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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?
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!