All right, so as not to exclude PC gamers, I think the title should be What’s your “Flung control or throw your keyboard out of the window in disgust” moments in computer gaming but that’s a bit tad too long.
What’s the most difficult part of game that you have ever played?
For me, recently, it’s Ace Combat 6, Mission 9 – yeah, I have to take down 4 aerial fortresses, two with ESM, all armed with AA guns while an Ace squadron is firing Quick Manauever Air to Air missiles at me, and if I stray too far out, those aerial fortresses will launch cruise missile at me.
I think I re-did it over 20 times yesterday, from 10pm to 5am before I finally switch off my Xbox360 in disgust.
I can’t quite remember what was being played at the time they were made, but when I took some of my SNES pads out for a game of Bomberman, some of them had what look like bite marks on them :dubious:
Mafia. The old PC game that was based on, yet surpassed, the GTA formula.
This is truly one of the greatest games in PC gaming history, with a great mix of free roaming action and missions, incredible graphics for its time, superb voice acting, a great story (ripped off from Goodfellas), etc.
But one mid-level mission has you competing in a professional car race. Look, I don’t like race-car games, I don’t buy them or play them or even think about them. And I don’t like game developers sneaking in a race car game into my adventure game because you ran out of ideas and need filler.
To make it worse the car you have to use has much, MUCH, more touchy controls than all the other cars in the game. Plus you have to come in 1st place to advance. I played literally for over 25 hours trying to pass that level before finally going online and downloading a cheat (which I hate to do). It is interesting to note that the developers eventually released a patch that allows players to skip over that level.
Man, this was years ago and I’m still bitter - that’s how bad it was.
Either Ghouls 'n Ghosts or Ghosts 'n Goblins, probably on the C-64. I used to smash controllers fairly often, and I remember repeatedly banging the controller against my desk on this one, sometimes swinging it by the cord against the wall.
N+ for 360 Arcade. Don’t remember the level, but I do recall spending 30 minutes on it and I still kept dying within the first 10 seconds. I have not played it since.
Marble Madness on the old 386 with the EGA monitor. Playing with a joystick and trying to get the marble to go along that little bridge while the camera was in forced perspective… and you only get ONE life!
The family had to stop playing after I (about 10 years old) actually ripped the joystick “stick” from its base in pure animal frustration.
Played an old hockey game (Wayne Gretzky Hockey) years ago. The EA hockey series (which came later) had the same problem this one did; they had to crank the goalies up to godlike to make it anything close to a fair fight, because it was too easy to fake out the defensemen and get tons of shots from the slot. In this particular game I must have had like 30 shots on goal in the final period, trying desperately to tie the game, every single shot stoned. With about 2 minutes to go I had a 2 on 1 (which typically was the best way to score), Gretzky himself and Kurri, and passed to Kurri for the one-timer. The goalie was clearly beat, the puck shot in behind him…and hit an invisible force field, and somehow slid sideways through the crease and out beyond the post. I couldn’t believe it, and promptly crushed the 5 1/2" floppy in my hands and threw it in the garbage.
Is that the old Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey game? If so I remember if you timed a power shot from right behind the blue line (I think) you could get an automatic goal and knock the goalie along with the goal completely over.
The last time I was controller flinging frustrated was Midnight Club Underground for PS2. I don’t remember what race it was - but it had to be near the end. The race was almost 7 mins long and I would just barely - like withing 3 secs - run out of time every time. I re-ran that race for about three hours straight before I finally stood up and spiked my controller.
The controller shattered and I haven’t played the game since.
XIII. The damn thing has a fake “tutorial” where it lets you walk the character down a hall (learning nothing about the controls). Then the game starts, you get shot at, and there is no hint as to what the controllers do. I ran around frantically mashing buttons for a few minutes, then I threw the damn controller down.
Being told that “It works just like any other FPS for that console” didn’t help any. F*ck you, game developer. You aparantly don’t want me to play your game, and I am happy to grant that wish.
The final boss battle in Beyond Good and Evil. It was such an AWESOME game. I never got to see the end of it because of one of those never ending, completely pointless run-around-like-nuts-and-fight-different-incarnations-of-the-boss-cum-minions-battles that has nothing to do with the rest of the game and is impossible to finish unless you’re superhuman. I’m still pissed off at the developers for that.
**Maximo ** for the PS2 - it has a a learning curve that feels like you ran into a brick wall, on several occassions.
The only time I’ve physically thrown my controller at the television in disgust was “Arc the Lad: Twilight of Spirits” and wasn’t the game’s difficulty - it was a plot related issue. I already wanted to kill most of my own party at this point because they were so utterly unlikeable. When they let the nazi eugenics vivsectionist (not kidding) join the party I snapped.
Same here. I’ve played completely through the game three times, only to be stymied each time by the final boss.
Another for me is God of War, when Kratos has to jump across the lethal ceiling fans. I’m a fuckin killing machine! Why give me this mario bros. jumping crap?!
I sworn off God of War in the first stage where I have to do a tightrope sequence and died 3 times. (Dear Og, why aren’t all games with platform elements in them as tolerant as Okami?)
I got that feeling too with one of the Tomb Raider games, I couldn’t get Croft to make a small jump in a tutorial level and left the game completely alone after that.
Really sorry about that, yearsofstatic – I’m part of the team that made that game, and even though it’s waaaaay easier than the original game, N, it’s still quite hard. That was deliberate, but we tried to make the learning curve much smoother to accommodate new players.
Did you try the tutorial first? That definitely helps most players. Being able to see what moves you have available to you and try them out without fear of death is so nice.
If you’re stuck on a certain level, you can try shifting columns – the first levels in each column are easier than levels farther down in that column.
Have you tried co-op? You can do a co-op campaign through the single player levels, so you’d at least get two ‘tries’, plus the help of a friend!
Ooh, and finally, we just released a pack of Easier levels, in which we worked very hard to smooth out the difficulty curve even further – you might find these much more conducive to the development of your mad ninja skillz.
The first time I went after Yazmat in Final Fantasy XII. I’d been playing that damn fight for 4, 5 hours straight, then the stupid beast wiped me in one blow.
