Here are two that are about the same thing: control reversal.
The last boss in Beyond Good & Evil on the original Xbox. The boss teleports around you, and you have to attack in the direction he appears. Above you, left, right, forward, back, whatever. But for the second half of the flight, he reverses your controls, so if he appears to your left, you have to attack right, and if he’s above you, you have to attack down. You have about a half-second to react every time he appears. I think the first time I beat it, I ended up with no lives left and half a heart remaining on my health bar.
The second is from the more recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. The game is about building your own vehicles and using them to defeat challenges. One challenge in particular requires that you use a specific vehicle called the “Oddball” that has its controls reversed. You have to pilot this vehicle through tunnels, around obstacles, and across narrow elevated ramps and pathways within a specific time to beat the challenge. I was mighty relieved when someone discovered that you can take the vehicle apart during the race and reassemble it in a way that negates the reversed controls.
I have to say, I believe every game should have easy save points now. You can do whatever people like with the rest of the game, but more and more gamers are adult gamers now, and we have lives. We have to go to work, or cook dinner, or whatever. Acknowledge that we are not teens with nothing else to do and let us save when we need to dammit.
Even better, use autosave and use it regularly. And make damn sure if you put a cutscene in before something difficult that it is skippable. One of the most frustrating segments I ever played was in the PS2 Orphen: Scion of Sorcery RPG (note: I actually like the series and found the game fun enough). That thing had a bunch of long, FMV voice-acted cutscenes. That wouldn’t be too bad, but they were unskippable. One was about 10 minutes long and put right before a difficult boss battle that would be won or lost in about five minutes. I’m still not sure how I managed to beat that game without destroying my brand-new PS2 in frustration.
And speaking of unskippable cutscenes, a duo from FFVII and FFVIII. Final Fantasy VII had those long, unskippable summoning spells. I could actually W-Summon Knights of the Round, Mime it twice, and go make a sandwich while the game ran through that animation six times in a row. Final Fantasy VIII also had long, unskippable summoning spells, but the player was supposed to sit there pumping a button the whole time to power up the attack or something. I don’t remember, really, because the whole game pissed me off so much I quit on the first disc.
Metroid Prime Wii, the boss Mogenar. Every few months I replay this damn game and reach this guy, an dthen spend a few frustrating days trying to kill him. I’ve never made it past this point. This game is simultaneously the greatest (up to that point) and worst game ever made as a result.
I’m the only one here who actually managed to complete the butterfly catching game? (Only once out of the 4 times I played the game all the way through - I didn’t actually try for any of the Ultimates the first time, succeeded the second time, gave up the third, and didn’t try the fourth, because I never use Khimari. Still, I did complete it!) It certainly was nowhere near as frustrating as the lightning dodging or chocobo race.
Yes, I actually did do the butterfly catching one successfully IIRC.
I mentioned lightning dodging not because it was especially difficult (I think I did it on my second or third serious attempt with no-encounters equipped) but because it required staring at the screen with unblinking (literally) attention. The rest were shorter minigames that might require continuous repeats, but at least you could try it, then refocus your eyes on something else for a while.
I refused to do the blitzball challenges at all because I hate blitzball.
In E.V.O. for the SNES, the boss fights were pretty tough, particularly the Mama Yeti and the Queen Bee.
Here is a German-language Let’s Play featuring Mama Yeti. I can’t make out most of what the player is saying, but it’s pretty easy to guess. Note: in this game, evolving a body part into a different form restores your health, and is a handy trick to make boss fights less ridiculously difficult. Usually.
This, this and thousand times this. Mass Effect 1 had one fight that teleported the party in the middle of an empty space devoid of cover during the stupid cutscene and once the actual fight started in 2-3 minutes, you could die in 5 seconds if you didn’t run to the right cover right away. ME1 combat was otherwise easy, and I wouldn’t have minded harder fights, but having to watch a longish time when my supposedly veteran soldiers blithedly walk into an ambush like stupid civilians and then die in a few seconds just made me soooo mad.
All Bioware RPGs seem to love the cutscene-teleport into a room filled with enemies, and it always makes me angry even when I can just run back out and re-start the fight on my own terms like in Dragon Age. It just makes the hero feel such a fool.
Other things I’ve gotten mad about:
Ultima 5 last dungeon. I couldn’t find a way through level 6 and there were no google searches and walkthroughs on the web back then, so after playing the game all summer I quit in 6/8 through of the last dungeon in the game.
Borderlands: the Secret Armory of General Knoxx. Again, the ending sucked. Even if I don’t grab anything, I have such a poor sense of direction I just blow up. And if I want to try that again, I have to suffer through the easy but obnoxiously tiresome and long bossfight again.
Mmm, can’t think of any else on such a short notice. But I’m sure there are a bunch of them.
Hm… the Last Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. No real indication of where to go or what to do because the stupid sword-glow thing is next to useless, and the game overall doesn’t do a very good job of encouraging you to ever try shooting weak spots with a bow. I must’ve flubbed trying to jump from his hand to his shoulder fifty times before I gave up and read a FAQ that told me I needed to shoot him. And even then the rest of him was freaking tedious. Really a bummer way to finish up that game.
After you beat the game, you get to complete these mini challenges to get an extra cutscene or whatever that fleshes out some of the story. There are 10 challenges with increasing difficulty. Most of them are beatable with skill and a bit of luck, but challenge #10 was absolutely insane and rage-inducing
You see, you can’t save during these challenges. If you find them too hard and get stuck and decide to turn the game off, you have to start all the way from challenge #1. Well #1-9 took me about 2 hours, but #10 was about the closest I ever got to throwing my controller at the TV.
You are on the little platform that spawns 5 monsters. Everytime you kill one or knock one off, the platform moves up a little. Kill enough, and it will be high enough for you to jump to the finish. But if you die or get knocked off, it’s the end and you have to start over again
It took me 3 or 4 hours to give up in frustration the first time. I had to go away and do something for a while to reduce the anger. I picked it up again and played for a few hours and had to give up again. Finally, I picked it up for the last time around 8pm and played until almost midnight. Keep in mind I’ve been at this level since 11am that morning. I was 10 mins from quitting when I suddenly got lucky and made it. I never want to play that again, I don’t give a damn what cutscenes or completion points I get, NEVER FUCKING AGAIN!!!
I’m puzzled by how many people had problems with the meat circus in Psychonauts. I never had any problem getting thorugh that level. And as for the final boss in Beyond Good and Evil, just flip your controller upside down.
I found the part in Okami on the Wii where you have to help the old man with his dance to restore a tree extremly frustrating. There’s virtually no room for error because doing the brushstrokes with the Wiimote successfully can be tricky. I had to try that part dozens of times before I got it right, and each time you fail the cutscene starts from the beginning. Here’s the part in question.
