Flummoxing Moments

johnny_ultimate

I was just playing Sonic 3 there and in World 4 (i.e. the Carnival zone) I got extremely irritated by a round circular object that needed to move, but refused to obey conventional videogame logic to do so. A quick google found out I needed to press up and down in a pattern, and it appears other people have suffered from the same issue. It is a confusing design choice, with a solution that doesnt really belong in the world of Sonic, the most complicated puzzle of which usually involves choosing whether to go left or right.

And other games do it too: point and click adventure games are often notorious for puzzles that require absurd leaps of logic from the player in order to progress. Pretty much every point and click game Ive played has had one.

At worst they are game ruining, provoking such strong frustration that it is impossible to complete the game. At best they are irritating distractions that provoke a walk of shame to gamefaqs, mindless repetition or hours wasted visiting and re-visiting locations that may provide the solution. Have you ever come across such moments, and which ones stick in the mind as the most irritating of flummoxing moments?

x keo21

dont know if these momemts belong here, but anyway, definetly the most frustrating parts to games i have come across is the plane mission( 'red baron' i think it was called) in gta san andreas on the 2nd city with the harbour. also from that city was the one lap timetrial, from the driver school, where you had to race from one end of the city to the other very very annoying, took long time to complete
ps i know these were avoidable in the storyline but...

Fnz

An Irish goat, in the first Broken Sword, flummoxed me good.... then posted the pictures on the internet! :eek:

It turns out it had been flummoxing half the planet with unprecedented Quick Time Event shenanigans. Had to resort to a gaming mag's tips section in order to advance.

This goat 'puzzle' was made easier for the more recent GBA version than the previous PC & PSOne versions.

Silverfish

Fnz wrote: »

An Irish goat, in the first Broken Sword, flummoxed me good.... then posted the pictures on the internet! :eek:

I remember that. I never wanted to remember that. My one true 'Wtf' moment in gaming.

Fnz

Silverfish wrote: »

I remember that. I never wanted to remember that. My one true 'Wtf' moment in gaming.

Yeah, not many were exclaiming "but of course - it's so obvious!" once the goat was taken care of, I reckon.

Oh that Stobbart chap - gets himself into all sorts of situation, he does.

Varkov

Myst.............f**k that game.

Retr0gamer

Spent 3 weeks in Shining Force 2 because I didn't know that a square piece of wood had to be put into a hole in a tree to advance the story. It was totally obscure, didn't know what was going on. I usually get horribly stuck on point and clicks but by the time I started playing them I had discovered gamefaqs. What did we do before the days of gamefaqs?

Don't feel bad johnny_ultimate although I figures out that part of sonic 3 in about 10 seconds supposedly it's a very famous part that had a lot of people stuck for ages on it.

Kiith

I stopped playing point and clicks a long time ago. Got totally stuck in Beneath a Steel Sky (fantastic game btw) in an underground tunnel. iirc, there was no light in the tunnel and i couldnt get any further. Cant remember exactly what i tried, but nothing seemed to work. I eventually gave up and never went back. Shame really, as it was one of my earliest favourite games. Also, in one of the Monkey Island games (3 i think), i got totally stuck when i had to do something to a monkey playing a piano. Couldnt figure that out either.

In non puzzle games, i got stuck on the 4th (i think) level of Homeworld, where you had to send a probe to a certain location, and once you did you were attacked on mass by the Turanic Raider, and i could never withstand their ion cannon frigates. Eventually (after leaving the game for weeks), didnt bother sending the probe, and got loads of time to build a fleet. Glad i did, as it will always be in my Top 10 (if not 5) games of all time.

rgiller

Pheonix Wright! The first game was ok, no real stellar logic leaps involved there, but since then it's been impossible to complete anything past the second case without resorting to gamefaqs.

I guess the shady translation from Japanese to English doesn't help, but it can be so f**king frustrating when you know exactly how to solve a case and who did it, but can't get the ridiculous minute step towards the answer that they require of you.

And I hate that stupid Judge...

BlitzKrieg

Don't feel bad johnny_ultimate although I figures out that part of sonic 3 in about 10 seconds supposedly it's a very famous part that had a lot of people stuck for ages on it.

Didnt get me stuck

Burning Eclipse

About half of Grim Fandango, brilliant game though, and great satisfaction in solving a puzzle.... Eventually!

Trode

Kiith wrote: »

I stopped playing point and clicks a long time ago. Got totally stuck in Beneath a Steel Sky (fantastic game btw) in an underground tunnel. iirc, there was no light in the tunnel and i couldnt get any further. Cant remember exactly what i tried, but nothing seemed to work. I eventually gave up and never went back

I remember that bit, it was a pixel hunt of the worst kind. You had to find a spot of literally one or two black pixels in the richly detailed background art or it was insta-death.

The worst such moment for me was in the fourth Monkey Island game, those goddamn Monkey Kombat sections. I could work out the mechanics of it, but it just seemed impossible to win unless the computer made a mistake, and it rarely did. I managed to beat the first one somehow, but was completely stuck at the second one. Eventually I gave up in frustration, only for someone who'd been watching me to give it a try and beat it in five minutes by choosing moves at random.

Kinetic^

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I was just playing Sonic 3 there and in World 4 (i.e. the Carnival zone) I got extremely irritated by a round circular object that needed to move, but refused to obey conventional videogame logic to do so. A quick google found out I needed to press up and down in a pattern, and it appears other people have suffered from the same issue. It is a confusing design choice, with a solution that doesnt really belong in the world of Sonic, the most complicated puzzle of which usually involves choosing whether to go left or right.

I got stuck on that when I actually played it when I was younger

L31mr0d

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I was just playing Sonic 3 there and in World 4 (i.e. the Carnival zone) I got extremely irritated by a round circular object that needed to move, but refused to obey conventional videogame logic to do so.

Yeah me too. Was stuck on that bit for ages. Eventually went into Easons and read a game guide on how to get past it. I think its like you said, most people just play sonic by pressing left right and jump, you very rarely need to press up and down unless doing a spin. The people who got past it easily usually where the ones that would use up and down to look above and below as it moved the camera. Standing on the barrel, one of these people would just press down to see below and then notice the barrel moving and figure it out.

Other games that annoyed me:

Ninja f***in Gaiden for the Xbox :mad: not only was it ridiculously difficult to get from one save point to the next but the puzzles where ridiculously obscure also. I played through it with a friend and whenever things are going bad he always says "it could be worse, we could be playing ninja gaiden!"

There was also a bit in the game "Severence" that was really obscure. There was a bit where you where in a room with a balcony overlooking a room below, but the drop was too high to make with nearly killing yourself. In most games they won't make you jump off something unless you can make it without losing health (as they can't assume the player will have enough health when they get to that point) however after hours searching around the map for another way into the room below I justed filled up my health to the max and jumped over and found out thats what they had intended for me to do. I lost all but one bar of my health doing it, and nowhere else in the game did you have to do anything else like it.

CiDeRmAn

That mission in GTA SA when you're riding the motorbike, chasing the train and that useless plank is shooting at the bad guys on top of the train, all good but it's time limited and your gun toting buddy is a crap shot!

Odd also is when I find a game insurmountable, leave it, then go back to it much later, months later in fact, and breeze past the problem without a second thought, Bioshock and Oblivion, please step forward!

L31mr0d

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Bioshock and Oblivion, please step forward!

what part did you find "flummoxing" in Bioshock?

Retr0gamer

Got hopelessly stuck in beneath a steel sky as well. Was near the start when you have to rob stuff from the supplies. Couldn't find the C4 because it was represented by 3 pixels and it was lying on a mesh floor to make matters worse.

Another was in Tomb Raider 2. Got to the second last level and there is a bit where you have to jump behind you and grab a ladder thats behind you. This was impossible for me because I didn't have an manual for the game since it was a lend from a friend. You had to perform some complex command while in mid air to turn around and catch the ladder behind you. It was the only point in hte whole game where that move was needed. Fecking brutal game any way compared to the first one.

I'll also have nothing bad said about ninja gaiden. If it's too hard, you're just **** at it.

Kiith

L31mr0d wrote: »

what part did you find "flummoxing" in Bioshock?

I'd say he means that he got totally stuck (maybe on a tough fight) at some point or another, left it for ages, then came back and thought it was easy to get by.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'll also have nothing bad said about ninja gaiden. If it's too hard, you're just **** at it.

Is it really that good? I really must try it. I've always considered myself to be pretty good at games, so i should really try it.

stevenmu

Maybe more of a glitch than a genuine flummoxing, but playing half-life 2 there's the bit just at the end of the boat section where you come to a smallish outpost type thing in the middle of the water, after fighting your way up through it you're supposed to cross a bridge onto a big dock IIRC. Well approaching the outpost I shot down a helicopter which landed on and blocked the bridge you're supposed to cross. Clever me assumed this was scripted and that there was some sort of puzzle to solve. Cue several days running in circles trying to solve the puzzle of the blocked bridge (and of course there was a save point between shooting down the copter and getting too the bridge).

On the plus side I had great fun trying to build ramps so I could ram it off with the speed boat, came pretty close too , and it probably doubled the length of the game for me.

L31mr0d

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'll also have nothing bad said about ninja gaiden. If it's too hard, you're just **** at it.

oh we completed it, and I will more than likely get the next one but it was pointlessly obtuse and difficult in parts, you where basically given a hairs breath of room to make a mistake so you would have to play through the level multiple times to memorise where bad guys where suddenly going to fall from the sky so you could change weapons and prepare yourself. Oh and respawning bad guys, COME ON!!! who does that anymore??? You'd enter a room, fight off the constantly reappearing badguys and then realise you needed to do something in the previous room first, so you go back into the previous room, again fight the guys you'd already defeated again, and then go back to were you where and fight the next room full of guys again before you could progress another 5 feet before meeting another door you had to open, behind which you could be guaranteed would be another room filled with respawning baddies.

That being said, there was a real sense of achievement when we completed it early one monday morning after being up all weekend playing it. But there was quiet a few moments where we had to walk away and cool off for fear of throwing the controller at the TV.

The Gnome

If anyone remembers The Journeyman Project 2:Buried in Time then behold my Nemisis, the Chichen Itza time zone. Screw you history!

Retr0gamer

L31mr0d wrote: »

oh we completed it, and I will more than likely get the next one but it was pointlessly obtuse and difficult in parts, you where basically given a hairs breath of room to make a mistake so you would have to play through the level multiple times to memorise where bad guys where suddenly going to fall from the sky so you could change weapons and prepare yourself. Oh and respawning bad guys, COME ON!!! who does that anymore??? You'd enter a room, fight off the constantly reappearing badguys and then realise you needed to do something in the previous room first, so you go back into the previous room, again fight the guys you'd already defeated again, and then go back to were you where and fight the next room full of guys again before you could progress another 5 feet before meeting another door you had to open, behind which you could be guaranteed would be another room filled with respawning baddies.

That being said, there was a real sense of achievement when we completed it early one monday morning after being up all weekend playing it. But there was quiet a few moments where we had to walk away and cool off for fear of throwing the controller at the TV.

I liked it for all those reasons. Reminded me of all those really tough and unforgiving games from the 16-bit era.

missingtime

I hated GTA games for the stupid timer missions...plenty of box kicking.

Retr0gamer

Actually just remembered a bit in ninja gaiden that nearly made me throw the controller at the TV. When you are in the underground crypts with the zombie skeleton guys there's a bit where you have to scale this massive room by climbing up platforms along the wall. However halfway up there are 3 zombie skeleton archers and they kept knocking me off the platforms when I started fighting them. The most infuriating thing was that once you fell off they would respawn so any damage you did was negated. Spent an hour and a half swearing my head off trying to do that bit. Take one hit and you would be right back to the start of the level. Infuriating.

johnny_ultimate

I think there is a difference between hard games and flummoxing ones. In something like Ninja Gaiden, you may know how to pass something, it is just so relentlessly difficult that you can't. A flummoxing moment is one in which the solution may be easy, but you just can't figure it. Every second puzzle in the Longest Journey being an example. Terrific game, but so many logic-bending puzzles. Dreamfall went the opposite way, with almost insultingly easy puzzles. Both great stories marred by too hard / too easy gameplay.

That said, in Ninja Gaiden Black I got stuck for like two hours in some room. I think it was the second last level, and after dispatching the bad guys, I just had no idea how to get out. If I remember correctly, it involved some kind of difficult jumping mechanism, or perhaps simply the need to place an object in a ridiculously well hidden gap, but I had no idea how to handle it. I think those are the worst ones - the ones when you figure out the solution you curse yourself for being a ****ing idiot.

Gizzle

I got stuck in Chrono Trigger once in some cave level because I simply had to walk through a door, but it was exactly the same colour as the caves walls. In the days before gamefaqs, that kind of stuff drove you to dementia.

Canis Lupus

Jedi Knight had some odd level design in parts. I remember one particular jump had me stuck for sodding ages. You sort had to jump onto a ledge above you or fall into a purple laser and instant death but at the time the jump looked impossible and I died a few times trying to reach it.

Had me driven mad backtracking till I went back and made the jump. Was silly looking back cos it was easy I just don't know what part of my brain refused to let me complete the jupmp the first time I tackled it.

Retr0gamer

Gizzle wrote: »

I got stuck in Chrono Trigger once in some cave level because I simply had to walk through a door, but it was exactly the same colour as the caves walls. In the days before gamefaqs, that kind of stuff drove you to dementia.

Happened to me a lot in the older FPS games like Jedi Knight. I'd be stuck for hours because a door switch was badly textured and blended in with the wall textures.

thelordofcheese

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I was just playing Sonic 3 there and in World 4 (i.e. the Carnival zone) I got extremely irritated by a round circular object that needed to move, but refused to obey conventional videogame logic to do so. A quick google found out I needed to press up and down in a pattern, and it appears other people have suffered from the same issue. It is a confusing design choice, with a solution that doesnt really belong in the world of Sonic, the most complicated puzzle of which usually involves choosing whether to go left or right.

That was the first thing i thought of when i read the thread titile, goddamn you Sonic 3!

Danger_Dave

L31mr0d wrote: »

There was also a bit in the game "Severence" that was really obscure. There was a bit where you where in a room with a balcony overlooking a room below, but the drop was too high to make with nearly killing yourself. In most games they won't make you jump off something unless you can make it without losing health (as they can't assume the player will have enough health when they get to that point) however after hours searching around the map for another way into the room below I justed filled up my health to the max and jumped over and found out thats what they had intended for me to do. I lost all but one bar of my health doing it, and nowhere else in the game did you have to do anything else like it.

I remeber that pain, HOW DO I GET DOWN ! i screamed so much after 3 hours of searching , and looking at walls for secret entrances , or anything ! . At least it was a brilliant game

L31mr0d

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Happened to me a lot in the older FPS games like Jedi Knight. I'd be stuck for hours because a door switch was badly textured and blended in with the wall textures.

Yeah Jedi Knight was another one of those obscure puzzle FPS games, the texturing was really bad. I remember searching for hours for a way of opening a door only to find the entrance hidden in a black corner of a room, the corner was shaded (so in those days a shadow was just the colour black) and the door entrance was also black. I only found it because I was so frustrated I was just running around the perimeter of every room.

Doodee

Kangaroo Court Tbh.

Aldebaran

Definately the irish goat in broken sword

or in the second broken sword where you had to get a guy covered in jam or something and then throw a rock into a bush full of hornets and they were supposed to come out and chase him but it never EVER worked for me, even after reading about twenty walkthroughs! aaaagh!! damn you George Stobbart!!

astrofool

Mega Man 2, finding out only bubble mans weapon worked on the last boss.

Super Metroid, with the wall that you had to walk through (but the device that showed which walls could be walked through didn't work on it). Did nintendo expect us to rub each wall just in case? Wall jumping was also stupid.

Tomb Raider 2 I finished easy enough (no guide ).

Games that involve limited supplies, but never tell you when you can use the mega weapon you got, I'd always finish the game with it in reserve "just in case". Resident Evil: Code Veronica annoyed me here.

The VTOL level in Crysis, not hard, just exceedingly stupid, I reloaded sections multiple times because I thought I'd missed something.

I always liked Mario games, always prompted the player. Half life is very good at this, Valve are the masters of showing gamers a new mechanic.

Fnz

astrofool wrote: »

Mega Man 2, finding out only bubble mans weapon worked on the last boss.

Lol, I was going to mention that but then remembered that they're lead bubbles so it's perfectly logical.

Having to die at least once to finish a boss 'area' was somewhat fummoxcious at the time.

astrofool wrote: »

Tomb Raider 2 I finished easy enough (no guide ).

Because it's worth it? - no! Took me 4 years to finish, and not because of the difficulty.

astrofool wrote: »

Games that involve limited supplies, but never tell you when you can use the mega weapon you got, I'd always finish the game with it in reserve "just in case". Resident Evil: Code Veronica annoyed me here.

(Going increasingly off topic, but)
Yep, dunno if resi's to blame but I always annoy myself by hoarding my ass off for the majority of games - picking off grunts from a distance with pebbles, taking down bosses using noting but harsh language - then by end I'm left with an aircraft carrier full of charges for my A-bomb-firing pistol.

Burning Eclipse

astrofool wrote: »

Half life is very good at this, Valve are the masters of showing gamers a new mechanic.

Read a quote in Edge recently, from the forums, about that very thing. You start the Ravenholm level and the second you use the Grav Gun on the circular saw blade a zombie comes rushing at you. You can't help but know what to do. Excellent!

Tails142

Maniac Mansion as a youth - hundreds of hours spent playing it, don't think that I ever finished.

Canis Lupus

Tails142 wrote: »

Maniac Mansion as a youth - hundreds of hours spent playing it, don't think that I ever finished.

Stupid 1 pixel mistake instant death stress frustration madness plus corrupted tape meant 4 levels in all the maps turned to weird strippy things.

EDIT: Actually I'm thinking of manic miner.

superfly

when i first played Another World you had these scorpion like worms that would kill you if you got too near so i used to jump over them and then you had to run back through the screens when the alien lion chases you, and i had memorised when to jump
took me ages to finish only to later learn that i could have just killed them by ducking and kicking them D'oh!

Earthhorse

Fnz wrote: »

An Irish goat, in the first Broken Sword, flummoxed me good.... then posted the pictures on the internet!

Yep. I really persevered with that puzzle too.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I usually get horribly stuck on point and clicks but by the time I started playing them I had discovered gamefaqs. What did we do before the days of gamefaqs?

I finished the original Monkey Island pretty much on my own. Occasionally I resorted to looking at my brother's game, just to see if I had anything I didn't, and it would give me hints. I used to spend hours, maybe days, on some of the less intuitive puzzles. Honestly, I think people are too quick to reach for FAQs when they get stuck and think the whole phenomenom encourages poorer game design.

Kiith wrote: »

I stopped playing point and clicks a long time ago. Got totally stuck in Beneath a Steel Sky (fantastic game btw) in an underground tunnel. iirc, there was no light in the tunnel and i couldnt get any further.

I gave up on this game too. I had to stop a conveyor belt at somepoint; I don't know why, I just knew I had to, but I couldn't work out what to do once it was stopped.

Remember being stuck confronting my mirror double in Prince of Persia for absolutely ages. Had to give up on the final boss of Doom II; it was completely unobvious as to what you were supposed to do.

Retr0gamer

Earthhorse wrote: »

Remember being stuck confronting my mirror double in Prince of Persia for absolutely ages.

That was a brilliant part of that game.

Remember being horribly stuck on FFIV as well when you confront a mirror image of yourself. Thanks to some horrid translation work it wasn't obvious at all that you had to defend rather than attack yourself.

Gingervitis

Earthhorse wrote: »

Remember being stuck confronting my mirror double in Prince of Persia for absolutely ages.

Also, the Shadow and the Flame bit-

how were you supposed to wait after you died in the flame to become the shadow?

That's where the game ended for me:o

and yes, that should be spoilered;)

Retr0gamer

Actually that boss were you fight

the dead guy

in MGS 3.

When you died at the end you had to use the revival pill you had with you

. Bloody stupid, there's was no indication of what you should do.

Branoic

+1 for the start of Another World and the mirror bit in Prince of Persia

In Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis near the end I couldn't figure out how to get the girl (Sophie or something?) out of the holding cell in Atlantis when I was a wee lad. I spent months trying to figure it out. It consumed my every waking moment.

Years later I booted it up again and found some pin from the hinge of a giant door in another part of the level which you could use to prop the cell door open. D'Oh!!

Earthhorse

Gingervitis wrote: »

Also, the Shadow and the Flame bit-

how were you supposed to wait after you died in the flame to become the shadow?

That's where the game ended for me

Guh? Don't remember that. What version of Prince of Persia were you playing?

CiDeRmAn

Played MGS in japanese, had a chipped PS and couldn't wait for the official release, some head scratchers there seeing as I didn't speak the lingo!

Also the level in Robotron with the spawning tanks, this has been my Nemesis since 1st playing the game many many moons ago, and remains my enemy today, feckin' spawnin' tanks!

Gingervitis

Earthhorse wrote: »

Guh? Don't remember that. What version of Prince of Persia were you playing?

The sequel bit:o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_2:_The_Shadow_and_the_Flame

steviec

I just ran out of time on the DMC4 demo trying to get out the door of the first area.

The problem was two fold - first of all both the camera and the map strongly implied I was meant to go through a gate straight in front of me, so I spent a lot of time trying to fight or shoot through it and seeing if the nearby statues needed to be manipulated (as videogame logic dictates) to make it open. It turned out I wasn't meant to go through the gate at all but a small door next to it.

The second problem of course being that you don't just walk through the door, you have to use your special attack button to walk through it. Of all the buttons, I tend to avoid using that one because I'm saving it for fights.

Maybe it was all extremely obvious to people who played previous games in the series but it annoyed me, if only for a few minutes.

elekid

Wow, it never would have occured to me that people would get stuck on those things in Sonic 3, amazing what you take for granted.

I got badly stuck on Breath of Fire 3, towards the end you get trapped in a room with a statue which keeps telling you to sit down and rest, but no matter what I tried I couldn't figure out what to do and since this was the days before I had the internet I had to wait until the solution was printed in a magazine. Turned out you were meant to stand in front of the statue and not touch the controller for over a minute until the guy went into his "idle" animation. Pretty stupid!

MOH

Fnz wrote: »

Yep, dunno if resi's to blame but I always annoy myself by hoarding my ass off for the majority of games - picking off grunts from a distance with pebbles, taking down bosses using noting but harsh language - then by end I'm left with an aircraft carrier full of charges for my A-bomb-firing pistol.

Yep, I'm always doing that. Except with Stalker, where I somehow ended up running out of almost everything by the end. Those bloody grunts respawning after quickloads didn't help.

Burning Eclipse wrote: »

Read a quote in Edge recently, from the forums, about that very thing. You start the Ravenholm level and the second you use the Grav Gun on the circular saw blade a zombie comes rushing at you. You can't help but know what to do. Excellent!

Think there was a bisected zombie lying on the ground near the saw blade too, which was a helpful prompt.


didn't Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade have one (or more?) of those annoying pixel hunting things in the three trials at the end. There was the swinging blade where you had to position the cursor exactly over a 3-pixel-wide cross which you couldn't even see unless you turned up the monitor contrast. And the leap of faith, think that may have been pixel hunting too. And then you get to the end and find you have to choose the right grail, based on something you were supposed to have read way back ages ago.


Managed to get slightly flummoxed in TF2 yesterday. Defending the second cap on the first stage up Dustbowl, trying to get a sentry gun up in the raised tunnel, just inside the exit gate, frantically hammering away as I know the blue team will be charging in any minute. Halfway through the upgrade, run out of metal, wait for the ammo box to respawn - which it does directly under my sentry, which because it's my own building was blocking me from reaching it from any side. Ended up getting blown to bits.

FutureGuy

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

That mission in GTA SA when you're riding the motorbike, chasing the train and that useless plank is shooting at the bad guys on top of the train, all good but it's time limited and your gun toting buddy is a crap shot!

I gave the game up after that...I nearly went crazy trying to beat it.

And Phoenix Wright 2 drove me bonkers. You copuld waste your life bar coming up with 5 more plausable answers to the problems. Then you go and read the FAQ and think "how stupid is that". :mad:

While not flummoxing, I did spend 5 hours straight trying to get a 5-star rating on one of the Mercenaries levels on RE4 on the gamecuble.