Take a great and humourously written game, and then screw it up by tying the camera POV to the action controls. (What you do with the character controls the POV of the Camera… often the camera gets stuck looking at a rock face while you are trying to climb up a cliff, hiding the actual hand holds you need to see to progress - for example)
Lots of Jump from point a to point b stuff that doesn’[t let you see the actual jump… as soon as you jump, all yo see is the target, not the jumper whom you have to “steer”.
Got about 2/3rds of way through game and got stuck on one level. Couldn’t get past it. Spent several evenings trying to do it.
(The lava river, for those of you who have played it)
A friend came over with his 9 yr old sister once. She was into W&G, so I showed her the game, plus the level I was trapped on. She aced it in one… Grrr
I didn’t toss the control, but I did give her the game…
The game “Blast Corps” for N64 had a lot of levels that frustrated me to the point of physical anger. One of the worst levels was one called Diamond Sands, where you had to use a dump truck to destroy these long rows of houses at a mining camp, and the only way to do it was to do donuts over and over again or back up at high speed and crash into them.
It was bullshit because the Blast Corps team ostensibly had access to a wide variety of vehicles and robots - so why the fuck did they decide to deploy the dump truck (“Backlash”) to the one level that would be most difficult for it? Well, I mean, obviously, the game did it to be challenging, but in reality, they just would have used the J-Bomb or the Thunderfist.
(Anyone who’s ever wondered what my username means, by the way - it’s the name of one of the levels in that game.)
One time, in 6th grade I think, while arguing with a friend over which weapons to use in Goldeneye multiplayer, I actually got so angry at him that I threw the controller at the television, completely destroying the screen and sending glass and plastic fragments everywhere. (This wasn’t technically brought on by something happening in the game, so it doesn’t really count.)
I vaguely remembered reading something about a Doper working on N, and I guess you’re the Doper. I enjoyed the difficulty, but for whatever reason I simply couldn’t do what I needed to do (last stage of 14 btw). The game is kick ass by the way, one of the very best titles on 360 arcade, but when I want to start smashing my controller in frustration it’s time for a break. Maybe I’ll pick it up again and see what I can do.
I’m trying to get WoW updated after not playing it for over a year, and I’m getting the “Spell.dbc could not be applied” message after hours of downloads. Does that count?
gasp Master Control! The level that basically made a legion of N+ gamers hate us! It is for you, and everyone else who was driven insane by that level, that we made the first level in the new downloadable level pack an apology. It’s called: “to all those stuck on Master Control…” and consists of the words “we’re sorry!” spelled out in tiles
Here’s a youtube video (one of many!) of a solution, or check the leaderboards for replay that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUaumyCLiiU
Or, skip to the next column and try episode 15! I guarantee you’ll get through it
Geez, all this talk about N+ and I didn’t even contribute to the thread! Sorry about that. There are so many games that have made me so frustrated I’ve wanted to throw my controller or laptop, but most recently I tried to replay the original Zelda and Star Tropics on Virtual Console – gah, how did I ever enjoy playing those when I was younger?! I get killed by virtually everything!
I played it on PC, so turning anything around is out. I get the first suggestion, which I tried to do, but I guess I don’t have the determination it takes. My main gripe is that the fight is designed that way AT ALL.
Oh geez. I actually came into this thread just to mention Blast Corps, and Diamond Sands specifically, as a matter of fact! (For anybody who’s unfamiliar with Blast Corps, the shtick is that a nuclear missile truck’s runaway autopilot is steering it directly towards a disposal site, but there are a whole bunch of inconvenient cities and buildings in the way. As the slightest impact will set off a cataclysmic explosion, your only option is to employ a variety of vehicles to demolish everything in the way before the missile truck bumps into it.)
What really pissed me off about Diamond Sands was the fact that this enormous dump truck was, for some insane reason, completely incapable of driving across the train tracks (train tracks!) that ran through all the buildings in the level. Instead, you had to zip through tunnels that went under the tracks. So, between the dump truck’s horribly slow speed (compounded by the sand you had to drive it through), the need to waste time constantly crossing under the tracks to keep the path clear on both sides, and the fact that the only way to do much damage was to send the Backlash into a circular spin and whack the building precisely with the corner of the truck bed, Diamond Sands was so insanely difficult that just thinking about it makes me want to dust off the old N64 controllers again just so I can throw them across the room.
Timing the spins was very difficult. Usually what would happen is that I would go into a spin and run out of momentum immediately before touching the building, so I would wind up stuck against the side, or in a corner, repeatedly annoying the building with a series of completely impotent taps. While I was weeping in rage and frustration and hopelessly trying to disengage my enormous dump truck from the side of the building, the carrier truck would merrily bump into the front of it and usher in a nuclear apocalypse.
When I finally beat the game and discovered that I just had to do it all over again with the carrier moving faster (to earn platinum medals!) I gave up in disgust. :mad:
You know, I thought your name seemed familiar! I think all the trauma and mental scarring from my Blast Corps experiences had been blocking it out.
I played on the PS2, although I memorised all the moves and then counted between strikes to complete the final part. After I finished, I then realised I could have turned it upside down. :smack:
I can see why playing on the PC could make it slightly more tricky.
Heh, I hardly ever play games these days, and when I do it’s usually Civ IV, but I’m playing Ace Combat 6 at the moment too. I probably only pick it up once every 3 weeks and plow through a couple missions before hanging it up for a couple more weeks. Last time I played it I was on the same mission. It took me a few attempts to finish that mission, certainly had the most attrition of any mission so far, but I didn’t find it that frustration.
What plane are you choosing? I am using the F-22 I downloaded with QAAM special weapons. All you have to do is focus on those Strigon fighters first. They are a pain and you’ll need to call as much Allied Support as possible to get them, but the Battleships aren;t going anywhere and aren’t much threat so long as you stay away from the cruise missle range.
The game was X-Wing, the space combat simulator. For those of you who don’t remember the days when applying shading and textures to polygons was a strange and arcane art better left to people with supercomputer time than video games this game was hard. Really hard. There were roughly forty-five missions and it wasn’t uncommon for most people to get permanently stuck at three.
In those days PC games that used joysticks used real joysticks, not those flimsy thumb pads. They were inevitably designed to look like something from a fighter jet (this at least being after the day when they were typically boxes with two awkwardly placed buttons on the side). Back then people made fun of the PC joystick because pads were where it was at; only simulators would ever possibly want to know how far from center a joystick had moved (really, there was quite a bit of discussion among game designers on this “flaw” and conflict between PC’s and consoles).
So I had been playing X-Wing a lot. I cleared the first two campaigns. I battled my way to the Death Star, cleared the space around it, and flew the near impossible mission to clear enough ground fire that an approach could be made. It was time for the big moment: the trench run.
I had it mapped out in my head: full power to forward shields, dump the energy from the weapons into the shields to keep them up, and burn my engines out trying to blitz the defenses. The mission loaded up and I was instantly getting pounded by the towers but the final goal was right there; the trench ready for me to recreate every boy’s dream.
Naturally I completely let the geek flow through me and shouted, “This is Red 5! I’m going in!” I pushed my joystick hard to the right to roll into the shelter of the trench and…
SNAP!
The controller went dead as my ship spun out of control into the wall. When I disassembled it (yes, we used to disassemble controllers all the time to repair them) I found I had completely broken the frame for holding the stick. There was no way I could be able to continue the game that night (you’d have to be insane to try the trench with the keyboard).
And so that controller was thrown and I believe it was one of the few times where it was genuinely justified.
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: That version has many changes, since DS and PSP development was done by a different team than the XBLA version, and also since Atari’s goal was to make the game more appealing to casual gamers. The levels are slightly less difficult than the XBLA built-in ones, and the episode unlocking scheme has been changed so you only need to complete a couple episodes to unlock many new ones. So, you’ll also have more choice of which levels to play, which does help.
Overall, I would say the teams were successful at making the game slightly easier.
Of course, IMO the XBLA version is the better game. I just find that it is more rewarding when you finally beat those frustrating levels.
Wow, all this talk and yet no mention of Gran Turismo for PSX?.
I might be ridiculous here, but I found one particular level on the drivers license thingie nearly impossible. It was like the Intermediate license or whatever, and there were like 10 little races you had to complete under a certain time. I played that thing for DAYS trying to get the damn thing to work. I drove an RX-7 so I did a good bit of drifting. I don’t remember a single course on the subsequent examinations being harder. Really it just boiled down to one hairpin turn. I’m pretty sure i’m not alone on this one either.
metonymic, N rocks. I’ve wasted many, many work hours playing the original Flash game, and I was delighted to see it on the 360. It’s driven me insane a number of times, but it’s one of the few games where that only inspires me to try harder rather than go “Fuck this” and walk away. Beating the harder levels is intensely satisfying.
The most recent game I can think of where I’ve had the urge to throw the controller is Mario Kart Wii. I want to like it very much, but the AI’s built-in cheats are designed to punish you for doing well. It’s not a challenge, it’s just a middle finger to the player, and it’s caused me endless frustration. I defended it when it came out, but I haven’t touched it in weeks.
Speedball II on the Atari ST
The hardest team to beat was called Super Nashwan, I beat them *one* time*, thought Whoo Hoo! Then promptly got beaten by the Turbo Hammers. WTF? I beat them all the time? Joystick->smash**. I figured the game was randomised in such a way that you could never beat both of the top two teams.
I figured a way to hack the game save disc and gave all my team full speed/skill/power/defence (255/255***) even the top computer teams (Super Nashwan and Turbo Hammers) were supposed to be less than 100% in some aspects.
Even starting with a full team of supermen you still got creamed by Super Nashwan, their speedy but (supposedly) weaker centre forward would take on my guy (who should’ve been indestructible) and wipe him out. Something fishy there.
Still, possibly the second best computer game ever. I could have a play tonight, I’ve got a PC version and I think the Atari still works but I don’t think I could stand the frustration these days.
* without cheating that is. They were *just* beatable if you gave yourself a team of supermen and drank enough coffee.
** OF course I had to fix the joystick because the game was so addictive.
*** FF/FF
