I’ve been playing my way through Chrono Trigger again lately, and I remembered how much I hate the future sections. I don’t know why, but I despise every second I’m in 2300 AD.
How about you? What parts/levels/sections in your favorite games do you try to finish as fast as possible so you can be done with it and never look back?
The prehistoric time ain’t so hot, either.
Water levels, primarily. I loathed the water temples in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, and I barely played through the first temple of Windwaker before I decided the entire game wasn’t for me. In Unreal Tournament, there were a few levels that had underwater action, the most notable being an Assault map that started you on a sub/boat and you had to swim through the water to reach an undersea base. I was able to make the trip, but it unnerved me badly.
Oddly enough, I find World of Warcraft’s water relatively pleasant and have little problem with it as long as I can see the floor. I can feel my nerves start to go whenever I get near an underwater cliff and there’s nothing but open ocean beyond that point.
I like all three Halos but especially the third one. However, I hate all the sections that are predominantly fighting against the flood.
I just don’t like that style of fight where things pop out at you from all over the place. I get in panic mode and waste a lot of bullets. Plus all the Covenant fights seem much more well designed whereas for flood they just say, lets try to overwhelm them with constant onrushing hordes.
Of all the flood parts, the Library in Halo 1 qualifies as the worst level in any fps game I’ve ever played. Often in Halo 1, if I play it at all, I will just stop when I get to the library level and go do something else entirely.
Pool, when the other player is shooting.
The only two parts in Chrono Trigger I really hated were the soup/alcohol drinking contest, and the part where you were on the giant plane, trying to get all of your stuff back and get out of there.
The Ice Castle in Zelda Link To the Past. To a lesser extent, the Dark Lost Woods. Two stages that were frustrating as hell.
The Golden Palace in Zelda 2, as well as the mountain path to it. Nasty, nasty, NASTY levels. This is a reason I usually quit Zelda 2 after beating the 3rd Eye Palace.
In the original Final Fantasy, the entire section beginning with the Marsh Cave, and ending when you finish the Earth Cave and have the Canoe. The Marsh and Earth caves are two very nasty levels, the former where every battle ends with the entire party poisoned, and the boss’s difficulty is a factor of luck, depending on if they give you 2, 3 or 4 wizards to fight, and the latter being a very long dungeon, with overpowered enemies for this point in the game, which you have to play through twice (since you half to leave halfway after fighting the miniboss, and you do not have an exit spell at this point in the game), and TWO levels are actual MAZES. Also, between these two dungeons is a giant errand quest, with (crown, eye crystal, herb, key, tnt, boom = 6 stops). Fortunately once you get the canoe and can get into Castle Ordeals, the game gets so much easier and funner in the second half.
Any section of any King’s Quest game that requires you to climb stairs. Especially the attic staircase in KQ4.
One of my friends LOVED Final Fantasy 9, but refuses to ever play it again just because of the puzzle where you get turned into a frog…
The final mission of GTA IV - specifically, the (endgame spoiler ahead) [spoiler] “Deal” branch, where you take the deal rather than immediate revenge, and the Russians kill Roman at his wedding, and you go take your revenge on Dmitri.
Once you kill all Dmitri’s henchmen in the abandoned building, you chase after his helicopter in a boat. If you can get in the boat without getting blown up by his rocket launcher. And if you can catch up to your friend’s helicopter in time to grab onto it before the friend takes off. And if you don’t get riddled with bullets by either Dmitri’s henchmen or the 500 gazillion cops on the Happiness island (how did they all get there so quickly?).
What really got my knickers in a twist was the boat part where you’ve got to catch up to the helicopter while driving the boat. Everywhere else in the game, if you want to go faster in a boat, you use the left analog stick to control the boat’s pitch as it rises and falls on the waves - back while going up a wave, forward while going down a wave.
But in this particular mission, you can only ever catch up to the helicopter if you don’t touch the pitch! A horribly incongruous mechanic, and altogether frustrating when the game doesn’t give you any hint of why you keep winding up six feet short of Jacob’s helicopter every time.
And the kicker is that the actual outcome is the same with either branch, but the Deal branch is the only one that leaves Kate alive so you can continue to woo her (the hard-to-get-playing little minx). And I’ still haven’t gotten past a basic date with her - my wife asked me the other night “have you screwed the Irish gangter’s sister yet?”[/spoiler]
Oh, and every part of foosball but the drinking.
The absolute worst IMO is the climb up the whales tongue in KQ4.
Far Cry 2 seems to go like this…
[spoiler]
get mission from warlord, immediately get mission from your friend choose one mission to actually do (you can’t do both) repeat step 1.
So if you want to be loyal to your friend you NEVER actually complete any of the warlord missions, and you collect the money from them each time regardless. They seem to be stupid - not only do they pay up front (what kind of evil warlord does that!) but they don’t seem to notice that I never complete the actual missions.
Unless the missions are actually being completed by what I do instead for my friend and I’m not realy noticing. (too busy staring in awe at the pretty graphics)[/spoiler]
Which is irritating. (not that last sentence)
oh and another thing…
Why have they left the console style ‘save at your safehous’ in when you can save the game at any exact point! And not only that but it autosaves. WTFBBQ
I hated the dream sequences in Max Payne (specifically the parts where you have to follow the trail of blood and jump around), and if you screw up you go all the way back to the beginning of the trail.
I was playing it on a PS2, though. I hear the controls are much easier on a PC.
Tailing the rebel through town in MGS4. That thing took me like 25 tried to complete. I hated it.
The maze/rpg levels in Starcraft. You know, the ones where you have a squad of marines, or what have you, and you need to navigate a giant complex to find the MacGuffin. Damnit, if I wanted to place a hack+slash RPG, I’d play Diablo. I like Diablo - it does hack and slash well. Starcraft doesn’t.
I love Metal Gear Solid, but backtracking (twice!) to get the red and blue key cards just felt like game-padding, especially when I’d already backtracked for the bloody sniper rifle.
I felt much the same way. Particularly since I already had a sneaking suspicion about what ended up happening next.
I mean, Liquid and Revolver knock the card out of your hand, but then just conveniently leave the room practically unguarded. Sure…
GTA III: Driving the corrupt cop to the airport on the other island. The bridge is blocked so you have to go through the tunnel and if traffic is very light and you’re a crazy driver you can make it with a second to spare.
IIRC the last mission of GTA is stupid tough too but I’ve only played it once or twice.
GTA Vice City: any mission where you are forced to use inferior weapons. For example when Cortez is leaving town the French come after you in sailboats. Since it’s an animated cutscene you just get to watch as they run down the dock. If you could actually play at that point you’d be able to massacre them before they touched a single boat.
The stunt boat mission is annoying as well. I’m also not a fan of Auntie Poulet’s missions. There’s a sniper rifle mission which is insanely hard and there’s a pick 3 packages in 60 seconds mission that leaves you with the FBI chasing you. I don’t mind the mission with the RC plane but I could do that one a lot faster if I could do it on foot.
San Andreas: several annoying missions. Painting the graffiti tags, every chase mission, trying to get a motorbike onto the back of a moving plane, flying school, driving school and who could forget the infamous one where you have to take on a jet in your little propeller driver plane? There are many good missions in SA and lots of PITA ones.
The latter stages of a Civilization game, when you’ve got tons of cities and more units than you know what to do with, can be pretty irritating. It just takes FOREVER to give all the orders you need to give.
Of course, if one of those units is a nuke, and you use it to teach the country next door who the hell is in charge around here, that will make up for a lot of drudgery!
The section in Fable II where you go to the Tattered Spire.
It’s fun and atmospheric the first time, but the second time through you realize that a) it completely differs in tone from the rest of the game, and b) it’s on rails, and c) none of it really matters.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Escorting Maria in Silent Hill 2. In fact, escort missions in any game ever. RE4 was so cool until then. Then they go and make a whole game based off the mechanic for Ico… gah.
Resident Evil 4: The stupid contrived quick-time button stupidly patterned gimmicky boss battles.
Metroid Prime Wii: The stupid contrived quick-time button stupidly patterned gimmicky boss battles.
Super Monkey Ball: The stupid contrived quick-time button stupidly patterned gimmicky boss battles.
Zelda Twilight Princess: The stupid contrived quick-time button stupidly patterned gimmicky boss battles.
…and so on…
Super Metroid: the quicksand level. Also known as the “bounce up and down trying to get out while being repeatedly punctured by little spinny thingies” level.