Games that defeated you.

[The_Endless_Void]

-Banjo Kazooie

-Rusty Bucket Bay

-The Engine Room

-Falling to my death with 94/100 notes collected for that level

Let it be known, that engine room is the only place in the entire game where there exists a bottomless pit like that for you to fall into. Very soul-crushing indeed.

Rusty bucket bay was the bane of many childhoods. A game that had so far been the perfect difficulty level (challenging but not overly so) suddenly ramps everything up.
The only time ever died other than rusty bucket bay was the final boss, the boss second only to Banjo Tooie's final boss.

It was like climbing up a hill to find a wall near the top that said screw you. And then climbing over it to find a bigger hill.

 

[mirage202]

Gemini Wars.

Never before have I come across AI that cheats this much, this blatantly. Hell I'm not even sure it is AI, just scripts with cheat codes.

 

[soren7550]

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Fuck that final boss. Fuck that optional side boss that summons balls as well. I spent over an hour trying to beat the former and nothing. I spent two or so trying to beat the optional one, and nothing still. The game was largely fun up until that point, but fuck it up its ass. Spending that much time trying to beat a boss is ridiculous.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

Dark Souls i got to undead burg and that was pretty much it apart from a few attempts to beat the taurus demon.

 

[Scrubiii]

I wanna be the Boshy.

The psychopathic brother of I wanna be the guy. Seriously, some guy must have played I wanna be the guy and said "what is this pathetic, pansy-ass shit for limbless infants? I'm gonna make a real man's game!"

And so, an abomination was born.

 

[Polite Sage]

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are small time.

Pretty much every Ninja Gaiden on harder difficulties or their extra stages.
PC era Touhous on anything higher than normal and even then they're hard to 1cc.
X3 Terran Conflict's story campaigns and similarly Mount & Blade games on harder difficulties.
And every damn grand strategy produced by Paradox, starting with Hearts of Iron 3.

 

[00slash00]

psychonauts. that fucking meat circus level at the very end made me rage quit and never come back

 

[1000000]

La Mulana. Although I like to think of my having the good sense to give up after only 4 hours of frustration is more of a victory than a defeat. It could have been worse...

 

[Space Spoons]

Final Fantasy Tactics.

Solo Ramza Challenge.

You already know the battle I'm going to reference.

It wouldn't be so bad, if it were JUST Velius... But of course, he brings friends.

I'm not the type to give up easily, but this was just too much.

 

[Vigilante 989]

Jet Force Gemini

That last FUCKING ship piece will forever elude me.

 

[TheKruzdawg]

The first level of Halo 2 on legendary. I've beaten every other level, but the second boarding party is imposibly hard. A friend and I tried to tackle it together over LAN, and it still managed to beat us. It kind of killed the night for us - stressed us out and put us in a bad mood.

Oh my god this. THIS TIMES 1,000. A buddy and I spent at least 2 hours trying to beat that level on a single occasion and could never get past that 2nd boarding party either. And I think that's pretty much it for the level right? We even got down to 1 guy left but he killed us both with a lucky plasma grenade stick. Super depressing.

Pretty much all of the campaigns in Age of Empires 2 on any difficulty above Medium (which I think was the 2nd tier). I used to think I was pretty good, since I could defeat a team of 6 bots on hard by myself, but those campaigns (especially Frederick Barbarossa's campaign) kicked my ass. I never actually beat them without cheating.

 

[Iyon]

Dark Souls. Although it defeated me I wouldn't say it was because it was too hard, just so punishing. There was a time I could have toughed it out but with a full time job and not a whole lot of free time it just wasn't worth doing.

What really sealed the deal was when I decided to try the multiplayer and found most of my opponents using the following tactics:
1. Become invisible and untargetable
2. Use the area of effect attack to slow down my movement speed
3. Spew corrosive stuff all over me that I'm too slow to walk out of
4. Roll around in circles and laugh at me

Forcing me to counter with:
1. Turn into a pot

 

[MrGrey]

Only Dead Space 2 on Hardcore so far, just wasnt into playing like that at the time. Im planning to play it again in the near future though.

Another Dead Space 2 example here.

I did a second playthrough on the first game to get the "One gun" trophy (use only the plasma cutter the entire game). I had a surprisingly good time with it so when I got the second one I made my first playthrough a One Gun run on Zealot, the hard difficulty that's first accessible right under Hardcore. I did enjoy it but the last levels were so stupid pacing wise. I endure through a barrage of mooks in the final chapter before the big end game boss fight expecting to get this really awesome final battle. Then I find out the boss is... a giant barrage of mooks, with an extra target you have to shoot sometimes. And the whole thing has this disgusting brown filter over is like the paint filter on Photoshop. I don't know if it gets better after the minion barrage but it was so stupid and tiring to slug through all these ambushes and hallways only to have a brief cutscene before its just more minions rushing you. Needless to say my interest evaporated instantly and I have not touched it since. Congratulations Dead Space 2, you "won."

 

[The_Waspman]

Another Dead Space 2 example here.

I did a second playthrough on the first game to get the "One gun" trophy (use only the plasma cutter the entire game). I had a surprisingly good time with it so when I got the second one I made my first playthrough a One Gun run on Zealot, the hard difficulty that's first accessible right under Hardcore. I did enjoy it but the last levels were so stupid pacing wise. I endure through a barrage of mooks in the final chapter before the big end game boss fight expecting to get this really awesome final battle. Then I find out the boss is... a giant barrage of mooks, with an extra target you have to shoot sometimes. And the whole thing has this disgusting brown filter over is like the paint filter on Photoshop. I don't know if it gets better after the minion barrage but it was so stupid and tiring to slug through all these ambushes and hallways only to have a brief cutscene before its just more minions rushing you. Needless to say my interest evaporated instantly and I have not touched it since. Congratulations Dead Space 2, you "won."

Yeah, the ending of Dead Space 2 sucks so fucking hard. Not because its hard, but because as you say, its that fucking squiggly brown filter and the mooks swarming at you. Its just a horribly designed, rushed mess. Still, good to see all the time they wasted on the shit multiplayer didn't impact the single player too much, right?

/rant

Back On Topic...

The most recent game I can think of that defeated me was Bloodrayne Betrayal. 'Challenging side-scrolling hack and slash' I'd heard. 'I'm down with that.' Nice animated graphics too. Somehow managed to overcome the crazy controls enough to get to the final boss, only to get repeatedly owned by his hoardes of flunkies before I can even attempt to fight him. So many times I tried. So many times I failed. Then I found out he wasn't actually the final boss, there were still three chapters after that.

So congratulations Bloodrayne. I defeated Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Demon's Souls and I even endured grinding out the Plat for FF13. But you have beaten me.

*falls on own sword*

 

[SquidVicious]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I bought my copy on Steam, which apparently comes with a bug where during the battleship section where you're supposed to snipe the fishmen sorcerers with the main canon they turn invisible and your turret can't zoom in. That was the first time I gave up. Then I found a thread on the Steam forums this past December pointing out a mod to the game that allows you to skip that portion after three tidal waves passed, which I immediately downloaded and proceeded to play from the beginning to get back in the mood. After gutting Father Dagon and fighting my way through the underwater city to Mother Hydra, I got to the point where you're supposed to escape the city as it falls apart around you. No matter how times I've replayed it, as soon as I reach the wooden portcullis that Sebastian Marsh trapped you in earlier, I get flattened by the falling ceiling. I spent three straight hours trying to get past that point. I always avoided falling debris on the way, I took the shortest route from point A to B that shaved entire milliseconds and what do I get? Boom. Fall. Splat. This was literally the last minute of game play, and I couldn't get past it again because of buggy programming.

I'm glad I'm not alone in my defeat at this particular section. I must have spent at least 2 hours replaying that fucking section, learning every nuance, where every section of roof falls, all in order to make myself that much faster and met with splattery death. I eventually watched a Youtube video and saw that someone was able to get to the other side and complete the game, but I definitely felt cheated.

 

[Trololo Punk]

Super Meat Boy. But not cause of the crushing difficulty or the fact that I suck at hard games, no, no. It's the fact I was using a key board... Really. I promise.

Haha, I literally *just* beat the Dark World Final Boss with a keyboard. Stop complaining >

I bow to thee, master of thy keyboard.

(As a side note, it really was a combination of my non-existent skill and the cons of the keyboard that led to my downfall).

 

[vid87]

I tried Chaos mode in Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires for the first time the other day - they just make enemies harder to beat but allow them to kill you in 3 hits. I could probably beat it if I were really, really careful, but it's one of the first times for me as a gamer where I said, "It's not worth it: it's not fun."

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The Lion King for Sega Genesis. Took me 12 years to beat it. ˘_˘

fuck. that. game. and fuck alladin on genesis too. bane of my existence

agreed, it seems developers wanted to raise disney kids to be raging suicide depressed people when they grew up. fuck those games.

i'll add toy story on the original gameboy to these two games (it's fucking god awful annoying for a 6 year old, let me tell you)


otherwise can't think of too many off the top of my head...

 

[Mistilteinn]

I don't think any game has really 'defeated me' in the sense that I wasn't skilled enough to complete it--rather the game was just terribly broken in some way and I didn't want to be bothered with it. But there were definitely moments in games that I just said, "No. No way in hell."

Probably the biggest one for me is Yiazmat in FFXII. Now, I know he's not considered a 'hard' boss--more of an endurance challenge--but I don't want to spend upwards of ten hours farming three weapons and dozens of ridiculously rare materials from tedious enemies. Plus, I like to control one character at all times, so fighting a boss for four or five hours isn't all that appealing. Heck, I spent three hours straight fighting the Hell Wyrm with average gear at an average level, so I think I've earned my stripes well enough.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

When I was younger, I used to play this old FPS called Blood. I never completed it though. Not because it was too difficult mind you, oh no. Me in my young ways was utterly terrified by the severed hands that would chase you down and choked you to death. I could never progress much in that game because of those fuckers.