Most unforgiveable cheat of a deathtrap in a game.

The Game Room
21

Oh, what a timely thread – I just yesterday decided to replay Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which I think is an outstanding game, but which also features one of the most frustrating sequences in any game I recall. Right after you found lodging in some charming little seaside town called Innsmouth, where something fishy’s going on, the townsfolk decide that they do not take kindly to strangers, and come battering on your hotel room door – OK, so I was smart enough to bolt that, no problem. But, they burst through after about three or four seconds, so as soon as you hear the first knock on the door, you have to jump up, run to the next room (which you already have bolted shut in advance, but hopefully not closed the connecting door to, because having to take the time to open it will likely leave you as bait for the Innsmouthians), close the door behind you, bolt it shut, careful to not accidentally re-open it instead, which happens about every other time when you’re not precisely facing the bolt, push a shelf away from the door to the next room which you can only do at an atrociously slow pace, open that door, run through, again bolt it shut, run to that room’s door, bolt it shut, again run into the next room, find out that that one’s lock is broken (or rather, you pretty much have to know that in advance, if you have to take the time to check, you’re pretty much dead), push a shelf in front of it which you won’t make fast enough half the time, then race to the window, push another shelf away from it, open it, jump across the balcony, dodge the shots of about two dozen fish, er, men, and then the real hide, seek and flee sequence starts.

The best part, the game has rather sparingly placed save points, so if at any one point you don’t perform your memorized moves perfectly, you have to do everything all over again (though they’ve made an effort to have the save points make sense – they’re mystical signs, and if you’re killed, you get the impression it was all ‘just a dream’, your character is plagued by constant visions anyway).

You do get a gun, eventually, but much too late to really take out your frustration on the townsfolk.

Here’s a video of the sequence (warning, rather graphically violent in places).

22

The final battle in Beyond Good and Evil takes nearly requires you to die once, as well. If you don’t cheat and read a guide, it takes a bit of observation to realize what you have to do…and that the controls are reversed for a large part of the battle.

23

Well, that’s pretty much exactly who’s it’s made for. The guys who yearn for the “Nintendo Hard” days of yore and who tend to complain about games not being hard enough on anything but the most difficult of difficulty levels.

24

One of the things that impressed me what how faithful to the book that part was(okay, so a little more difficult).

Sadly, once you get a gun, it feels like the game stops being nearly as fun and starts to turn into a mediocre shooter CoughMarshRefineryCough.

And boy I was disappointed when your allies in the later chapters turned out to be almost useless. CoughUSMCCough

25

One of the Leisure Suit Larry series – I think it might’ve been LSL III: Passionate Patty In Pursuit Of The Pulsating Pectorals – had a part where you were served a bowl of soup. The natural statement to type was EAT SOUP. Unfortunately, when you did so, you choked to death on the pin hidden in the soup.

After loading up a saved game (and hopefully you saved not too long before) and getting back to that point, you would then of course INVESTIGATE SOUP. When you did so, you would find the pin, and have an internal monologue about what a good thing it was that you looked in the soup before eating it, or else it could’ve really been disastrous…

26

Well, there was that time me and a buddy were playing the Apple adventure game Crypt of Medea. To get through one barrier required gathering a barrel of gunpowder and a length of fuse to build a bomb, light the bomb, then run away. So it went (roughly) like:

Me: Okay, we got the fuse and barrel.
Johnny: Make bomb, or build bomb or something.

> BUILD BOMB
> You built a bomb.

> LIGHT BOMB WITH CANDLE
> The fuse is lit!

Johnny: Let’s go!

> EAST
> EAST
> EAST
> The bomb explodes and you are killed!

Me: Dammit! We weren’t fast enough.
Johnny: I’ll load a save game.

> BUILD BOMB
> You built a bomb.

> LIGHT BOMB WITH CANDLE
> The fuse is lit!

Me: Go fast!

> EAST
> EAST
> EAST
> EAST
> The bomb explodes and you are killed!
What we were missing, of course, is the crucial DROP BOMB step.

27

Resident Evil 4 : the Zombie Siege.

At one point early in the game, you find yourself in a dingy little house in the middle of nowhere, with one NPC who has a handgun, and one NPC who you must protect at all cost. An infinite mob of zombies is hot on your trail. You have like 15 seconds to push cupboards and so on in front of the 4 windows + 1 door on the ground floor, after which point the zombies come pouring in from all sides. Said cupboards last for a good 5 seconds before the zombies tear them apart. After some fighting, a scream comes from the top floor - prompting you to go up where, again, there are 4 windows + the stairs, and zombies climbing from ladders that you may push. Don’t worry, the zombies will have them back up in no time.

Did I mention that this was a Resident Evil game, and thus the combat controls are awkward, you have limited ammo and even more limited healing items ? That each zombie takes an innordinate amount of punishment before it dies, unless you shoot them in the head in which case you have 50% chance to kill them fast, but another 50% chance to make the zombie-creature go apeshit and gain ranged tentacle attacks ? Oh, yes. And remember : this is early in the game. You’ve got your shotgun with maybe 10 slugs, your piss-poor handgun, and maybe, just maybe a sniper rifle.

Aaah, I knew I forgot something : the whole sequence takes place after a lenghty and unskippable cutscene. Oh, what fun…

28

At that point in the game I usually trade in the starter handgun for the Red9 with stock. But yeah I definitely did not get through that part the first time through. More like the 6th after restarting the game. It gets a lot easier the second time through because you get to start the game with the weapons, ammo, and heal items you ended with.

The only thing in your favor during that sequence is that Ashley disappears from that area and doesn’t get in your way.

The thought of trying it on Professional scares me.

The Ada Minigame that doesn’t have the Merchant in it is impossible to get through without dying. They give you the absolutely shittiest weapons in the game for that one.

29

It’s not soup. It’s pate. And I’m pretty sure it was LSL 2- Looking For Love In Several Wrong Places.

30

Oooo, that’s right – the Blue Pate Special! Wow…that was a memory-jogger…

31

And in King’s Quest IV, you had to use your shovel to dig up certain graves. You could continue through the game having dug up wrong ones, only to find your shovel breaks rather unexpectedly. You had no way to know in advance that your shovel was about to break.

Let’s not even start with King’s Quest V, where you had to catch save a mouse from a cat very very quickly or die horribly much later in the game.

32

And to be more fair it was a tournament module so ludicrous unfairness was part of the point.

Of course there is a reason why “Gygaxian” is an dirty word when it comes to adventure design…

At least the level before it ends with you getting thrown down a deep pit so you should be ready to grab (if not holding down the key as the level starts).

Really Dark Corners of the Earth is one long “Man, that was obnoxious” sequence after another. Trying to do that door sequence with sloppy console FPS controls can be enough to make you pull your hair out. Later on when you still die in two or three hits and the enemies have random movement patterns with some strangely variable vision (“They couldn’t spot me here last time, why am I getting swarmed now?!”) it continues to not be fun. I stopped when the game finally completely bugged out on me and spawned a pack of enemies at the hiding spot I was saved at. Reload, they spawn, I die, repeat.

Sierra games could be their own list for that.

There’s always the arbitrary death rooms in text adventures. If you enter this room you die. The worst of those don’t have you die right away but instead linger a turn or two.

33

Not a text adventure but in Star Tropics, there is at least one room once you enter you’re dead.

34

That’s actually funny. I imagine that if you did a ‘look’ or an ‘inventory’ you’d realize that you kept hold of the bomb when you built it - but who really spares time to look around or check their pockets when they’re running away from a freakin’ bomb! :smiley:

In other words, it’s a mistake that follows naturally from the artificial gaming environment but would never happen in real life. Sigh.

35

I think it’s KQ7 (I can’t remember which one is Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder) in which there is a labyrinth. Some of the rooms are trapped, but with the right items or by following clues in The Guidebook To The Green Isles you can make it through. But one room is just a pit that opens and kills you. There’s no sign it’s a trap until you enter. There’s no way to avoid the pit once you enter. It’s an insta death room.

36

Oh yeah, that was such crap!

37

That’s probably what I was thinking of, I played that game too.

38

What the flying fuck!?
WHO WOULD DESIGN SUCH A SADISTIC GAME?!

39

Nothing fills me with relief and a feeling like everything will be all right with the world as when I think to myself, “I can avoid playing I Wanna Be The Guy. It does not affect my world in any way if I do not attempt to beat or even play it.”

40

I may purchase this game, and attempt to play it when, and only when, I’m feeling cocky.

Just to put me in my place.