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Discussion: what was your most frustrating video game moment?

Video games can be fun, but they can also be a source of immense frustration. What’s your most frustrating moment in games?


Rishi: The Library level in Halo: Combat Evolved. While it did a fantastic job in building tension and almost creating a sense of horror, it felt like it should have been in a different game. Not one bearing the Halo moniker. And I had to play through it multiple times because the rest of the levels in the game are so damn good. I can’t tell if it is a deliberate ploy from a sadistic developer who wants to package fantastic gameplay with a couple of annoying sections or the sheer randomness of the game making process. Either way, it stood out as being absolutely monotonous and uber-frustrating to play through in what should have been a perfect game.


Jing: Breeding a stupid Gold Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII. Sure, it wasn’t exactly required to beat the game, but who would pass up the infamous Knights of the Round materia, which is essentially the game’s “I win” button?

Of course, the whole journey was not easy, much less fun. In a nutshell, players would need to gather worthless Chocobo from all around Gaia, race with those slow little turds until they become less turdy, then breed them using goblin and raptor nuts. As a final step, players would need to pray that their Playstation doesn’t break from the dozens of resets needed to get their desired Chocobo. Fun stuff.


Xairylle: Sitting beside my cousin and only being able to watch as he played Diablo and and then later, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. You can only imagine my frustration at this because he and my other cousin would often talk to each other about their in-game progress and I’d just sit there, being able to relate, but not have my own save file to talk about. They didn’t make fun of me and they did let me join the conversation, but it still would have been a different experience if I was actually able to play!

I wasn’t allowed to play these games because my dad believed that these games would brainwash me into becoming a follower of the devil if not make me march straight into hell. I didn’t have the guts to go against my dad’s decision at the time. I eventually got to play these games several years later and I have reason to believe that my soul is safe so far.


Mary-Anne: Nearly any game I play, I invariably come across some point really early in the story that I cannot cross. Sometimes it’s something really stupid, like finding a path out of an area. I once got stuck in disc one of Final Fantasy VII because I couldn’t find my way out of some stupidly cluttered area. Other times it’s something exceedingly facepalm-worthy, like when I couldn’t get through the Assassin’s Creed tutorial because I couldn’t gently push people out of the way. I still remember how the crowd I had to walk inconspicuously through all carried pots on their heads, and shoving them too hard or simply walking through them would make them all drop those damn pots and stare at me accusingly.

…I’m not sure how I got a job writing about games, to be honest. I shouldn’t even be near the majority of them.


Iain: Max Payne and the trail of blood level. Anyone who has played the original Max Payne knows exactly what I am talking about. It’s a level that forces you to guide a Max through a hallucination. During this hallucination you must step on a thin trail of blood, one inch either side of the trail and you fall, forcing you to restart the area. Sounds shit? It gets worse. Not only are there blood trails but there are intersections that lead to dead ends. Thought navigating the blood tightrope was hard? Wait until you try it in reverse.

And just to hammer home the awfulness of this section, you are forced to do it again, and again, all the while listening to the sound of a baby crying on loop. If there is a hell, this is it.


Charlie: The ending of Dead Space 2 is a strong contender for the stupidest and most frustrating video game section I’ve ever played, but for today I’d have to say getting facerolled in ranked 5s in League of Legends. I started a ranked team with some friends, all of us pretty inexperienced Bronze and Silver players, and 4 out of 5 games are against other people at our level. Those games are really fun. But the other 1 out of 5 games always seems to be against teams of Diamond and Plat players who are intentionally losing to keep their ELO low. These games are not fun. They’re just humiliating and pointless. We often end up technically winning, because the other team surrenders so their ELO stays low, but a win doesn’t feel very good when the kill score is something like 50-10 and all our towers are gone. I wish these assholes would have the guts to play players at their own level instead of stomping less experienced players in the lower leagues for laughs.


Thomas: Every time I figure out something in an Ace Attorney game before the designers wanted me to. Having to then jump through a series of strange logic hoops in order to reach an answer I’m already desperate to share (and am continuously penalized for sharing too early)? That takes frustrating all the way up to infuriating. Like being hit by several blue shells in a row in Mario Kart, I feel punished for being too good.

But then, I guess it’s balanced out by all those times I’m left completely stumped, and am presenting every random piece of evidence in the hopes it’s the one I’m meant to be looking for.


How about you?

The post Discussion: what was your most frustrating video game moment? appeared first on Games in Asia.


The post Discussion: what was your most frustrating video game moment? appeared first on Games in Asia.