Multi Games you quit because you got stuck due to difficulty spike or part?

[Quagmire]

First that comes to mind is Jak 2, it is already a tough game due check point spacing and lack of supplies, but then there is a race through the city I could never beat, it was decent amount of the way into the game

The other is the inspiration for this post The Messenger, overall it's a fair game, I've died but usually my fault or learning how a boss works, but I got to a platforming section in the underworld, where you have to race against lava coming up, and it's a long section with a lot of obstacles and tough platforming. What really makes me not want to keep trying is the checkpoint is a screen before this, meaning I have to do a screen which isnt too hard, but it is annoying that I cant just die and immediately try again, theres 30 or so seconds of game before

What about you all?

 

[shortkut]

Widget for NES
Bart vs the space mutants for NES

 

[Mark]

This is gonna wind up being a good thread.

Ranger X for Sega Genesis/MegaDrive is probably going to be my first on the list. It was a side-scroll/top-scroll third-person shooter, and stumped the hell out of me as a kid.

Ecco the Dolphin for Genesis was another, and the lack of instructions made it even more difficult.

The Ooze was a weird one for Genesis. It wasn’t too difficult, but it just stopped making sense to me. Dude gets turned into ooze… dude has to acquire more ooze to stay alive, each hit removes ooze. Simple enough, right? Naaah.

Steel Empire for Genesis got me because I just couldn’t figure out the hit box for one of the bosses, ended up beating it years later.

Eternal Champions for Genesis tried so hard to be a Mortal Kombat clone, but the storyline wasn’t nearly as simple as climbing a list.

Desert Strike for Genesis just pissed me off. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Jungle Strike, Urban Strike, and later Nuclear Strike… I just couldn’t get the hang of this one.

Gran Turismo is my first on PSX I gave up on. I wanted to get better at this game, but it was just too damn frustrating to play with a controller that didn’t even have analog sticks at the time.

Final Fantasy VIII is gonna be on there for PSX since I mentioned it in another thread. Dumbass over here didn’t know anything about level scaling as a kid.

Resident Evil took me forever to beat the first time around. Definitely painted myself into a corner on a few attempts, finally beat it by the time the Director’s Cut came out.

 

[TD]

A few come to mind immediately although there's quite a lot from the NES/SNES/Genesis era.

Vagrant Story - I remember liking it but I think I just couldn't grasp the conplex mechanics. I was never able to beat it.

Cuphead - I loved the art style and gameplay but I just couldn't beat it.

Battletoads / Ghouls n Ghosts - PTSD as a kid right there.

 

[Mark]

A few come to mind immediately although there's quite a lot from the NES/SNES/Genesis era.

Vagrant Story - I remember liking it but I think I just couldn't grasp the conplex mechanics. I was never able to beat it.

Cuphead - I loved the art style and gameplay but I just couldn't beat it.

Battletoads / Ghouls n Ghosts - PTSD as a kid right there.

Fuckin’ Battletoads and Double Dragon! That was another one that was unnecessarily difficult for me.

 

[Ben]

I'll admit to never truly beating the final "one winged angel" battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. I tried for so long, I think I eventually just used a GameShark so I could see the final cutscene.

 

[Marlfox]

As a kid, I didn’t finish Super Mario Bros. or SMB3, Ecco the Dolphin, bloody Altered Beast, Streets of Rage and other ex-arcade coin machine games.

That one goddamn hoverbike obstacle course level on Battletoads always drained my lives if not stopping my progression outright.

As an adult, any MMO is going to bore me out eventually, and I’ve got much more skill for difficult games but less patience. LotR Shadow of War harded me out in the early game even though I’d risen through Shadow of Mordor. Recently gave up on some indie rat game not worth the difficulty.

 

[Mark]

I'll admit to never truly beating the final "one winged angel" battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. I tried for so long, I think I eventually just used a GameShark so I could see the final cutscene.

Although I did beat that last battle, I know you’re not alone on that one. I know a few people that got stumped on it, then ended up going through with a leveled KotR and wiping it out. More often, I’ve heard of people getting stuck on Emerald or Ruby weapon.

As a kid, I didn’t finish Super Mario Bros. or SMB3, Ecco the Dolphin, bloody Altered Beast, Streets of Rage and other ex-arcade coin machine games.

That one goddamn hoverbike obstacle course level on Battletoads always drained my lives if not stopping my progression outright.

As an adult, any MMO is going to bore me out eventually, and I’ve got much more skill for difficult games but less patience. LotR Shadow of War harded me out in the early game even though I’d risen through Shadow of Mordor. Recently gave up on some indie rat game not worth the difficulty.

Altered Beast INFURIATED me as a kid, and then again as an adult when I downloaded it off of PSN.

As far as MMO’s… I’ve yet to play one, whether it’s WoW or CoD online. Split-screen co-op or nothing for multiplayer.

 

[Quagmire]

This is gonna wind up being a good thread.

Ecco the Dolphin for Genesis was another, and the lack of instructions made it even more difficult.

The Ooze was a weird one for Genesis. It wasn’t too difficult, but it just stopped making sense to me. Dude gets turned into ooze… dude has to acquire more ooze to stay alive, each hit removes ooze. Simple enough, right? Naaah.



Final Fantasy VIII is gonna be on there for PSX since I mentioned it in another thread. Dumbass over here didn’t know anything about level scaling as a kid.

Yeah Ecco is tough, especially for a kid which is when I played it. I have heard the ooze can be tough, but I've never tried it

I wouldnt have known about level scaling without the internet (I beat VIII in the late 00s)

A few come to mind immediately although there's quite a lot from the NES/SNES/Genesis era.

Vagrant Story - I remember liking it but I think I just couldn't grasp the conplex mechanics. I was never able to beat it.


Battletoads / Ghouls n Ghosts - PTSD as a kid right there.

Vagrant story was tough, you had to keep like oen of each type of weapon, I also got bored with it as it was more a dungeon crawler feel than a normal jrpg

Last two par for the course for most

I'll admit to never truly beating the final "one winged angel" battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. I tried for so long, I think I eventually just used a GameShark so I could see the final cutscene.

Although I did beat that last battle, I know you’re not alone on that one. I know a few people that got stumped on it, then ended up going through with a leveled KotR and wiping it out. More often, I’ve heard of people getting stuck on Emerald or Ruby weapon.

I was over powered when I got to Sephy and yeah KotR wrecked him, I think I even had a double cast where the battle started out with me double casting it, good times

 

[Fool's Requiem]

Gran Turismo is my first on PSX I gave up on. I wanted to get better at this game, but it was just too damn frustrating to play with a controller that didn’t even have analog sticks at the time.

I stopped playing Gran Turismo 3 when I got to the part where you're expected to complete excessively long races and have to try to manage your tires and fuel and time your pit stops well so you don't fall behind. The game was already suuuuuper repetitive by that point, those endurance races put me over the edge.

‐----------

The number of games I've stopped playing midway into it for any number of reasons besides "this game sucks" are astronomical.

I never completed DK64 because of the boxing match with King K Rool. I cheated to beat King Boo in Luigi's Mansion.

I've since beaten it, but in Max Payne 2, there's a mission where you play as Mona and you have to keep Max alive. Even today, it's a massive pain in the ass, but back when the game came out, that was my stopping point.

I never played F-Zero GX beyond the second training level. Only really played the tracks and racers I had available from the start. Driver 1 is the same. Couldn't get past that first training level and have only played the free roam map. The original F-Zero never got finished either because one of the later races were nearly impossible. Just surviving a race was hard enough, coming out on top was impossible.

XIII has the no checkpoints issue that many games in the 00s had and if you died in the middle of a long level, you started over from the beginning. I still have not beat the game because of that.

I could only beat No One Lives Forever because I used a cheat to turn off the damn alarms.

I stopped playing GTA 5 when I realized I was wasting the stockmarket missions by completeting them too early and thus made it so I could make the most money possible from them.

I quit GTA 4 somewhere lateish into the game when I encountered what seemed like an impossible mission. GTA 4 has this annoying thing where when you complete a mission, you then have to escape a 4 or 5 star wanted level. Super annoying when you barely scrape through from the mission itself.

Stopped playing Dynasty Warriors 8 on PC after I accidentally deleted all of my save information. Hundreds of hours down the drain. Sometimes the difficulty spike is your own ineptitude.

I couldn't play through Uncharted 1 because of the swapped controls that were unable to be changed. Seriously, why is Fire bound to R1, not R2? How does that make sense?

If I listed off the number of mediocre/crappy games that I brute forced my way though, it would be shorter than the list of really good games I just stopped playing early on for whatever reason.

 

[Crystal]

I feel like there's a little PTSD involved in some of these names, I twitched reading Altered Beasts, Battletoads and a few others. Going to add Super Meat Boy, because UGH.

 

[Mark]

Yeah Ecco is tough, especially for a kid which is when I played it. I have heard the ooze can be tough, but I've never tried it

That was THE thing with Ecco, though… it was intended to make you discover everything, but it never spelled that out and what storyline you could ascertain was inconsequential to the game.

I wouldnt have known about level scaling without the internet (I beat VIII in the late 00s)

I just didn’t understand it… even with the guide, it just showed a diagram with level ranges and all that jazz… but it was beyond me at the time.

I was over powered when I got to Sephy and yeah KotR wrecked him, I think I even had a double cast where the battle started out with me double casting it, good times

I think most people that got their asses handed to them the first time through ended up overcompensating the second time around. By that point, I was a member at GW and had PLENTY of help to get through it thanks to @the_promised_land and @Zell 17 explaining the mechanics to the W-Item and W-Summon materia.

I stopped playing Gran Turismo 3 when I got to the part where you're expected to complete excessively long races and have to try to manage your tires and fuel and time your pit stops well so you don't fall behind. The game was already suuuuuper repetitive by that point, those endurance races put me over the edge.

That’s also what killed the NASCAR games for me. My dad got me a racing wheel for Christmas one year to go along with NFS: V-Rally, so he picked up NASCAR 97 or 98 along with it because it was one sale. I was never really a NASCAR fan anyway, but pacing your fuel and tires was enough… adding damage to the equation was just too goddamn much for a kid to keep track of.

I've since beaten it, but in Max Payne 2, there's a mission where you play as Mona and you have to keep Max alive. Even today, it's a massive pain in the ass, but back when the game came out, that was my stopping point.

Do you remember how annoying the blood trail levels were in the first game? Talk about frustrating…

I stopped playing GTA 5 when I realized I was wasting the stockmarket missions by completeting them too early and thus made it so I could make the most money possible from them.

And the unfortunate thing about that is although you miss out on the early bank from getting the stock market right (Lester did a shitty job explaining it, you’re practically reliant on your own knowledge of buy low/sell high), you still end up able to profit from it if you hold onto the money and don’t invest it since the market fluctuates in-game.

I quit GTA 4 somewhere lateish into the game when I encountered what seemed like an impossible mission. GTA 4 has this annoying thing where when you complete a mission, you then have to escape a 4 or 5 star wanted level. Super annoying when you barely scrape through from the mission itself.

The worst part? Luck of the draw. Sometimes you could hit an alley, beat feet, and dodge them in a matter of seconds with a few clever turns. Sometimes… they stayed on your ass the whole way.

I couldn't play through Uncharted 1 because of the swapped controls that were unable to be changed. Seriously, why is Fire bound to R1, not R2? How does that make sense?

Ah… the days before button standardization. A LOT of games used R1 to fire back then, I think the tail end of PS2 into PS3 is when they finally started using R2.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

Do you remember how annoying the blood trail levels were in the first game? Talk about frustrating…

I found them annoying, but they weren't too hard because it wasn't randomized. I had more issues with sudden spikes in enemy difficulty due to the difficulty adjusting based on how well you were doing. If you steamroll through a bunch of enemies, suddenly the games became ridiculously hard. I remember having issues with the bank vault section early on because you steamroll your way through the game up to that point and suddenly the enemies are hard as nails and you have no resources left. The second trip to the hotel sucked, too because the boss was suddenly impossible to deal with until you died a few times to him. Then for some reason, you start the docks level with the same health you finished the last level with and you have to play ultra conservative until you get a few painkillers.

 

[Mark]

I found them annoying, but they weren't too hard because it wasn't randomized. I had more issues with sudden spikes in enemy difficulty due to the difficulty adjusting based on how well you were doing. If you steamroll through a bunch of enemies, suddenly the games became ridiculously hard. I remember having issues with the bank vault section early on because you steamroll your way through the game up to that point and suddenly the enemies are hard as nails and you have no resources left. The second trip to the hotel sucked, too because the boss was suddenly impossible to deal with until you died a few times to him. Then for some reason, you start the docks level with the same health you finished the last level with and you have to play ultra conservative until you get a few painkillers.

You’re making me angry at a game I haven’t touched in 20 years remembering this, so congrats on nailing the purpose of this thread.

Speaking of… what the fuck was Rockstar thinking with Max Payne 3? I was so excited for that game, and then it came out. It felt like they were just testing shit for GTA and RDR at that point… definitely not the successor we deserved.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

I actually quite enjoyed MP3. The feeling of diving in slomo and doming everyone in the room was second to none.

 

[Mark]

I actually quite enjoyed MP3. The feeling of diving in slomo and doming everyone in the room was second to none.

I just couldn’t shake the change in tone, dude. I was expecting each game to get progressively darker as his mental health deteriorated, that was part of the appeal to me. It wasn’t just your typical shoot ‘em up revenge game, it made you connect with the character in a way other action games don’t necessarily do with that degree of ease. The scenery was what did it most for me, because it felt like it was too bright. I do agree that the slow-mo was an excellent touch to it, I loved the way they executed that.

 

[Quagmire]

I feel like there's a little PTSD involved in some of these names, I twitched reading Altered Beasts, Battletoads and a few others. Going to add Super Meat Boy, because UGH.

I didnt make it far in SMB, even with the each level being short, I gave up

I quit GTA 4 somewhere lateish into the game when I encountered what seemed like an impossible mission. GTA 4 has this annoying thing where when you complete a mission, you then have to escape a 4 or 5 star wanted level. Super annoying when you barely scrape through from the mission itself.

The worst part? Luck of the draw. Sometimes you could hit an alley, beat feet, and dodge them in a matter of seconds with a few clever turns. Sometimes… they stayed on your ass the whole way.

There were a couple tough missions in GTA 4 hat I remember, namely the bank one due to bad or no checkpoints and the shoot out on the island at the ruined training house. I think it was a drug deal set up

For the one to escape the stars, drive into the train tunnel and you're good, might have to kill a couple if they're close behind, but thats it

 

[Mark]

There were a couple tough missions in GTA 4 hat I remember, namely the bank one due to bad or no checkpoints and the shoot out on the island at the ruined training house. I think it was a drug deal set up

The sluggish run and gun mechanics didn’t really help with these kinda missions either, since cover and blind fire were hardly refined.

For the one to escape the stars, drive into the train tunnel and you're good, might have to kill a couple if they're close behind, but thats it

…or, let your inner hoodrat do the thinking and hit the alleys and underpasses if you’ve got a bird on you.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

I didnt make it far in SMB, even with the each level being short, I gave up



There were a couple tough missions in GTA 4 hat I remember, namely the bank one due to bad or no checkpoints and the shoot out on the island at the ruined training house. I think it was a drug deal set up

For the one to escape the stars, drive into the train tunnel and you're good, might have to kill a couple if they're close behind, but thats it

The island one was awful. I did recently find out that there's a boat you can use to escape, though.

 

[Kat]

Jak 2, it is already a tough game due check point spacing and lack of supplies, but then there is a race through the city I could never beat, it was decent amount of the way into the game

That is a tough one. I finished the original but played it again on a later console as a remake, and I think I gave up on it at some point too.

Resident Evil took me forever to beat the first time around. Definitely painted myself into a corner on a few attempts, finally beat it by the time the Director’s Cut came out.

I got stuck on one of the RE games because I ran out of ammo in the middle of a bunch of really nasty enemies. I was enjoying the game before that happened but I don't have any idea what to do in that situation.

I stopped playing Gran Turismo 3 when I got to the part where you're expected to complete excessively long races and have to try to manage your tires and fuel and time your pit stops well so you don't fall behind. The game was already suuuuuper repetitive by that point, those endurance races put me over the edge.

GT is more of a racing simulator than a game IMO. Its priority is being realistic, not fun. It's tedious as a result

I did play through one of those endurance races on the original PlayStation. I want to say it took me at least four hours. I was maybe a half dozen laps from the end, had a decent buffer in first place that was hard fought, and all of a sudden the screen went black. I looked at the console and THE CAT HAD SAT ON IT AND TURNED IT OFF! I'm pretty sure I literally cried and never played that game again. I'm sooo glad they moved the power button on later consoles.

I'm currently kinda stuck on Dragon's Dogma and would probably give it up if my friend wasn't insisting the story is worth struggling through the game. That one is hard because it gives you a ton of things to do and it's impossible to tell which things are appropriate for your level. It doesn't hold your hand at all and it's kind of annoying. For instance, once you make it through the intro, it gives you a quest to go to a dock in the first city, and if you do it, you get brought to end game content where you will instantly be slaughtered if you attempt it when you get the quest. Areas also very quickly escalate from "a swarm of bats you can kill in a swing" to "an ogre who will literally eat you alive".

 

[Fool's Requiem]

Thing about GT is that it had the most realisitic physics and a massive library of cars to play with. Need for Speed was fun, but had a small number of cars and passible graphics. Luckily, nowadays we have Forza Horizions which is definitely something I plan on getting into.

Hoping the new Test Drive Unlimited game is good. TDU2 is impossible to find at a decent price so I'm pretty much stuck with janky and dated TDU1.

 

[Jawneh]

I remember as a kid I was stuck in Zelda 2, but that's not really a surprise to anyone. When I got older, learned English, and could do some puzzle solving as well as your usual brute forcing through anything since you got all the time in the world. I think I was 7 or 8 when I first played it and was somewhere in my mid teens when I got through it.

Another one was FF8. Towards the end of... disc 3 I believe, when Squall and Rinoa are in space. I think I was super low level on Rinoa and couldn't kill the things solo on Squall in the space ship. The one where you had to kill the same color aliens back to back or something like that. I think I had tried many different junctions, but nothing was good enough and gave up. Eventually I did just start a whole new game and did beat it very easily that time. There might've been another part way early in disc 1 too, but I do not remember for sure.

Flinthook. Very fun roguelite game. Sadly, the second boss in the game was too much for me and I couldn't beat it even after dozens of tries. Sure, there could be something I'm missing, but I just gave up on the game since every run I'd have to go through that boss anyhow and it wouldn't be fun.

 

[Jawneh]

I never played F-Zero GX beyond the second training level. Only really played the tracks and racers I had available from the start. Driver 1 is the same. Couldn't get past that first training level and have only played the free roam map.

Man, I loved F-Zero GX to bits. I believe I had some fastest laps for some tracks between GW folks for the game back in the day. I believe I 100%'d everything in it, which was a pain in the ass as you had to beat a grand prix, or whatever they called a season in it, with each and every character.

Driver 1 though, I'm on the same boat as you on that. I was stuck in the damn parking garage for ages trying to do the training. It didn't get awfully a lot better after that, since I got maybe one or two missions past that eventually, but they were also damn hard. I had forgotten all about that until I read this.

 

[Kat]

Luckily, nowadays we have Forza Horizions which is definitely something I plan on getting into.

Forza is an excellent game and the only thing I miss about having an Xbox.

 

[Mark]

I got stuck on one of the RE games because I ran out of ammo in the middle of a bunch of really nasty enemies. I was enjoying the game before that happened but I don't have any idea what to do in that situation.

I can’t help you there, dude, that’s the same problem I ran into. If I was lucky enough to conserve ammo, then I ended up having no first aid, if I had both… I was outta ink ribbons.

GT is more of a racing simulator than a game IMO. Its priority is being realistic, not fun. It's tedious as a result

I did play through one of those endurance races on the original PlayStation. I want to say it took me at least four hours. I was maybe a half dozen laps from the end, had a decent buffer in first place that was hard fought, and all of a sudden the screen went black. I looked at the console and THE CAT HAD SAT ON IT AND TURNED IT OFF! I'm pretty sure I literally cried and never played that game again. I'm sooo glad they moved the power button on later consoles.

Nooope. Fuck that game forever at that point. Lost cause. Burn the memory card. Frisbee the disc to the backyard beyond the property line.

Thing about GT is that it had the most realisitic physics and a massive library of cars to play with. Need for Speed was fun, but had a small number of cars and passible graphics. Luckily, nowadays we have Forza Horizions which is definitely something I plan on getting into.

Hoping the new Test Drive Unlimited game is good. TDU2 is impossible to find at a decent price so I'm pretty much stuck with janky and dated TDU1.

NFS disappointed me over the years… they had a good thing going, shit the bed with a few releases, started to work past it, lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Raine]

I've never quit a game specifically because of difficulty. I've gotten really fucking irritated with a great many games, but I usually take that as a very personal challenge and will double down on my stubbornness until I win. Over the years that obsessive nature has just turned into an explicit desire - a sense of fun, if you will - to break as many games as possible. It's not exactly min-maxing; it's doing whatever I want, regardless of how fucking stupid (there will be an example in the quotes!), just because I can.

Now that being said I also don't really count, like, arcade or (most) NES/SNES/GEN games as quitting because of difficulty. Like I've never beaten tons of old games that I've played, but playing was almost always a cooperative affair with the express purpose of passing time. In later years, for example, I have gone back to games like Super Smash TV (and Smash TV via X360) with the goal of "winning" and have accomplished that. Conversely, when I was a child, I "won" Galaga on NES by any reasonable metric by reaching Stage 96, but I've never really thought of that as a game you complete.

For things that have gotten me unreasonably heated in recent memory:

SoulCalibur V is just complete, unmitigated, dumpster fire trash. The AI in several of the offline modes have increased speed and power, and blatantly read your controller inputs. If you attempt to play against them legitimately you are instantly parried, juggled and probably get thrown out of the ring for good measure. For as much as I love(d) SC2, SC5 (with an assist from SC4) can die in a fucking fire.

Drakengard 3. Just... just that. If you're even vaguely aware of the game, or the first Drakengard, or Yoko Taro's love of trolling, you understand. You know. The final boss of Drakengard 3 is nothing like anything else in the game; it's not even really like the final boss of D1. No, what it is is a rhythm game wherein 1) you can't miss a single note, 2) can't play extra notes, 3) can't see notes, 4) have multiple different tempos and 5) THERE IS A FUCKING NOTE WHEN THE BEGINNING OF THE CREDITS BEGIN TO ROLL BECAUSE FUCK YOU.

I'm fucking serious. If you don't care about spoilers for a mediocre game forever stuck on the PS3, watch this shit. Watch and suffer. Even the first couple chimes that got through while grabbing the video to link is giving me PTSD. JFC.

Spoiler: Drakengard 3 final boss

A guide somebody had to make for everyone that isn't a music major:

Spoiler: Ranting about games others have brought up

Vagrant Story - I remember liking it but I think I just couldn't grasp the conplex mechanics. I was never able to beat it.

Vagrant Story wanted so badly to be my Kryptonite. There are so many mechanics stacked on top of mechanics and it's just an absolute chore to play if you're not reading a guide/wiki and looking to tick a bunch of boxes and "git gud" in a very specific way. The story, setting, art style, etc is great - the game is not.

I wasn't about that quitting life though, so I did complete the game: I beat the entirety of Vagrant Story using a broken dagger and ignoring 99% of all mechanics. I fucking killed every single thing in that game past the first, say, three hours, hitting them for 1 damage. Including the end boss.

I'll admit to never truly beating the final "one winged angel" battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. I tried for so long, I think I eventually just used a GameShark so I could see the final cutscene.

I learned of the concept of "grinding" in an RPG thanks to FF7. There's a boss in or around Nibelheim, I think - maybe related to a library - that I couldn't beat, so I spent probably an hour doing random battles to get stronger and took it out. In retrospect I probably got too strong because I don't remember the rest of the game putting up much of a fight at all.

FF7 has one of my most memorable "Well, that was entirely underwhelming" moments, too. I took out Ruby Weapon during my original stint with FF7, but wanted to keep playing more games in the series as I was new to it. So I attempted Emerald Weapon only a handful of times and then set the game aside figuring I'd come back through all of them and mop up all of the ultimate bosses.

I came back, I don't know, two or so years later and did some grinding in the final cavern. Got to maybe lv92 or so, up from maybe high 70s? So I set up the party's Materia in a loose configuration, something where Aire Tam Storm would only do like 5~6k, and wandered over to see how long it took to get killed. Wasn't paying super close attention and chatting with a relative while in the fight, and around 15 minutes in... it died. Just, it fucking died?! I was so blown away by how dumb and empty feeling it was that I genuinely don't even remember if I bothered saving afterward.

People love it, but that game wasn't balanced very well at all.

I quit GTA 4 somewhere lateish into the game when I encountered what seemed like an impossible mission. GTA 4 has this annoying thing where when you complete a mission, you then have to escape a 4 or 5 star wanted level. Super annoying when you barely scrape through from the mission itself.

I don't remember anything specifically like this, but I hated just about everything about the game regardless.

In the actual final mission I got caught up for a good 90 minutes because the game just felt like pissing me off, and I got pretty close to setting the game down for a while. You're basically riding a dirt bike and are supposed to hit certain time milestones and perform certain jumps to complete the narrative setpiece, and like... there's a random rock, or stray geometry, or something, in the lead-in to the final ramp. Every single time I was lining up to hit the ramp at the appropriate speed I would hit this fucking rock, lose complete control, and fail the mission. And have to do the entire thing over again, to reach the same spot, to not be able to tell exactly what I was hitting, to hit it again and fail.

...There's a reason I never even looked at GTA5.

 

[Fool's Requiem]

I've never quit a game specifically because of difficulty. I've gotten really fucking irritated with a great many games, but I usually take that as a very personal challenge and will double down on my stubbornness until I win. Over the years that obsessive nature has just turned into an explicit desire - a sense of fun, if you will - to break as many games as possible. It's not exactly min-maxing; it's doing whatever I want, regardless of how fucking stupid (there will be an example in the quotes!), just because I can.

Now that being said I also don't really count, like, arcade or (most) NES/SNES/GEN games as quitting because of difficulty. Like I've never beaten tons of old games that I've played, but playing was almost always a cooperative affair with the express purpose of passing time. In later years, for example, I have gone back to games like Super Smash TV (and Smash TV via X360) with the goal of "winning" and have accomplished that. Conversely, when I was a child, I "won" Galaga on NES by any reasonable metric by reaching Stage 96, but I've never really thought of that as a game you complete.

For things that have gotten me unreasonably heated in recent memory:

SoulCalibur V is just complete, unmitigated, dumpster fire trash. The AI in several of the offline modes have increased speed and power, and blatantly read your controller inputs. If you attempt to play against them legitimately you are instantly parried, juggled and probably get thrown out of the ring for good measure. For as much as I love(d) SC2, SC5 (with an assist from SC4) can die in a fucking fire.

Drakengard 3. Just... just that. If you're even vaguely aware of the game, or the first Drakengard, or Yoko Taro's love of trolling, you understand. You know. The final boss of Drakengard 3 is nothing like anything else in the game; it's not even really like the final boss of D1. No, what it is is a rhythm game wherein 1) you can't miss a single note, 2) can't play extra notes, 3) can't see notes, 4) have multiple different tempos and 5) THERE IS A FUCKING NOTE WHEN THE BEGINNING OF THE CREDITS BEGIN TO ROLL BECAUSE FUCK YOU.

I'm fucking serious. If you don't care about spoilers for a mediocre game forever stuck on the PS3, watch this shit. Watch and suffer. Even the first couple chimes that got through while grabbing the video to link is giving me PTSD. JFC.

Spoiler: Drakengard 3 final boss

A guide somebody had to make for everyone that isn't a music major:

Spoiler: Ranting about games others have brought up

Vagrant Story wanted so badly to be my Kryptonite. There are so many mechanics stacked on top of mechanics and it's just an absolute chore to play if you're not reading a guide/wiki and looking to tick a bunch of boxes and "git gud" in a very specific way. The story, setting, art style, etc is great - the game is not.

I wasn't about that quitting life though, so I did complete the game: I beat the entirety of Vagrant Story using a broken dagger and ignoring 99% of all mechanics. I fucking killed every single thing in that game past the first, say, three hours, hitting them for 1 damage. Including the end boss.


I learned of the concept of "grinding" in an RPG thanks to FF7. There's a boss in or around Nibelheim, I think - maybe related to a library - that I couldn't beat, so I spent probably an hour doing random battles to get stronger and took it out. In retrospect I probably got too strong because I don't remember the rest of the game putting up much of a fight at all.

FF7 has one of my most memorable "Well, that was entirely underwhelming" moments, too. I took out Ruby Weapon during my original stint with FF7, but wanted to keep playing more games in the series as I was new to it. So I attempted Emerald Weapon only a handful of times and then set the game aside figuring I'd come back through all of them and mop up all of the ultimate bosses.

I came back, I don't know, two or so years later and did some grinding in the final cavern. Got to maybe lv92 or so, up from maybe high 70s? So I set up the party's Materia in a loose configuration, something where Aire Tam Storm would only do like 5~6k, and wandered over to see how long it took to get killed. Wasn't paying super close attention and chatting with a relative while in the fight, and around 15 minutes in... it died. Just, it fucking died?! I was so blown away by how dumb and empty feeling it was that I genuinely don't even remember if I bothered saving afterward.

People love it, but that game wasn't balanced very well at all.


I don't remember anything specifically like this, but I hated just about everything about the game regardless.

In the actual final mission I got caught up for a good 90 minutes because the game just felt like pissing me off, and I got pretty close to setting the game down for a while. You're basically riding a dirt bike and are supposed to hit certain time milestones and perform certain jumps to complete the narrative setpiece, and like... there's a random rock, or stray geometry, or something, in the lead-in to the final ramp. Every single time I was lining up to hit the ramp at the appropriate speed I would hit this fucking rock, lose complete control, and fail the mission. And have to do the entire thing over again, to reach the same spot, to not be able to tell exactly what I was hitting, to hit it again and fail.

...There's a reason I never even looked at GTA5.

Wasn't Soul Calibur V the one where they removed almost every character from the first few games and replaced them with crummy versions?

If Soul Calibur doesn't have my Seong Mi-na, what's the point?

 

[Quagmire]

@Warp

GTA V had much better check pointing and don't remember getting frustrated

 

[Raine]

Wasn't Soul Calibur V the one where they removed almost every character from the first few games and replaced them with crummy versions?

Yup, there was that too. Characters that play the same, or at least similarly, but are basically generic brand knock-offs that also didn't get any real development. Like Viola (not-Amy) and Tira were fun, but the roster is hella weak. And that's before getting into the lack of modes, questionable additions like Guard Break and supers, and the aforementioned AI.

GTA V had much better check pointing and don't remember getting frustrated

Well that's good, at least. I didn't really have a problem before/until that mission, and don't remember anything particularly egregious in San Andreas, so it stood out even more.

The auto-targeting needed to be turned on by default, too. Instantly made GTA4 better, even if it basically trivialized gun fights.

 

[Marlfox]

I feel like there's a little PTSD involved in some of these names, I twitched reading Altered Beasts, Battletoads and a few others. Going to add Super Meat Boy, because UGH.

Yup! I actually loved Super Meat Boy. The great music kept me positive throughout and I completed that game to 100%.

THE CAT HAD SAT ON IT AND TURNED IT OFF!

I'm currently kinda stuck on Dragon's Dogma and would probably give it up if my friend wasn't insisting the story is worth struggling through the game.

Damn cats. I tried Dragons Dogma for about an hour and just wasn't impressed. Never touched it again.

FF8. Towards the end of... disc 3 I believe, when Squall and Rinoa are in space. I think I was super low level on Rinoa and couldn't kill the things solo on Squall in the space ship.

I think I quit FF8 at the exact same point. Didn't help that I thought Squall was a twat and was happy to watch him fail.

 

[Crystal]

Yup! I actually loved Super Meat Boy. The great music kept me positive throughout and I completed that game to 100%.

Oh its 100% a fun game, but it is soooo frustrating lol

 

[Marlfox]

There's a new Super Meat Boy out. I haven't dared to try it.

 

[Crystal]

There's a new Super Meat Boy out. I haven't dared to try it.

I don't blame you there, I can only imagine how challenging that is!

 

[Marlfox]

It looks easier maybe? More boss fights, less incredibly fatal jumps

 

[Bandicoot]

Isn’t the new meat boy an auto-runner?

I know I only got about 67/75% through Celeste before turning on the built in cheats.

 

[Scott]

I'll admit to never truly beating the final "one winged angel" battle with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. I tried for so long, I think I eventually just used a GameShark so I could see the final cutscene.

Although I did beat that last battle, I know you’re not alone on that one. I know a few people that got stumped on it, then ended up going through with a leveled KotR and wiping it out. More often, I’ve heard of people getting stuck on Emerald or Ruby weapon.

Safer Sephiroth sucks if you're unprepared, and if you mess it up it's more irritating because you have to go back to before both Jenova and Bizarro - or even further, depending where you put the save crystal. He also increases stats for every character at level 99, and if you used KotR against Jenova, however the dangerous bits are status effects rather than damage, seems Super Nova is long, but can't actually kill you (directly).

Emerald is tough because of the time limit, and because most people didn't know how Aire Tam Storm worked.

Ruby is the one I found the toughest, especially if you didn't go for the two party members dead at the start. Then again, I think I've got a video on my youtube somewhere of me beating Ruby using basically just counter attack.

As for OT, most games I gave up on where as a kid. I didn't finish Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles until I was an adult. I'd normally get to the Death Egg Zone, and then get stuck towards the end. Loads of games from the Mega Drive era... Lion King, Jurassic Park. I don't think I ever finished any of the original Super Mario games either.

 

[Marlfox]

Lion King I did beat (somehow!)

Sonic 3 and Knuckles had save files so I found that the easiest of the series. Absolutely loved that game, my favourite from Mega Drive / Genesis.

Didn't finish Sonic 1 (always got bored) or Sonic 2 (always got to the final level then died because it makes you do it with no rings, never had enough lives to learn how to beat the two endgame bosses before I got game over)
Ergh, still not happy about Sonic 2

 

[Squall_Lionheart]

i can't think of many games.

the first game that comes to mind is Vagrant Story. my lil brain didn't understand it. shame, i remember being HYPED for that game to come out. i remebr reading magazines gushing over how it's the best graphics they've ever seen. haha. it's funny how fast technology improves

Lion King. could never beat the final boss. made no sense to me, and it was a ballache getting there only to die from not knowing how to fucking beat him. ffs

Streets of Rage 3. it was too hard. and i didn't like the mechanics very much. SOR2 remains one of my fav games to this day, though

Ecco the Dolphin. i don't need to say anything here

Jungle Strike. that was hard! i mainly just played the first level over and over. that was still fun though. well, until i learned about cheat codes from some website called "GameWinners" (if i remember the name correctly)

 

[Andy]

I’m at the stage in my life where games need to be relatively easy for me. Or at least not difficult. I’ve recently quit Dishonored 2 and Ori because I couldn’t do certain parts and that’s just not fun to me anymore. It’s weird because I remember loving playing Call of Duty on the hardest difficulty and Mass Effect. Guess I just don’t have the time anymore.

 

[Marlfox]

Mm. Too little free time to do lots of repeats

 

[Boots]

 

[shortkut]

 

[Boots]

Forza is an excellent game and the only thing I miss about having an Xbox.

If you have a decent PC, you can play FH4 and FH5.

 

[Boots]

That must be how we got to level 4. We had a game genie.

 

[Kat]

If you have a decent PC, you can play FH4 and FH5.

Ooo I always forget this is a thing. I might have to go that route.

I tried Dragons Dogma for about an hour and just wasn't impressed. Never touched it again.

So I just picked up an escort quest you get "one chance" at, and the description said it was for a destination a short distance away. Of course, it's actually on the other side of the map and forces you to walk through dense groups of things that are hard to kill. And I picked this up in the starting area!! I think I'm just going to let him die. It's on him for false advertising.

That must be how we got to level 4. We had a game genie.

That's the only way I got past some levels in Mario on the NES. I wonder if those games would be easier or harder today.

 

[Boots]

Definitely recommend a 360 or Xbox wireless controller that works with PC. The kind with a rechargeable battery and usb-c charger.

 

[Kat]

Definitely recommend a 360 or Xbox wireless controller that works with PC. The kind with a rechargeable battery and usb-c charger.

I don't suppose I can use a PlayStation controller?

 

[Boots]

PS5 controllers use Bluetooth to connect to PC. PS4 controllers require either a wireless adaptor or a compatible micro USB cable.

 

[Quagmire]

I don't suppose I can use a PlayStation controller?

PS5 controllers use Bluetooth to connect to PC. PS4 controllers require either a wireless adaptor or a compatible micro USB cable.

You can use a ps4, they can connect via bluetooth easily if your computer has, you will want to use DS4Windows though to manage it, but its a free program that is easy to use. The cable that comes with it works well, but you'll want a USB extender unless you're playing super close at like a laptop

 

[Lee]

You’re making me angry at a game I haven’t touched in 20 years remembering this, so congrats on nailing the purpose of this thread.

Speaking of… what the fuck was Rockstar thinking with Max Payne 3? I was so excited for that game, and then it came out. It felt like they were just testing shit for GTA and RDR at that point… definitely not the successor we deserved.

The final airport shootout took me SO LONG to complete. I loved Max Payne 3 thought, it is my favourite of the franchise.