment to people of all skill levels, savant included.

Re:I completely disagree

[MarcoAtWork]

I feel ripped off when I can beat the whole game, and there is nothing left offered. Do I get mad that I can't beat Ninja Gaiden Black on master? No, because I can beat it on normal, and given enough time, probably even on hard.

you're missing my point: I don't mind at all if games have the hard, super hard, nightmare, whatever modes, but I don't agree when the lowest difficulty setting is basically impossible and it prevents you from seeing most of the rest of the game (in story mode) or 1/5th of the tracks (as I think most people can unlock up to diamond difficulty, but unlocking ax is practically impossible).

Your ninja gaiden example is perfect: how would you feel if the developer placed a master-level opponent 1/5th of the game in on 'easy'? Would you enjoy that? With no codes and no way whatsoever around it?

Re:I completely disagree

[tepples]

Your ninja gaiden example is perfect: how would you feel if the developer placed a master-level opponent 1/5th of the game in on 'easy'? Would you enjoy that?

That's because 1/5 of the way through is not a "master" opponent. For example, in Tetris, this is easy, but this is master.

Pretty Much Every Final Fantasy

[Itchyeyes]

I've hit a wall on pretty much every Final Fantasy game. It's more psychological than anything. I reach a point in the game, usually near the final boss when I don't feel like I'm at the appropriate skill level to progress any further. I then spend the rest of my time leveling up my characters until I lose interest in the game.

Re:Pretty Much Every Final Fantasy

[Truman Starr]

FF:III on the S-NES is probably in my top 5 games of all time. But I don't think I've ever actually beaten the game, because I can't stand Kefka's tower at the end! You have to control 2 (3?) different teams walking through, hitting switches and stuff for each other. My desire to not use a walkthrough meant I got into about a million mob-fights while I was wandering around.

The other game I haven't seen mentioned yet at all is Lion King for the Sega Genesis. Good god! The entire game, after the 3rd level, is a wall!

Re:Pretty Much Every Final Fantasy

[Beefysworld]

I've only played from FF7 onwards. I've finished 7 multiple times, 10 once, currently playing 12. In 8 and 9 (and the abomination that is FFX-2) I also just lost interest right near the end. It's especially sad in a FF game because of all the time you spend getting up to that point in that game, but there's not a lot you can really do about it if you do lose interest.

Re:Pretty Much Every Final Fantasy

[SilentBob0727]

That's where the Moogle Charm comes in handy. It'll spare you all random encounters in Mog's party, so you've got 1/3 of those fights eliminated. Only make sure to put him in the second or third group, because the first group has the least distance to go. In one of the other parties, place Locke with a Genji Glove/Offering combo plus ValiantKnife and Atma Weapon. In the other, place Edgar with Dragoon Boots, Dragon Horn and a Pearl Lance. Sabin and Gogo can use Bum Rush to help, so put one of them in each. Put Economizers and Gold Hairpins on the remaining party members, earrings to boost magic damage, and the gem box on Celes or Terra to allow for two magic casts in a row. Have everyone cast Quick on themselves to get two commands in simultaneously each time. These combos will dispatch most of your enemies quickly so it's a lot less of a hassle. There's only about two places per team where you can go ridiculously astray; it's pretty linear after that. Kefka's tower also has the last two dragons, without which you can't get the Crusader esper which teaches the uber Merton spell (and if you don't want to equip flame shields on everyone, it also teaches Meteor at x10).

A word of warning though. If you equip Dragoon Boots and Dragon Horn on Edgar in the final battle, he'll jump off the screen and never return, so take these off him or put him close to the end in the final battle line-up.

Starflight

[cemcnulty]

Starflight for Genesis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight
HHGG (text based) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guid e_to_the_Galaxy_(computer_game)

Are the only two games I think I've given up on. I got damn far on the HHGG, but was missing a piece of lint or something, and just couldn't stomach starting over. Similar deal with Starflight. I usually give up on a game when I realize that I'm going to have to do a whole lot of stuff I thought I'd already finished over again. In Starflight it was mining. I don't even want to think about the amount of hours I spent virtually mining in that game.

I find more walls are from boredom

[Astarica]

As opposed to difficulty. For difficulty based stuff, I can accept some games are just plain hard. The ones that bother me is the ones that don't give you any way out of it, and kick you while you're down. For example, in the Megaman Zero series you used to miss the EX Skills if you suck (need an A rating to obtain them), so if you suck you don't get the moves that makes the game easier and you're basically stuck. Gradius V for PS2 is like that too. You unlock unlimited credits after 15 hours of gameplay, but that's only while playing the game, so if you die 15 minutes into the game at the third stage, it gets boring pretty quickly to try to fill your quota of 60 game overs before you can even have a shot at beating the game. It's one thing that you can suck at a game and have a hard time. It's another that things get progressively worse the more you suck. In Gradius V if you could half an hour before dying, at least you won't be as frustrated with repeatedly dying compared to lasting only 15 minutes so you'll hit your unlimited credits easier.

A counter example of a good difficulty wall would be Shining Force Neo. In the 3 Trials of Light the Demons bosses all do some insane amount of damage compared to anything you may have fought before (heck even some of the random stuff before them is insanely hard), but you can save basically anywhere. The game has a ton of customization so if one combo doesn't work you can always try another. And if you still can't beat it you can do the tried and true level up approach.

Neverwinter Nights 2

[Anonymous Coward]

The part where Cain plays a tune and you have to play it back. I know nothing about music and the different tones and such. Took me close to an hour to match the first tune after about a dozen saves and reloads. To make things worse, the tune that Cain played sounds a bit different than what you can play, which didn't help things. I just gave up on the 2nd tune and looked up the answer the the next three tunes in a walkthrough.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[ravenshrike]

Patience young padawan. Unless you are extremely familiar with D&D esoterica and have FPS reflexes combined with Starcraft mastery strategy skills, you should be using the pause button to plan your next few attacks pretty damned often. What class did you play, a bard?

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[Das Modell]

I quit NWN2 because it sucked, not because it was hard.

Runner-up-Bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is there anyone who managed to get past the final battle in the volcano without cheating?"

I found an interesting bug in that level. Before you open the outer door. Do something to draw the attention of those guys with a gun for an arm. Now when part of their arm shows through the door (collision bug), shoot at it. It will hurt them, but they can't hurt you. repeat until they're dead. The rest of it is the sniper rifle, and thermal sight. The last is using the gun with the grenade launcher. If you want to cheat? Use the unlimited weapons and ammo. BTW one walkthough suggested using the chairs to keep the outer and inner door from locking behind you, so you could run back for more ammo. I could never get that to work reliably.

Triple Holy Water gets my vote

[kninja]

I seem to recall there was a freezing effect on the bosses when you used the holy water. It is awesome for Frankenstein and if you use it on the reaper (jump and hit the reaper with the water as it appears) then the sickles don't have time to appear.

Other cool games that are just as hard are Blaster Master and Zelda II.

Re:Triple Holy Water gets my vote

[Bloomy]

Yeah, I noticed that "freeze effect" in the speed runs. But I got good enough with the game to beat it in 1 life, so I didn't bother optimizing my run throughs.

Blaster Master was tough, made a little easier with the bomb/pause trick against the bosses of levels 2, 4, 6 and 7. Rented that many times but could never find my way through the last level. Finally bought it at a flea market and used a walkthrough to get to the final boss. Was glad to finally beat that game. Still leaves Battletoads ...

I remembered Zelda II being tough, but I recently played through the GBA Classics version. While getting through some of the temples required a bit of dying before finding the right path, I beat it without much trouble. The fight with the Thunderbird was a lot easier than I remembered. Shadow Link was tough as always, because I fight him throughout the room instead of using the tactic of staying on the left edge and slashing away.

The first Ninja Gaiden was hard. Only ever beat that once. A three stage final boss fight, and you have to repeat most of last level if you lose a life? Yeesh.

Re:Triple Holy Water gets my vote

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> I seem to recall there was a freezing effect on the bosses when
> you used the holy water. It is awesome for Frankenstein

Sigh. Gotta love game designers. Frankenstein('s monster) is undead, but he's not an unholy undead!

He's resurrected using electricity to reanimate him. That's the whole point! Hence holy water wouldn't work on him -- it's a mechanical, physical reanimation without "life force" or "spirituality" or whatever, as opposed to skeletons or zombies (which have disturbed spirits bound to them) or vampires (which still have their own but the body has died), which both thus would be affected by holy water.

Man, I haven't been this upset at a game goof since EverQuest allowed monks to not have a patron god.

Re:Triple Holy Water gets my vote

[KDR_11k]

In the Castlevania series holy water works even against humans. Of course "holy water" does seem to be just a nice name for a molotov cocktail.

Zelda Windwaker - Early Wall

[maddog2o_2o]

Before you can climb to the top of a mountain on one of the earlier islands you need to topple two statues into pools of lava so you can skip across. So I drop the first one easy and then .... nothing ... the second one is 'just' out of range ... its been a month and I've since put the disc away. I'm since playing Call of Duty 2 and Pikmin2 more on my GameCube.

The other GameCube one that kills me is Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - after a 4 mninute tutorial you are butchered by a Bitch-Queen ... we laughed and went back to SuperMario Strikers. What's the deal there? Are only previous Prince of Persia masters supposed to have bought that game?

Kevin

Re:Zelda Windwaker - Early Wall

[OSXCPA2]

Another aging gamer like me, whose ability to machine-mash buttons is shot :) ... I *hate* that fight. It only gets worse as you go through. Good luck...

Re:Zelda Windwaker - Early Wall

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Zelda thing, you were probably doing it wrong. You have to jump onto the first statue before throwing the bomb at the second. It is easily within range if you do this instead of trying to throw from the shore.

It's been a long time since a Zelda game has required much manual dexterity to win. Now the challenge is all in the puzzles.

Gaming Cameras I have known

[Anonymous Coward]

"3) Beyond Good and Evil - Sailing again, sort of. Once I got the power boat and could explore, I ended up getting very bored and stopped playing."

I'm actually stuck at a boss battle, not because of fighting ability, but the damn camera making it harder than it needs to be. The silent hills series has camera problems too.

Re:Gaming Cameras I have known

[Anonymous Coward]

Which boss battle?

Re:Gaming Cameras I have known

[Anonymous Coward]

Walkthrough.

This part:
"Wallhug your way back to the main elevator room, and you'll be attacked by a
huge green critter, who grabs Pey'j. Take a photo first (3500 units!). He'll
jump up to the side of the room. Zoom in your camera, use a Gyrodisk to make
him jump back down. While he's up on the side of the room, he'll fire green
shots. Just stand between two of them to avoid getting hit. Be sure not to be
around him when he lands. After he lands, fire another gyrodisk to make him
cover his eye. Run up, and smack him around with your staff. He'll take a
beating, then jump back up. Repeat this process : Hit him with a gyrodisk
when he's up on the ducting on the wall, avoid him when he lands, fire a disk
to blind him, then hit him with your staff. Do it three or four more times,
and he should let go of Pey'j, and die."

Re:Gaming Cameras I have known

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing the annoying part is the dramatic overhead shot as the huge green creature jumps down toward you. Just try to get away from whereever the thing is going to land while the camera's like that.

Another option is to charge up your superattack while he's jumping toward you and then release it right before he hits you. I don't know if that prevents you from being damaged, though.

FFIV Advance - Zeromus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure I will never see the end of this game because Zeromus is a beeotch. He takes out 2/5 of my party with his first attack just about every time, and everyone's at least level 60. I don't know what to do short of messing around and levelling everyone up to 70 or 80.

Re:FFIV Advance - Zeromus

[bunuel]

Is Zeromus the last boss? I think you should be OK at level 60, there are some tricks I found at gamefaqs that helped a *lot*. It involves letting 2 of your party members die, and duplicating a weapon (though I don't know if the second part is really necessary). With 2 members dead, the rest heal easier.

Re:FFIV Advance - Zeromus

[ShadowsHawk]

Try to steal from the first form. Have everyone defend and have Edge steal the dark matter. Zeromus will counter attack any time you attack, but will generally leave you alone if you stop. The only exception to that is the Big Bang attack. If you get smacked, stop attacking and heal up. Also, throw any large weapons that you don't have equipped. Eg. Excaliber, the spoon, etc.

Hell is the Meat Circus

[Anonymous Coward]

Just last week I picked up Psychonauts in the bargain bin. I don't go for platformers as a rule, but I was enjoying the atmosphere and the humour of the game right up until the final level: The Meat Circus. It is hell. Getting through requires a long sequence of perfectly executed actions performed within a very tight time limit, all while you try to protect an NPC from taking too much damage. Fail, and you have to go back to the start of this sequence. After a few dozen tries I broke down and consulted a walkthrough. Nothing else in the game had been remotely this tough and I was sure I was doing something wrong. I wasn't. I was simply expected to put on a marathon display of perfection to get to the next checkpoint. Well, I'm not gonna play. Not fun. I went to YouTube instead and looked up a video of the closing cutscene.

Oh yeah, Jak and Daxter 2

[pierreact]

Actually, in this case, it's not only the difficulty, it's the stupidity of some places, I loved jak 1 before the #@$%^&%^ bug that blocked the game.
I expected something great with jak2, some parts are, but some parts are just too stupid, My wife and myself are stuck in a damn STUPID place where you have to move cubes in due time to progress... I expected a platform game, I got a tetris.... without the fun. Added to which, if you die for some reasom you get back 20 minutes before....

It was the last game I bought from this company, as crash bandicoot seemd to go the same way lately...

Weak gamers

[axia777]

I grew up on the like of the original Contra and Mega Man. Gaming wall? We knew no such thing back then. If anyone really wants to sharpen their skills up go back and play the original Mega Man or the like. Then go and play God of War. God of War will seem like a cake walk, even the supposedly hard spear traps in the Paths of Madness. That or you could go and play the first edition of DMC3. Games today are easy in comparison to yesteryears games.

BG & E Gaming Wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just timed going from one end of the map to the other in Beyond Good and Evil and it took less than three minutes.

This is probably a stupid question, but are you holding down the button that turns on your boat's motor? (I'm assuming you have the motor because they make it almost impossible not to get, you end up being dragged to the garage to buy it right after you get in the boat.) The button is spacebar by default on the PC version, (I wasn't able to find which button it is for the console version) it's the same button you use to run.

Re:BG & E Gaming Wall?

[MeanderingMind]

Oh I used the motor, but all the actual boating around just bored me greatly. Not sure why really, maybe it brought back too many memories of Windwaker.

Deadly Towers and Ghosts and Goblins

[jedi_chemist]

First, I think we need to elaborate on certain aspects of hitting the wall. You need separate hitting the wall on simply beating the game versus hitting the wall trying to "do it all." I think (from personal experience on seeing the ending credits on at least 1000 games, including many titles people are dicussing in this forum) that it is rare to find a game that _truly_ frustrates people simply to play the game. Deadly Towers for the NES (which is on my beaten list) was truly frustrating...falling into pits, small weapons, etc. Ghosts and Goblins too was a pain to beat...going through the game once is a pain, but to beat it you must do it twice...

Then there is the do it all: "bosses" in Final Fantasy X? please! none of the bosses necessary to beat the game are difficult, but the leveling up and other garbage to beat the optional bosses or dodging all the lighting bolts to get the weapons is sick mad at causing a crash. But...RPG's were not designed to be whiz-bang action all the time!

I think another thing IMHO is that games have gotten EASIER since the days of the earlier systems because we have more control over our on screen identities. First, almost all games now allow players to save partway through the game which allows the player to walk away, that was not an option on Battletoads. Games are also less linear now as well: if you are having a hard time with one thing in GTA you can go waste time venting on some poor soul in another part of the city and then come back to try again at what was hard...no so in Castlevania. Then there is "cheating devices" I hate them! never-owned-never-used! I am sure that many would be responders to this message will give examples of hard games today, and I am sure you are right, but in general games are easier today, plain and simple.

Re:Deadly Towers and Ghosts and Goblins

[Das Modell]

Battletoads

There's a game I never finished.

There are few if any games today that you can't beat relatively easily, but I remember several NES and C-64 games that I couldn't beat (of course, I was also very young at the time). Last Ninja 2, for instance. As far as I remember, the most "recent" game I couldn't beat was Warhawk for the PSX. Got stuck in the last level. I'm sure I could easily do it today, though.

Re:Deadly Towers and Ghosts and Goblins

[KDR_11k]

I did get stuck at a boss in FFX (right before Zanarkand, he can kill my entire party in on turn) but that's because I got so fed up with the random encounter battles in the area before that (one long path with an encounter every 10 metres and probably the dumbest battle system ever) that I ran from everything and of course was completely underlevelled by the time I got to the boss.

That last guy on Space Invaders

[Sponge Bath]

... he's just too fast.

Re:That last guy on Space Invaders

[stvartak]

Yea, My brother always got it for me.

Re:That last guy on Space Invaders

[The Dark]

Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot at where I was going to be.

Re:That last guy on Space Invaders

[pyro_peter_911]

Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot where I was going to be!

Re:That last guy on Space Invaders

[geekoid]

yeah, that sure was an addictive game.

Re:That last guy on Space Invaders

[willpall]

I'm only replying to erase my accidental 'Overrated' moderation. I meant 'Funny', but damn that AJAXey moderation, I can't undo it!

Re:Commodore VIC-20 Dracula Text Adventure...

[Omestes]

Sorry...

YOU'VE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE!

Thats my Commodore gaming memory.

Key to Dead Rising: Don't be afraid to start over

[jchenx]

It's the crazy game save locations and the ridiculous time constraints for each of the missions.

The key to Dead Rising is not being afraid to save and start over with your updated stats. There was one point where I screwed myself over, saving the game and then finding out that I didn't have enough time to complete the mission. So I started over, thinking that it was going to stuck having to go through the beginning part of the game again.

Well, not really. Since my stats were much better than the first time around, I found that I was playing the game much differently, and also much better. Before, I was only able to save a handful of survivors, between missions. Now? I could save twice as many, and found myself tackling them in different orders. It also helped knowing when certain events were going to take place, so I could put myself in the right place at the right time.

So yeah, the key to Dead Rising is not being afraid to start over. That said, I really do wish Capcom did a better job of handling the save system, or at least messaging the intent of it a bit better. Normally you associate any sort of "starting over" as a sort of failure, where in this game, it's almost expected that you do this at least once.

For me ... almost Gears of War

[jchenx]

I almost hit the wall with Gears of War. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say I had a helluva time with the last boss. The rest of the game, I didn't have too much of a problem with, but the last guy was just brutal. Fortunately, after some tips from friends and lots of retrying, I was finally able to get it done. But yeah, I was awfully close to just packing it up.

From talking with a lot of folks, either they think the last guy is too easy, or (like me), a real pain in the ass.

Fire Leo should just die of AIDS

[Troll_Destroyer]

I cannot beat Viewtiful Joe for the gamecube. I can play through the whole game no problem in one sitting and collect as much viewtiful points as possible and buy all the lives and take-2's as I want but it's always for naught. The final boss, Fire Leo, is too hard and has a wonky pattern that I can't figure out, even with online strategies. I once spent hours just dying over and over again. Fire Leo seriously needs to die of AIDS or something.

Gears of War

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly a completely fatal wall, but a wall that caused me a half an hour of intense frustration. At the end of Act 3, there's a segment in which you have to attack a structure that's being defended by not only regular drones (with machine guns), but also with theron guards (tougher drones, better weapons). The theron guards carry a torque bow, which is basically an explosive crossbow. On the lowest difficulty, the explosions only seriously wound you, but they kill you on higher difficulties. Coupled with the fact that the guards are good shots, I had to go through the segment several times and take many different approaches.

The worst thing about it was that there's this unskippable cutscene around one and a half minutes long right before the tough segment. The game autosave (you can't make your own) is made before the cutscene, so every time I died (quite often!), I had to watch the cutscene again and again and again until I finally made it out. If it weren't for the shoddy placement of the autosave, the part would've been much easier to tolerate.

how difficult?

[doug141]

This would be more like if there was a test 20% into it that you had to pass before you could watch the last 80%. And all the questions were essay questions. And you had to come up with the essay answer that was word for word, letter for letter the same as the official answer. While being kicked in the nuts.

Jesus Christ... that must be one difficult race we're talking about.

If no walls, then no challenge

[novocode]

My experience is more with the Final Fantasy RPG's more than anything, and I don't really experience that much walls with FF. But without any form of challenge then what's the point of a game?

What I find funny though is that there are "mini-bosses" that are harder to beat than the final boss themselves. For example:
Emerald Weapon for FF7 (a LOT harder than Sephiroth)
Sephiroth for Kingdom Hearts I & II

Now those are only a couple from Squaresoft games, but it does kind of make you wonder. If mini-bosses are supposed to be tougher than the final bosses, why aren't they the final bosses?

Re:If no walls, then no challenge

[grumbel]

### But without any form of challenge then what's the point of a game?

The point of the game? How about simply having a good time? The games that I had most fun with in the last month where Tomb Raider: Legends and Dreamfall, neither of them where much difficult at all. If a game isn't difficult it gives me the freedom to actually enjoy the story and the characters instead of getting frustrated in some boss battle. Sure there is a place for games like Ikaruga, which by the way was very nice in terms of difficulty, since even when you suck at it, you sooner or later get unlimited continues, but some games are just hard for no good reason and even worse, don't even provide any way to overcome the hurdles.

One thing I don't understand is why there are still games that allow you do only set the difficulty at the start and not in the game, what good is a difficulty setting when I only find out that 'normal' was to hard when I am at the final boss?

Speaking about RPGs, I avoid to play them pretty much completly, since in the end there are only two ways for me to play them, either the game is easy enough so that I don't have any trouble with any enemy ever in the game, so the whole fighting is annoying and pointless, or there comes a point where fighting actually gets hard enough that it gets impossible to beat the enemy without doing stupid grinding to level up, I normally give up then. No matter how it goes, I never found the gameplay of jRPGs especially appealing.

Serious Sam 2

[gmb61]

The last level of this game was IMPOSSIBLE. After about an hour of dealing with dozens of giant mechanical spiders, hundreds of kleers, and a giant pyramid driven by Mental, I finally gave up and used a god mode cheat to finish the game. An extremely frustrating experience.

Speaking of God Of War...

[Dacmot]

The spike room is a breeze. Zonk's just getting old and arthritic. Battling the clones on god mode or challenge of the gods #8, that's something that caught my attention in between writing an email and talking on the phone.

Re:Speaking of God Of War...

[MasterGwaha]

i saved my game into a corner on godmode. i beat the challenge of the gods (jesus i was soo good after defeating the what how many round wasters and gorgons level? (7 or 8) but was stuck at pandoras box where there are treadmills on the floor running different was, archers and flying lava birds. all with NO MAGIC and some health =( i tried back tracking but there were no enemies left to get magic from.... it just waits for me..the wall....

Hitting a wall with a game that's not out?

[earthbound kid]

"Super Paper Mario" isn't out yet. It will be released for the Wii sometime later this year. Probably the comment should be about "Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door" on the Gamecube which is the sequel to "Paper Mario" for the N64.

For the record, I beat "Thousand Year Door," and I don't recall their being any unbeatable bosses. There might have been a couple that I had to challenge more than once to actually beat, but none were that tough. And I'm not a RPG grinder at all. For example, I never beat "Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga" because I found the final boss too hard.

Anyhow, if you haven't tried "Thousand Year Door," I can't recommend it enough: The dialogue is awesome, and the combat is fun.

Re:Commodore VIC-20 Dracula Text Adventure...

[zr-rifle]

You're not alone.

The name of the game is "The Count" and I had it too when I was a child. It is one of Scott Adams most challenging text adventures. One of the game objectives was inventing stratagems to quench the Vampire's lust for blood in order to survive the arrival of the night and live another day.

FFX

[Zebra_X]

FFX is a fun game - the thing that I found though was that if you raced through, and didn't get your charachters to a high enough level you would get pwnd by the later bosses. So... keep playing and you'll pwn.

King's Quest V

[Pendersempai]

In short: don't eat the pie.

Star Ocean: TSS - Fun with limiters

[Quilted Porcupine]

The first time I played through Star Ocean: TSS, I was having trouble beating Indalecio so I decided to leave the dungeon and do some leveling. While on the world map I figured I would hit all the cities on last time in case I had missed a Private Action at some point. To my surprise, I did find a PA with Indalecio's daughter. Little did I know, this PA (only available if you have a save at the last save point in the game) turns off Indalecio limiter which means instead of needing to be level 70-80 to beat him, you pretty much need to go all the way up to 255.

I didn't realize that and when I went back to fight the boss again, I foolishly saved over the earlier save. About 5 seconds in to the fight Indalecio wiped out my whole team. It wasn't until years later that I played through the game again and actually beat it.

Final Fantasy & Dragon Warrior

[GWBasic]

Something that used to bug me in some RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior is that you'd progress to a point in the game where you suddenly needed to increase your level by a significant amount. This would require you to literally play 5-6 hours straight fighting random enemies in the woods.

I always give up at the point where I need to spend an entire afternoon or evening doing boring tasks. Games are supposed to be FUN!

A recent phenomenon

[Belgand]

This is only a very recent issue. In the past the game was supposed to be hard. Hell, most games only have 10 levels or so total. The point was that the game was a challenge. You kept playing and playing and playing and trying to advance. Eventually you'd get better and slowly advance in the game. The people who beat games didn't do so because the makers intended everyone to get to the end, but because they had mastered the game.

Then again in those days (generally) you couldn't save your game. Also, this is not a blanket case and applies mainly to action games rather than adventure, RPG, or the like. This is also largely due to many earlier games having descended from arcade games where this was really the only way to handle a game.

Partially this represents a shift in the attitudes of game developers/audiences. Gaming has become more like a movie or book where you tell a story and mediate an experience. The older, challenge based area of action gaming has generally been given over to online multiplayer gaming where the challenge is constant and dynamic... but you'll never really be able to say that you're good enough to beat it.

Basically, what I'm saying is maybe we shouldn't harshly grade games based on the idea that everyone should be able to just play it straight through, but perhaps, we should accept that sometimes you just need to practice and get better... not cheat or demand easier games.

Then again, when there's some damn jumping puzzle that just makes a single part of a game unreasonably hard for no good reason that's just bad design and always has been.

Re:A recent phenomenon

[tepples]

Basically, what I'm saying is maybe we shouldn't harshly grade games based on the idea that everyone should be able to just play it straight through, but perhaps, we should accept that sometimes you just need to practice and get better... not cheat or demand easier games.

Do you seriously think everybody will be able to beat "The legend of MAX" by mere practice?

Re:A recent phenomenon

[DarkDust]

Well, we had that wall back in the old days as well. I particularly remember Super Mario Bros. 3: I had no problems reaching World 8, and even had lots of extras. But the levels in that world are so much more difficult than the previous ones that I didn't stand a chance... after playing three times to World 8 I only managed to cross about half of the worlds. That was it for me then. No fun any more. I like challenging games and beaten quite a lot of games now, but when the difficulty suddenly rises by an insanely amount it frustrates me and makes me abandon the game after a few tries.

But I agree with you that most games nowadays are way easier then former games... or maybe we just got better ? ;-)

Re:A recent phenomenon

[Belgand]

I think that older games actually had walls all the time. Think back to Contra, for example. While definitely one of the harder games, it certainly didn't affect sales much. You played the game and accepted that you probably weren't going to make it to the end. Beating a game was an accomplishment that took time and effort, not a natural expectation like finishing a book. Beating it meant that you were finally good enough to win.

Was it frustrating? Yes, at times it was pretty irritating. At the same time, games weren't measured in length the way they often are today. It's not a question of putting in more levels just to extend playtime. To go back to Contra you can play through it in what, 30 minutes to an hour? But is that really the actual play-time?

Gamecube games

[hellfish006]

Viewtiful Joe (1 & 2) and F-Zero for the GCN drove (no pun intended) me nuts for the longest time. They are VERY difficult games, atleast for me, and I have thrown my wavebird many a times. NFS:Hot Pursuit 2 caused me to throw the rented game disc against my wall (didn't break thankfully). I did this after having played one of the last races over a dozen times, to finally be in the lead in the last lap to only run into an invisible object in the middle of the road and lose the race. I went insane. Also, I have broken 2 ps2 controllers while playing EA sports games (mainly NCAA Basketball) becauses of how ridiculous it can be. The AI will just make miraculous come backs or I get called for invisible fouls. Better yet, my players won't do crap or run out of bounds when they have the ball before I control them, so frustrating.

Burnout

[British]

Burnout 3: Takedown - The preview race with the Formula 1 race car(fastest car in the game). All you have to do is race a course in a specific time(or faster). Sadly, the course is littered wtih toll booths that divide up the lanes. I couldn't race it 5 seconds without crashing into something. I threw my controller in frustration and sold the game.

That was the hardest "gaming wall" I hit. I've hit smaller walls and was so ticked off I gave up on the game early.

1. Driver - couldn't do the initiation with the various stunts. gave up
2. Driv3r - I coudln't even pass the 1st mission(keep up with the police cars). I figured if just the 1st mission is this steep and unforgiving, the game cannot possibly be that fun.
3. The Getaway - Gave up on the 2nd mission. This game does its absolute best to leave you in the dark. Yep, sold that one too. Huge ripoff.

As for positives, in Simpsons Hit & Run, I could never beat Smithers in the race, BUT it let me skip the mission.

Re:Burnout

[MasterGwaha]

the only way to beat it is to crash only once or less!! and when they are super hard like that try to imagine that there is only a single "straight" line that you can use to guide you. a rail per say based on timing. as long as you get to each "point" at the exact same time the same conditions present themselves (cars obstacles etc) and you can perfect exactly when to brake and when to turn. NEVER LET OFF THE BOOST!!!! that level is intense! goodluck!

You're right. What is "completion"?

[tepples]

Depends on your definition of "completion."

So what is an appropriate level of "completion" for the games Animal Crossing Population Growing (Nintendo GameCube) and Animal Crossing Wild World (Nintendo DS)? What about Tetris (almost every platform you've heard of) or SimCity (PC DOS, Mac, Super NES, Windows)?

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[walnutmon]

Don't play pointless crap games made for water-heads.

Blleep blip pp tippy dip blipp blppitty!

That is the stupid cow person from AC:WW telling you to get a life!

Just kidding. I like you tepples... But Animal Crossing sucks BIG TIME.

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[Applekid]

So what is an appropriate level of "completion" for the games Animal Crossing Population Growing (Nintendo GameCube) and Animal Crossing Wild World (Nintendo DS)?

You have all the items possible to get in the game.

What about Tetris (almost every platform you've heard of)

There has to be an upper limit, real or artificial, where things just don't get any faster. Easy Tetris versions like the one on DS and The Grandmaster have points at which they declare you a winner and show you an ending.

or SimCity (PC DOS, Mac, Super NES, Windows)?

Back in the day I remember it as trying to get a city with populations and income per month closest to the theoretical maximum, doing so in as few years as possible, and with the least amount to initial money.

Don't know about you, but the only one of the above completion states one could arrive at without a strategy guide that contains secrets of the inner workings of the games that one might never derive on their own. There was a time when games were 100% complete with all items and trinkets and levels and enemies and any other quantifiable thing without the use of strategy guides. The guides basically upset the game player / game maker difficulty balance like an arms race and so the game makers had to put more junk hidden in more obscure and arbitrary ways.

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[timftbf]

Tetris has at least one mode that you can 'win'. To complete it, I'd say you have to 'win' it on the highest difficulty settings, which starts with the screen about three-quarters full of blocks and things falling at an obscene rate. It's possible though - from memory, a fat Russian guy stands on the balcony playing the violin while the space shuttle launches.

This is the original GameBoy version, I don't know if a similar mode is universal.

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[C0rinthian]

Type B
Level 9
High 5

I remember quite a bit of satisfaction when finally winning that game.

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[The One and Only]

I always consider SimCity "won" if the only way to further develop is to build more arcos. At that point I summon disasters and rebuild.

Re:You're right. What is "completion"?

[Eccles]

It's not just the guides, it's the internet, which often has better (and free) guides than the guides. The smartest of us isn't going to notice as many things as a large group. How many people would have come with Regulus Black as RAB in Harry Potter? But now that's a very well-known possible solution to a puzzle from the last Harry Potter book. I'd say some serial TV shows, as well as video games, have had to become more sophisticated for that very reason.

Cave Story

[meowsqueak]

The last set of boss fights at the end of Cave Story, with NO save points, is just way too hard. A real pity because the rest of the game was a fantastic challenge - never hard enough to make me quit in disgust, but not easy either. But the final fights are just insane. Perhaps I just need to learn a technique, but I don't have time to try twenty times from scratch.

Faster than a speeding bullet?

[tepples]

The giant leap in the middle of World 8-2 in NES Super Mario Brothers.

There are a green pipe and two little platforms before this pit. Stand on the left side of the pipe so that both of Mario's feet are on the pipe, not hanging off. Then when you run to the right side and leap from the second little platform, you make it.

NES Ikari Warriors. I can't see how anyone can beat it without cheating, because you move so slowly that you can't dodge bullets

You can't dodge bullets in a lot of games. A lot of 2D games use a scale such that the screen is roughly 16 meters wide, and real bullets have a muzzle velocity on the order of the speed of sound (330 m/s). If you want to dodge bullets, play a game in The Matrix universe.

Re:Faster than a speeding bullet?

[Nimey]

Yeah, but compare your movement speed in Ikari Warriors to NES Guerilla War, a far better game. In IW, you die by being hit by *anything*: bullet, grenade, shrapnel, laser. No health or armor. I don't care about quasi-realistic physics if the damn game is no fun.

Hitting the wall... everywhere!

[OSXCPA2]

My Gamecube has defeated me.
Eternal Darkness - the three-legged boss that takes three spates of spell-casting (per the walkthrough) to kill. Never got past, despite 2 hours of trying. Gave up.
Metroid Prime - Boss where you have to shoot, roll around the circular track around it and up to the body three times. Never got past despite several hours of trying. Gave up.
Zelda - Wind Waker - got to the last castle and had to break for a few weeks due to school. Came back and I have no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do. And the timed side-quests (bring a bottle of special water halfway across the world in $RIDICULOUSLY_LITTLE time) were so annoying I didn't bother. Did anyone EVER figure out how to complete the 'flying platform' ? Your leaf won't stay 'whole' long enough, no matter how many mini-typhoons you catch.
Zelda - Twilight Princess - Got the damn goats into the stall, saved the game, came back the next day and I have another 10 goats to herd. Originals are already in the shed, and the 'new' goats won't enter. NPCs driving me nuts asking 'aren't you going to help out at the ranch?' Two hours in, the goats have beaten me. I quit - my personal record for giving up on a game - not making it out of the 'tutorial' portion.
Prince of Persia - Warrior Within - If I don't play it every day, I lose the ability to fight even remotely decently (at $AGE, my fast-twitch reflexes are shot unless playing guitar, and that's more muscle memory than anything else).

Original Doom on the PC - played the higher levels with NOCLIPPING and god-mode the first time to see where everything was. What a pansy when I was younger...

Super Mario - Any game that keeps letting me play no matter how many times I die gives me a sense of incredible game-inferiority, like its' saying 'It's okay, it happens to everybody... maybe next time.' Get to the second world with 5 restarts of however many lives and just have to stop, go outside and get some sunshine so I don't feel like a total idiot.

Yes, I suck at these games, but am obviously too stupid to know I should stop buying them. Good thing I'm married, or I'd have nothing constructive to spend my spare time on... and my wife doesn't care that I'm bad at video games - I can usually beat her at Mario Kart, so my (video game) life is not completely pathetic. :)

Re:Hitting the wall... everywhere!

[beyowulf]

Zelda - Wind Waker - got to the last castle and had to break for a few weeks due to school. Came back and I have no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do. And the timed side-quests (bring a bottle of special water halfway across the world in $RIDICULOUSLY_LITTLE time) were so annoying I didn't bother. Did anyone EVER figure out how to complete the 'flying platform' ? Your leaf won't stay 'whole' long enough, no matter how many mini-typhoons you catch.

The special water trip required the teleport song and some planning, but it is possible. As for the flying platform, where in the game was that? There are a couple of areas that could fit the description.

Myst IV

[Calmiche]

One of my most memorable and frustrating game breaker in recent years was the infamous Myst IV Monkey puzzle.

It was fairly simple in concept. That is, you used a device to generate different tones and lengths of notes to command different monkeys to move to different locations. The problem, at least for me, was that it was almost impossible for me to spin the cursor at the right speed to generate the right notes.

I love Myst Games, and still, the only game that I haven't finished is Myst IV.

The dog!

[Jarn_Firebrand]

I always attack my dog in nethack and he turns on me!

DROD

[Eustace Tilley]

I was enjoying DROD, but there is no way to bypass levels, and after a week seeing the same old puzzle, I lost interest.

I'm ridin' spinners, it don't stop

[tepples]

jak2 [...] I expected a platform game, I got a tetris.... without the fun. Compare to Ryan Davis of GameSpot who expected a tetris but got a tetris... without the fun. Mike Nowak of the-inbetween.com had the same experience. They got burned by infinite spin long before they got to the boss, who plays like this.

Zork 1 treasures

[owlman17]

Does anyone know how to open that stupid jewel-encrusted egg? Oh never mind...

Re:Zork 1 treasures

[Purity Of Essence]

You can't open it ... but it can be opened.

Re:Zork 1 treasures

[Uncle Rummy]

Perhaps by someone with the proper tools...

Let me guess, you hated Animal Crossing.

[tepples]

Something that used to bug me in some RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior is that you'd progress to a point in the game where you suddenly needed to increase your level by a significant amount. This would require you to literally play 5-6 hours straight fighting random enemies in the woods.

I always give up at the point where I need to spend an entire afternoon or evening doing boring tasks. Games are supposed to be FUN!

Let me guess, you hated Animal Crossing.

Nearly all of them

[dar]

Nearly every game I've played, I hit a wall somewhere. It's one of the reasons I love the Castlevania series. You never hit a wall. Have trouble beating a boss? Go beat up on the weaker enemies for a while and level up.

NINJA GAIDEN: BLACK

[noasj97]

Maybe its just me, but as if beating ninja gaiden for my third time wasn't enough, the missions are just ridiculous... please someone else tell me they have problems with the missions.. i made it a few rows down, but things just start to go insane... ill never stop playing the game though... its definetly my favorite game and just for this reason, its so challenging....and your a freaking ninja...

Most evil game ever...

[nick_davison]

First, let me say I'm a relatively hardcore gamer...

I custom build my own rigs, I made it to Elite in the game of the same name back in the 80s, I completed Doom countless times, I've owned every car in Gran Turismo 1 and 2, I've logged months in various versions of Civ. I even became a coder, wrote my own games as a kid and went on to work for a major game publisher and anyone that creates an account on the PS3 or buys from its store sees code I wrote.

But there's one game that I just can't beat. I swear, I've played it endlessly and still can't seem to complete it, find a completion screen, anything!

Bejewelled.

Casual game, my ass!

Zone of the Enders 2

[CelticWhisper]

Let me start by saying that I played and LOVED the first ZOE, and have finished and LOVE MOST OF the 2nd. Gameplay-wise, the 2nd is a vast improvement, or perhaps refinement, over the first and just plain shines.

Until you reach a certain boss. Those of you who have played the game probably know where I'm going with this.

The boss battle basically consists of fighting against a possessed ally whom you must cure, but CANNOT KILL lest you lose the fight and have to start over. It's essentially a battle of timing, as you have to attack the boss at the same time the boss attacks you, repeat 2-3 times, and then grab hold of it to cure your ally of the virus infecting their ship ("frame" as they're called in the game).

This battle is next to impossible in all but the initial playthrough of the game, and even then it's no picnic. The reason it actually gets harder as you replay the game is that you start over from round 1 with a maxed-out character. This means all special abilities/weapons, max damage, near invulnerability to enemy attacks, etc.

Problem is, when you reach this boss, the boss will die in 2-3 direct hits due to your superpowered ship, yet you're still required to line up the same 9-10 "perfectly timed" hits as in the first time through so you can grab the boss and cure the possession. Add to that the fact that the timing required is ridiculously precise and that the game really, truly seems to cheat half the time (properly-timed attacks wind up hurting the boss instead of opening the window to grab) just to get an edge over you, and all semblance of fun and enjoyment go straight out the window.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the most fun parts of the game (the 2nd half or a little less), including a couple of amazing battles, are AFTER this maddening boss fight.

I've gotten to the point where I consider the level immediately before the boss (a nifty train chase) to be the de-facto end of the game, and I just turn it off after that. The battle is so horrible it quite effectively ruins--completely and utterly ruins--what is otherwise a great action/adventure title.

Re:Zone of the Enders 2

[CelticWhisper]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but it also merits mentioning that the boss is EXTREMELY talkative and, to my knowledge, there is no way to shut off character voice-overs. Couple the repeated loss of the battle with having to hear the boss taunt your character and the battle gets really old, really fast.

Laundry list

[patternjuggler]

GTA:SA for the PC. A mission where you have to shoot down a plane with an executive or somebody on board. It's impossible with a mouse, and I haven't bothered to buy a PS2 style controller yet.

Simpsons Hit and Run for GC. Very late in the game there's a mission where you have to ferry toxic waste back and forth between the school and the nuclear plant within a time limit, and if you crash too hard the waste blows up and you have to drive all the way back for another one. Cheats that make your car go faster don't help, because the faster you go the harder the crashes will be and more likely the waste will explode. I know I'm only two levels away from beating the thing, and other than that it's a great game (earlier difficult levels let you skip them, but now at the end it doesn't do that anymore).

Resident Evil Zero for GC. I thought this game was pretty decent compared to my experience playing RS on the PS1. I made it into some mansion where there's some stairs to a closet with monsters that take a couple of shotgun hits to kill. Only I don't have that much ammo, and all other weapons are too slow. I've been thinking of starting over on the easy difficultly level, but the thought of having to go over all the same stuff again has prevented me from trying.

Spy Hunter for the GC. I didn't beat the first level on the first try, the game seemed so shitty I never tried it again.

Freelancer for the PC. This game seemed pretty good for a while, then I went a little too far out for the upgrade levels of my ship, and got into a mission where there's a save point halfway through in the middle of space. I reload that save and am killed pretty soon after, and I think I either copied over earlier save points or didn't even want to have to replay the first half of that mission even once.

Metroid Prime 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Boost ball guardian. After dying on this guy 20+ times I finally just quit trying. I will never see the 2nd half of the game.

my thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

FFX ?? had a wall? where? the last boss are you joking? Perhaps what the op ran into was the wall of boredom in leveling up... that I can see how it could become a wall, but if you could handle a little bit of boredom, the last boss was cake.

GoW didn't give me much trouble, of course I play most of my games on a medium difficulty level as I've found that putting things on ultra-hard leads me to dumping games much faster. (GOW gave me another problem however, after playing through it once the disk failed to load thereafter at a point in the beginning... sigh)

The wall that I always run into, ignoring hardware/software failures, is boredom. At some point I just get bored with the whole thing... time to go play a different game.

Hmm.. the one game I did quit simply for difficulty was gta:SA... I was enjoying the game quite a bit and I got to the jet missions and that's the point I stopped playing. The controls were just horrible for planes. (I was playing the pc version) (I don't remember any other part of that game that I didn't enjoy)

My brickwalls

[DimGeo]

1. Broodwar, the last Zerg campaign mission. Never defeated more than Mengsk.
2. Medal of Honor, the D-Day mission. Never reached the shore.

That said, Sub-Niggurat (Quake 1 final boss, excuse my spelling) was almost a dealbreaker for me, but someone told me I have to think in Doom terms, and I managed to complete it then...

Warcraft 1, human mission 7. There was a bug that sent out all the orcs when I freed the first peasant. There's a patch that fixes that though. Nice for dosbox-ing thease days...

Warcraft 2's last alliance mission was real hard, and so were (in Warcraft 3) the last missions of the first and second undead campaigns, and the night elves first last mission...

Black Dragon/Tiger and Doom 2

[LukeRazor]

The old coin-op game

There was one jump near the end (I assume it was, because you had already bought everthing from the shop) that was impossible.

My guess was that you needed an 8-way joystick to do a diagonal jump, but it was only ever installed on 4-way boxes :-(

also I never finished Doom 2 unless I activated the bug that made all of the monsters spawn in the wall in the final level

Walls

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

FFXI - Limit Break 2. Just... can't... do it... anymore. Finally uninstalled the game. zzzz

GranTurismo 4 - Man, 89% and I just can't keep going. One of the best racing games ever, but I think I may FINALLY be done. Bravo for making it compelling since release!

Onlink (Mod for the great game Uplink) - Blown cover and game over is a regular part of the learning curve, but there aren't any saves for the game, and when you have 36+ hours invested in a career and blow it from something stupid, it just hurts the soul. Still haven't gone back.

Re:Walls

[Gleng]

I just bought GT4 after playing the arse off of GT3 for years. (I saw it for £8 second hand. Bargain!)

Stage 15 of the iA license tests is killing me. The one where you have to do a lap of the Nurburgring without hitting the grass. I've gone off the track at one of the last few corners twice now.

I'm sure I'll do it eventually, but I've thrown the controller a couple of times already, and I only bought it a few days ago. :)

Re:Walls

[oc255]

Gran Turismo 3. My wall was the complex string test. You have to drive a 3minute lap with no driving aids on this ridiculous course in a Porsche. I was at 99% complete and that race is all I had to beat (gold). I put it down for 3 months after killing myself on it. The very day that I picked it back up again I beat it and got 100%. I haven't talked to anyone IRL that has gotten 100% although I know they are out there.

GT4, yeah, not going through that again. I'm just racing to have fun and getting bronze medals.

Are you playing the hentai version?

[macadamia_harold]

I got sick of the "save the caravan" one, previous to that was the first time (early on) where you had to follow the Orc guy, and beat off his armor

Are you playing the hentai version? I played through the entire thing and never had to beat anyone off.

DMC 3

[Otis_INF]

In Devil may cry 3 (not the SE edition), I simply couldn't proceed anymore with the game. I already switched to 'easy' which I found pretty lame, but heck, it was said to be a great game. Though in mission 7 you need to put out flames on a statue by attacking it with every combo you know, and... every time you need to use a different combo, and for a loooooong time. I spend over an hour to get past it and then I gave up. It wasnt even the end-boss. So if I failed to hammer the end-boss' into the ground, I would be forced to do it all over again... no way.

I also quit on GTA 3 VC and GTA SA, simply due to the incredibly crappy controls during shooting missions. It was simply impossible to aim right in some missions, so you were forced to do them over and over again, while other missions were just so boringly easy.

Re:DMC 3

[MasterGwaha]

for the combat adjudicator statues you need to have all the combos leveled up in order to break it. or get to SS super stylish rating on the SUPER ones with all the flames lit. try doing a "mini-jump" attack. youd be surprised that jumping and doing the combos adds to your combo meter and that i did it all with the trickster style. if you use the sword master style its really much easier ^_^ later on you fight several of the hell guardians/ reapers that warp around at once. good luck! and on harder difficulty levels the harder enemies appear sooner than they are introduced! DMC3 takes difficulty to ELEVEN!!

Re:Commodore VIC-20 Dracula Text Adventure...

[Petrushka]

Ouch. I did manage to beat The Count, but I remember many hapless hours of infuriation trying to work out what things I could do in Savage Island that wouldn't get me killed very quickly. I never did finish Savage Island I; I never got anywhere in Savage Island II (hyperventilate, breathe out, run through the vacuum ... and, inevitably, die)

Zelda!

[LKM]

For me, Zelda is a big offender. In several Zelda games, I've made it to the final boss, but wasn't able to beat him. Minish Cap was especially disturbing, because in order to get to the boss, you had to kill several pretty tough knights... I thought about trying to level up before trying again, but I then, a few more hearts wouldn't have made that big a difference.

Rocket Slime on the DS is another game that is very easy until the final battle.

Far Cry - Good Example Of An Alternative Solution

[pandrijeczko]

As on old duffer in my mid-40s, I don't claim to be too fast on the old "trigger finger" these days - so I'm sure there are a few spotty youths out there will find it hilarious that an old-man FPS fan is having problems with this game. Never mind...

However, I'm playing it on "challenging" and spent most of an evening trying to take out a large group of mercenaries on a nearby island. (For anyone who has played the game, it's the bit in the "Research" level before you enter the mine.)

I had no bullets for my sniper rifle and anytime I started to approach them, via land or sea, I got cut to shreds.

In the end, I decided to swim some way around the back of the island and came across two guys in a gun boat - so I took them out, stole the boat and used it to totally strafe the mercenaries first, then picked off the remainder in the normal way.

I don't know if this was the recommended way of doing this but I would have been easy just picking them off with a sniper rifle had I had any ammunition. So it's nice to know that the game has been designed with at least two solutions in mind, if you are prepared to look a little for an alternative.

No game should rely on "pixel perfect jumping", which is my one and only criticism of the original Half-Life. I have literally given up some games because of having to try and retry unsuccessfully to get past a particular problem - there should always be the option of an alternative way through for players who "think outside of the box" a bit more.

DNF

[rlp]

In Duke Nukem Forever running on the GGC II (Google Game Console), I usually get a splitting headache after the second boss level. They really need to work on the the firmware for those neural implants.

America'a army

[Chris whatever]

i was never able to go over the rope wall in th training courser, going up and over it no problem but as soon as i would go down no matter where i went they yelled that i had failed so after trying every way possible except jumping of knifing my instructor i quit.

Super MarioKart

[Mumeinohito]

I've never been able to win the gold medal in 150cc Special Cup, because I can barely ever even place in the starting Donut Plains course.

The "anneurisms" level in Trauma Center for the DS

[CaseM]

Holy frickin' crap...it made me give up the game completely.

Thief Series

[DarkHand]

I've played Thief 1, 2, and 3, and each game has a 'shelf' point for me about 3/4ths through. I love the concept of the game to death, but I've never been able to muster the effort to push through these sticking points... I hate to admit that I've never beat any of the three games. :P

number ONE!

[Hognoxious]

A professor of mine (and a Canadian liberal, surprisingly enough, to boot) said it best recently: "Americans, as a whole, are overly critical toward themselves--and look at everybody else in the world through rose-colored glasses."

Based on a sample of around ten, all academics like him, I'll wager. The majority sure aren't like that.

Two Words

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rick Dangerous"

The entire game (and it sequel) were all about getting past that wall.

StarFox Adventures on GC

[InspectorGadget]

I got to the 'Test of Fear' section, and just can't get past it. Getting the joystick twitch at just the right millisecond seems beyond me. It's a shame 'cos up until then I was addicted.

Fate - Gates of Dawn

[baburas]

IMO one of the greatest RPG game ever. But sadly I could never finish it. There are hours and hours of gameplay with tricky quests to do. The problem is if you stop playing for a some time, you don't realy know where you are and what do do. There's no quest log or such thing. So you have to start again. And when you lose your savegames........ lets start again. Time to grap my Atari ST from the pavement and start the game one last time. But this time i will succeed..

haha

[xiphix]

anyone who ran into the "wall" in final fantasy x obviously hasnt played a "challenging" rpg. FF:X was easy as cake. so easy, in fact that for a challenge i still pickup the game and play with the main character only. no support. yay! the only game ive ever put down due to the fact that it was so hard was the original legacy of kain: blood omen. the controls were sticky at best and the game required alot of movement with horrible camera angles.

FF8

[C0rinthian]

My first time through the game, I wasn't very good. I relied on summons way too heavily, and didn't bother getting weapons for anyone. I also didn't utilize the draw system very well. I hit the final dungeon with little issue, but the moment I stepped in, I was screwed. I put the game away for a couple months then started over.

Also, the last fight in DOA4 is such a PITA. The Katsumi clone is one of the cheapest fights I've ever seen.

Slave Zero

[kalirion]

I can see how lots of people would quite after not being able to beat the end boss. Especially since there's not enough ammo in the final area to kill him if you're carrying the final weapons (you can only carry one cannon type, one rocket launcher type and one energy type at a time). I was only able to finish the game after reloading the previous saved game and swapping weapons for ones which have a better damage/ammo ration.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels (old N64 game)

[lamplighter]

Probably the "wall" I remember most was this game for my old Nintendo 64 called "Rocket: Robot on Wheels." It was originally going to be called "Sprocket," but then they found out there was already a game called Sprocket, so they had to change it.

Rocket was this little red robot, basically a unicycle with a head and no arms, just a tractor beam. The game was very creative with this, though -- you could pick up objects with the tractor beam and carry them around, or even throw them by moving forward and then releasing them. You could also tractor onto moving objects to be carried along with them. The worlds were fully 3D; it had a very good physics engine.

Rocket had no built-in weapons, but sometimes there were bombs you could pick up and throw. It was very hard to get the hang of picking up a bomb, moving backward, moving forward in the right direction, and releasing the bomb at just the right time so it would go where you wanted without blowing yourself up.

Well, in the final world, after getting past a few complex obstacles that took about 10 minutes, there was a place where there was a giant fan coming at you in a room where you couldn't escape. There were bombs you could throw to knock out the blades, if they didn't bounce off and possibly kill you. If you didn't knock out all 4 blades before the fan got to you, you died. There were holes in the floor, so you had to avoid those or you'd fall into oblivion. There were some flying enemies that were trying to kill you too. And if you ran out of energy (each time you died you'd lose energy), you'd have to start the whole level over again.

I'm fairly patient, but after about 20 times this became too much. I never finished this game. Beautiful, innovative gameplay, and then it suddenly stopped at this do-or-die moment. I never saw the end boss.

Tetris "at an obscene rate"

[tepples]

and things falling at an obscene rate

It wasn't this fast, was it?

RE4

[^_^x]

Lots of games have "shelves," but RE4 is the one that bothers me the most now since it's such an awesome game...

I'm fighting the big guy in the flaming barn, but I don't have anything that can scratch him. Dump all my handguns into him, empty some boxes of ammo from the shotgun, toss three of each kind of grenade... then get mowed down.

It's not fun. It's not realistic - the guy goes well beyond any rules of physics unless he's made of diamond... The only real answer I guess is to go back a dozen or two hours and replay the whole game, hoping to have more supplies the next time I make it there... and that's just not going to happen. :/

Tomb Raider, Angel of Darkness

[gedhrel]

Trying to run up the flight of stairs you start by.

Or how about "Earliest know gaming wall"?

[Bright Apollo]

I can remember playing Lode Runner on my Apple //e and getting to some odd level where, basically, you just died endlessly because you could never maneuver out of danger.

Or Wizardry (hacked of course, also on Apple //e) where you never got to the last level and finally realized you're never going to get back those last eight months.

-BA

The original gaming wall: the PacMan final level.

[TwoBit]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/Spli t_Screen_in_Pac_Man.gif

Rygar (NES) - the final boss

[The Beezer]

This game has haunted me for 20 years. No save options at all, so after spending several hours playing through the game, this boss would slap me around like it was nothing. I didn't have the patience to spend several more hours powering up at once and Mom wouldn't let me leave the system on when it wasn't being used, so I never finished it. One of these days I'll knock this off my list.

Ikaruga

[Reapy]

I really wanted to get good at this game, and at least beat it. It was so well done.

I got to the level, maybe the 4th level, that had you approaching the spinning base. I took one look at it, realized there was one more level after this, and, very calmly, put the game away forever. No thank you. Thats probably one of the few times in 20+ years of gaming that i was intimidated by difficulty. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Ninja gaiden, I put it down not due to difficulty, but frustration at repetition. I realize that playing a spot over and over forces you to get good, but sometimes I would rather just have a save game right at the boss, or whatever tough spot it is, and keep dieing over and over again until I get it.

Sometimes I'll do ridiculous challenges over and over again for hours if I can restart them fast. If I have to wait 1 to 5 minutes before I can get to the hard part again, the games going back on the shelf.

I mean I remember the NES days where getting to the boss was the thrill, a new part, you were shaking, new attack patterns, and what a great feeling. But I'm kinda over that. Its not new anymore, just let me save the game where I want. Hell, half the reason I liked COD 2 (single player) was cause it autosaved for me and I never had to touch a load or save button and was able to just play right through the game with minimal effort.

Oh, and one last HARD game.. Grand turismo, license tests, trying to get perfect score on them all. I never knew it was so hard to take one fucking corner in my life.

Reapy

N00bs....

[Hazclan13]

I play Counter Strike Source and its the newbie player, campers and team killers that makes me hot under the collier.

If you suck, you suck

[Anonymous Coward]

... no point in complaining about it through pseudo-journalism!

Ultima 3

[auld_wyrm]

Mark of the Snake I still vividly recall the trauma of walking through every dungeon trying to get the location and moons right.

from reading the posts, I can only say

[geekoid]

What a bunch of pansy gamers.

Sheesh.
It's too hard, it's to repetitve.
Gah.

What do you want a Boss who is defensless and just waiting for you to kill it with a toothbrush?

yeah, you heard me.

Wimps.

Breakout

[geekoid]

in that game, I was always hitting the wall!

Diakatana

[geekoid]

was a shelf game...it sat on the store shelves forever!

Rainbow Six - Vegas: Hacking the computer at end

[JohnnyComeLately]

I hit a wall for quite some time, and if it weren't for the public forum on the developer's website, I may have never finished the game. I had ran into a glitch in the part where you fight through the labs (at the dam) and you hacked the computer, which opened a vault door. With the door open, you could then finish the game by killing the "bad chick" (sorry, forgot her name already). Problem was, I could never seem to hold off all the guys who bum-rushed us in the warehouse, while our trusty side kick hacked the computer. I thought I saw some scaffolding or something that might enable another way to get to her....so I back tracked through the labs to look for a 2nd (3rd to be technically accurate) way into the warehouse, but on the second story. Anyway, it "checkpoint" saved back in the labs. From that point on, I could not "hack computer", so the final fight scene never spawned and I couldn't get to the "bad chick".

I later learned you can "reload scene" in R6:Vegas (rather than "Start at last Checkpoint") and it worked like a champ.

Changing game subjects, I'm contemplating going though Gears of War. I found 27 of 30 COGS, but it's really a pain in the ass to go back through the same game a 2nd and 3rd game for points. Yes, I don't have to do it...but I'm only at ~470 out of 1000 even though I've beaten GoW and R6:Vegas. Some times you have to beat a game 3 times: Single Player (insane level, if not you beat it a 4th (normal) and 5th (realistic) time), Co-Op and Multiplayer (usually ranked).

Yeah, yeah, I'm whining...but I wish we got more for beating it. Some achievements almost seem silly in retrospect.

Starfox Adventures

[Springhead]

I played through this one with my son and we were having a great time with it until we got to the level where you had to ride a bird-like reptile and take out missile towers. I'm sure no-one has ever finished it, my wife, my older son and several of his friends had a go and no joy. I was quite annoyed as we had enjoyed the game (my son is eight), the story and invested a lot of time into the game just to hit a wall with what seems like a damn-near impossible twitch section that was totally out of sync with the rest of the game. I hated that level.

I can't believe no one mentioned this...

[Andre_PC]

Shadow of the Beast (genesis/mega drive). The whole game is a huge gaming wall, considered to be one of the hardest games ever at the time. It always frustrated me as I could never pass beyond the first screen(there are no levels), until Sega released the invincibility cheat code. I swear, I heard thousand of cries of joy through out the world. ;) So yeah, I used a cheat to finish it, shame on me.

Funny, only now, after reading the article on wikipedia (that I linked above), I found out that the increased difficulty was due to a sloppy conversion of the refresh rate.

Re:Commodore VIC-20 Dracula Text Adventure...

[Darby]

YOU'VE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE!

Thats my Commodore gaming memory.

You fought your way through a million enemies to rescue your lady and she kicks you square in the nuts and you die.

That's my Commodore gaming memory ;-)

Half-Life 2: Starting the game

[sehlat]

After having to deal with multi-minute "monther may I?" links to Steam weeks after everything was supposed to be stable, I gave up even trying to play. Oddly enough, it finally broke my "gotta get another game" meme and I haven't bought ANY games since.

Thanks, Valve. I needed the time.

My "Bug Against The Windshield" Moments In Gaming

[kionel]

1. Goldeneye 64 -- Protect whatsherface in the Evil Control Room while dozens of bad guys attack.

I lost track of how many times I tried this level. I never, ever made it through.

2. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City -- The Tank mission.

In my defense, this was on a PS2, not a PC. Aiming with that controller SUCKED.

I tried this for a week. I put down the game to take a break. I never went back.

3. Federation of Free Traders -- Everything

This Amiga "classic" was supposed to be like Elite, except better. Instead, it was like being anally fisted by a thick-knuckled dwarf, except worse.

Nothing worked. Nothing. See the pirate? The one shooting at you? Oh, crud, you're dead. Next time I'll...oh, I'm dead again. What about...Crud.

4. Starfleet Command II: Empires At War -- Final Federation Mission

I played that mission a dozen times on one day of my Christmas vacation. Did it matter? Nope. The mission always, always failed.

In my defense, I've since learned that it was bugged. :)

Descent: Freespace -- Silent Threat

[MortalityTechnician]

Your wing of fighters is sent as an escort for a couple of bombers. Simple mission in theory: bombers turn a space station into dust, everyone goes home. Problem is, the bombers do pretty much nothing to the station and you're forced to blow it up yourself. Not so bad, as after the first fifteen or so attempts, you've finally given in and gotten yourself a bomber to pilot. And then a huge destroyer jumps in. Still not so bad, as you have most of your wings still flying around. Its weapons won't even hit a half-decent pilot. Except the destroyer is the spawn point for unlimited waves of fighters. One by one, your wingmates are hunted down, until you're left, feebly pummeling away at the destroyer with your stockpile of bombs in a spot where you hope no-one will notice you. Eventually you run out, and call in a support ship for more ammo. The fighters chew up your support ship. You're stuck there alone, trying to melt a hole in the destroyer's hull with your laser cannons. A stray fighter notices you. You die. I've never seen the ending.

Perfect Dark

[Anonymous Coward]

No one mentioned Perfect Dark for the N64 yet. I can beat many of the levels, but for some reason I've never been able to beat the final boss (even on easy)!

I read the strategies on how to beat him, but as of today I have yet to beat it.

Biggest obstacle is...

[vorlich]

Hanging around waiting for Sow Joan on a Sunday.
She's never early,
she's always late,
the first thing you learn is you always have to wait...
Damn you turnips! Damn you all to

F-Zero GX

[russfeld]

Ok, it's not the hardest game in the world, but who here (among us lowly GCN owners) has ever actually beat everything on that game? Without going to the arcade to get the bonus stuff? (I hear there are such things as those, but here in Kansas we don't get that newfangled gadgetry). I consider my self pretty danged good (I beat Twilight Princess in 29hrs with absolutely no help, guides, etc), but that is the only Gamecube game that I paid for that I haven't beat yet.

Buying a level 40 mount in World of Warcraft

[petrus4]

It's a major pain in the rear end...it took me close to a month.

Blizz either need to make it cheaper, or better educate people on earning gold in the game. Personally though, I think they should try and avoid having any single item cost more than 50g at the absolute most...cos that way people would have much less incentive to buy from gold farmers.

Anyone ever played...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guitaroo Man?
When I first played it, I could not get past the flying shark level at all. I ended up giving up in frustration.
A few months later, I came back to it and played the level again. After many, many tries I finally managed to get through it. Now I can get through it every time. However, I think I enjoyed the game more because of it. When I hit the next "wall" (the level in the Cathedral) I felt more confident that with work I could get past at, and my skill at the game increased.
These "walls" transformed what could of been a stupidly easy rythm game into a fun, challenging game that lasted a lot longer than it could of done. When you get good at the game, it is easy to play through the entire game in one sitting, but the process of improving at the game is very satisfying.

However, I still haven't got past the second level on master mode...

Anyone else played this game? Thoughts? Comments?

ADVENT

[slagish666]

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

Damnit! Ctrl-C, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-C...

Two Halo 2 walls

[BigVig209]

When playing in legendary mode in Halo 2, my first wall is the second hanger battle at the beginning of the game. I always run out of ammo and grenades before the second or third wave of grunts and elites. My second wall is attempting to seize the gravity well with the marines when playing legendary. I always find it really hard to get past those two points in the game.

Yes, World of Warcraft

[TheSuperlative]

I hit a gaming wall called World of Warcraft. After months and months of almost-constant play, main-tanking all the way to AQ40, I realized how pointless and obnoxiously repetitive it all was. I haven't played another game for six months. The realization entirely drained my will to Play.

DOA 4

[Conception]

So, Kasumi's Clone at the end... man... every review I read of that game talks about how the computer basically cheats. There's no reason that the end boss had to be that hard, and even less reason to force you to beat her to unlock most of the content. Ugh!

SMW?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Tubular on Super Mario World

Boss fights

[ThePhilips]

This is precisely why I hate the game console's infamous notion of "boss fights": most of the time you die fast and for no apparent reason. Some stupid game might require you to redo whole level if you die there, since the console' games has only rudimentary notion of "same game".

For the reason, I avoid sequel games coming from consoles: they often flush on your all their new and improved (as seen by old timers) coolness, and if you haven't played previous versions of the game it does only frustrate you with obscure quests and weird feats.

And I hate platformers - in particular New Super Mario DS. It boring and sucks. There are some places w/o any clues how to pass them. All in all, wasted money and -worst- wasted weeks in one place on map 2-2 I haven't managed to pass. "Mario Sucks" (c) me.

Cheating Game AI's: Heroes of Might and Magic

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate cheating AI's. I was playing Heroes of Might and Magic. I don't rememeber which one but I had a great run in the game and then I was attacked by the enemy and they had a few genies that just massacred my party of dragons.

I had a save point just before the battle and I tried replaying it but I would always die. I then tried attacking the enemy before they go to me and I found that there were NO genies in this group. WTF? Where did they come from? So I tracked the groups path and found that they were going to some bush and getting the Genies there. But when I went I wouldn't get anything.

I wasted an afternoon figuring this out and I lost all respect for the game and stopped playing it. I actually stopped playing all games at that point too.

Rogue - the original

[Anonymous Coward]

Still can't beat it!

The original 'Wall' for me at least

[thewils]

Was killing the dragon in Adventure/Colossal Cave.

Man, I must have played that thing on and off for months until someone told me how to kill it.

What, with your bare hands?

Jet Force Gemini

[Jens de Smit]

The final boss is hard, but that's OK. The problem is, you NEED a whole bunch of homing missiles to finish him off. The problem is, I didn't give Juno the homing missile upgrades, so he just has 10, which is not enough to kill the boss. Trying to hit that #@&^%^&^&* small spot on his ass with something other than a homing missile is just not doable. I nevertheless apent three days trying to do it and than I never pleyed the game again. A pity, because the game rocked altogether.

Driver

[LittleImp]

The first Driver was a extremely frustrating experience. I'm not very good at racing games, and the first mission in Driver was some kind of extremely difficult driving test. The only game where I couldn't even finish the tutorial...

ZZT

[Ekhymosis]

So there i was, a few years back trying to open the bank vault in zzt, but failed miserably. DAMN YOU TIM SWEENY!!!!

Mansion of Terror

[Forgotten Gopher]

Recently I cracked out the NES and started playing some of those games. Some of them became instantly infuriating, such as the Mansion of Terror level in Double Dragon II. That place fucking sucks. You step onto a ledge, and a fireball greets your face, and encourages you to make quick friends with the below you or the loving spikes that just seem to beckon to you. Took about 4 game overs before I wiimoted the controller at the TV...