Most pointlessly frustrating gaming moments

[Bluebird55]

They mix it up a little more in the newer games, but the 'rule of three' tends to apply to most of what they do.

Cheers Flabyo, I thought I was going cheese-on crackers when I noticed that in LoZ games, it's as predictable as a 90's romance film, like Titanic except of course you get to kill the most irritating character in the game.

An exception of this rule is in Ocarina of Time, where I learnt that you simply CANNOT kill Ganon with the Giant's Knife, which sucks because the other bosses have skin like a piñata, with a deliciously healthy heart container inside, YUMMY .

Yes! Yippee! I remembered a frustratingly pointle- pointlessly frustrating moment! Super Ghouls and Ghosts! Where

Spoiler: show

you go through the entire game to save the princess of wherever you are by jumping around like an old man in flea infested flannel pyjamas, only to start ALL OVER AGAIN with a delightful ( ) little firelighter to kill the last bloody boss with, who is an absolute arsehole to kill by the way - oh, if you die during said firelighter relay, you have to start all over again

Keep 'em rolling, guys!

[kintaris]

Unless I'm being blind, we've yet to mention unnecessary "arcade" (or otherwise genre-flipping) moments in point and click adventure games. Space Quest I being a particular culprit with the vehicle section, and many moons later Escape from Monkey Island's lava log flume bit. And the Monkey Combat bit. And the ball puzzle bit. In fact, all the bits.

Throughout adventure gaming's turbulent history there's been this anxiety about appealing to gamers outside of the niche, and it's always led to these horrendous and broken sequences that are definitely pointless and frustrating. I'm sure I'll remember more shortly.

How about Ubisoft's penchant for excpetionally pointless and frustrating mini games in their open world titles? Special mention to the drinking game in Watch Dogs and the boules-esque game on the Homestead in ACIII.

Oh lord, now I've just remembered the social activities in Grand Theft Auto IV...

Wow, this thread has made me pointlessly frustrated just thinking about the subject.

[ThirdDrawing]

The platforming in Xenogears. (Particularly the tower)

From the mind of pure evil I tell you!

[Flabyo]

The platforming in Xenogears. (Particularly the tower)

I adore that game, one of the few plots to really get under my skin.

But yes. You're right. The forced platforming bits are the absolute worst.

(Most horrid thing is that if it decides to kick in a random battle while you're doing a jump the controls lock for about half a second before the battle starts, which is often enough to make you mess up the jump).

[hazeredmist]

A boss where I've worked out what to do, but must then repeat that for 20 minutes to beat it is not to me good game design. But then I'm very much in the 'not really liking Dark Souls at all' camp so...

This.

To add an example, the bosses in Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze are really frustrating to me, but that could be just because I'm shit.

[KSubzero1000]

How do you guys feel about traditional JRPG bosses, then? Most of them definitely fall under Flabyo's description and can go on and on while the player is more or less forced to repeat the exact same attack pattern.

[Michiel K]

How do you guys feel about traditional JRPG bosses, then? Most of them definitely fall under Flabyo's description and can go on and on while the player is more or less forced to repeat the exact same attack pattern.

HATE IT.

That said, there has to be a balance in between long drawn out boss fights in which you repeat the same tactics over and over again and the frankly rather predictable and overly cliche'd 'rule of 3' (and I say that as a massive Zelda fan).

Bosses by Treasure and PlatinumGames are in many cases master classes of exciting, ever evolving and skill testing climactic confrontations, though I imagine that their style of boss design would not work for every genre of video game.

[kintaris]

I think one of the reasons boss fights in general often land in the "pointlessly frustrating" bracket is because, to be a boss fight, it needs to feel different. At the same time, to be an appropriate fight it needs to continue to require the player to use the gameplay they have learned thus far - so it has to be somewhat familiar. The lowest common denominator to balance those two things is to make the bad guy bigger and the fight longer.

I think the Rule of 3 ends up an easy way out of the conundrum too. You can invent quite a tricky and unfamiliar boss, but if you obey the Rule of 3 players can still quickly settle into the rhythm and the pattern subconsciously.

I think it's hard for designers to break that mold because there's a fear of upsetting that balance. Either the boss ends up feeling like just another enemy, or its so different from everything before that the player feels blindsided, having to learn something new right at the finish.

Plus there's the old enemy, development time and budget. The boss is often the thing to suffer most when those are stretched.

[Flabyo]

The bosses in Breath of the Wild follow a pattern that isn't the rule of three, but is actually quite an interesting spin on it. Nintendo are defiintely evolving their approach. Spoiler time!

Spoiler: show

So at the end of each great beast you have to fight a boss. The battle is always split into two phases.

In the first you're simply fighting it conventionally, blocking or avoiding its attacks, then hitting back with sword of bow. There's an element of learning the pattern etc.. as normal. When you get it to half health though it changes to a new phase.

The second phase requires you to essentially solve a puzzle involving Link's rune abilities in order to either break through a defence or expose a weak point. These fall more into the 'puzzle boss' style of play or a game like Shadow of the Colossus. Where these tend to frustrate players is they often forget that their rune abilities are useful in combat (well, Apart from the bomb, everyone realises that's useful).

Jrpg bosses are indeed pretty poor design in the modern era. But then I think a lot of the design in that genre has stagnated hideously in recent years (outside of maybe ff12).

[KSubzero1000]

I think it's hard for designers to break that mold because there's a fear of upsetting that balance. Either the boss ends up feeling like just another enemy, or its so different from everything before that the player feels blindsided, having to learn something new right at the finish.

I don't know about that. Most non-Nintendo games with great boss fights that I can think of like RE4, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Souls series, PlatinumGames stuff, manage to have challenging bosses that feel very different than normal enemies without relying on gimmicks like the Rule of 3. If anything, that rule seems to be more of a Nintendo trademark as opposed to an industry standard.

[Alex79]

Had a really irritating 15 minutes on GTA5 last night. Playing as Trevor, one of the strangers and freaks missions sees you teaming up with some border control guys and you have to chase down a car load of mariachi's.

It's only a 2/3 minute car chase, then they all jump out the car and you have to zap them with the stun gun. Except the first time I ran them over by accident. Failed. Second time I pulled the wrong gun somehow and shot and killed them. Failed. The third time they inexplicably ran in front of another truck and died. Failed. The fourth time I tried slowing the car by shooting out the tyres and accidentally killed them. Failed. Finally managed it on the fifth attempt! It wasn't even a hard mission, but you had to do the whole chase again every time you fail.

It was a massive pain in the arse!!

[kintaris]

I think it's hard for designers to break that mold because there's a fear of upsetting that balance. Either the boss ends up feeling like just another enemy, or its so different from everything before that the player feels blindsided, having to learn something new right at the finish.

I don't know about that. Most non-Nintendo games with great boss fights that I can think of like RE4, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Souls series, PlatinumGames stuff, manage to have challenging bosses that feel very different than normal enemies without relying on gimmicks like the Rule of 3. If anything, that rule seems to be more of a Nintendo trademark as opposed to an industry standard.

I should have qualified - "some" designers

But yes, fair point for all of those examples above. I'm thinking more of those action-adventure titles that aren't really sure how to wrap up without bunging a boss battle in at the end (which is a huge part of the problem in the first place). That tends to be where bosses get pointlessly frustrating for me personally, and I think it's because there's very little room for creativity when the combat is less well developed. This is by no means an excuse, it's just how I think things might be going down behind the scenes.

Had a really irritating 15 minutes on GTA5 last night. Playing as Trevor, one of the strangers and freaks missions sees you teaming up with some border control guys and you have to chase down a car load of mariachi's.

It's only a 2/3 minute car chase, then they all jump out the car and you have to zap them with the stun gun. Except the first time I ran them over by accident. Failed. Second time I pulled the wrong gun somehow and shot and killed them. Failed. The third time they inexplicably ran in front of another truck and died. Failed. The fourth time I tried slowing the car by shooting out the tyres and accidentally killed them. Failed. Finally managed it on the fifth attempt! It wasn't even a hard mission, but you had to do the whole chase again every time you fail.

It was a massive pain in the arse!!

It's telling that I remember that exact same frustration well, despite the fact that I last played that mission several years ago! A fair few missions frustrated me actually. I can't tell if the mission design is getting more frustrating as the series continues or if I'm just losing patience as I get older!

[Flabyo]

For me GTA4 and 5 don't get even close to as frustrating as some of the stuff in Vice City and San Andreas did. I vaguely remember wanting to smash my controller trying to plant bombs using a remote control helicopter in one of them...

[kintaris]

For me GTA4 and 5 don't get even close to as frustrating as some of the stuff in Vice City and San Andreas did. I vaguely remember wanting to smash my controller trying to plant bombs using a remote control helicopter in one of them...

Ah, true. It doesn't get much more frustrating and pointless than a vehicle sequence with a time limit and a dodgy camera!

[Joshihatsumitsu]

For me GTA4 and 5 don't get even close to as frustrating as some of the stuff in Vice City and San Andreas did. I vaguely remember wanting to smash my controller trying to plant bombs using a remote control helicopter in one of them...

Ah, true. It doesn't get much more frustrating and pointless than a vehicle sequence with a time limit and a dodgy camera!

The frustrating thing to me about every GTA entry is that you are presented with an open world, and the freedom to approach things in different ways is encouraged, and yet there are missions that rub up against that alleged freedom.

There's a mission in IV (that surprisingly isn't Three Leaf Clover) towards the end of the game that involves a car chase. After trying and failing a few times, it became apparent to me, eventually, that I was approaching it wrong. Even if you choose the fastest car in the game, there's no way you can catch them (as there's some major rubber-banding going on there). You just have to get to the next checkpoint, to trigger the next part of the mission.

Some of that frustration is due to my expectations, in that open-world games imply "openness" and freedom. So I'm willing to accept that some of that is due to my own assumptions. But yeah, it's a problem of wanting to present a narrative or a set piece in an open world game, and GTA isn't alone in that design problem.

[ThirdDrawing]

How do you guys feel about traditional JRPG bosses, then? Most of them definitely fall under Flabyo's description and can go on and on while the player is more or less forced to repeat the exact same attack pattern.

Yes and no. I think it depends on the game.

I play a lot of JRPGs, and there's not a lot of bosses that I would call "frustrating" in the way that way this topic is about.

(Though Etrian Odyssey and Shin Megami Tensei bosses can be! Matador in Nocturne/Lucifer's Call, for example)

[Alex79]

For me GTA4 and 5 don't get even close to as frustrating as some of the stuff in Vice City and San Andreas did. I vaguely remember wanting to smash my controller trying to plant bombs using a remote control helicopter in one of them...

Yeah plus the checkpointing is at least far better now. I mean it was non-existent before wasn't it. Having said that I did love the RC copter missions, that one where you're flying round the building site. Flying has always been my favourite part of those games. I wish they'd remake VC in the 5 engine.

[Alex79]

How do you guys feel about traditional JRPG bosses, then? Most of them definitely fall under Flabyo's description and can go on and on while the player is more or less forced to repeat the exact same attack pattern.

Yes and no. I think it depends on the game.

I play a lot of JRPGs, and there's not a lot of bosses that I would call "frustrating" in the way that way this topic is about.

(Though Etrian Odyssey and Shin Megami Tensei bosses can be! Matador in Nocturne/Lucifer's Call, for example)

I always think of JRPG bosses as puzzles as they're very unlikely to be brute forced to victory. It's generally a case of finding the order of moves you need to make and repeating until you win. As such they can be quite boring if they have huge HP, I found the P4G ones particularly annoying.

[Bluebird55]

Oh bollocks, I just remembered a brain burner!!

Pokemon Sun/Moon, I swear, they made a complete flop of that bloody game. In case you haven't played it, for the love of oxygen DON'T!! You will spend AT LEAST 30 minutes going through endless dialogue, only to beat a few pokemon and trainers and yet again another bloody half hour of talking, in the first hour of playing Sun, I almost quit.

If I wanted to put up with endless dialogue and a bit of arsekicking, I would have watched The Jeremy Kyle Show. Actually, that's not fair because at least on there they make progress.

[Jobobonobo]

For me GTA4 and 5 don't get even close to as frustrating as some of the stuff in Vice City and San Andreas did. I vaguely remember wanting to smash my controller trying to plant bombs using a remote control helicopter in one of them...

HATE HATE HATE those missions with a burning passion. I remember playing Vice City and did every other mission and THIS was the one I needed to complete in order to progress through the story. Never bothered to pick it up again. Outright ruined the game for me.

I'm thinking more of those action-adventure titles that aren't really sure how to wrap up without bunging a boss battle in at the end (which is a huge part of the problem in the first place).

One of the things I really appreciated about Tearaway is that it did not bother with boss battles at all. The final stretch of the game is to reach the final destination to deliver your message which gels with the story much better. Sometimes boss battles really do not add anything to a game and I wish more developers would do away with them altogether if they do not go well with either the gameplay or story.