We love playing video games. It can be a mode of escape, a time to relax, a story to get deep into, or something to stimulate the mind. But the fact of the matter is, we also hate playing video games. They can be really hard, we lose unfairly, a mechanic doesn't sit right, or we forget to save.
Of course, these frustrations are never permanent (isn't that what keeps us coming back, after all?), but this doesn't make them any less annoying. Sometimes we really need to complete a certain task to move on with the game and other times it is all about our own sanity: "I have to overcome this obstacle/defeat this boss/find this item before I can put it down."
This is a mode that some great games wear proudly on their sleeve. From Elden Ring to Tunic, we did an awful lot of dying last year. However, these gaming frustrations are not limited to so-called 'hard games'. What about the times that a mechanic just doesn't click or when we overthink something so much that finding the extremely simple solution on Google somehow makes it worse (not speaking from personal experience, of course)?
In order to get some of these frustrations out of our system, a collection of our writers have come together to share the moments that had them ready to throw away the controller and move to a remote forest where the ice-cold grasp of video games could never get them again. Have a read through our most frustrating moments and then take to the comments to share the times that you have entered the pause menu for a moment of screaming into a pillow.
From the specifically simple to the genuinely very hard, here are the video game moments that have got us the most frustrated...
Jim Norman, Staff Writer
I get frustrated with almost every single game that I play because, for the most part, I am not very good. This being said, there are a few stand-out moments that have really got me grinding my teeth and contemplating crushing my controller with my bare hands (if 1. I was anything like strong enough to do that, and 2. I didn't care so much for my controllers).
On a large scale, the first time that I ever took on Phantom Ganon in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has always stayed with me as being my first experience of really grinding a boss fight. Whether it was the lack of camera control to quickly switch my view between the paintings or my inability to memorise attack patterns, this one took me way too long and almost brought me to tears on a number of occasions at the tender age of seven.
Far more specifically though (and this is the small hill I will die on) is wall jumping in Super Metroid. Yes, the game is a masterpiece and yes, it still holds up today, but I swear that the wall jump mechanic is one of the most frustrating controls that I have ever come across. The section where you need to perform a consecutive chain of those little blighters in Maridia while shooting at the ice monsters above? I genuinely gave myself cramp in my right hand. That's how long it took me.
Alana Hagues, Staff Writer
I’m the kind of person who seems to get wrapped up in a lot of RNG-style nonsense. We’re talking about spending hours trying to catch low-spawn-rate Pokémon, or wasting time trying to get the Sword of Kings in EarthBound. Things that annoy me to no end but I can’t drop because my pride won’t let me – I have to have the stupidly-rare things, and the fact that RNG hates me just makes me more determined.
But I can’t get properly annoyed at things like this. What I get frustrated by still is Wizpig from Diddy Kong Racing. Honestly, I don’t really like most of the boss races in Diddy Kong Racing anyway. Tricky is an appropriate name, and Blubber is irritating because of the bouncy water physics. But the first race against Wizpig feels almost impossible.
For starters, Wizpig cheats, getting off the line before the countdown has even finished. Then, if you managed to overtake Wizpig early in the race, he’s almost guaranteed to overtake you again unless you play perfectly. If you even miss one boost then you might as well restart. It’s maddening, and I spent almost a week trying to beat the wizard pig. My hands were sore pretty much every day from trying so much. I eventually did it with Tiptup – and managed to unlock everything in the game – but my God getting there was a pain. there's no way I have the patience to do it again today.
The worst part? The second race against him is so much easier. Why!?
Ollie Reynolds, Staff Writer
When it comes to games being frustrating, there are quite literally dozens of examples that I could choose from when it comes to sheer difficulty. But as a child, the one thing that really burnt my toast was the hunt for the legendary dogs in Pokémon Gold And Silver (I had Gold, specifically). This was, by far, the most anger-inducing task I’ve ever undertaken in a video game, and by the time I actually managed to catch Entei, Suicine, and Raikou, I was so tired of the whole ordeal, I immediately put the game down and moved on with my life.
For those unaware, the legendary dogs would basically run from battle at the first opportunity, and their location — though viewable via the in-game map — would change when you yourself move from one area to the next (or if you stay in one spot for too long). The most fool-proof way to run into these beggars would be to position yourself in a region where you could easily swap from one location to another. Once you see one of the dogs in the same location as you, you quickly pace back and forth in the tall grass until they pop up in battle.
Now, my feeble child mind didn’t realise that the 'Mean Look' move would prevent a Pokémon from fleeing from battle, so I foolishly never used it in my endeavour. What I did do, however, was chip each dog's health down to 1 HP and put them all to sleep, and I still managed to burn through about 50+ Ultra Balls. It was absolutely infuriating, and if Game Freak ever pulls something like this again, I’ll be having words.
Kate Gray, Staff Writer
I feel like I'm gonna catch a lot of flak for this one, but I can't be bothered with precision platforming, so my choices are two Metroidvania games that made me want to quit games forever.
The first is Hollow Knight's Crystal Peaks area, which is full of nasty spiky walls and laser beams. It exists to piss me off. There are harder platforming sections and harder bosses, even, but Crystal Peaks is right near the beginning of the game, so I keep thinking, "it can't be that hard! Let's try again" and then BOOP I'm dead because I panic-dashed into spikes, AGAIN. I hate you, Crystal Peaks.
The second is this one bit in Ori and the Blind Forest that's the same deal — spikes. Spikes on the wall, on the floor, on the ceiling, with maybe an iiiiiitty bitty bit you can land on. You have to be really good at platforming and dashing, and I'm just... not. I think spiky walls in platforming games are evil.
Gavin Lane, Editor
There are many instances in games when I’ve been impaled on a difficulty spike, but the biggest sticking points come when you feel a game is being unfair or gives you inadequate tools to do the job. And if it comes from a developer that you know can do so much better, it’s doubly irritating. Super Mario Sunshine sticks in my memory as having some of the worst cases of this I've ever encountered. Not because it's a beacon of bad game design — there are some great parts! — but because seeing Nintendo EAD trip over such evident, elementary problems added a hefty dose of confusion to my frustration. I mean... how? WHY!?
There are various stages that feel uncharacteristically scattershot and unpolished from a design perspective. The pachinko level is often cited, and with good reason, but Ricco Harbor’s ‘Red Coins on the Water’ shine — yes, the infamous Blooper one — still stands out for me. The surfing itself I never had an issue with (in fact, I like how the Blooper controls), but the inability to dismount and the tiny margin for error when jumping to collect the shine at the end wound me up no end.
A hidden 'trick' to dismount the thing was discovered years after the fact, and it was admittedly hilarious to see new players encounter Sunshine’s foibles when 3D All-Stars launched a few years back. Still, I’m in no rush to return to Ricco Harbor. Nuts to Ricco Harbor.
Austin Voigt, Contributing Writer
Admittedly... one of the most challenging memories I have with gaming is my very first encounter with Unowns in Pokémon Crystal. At the tender young age of 8, this was my very first foray into the world of Pokémon video games - and while I was obsessed with it, I was also frequently stumped by many of the puzzles it contained, specifically in the Ruins of Alph.
Now, looking back as an adult with a fully-formed brain and years of experience under my belt, it's easy for me to decipher the various messages and clues spelled out by these alphabetical animals. Clearly, one can see that each of them is shaped like a different letter, spelling words like "ESCAPE" that prompt you to use an escape rope in that particular spot. But alas, to 8-year-old Austin, these were unrecognizable hieroglyphs which required enigma-level deductive reasoning that filled multiple notebooks (still residing somewhere in a closet in my parents' home). Because these were the days before easily-accessible home internet - and I did not have the pocket money for a physical game guide - I would sit in bed at night with my Game Boy Color, a matching purple worm light, a lined notebook, and a pencil, carefully copying down all of the "coded" clues spelled out by the Unowns and attempting to use mathematics / logical reasoning determine what exactly they could be trying to spell out!
Never once did it occur to my younger self that they were designed to look like letters they represented - no! My inexperienced mind failed to see this obvious relation to the alphabet, and spent literal hours trying to figure out how exactly to read the Unown messages and get through the ruins in that wonderful game... ahh, to be young and ignorant again.
Mitch Vogel, Reviewer
For me, it would be getting the “Truly Awesome!” Trophy in Rayman Legends. I’m a bit of a fiend for trophy hunting on PlayStation and given that Rayman Legends is such an awesome game, I decided that I’d do what it takes to add its Platinum to my collection. In order to do so, you have to raise your ‘Awesomeness’ level to 11, which requires approximately 6000 points from cups you get for completing levels. The problem is, beating the game 100% only nets you 4184 points. The remainder has to be grinded out by doing the daily and weekly challenge runs, of which you can do a total of sixteen every week. A Diamond cup (the highest) nets you 50 points, but this requires you to be in the top 1% of all players for a challenge. The next highest cup, Gold, only requires you to be in the top 20%, but it grants you a mere 10 points. You can probably see where this is going…
If you played every challenge without fail and got a Gold every time, it would take you a little over 11 weeks of playing this game every single day to get all the points you need. Any missed days or cups of lesser value would extend that timeline even further. So, guess what I did? I opened this game first every single time I booted up my PS4 for a little over a year so I could get in my challenges and collect my damn points. I questioned my life choices every time I opened the game, but at least now I can say I’m part of the elite .3% who hate themselves enough to actually do this ridiculous challenge. After all that, I still love Rayman Legends, but woof I hope Ubisoft takes it easy on us with the next game.
Do you have any gaming frustrations of your own to add to our pile of anger? Let them all out in the comments below!
Comments 196
Returnal, I’ve never been truly frustrated with a Souls game or Hollow Knight, because I never lost progress and always got a bit better after each attempt. Returnal felt profoundly unbalanced, I had 2 hour runs and lost all progress and was just as bad at the game as before.
Road Rash on Sega CD….. got so ticked off at the rubber banding of the AI that I snapped the disc in half. Def not my proudest moment. Was a very angsty teen.
Punching desk when playing Counter-Strike 1.5/1.6.
Last boss of No More Heroes 2. Absolutely abysmal. I loved the game to death up until that point but never finished it on Wii because I just got so infuriated with it.
Played the Switch version, same story. Hoped they’d have fixed it but no luck.
A few off the top of my head.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver: To be continued...
...that's basically what the game did at the end. Raging
Kena: Bridge of Spirits: I tried playing on Master mode. It has to have some of the most unreasonably cheap and unbalanced difficulty spikes in any game ever. Boss jumps into the air, you roll away... and he tracks you midair and kills you in one or two hits. Brutally unjust. One of the few times i've ever given up on a game through sheer frustration.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: To be fair it's not the fault of the game design but I got to near the end of the game and then found my save had deleted, a known bug... 25+ hours lost. Thankfully it was a good enough game I played it again. On second thoughts perhaps the sequel frustrated me more through disappointment.
Sure there are many others i've purposefully blocked out of my mind.
EDIT: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (or any game with bad RNG) spending hours apon hours trying to get the last Blades through farming and then gatcha style RNG. Never got them.
Waiting for GoldeneEye to be added to NSO.
I have a faint memory of being insanely frustrated as a little kid at the Bianco Hills Secret in Mario Sunshine, bawling my eyes out. I died countless times and seeing the Game Over screen made it much worse. Was the first time I realized giving up and coming back was the best option. Was too determined though.
I don't feel like I ever truly recovered from Fire Leo in Viewtiful Joe. I came back again and again for weeks, if not months, trying to beat him, and what's worse is you have to do a full Boss Rush first. It never happened. I ended up buying the PS2 version about a year later and played through the whole thing in "KIDS" mode without much trouble. I might still have the GameCube save, waiting for me, tauntingly.
Final (hidden) boss on Cave story, and the area leading up to it. I kept giving up on it, but it was nagging at the back of my head that I didn't complete it, so I battled it for a few solid weeks until I was finally victorious
There are far too many to list over my time with gaming but there are definitely a few that instantly come to mind for me:
And all of those are just fairly recent examples. Someone save me
Chapter 8 of Astral Chain
But that was only because I experienced memory leak in that area which made the fps drop really had which obviously isn't good, especially in a hack'n slash game. I didn't know that such a thing like memory leak existed back then and after I died a few times since it was literally unplayable I rage quited and closed the game. After I started the game back up after a while it obviously resolved the problem and it ran just fine to my surprise
I don't remember as I usually find a way past it or give up and then move on.
That said, Super Mario Sunshine is definietly one of them. Just being able to use the controls correctly makes the platformer so challenging and hard. I didn't stop playing the game over it though.
Hollow Knight as well I guess. It's high difficulty for me, which makes me usually only play it to achieve a single goal at a time here and there. I guess that counts as frustrating.
I never attempt Legendary Pokemon in Pokemon games unless the catch rate is easy. It's more to do with patient's and staying alive. Yes I need a status effect and 1HP sweeping Pokemon like Gardevoir or something else.
Metroid Prime 3 Corruption: Final Boss.
Love hard games, souls games, metroidvanias, intense difficulty JRPGS, roguelikes etc.. and to this day the only game I got tired of trying a boss that I could never beat is that Dark Samus encounter on the Wii. Sadly I don't have my Wii with me to try it once more
Sonic 2 special stages are a special kind of frustration.
Limited opportunities to attempt them throughout the game, very tight ring requirements, not-exactly-fair bomb placement, and an AI tails who loves to mess you up at the last moment. It all adds up to a super frustrating challenge. But the reward for clearing them is oh so delicious.
...
In other news, I recently played Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole for the first time on the MD Mini and.... dang, some of that game's platforming/puzzle segments within the dungeons are super duper annoying! Miss a jump, and you're sent back 2 rooms. Hit a switch, and you have just baaarely not enough time to reach the door before it closes... And there's no respite - if you can't make it through some of the tricky puzzles, then you don't get to progress any more. Just sit there and keep trying until you do it.
I did enjoy Landstalker overall, and I did finish the whole game... but it does not pull its punches.
I have a lot of patience so getting frustrated in games is kind of difficult for me. It's been some weeks ago first time I've felt real frustration with a game and it was... souldiers. Not because of the game as it was manageable, but the crashes even saving that made me lose progress. Near the end of the game there is a map where crash saving is near 50% so you can guess. In addition some insane load screen times and you have the perfect combo.
Just for the general idea, my save file says it took me 24 hours to beat the game, but switch profile says 35+ hours. So these 11-15 extra hours are loading screens and doing parts of the game again and again.
The freaking motion control shrines in BotW made young me absolutely furious. Also losing in smash bros makes me mad still haha
The Judge in Who Framed Roger Rabbit
-Getting all the legendary Pokémon in Ultra Moon.
-Inner Agent 3
-TLoZ Triforce Heroes, solely because of the multiplayer. It was such a hassle to get people to work together.
-Basically every Classic Sonic special stage
Tekken 3 - The penultimate boss, Heihachi in arcade mode back when I was a kid, I was raging hard back then, he was the one big roadblock that kept me from unlocking more characters and endings, and then the real final boss of the game, Ogre is a total joke in comparison.
Nothing is more frustrating than getting juggled around in smash
Battletoads.
Horace - DayOff arcade competition. Hate quit and watched the rest of the game on YouTube. Also, ET. Also all of Mario Sunshine.
SoulCalibur 3. I once ejected the disc and threw it at the wall. It split right in half magnificently. Soon after I regretted it, especially because it put a nice dent in my wall which my mother eventually saw and was pretty mad about lol. Those were the days...
Ninja Gaiden on the OG Xbox. I remember throwing the disc out of my bedroom window.
Of course I immediately went outside and brought it back in. Still worked too but can’t say I ever really played it again. LOL
Spinch for Nintendo Switch. Precision platforming mixed with frame rate stuttering is not a good recipe. Cool game otherwise though.
The marathon challenge (999 lines) in Tetris 99. When I finally completed it, I had played it non-stop for over an hour, and my eyeballs were dessicated.
@JamminOnThe1 Yes, particularly the speederbike level. It's bad design, too, because it comes so early in the game and I'm reasonably confident most players gave up on that level.
Going for 200% in Tropical Freeze and Metroid Dread's final boss.
Super Meat Boy, unlocking The Kid. I hadn't even played the game very long before happening upon these secret 3 stages. I think it took me something like 6 hours to complete! I really wanted to give up on stage 3 because I was dying so much, but then I was afraid of losing the hours I spent beating the first 2 stages. It felt amazing to beat those 3 stages but when I was done, I lost all interest in playing the rest of the game.
Slave Knight Gael from Dark Souls 3 is possibly my favorite boss fight ever, but it took me at least 15 hours over the course of a couple months to beat him. I have beaten hundreds of entire games in less time than that one boss took me.
The problem turned out that I tried approaching this boss very differently than the rest of the game. I was suddenly trying to play how other people recommended instead of what works for me. When I eventually reverted to my person play style I beat him within an hour.
Beating Viewtiful Joe on Ultra V Rated was an amazing experience but it nearly broke me.
These were all positive experiences though. I have no desire to relive the traumatic memories of suffering through bad game design and cheap difficulty of some games I've beaten.
I could generate quite a list if I had the time, but off the top of my head:
I know its a dead game, but fortnite.
A relatively recent one for me was the last boss fight in Bug Fables. I loved the game to death, but the difficulty spike with the final boss seemed to require going back and doing a ton of level grinding. I unfortunately never had the energy to go back and beat it.
It’s not the most frustrating thing I’ve attempted, but I’m currently fighting the Organization XIII bosses from the Kingdom Hearts 3 DLC on critical mode. The general consensus is that you have to cheese most of them to win, but I’m having fun with it and just beat Vanitas after figuring out how to counter his moves.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2, hated the fact that you have to collect blades using the gacha system. Also it's not very good when compared to the other games in the series.
I finished Cave Story+ a year or two ago, and I'm still annoyed about the torture that is the true ending. Not only do you need to follow a guide from near the beginning to even access it, but you also have to get through the last couple normal bosses back to back without healing items so you can save them for the secret final boss, who of course has a long, timed, instakill obstacle course sitting between him and the final save point. I eventually realized it would take less time to replay the entire game on easy than to grind out that awful obstacle course and secret boss on normal, so that's what I did. And even then I wasn't happy because it has a different character sprite for easy mode just to rub it in.
Nothing has frustrated me more than buying the Circle Pad Pro for Kid Icarus Uprising so I wouldn't have to suffer through touch controls, only to find that the left stick controlled the reticle and the right stick controlled movement, flying in the face of over a decade of dual-stick standards. The game allowed so much customization of controls but for whatever reason, they did not include an option to swap the sticks. Only game I've ever returned out of severe distaste.
Removed - trolling/baiting
Demon’s Souls… proved that I’m not the ideal fromsoftware player.
Persona 5 Royal’s Okumura airlock puzzle
DiRT Rally… beat me within an inch of my life.
For me it is those instances when you insist you want to100% a game. I'm glad Sunshine was in this list, that game is truly awful, I despised everything about it, but annoyingly had to 100% it.
I've never tasted monotony so strongly, those blue coins and busted mechanics. I will never ever play that game again.
Other levels of frustration not matched were all part of the fun. I poured like a 180 hours in Enter the Gungeon. Which I hold up as one of the greatest games ever made. After doing everything there is to do I foolishly attempted double challenge mode.
Must have taken 70 - 100 attempts and you can have all the skill in the world but if you don't get those essential weapons which continuously change a random at random on double challenge mode you're stuffed. So it's literally a combo of perform your best run and hope beyond hope you get an unobstructive weapon.
I was sweating and shaking after I did it. There has been no thrill matched in any other game for me than Gungeon.
I’ve had way too many frustrating experiences with games over the years. And I love a good challenge, so that’s not it…my main frustrations revolve around the “why?” of some games. I get frustrated when you get a new power/item/skill/whatever (usually in a metroidvania) and then are IMMEDIATELY tasked with having it mastered before you can exit the area where you got it. No chance to really learn about it.
I also get frustrated when games are just too long for what they are and overstay their welcome. Not every game needs to be a 50+ hour epic. People have complained about Metroid Dread’s playtime, but it was perfect for what it was and didn’t slog on. Too many games just drag and are for no real reason. Give me Untitled Goose Game and Gato Roboto all day for achieving what they set out to do and wrapping up.
As far as recent gaming frustrations…collecting chest pieces in Bayonetta 3. Zero fun. Bailed on most of them.
Oh man, there are definitely more than a few games that have made my blood boil over the years. The one that sticks out the most has to be the Abyss Watchers from Dark Souls 3. Those games are tough in general, but that encounter felt particularly unfair. Not only are they stronger and faster than you, you have to fight two of them at once. I've still never beaten them to this day. Some times you just have to walk away.
@mrpeacoc Fortnite has 3 million players a day.
I can't think of anything specifically, but I will say that every version of Super Mario Kart over the years has been very frustrating in the higher cc's.
Hi there fellow gamers;
Here are a few of my frustrated moments in videogames:
But she was, for lack of better word, unfair for the most part.
She could have been even better than Lady Maria in Bloodborne, if only From had done a better job;
I could name a few more, but the list would be enormous 😜
Cheers, stay safe everyone and happy gaming to us all
Metroid Prime 2 has the Boost Guardian and Quadraxis.
Donkey Kong Country 2 is my absolute favorite game, but some of the thorn levels used to make me so angry.
Mario Sunshine has a lot of enraging parts. Stupid Sand Bird.
FFXIII had a boss with a bunch of faces, and no matter what I did I just couldn't beat it. Never did make it to the fabled open world parts
@JonathanDunn
Have you finished Balan Wonderworld yet?
I have to admit, you guys have a pretty good roster, but... two words: CUP-HEAD... the fight with King Dice had me stuck for days... I have never been stuck on a days since (ehem excluding Furi since I have yet to finish it)
First thing that comes to mind is Bravely Default . I so hated that you had to defeat a very difficult boss only to get stuck in a loop and fight multiple hard bosses OVER AND OVER again. I never finished that game.
@Tyranexx
I managed to hit the old guy 999 times in Wind Waker, I forget the trick, but it became trivial once I figured it out
Catching 100 fish in a row in Animal Crossing New Horizons - all for a poxy Nook Mileage Reward. Still haven’t managed it. Lots of choice words uttered when I let one go and the counter restarts. Blip… blip… blip… bloop… NOW! Sod that.
That and the unbalanced end bosses in LoZ Oracle of Ages & Seasons.
@themightyant Hi there friend;
"Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver: To be continued...
...that's basically what the game did at the end. Raging"
Man, do I agree with you on that.
One of my all time favourite franchises, one of my favourite videogame stories and one of my personal favourite character.
Why couldn´t they actualy finish that story and leave every fan in limbo? It just grinds my gears.
Hopefully the franchise might actually make a comeback and actualy give us a proper conclusion to the story. Hopefully.
Cheers, stay safe and have a good one
Empyrea in DQ8 and Ogre Eagle in Octopath Traveler. Someone at Square Enix must like putting BS bird bosses in RPGs.
The temple levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze are the worst. Blast & Bounce and Perilous Passage in Returns and Bopopolis in Tropical Freeze in particular cost me dozens of lives! Funnily enough, once I got good at Bopopolis, it became the best level to farm banana coins. The thing about hard single-player experiences is that, usually, it’s your own fault. Sometimes when I come back to play with a cooler head, that’s when I finally beat it.
The biggest things that frustrate me are those that are outside of my control, such as getting hit just before the finish line in Mario Kart and having to start the cup all over to get three stars. I would say playing Splatfests in Splatoon 2 was the most frustrated I got. With an online multiplayer game like Splatoon, I need good teammates to win. I would get salty or pessimistic playing Splatfests pretty often, to the point that they just weren’t that fun. The popular team was almost always not likely to win, even if it was a team I really wanted to join. As a former member of Team Order, the Final Fest was terrible for me. It’s why I try my best to not get worked up over Splatfests in Splatoon 3 anymore. I shouldn’t care as much about winning and losing and just have fun like I’m supposed to. When a video game isn’t fun, it defeats the purpose.
The last time I literally quit playing a Nintendo game out of frustration was with Metroid Dread. I loved the exploration and the atmosphere, but having to simultaneously press/hold so many buttons during boss/EMMI encounters (while Samus was forced to stand still, no less) felt like trying to play Twister with my fingers. Aiming, firing rockets, pretty much every mechanic left you unnecessarily vulnerable and felt overly awkward. It's really frustrating when you have to walk away from a game you'd be enjoying otherwise because you realize you're getting so enraged over fighting the controls.
@Kasparius Yeah, you want to play a hard game for grown-ups then try Balan, not kiddy games like Returnal!
Martyr Logarius and Daughter of the Cosmos in Bloodborne. The former nearly caused my to eat my joypad from pure irritation.
I really don't know why people have such a hard time with Sunshine. You can beat that game in a few hours, and 100% it in a couple days. The pachinko level is admittedly finicky, but it wouldn't really be pachinko if you could beat it consistently. Even that shouldn't take more than an hour.
Soul Calibur 3 story mode. Only time I have thrown a controller.
Gotta be FF XIV (PS4). Tried to get into it so many times but I find it so frustrating to play. Oh, and Elite Dangerous (PS4). I’m either completely lost in space or crashing continually into a space station. Two games I love the look of but just can’t get to work for me.
Edit: Also, The Sentinel (ZX Spectrum), Knights Into Knightmare (DS), Pokemon Conquest (DS).
Rainbow Islands on the amiga back in day. World 4, just couldnt beat it. The disk was ejected & thrown into the radiator at 1000mph. What was left of it went in the bin
@Lynox5 Yeah, you had to beat those 4 bosses 4 times in a row, iirc. I just kept at it hoping something different would happen. That part of the game really killed it for me and felt like unnecessary padding. If you thought that was frustrating, the end boss was super tough. It was basically my first rpg, so it was pretty overwhelming for me. I basically, had to go grind for a ton of elixirs to ensure that everyone could heal at all times. Looking back I did enjoy the game, but at the time it was tough as hell.
@Bret yep, and i play it too.
@RaZieLDaNtE I was so frustrated I never played Soul Reaver 2. Or any LOK game again. (despite loving the series before that)
YOU were so frustrated you came out of Nosgoth and undulatingly merged with Sparda
First thing to come to mind is fighting Death in Castlevania and those stupid scythes flying around. RNG!!!!!
Might update this comment as I remember more anger inducing gameplay.
Trying to defeat the true final boss of Dandara (the one from the Trials of Fear expansion) got me to the point of feeling almost sick with anger, and forced me to essentially switch to easy mode to do it. And even then, I barely made it.
As an incurably lame gamer despite the experience amassed (and rare opposite extremes like actually platting FFX and gathering every trinket in VVVVVV, but even those experiences still give me flashbacks💀), I wouldn't get finished until next month.😅 I've already said before that one of the reasons I adore RPGs and other grindable genres is because I royally suck at lasting gitguddery (as in, even more than in general gitgudderry), meaning that repeatedly going back to square one in other challenges doesn't compensate me with much in the way of "skills and reflexes" it's supposed to hone. Compared to that, even the proverbial soulslikes give you something to invest your time in if you hit a boss wall or whatnot - grinding up a few stats here and procuring a better loadout there won't necessarily carry you to victory either, but as long as you do well enough therein and save properly, these contributions won't dissipate by the next session... whereas the ten times I've managed to dodge or parry the boss's attack ultimately leave me none the more guaranteed to dodge the eleventh.
Of course, there are other things to howl at, like match-three RPG's AI opponents getting astoundingly lucky in a pinch (not to mention the move prompter often baiting you into a trap, although I dare suspect it's just a perennial clash of good intentions and gleefully ignored turn order) or the loot RNG watching your suffering with a bag of popcorn in games which notably rely on loot. Isaac alone is legendary in its variety of ways to troll the player - one of my attempts at Greed mode with the Lost ended when I finally found Pyromaniac on sale, grabbed it... and got immediately offed by a nearby blue flame's projectile - the projectile oh so momentarily but successfully obscured by the purchased item's popup text!👹😂
The combination of the aforesaid cases often leads me to overcome the toughest parts not with a sense of triumph, but one of weariness. There are beaten gems like Bloodroots in my backlog that get the verdict of "amazing game, but NEVER AGAIN" - and while GTA Trilogy has been on my wishlist for a good while, one of the reasons I've hesitated to grab it even on sale so far is the mixed feelings at the prospect of another playthrough - every GTA game has many things I'd happily revisit and many things I really don't look forward to ever having to do again. The memetic "damn train" or RC helicopter missions aren't even at the top of the latter list.😏
But I will likely find myself facing many such stumpers and going through half my expletive vocabulary in all my used languages again and again.😏 Tenacity or masochism, call it what you will.😆
Entei = lion
Raikou = tiger
Suicune = cheetah
Cats…. They are legendary cats!!
The angriest I've ever been playing a game is online on For Honor. I'm genuinely embarrassed at how angry I allowed myself to get. I've swore I'll never get that angry at a game again. If I feel myself getting angry I just turn the game off. It's not worth getting wound up over.
I've never thrown or smashed a pad though. That is some next level cringe.
Pretty much any post game Battle Facility in a Pokèmon game. Many times I've been on a winning streak then all of a sudden the game just enters full cheat mode. From 100% accuracy moves missing multiple times in a row not caused by accuracy lowering item and one hit KO moves hitting multiple times in a row along with the computer thawing out and waking up immediately followed by landing critical hit after critical hit. I have come close many times to destroying a Console including my Switch OLED because of this constant nonsense.
Oh and don't get me started on computer quick claws kicking in multiple times in a row when you're about to win and when the computer uses moves like Swords Dance. The difficulty in these games is just artificial in every conceivable way.
I did want to use the B word but I had to change it to nonsense for obvious reasons.
What frustrates me are these parts in some older jrpgs where you face a freakishly difficult boss after an unskippable cutscene. Every time you lose, you have to watch that scene over and over.
The only instance I remember vividly is the platforming segment of a particular boss in Ni No Kuni II. I avoid platform games because I suck at them so it frustrated me to tears having to attempt that part like 30 times 😭
The chapter 9 Farewell for Celeste. Or actually just Celeste in general. One of the best games I’ve ever played, but holy crap, also one of the hardest games I’ve ever played in my entire life. Still haven’t beat Farewell, although I someday hope to.
I spent 4 hours in a row once trying to complete Resident Evil 5's Desperate Escape on Professional difficulty. I literally swat from the experience and I had to change my t-shirt and sweater afterwards.
I won't say I was even that frustrated, as I took it as an experience/lesson; I did learn that in order to do the final area, you had to have a shotgun, but I hadn't found one.
Now I know where the 2 shotguns are situated (it's a coop game after all - so one shotgun per player I played it solo though).
I still haven't got around to try another time on Professional, but I will try it again at some point (and I genuinely believe I can do it - but I currently have way to many other games I want to delve into first).
@Dm9982 You win this comments section! Did you get another copy?
100% super Mario galaxy 2. Took 40-50 tries to get some of the stars each. Then dark souls 1 upon 1st releasing. We had been used to easy games and this 1st time in generations that a game challenged you in every way, if you stayed away from internet and just played game through. Just dropped you into a world that you had to explore, no little beacon saying this objective next. And if you dropped your guard, the most mundane enemies would kill you.
The one I remember the most from my kid days is in Donkey Kong 64, it was the Fungi Forest boss, Dodagon's revenge. At one moment the platform starts to sink and you have to get big to punch him. I was always punching him and the platform always sunk to the lava with me on it, it wasn't until I realized the Z+B punch registered that I understood that's what I had to do.
The Omega Pirate in Metroid Prime was also a little rage-inducing for me, more than Meta Ridley or Metroid Prime itself.
Crazy Gadget in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was another level I had a lot of problems with. The last section with the changing gravity threw me a curve ball for my skill. Thankfully I remember I took a shortcut avoiding some of those gravity changing platforms and that took me to the end of the level.
It goes without saying that Tubular in Super Mario World and World 8-2 from Super Mario Bros. 3 are perhaps the only instances where a Mario game handed my butt to me for real.
Games where you only can save on save stations make me angry sometimes. For example, I was playing paper mario 64 on NSO. It was a fetch quest that takes like a half hour to complete. Because I wasn't focused I lost a battle. I needed to play that same 30 minutes again. That are moments where I rage quit and go study a bit more
The challenge tower in Mortal Kombat 9 was... Very trying
For me it must proably be Hollow Knight. The Hall of Gods is incredibly difficult, but as a completionist, I have to get the platinum trophy on every boss (not being hit at all). So far I’m at 80% of the bosses and I do one every month, but I will probably never get it because I’m getting old.
Next to that, inserting my snes cardridge and seeing that my Lufia progress was gone was my first gaming sadness I experienced. I had farmed so many blue chests in the old cave and I was almost ready to try and reach the 99th level of the old cave… but unfortunately the save bit on the cardridge got corrupted or the battery died down or something. All my progress was just… gone.
Many of the jumps in the old platformers like Manic Miner etc, that you needed to get right to the edge and then jump, failed at the same point too many times.
But also one Skultula that I could never get in ocarina of time, really annoyed me not to get that.
@MetalMan imagine throwing a digital game to a wall, little to no satisfaction
I totally agree about Wizpig. It was so frustrating that I just stopped trying and never saw the rest of the game, which is a shame because I was loving it.
Also the final boss in DK64, annoying, frustrating and too long. Never finished that either.
i have severals moments that frustated me and i will list here:
Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: Water Temple, got so frustated my late maternal grandfather has to complete this to me
Super Mario Sunshine: the dreadful Pachinko level
Super Mario Galaxy 1/2: the start where you have to control a ball by tilting your Wiimote, this stupid mission lead me to a lot of death and Luigi Purple Coin challenge in Toyback Galaxy
Mario e Luigi Dream Team: some challenges to free the Pillo
Bayonetta 3: the train challenge in chapter 4, it nearly drive me insane
I'm sure there have been quite a few over the years, but I can't remember them all.
Two come to mind:
1) The Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. Specifically, the time block in the Longshot room that I didn't know was there, caused me to backtrack cause I thought I missed something. I put the game down for a few days, I was so frustrated. My cousin, Chuck (god rest his soul) was home sick one day from school. When I got home, he had figured it out
2) The other would be that pachinko level in Mario Sunshine. 3D All Stars reminded me why I never actually finished it. I'm sure there's some technique out there to finish it as I don't think Nintendo would actually leave the thing broken if that was the case.
As a kid, finding the third star in Hands-On Hall in Super Mario 3D World. I had all the stars, all the stamps, all the golden flagpoles, I knew I just needed to get this one star. It took me like three months to figure out you could just walk the way the spikes were going and there was a whole other area.
My recent biggest frustration was presenting the Blue Badger at the end of the first Ace Attorney game. I knew what to do, I knew how to do it, I looked up about 15 guides to help, and it took forever.
I’ll second crystal peaks. Screw that area I’m still stuck on it.
Ornstein and Smough.
Never have I wanted to throw my controller through a wall more than fighting those two in Dark Souls Remastered on Switch.
I finally recruited help from other players just to carry on. They were by far the hardest boss of the game for me.
I did replay Dark Souls Remastered on Xbox One X and I beat the snot out of them (I am a muuuch better Soulsbourne player now).
Those bloody motion control shrines on BOTW. I was attempting them on a Lite at the time, and they would just not register my movements properly no matter what I did. And you had to hold the console in ridiculous positions where you couldn’t even see the screen. Those sections were not built for handheld play.
Vega on Street Fighter 2 level 7. It was the SNES version where I struggled. Was playing SF2 in both the arcades and home. Arcade joysticks Vs dpads, night and day difference for fighting games. Even analogue sticks today can't beat an arcade stick for fighters.
Treasure Island Dizzy, one wrong move, start again. No lives, no respawns back in the day.
In a general sense, waiting 10 mins for a C64 tape to load and crash at the last minute.
Rage moments of my youth.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on the Amstrad CPC.
... nnnnghhhhhhhhhh...
Several Metroid bosses have frustrated me, particularly the Spider Guardian in Metroid Prime 2 (GameCube original).
The thing that annoyed me most, though, was Star 242 in Super Mario Galaxy 2. I tried it so many times it really made me feel quite bad. It's a shame because I used to 100% Mario games up to that point, and just gave up when they went over-the-top with the sort of no-mistake, endurance runs, like the hardest two levels in Super Mario 3D World as well. Nowadays, I don't even bother to think about 100%-ing them.
Sekiro. The game’s brutality just undercuts your efforts so many times, not just in boss fights but in navigating the world in general. Demon of Hatred is the one boss that broke my spirit where I had to go for several walks to decompress after what appeared to be failures lacking progress. Even Malenia in Elden Ring didn’t do that to me, and I think it’s simply that you’re learning the mechanics all through the game and they don’t matter against this massive demonic spirit who rumbles and ravages the stage like it’s his sandbox. Extremely difficult for me (but I did beat him).
But, still love Sekiro, and am considering a replay soon. Just might skip the fiery spirit this round.
Without a doubt basically all Cloister of Trials in FFX. It's so lame, I couldn't imagine doing it pre-youtube days. Plus I loved FFXs story so being pulled away from it to press wall buttons for half an hour compounded my frustration
Last frustrating experience: MGSV The Phantom Pain. That last Quiet mission is awful, you get stuck on it for a while, and all that hardwork doesn't pay off, because she leaves. She's not even the best companion in the game.
@Kasparius It's been several years, but IIRC I had to back him into a corner and pseudo cheese the fight that way. But before I figured that out...ugh.
Hollow Knight.. first few hours were almost unplayable due to awful control lag... switched v sync off and it fixed the issue. Water Temple... remember there was some room in the ceiling I didnt know was there. Playing Environmental Station Alpha just now and its a frustrating lil blighter. You can play for hours and hours and get nowhere ... speaking of which ... Returnal. Can grind levels for hours, die and lose EVERYTHING. GRRRRRR
I haven't got the skills for the likes of Cuphead or Elden Ring and I am too old to get frustrated with video games so have avoided them. Too hard is an instant no from me.
I think the only real time I've gotten angry at a game was Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. It'd been annoying on my Wii U, what with the Mic being sub-par at best, and I got to the part where you had to navigate a pitch-black room and I noped out for a few months haha. And Maybe Master Quest on 3DS haha (I really hate the Water Temple)
"All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!"
Any team based online game
FFX… someone saved over my save data when I was a kid. Happened to a friend of mine too, and he told me how awful it felt. Crazy someone did the same thing to me. That’s what probably the most frustrated I’ve ever gotten with a game.
For the sake of gameplay, I grew up with the NES and Gameboy. I was and am used to having my patience tested. Kid Klown was often one that boiled my blood as a wee lad, as was the first TMNT title. Battletoads was awful. I’ve definitely rage quit playing Mortal Kombat, especially 3, which definitely had unfair AI. I remember my mom telling me to turn off my N64 and take a walk one time, but I don’t remember the game. I don’t really get that upset with games anymore though.
I remember that one boss battle in Devil's Third that was insanely broken, but there have been plenty of times I got frustrated playing games that were supposed to give me relief of the frustration of daily life, dealing with human "authorities",... One of the biggest ones we probably all know: the Blue Shell spoiling an entire 150 cc that finally went well, just at the very end.
But I can also get behind some levels in Mario Sunshine, and precise platforming in general. Or Timesplitters challenges like the one with the cow carcasses and the tranquilizer gun in the kitchen. Not even anything to do with being vegan. There's definitely more, because I've called many games the worst game ever with the most terrible gameplay design ever because I realised I had been playing them for hours and had no fun only frustration. Nowadays I have no more patience for those games.
Don't get as frustrated now I'm an adult, but used to get furious at Mario kart double dash when I was around 13, trying to do 150 grand Prix and finished 4th only for my mum to tell me 4th was good even though 4th doesn't get you anything and makes you a complete failure
@GamingFan4Lyf Same for me although I did end up beating the whole game solo; not by choice, I saw a grand total of 1 player summon sign the entire game. The trick is that Ornstein is weak to fire and the second stage Smough gains it too. Quelaag's Furysword tears through them like tissue paper once you get the basic Ornstein avoidance down. I'm not sure how many hours I spent before I saw that tip.
Any time I used to go online with Fifa or Pes and your opponent always picked the strongest team for that version. Got boring real quick.
Most recently Assassins Creed 2 I swear I don't remember having so many issues smoothly parkouring in 3 and 4. Although I've had issues where Ezio will jump so far off the direction my stick is pointing what passes me off most is edge grabbing. Like I'd literally smack into the ledge and he doesnt grab it but I do it again suddenly he knows to grab the ledge... failing a Sync cuz of it... what sucks is I mainly play handheld so I always catchmyself about ti snap my Switch in half... luckily I always catch myself (so far) and I'll Switch to Ark or Sunbreak to relax lol
Jump King.
I laugh at every big fall and it's deliberately meant to be frustrating, so kudos for that. But man it sucks every time you get a few screens up into a new area, then bodge it all with a fractionally misjudged jump.
@KateGray I had the exact same issue in Ori, in i think the exact same spot by your description. I imagine that was a dropping off point for quite a few who were lulled in by the demo.
I didn’t like the enforced timer in Octo Expansion anyway, it changed the game from great to annoying. But i persisted, till there’s this one level which is basically balloons popping up on a square platform .. on a timer. Brutal. After tens of tries that was the end of that game.
I broke a joycon playing Fortnite a few years back. NCAAF games can get frustrating depending on the team you play as. Other than that maybe Ocarina of time and majoras mask. I didn’t really get frustrated, but I did quit the games the first time I played them because I got stuck.
@Sirvant7 the songs in spirit tracks suck. I played on a new 2ds and each song took forever. I almost quit on the last tower of spirits due to how frustrated I was. That being said, it is an alright game. I like phantom hourglass more though
Toss up between the vertical platforming in the last level of Cyber Shadow and fighting Radiance in Hollow Knight. But the satisfaction that came with beating each was sweeter than candy.
A few years back I was spending a halloween night playing games with a buddy and we decided it would be fun to crack out the old 3 prong controller and play through Castlevania 64. The amount of times I died due to stupid camera controls or just getting caught on a polygon was ludicrous. I used to never swear but that night broke something in me and now I swear like a sailor.
I can't beat the boss on the casino/TV Station level of Sonic Mania and it really grinds my gears.
If I ended up finishing the game I find it hard to mention since I think "eh it wasn't so bad". So, I'd rather mention games that were so frustrating I never bothered finishing.
Panel de Pon
Thracia 776
Batman Forever
Return of the Jedi
Heh, all SNES games, they don't make em like they used to.
For me theres frustration from a game’s difficulty and there’s frustration from the game being broken and/or glitchy.
OK, this one is really stupid, but Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion. Was on a level that i didn’t want to skip and repeatedly died. Eventually rage threw the console, and broke a joycon in the process.
Lesson learned: Don’t throw your Switch. Should be obvious but it wasn’t to me for some reason.
Oh yeah, and Pauline’s spirit in SSBU. You can probably assume why i hate that one.
Ninja Reflex on the Wii.
Probably a 1 hit kills bad guy from dark souls 3
Two recent examples:
Taking down the Northern Area's boss in Hyper Light Drifter (New Game+ difficulty). Said boss on Standard difficulty is annoying enough as is (in my opinion the hardest boss in the game), but on New Game+, where your protagonist has at most 2HP instead of 5HP? Ugh.
'Ascending' almost any specialization in Siralim Ultimate. Ascending requires that you beat all 30 gods when they are 15x your creatures' levels (Lv.1500 vs Lv.100). Granted with a well-planned team, most gods are actually not that hard to take down, until that is you're up against the goddess Muse. Abuses her minion army at your team like she's constantly laughing in your face.
I know I have had a few experiences but nothing I could recall off the top of my head. I certainly sympathise with Mitch's struggle with Rayman Legends, as I had the exact same issue. I would get so darn close to diamond cups, but could never actually get them. It took forever getting those cups, but the work is done.
@Duncanballs I felt no joy playing Elden Ring. I’m just past that stage in life where I want to power my way through a game like that. I got headaches playing it.
The level "Lair of the Blind Ones" in Turok 2. Even WITH an online walkthrough AND the QoL 'save anytime' feature I still got so frustratingly lost. How the hell anyone back in the original release days got past that level is beyond me. I had it back then but even I couldn't get past the 2nd level.
@trcsf Lol, not on Sega CD. I did get the Sega Saturn Road Rash which still had the rubber banding but not as bad. Loved that one as it had the ability to upgrade parts on your bike to extend its capabilities before needing to upgrade the whole bike. This is making me want to redownload Road Redemption and give it a whirl.
I was on one of the last few races with the top end bikes, was soooooo far ahead. Got wiped out by a sudden car spawn and immediately the computer was passing me. Same thing happened in F Zero on GBA, was trying to unlock Joker or Queen, I forget which. Had a perfect race going, was more than half a track ahead, random wipe out and got passed right at the finish line. So infuriating!
@Rcavhs I don't mind a long game and looking forward to BOTW2. I just dont have the energy for games where I have to practice and it takes ages to get past one bit. When I was a kid, I would lose days quite happily to only one level on a game. Not now. Fun game, good story, reasonable difficulty and no stress .... Ideal.
@Ganner yup I remember Turok being rough in points. But it can be forgiven because of the cerebral bore 😂
Far too many games to boil it down. But, the top 5 are almost all going to involve some of stupid jumping puzzle, or other jump situation that requires more timing it should it should within the context of the rest of the level.
For me it was these games:
Sonic 3D Blast for Sega Saturn (those isometric boss battles just killed me time and time again).
The Lion King for Super NES (that waterfall in Hakuna Matata is treacherous).
Killer Instinct for Arcade and Super NES (that fight with Eyedol is unfair, just when I thought my plan is going good the dude then uppercut me and recharge his energy like no tomorrow).
F-Zero GX for GameCube (killing every one of Michael Chain's gang member in Chapter 4 in that limited amount of time is a frustrating nightmare).
Battletoads for NES (that darn Turbo Tunnel haunts me for life, thank goodness for emulators and save-states).
Mortal Kombat II for Arcade (Trying to beat Kintaro with $5 worth of quarters with every fighters I had learn at that point just frustrate the heck out of me, that dude just can't be kill).
Double Dragon 4 for Switch and Steam (Such unfair surprise. Throw a crate at one sumo only for that crate to break out and reveal 6 more sumos).
I can say this one since P5R is on the Switch now: The end of Persona 5 on PS4 irreparably damaged my opinion of the otherwise fantastic game. The rest of this post contains SPOILERS for the endgame, so stop reading here if that bothers you.
I was ready to have the 135 hour game beaten before Christmas, and when I struck down buff Shido, I figured that would happen. Instead, the story decided to keep going, now with Shido’s nameless lackeys posing a threat. So I entered the real final dungeon, and it wasn’t so bad. Then I lost to the Holy Grail (which is scripted) and everything from that point on was downhill. The final area where you climb the skeleton into the sky is quite possibly the least fun final area in any RPG I’ve played. It’s got one save point at the very beginning, about four tough minibosses that don’t save your progress after each, enemy formations that can obliterate you in an instant (one of them would immediately kill Joker in two unblockable hits if struck first), a rather gross enemy that my entire couldn’t defeat if I ran into it, and a truly difficult final boss. Reminder: The only save point was at the very beginning of this long, arduous room, so if you beat a mini boss but you accidentally engage an enemy as you’re backtracking, it may kill you and force you to redo that beaten miniboss. It’s infuriating!
Remember, the game had lasted 135 hours up to that point, I was completely satisfied with the story concluding before this, and now this atrocious gauntlet was holding me up right before Christmas. I considered giving up, but I stuck it out. I then complained to my cousin about my listed grievances, and he said the ending was flawless and I was just bad at the game. Couldn’t even get sympathy from my best friend after enduring the most frustrating, unnecessary ending to a gargantuan journey I’ve seen. Never again.
I lose my ***** when bugs cause me to lose tera raids in Pokemon Violet.
Ori & the Blind Forest on xbox.
The character was just not doing what i was inputting on my controller, don't know if my game was bugged or not.
So frustrating, i gave up.
Organization XIII data battles in KH2HD
Liquid Ocelot in MGS4
SSBU's lagfest of an online mode
Off the top of my head
The casino tile puzzle in Super Mario Sunshine. I wanted to throw my controller through the wall. And the Star Road in Super Mario World also left me with some bad memories .
@dsparil I was lucky enough to get 2 summon signs by the bonfire. Those two ripped them to shreds like it was nothing.
Majora’s Mask. I loved so much about that game…. But it was so damn tedious. Around 16 hours in I had to face facts, I couldn’t continue. I’ve tried numerous times over the years. It frustrates me to this day because as I said there was plenty of things I loved in it…. I keep telling myself I’ll go back one day again though, will I ever learn?
The biggest recent frustration though is Scarlett and Violet. How much useless talking does one game need? And why can’t I skip? And why are all the activities so repetitive? I finally managed to beat the three paths, only a bit further to go but I’ve brunt out. I’ll get back to it one day maybe.
CUPHEAD.
I wanted to love it... but it felt too cheaply hard to me.
Im an old gamer, and dont get afraid of Battletoads, Castlevania, Megaman, Karate Kid... But Cuphead feels too difficult to me... so difficult I got bored, stuck in the Dragon Boss.
Ultra Necrozma was the bane of every Nuzlocker
@Supermoose8645 From what I remember, the songs sounded fine enough, but yes, they were horrible to try to play, no matter what device you played the game on haha.
I need to try Phantom Hourglass soon.
It's frustrating when certain video games draw you in by being initially promising but then the difficulty spike is suddenly turned up to 11. This often seems like some cheap trick to increase play time and I have to admit I've given up on quite a few games. Most which try this just aren't worth persevering with.
While quality games pitched at the right level do give a sense of achievement, sadly some others are nigh on impossible.
Donkey Kong 64. The fly swatting minigame and Tiny's race against the beetle. Both because of the bugs' voices when you fail (miss the fly or don't beat the beetle): there's just something about their high pitches that makes it sting extra.
Of course, I could be here all day: I get frustrated easily.
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker: the 50 level maze gauntlet.
Pokemon Ultra Sun- Totem Marowak.
I love everything else about that section of the game- Music, characters, even the boss's design is sick. But it was just way too hard. I ended up buying Moon just because there was a different boss in that version. I did beat it one day, and finish the game. It became one of my favourites. But that section was so annoying...
Also, Shovel Knight. Why are the spikes all OHKOs? It would have been so easy to take the Hollow Knight route, where you take one hit of damage and then respawn. I wish I'd gotten the game on my computer now, since I could get a mod that does just that.
Also, I did play Hollow Knight up until the second ending. I died a lot, but I don't believe I ever got mad. The game always makes you understand why, you can easily understand what mistakes to learn from, and you don't feel cheated at all. You died a zillion times to the Radiance because it's a literal god, not because it's cheating.
I remember in blaster master Zero 2 there was this one frustrating optional area involving ladders and the game can be very finicky when it comes to grabbing onto ladders.
it was patched to make it easier but initially it was aggravating
in FFX i remember always finding the first blitzball game annoying, its not too difficult esp if you have jecht shot but its more that if you do want to retry theres a bunch of unskippable cutscenes (in general unskippable cutscenes before bosses can be annoying like a certain boss in KH1 original)
Also a common theme for me between mandatory motion controls and frustrating segments fortunately those are less common on switch nowadays but there was this one minigame on Kirby and the forgotten land which was frustrating especially in handheld mode, fortunately its optional and the rest of the game was so great it balanced things out.
Most of my picks have been discussed already, but the one that immediately came to mind for me was the Yunalesca boss fight from Final Fantasy X.
Without spoiling too much, this story boss appears about 3/4 of the way through the game, and took me more retries than the final boss. It starts by infecting your party with Zombie, making healing spells hurt you, and then sends a barrage of healing spells your way. Your first instinct would be to heal your status, but nope: Yunalesca will usually follow up with Mega Death (hm), which insta-kills anyone NOT zombiefied. It’s a battle of attrition, where you have to slowly chip away at the boss, heal only when you’re just about to die anyway, and hope to RNGesus that the boss doesn’t spam its most annoying attacks. In true JRPG fashion there are abilities you can use to cheese the fight, but unlocking them is a tedious grind and you wouldn’t think to go that far on your first playthrough. The worst part was, that I played on the original PS2 version, and I had to watch an hour long unskippable cutscene before each attempt!
Most of FFX is very easy, but the Yunalesca fight is an enormous difficulty spike that can ruin the entire game. I eventually beat it, but by then I was just relieved I never had to do that nonsense again.
Trying to beat the Shadow of Doom DLC of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order on Superior mode just to unlock Doctor Doom's alternate costume. It took me 3 days to try and beat the final boss because it was so FRUSTRATING .
1. Getting Alpaca Wool+, rare crops, Orichalcum ore from Story of Seasons Pioneers of Olive Town.
2. Passing Chaos in Expert difficulty as Encore Extra Stage from DDR SuperNOVA since one mistake will be instant Game Over.
3. Getting Raymond in Animal Crossing New Horizons without Amiibo card.
4. Playing Sonic games. 😫
5. Defeating Esper Ultima and Zodiac in Final Fantasy XII.
6. Playing Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario 3D World. It wasn't really fun to clear certain stages over there as I oftenly died by fell into bottomless pit or get kissed by enemies.
7. Playing any golf games. I'm suck at hitting the ball with right power amount and right angle. I oftenly get Boogey Wonderland as the result.
8. I hate Threesome or Foursome fights in ARMS as winning the fight is very unpredictable.
9. Going down to 100th floor of mines in Harvest Moon Magical Melody.
10. Passing S Rank Examination in Gold's Gym Cardio Workout Wii.
Championship Manager (or Football Manager). You’ve brought your team to the heights of club football, have won the top flight and Champions League for three years running, and one day meet a League Two side in the FA Cup. And lose 2-0, despite 40 shots to their two.
@MattyBH85 oh god…… THAT is god tier frustration!!!!
The final story level in F-Zero GX … I think it was a Rainbow Road look alike? That in the highest difficulty I think is one of my greatest achievements in gaming.
Probably while playing Cuphead and fighting King Dice. I had been trying for a LONG time to make it to the actual part where you fight King Dice, and I was so close to winning, but I barely lost. I ended up spiking my controller, which broke the ZL button completely. I had to spend $70 on a new one. Needless to say, I have learned my lesson and have never spiked a controller since that day.
I'm a pretty new gamer .... Buuuut ....
The one that has made me give up was Kirby and the forgotten land - the secret boss . SO DAMN HARD! Maybe one day when I'll get better...
I hope lol.
Oh and also , BOTW. I got stuck in a temple w no clue how to move on. I hope to be able to get into it again.
Terra Raid battles in Scarlet/Violet
The original Phantasy Star Online... it was nothing like Phantasy Star. It was Diablo x Phantasy Star, and though it was ok for what it was as something new, it wasn't as good as the original 4 games. It was the beginning of the end for that franchise as something that could legitimately transport you somewhere magical.
The first boss in Mass Effect that does that force field thing that makes you and your team just ragdoll and float while everyone shoots you remains the only game that has made me throw my controller.
Also everything in Skyrim. The bugs, the mechanics, everything about it is awful and stressful. Opposite of fun.
Oh and all the train stuff in SpiritTracks. Which is a shame as the rest is fun!
@themightyant Hey friend;
Yeah, I was so pissed off that I used my Broken Wings to glide myself into Hell itself, brought the Lengendary Dark Knight Sparda with me to earth, joined forces with is Second Son and with the power of the Fusion dance we became as one.
And that´s my origin story 😜
Jokes asside, I really hope we can actually get some sort of conclusion to one of, if not the best, Vampire Mature Story ever written in any media (altough, Interview with the Vampire movie was also really good).
Cheers, stay safe and all the best
The final boss in Spider-Man 2 on the GameCube
Adventure Island level 7-4. I hate that level
Super Mario Sunshine.
Just... So much about it back in the day made me a very angered person with a lot of the levels.
It got so bad once that I snapped the disc almost into two halves once back in the day and I tossed it in the trash bin and silently fumed. Nowadays though, I just shake my head and go "Welp..." and continue on.
Playing Diablo 2 on hardcore with my crappy internet in Australia in the late 90s early 00s. Would lag out and lose a character I had been building for months. I definitely broke something after one of those times and had to have a long look at myself in the mirror about my gaming
Dr. Doom, final boss on Roger Rabbit on NES I must've spent three or four days.
Also, the final boss on Ys Chronicle 2, on PC port of the turbografx version. He's just brutal.
Mission Mode in F-Zero GX is also insane.
Any game that has dynamic dungeons, etc. Was supposed to love Dead Cells but literally couldn't make it past the first hour due to a bug. Never picked it back up.
I can deal with hard games and I enjoy them to an extent, but there's one game I played that took things a little too far. It was Death's Gambit... I really wanted to enjoy it. It was a nicely made Metroidvania with lots of challenge. But at some point I got a little far and I just kept encountering ridiculously hard bosses that required superhuman reflexes...but dying a lot wasn't the problem. The problem was after a while, the player character starts saying things like "I don't know how much more of this I can take" and 'Death' himself literally LAUGHED at me for dying to a boss a number of times. I was actively pissed at the developers and I rage-quit the game, never to touch it again.
I had more fun beating my head against the wall against bosses in Elden Ring...
@YoshiF2 winning the final cup in F-Zero GX on Master Difficulty was one of my proudest gaming achievements...even though I didn't come in first place in the final track, I got enough points to get the top rank. That game was BRUTAL. Even it's story mode was brutal--I never finished that.
I used to get so frustrated during my childhood playing NES games, that I'd hurl the controllers against the wall. I always took losing personally, like I was to blame for something unseen that was causing the problem. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's how I felt at the time. I guess I just expected too much of myself, because they were more than games to me.
In recent memory, I would say one of the levels from Splatoon 3, "One-Way Ride Through Target Town." I got so frustrated that I actually rage quit. The irony is that despite me continuously dying, I ended up with an increasing amount of Power Eggs.
A few years ago, it was trying to play Halo on Legendary Mode. I'd always end up dying. And years before that, it was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, because the difficulty is way too high early on in the game and the deaths are just so cheap.
@Sirvant7 the songs sounded good, but like you said, they were awful to play. They ruined what could have been an underrated gem. Try Phantom hourglass. The only major problem for me was the temple of the ocean king, but otherwise I really enjoyed the game
It's not my biggest frustation with videogames I had (that probably goes to like Celeste chapter 9 or something) but since it's more recent in my case.
...Mew in Rescue Team DX. Between my bad luck and the 99f dungeon with escape orbs turning unusuable. I want to do it at this point because sunk cost falacy more than anything else.
@Supermoose8645 I will definitely give it a shot!
@MetalKingShield I have started doing this. I call it 99%ing a game. You play the main bits and then the extra bits. But there's often some final bit that suffers from sadistic design or wastes a lot of your time.
As a kid, completing these is important because it teaches you that you can do difficult things. As an adult, I've got more achievements and less time to waste. 99%ing is where you trade in the achievement of that final bit in favor of the achievement of wresting control from the game designer as to who decides when you've completed it.
Thus I felt a kinship when reading Kate Gray's article on never completing the final boss on BOTW.
Most of my hair-pulling experiences in gaming were back in my NES days (when I still had hair to pull).
The first experience that comes to mind is with Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. I couldn't find a key that would allow me to complete the penultimate temple and finally gain access to the final one, no matter where I looked and how much I wracked my childhood brain for ideas. I eventually just gave up.
Looking back now, I'm pretty sure the key is just somewhere simple and logical, but I've never been able to once again muster the energy to replay Zelda 2 since then.
ClusterTruck’s final level. Brilliant absurd game, with plenty of challenge leading up to the final level, but it always felt fair. Not so with the devil truck. It took me ages to ascend that thing once. When I realized I had to do it three times, I gave up on the game for a while. I was only able to beat it by doing the trick where rather than falling all the way back down after hitting the (maddeningly small) green button on top of the head, I landed on one of his arms and thus significantly short cut the journey (and avoided a ton of lasers).
Recently, Sonic Frontiers on Chaos Island trying to get the blue emerald and not being able to run as fast as the platforms I'm on.
Older games, Heart of Darkness was frustrating as hell which is annoying because the game was great.
Army or/or Navy Moves on the zx spectrum. Those second parts looked pretty awesome. Just a shame the first part was a ridiculous endurance test of reflexes, precision jumping and memorising about 10 mins of ***** frustration.
Getting to the end of Super Ghouls'n'Ghosts on the SNES should've been a moment of pride and something you could boast about. Seeing that you didn't have the special weapon and being sent back to the beginning was quite a shock and then getting the weapon and accidently losing it was almost controller breakingly annoying.
I did eventually manage to complete it - this was back on the original hardware too so no cheats. Conversely which was one of the most rewarding moments I've had in gaming.
The original Monkey Island. The banality and obscurity of some of the puzzles defied belief. Pre-internet days was a massive struggle - so much so it actually took me years to finish.
I've probably repressed the most frustrating video game moments from memory, but getting Tidus's Sun Sigil in Final Fantasy X is the worst thing that comes to mind. The Chocobo race isn't even that fun to begin with so having to master it was especially painful.
@Duncanballs "Treasure Island Dizzy, one wrong move, start again. No lives, no respawns back in the day."
And all because of that blasted snorkel.
@Zequio
"CUPHEAD. I wanted to love it... but it felt too cheaply hard to me."
Yeah, same — I love the art style, the music, and the whole vibe, but I find the gameplay just unforgiving and lacks real impact; all the bosses feel very spongey and you spend the majority of your time just dodging projectiles while firing blindly.
@KateGray I'd be interested to know, did you like Celeste?
Some rage moments back when I was going through some life stuff and took Smash way too seriously.
@Andee or a zipstick joystick on its way out
@Andee I haven't played much of it, because precision platformers just aren't my thing — even the ones that are about wanting to encourage people to play precision platformers despite being bad at them!
Good point about that grinding trophy in Rayman. It reminds me that there are dozens of unattainable online achievements in Tony Hawks 1+2 remake.
While I'm at it I'll also call out content that's locked behind amibo. I wouldn't fill my house with that plastic junk even if it was free. But sure, give lonely Link a wolf companion only if I run out and buy a dolly.
Here's a real teeth-grinder from my recent memory.
I was sick for a week and threw myself into Bowser's Fury as I heard that it was a hidden gem open world Mario. But every 5 minutes all the pretty colours go black and you have to abandon the platforming challenge you're trying to do because Bowser is having a hissy fit and ruining everything. What's even worse is when you get to the end of the game and you're just trying to 100% all the moons, and you've already seen the credits, and Bowser keeps coming back even more frequently than before, and there is nothing you can do anymore: you can't ring the bell because that just triggers the final end boss fight again, you can't hide because he no longer gives up after a while, the only possible thing to do is to purposefully die. That Nintendo put such outrageously bad game design in a Mario game is mind-boggling.
@87th Fire Leo is absolutely insane. I've beaten a lot of hard games, I greatly enjoy difficulty, I have rare platinums on PSN ect ect.
I literally gave up on Fire Leo. It's the ONLY time in 20+ years of video gaming that I've straight up said "this actually seems impossible and I don't want to try anymore". It takes so much to push me to that point but that goddamn game did it.
Jinpachi in Tekken 5 is the only time I ever threw a controller. He's not actually that bad now that I'm a bit older and beat arcade mode with everyone about a million times (Tekken 5 is awesome) but that first attempt...oof.
Outside of shmups, I’m not really sure I’ve ever actually given up on a game though. To be sure, getting all the achievements in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and getting the mile high club achievement in original Modern Warfare were some frustrating hours.
Getting the gem on Crash Bandicoot Stormy Ascent! Wanted to throw the controller through the tv!
I have far too many moments like these that it is incredibly hard for me to just think of one. But when I do think of some of the most irritated I've been in gaming, I have to go back to my roots. Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for NES come to mind. Ghostbusters for the very last segment of the game and how ridiculous it was programmed and near impossible without patience of steel and a lot of luck. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles specifically for the very last hallway in the Technodrome that led to Shredder-- I could not do that final segment without the help of a Game Genie and it frustrates me to this day. When I play the Cowabunga Collection, I vow to play that game again and beat that without a Game Genie. An honorable mention is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link when that game seemed so hard to me in my youth, but I had come back to it and later years and completely trounced the game. I'm glad that I had got that monkey off my back years ago.
Cuphead & Celeste in recent memory. But both somehow strike this amazing magical balance between frustration and accomplishment when you were just about to call it quits. At least that was my experience which despite being frustrated at times ended up being a positive one.
Negative frustration would be a number of games that I decided weren't for me due to unfairness or difficulty- that difficulty usually just being a function of being able to put the requisite trial & error time in to 'git gud'.
I agree with Kate on Ori 1, definitely too many spikes in some areas and Hollow Knight can definitely get frustrating especially with the platforming near the end (but it's still an amazing experience). And Axiom Verge lack of a good map frustration comes to mind but I finished both games still.
These days if I'm frustrated I'm likely moving on to something else. Too much backlog and I mostly play games now to relax more than overcome massive challenges tbh.
The Gordon race in Majora’s Mask was incredibly frustrating - felt largely down to luck than anything and it was so easy to get knocked down right at the end! The fume!
Battletoads (NES)
Ghosts 'n Goblins (NES)
Deadly Towers (NES)
Sonic 3, because of the **** barrels in Carnival Night Zone, so frustrating, Pokemon Emerald because of a ****ing save state gone wrong and ended up loading a previous state from like HOURS ago(I was using an emulator), and I'm not forgetting one more: ****ing Roblox games (specific ones, I won't list), spawn campers who block the exits of spawn are just ****heads as well as other toxic players.
I'm sure I've had plenty of frustrating game encounters throughout my life, but the first few games that come to mind on Switch are Thumper (which I loved and hated at the same time but managed to 100% S-rank the thing), Crypt of the Necrodancer (another awesome game, but I never made it past the second level because it's just too hard), Conduct Together! (getting perfect scores on a lot of those levels was ridiculously frustrating, but it's hard to complain when I only spent like 100 Yen on the thing), and my favorite game to complain about: Earth Atlantis.
Nowadays if I have to replay something so many times that it’s infuriating I just give up as I don’t have enough gaming time to spend on things that aren’t fun. Unless it’s a game I love and the bit in question is required to see the end of the game. E.g splatoon 3 story mode - I did persist with the tricky target levels and beat them, but came close to abandoning. But then that final bonus level I just gave up on and will never complete as I don’t feel like the reward is worth it.
Some of the worst offenders in the past that I can recall are: a NES game called Trojan Warrior (or something like that) - not a big game but very hard; BOTW trials thing - gave up after making it however far and having to restart so many times; Viewtiful Joe; Metroid Prime boss.
My son gets it worse (he’s 15) - he’s constantly getting annoyed at splatoon 3 salmon run, trying to get a very high level. The worst he had though was when he was about 6 or 7 and I got him playing DK Jungle Beat with the bongoes. He used to end up literally crying with rage every time but didn’t want to give up.
@kurtasbestos Thumper is one of those games that I enjoyed for a while but after getting so far in the game I started to get frustrated with trying the same bits over and over - just think I’m not good enough! So I gave up, but I got it on sale and I feel like I got enough of a unique experience from it that I got my moneys worth.
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