Huh, I was just talking about this the other day with a friend. Lately I’ve been replaying through Myth II (I don’t think I’ve ever gone all the way through on the top difficulty before), and they put my four least favorite missions all in a row in the middle of the game. First there’s The Great Library, where you have to defend the library entrance until the journeyman comes out… I think what I dislike most about it is that you can’t really take the initiative, you just have to deal with whatever the undead decide to do, and like it. Then you’ve got Gate of Storms, which is like an escort quest, except you’ve got thirty guys to escort: Warriors are basically useless against myrkridia, so you have to do the whole mission with your bowmen, dwarves, and Alric. Then there’s Landing at White Falls, where if you charge forward recklessly into a superior defended position and don’t waste any time doing sensible things like covering your rear, you just might meet the time limit, or might get most of your forces blasted to oblivion by Fetch and pus packets. Finally, there’s Through the Ermine, which is just like The Great Library, except without a good defensible position.
Quoth fusoya:
Of course, if you go to the Castle early like that, then you’re facing monsters way above your level, some of which can TPK you in the surprise round. Fortunately, it’s a short enough area that you can just save outside and keep on trying, and the rewards are oh so worth it. And personally, I’d rate the Ice Cave as much worse than the Earth Cave: You go through the entire dungeon hoping that you don’t get insta-killed by Mages, or insta-killed by Sorcerers, or petrified by Cocatrices, or killed the old-fashioned way from damage by Frost Dragons, and then you have to fight the Eye and hope you don’t get insta-killed by any of its spells, and then you have to go through half of the dungeon again to get out.
Quoth Thudlow Boink:
The original one wasn’t so bad: You leave scraps of miscellaneous items (the welcome mat, the letter, the label from inside the boat, etc.) in every room to tell them apart, and then construct a table of which path leads where and take it from there. Where it got bad was in some of the sequels, where they started doing things like randomly shifting rooms, or made the exits to the same room different depending on how you got there.
The Water Temple in Ocarina of Time–raise the water level, lower the water level, raise it halfway, lower it all the way, iron boots on, iron boots off. A real PITA. Of course I don’t much like water levels in any game, I always manage to bob into the enemy or get sucked down a gap in the bottom. scream!
Ice levels in any game–I am going to slip off the edge about 900 times and have to start from the bottom of the level. No use trying to avoid it, it simply is going to happen!
Cut scenes after you’ve finished the game and are playing it again–the first time, you want to see the new information that helps you to the next level. After that, they’re just a boring waste of time, and you can’t FF through them!
I hate it in Monopoly when you get down to two people. It’s just
:roll:
Hit Hotels?
Yes–>You Lose
No–>His turn
:roll:
Hit Hotels?
etc.
In my opinion, the game should end when there are three players left, and the one with the most money is the winner. That’s assuming you don’t distribute the losing players’ property to the taking player. (which we never did)
the combat in Mirror’s Edge. Seriously, I was diggin on this game a lot until it started forcing combat down my throat in tiny environments with nowhere to run. The game is about running, not fighting. Fine, I undertsand you want to make fighting part of the game for some strange reason that only retarded developers can understand, but you should ALWAYS have the option of running.
the grind in most ill-paced JRPGS. Grinding should always be an option, but I seriously shouldn’t be forced to grind up 5-10 levels just to move on in a game, that’s BS.
Speaking of grind…I don’t know how to feel about games that make the grind so addicting you can’t stop even after dropping 100+ hours into it. (Nippon Ichi, I’m looking at you.)
The only part I hate in CT I only hate in the Playstation port…the bit where you have to enter a code to save Lucca’s mum.
The original code was based on the SNES controls (L A R A), and they didn’t change the hint so it suggested what the code would be on a PS controller, plus they remapped the controls to match the later PS Square games (WHY they made the change, I don’t know - not just to CT, but in general), so I was left to guess whether the code was now L1 O R1 O or L1 X R1 X…whichever it was, I guessed WRONG.
Wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d saved closer to it… sigh
I also hate sewers in games. I quit playing Vampire the Masquerade and Ninja Gaiden II when I got to the sewer parts. Hated them in Baldur’s Gate too, but I managed to plough through.
Jumping puzzles in every FPS. Rotate right, advance 2 pixels, jump while hitting ‘run’ simultanously… lather, rinse, repeat. Lame, lame, lame. I pretty much skipped the last third of Half-Life 1 because of all the lame jump puzzles.
Civilization IV (this probably apllies to all civ games) - When the obligatory attack from a rival xiv comes despite the fact that you have done everything in game to make the friends. they’ll just go from friendly to hostile for seemingly no reason in two turns and attack. The AI seems to be able to create huge stacks, so they either don’t build infrastructure or they they just leave a few cities unguarded.
City of Heroes- Any mission in the five layer cake cave map. Well, any cave map. I hate those. Well, I hate sewers too, not as much as caves though. Any mission that requires you to team up or go to Orabenga or Perez Park. (seriously, they need to create some new maps in that game for variety.)
Warcraft -This may just be my peeve, but the fact that you can get a quest in an area you’ve never been to, but the quest giver never gives you directions on how to get there. Often I have to rely on addons or log out and check the internet.
Fable: The escort quest with the little boy in the Hobb Cave Knights of the Old Republic: The shooty bits where you had to shoot bad guy fighters from your ship Psychonauts: The part at the meat circus where you have to slide on those rails, hopping from rail to rail to avoid obstables Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessThe Stagecoach. Oh god, the stagecoach.
That, and the swoop races. If I’d wanted to play a dumbass twitch game, I would’ve bought a dumbass twitch game. (Yes, I know the races are technically optional, but the money you get from winning them is very helpful.) That card game is pretty lame too.
In Wizardry 8, the Nessie battle is long and boring, since you pretty much have to stand back and use missile weapons.
I’m finally working my way through Beyond Divinity, and the battlefield areas are pretty dull. You also have to do some pixel-hunting, though it doesn’t seem quite as bad as Divine Divinity was.
Never play City of Heroes. A third of the damn game takes place in sewers. (Another third takes place in caves, and the last third takes place in warehouses. I am exaggerating, but not by much.)
My problem with V:tM was the haunted hotel. I got through the sewers okay, and I was absolutely loving the game up until then, but the hotel was just mean. Well done, but mean.
I still remember that despite it being half a lifetime ago. Also the path down from the wizard’s house in KQ3. And the maze in KQ5…Come to think of it, KQ had a lot of that.
Anyone else not realize at first that the people in the graveyard were zombies in KQ4? When I saw the first one I was thinking “Oh, I wonder if he’ll be friendly?”:smack:
In WoW, anything to do with PvP. Just don’t do it, you say? Hah. I came up through the game thinking it was part of my responsibility as a caster to put buff spells on people as they passed me by, and other casters would buff my melee types. It’s just the way the game worked, and it always worked out pretty well.
Then I started running into people who were flagged for PvP, and when I buffed them, that flagged me, too. Usually I don’t notice it, and I’m going on, merrily doing my thing, killing ogres and skinning things, and suddently I’m stunned, frozen in place, and dead, and some undead rogue is teabagging me.
Oh god, yes. I was also sorely disappointed by the last couple of bosses in SotC, since it was as if the game designers had said “screw it, we’re out of ideas, so instead of any real gameplay challenge we’ll just make this thing shake like it’s got some kind of neurodegenerative disorder and give you very few opportunities to recover and if you fall off it’ll take you forever to climb back on”. After falling off Malus’ arm for the millionth time I just wanted the game to be over. Probably not the emotional response they were looking for.
I just wanted to give a shout out to one of my favorite games of all time. Myth I was my first experience with on-line gaming and I still think the RTS online gameplay has yet to be beaten. It was pure strategy with a minimal amount of luck and micro-managing. Pure awesome.
Yet, no-one ever seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. It never gets a mention in top 100 games, and everyone I try to get to play it says it is “too hard.” It is nice to see someone else enjoyed it.
BTW, did Myth III ever recover from all the bugs? My computer couldn’t run it properly at the time and I lost the disc and was never able to play it through. Is it worth the effort to hunt down a copy?
