This is your standard spoiler warning. If you don’t
want any spoilers for any games mentioned then don’t even bother.
Ghost here, thanks for joining!
GHOST GHOST GHOST ARE YOU DOING MOTHER 3 YET HUH? HUH?
HUH? I CAN HELP! I WANT TO HELP! I NEED TO HELP!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
MARK MY WORDS THIS SHALL BE DONE SOON OR I WILL
MARK MY WORDS THIS SHALL BE DONE SOON OR I WILL
Good riddance! So
frustrating! You know he’s not the only
thing around here that’s frustrating.
Life in and of itself has more twists, turns, and irritations that
anyone can number. At times you just
want to scream rant and rave about things and video games are no
exception. If you search anywhere on the
internet I’m sure you’ll find copious amounts of nerd rage about one aspect of
a video game or another choice of a company.
The Video Game industry for all it has given to us has also given us
plenty to be annoyed with as well.
Between the poor executive decisions, not listening to fanbase,
legalities, porting of games, poorly created hardware and casual pandering,
it’s enough to make you eat your own hat.
So with that spirit in mind I’ll do something just as
frustrating and make a top 10 list. This
week’s session will be the Top 10 Most Personally Frustrating Moments in Video
Games. Now this isn’t a list of the most
frustrating things in video game history this is just my personal list of what
really has irritated me with my own personal experience. If you want to tell me your own list, please
do so in the comments section. Now this
is the first top 10 list I have ever created so don’t expect greatness. So, without further buildup let’s hop right
into
THE TOP 10
MOST PERSONALLY FRUSTRATING
MOMENTS IN VIDEO GAMES
#10
Boos in the Basement
Have you ever wondered what a crossover between Super
Mario Bros and the Ghostbusters would be like?
Well this is the game for that!
Luigi’s Mansion was one of the first games to be released on the
Gamecube and is considered by myself and others to be a novelty as far as the
Mario games are concerned. Not only are
all of the traditional elements of Mario games missing, such as power-ups that
change the character, jumping on the heads of enemies, and platforming is
completely gone. Most notable of course
is that in this game it is Luigi who gets the spotlight for the first time
ever.
But if you know anything about this game you already know
the topic that I’m going to bring up, the 40 Boos. For those of you fortunate to not have
knowledge of this game let me enlighten you to the annoyance. A little before the mid-point of the game,
Luigi opens a trap door and released 40 Boos who fly through the walls and into
every single room in the Mansion. WHAT?
Wait wait wait… So they can go through walls like normal ghosts but are stopped
by trap doors??? What a load of crap!
You have to track down every single one of these Boos
which isn’t necessarily a problem, except for the fact that unlike most of the other
ghosts in the games, these bad boys are not pulled backwards by the
vacuum. They also can travel from room
to room. Normally that’s not much of a
problem except when you get to the basement.
Now looking at this map I know you’re going to say “What the heck? There’s barely any rooms there How can this
be worse than upstairs where there are 20 some rooms?” Well I’ll tell you. The ones in the basement tend to favor going
through walls more so than the others.
The problem with this is the Cellar room. In this room you have to go to one end, step
on a switch, walk on the ceiling, go to the other side, step on a switch and
end up on the floor again. It’s a rather
tedious process and when a boo likes to go back and forth from the room above
the cellar to the room across the hall with the cellar being the only method of
getting from point a to point b it gets old REALLY fast!!
#9
Chapter 15: The Falling Ship
I love the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series. If you have never had the pleasure of playing
one of these games then you have done yourself a great disservice. The adventures of Kyle Katarn across a galaxy
far far away rival that of the original movies, and are hands down better than
the prequel movies. Shadows of the
Empire is widely considered a gem in earlier Star Wars games, but I have to say
that Dark Forces and Jedi Knight blew it out of the water. How many other star wars games have bosses as
awesome as THESE?!
GLORIOUS!!
Now since I’ve told you something that I like, I have to
mention something I hate, and that something is timed escape levels. You know the kind! Something is about to die or explode and you
only have a couple of minutes to get there before you’re dead. I’m looking at you Metroid Prime!! Well Unfortunately Dark Forces 2 has a level
just like this in which you have to escape a falling starship to get aboard
your x-wing knockoff and escape doom.
The corridors are a maze and you have only one minute and 30 seconds to
navigate it.
Asking me to navigate through a falling ship in only one
minute and thirty seconds is like asking a five year old to take a nap after 3
cups of espresso. There’s going to be
jitters, paranoia, and someone is going to have a mess on their hands. Amidst this chaos in the level, you’ll get
turned around constantly and lose your ability to even think straight. It’s more like this
I ABSOLUTELY HATE stuff like this and will avoid it at
all cost. Luckily there’s a cheat code
to skip a level in this game so… thereisnotry.
#8
The Hall of Ecology
This is one I’m sure many of you have never heard of
before as this game belongs in the desolate wasteland of Educational Games. I
know I know, put down your pitchforks and sit back down I’m not about to make
you actually learn something! Museum
Madness is a PC game from 1995 and to further show how old this is, its system
requirements were Version 5 of DOS. I
used to play this all the time as a child because despite its educational
nature it was actually somewhat enjoyable.
You play as a high schooler who has gone to a museum with
the aid of the museum’s robot. He is
there because all of the exhibits have come alive, and as long as we don’t see
Ben Stiller anywhere I think we’ll be safe.
Each level is a different exhibit in which you solve
puzzled based on your knowledge of history, science, technology etc. I remember the Revolutionary War and the Deep
Sea Exhibits being particularly fun and goofy.
Every exhibit/level was unique and fun enough to play multiple times
with one exception. The Hall of Ecology.
The Hall of Ecology is quite possibly the most tedious
and ridiculous puzzles I’ve ever seen in a child’s educational game. There’s a difference in testing the intellect
of children, and bludgeoning them over the head with a challenge that’s beyond
insane. What challenge is that? It’s a “simple puzzle challenge”
YEAH RIGHT!!
This thing is brutal!
It’s extremely slow moving and incredibly unforgiving as each time you
almost get the sections lined up you have to completely ruin the whole thing to
get one segment where it’s supposed to be on the edge. I remember spending 45 minutes solid and
getting nowhere. I asked my dad to attempt it and he spent 30 minutes with no
luck. I also recently watched a Let’s
Play of that level and the LPer had to cut out 15 minutes of him moving tiles
around cause he got confused. And it’s
because of this ONE level the game was never finished. If you are making a game for children and
including a challenge that adults are having great difficulty solving… well…
#7
Pokémon Red, Blue, and Special Yellow
Battling Against
Psychic Types
There are very few gaming fans out there that don’t
recognize the powerhouse that is pokémon and its very influential first
games. There is a school of thought
still existing that the original games and the original 150 pokémon are the
only “real” pokémon out there and everything else is worthless junk. I cannot
deny that the originals are classic and still just as good as they were in
1998. Except there’s one thing that
people tend to ignore when talking about these games, and that’s a LARGE
oversight by Gamefreak (which was corrected in the follow up games Gold, Silver, and Crystal)
As any pokémon fan would know, each pokémon has one or two types and each type
has its own weaknesses and strengths as you can see above. Fire is strong against Grass, Ground is
strong against Electric, and the list goes on and on. Those with a second type can either help them
in their weaknesses or even worse, make them weaker to other types. Overall with 150 pokémon to choose from the type
coverage was pretty vast and easily balanced with one exception, psychic types.
Since there are no dark type pokémon in Generation 1,
psychic types are only weak to bug type attacks and ghost type attacks. Those of you that know the roster of Gen 1
already know the problem here. There is
only one family of ghosts, that being Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar
respectively. There are two problems here however. The only ghost type move that wasn't one with a set amount of damage on it like Nightshade was the move Lick. Lick was so weak nobody used it and also for some reason Lick wasn't effective against psychic types despite it flat saying that ghost types are strong against psychic types. Secondly, all
three stages of this pokémon are also poison type which is weak against psychic
attacks making them entirely useless in the long run.
So what about bugs?
Well we’re S.O.L. here too. All
the bug type attacks are very weak ones or ones that hit multiple times for
tiny damage. There aren’t any real
showstoppers in the bug type attacking range, but what about the bug type pokémon?
NOPE! All of the very strong bugs with
high stats are either also poison type giving them the same problem as gastly,
or have no bug type attacks at all.
This is why those of us who grew up with the first games
were terrified of Sabrina, and we thought Mewtwo was the ultimate pokémon that
no one could stand against. He was a
deity in this game and for the right reason.
Unless you had a pokémon of high enough level to destroy a psychic type
with a normal damaging attack, you really didn’t have much of a chance and that
level of oversight is just frustrating.
#6
Acquiring the
Megaton Hammer
It should come as no surprise to those who know me when I
say that Ocarina of Time is my favorite game of all time. Yes people tend to overrate it but it really
is good enough to be deserving of the #1 spot in my gaming heart. However it’s not without its
irritations. Ask any Zelda fan about
this game and they are bound to still fuss about something; Epona’s Race,
Shooting arrows while on horseback, The Water Temple, Saving the game in a
temple warps you back to the opening of the temple, the fact that it’s not
Majora’s Mask. There are a lot of little
things that can be brought up, but none of them compare to my irritation and
rage about one particular part of the game…
Now I know what you might be thinking. This really isn’t that difficult of a part of
the game. You just walk into a room,
step on a floor switch, walk up a ledge, and get the hammer. If only it were as easily done as it were
said. The problem exists in the ledge
you must traverse. It is immensely tiny
and curved forcing you to have 100% exact footing or you will plummet to a level
below meaning you have to run all the way around all the obstacles and rooms
you’ve been in before to try it again.
How tiny is this ledge you ask? Here
allow my good friend Pai Mei to illustrate.
OK so it’s not quite THAT thin of a walking area but it
might as well be. Every time I attempt
this game I end up falling off this stupid freaking ledge over and over
again. They say the definition of
insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different
result. Well I can safely say each time I
attempt getting this hammer, I show clear signs of insanity for 30 minutes or
longer because I keep expecting success but end up with failure. I have yet to acquire this thing without the
use of a floating cheat code. It’s THAT annoying.
#5
Pikmin
Purchasing the Game
Pikmin is one of those series that passed me by. I saw it in a K-Mart display a few times but
never really cared about giving it a real chance to shine and obviously the
same goes for its sequel, Pikmin 2. The
games just held no real appeal for me at that age. However now that I’m older and in want of
more gaming experiences I looked to the miniscule Olimar after his inclusion in
Super Smash Bros Brawl. I watched a few
videos and figured that I would give the game a shot. I knew that Pikmin 2 was the superior game
but since it usually sold for around $50 in this area and the original game
sold for only $9. I would go with the original.
Also at this time the re-release on the Wii was there but I decided I wanted the original. So I went to my local Gamestop to purchase Pikmin if they had it and to my amazing surprise they had four copies! I quickly bought it and brought it home. Instantly I went for my Gamecube, booted it up and inserted the disc, grabbed my controller and waited for the game to start. And what did I get?
Also at this time the re-release on the Wii was there but I decided I wanted the original. So I went to my local Gamestop to purchase Pikmin if they had it and to my amazing surprise they had four copies! I quickly bought it and brought it home. Instantly I went for my Gamecube, booted it up and inserted the disc, grabbed my controller and waited for the game to start. And what did I get?
I thought that perhaps my Gamecube was dusty so I cleaned it off and tried again to find the same issue. So I looked at the back of the disc. It was fairly scratched up but nowhere near as badly as my Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee disc. So I grabbed Godzilla and put it in the Gamecube and it booted up instantly. Maybe something was wrong with the Gamecube’s laser and this disc. So I decided to place the disc in my Wii to try that. Got my GCN controller in place, and went to the game channel to play the disc. It left the menu and I was fairly satisfied…UNTIL
Must be a problem with the disc then. I tried the Godzilla disc in the Wii just in
case and it booted up normally. So I marched
out the door and back to Gamestop to swap the discs since that one didn’t
work. No problems at all with that
because this happens often with older games.
The employee gave me another disc that was less scratched but was better
than the one I originally had gotten. I
drove back home and placed it into my Gamecube and my Wii.
YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!!!!
Another trip back to Gamestop and this time they were
questioning my ability to use the Gamecube.
I explained how I had placed other Gamecube games in both systems and it
worked. They were convinced I knew what
was going on and thought I must just have bad luck. So the associate pulled out the other two
remaining discs. One of which was in
near perfect condition so he gave me that one and sent me on my way. I get back to my house and place it in my Gamecube
and Wii.
AAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Trip #4 to Gamestop. As soon as I walk in the door the guy and his manager both echoed the same response almost in unison. “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??” At this point the manager is falling over himself apologizing for wasting my time and gas with this ridiculous errand and gives me the last disc hoping that it will work. I’m sure you know the drill by now.
At this point I could only laugh. 2 hours wasted trying to get a store’s entire stock of Pikmin to work and not a single one did. When I showed back up the manager was furious! He assured me that he was going to have a staff meeting within the week to discuss methods of testing games to make sure they work after they are traded in, if not before they would even accept them for Gamecube games specifically. It was an absolute nightmare and I STILL don’t have Pikmin cause I’m not about to do this charade anymore.
#4
Ricco Harbor Red Coin Challenge
Oh Mario, why am I not surprised that your franchise has
appeared on here twice? Mario and I have
had a very rocky history together and that’s mostly due to the fact that most
Mario games hit that sweet spot in my gaming abilities between the crossroads
of amazing excellence and shoveling cow dung.
I love video games but I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m abysmal
at them, especially platforming games which are what the majority of Mario contains
(or used to). Super Mario 64 however
changed that outlook slightly. Now instead
of being terrible at jumping around 2 dimensional platforms, I can now also
make the Italian plumber die from 3 dimensions of me not being able to see or
estimate how far I should walk/jump.
3D Mario games however have also set a standard of
annoyance many other games can’t even fathom.
Particularly revolving around collecting coins, which was made worse
with Super Mario Galaxy, something that unfortunately won’t be making this list
despite the terror it holds on many gamers.
However I will be focusing on a completely different coin
challenge. The Red Coins in Super Mario
Sunshine.
Red Coin Challenges are pretty standard. You have to collect all of the red coins to
pass the level.
However the one in Ricco Harbor had me wanting to aid bowser in the destruction
of Mario permanently. There are red
coins all over the ocean and in order to reach them you have to climb on top of
a blooper and surf across the waves and then on into a cave within the
associated time limit. Now that doesn’t
sound too bad does it? It’s just a
squid-like creature so it shouldn’t be that difficult to navigate. Let’s hop on one and see.
HOLY CRAP!!! The second you jump on one of these they jettison into the water
almost faster than you can breathe! You
have to know exactly where each and every obstacle and red coin is and know the
EXACT way to get all of them in a perfect path.
If you miss a single one you will not have either the time or the
maneuverability to go back and get it.
If you miss one you might as well just restart the level cause you’re
going to fail anyway.
I tried this over and over and over again tossing my Gamecube controller to the ground several times in the process just out of sheer rage. Something this unforgiving might be acceptable toward the end of the game, but this is like World 2!!! Forget that crap!
I tried this over and over and over again tossing my Gamecube controller to the ground several times in the process just out of sheer rage. Something this unforgiving might be acceptable toward the end of the game, but this is like World 2!!! Forget that crap!
#3
Kingdom Hearts – Sephiroth Battle AND Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories – Marluxia Battle
Of course I had to include Kingdom Hearts in here
somewhere. I’m too much of a fanboy not
to. Kingdom Hearts is known to have some
pretty tough bosses, especially when it comes to the hidden or additional
bosses that are entirely optional.
However I couldn’t think of just one boss battle to put here so I had to
go with a tie between Sephiroth in the original and Marluxia from CoM. The reason for the tie is because of a very
different mentality between both of them.
Sephiroth was included in Kingdom Hearts as an optional final boss in Olympus Coliseum. After you have beaten all of the cups, two
new fights emerge; one against the Ice Titan, and one against Sephiroth. Now the Ice Titan, like the other two
optional bosses Kurt Zisa, and the Phantom, took me about thirty minutes to
finally whittle down and defeat with difficulty but it was able to be
done. So I decided to face off against
the villain from Final Fantasy VII himself, Sephiroth.
And two minutes later my derriere was on a golden platter thanks to him. I added cheat codes to increase my health, and give myself all megalixers to help combat him. Still somewhere around the 2 minute mark, I became minced burger meat at his hands. It was such a difficult task that I was instantly overwhelmed and couldn’t even get mad over it. You know how something happens, and you just have to sit down and go “WOAH… what the heck was that?” The battle against Sephiroth went kinda like that. Now you could fight him again in Kingdom Hearts II and he was dumbed down so that I could actually defeat him after only 8 tries, but at least it was doable. Now I realize he is SUPPOSED to be this hard and frustrating which is why I almost didn’t put him on here, but the more I thought about how it just left me almost breathless, the more I realized he is very deserving of this spot.
And two minutes later my derriere was on a golden platter thanks to him. I added cheat codes to increase my health, and give myself all megalixers to help combat him. Still somewhere around the 2 minute mark, I became minced burger meat at his hands. It was such a difficult task that I was instantly overwhelmed and couldn’t even get mad over it. You know how something happens, and you just have to sit down and go “WOAH… what the heck was that?” The battle against Sephiroth went kinda like that. Now you could fight him again in Kingdom Hearts II and he was dumbed down so that I could actually defeat him after only 8 tries, but at least it was doable. Now I realize he is SUPPOSED to be this hard and frustrating which is why I almost didn’t put him on here, but the more I thought about how it just left me almost breathless, the more I realized he is very deserving of this spot.
Now that may have you wondering why I put Marluxia on here on the same lines as
someone THAT powerful. Truth is that he
is nowhere near as strong as Sephiroth nor do I believe he was intended to be
this way. The problem with Marluxia is
that he too, is someone I could never beat however he is not optional. There is a second entire segment of the game
where you fight as Riku and escape the tower with Mickey Mouse that I have
NEVER had the pleasure of playing because I can’t beat Marluxia at all.
Why can’t I beat him? THOSE STUPID CARDS!!! I used cheat codes to give me all the best cards, and give myself invincibility in order to defeat him but because the coding is funky, cheat codes don’t work well with this and somehow I get healed every time which gets rid of my invincibility and he keeps blocking and outdoing my card combinations. I have tried this on both the GBA and the PS2 version innumerable times and I can’t do it at all. In fact, there are several other people I know who have been denied the joy of playing the second half of this game because they can’t beat Marluxia due to the cards and idiocy of the game as a whole, and when I can’t play an entire portion of one of my favorite game series, something is terribly wrong that leaves me incredibly angry!!
Why can’t I beat him? THOSE STUPID CARDS!!! I used cheat codes to give me all the best cards, and give myself invincibility in order to defeat him but because the coding is funky, cheat codes don’t work well with this and somehow I get healed every time which gets rid of my invincibility and he keeps blocking and outdoing my card combinations. I have tried this on both the GBA and the PS2 version innumerable times and I can’t do it at all. In fact, there are several other people I know who have been denied the joy of playing the second half of this game because they can’t beat Marluxia due to the cards and idiocy of the game as a whole, and when I can’t play an entire portion of one of my favorite game series, something is terribly wrong that leaves me incredibly angry!!
#2
Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi
Unlocking Kid Goku
It seems almost poetic that a video game based on an
anime where people do a lot of screaming and rage would be included so high on
a list that made me scream with rage.
Don’t get me wrong I am a fan of the DBZ series though not a diehard
fan. The Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi
series were quite fun because I do enjoy fighting games and this gave me a lot
of fun characters to play around with.
However it is in the pursuit of getting extra characters
that made me angrier than I had ever been at that point with video games. I read online that you had to finish a set of
challenges in order to unlock the last character I needed, Kid Goku. Well when it got to the last challenge, it
was my one guy with one life against 5 other guys. Needless to say they slaughtered me over and
over and over and over. I tried for
close to an hour to defeat them slowly getting angrier as I did until I just
snapped. I don’t really remember much
after that but when I finally came back to a calm state apparently I had
shredded the strategy guide into confetti with my bare hands. YIKES!!
Now this one is kind of short because even though I remember
the circumstances, and I remember the rage, I performed a Google search on
unlocking this character in all iterations of the Budokai games and I see no record
of what was told to me about unlocking Kid Goku. Meaning I probably tried something incredibly
difficult and shredded a perfectly good strategy guide for no reason at all…
wonderful!
And my Number One Most Personally Frustrating Moment in
Video Games is…
#1
Wifi (All of it)
Yeah Yeah I’m sure very few of you are surprised here if
you know anything about Smash Brothers. Now
as I said in the Mario Sunshine portion, I really do love video games, but I REALLY
suck at them, this is especially true for fighting games, and even more so
Super Smash Bros. Smash Bros is my
second or third favorite game series just due to the inventiveness and the
meshing of characters and franchises all in one place. It has something for everyone and I am very
passionate about it. That’s where the
problem comes in. I’m passionate about
something I’m not very good at. As you
know, the more passionate you are about something, the more emotional you will
be about it, and the angrier you will get when you fail. And I used to fail often at this game turning
me into a redneck version of that German kid screaming about Unreal Tournament.
First off I have to say that the connection issues are
more common than zubat in a cave. You
can spectate all day within seconds, but if you try to join a wifi battle, be
prepared to sit there for twenty minutes while it tries to find someone to pair
you up with then right as the battle starts it will disconnect you entirely so
you have to log back into wifi and attempt it all over again, hearing that same
music OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
I’m pretty sure Satan has this theme on repeat.
Not only that but the sheer unpredictability of those who
you will fight against. I’ve been in
battles where people are stomping all over me, I’ve been in battles where all
three people were teaming up against me, and I’ve been in battles where
everyone sits around for 2 minutes using taunts until the sudden death happens
in which case it’s a race to see who can survive the bombs the longest. I JUST WANT TO BASH SOMETHING IN THE FACE!!
Not all this ridiculousness.
But the really sad thing about this is that I am so
passionate about this game yet there are a metric buttload of people out there
much better at this game than I am. Let’s
pick someone at random shall we? How
about…Daman Mills.
Seems like an average enough kid right? Looks like he’s enjoying himself there,
normal kid, not into drugs or wild parties; he probably enjoys anime and just
hanging out with friends. But don’t let
that fool you! The second you put Smash
Bros Brawl in and hand him the controller, this normal kid turns into Jason
Freaking Voorhees. That’s right! Many a night he has spent taking Ganondorf,
one of the WORST characters in brawl, and murdering other people on wifi for
hours on end, thus killing the hopes and dreams of adults and children alike
with every warlock punch KO he can squeeze out of the machine. Who would have thought that a digital sadist
lurked beneath that bleached hair?
How do I know this?
Because I was once one of those poor unfortunate souls who ran across
him in his reign of terror. It was I who
attempted to fight the good fight, and it was I who lost more than pride. No literally… I broke a flipping computer
chair after a 45 minute session of him slaughtering me left and right.
When a game frustrates you so badly that you literally
break furniture not only is it beyond the limits of that which should be tolerated
but it’s also a pretty good sign that I need help (Thankfully I don’t break furniture
anymore, though with some games I probably wish I still did)
So there you have it.
That’s my Top 10 list of the most personally frustrating moments in
video games. As I said before this is
just my list of my personal frustrations and nightmares and I’m sure you have
your own. Please feel free to mention
some of your frustrations and irritations in the comment section on here or as
a comment on Facebook where I linked this.
This is Ghost, fading into the darkness.
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