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Games Entertainment

Have You Hit a Gaming Wall? 484

Posted by Zonk from the that-was-the-brick-against-my-face dept.
Stephen Totilo, at MTV Games, has hit a gaming wall. At the newly un-flashed Multiplayer site he talks about the bane of gamers everywhere, what developer Jamie Fristrom calls a 'shelf-level event': a gaming wall that makes it hard if not impossible to complete a game. While a lot of gamers can overcome difficulties to reach the end credits, there are some frustrations that can suck all the fun out of play. He cites the bosses from Final Fantasy X and Super Paper Mario as dealbreakers. I personally am playing through God of War again, and the incredibly frustrating spear trap in the 'Paths of Madness' section of the game never fails to provoke hysterics. Have you run into any such obstacles lately? What game obstacles have caused you toss away a controller in frustration and swear off a game entirely?
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Have You Hit a Gaming Wall? More

Have You Hit a Gaming Wall?

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  • Painkiller (Score:3, Informative)

    by tedgyz ( 515156 ) * on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @04:58PM (#17911790) Homepage
    Find all secret areas in some levels to gain a tarot card.

  • So.... maybe we need to get rid of the (Score:4, Funny)

    by Broken scope ( 973885 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @04:59PM (#17911796) Homepage
    the cheats in games. They have made gamers weak.

    • Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:30PM (#17912476) Homepage Journal
      I completely disagree.

      I don't cheat myself, but I have friends who do. Some of these friends wouldn't even play games if they couldn't cheat, simply because it wouldn't be fun for them. That's not how I have fun, but it's how they have fun.

      They'll also slap a friendly sticky grenade on your back when you aren't looking and laugh.

      Cheats have a place in video games, and I honestly miss the days of the "Unlock everything" codes for Gameshark or just the game itself because it provided a failsafe for when something goes wrong. Nothing kills a game like having your savegame corrupt, and having no recourse but to resign yourself to fewer characters, levels and features (especially after it took 60 hours of play to get everything you did).

      • Re:So.... maybe we need to get rid of the (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:25PM (#17913548) Journal
        It's hit or miss for me. Some games I probably give up on because they're getting pretty hard, and I'm not having that much fun anyways. Some games I have trouble with, but I'll play them until I figure it out, or until I get every item and find every secret room because I just enjoy the game. I'm a pretty casual gamer, I seldom have a whole afternoon to really dig into a game and get in the flow and perfect my technique to the level that some games seem to need.

        A good example is the GTA games. I don't enjoy the missions nearly as much as I enjoy just cruising around and exploring the game world. Unfortunately, the missions are required to unlock various things, and I don't have the patience to do all of that. I might just want to spend a half hour blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher. And so I turn to cheat codes, which GTA:SA fortunately has in spades.

        While I respect that some people enjoy things that are difficult just for the sake of difficulty (some people like rock climbing for pete's sake), that's not how I prefer to spend my time, and a game that wants to force that sort of playing on me is not something that I'm interested in. Things like cheat codes can sometimes make a game like that enjoyable and appealing to a wider audience.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by theStorminMormon ( 883615 )
          I think it also depends a lot on the type of difficulty. I played Halo (the original) all the way through on regular, heroic, and legendary. I felt that the enemies got faster and smarter. The experience was more intense, but the challenges were over all the same. Halo 2 was a completely different feeling. I felt that instead of making the experience more challenging, they just hyper-inflated the stats of your opponents. I never beat it on legendary. I remember one level in particular near the very e

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 )

        I don't cheat myself, but I have friends who do. Some of these friends wouldn't even play games if they couldn't cheat, simply because it wouldn't be fun for them. That's not how I have fun, but it's how they have fun.

        I find myself in that boat sometimes. I'm pushing 40, and not a hardcore gamer. I used to buy games for my PS2 and hope that I could get through them. Then, I eventually figured out that most modern games are way overly complex for me to successfully play. For some of the FPS games, I'd j

  • Stuck?

    Then it's time to either grind levels or get better, depending on the game.

    Alternatively, hit gamefaqs or bust out the cheat codes, if you lack fortitude.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wiggles ( 30088 )
      Yeah. Try using cheat codes to get past the Grim Reaper in the original Castlevania. There aren't any! The FAQs I've seen won't do it either.

      I've been trying to beat that game for twenty years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by karnal ( 22275 )
        I even tried using Save States on my GBA (emulation) and I can't kill him....

        Sucks that I can't even cheating.
      • Try using cheat codes to get past the Grim Reaper in the original Castlevania. There aren't any!

        Unless you have a Game Genie, and what dedicated NES gamer didn't? I even imported mine from Canada, because the US release was held up by Nintendo filing a lawsuit to block it.

      • I sympathize. I actually got past the Reaper once. The original Castlevania was the last one I played, after I'd beaten 2 and 3. This was when I was 10 or so. Anyway, after I'd beaten him somehow, I forget why, I had to shut off the NES, or I had it turned off for me... can't remember which. I had managed to get to the third form of Dracula, too, but couldn't quite beat him. Maybe I ran out of continues. Anyway, I've never been able to beat the Reaper since then. Bastard.

      • Re:Wall my ass (Score:5, Informative)

        by default luser ( 529332 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:59PM (#17913070) Journal
        Grim Reaper? That's nothing. Here's how you do it:

        1. You need the cross (boomerang). Lucky for you, it is available on the way to the reaper, even if you die and restart.

        2. You need to build up hearts, at least 40-50 of them. On the top of the staircase that leads to the hall full of axe knights, there is a large heart in the candle directly above the stairs. Grab the (5) hearts, go down the stairs and come back up and repeat.

        3. You need triple-shot crosses. You can get this by killing the axe knights with crosses, then afterwards hitting candles with the cross. The candle should drop double, and later triple shots. IF you fail to get the triple shots, go back down the stairs and come back up to face the axe knights again.

        Strategy for killing the reaper:

        1. Saturate the space. Fire crosses even if they're going to miss the reaper. The primary purpose of the crosses is to kill the reaper, but the secondary purpose is to kill the flying sickles. Try to fire crosses at multiple levels of the screen so you get more coverage. This works well with the next technique, which is:

        2. Always keep moving. You can't see the sickles appear under you if you stand still - you have a chance of dodging them if you see them fade in. Jumping from level-to-level makes this strategy easier to pull off, and also allows you to saturate the whole screen with crosses (see above).

        I did spend quite a bit of time learning how to beat the reaper hen I was a kid, but compared to the count he's cake. Still, until I came up with this strategy he usually kicked my ass, so I'm not surprised you're stuck on him.
  • I cheat. When I can't win, I pull out my last advantage over a computer and start trying to pick it apart. If I can't have fun and win, I try to break the game instead and make my own fun out of it.

    Of course, this doesn't apply to multiplayer games. In those cases I just call everyone H4X0RZ and log off before they get a victory.
    • Heh, I've played you before.

      I'm just the opposite; I never fricking quit. I'm the guy who's building random photon cannons all over the map, just to piss off the guys who are beating my ass...And I've pulled it off before, where I've been in an "unwinnable" situation and ended up winning, because the opponents slacked off. I was in a 3v3 in Warcraft III once, and had two of my teammates quit, and managed to footy rush and wipe out two of my three remaining opponents, and then just outplayed the last guy. It

      • Re:I don't quit. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:11PM (#17913272)
        Heh, I'm (in reality) very similar when faced with a losing situation online. I like to make a defeat as fun as possible, I was into Counter-Strike for a while and I've been in some pretty 1-sided situations. I remember once where I was on the terrorist team in the office level. We were completly random strangers and the CT team was a tourney clan. Whooping us bad, to say the least. So I made it fun next round, I stabbed the hostages just enough to keep them alive, tagged the wall with a spray, and stood there in between the hostages. They always came to the hostages last, and there I was. They had one guy left, we had one guy left. They're guy the shot gun, I didn't have the money to pay for armor. He came up, saw me standing there and ducked back. Then ran at me, and killed me like I was afk. I hit the ground and so did the grenade I had been holding the entire round. BLAM! There went the hostages and there went the knifing CT! The whole server had a good laugh and called it a draw!

  • I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.

    One of these days, I'm going to play all the way through the game again, and at least make it to the Sephiroth fight... one of these days...

    • If you level enough, you can beat sephiroth in about 12 min. and thats almost entirely watching 3 knights of the rounds do 120,000+ dmg to him. you can also solo omnislash/mimic/auto pheonix him in about 3 min. summon, mimic, mimic. doen game. I had max str with slash all so 9999 each hit with each char to every enemy. end game is boring if you munchkin like a mad man.
      • Keep in mind, this was my first play through, and I was trying to go through without using a walkthrough. Consequently, I did not have any of the Ultima Weapons. None at all. (Well, okay, I found Aerith's, but that doesn't precisely help me).
        • Yea, I did it both ways. He's beatable without any of the super-sexy stuff...in fact, it's a much better fight, but it's truly special to go in and crush him with a couple of consecutive limit breaks.
    • I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.

      I had a similar experience with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, on the Gameboy Advance. I played all the way through this RPG, having a great time, and then found myself in the final battle without enough attack points to defeat the enemy,
  • Played the entire game, a little disappointed. Must have put 30+ hours in, then got to the final boss failed a few times and never played the game again. Same happened with Diddy Kong racing. An experience like that can sour an entire game for me and I have no regrets not finishing them, the idea that i must finish something because I've wasted X many hours of my life on it doesn't click. If the story is good I'll persevere but otherwise no.

  • Nope! (Score:2)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 )
    Because that is what cheat codes and gameshark is for. I break it out when the game is kicking my arse for days on end at that point or like in FF-X the save points are too damned far apart and you just died in a minor battle right after a damn SIN fight that takes 1 hour.

    Quake 4 was quite fun after I started throwing in the "give all" and undying" cheats. (note last boss undying does not work, the boss get's an undying if you get it. It made the game way more fun when I could start lobbing rockets around
  • When you need to make Bender jump from girder to girder. I always end up falling :-(. Haven't picked up then game in months because of that spot.
  • I don't know anyone who passed that hurdle by themselves, everyone I asked checked out a walkthrough on the net.
    I blame the translation, the instruction for the puzzle can't be followed to solve it.
    • I played thru Silent Hill with no cheats and don't remember the piano puzzle being that difficult, but I've played musical instruments since I was 5. I remember when Myst was out, one of my friends that was not a gamer got a call from a tone deaf friend wanting help with the organ puzzle. He listened to it over the phone and told him which keys to hit. It worked. You just need some more music geeks in your life! I just finished Twilight Princess on the Wii and I loved the Howling Stone sections where y
      • dude - even with the little blue lines to help, it drives me crazy getting the howling right. my kids get really frustrated with me. 'come on dad! do it right!' and other helpful comments. the puzzle with the two statues that needed to go back to their original spots was one of the harder things i've done yet in that game though.
  • I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing usef

    • I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes.

      For me, the most frustrating part of Max Payne wasn't the combat, it was the jumping puzzles during the drug-induced fever-dreams. Those were a royal pain in the ass.

      • I'm surprised Max Payne gets mentioned here (and again by another poster down the thread). Not only did it load in a reasonable amount of time on a PII-350 level system, the quickloads were very fast and I don't remember being frustrated at that at all. I also found the whole game quite easy, and even the walk-the-thin-line, jump-over-there puzzles, which I normally hate, didn't cause me much trouble.

        And now that you bastards mentioned Max Payne, I'll have to dig it out and finish it twice today, thanks!

  • amen! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:06PM (#17911982)

    The GameCube version of "F-Zero" includes a race set on a course full of 90-degree turns and expert opponents. I'll never beat it. I'll never see the rest of the game.
    same thing happened to me, no way I'll ever be able to beat that mission in story mode, or beat all the cups in diamond to unlock AX, and due to the fact that for some bizarre reason there are NO CODES for f-zero-gx I just stopped playing it, and basically stopped playing my gc altogether due to the huge amounts of frustration f-zero gx caused.

    Note to Nintendo: if you sell a game, make sure that there is some sort of code to use to unlock all the game has to offer, or a reduced difficulty level, I paid for the whole game and to be locked out of 1/5th of the tracks (likely among the best ones) and 4/5ths of the story mode does not feel right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Erioll ( 229536 )
      I agree. That game was really fun (not QUITE as fun as N64 version, but close), with great visuals (better than N64, obviously), but the frustration of knowing that there was more that I'd NEVER touch was something that always really got to me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MeanderingMind ( 884641 )
      Agreed.

      I'm one of those crazy gamers capable of unlocking everything in F-Zero GX, and I did. However, my greatest fear is save file corruption. Can anyone explain to me how I'm supposed to recover the work I did unlocking tracks when crap happens to my save files?

      Quite simply, game companies need to catch on that any game requiring more than 5-10 hours to unlock everything useful for multiplayer need to include some method of cheating to unlock it all instantly.
    • The AR codes were the only reason I finished that race. It's also worth buying one because you can use it to unlock parts that are not accessible any other way. IIRC, you had to bring your memory card to some special event in Japan to get them legitimately, and they let you build some cool vehicles.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • but the story is impossible to get back into the story and really know what is going on(it's hard enough if you don't stop). Tactics Ogre was the whole reason I bought a gba and it took me 3 years and 3 continents to finally beat it. I bought it in North America, took it with me and got to the boss while I was living in Japan, and then a year and a half later finally beat it when I was in Europe. Tried playing through again and well, I'm lost in the story again. I know you can replay all the events, but
    • I've gotten stuck in two Fire Emblem games where the main members of the party are maxed out on levels (and gain nothing further from experience) and the rest of the party is too weak to level up without getting killed. Since the games offer no random, non-story battles to strengthen your party with, I'm stuck unable to advance the plot without having to sacrifice low-level characters (who then die permanently, losing you their elements of the story).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amrust ( 686727 )
        I thought there was some sort of 'tower', near the beginning of "Sacred Stones", that you could go in and basically level all day, if you wanted. Like a torunament-dungeon, sort of thing?

        Been awhile, maybe I'm wrong on that.
    • I'm sorry, but if you had trouble beating Tactics Ogre for the GBA it's because you suck, not because the game was too hard. I could understand getting frustrated with Tactics Ogre for the Playstation, but Knight of Lodis was dead easy, up to and including the last boss. One of the only downsides to the game, really.
  • This exact thing happened to me in it. I got to one of the levels (I forget what one it was) that was almost impossible to beat. I don't know if I tired cheats, but I ended up passing it only with a slight hardware mod (gluing a stick onto the control stick).

    I am hardly lame when it comes to gaming, and this type of thing happened to me in other situations as well. Some well designed games normally don't have walls, but they are in a lot of them (mainly console adventure games), normally unlikely places.
  • Not the most popular game, true.

    But I played that bitch for a solid month trying to win the title in 'Hard' mode, only to be defeated in the finals about 100 times. Had to toss the disk.

  • DOS-era game, one of the best sidescrolling games. At a certain fiery stage I think level 7 out of 10, it gets just too confusing and difficult.

    I felt that way about prince of persia too. You just run out of time and need to play better all the way from the start. But I finished that one.

    Neither I nor anyone else I've known who has attempted Zeliard has completed that game without cheating.

  • Battletoads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Deluxe_247 ( 743837 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:13PM (#17912132)
    If you havn't played the little racer levels, then you don't know what hitting a gaming wall is. All this talk about FF games and Gears of War and Doom 3 and stuff?

    Please. Fire up your NES Emulator of choice and see how far you get with Battletoads (without cheating of course..)

    Warning: You may want to go shopping for a hairpiece first, because you'll look funny once you pull all your hair out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by richdun ( 672214 )
      Darn you beat me to it. I still haven't beat that thing. While we're on the NES tilt, anyone remember Jackal? Had nice replay value, but the whole one-hit-you-die life system nailed me every time. Kids these days, with their fancy save games, and strategy guides, and cheat codes. Why, in my day, we had to go hunting for the issue with the right section of Classified Information to get past the "gaming walls!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Requiem ( 12551 )
      I was just about to post that. There's this stupid racing level I can never pass. You have to time your jumps better than the damn NES controller allows.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jchenx ( 267053 )
      Yup, I totally agree. Talk to any hardcore gamer during the NES era, and just mentioning "Battletoads" is likely to incite anger and rage. Total pain in the ass.

      Funny thing is that I was finally able to get past the stupid racing level by memorizing all the jumps exactly. However, I always gave up after the next level (which involved a bunch of snakes and more jumping), because after dying, I didn't want to go back through the blasted game again. Talk about being burned out ...

  • Intelligent difficulty (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aldur42 ( 1042038 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:14PM (#17912138)
    Good games will often take these brick wall scenario's in mind. For example, in halo, after wandering around aimlessly for half an hour a way point will lead you in the right direction. Other games will ask if you want to reduced the difficulty after you died 10 - twenty times. Brick walls in games is just laziness on the part of the developers. There was a great article earlier this week on slashdot http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/24/ 1821238 [slashdot.org] that asked whether mathematical tuning made games better, in my opinion, Yes.
  • Cause if they do, any fight with Dr. B in Tekken3 gave me a heart attack.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brogdon ( 65526 )
      Yeah, tell me about it. There was this one dude that used to play Street Fighter II down at my local arcade. He was insanely and (I maintain) unfairly good, and I must have spent a couple hundred bucks in quarters trying to beat him. Eventually I just had to give up and have him cryogenically frozen.

      One of these days I'll probably get nostalgic, thaw him out and give it another go.
  • The PlayStation2 seems prone to corrupted save data.

    When I've spent hours working my way thru Harry Potter, DDR *, or other games only to be forced to start over thanks to a corrupted save, there's just no desire to start over only to do hours of what was already achieved, and hesitation to start anything else thanks to perceived inevitability of the same stupid waste.

    The player works hard to get to a saved point. That data better be there when he comes back.
    • Luckily, you can zoom through DDR games pretty quickly on the controller. It's a slightly different angle on the game, plus it lets you get back to where you were before quickly.

  • The Same thing Happened to me in EVE Online (Score:5, Funny)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:17PM (#17912202) Homepage
    I have been trying to overthrow the leader of an enemy corporation,
    so I've been camped outside his house with a can of mace and a box
    of Chips-Ahoy for 3 days now, but I think he went skiing.

    God this game is frustrating.

  • This one is a literal wall that proved to be extremely difficult. Not only was the dungeon difficult but if you didn't beat the evil wall by the time it reached you it would start one shotting your party members.
    • There's also the boss which pretty much requires the Wall spell. Good luck trying to beat it if you haven't leveled enough for it. Trying to outdamage its constant healing is a nightmare.
  • Who can forget those maddening mini-levels where you had to literally walk a thin red line, along with making precise jumps, all while some diseased baby was wailing in the background. I barely managed the patience to see that through.
  • Expert level. I managed to get through 1 song and ended up with my wrist in a cast.

  • Super Mario Bros (Score:3)

    by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:22PM (#17912308) Homepage Journal
    The giant leap in the middle of World 8-2 in NES Super Mario Brothers. In probably 20 years I've only gotten over it once, then died to something silly before ending the level. I ended up using a Game Genie code in the emulator to beat it.

    Agree with the other person about Battletoads. It's a fun game, for the very short period before it becomes INSANELY HARD.

    Doom 3, because I just got tired of not being able to see anything.

    NES Ikari Warriors. I can't see how anyone can beat it without cheating, because you move so slowly that you can't dodge bullets well and there are so so many ways to die.
    • The giant leap in the middle of World 8-2 in NES Super Mario Brothers.

      That one isn't bad. Basically, you gotta inch over to the left on the first little pillar. You get mario positioned so that one foot is off the left side of the pillar. Then do your running jump. Works every time.
  • Yeah, this one. [wikipedia.org] I can't think of a single game that had as big of a wall as that one seemed to, after you got to the city level. Only nes game I've ever owned and never beat.
  • Super Paper Mario isn't out yet. He's talking about Paper Mario 2 for GameCube. And it is very sad that he couldn't beat one of the most linear RPG experiences of all time. Jeez, how can you screw that up?
    • The only Boss I can think of as debilitatingly hard is the one at the bottom of the pit of 100 trials, simply because most everyone finds out the hard way he's stronger than they're prepared for, not to mention the horrible attrition you face trying to get to him.

      However, another point to make is that any RPG, including linear ones, can have slow phases where one becomes quite bored. That can kill a game.

  • Gaming Walls I have known (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:26PM (#17912402) Homepage Journal
    1) LoZ: WindWaker - Sailing around to pick up all those triforce pieces, it all just slowed down there and I never beat the game.

    2) WarCraft III - I bought the game when it first came out, back when Demon Hunters could burn you for 300 mana, and Huntresses were the key to winning. Things changed, patches fixed imbalances, but I kept playing and had lots of fun becoming more skilled and enjoying myself. Then the first DC hack hit. What was frustrating wasn't so much that I went from a winning record to abject mediocrity so much as the complete inability to finish and sometimes even start games before I was inceremoniously DC'd. The number of times this happened after a dramatic turnaround was more than suspicious. I couldn't play it for months after that, and when I returned I felt left behind. There was no motivation to play competitively again.

    3) Beyond Good and Evil - Sailing again, sort of. Once I got the power boat and could explore, I ended up getting very bored and stopped playing.

    4) Goblin Commander - After getting through the campaign and defeating the fourth goblin, I simply lost interest.

    5) Time Splitters 2 - Awesome game, beat the ever-living snot out of it. Then a friend accidentally corrupted my profile, simultaneously wiping out everything I'd done. Given the huge number of hours it took to unlock everything, that was utterly heartbreaking and I've never played the game again. This is the single greatest reason for an "unlock everything" code.

    6) Final Fantasy X - I got stuck at the first, whatever that sport thigy was, match. Or shortly thereafter.

    7) Azure Dreams - Fun game as all else, but I keep dropping off once I actually get in range of winning it. Excellent game despite my inability to finish it.

    8) Wii Sports - I can't play this alone, not after playing it with people.

    9) Evil Genius - For some reason, I can never bring myself to beat this game, despite my evil machinations and plans. I devise traps, complete objectives, silence my enemies, and then stop everything and never return. Apparently the reason why out Evil Genius Overlords haven't conquered the world yet is because they get bored with our childish strategems.

    10) Crystalis - There's something about RPGs which dictates I get 3/4ths of the way through and lose interest. However awesome they are.

    11) GTA3 - I have too much fun running from the FBI to further the plot. In fact, my only motivation to do any missions is so that I can get people even madder at me.

    12) Advance Wars: Dual Strike - It's a fun game, but a long one. I got a fair ways through, but for whatever reason interest died in doing anythign but firing up a random battle map rather than going through the story.

    13) Contact - I'm an idiot, and that's all. Best RPG since earthbound and I can't even play 2 hours before I broke for WoW. Shoot me now.

    That's the best I can do while at work and away from my gaming collection.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by karnal ( 22275 )
      6) Final Fantasy X - I got stuck at the first, whatever that sport thigy was, match. Or shortly thereafter.

      I played through X, and found out how badly I suck at that stupid BlitzBall matches. Tip: You don't really need to compete in any to get through the game; had I known that the first time I wouldn't have wasted ANY of my time on it. Felt like I was swimming through slime, the controls were so bad....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      1) LoZ: WindWaker - Sailing around to pick up all those triforce pieces, it all just slowed down there and I never beat the game.

      You didn't miss much - as I recall, all the major dungeons were already complete by that point and completing the Triforce essentially sent you straight to Gannon. The thing that annoyed me the most about that part was discovering that you had to have the Ghost Ship map to get on the Ghost Ship. They dropped clues left and right about where the Ghost Ship would be, so I was fo

  • Presumed experience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dazedNconfuzed ( 154242 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:28PM (#17912446)
    My wife dearly wants to play video games. Unfortunately, they all seem to expect the player already has hundreds of hours of experience. Run-jump-twist-shoot-land type movements expected at the start of games are certainly a wall to someone who can barely make the character go thru an open door.

    There's a small but potent market of games for adults who have practically no video game skills, but want a grown-up gaming experience.
  • There was an old text adventure game for the Commodore VIC-20 where you come to this door in Dracula's castle. I typed in the command, SMASH DOOR WITH FIST (or something like that), and the response was, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT? Since the instruction booklet said that your commands must follow a certain pattern, I could never get past that part of the game and got died after the third day.

    The command was YES, but the booklet didn't mention YES/NO situations. Plus being a dummy before the Dumm
  • I'll mention my "gaming wall". The spider-ball battle in Metroid Prime 2 was one of the most frustrating gaming moments I've ever encountered. Any of the multiple-bomb-jump parts in those games are a little bit of a pain in the ass, but this part was so unforgiving it took hours to pass. I eventually beat it, but I haven't gone back through the game at all since, whereas I've played through the first MP several times.

    Also, the "stealth" part of Metroid Zero Mission for GBA was annoying, but not a show-stop

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by edwdig ( 47888 )
      The spider ball boss is easy once you figure out the trick. There are 4 bomb slots - 2 on each side of the way up. The more damage you do, the faster the boss attacks. The trick is to hit the outer bomb slots first, as they're much harder to get to than the inner ones. If you do that, you can usually rush up to the inner ones without much difficulty.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rycross ( 836649 )
      Metroid Prime 2 was one of those games for me. It was when I got the invisibility goggles and realized I was going to have to crawl all around the entire map looking for some invisible platform that I couldn't see before.

      Lately, I'm very quick to drop games. Its pretty rare for me to actually finish a game these days.
  • It always hangs, RIGHT as I'm about to knock the last two hit points off the Grim Reaper in Castlevania...

    ARGH!
  • Anyone remember the original Homeworld? There was this one damn mission where you basically had to move your whole fleet down this effing "tube" of asteroids in order to avoid "solar radiation" which would basically pwn your ships if you weren't perfectly in the goddamn "tube". First time I got to that mission it was a deal breaker; I'd wasted too many resources early in the game. So I went back and started over; got to that point with (literally) every ship I could possibly have, and it was still a huge pain in the ass. Theoretically you could waypoint your ass down the "tube" but in practice it was nearly impossible, and forget trying to do it by eyeball.

    How about Sacrifice? I can think of more than a few missions in that game which made me chew on things.

    How about the last mission in the Warcraft III expansion? Pain in my ass...And there was one in the original Starcraft...One of the last Protoss missions...Wasn't hard to beat the enemy, but beat them without them managing to kill one of your goddamn heroes? Good luck. I'd literally put them in a shuttle (can't let them roam around on their own...goes without saying), and put the shuttle on "hold" over a pile of photon cannons, and they'd send one damn capital ship in to specifically kill that fucking shuttle.

    I think "walls" are a good thing, in some ways, because they challenge your ass to go to a new level...On the other hand, a poorly designed "wall", where the designers are basically just fucking with you, that's no fun. Why bother to play the damn game when they're basically just cheating to annoy you?

    It's especially annoying in a "strategy" game (real-time strategy is generally far more about tactics than strategy, and most turn based strategy isn't mission based), because you're left in a situation where only a fricking moron would have attacked, and you've got to deal with it.

  • I thought you meant bored of gaming... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by amohat ( 88362 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:33PM (#17912562)
    Because I hit that wall a while ago, where the games were static and similar and uninteresting. Another WWII shooter, yay. How many incredibly stupid AI opponents can keep you entertained? Just a handful, as that's all that will ever be on screen at the same time. Increase the difficulty, and you just get weaker, the computer doesn't get better. Halo 2 came out and was such a massive disappointment I stopped until these so-called next-gen games came out and AI is still stupid.

    That leaves me with online play, and I can only run around the same little levels for so long playing tag with foul-mouthed, homo-phobic and racist 13 year-olds for so long. And don't get me started on the modders, which is fancy for little cheating ass bitches.

    Yeah, I know, there are better games out there, and better ways to team up online, and I'm just being grumpy. I'm getting a little old, I guess, but why aren't any of these games drawing me in, keeping me awake all night and forgetting to eat anymore? I can't have changed that much over the past few console/pc generations.

    And so I wait for the shooter where the goddamn bodies stay there, and might even stack up and block the doorway if I kill enough of them. Or the non-botched Sim City game. How about a sports game that doesn't require the same investment as a certification to be mediocre? I liked the first person view in Madden, nice gimmick. How about being able to be a lineman or tight-end, let another human, Live or local, or even computer do the passing? So few co-op games, even fewer good ones. I practically raised my boy doing co-op in Halo 1, waited in line for Halo 2, but now unless Bungie publicly apologizes, I might not even rent Halo 3.

    (and more bitching, whining and moaning, c'mon, you old schoolers know what I'm talking about!)
  • I don't know what level you have to be, to beat the final boss and her 2 totemas. But I've played through the game at a little about the 'standard level', with pretty decent jobs and weapons.

    And I can't even come close to beating her, barely able to get 50% of her HP down. The match laws always preclude me from being able to do my best attacks, and she is still somehow able to do area damage with seemingly endless MP.

  • This level never fucking ends! I love this game, it's great, I've learned how to beat nearly every part of this act, but there's just to damn much of it. It's like running a marathon while being pelted with rocks and having people fresh and pumped mugging you every couple of feet. From the F.A.Q. "Frankly, way too many enemies [neoseeker.com]" The F.A.Q. in no way sums up what you have to do to defeat this act. I bite it once I make it to mission 6, unfortunately you have to beat that to save progress. I've had it s
  • It doesn't happen often that the difficulty becomes the problem, most often I found that the game starts to get uninteresting first. Those games that I didn't finish, I didn't finish for most part because I simply didn't care about them, when there is no interesting story to be told, no interesting characters to interact with and the gameplay the same for the last ten hours without anything interesting on the horizon there is little reason to continue playing, so once quit I never come back to those.

    There
  • There was a spot in Hordes of the Underdark just prior to the finale where you run into some of the henchmen you could have adventured with as well as some of the notable bad guys you killed. They had all ended up on the plane of hell you were stuck on and wanted to exact a little revenge. I think it took us 20 hours to figure out how to get past them over the course of a month. Very frustrating, but ultimately a few Time Stops smashed through that wall.
  • I've been stuck on "Jumping Jack Flash" with the normal difficulty in Elite Beat Agents. That third verse is a killer, and I can barely limp along to the fourth...
  • The helicopter you have to shoot with arrows in the Xbox Ninja Gaiden has stopped me from moving on in that game for months. It's the fault of my poor aim with the arrows but man, it's tough. Someday...

  • POP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mattpointblank ( 936343 ) <mattpointblank@NOSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:27PM (#17913604) Homepage
    In Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (PC) there was this bug at the end. You have to follow the Empress through the portal, and it gives you a video clip of her jumping through. It then switches to your view. When I tried to go through, nothing happened. I reloaded and tried again. When I still couldn't do it I went on the Ubisoft website and checked out the support forums. Turned out it's a random bug in the game and when it happens, it also corrupts all your saves so if you go back and reload, the bug is there too. The worst part is that this comes at the very end of the game, because after the portal is the final boss. In the end I had to download some dude's save game and play that, which sucked because he'd developed his character in different ways to mine so it wasn't really "my" Prince finishing the game.

    I was so mad at Ubisoft for letting the game ship with such a bug present. I mean, the fact that it wasn't an isolated case or anything just makes it so much worse. Their official FAQ basically said "Try doing X, Y and Z [a ton of crap that did nothing], and if this doesn't work, restart your game from scratch". This is as extreme a "wall" in gaming as I can think of.

  • Sorcerer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MWoody ( 222806 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:29PM (#17913642)
    My worst - and most embarrassing - gamer "wall" was the chest puzzle early on in the game Sorcerer [wikipedia.org], an Infocom text adventure. About half an hour into the game, you find a chest in the basement of the first building with different-colored buttons on the side, each with a corresponding shape such as a crown on the purple button. Pushing the buttons only returns a message about it making a "click." Nowhere in the building was there any mention of a series of colors or shapes, or indeed any real mention of the chest at all.

    After weeks, off and on, of frustration, my 14-year-old temper had had enough, and the box went on the shelf. Several times over the next few years, I came back to the game, and each time I was forced to rediscover why I'd put it down as I hit that goddamn chest.

    So flash forward to my 18th year and, bored one afternoon, I'm going through my old games and I decide to finish that stupid puzzle once and for all. But again, I get stuck on that chest. Frustrated, I start to thumb through the manual accompanying the game, thinking maybe it's mentioned offhand there (a long shot, and one I'd tried before). It's not, but it's when I'm looking through another included little pamphlet in the box - the "Field Guide to the Creatures of Frobozz [guetech.org]," a small color book of illustrations and descriptions of monsters in the gameworld - that the text at the end of one entry finally, FINALLY catches my eye. "Bloodworms are usually white and grey and black and red and black." "A common house rotgrub is gray and red and gray and purple and red." And it goes on, with this weird color description at the end of every entry.

    Elsewhere in the small area of the game explorable before the chest, one part that had always bugged me was a note that discussed the current "password" and mentioned a monster type. It was different every playthrough, and was the only thing that was. So, firing up the game, I found the note, which mentioned "Bloodworms" this time, and proceeded quickly to the chest. Referring to my guide, I pushed "white, gray, black, red, black" on the buttons and BAM! It's opened. After four years of attempts, the bloody thing was OPEN. I actually started cheering and dancing around the room like a madman, exclaiming to my surprised parents down the hall that "the damn chest is OPEN!"

    Those of you paying attention have probably already realized my ultimate shame. That's right, folks, I was defeated by the $%@#$%@#$% COPY PROTECTION for the game.

    I've hated DRM ever since.

  • Tie Fighter - Mission 7.1 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by default luser ( 529332 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:29PM (#17913644) Journal
    This is the hardest mission in the whole game. You have to fly in and destroy cargo containers near Harkov's Star Destroyer, tangle with some Tie Advanced (T/A) fighters, then move your ass to intercept a dozen waves of Z-95s spouting heavy rockets at your VERY VULNERABLE Interdictor. You have to keep the Interdictor intact, or you lose and the Star Destroyer escapes.

    If you don't take out at least half the T/A force, they will overwhelm your pathetic wingmen and hunt you down and kill you later, right when you need to focus all your attention on those heavy rocket waves. Unfortunately, you only have about 5 minutes from mission start before the cruiser with the Z-95s appears, so you have to close and kill the T/As quickly. When you consider that you want to save a few missiles if you REALLY need to stop a heavy rocket beyond your range, it becomes even harder to tango with those T/As because you have to do most of the damage with lasers.

    Man, that is incredibly tough**. I remember spending weeks flying it over and over.

    ** For those of you who bought the "Collector's CD" of Tie Fighter, you may think I'm crazy, because that mission is easy...and you would be right. For the CD release, the difficulty for that particular mission is toned down considerably (I think the number of Z-95 waves iscut to a quarter that of the original, so that you only haveto take out a couple and the Interdictor will survive). This challenge can only be found on the original floppy disk version of the game.

  • Pretty Much Every Final Fantasy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Itchyeyes ( 908311 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:46PM (#17913908) Homepage
    I've hit a wall on pretty much every Final Fantasy game. It's more psychological than anything. I reach a point in the game, usually near the final boss when I don't feel like I'm at the appropriate skill level to progress any further. I then spend the rest of my time leveling up my characters until I lose interest in the game.

  • I find more walls are from boredom (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Astarica ( 986098 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:47PM (#17913924)
    As opposed to difficulty. For difficulty based stuff, I can accept some games are just plain hard. The ones that bother me is the ones that don't give you any way out of it, and kick you while you're down. For example, in the Megaman Zero series you used to miss the EX Skills if you suck (need an A rating to obtain them), so if you suck you don't get the moves that makes the game easier and you're basically stuck. Gradius V for PS2 is like that too. You unlock unlimited credits after 15 hours of gameplay, but that's only while playing the game, so if you die 15 minutes into the game at the third stage, it gets boring pretty quickly to try to fill your quota of 60 game overs before you can even have a shot at beating the game. It's one thing that you can suck at a game and have a hard time. It's another that things get progressively worse the more you suck. In Gradius V if you could half an hour before dying, at least you won't be as frustrated with repeatedly dying compared to lasting only 15 minutes so you'll hit your unlimited credits easier.

    A counter example of a good difficulty wall would be Shining Force Neo. In the 3 Trials of Light the Demons bosses all do some insane amount of damage compared to anything you may have fought before (heck even some of the random stuff before them is insanely hard), but you can save basically anywhere. The game has a ton of customization so if one combo doesn't work you can always try another. And if you still can't beat it you can do the tried and true level up approach.

  • That last guy on Space Invaders (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @07:43PM (#17914658)
    ... he's just too fast.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @06:02AM (#17918794)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Breakout (Score:3, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @07:01PM (#17928238) Homepage Journal
    in that game, I was always hitting the wall!

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