Alright (insert game here), how the FUCK was I supposed to know that?!

[Iwata]

I think your Sonic 3 example is a good one. And no, you're not the only one who got held up at that point. Me, and all my friends, always had trouble with it too.

Well, I could spout the names of several different adventure games and call it a day (Riven, in particular, jumps out at me), but I've got another good one.

In one of the X-Men games for the Genesis (I forget exactly which one it is at the moment), when you get to the end of the game, you basically reach a dead end, with no way to proceed. The solution? Hit the reset button on your console. THAT will take you to the final screen.

What in the flying name of FUCK would lead you be believe that would work?

I came here to say just that. It's in Mojo's world, and I was palying co-op with a friend, right at the end of the game. As you can imagine, we were kinda reluctant to press the reset button, but we eventually sucked it up, and hey, it worked!

 

[Vrach]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution might've had a moment like that, though I'm not sure, maybe I just missed that bit in the tutorial (I'll be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to it, though I did look at "Help" later a few times). It took me about 3/4 of the game through to realise that, in the hacking minigame, if you captured the origin points of the tracer (the red stacks), you pretty much "win" it and the game gives you both the access and everything you could've picked up from it (data packets).

It's not really a big deal, especially as you can't do it all the time (they'll often have only a one-way connection to the tracer so you can't capture it), but when I realised it and it was available, it made my hacking that much easier and faster.

captcha: Skid row - *chuckle*

 

[Trivun]

Final Fantasy XII. Zodiac Spear. how get?

Literally every Final Fantasy game, and by extension most JRPGs I've played too. Take FFX, for instance. No clue as to where the Dark Aeons are later in the game - one renders Besaid Village completely blocked without fighting a Dark Aeon, which I didn't realise until I stumbled into its summoner upon entering the village to see how things were back on the island. There's also no clue as to where the extra Aeons are, save for Yojimbo, which you can only get after doing a completely optional dungeon anyway near the Calm Lands. The main temples - part of the damn story - have puzzles that offer no clue on how to solve them, and have rather obscure answers. I could go on...

 

[Auron225]

My example made me feel stupid since all my friends assumed the right answer immediately and I'll never know why.

FFX - Djose Temple
When solving the Cloister of Trails, you usually need to push these small pillars around the place. In these particular ones, you need to push one (with a sphere in it already) into what seems like a bottomless pit that has an electric field over it, and it will float there (for who knows what reason) allowing you to jump across. NOTHING hinted I was meant to do that, I was stuck on it for days!! Why on earth would I send what I know to be a valuable thing into a huge pit!?

 

[RustlessPotato]

Ha yes, I remember the MGS ones where you had to plug in your controller in the player 2 slot for that psychic bossfights. That was one great game.

I miss those kind of little things in the current gen. I'm not saying old games were better, just less obvious .

But they told you to do that. How is that less obvious?

BECAUSE YOU F*** AND **** WITH A**** !!!

Wait this isn't youtube .

Haha, you're right, I completely forgot they told you that ^^. My bad, i didn't think it through.

 

[Theminimanx]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt

Do I win? I totally win, right?

 

[Ultress]

Tales of games are horrible about this with quest starts/cutoffs, basically there is no indication when a quest starts and when you can't arbitrarily do it anymore.Hell one quest in Abyss starts in one town and the moment you try to advance the plot in said town, the quest is cut off.Again with no hint what so ever.

EDIT:Forgot about getting Reiji in Persona 1,there are small hints on how to get him but the game one never tells you you can only have one person join you as the fifth party member. So say you let brown join up at the police station, Reiji's lost forever.Two he's in places you would never go to till it's to late and he's lost forever. Finally for some reason if you talk to his mother twice he is you guessed it lost forever.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

any game that has a section that MAKES you die no matter what to proceed, i quicksave/load like crazy in these games getting frustrated to death, then after 20+ tries I finally say "fuck it, Go ahead game, tell me game over" and the screen changes to me being locked in a cell or something.

Fuck you games, at least give some kind of damn hint. (not to mention, when i nearly WIN the battle I am in, there is a problem, if you want me to die so badly, don't make it an even slightly winnable scenario)

This and to add of course during the fight you use every potion, hi-potion. ether, and phoenix down in your inventory and exhaust all of your magic points as well thinking you are just not doing it right.

Very true, I forgot about that..the one that comes to mind is from dragon age

Spoiler: if you have not played or don't want a tiny bit spoiled

That part where you go to save the queen, and right when you are about to leave with her you get stopped by Ser Cauthrien (loghain's second ***** in command) and her limitless supply of arrowed henchman, Good God almighty I have no idea why, but I hated this stubborn ignorant *****, so I refused to be beaten by her (yet taking 3 steps into the room you and your party get obliterated by arrows) so I tried luring her back into the hallway with the jail door that anora was in, yet I would still end up getting pummeled by arrows...So I finally accepted defeat, and the cutscene switched

...Yes, later on I realized that you CAN win that part, but holy hell, that fight was harder than 2 archdemons combined..stubborn *****.

 

[Jak23]

I say "for the most part" because I've noticed a few points in games where a bit of guidance certainly wouldn't hurt. Here's an example, reaching back to a classic: Sonic 3

Carnival Night Act 2. Towards the end of the stage (I'd roughly guess about 2/3rds of the way through it) you run into a small chamber and get locked inside. There's a big red spinning cylinder that goes up and down when you jump on it and it's plugging the shaft that you need to fall through to proceed through the level. Now, if you time your jumps right, you can use the thing as a launcher for a really big jump, or if you time it right you can knock it further and further down the shaft. Common sense would lead you to believe that you have to time your jumps perfectly in order to push the cylinder down far enough that you can jump off it and proceed...problem is, it's impossible to get the cylinder down far enough. Were it not for having a turbo controller and the bubble shield, I would never have beaten Sonic 3 as a kid. What I did was use the turbo controller to turbo-bubble bounce and glitch my way through the cylinder. This had a 50-50 shot of working, as it'd either pop you out underneath the cylinder or spit you into an inaccessible/inescapable room within the wall of the stage.

It wasn't until YEARS later when I picked up a collection of Sonic games (Sonic 1 through Sonic and Knuckles) for my computer that I decided "Screw this, there HAS to be a way to get past this part without glitching." So I check gamefaqs and it says quite simply "Get on the cylinder and start pressing up and down until it moves enough that you can jump off it." Indeed, it turns out the cylinder can be quite easily controlled by simply jumping on it and pressing up and down at the right time to send it flying up and down, making getting past that part easy as hell.

Now, it's quite possible that I'm fucking retarded in this case for not knowing that, but there certainly wasn't any indication that those cylinders could be moved in any way other than jumping on them.

It wasn't until 10 YEARS later that I figured this out! Glad to no I wasn't the only one.

 

[silver wolf009]

Trying to figure out the Regi puzzle in Pokemon R/S/E.

No one could. No one. Barring looking it up, I would safely bet the my bottom dollar on there not being a SINGLE person who did it on their own, no cheats, no outside help.

Simply impossible.

OT: Halo CE. A lot of times. Those maps, they confused me, most notably the Library.

 

[Muspelheim]

I'm pretty sure the fact that you can't remove them is mentioned in the description for them when you research them, although admittedly this is useless if you start as Prussia, who already have them researched.

It did, I think, but I, like an idiot, forgot that. :< I'd heard of plug bayonets in real life, but I thought you could just yank them back out once you're done spearing things and assumed it worked the same here.

The battle after that was when the dear old advisor thought it fit to mention. It's mostly my fault, but it didn't specify in the tooltip that it was permanent for the rest of the battle.

found that one out the hard way too . WHY CANT THEY SHOOT !!! someones bight idea as a way to get rid of pikemen as a musket makes a really bad hand to hand club. but yeah why cant they remove plug bayonet?

"Ah, bollocks, we forgot our only pair of plyers back in Stockholm... Right, soldiers. We're pikemen now."

Plug bayonets can be rather useful when you're being ponyrushed and the pikemen are all over the ridge molesting peasants, but it'd be even better if they'd be able to return to their regular shooting-duties.

Also related to Empire; it took me a few times until I learned to not throw my general into the thick of things. And a few more practice runs until I learned how to avoid tearing my own men apart with my own canister shots...

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Final Fantasy XII. Zodiac Spear. how get?

Literally every Final Fantasy game, and by extension most JRPGs I've played too. Take FFX, for instance. No clue as to where the Dark Aeons are later in the game - one renders Besaid Village completely blocked without fighting a Dark Aeon, which I didn't realise until I stumbled into its summoner upon entering the village to see how things were back on the island. There's also no clue as to where the extra Aeons are, save for Yojimbo, which you can only get after doing a completely optional dungeon anyway near the Calm Lands. The main temples - part of the damn story - have puzzles that offer no clue on how to solve them, and have rather obscure answers. I could go on...

Except that the Zodiac Spear is infinitely more of a Guide Dang It than all of those.

 

[Sandytimeman]

Phantom Hourglass. At some point in the Temple of the Ocean King, you come across one of the four maps you need to proceed in the game. Thing is, the map's mounted on the wall, upside down and mirrored. I tried everything to get it; frantically tapping it all over with the stylus, tapping every button combination, using all my items on the map. Nothing worked.

It wasn't until I'd shut my DS in exasperation to put it into sleep mode and gone and done something else that I solved the puzzle. Yes, that's right; you had to 'stamp' the map onto your own map by closing and opening the DS. What.

I was similar on this one, I traveled to every island to double check I hadn't missed anything is the one thing that hurt me. I wasted almost 2 days on that puzzle until I chucked my DS into my clothes hamper in frustration that the puzzle was solved!

 

[Schadrach]

I think your Sonic 3 example is a good one. And no, you're not the only one who got held up at that point. Me, and all my friends, always had trouble with it too.

Well, I could spout the names of several different adventure games and call it a day (Riven, in particular, jumps out at me), but I've got another good one.

In one of the X-Men games for the Genesis (I forget exactly which one it is at the moment), when you get to the end of the game, you basically reach a dead end, with no way to proceed. The solution? Hit the reset button on your console. THAT will take you to the final screen.

What in the flying name of FUCK would lead you be believe that would work?

that one reminds of one from Metal Gear Solid...specifically when you're fighting the psychic guy that cheats by knowing every button you press and reacts accordingly, making him invincible.......unless you plug your controller into the player 2 slot.

Now I've never played MGS (I played MGS 2, but by all accounts that's one that is best left forgotten ) so I don't know if there's any hints or tips that you have to plug your controller into the 2nd player slot. But if there isn't, I can't imagine how the hell you're supposed to think to do that.

The bad part was that I was good enough at MGS that he couldn't kill me and we tangled for a good 45 minutes of me trying everything I could think of to trick the AI. Blew all my ammo. Then punched him to death. He wasn't *always* fast enough to dodge punches, I literally beat him to death bare handed and out of ammo.

 

[shrekfan246]

Pokemon being so tight-lipped about what natures do as well as EVs and IVs. Not to mention how certain pokemon such as Miltoic/Regis were incredibly hard to get unless you looked it up on the net.

Yeah, getting Feebas in the first place is a *****. Low encounter rate, and only in six randomly generated squares in a tiny pond in one area of the entire region. Ugh. But I love Milotic so much.

Carnival Night Act 2.

I was stuck on that cylinder for the longest time. Only thing in any Sonic game that ever flat-out stumped me, because jumping repeatedly just never dropped it far enough. Then I looked it up, tried out the Up+Down thing and was like "... SERIOUSLY? APSOIJHGQIOENGFOFQWIR."

And Metal Gear Solid had plenty of awesome moments like that. The boss fight it's hinted that you'll need to do something, because all of his cutscenes relate to stuff like reading your memory card for saves of other games like Castlevania and the Colonel really likes to break the fourth wall if you call enough times, but it also has stuff like needing to find a person's codec number by reading the manual, which you only find out by using the Codec to call the Colonel, and little things like how cigarettes will show you infrared lights, or how you can completely miss the tranquilizer pistol near the start of the game if you don't pay close enough attention, and you'll need to backtrack once or twice to get a sniper rifle or something if you don't pay attention... Ah, I love MGS.

 

[repeating integers]

Trying to figure out the Regi puzzle in Pokemon R/S/E.

No one could. No one. Barring looking it up, I would safely bet the my bottom dollar on there not being a SINGLE person who did it on their own, no cheats, no outside help.

Simply impossible.

OT: Halo CE. A lot of times. Those maps, they confused me, most notably the Library.

God, The Library... great game, but fuck that level. The very beginning of that level is the most confusing and frustrating part of the entire series.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution...I would place a confident bet that 99% or more players who played it all made the same mistake, namely:

Spoiler

After the tutorial level, Adam returns to Sarif HQ for his first day back to work. This is the first time the player has the opportunity to explore, hack office doors and the rest. However, drag Adam's heels too long and hostages held in the warehouse, which Adam is brought in to liberate from anti-aug "terrorists", are killed.

Listening carefully, there are hints but certainly not enough to spell out the consequences of hacking into every office, reading every magazine and stealing every candy bar from every desk drawer.

I certainly made this mistake first time thru and I bet everyone else did too. The game simply didn't tell us what the result of our actions at the stage would be. And the thing is I wouldn't want to change it. I love that a game didn't bash me over the head and wish more games would do the same and a) let me make mistakes b) let me learn things for myself and c) let me be smugly satisfied when I was quick enough second time around ;-) Mahatma Ghandi I am indeed!

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

In Castlevania Lords of Shadow, the music box puzzle, the last round of the puzzle you had to go through. There was a right path and a left path. It didn't tell which one lead to the rose, but another led to a health upgrade. It took me fifteen tries and It turns out I was going the wrong path which the game NEVER TOLD ME.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution...I would place a confident bet that 99% or more players who played it all made the same mistake, namely:

Spoiler

After the tutorial level, Adam returns to Sarif HQ for his first day back to work. This is the first time the player has the opportunity to explore, hack office doors and the rest. However, drag Adam's heels too long and hostages held in the warehouse, which Adam is brought in to liberate from anti-aug "terrorists", are killed.

Listening carefully, there are hints but certainly not enough to spell out the consequences of hacking into every office, reading every magazine and stealing every candy bar from every desk drawer.

I certainly made this mistake first time thru and I bet everyone else did too. The game simply didn't tell us what the result of our actions at the stage would be. And the thing is I wouldn't want to change it. I love that a game didn't bash me over the head and wish more games would do the same and a) let me make mistakes b) let me learn things for myself and c) let me be smugly satisfied when I was quick enough second time around ;-) Mahatma Ghandi I am indeed!

Strangely enough that never happened to me. I went around the office for a good two hours clicking on random shit and never once did I get a second call to go there. I went, saved the hostages, and everything was ok.

Well, one died, but that's another story.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Any moment in the Ace Attorney games when Phoenix goes "I have a plan!"

The trick is to usually present the newest evidence you've recieved.

Not that those moments are bad, I just can't deal with Phoenix actually having a plan for once rather than just pulling some genius luck out of the bag XD

Though the footprint/snowmobile bits in the final case in the third game always gets me completely stuck no matter how many times I go through it.

Maybe the bit in Persona 4 where the game just sits you down with a list of names (every person you've ever met is on the list btw) and says "pick the killer kthx!"

Not as hard as it looks surprisingly

Fucking genius in context though, scrambling about in the dark with zero clue wtf you're really looking for and simply reaching out to the truth is the theme of the entire game from second one.

Theming. Intro stage. FUCK.