Author Topic: Frustrating Games  (Read 3593 times)

Offline nickclone

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Frustrating Games
« on: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 06:00:57 PM »
I'm not talking about bad games or broken games, I mean frustrating games. I watched 30 minutes of gameplay of Darksiders 3, I'm trying to beat one (already had 2 for a year), but this game is excruciating.

Darksiders: I was told this game is like God of War with the puzzles of Zelda...which it is. Except Nintendo has perfected the explaining of puzzles in their games. They don't have to tell you exactly what to do, but they give you an idea of what can be done. Darksiders doesn't give you the pieces needed to complete tasks. I've been playing games for 30 years, I've never had to run to YouTube to figure out a game, let alone this much to finish it. They add new elements to the puzzles, things you would never figure out on your own. I just want to beat this game so I can move on to number 2, this game is no longer fun for me.

Witcher 2: I didn't really like this game to begin with, but I want to move onto 3. As I type this, my save has been "trying" to load this whole time. If I have to go back, even 30 minutes, I'll probably never play this game ever again.

Offline idolminds

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #1 on: Monday, November 26, 2018, 11:38:58 PM »
Decided to play some Destiny 2 since I got it for free. Its fun enough but the PVP aspect of it leaves me frustrated. TTK is super short and it feels like I'm dead before I can even turn to respond. Top that off with everyone having some kind of "ultimate" ability which pretty much means they can 100% one-shot you and its like...why am I even playing this?

Offline Xessive

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 08:30:32 AM »
I remember a particularly frustrating segment in Heavenly Sword on the PS3... Kai's Mission.

With the checkpoints so far apart, this entire segment was an exercise in frustration for me.

I really enjoyed Darksiders and I loved Darksiders II, so it's disheartening to see the mostly negative reception of Darksiders III. I'm still gonna play it and see for myself.

Offline nickclone

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #3 on: Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 03:45:10 PM »
I remember a particularly frustrating segment in Heavenly Sword on the PS3... Kai's Mission.

With the checkpoints so far apart, this entire segment was an exercise in frustration for me.

I really enjoyed Darksiders and I loved Darksiders II, so it's disheartening to see the mostly negative reception of Darksiders III. I'm still gonna play it and see for myself.

Bad reception? I watched the first 35 minutes of it, it looked pretty good.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #4 on: Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 09:16:03 PM »
It's mostly people complaining that it isn't the same thing the first two games were. It's got more difficult combat and they took out a lot of the side stuff. No idea if that's a legit complaint or not. It seems like a lot of the side stuff in the second game especially was just kind of fluff and not worth doing, so maybe they doubled-down on the story and other stuff to try and get away from that? Either way it looks good to me, I watched some play of it.

I enjoyed the first game, though I never quite finished it. I don't remember having any difficulty with it. I also didn't have any issue with Witcher 2, though we discussed that in another thread, if I remember right. Maybe just YouTube the story shit and get on with 3? 3 isn't for everyone either, but for different reasons, and that game is fucking phenomenal.

I'm trying to think of really frustrating games. I know I've had times that drove me nuts, but I'm having trouble remembering anything specific off the top of my head.

I do remember this one area in Hexen (I know, I'm old, shut up) where you're running around a sort of highlands area with caves and stuff, and there was some shit with a key you had to find that I couldn't find. I ran into it the first time I played the game and got stuck for ages until I figured it out, and then again when I played it years later. At least years later there was GameFAQs and I got through it more easily, but that one experience stands out to me even though I forget the specifics. Though that wasn't by and large a frustrating game. Real good times otherwise.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline scottws

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #5 on: Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 07:29:01 AM »
I'm going to go old school:

Defender
Zaxxon
Thexder

These were old school arcade coin eaters and were maddeningly, infuriatingly hard.

ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Obviously the game was poorly designed, but you would randomly fall down pits and it seemed to take magic to be able to get out of them.

The original Resident Evil was also really hard because of the controls.

Some levels in Goldeneye 007 on N64 when playing 00 Agent difficultly were incredibly frustrating. Bunker 2. Silo. Aztec.

There was also some sort of top down space shooter (kind of like 1942) on the PS2 where you could switch between resistance of black balls or white balls. I don't remember the name but it was notoriously hard. I remember seeing a video of a Japanese guy playing the arcade version in 2-player by himself. It was incredible.

Here's one that wasn't frustrating because of the difficulty or obtuseness, but because of a bug: Skies of Arcadia. I bought this and Grandia II at the same time, but played through the latter first. By the time I got around to SoA, it was about a year after I bough it. I played many hours into it only to find that the game would crash on the same exact turn of a boss battle. No matter how I tried to play the boss, the game would crash on like the fourth or fifth turn.

The game warranty was like 90 days and I couldn't get Sega or the retailer to get me a new copy of the game. I found an old post where I talked about it.

Offline nickclone

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #6 on: Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 02:29:42 PM »
It's mostly people complaining that it isn't the same thing the first two games were. It's got more difficult combat and they took out a lot of the side stuff. No idea if that's a legit complaint or not. It seems like a lot of the side stuff in the second game especially was just kind of fluff and not worth doing, so maybe they doubled-down on the story and other stuff to try and get away from that? Either way it looks good to me, I watched some play of it.

I enjoyed the first game, though I never quite finished it. I don't remember having any difficulty with it. I also didn't have any issue with Witcher 2, though we discussed that in another thread, if I remember right. Maybe just YouTube the story shit and get on with 3? 3 isn't for everyone either, but for different reasons, and that game is fucking phenomenal.

I'm trying to think of really frustrating games. I know I've had times that drove me nuts, but I'm having trouble remembering anything specific off the top of my head.

I do remember this one area in Hexen (I know, I'm old, shut up) where you're running around a sort of highlands area with caves and stuff, and there was some shit with a key you had to find that I couldn't find. I ran into it the first time I played the game and got stuck for ages until I figured it out, and then again when I played it years later. At least years later there was GameFAQs and I got through it more easily, but that one experience stands out to me even though I forget the specifics. Though that wasn't by and large a frustrating game. Real good times otherwise.

Years and and years ago, my brother said I could pick out a video game...I picked Hexen 64...I'm old too.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #7 on: Thursday, November 29, 2018, 12:03:28 AM »
Not a bad choice. I really liked that game. I seem to recall the 64 version being pretty good too.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline gpw11

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #8 on: Thursday, November 29, 2018, 10:20:18 PM »
I'm not talking about bad games or broken games, I mean frustrating games. I watched 30 minutes of gameplay of Darksiders 3, I'm trying to beat one (already had 2 for a year), but this game is excruciating.

Darksiders: I was told this game is like God of War with the puzzles of Zelda...which it is. Except Nintendo has perfected the explaining of puzzles in their games. They don't have to tell you exactly what to do, but they give you an idea of what can be done. Darksiders doesn't give you the pieces needed to complete tasks. I've been playing games for 30 years, I've never had to run to YouTube to figure out a game, let alone this much to finish it. They add new elements to the puzzles, things you would never figure out on your own. I just want to beat this game so I can move on to number 2, this game is no longer fun for me.

Witcher 2: I didn't really like this game to begin with, but I want to move onto 3. As I type this, my save has been "trying" to load this whole time. If I have to go back, even 30 minutes, I'll probably never play this game ever again.


For these games: 

Darksiders - I liked the first the most.  Try the second but I think if the first isn't doing it for you the whole series might not be your jam.

Witcher 2 - Witcher 1 gets a lot of shit for being hard to get into but I found the second to be the most disappointing.  Something about it, like it was polished but there was just so many poor design decisions that made it hard to play and hard to stay with.  If you're not liking it just watch some story videos and jump into the third....much much better experience in every way.

For me Hollow Knight is the most frustrating game I've come across in recent memory.  I have a love/hate relationship with the gameplay style and realize that the "find your corpse to reclaim your progress" mechanic is key in these types of game but a combination of that mechanic and the map system in this particular game just kills me.  I've spent two periods playing this game and getting really into it, only to get frustrated enough at the map system and loss of progress to just finally give up.  I don't think there'll be a third when there are so many great games in this genre that are just less annoying to me.

Offline Xessive

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #9 on: Monday, December 03, 2018, 12:05:30 AM »
Bad reception? I watched the first 35 minutes of it, it looked pretty good.
Yeah, Darksiders 3 seems to be getting some bad reviews but overall settling around the middle of the range.

Personally, I am enjoying it so far.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #10 on: Monday, December 03, 2018, 08:35:31 AM »

For these games: 

Darksiders - I liked the first the most.  Try the second but I think if the first isn't doing it for you the whole series might not be your jam.

Witcher 2 - Witcher 1 gets a lot of shit for being hard to get into but I found the second to be the most disappointing.  Something about it, like it was polished but there was just so many poor design decisions that made it hard to play and hard to stay with.  If you're not liking it just watch some story videos and jump into the third....much much better experience in every way.

For me Hollow Knight is the most frustrating game I've come across in recent memory.  I have a love/hate relationship with the gameplay style and realize that the "find your corpse to reclaim your progress" mechanic is key in these types of game but a combination of that mechanic and the map system in this particular game just kills me.  I've spent two periods playing this game and getting really into it, only to get frustrated enough at the map system and loss of progress to just finally give up.  I don't think there'll be a third when there are so many great games in this genre that are just less annoying to me.

My feelings, pretty much, all the way across.  Witcher 2 got no less than two of my attempts to get into it.  No go.  I tried the first game on the PC, and combat is so yucky that I couldn't power through it.  If feels too archaic, in a bad way.  (Some old mechanics in older games are still fun.)  Hollow Knight I eventually quit in frustration.  Punishing repetition is just not my idea of fun.  I never liked it, even when I thought I had to live with it in the early console years.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #11 on: Monday, December 03, 2018, 09:45:48 PM »
At first I thought maybe I hadn't died in Hollow Knight yet because that didn't sound familiar, but upon thinking about it, I definitely have. I guess it just didn't bother me. I have a pretty good mind for maps and directions which helps me in games like that. I keep wanting to go back to play more Hollow Knight but never have the time, and the Japanese is way too difficult for me to enjoy the story, so I have to play in English, which is a self-prohibition for me at the moment. I love the design choices, though, like the map. That's a game that speaks to me on many levels.

We were just talking about Shadow of War earlier, and Shadow of Mordor frustrated me. We've talked about this before, but I felt it was too easy, and that's it's own kind of frustration. Like I've played a lot of games I loved from an art/design standpoint and thought they were legitimately good, but they were just too easy and that took all the wind out of my sails. I don't need every game to be a huge challenge (I love Okami, which is very easy and was designed to be so), but when it comes to combat and stuff I often find that impossible to get past in a game that focuses on it so heavily. I heard they added difficulty levels to Shadow of War and got all excited, but opinions were so down on it for so long I never bit. Kinda hoping that after getting rid of the microtransaction BS and fixing things up a bit it'll be something I can play when I get home.

OG Witcher definitely hasn't aged well. I have a tremendous fondness for it, but going back was tough.

Back on the topic of frustration, I realized playing Rimworld lately that I often get frustrated with builder-type games. I really love them in principle, but I tend to love the first half of a game a lot more than the second. After a point it often gets difficult to get a handle on things and keep them functioning, or just to build in a way that's efficient and sensible. I tend to get frustrated when I start losing the ability to have the control I want over things (which is not the fault of those games, but a failing of my own OCD needs, I guess). I used to feel that way about the old Sim City games too. And Civilization endgames have always been my least favorite part. I generally quit a game of Civ halfway through.

So yeah, I guess that has nothing to do with those games being frustrating and everything to do with the way I approach them. I sometimes struggle with JRPGs that way too. I'll be all on fire in the beginning and then once I learn the systems pretty deeply and start getting a handle on the combat, they start to lose their spark unless the story and world are really good.

Oh, you know, I find Minecraft to be quite frustrating. There's a part of me that wants to like it, but ultimately after I spend like 10 hours in a game I start getting fed up with the rote mechanics. And having to look up crafting recipes every five minutes because it doesn't really have a good progression for that to help you look ahead. It only ever tells you what you can do RIGHT NOW, which doesn't help me know where to go from there.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline nickclone

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Re: Frustrating Games
« Reply #12 on: Sunday, January 06, 2019, 12:11:34 PM »
Well, I finally beat Darksiders, now I'm on #2. I like it much better, I also love the RNG loot and and equipping gear.