Most frustrating game(s) ever...

[Slaughter Manslaught]

Does it count that I almost broke my keyboard by banging my head on it 'cos my GTA:SA save file got corrupted just when I had finished the "Vertical Bird" mission, which is really hard on PC because of the controls.

Man, the whole training to pilot planes was a horrible, horrible nightmare. I don't remember Vertical Bird, but I remember that one mission where you had to assassinate some mobster dude from another town by... piloting a plane near his plane, JUMPING on his plane in the most absurd cutscene in the story of GTA EVER, and then gunning down his dudes. I had to edit a file because that plane I piloted was SLOOOOOOOOWWWW. Even edited, I had to try multiple times until I did it.

And piloting helicopters is a nightmare. The jet is cool, though.

 

[DoktorVivi]

For me it'd be the Touhou series - the game series that comes from the most obnoxiously frustrating game genres - danmaku. Still, it doesn't make the games less awesome - it's just that you're definitely gonna end up slamming your head against the wall while playing it.

Dodge this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8fJpphPcAw[/youtube]

Good games. I'm currently playing Phantasmagoria of Flower View... extremely fun but a lot easier than the rest when playing against the computer.. but it's got a two-player mode and I can't wait to try it out.

 

[iridium_ionizer]

Well, the older game systems were largely not capable of saving. As for the arcades, you'd be surprised how many people were able to get good at those "hard" games. They weren't for everyone though. But then again, not all of those games were impossible either.

"Easy mode" is included on most arcade-style games of late iirc. There's also a wide range of different games that do not require button-mashing agility. Complaining they're too hard is like a person with the intelligence of a grade-schooler ranting they were ripped off because the dialogue in Planescape was impossible to understand and unnecessary long.

Have you heard the term "target audience"?

Express mode sounds like a good idea, but it's economically unreasonable for companies. A lot of games are designed exactly to kill time. For some games, you wouldn't even able to do what you ask - it would kill most titles that are action-based. Imagine Planescape or Fallout 2 or Witcher "reduced" to 8 hours - it would be laughable.

So you're saying I should suck it up, and stop being a pansy.

Take a look at the this thread's name, "Most Frustrating video game(s) ever." Doesn't this sound like something that should be fixed? I'm willing to bet quite a few people hear would like the 50 hrs of their life back that they spent memorizing all of Level 4 just because it was so dang hard and you would get sent back to the beginning of the entire level when your three lives were lost.

Regarding technical capabilities, all NES-era and later games had the capability to have a password system (the original Metroid did). If those game companies didn't want to pay for a save-battery in the cartridge they should have had their programmers create a password system or at least a stage select or warp zones.

Regarding arcades, most games (a few new games are the exception) are designed to kill you very quickly and suck your coins. Which is great when the arcades have all the best games and they are crowded, but what happens when they have worse games than consoles. People would rather save their coins for a console game, and the fact you die so soon only diminishes the value per dollar. Result, arcades, at least in North America, are like ghost towns.

Also I think in many newer games the problem has been mostly solved - they have saves and they have an easy mode. Many more could use the option to drop down in difficulty at any time. You state that games are designed to kill time, but I thought they were designed to entertain. Does that mean I am not allowed to finish a game or unlock most of the stuff because I am not hardcore enough? Note that I am not saying drop the hard difficulty or cut the game length for people that are more skilled or have more time on their hands than me. Just give me the option.

Today's gamer demographic has more dads than ever, many with enough money to spend but not enough time to play all of their games. Doesn't appealing to both them and the teenage gamer make economic sense? Regarding non-linear RPGs, I am not saying that an "Express Mode" would be the preferred way to play a game, but it would just cover the highlights and give you feel for what the game is about. It would be hard to do well, but it would be possible, but like editing a 4 hour epic movie to 2 1/2 hours it could spur customers. And you retain the "Full" mode. How many of us wish that more Fallout 3 developers at least played a little bit of Fallout and Fallout 2?

 

[Ausdoerrt]

So you're saying I should suck it up, and stop being a pansy.

No, Im saying that the old games, just like today's games, were made for different target audiences. If you make all the games accessible for the "average dad", then they will be too easy/too boring for the more hardcore gamers (take FO3 as a present-day failure in that direction). I have no problem with family games, and they're fun, but making all or most games "family fun" is kind of ridiculous. The current social expectation is that dads should not be playing games if they're busy with work and kids. Besides they already have a whole system (Wii), and a whole genre (MMORPG) basically dedicated to them.

I'm not going to argue with you about the password system on NES. There's as much people praising the Metroid passwords as there are dissing it. The fact that there are so few games with it means that they were seen as either unnecessary or too difficult to implement on the system.

Note that you primarily blame lack of success in arcade scene on quality of the games. Don't blame the console or genre then, blame the game companies. The fact that arcades are still going strong in Japan says something.

Just like you said, most new games offer you lower difficulty, maybe even saves, etc. So what are you complaining about? Nobody (afaik) has a time machine to go back and redesign your old favourites.

In the economic sense for the companies, it's probably twice as much work (especially if you have to package both versions together), and the increase in gains is questionable. The dads with more than enough money will buy the game anyway, why bother?

Good games. I'm currently playing Phantasmagoria of Flower View... extremely fun but a lot easier than the rest when playing against the computer.. but it's got a two-player mode and I can't wait to try it out.

I played it with a friend (both on Easy mode, cuz we suck ^__^ ), and it's pretty fun. Mountain of Faith and Subterranian Animism have that new weird bomb system though, can't get used to it. I'm glad to hear they're getting rid of it in the next installation. Damn, they're stamping those out faster than Beth is making DLCs (well, not literally).