Flummoxing Moments

Doodee · 30-01-2008 5:04pm

Kangaroo Court Tbh.

Aldebaran · 31-01-2008 12:23am

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 · 31-01-2008 1:25am

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 · 31-01-2008 10:34am

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 · 31-01-2008 11:04am

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 · 31-01-2008 11:13am

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

Canis Lupus · 31-01-2008 1:40pm

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 · 31-01-2008 2:12pm

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 · 31-01-2008 2:13pm

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 · 31-01-2008 3:19pm

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 · 31-01-2008 5:38pm

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 · 31-01-2008 6:10pm

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 · 31-01-2008 6:28pm

+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 · 31-01-2008 6:46pm

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 · 31-01-2008 8:18pm

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 · 31-01-2008 9:57pm

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 · 01-02-2008 1:07am

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 · 04-02-2008 1:09am

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 · 05-02-2008 5:31pm

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 · 06-02-2008 6:36pm

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.

Bubs101 · 06-02-2008 6:43pm

Finding the first level in DK64

corcaigh07 · 06-02-2008 10:30pm

my worse moment was the christmas shenmue was released. i was stuck at the folklifting job with feck all happening story-wise.this went on for at least a week of constant gaming over x-mas. turns out i was driving a route that lets you continue at the job without the story interfering. the route turned up in tip sections of magazines months later. i was furious, i wasted so much time just because i was too stuck in my own ways! thats a bit too close to real-life work id say!!

evad_lhorg · 06-02-2008 11:57pm

steviec wrote: »

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.

you could have pushed the A(or X on ps3) button you know

0ubliette · 07-02-2008 11:52am

MOH wrote: »

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.

if you had the actualy copy of henrys diary that came with the games manual, it actually showed you exactly where to click to avoid the saw, it had a drawing of that section with an X where you needed to click. The leap of faith you just had click over the far side of the screen as soon as you entered the area, any hanging around meant youd fall to your death

humanji · 07-02-2008 1:06pm

superfly wrote: »

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!

Wait, you could kill them? :mad:

I got really stuck on Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass thingy on the DS the other day. You're shown a map with an island marked on it and told that you should press your map against it.

After about an hour trying to mark the spot on I closed the DS and went off for something to eat. I came back, opened the DS only to find that they meant "close the DS to press you map against the feckin' other map"!

It's soooooo bloody obvious when you get it done, but I almost threw out the bloody DS before hand!

Flummoxing Moments

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