Have you ever gotten a game into an unwinnable/unfinishable state?

[CleverCover]

Are you sure you were a full vampire at that point? there's a few days between getting the disease and actually becoming a vampire. And in those few days, you can easily cure the disease with a cure disease pot/spell/chapel.

Being outside running across the forest during the day killed me faster than having my character mauled by a bear, so I'm guessing I was a vampire. And that still doesn't help my poor little brother. I think the game disc is either defective or hates us both.

Well, I doubt it would work at all if the disc itself was bad... have you patched the game at all? It was pretty damn buggy on release.

Patched it as many times up until late 2007 that Bethesda sent one through Xbox Live. Brother tried again until two weeks ago. I'm going to chalk it up to "You gotta play it on the PC, dudeeee" and never touch another Elder Scrolls game ever again, or play it on a console. Whichever comes first.

 

[zombiestrangler]

Was playing Metro 2033 on Ranger Hardcore and going the sneaky route on the level where the Nazis and Reds were fighting.
As I was coming up a flight of steps to the main tunnel, the game saved with me right next to a patch of broken glass and a group of nazis walking past the doorway, so every time the file would load, I'd step on the glass and alert the Nazis and get shot all to hell.
I had to restart three fucking times because of how that autosave was placed.

 

[TheDarkKing]

Yeah... after grinding all of my skills for an hour in Oblivion, I leveled up to around level 12...
and suddenly I couldn't kill anything before it killed me.

That, and also I couldn't get the real ending for Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within because there was a life upgrade which you can't get again after you've finished the game, and I didn't want to replay the game, so I watched the ending on youtube. Also, I almost got stuck a load of times in half life because of awkward auto save timing. Mostly it was just because I had low health and/or very little ammo (mostly at the start of the game), but one time, I jumped off the cart and landed on the electrical tracks (taking damage), and the game auto saved just as I jumped. It took me like 1 hour to get past the level (due to heavy damage from the rails, and I didn't have very much health in the first place).

Edit: Also, I can't seem to get Prince Of Persia 2008 to work since it crashes on the first cut scene (where Elika's dad cuts down the tree) every single time. I don't know if its my computer or the game, so I'm not sure it counts.

No, you can get the life upgrade... you just need the sword that breaks through walls... and then you have to do A LOT of backtracking. No less stupid though.

Actually, there's this one life upgrade which if you go back to, gets you stuck in a place where you can't leave, I tried to get back to the throne room for two hours, then I checked a walkthrough and found out that you couldn't get it after you pass the area...

 

[demalo]

On topic: I've done so once in Dead Space. I ran out of ammo, didn't have any money, and my health was depleting rapidly. I still managed to finish it, but let me tell you, going melee-only/run-for-your-life in that game isn't fun xD.

yeah, this... This happened to me when I was getting the chip from the captain from sick bay. Fighting black necros and no weapons is not fun. I learned out to kill things with telekinesis really well in that room. Chairs worked the best until I could get some limbs. I also had to drag all the bodies to me first and sever their heads so they couldn't be converted by the changer.

 

[Nanaki316]

Yeah, Final Fantasy VIII. Ended up in some sort of tower chasing after damsel in distress, unbeknownst to me, once past a certain point in the tower, you can't go back and at the end is a massive boss fight that involves the boss having partially absorbed afor mentioned damsel in distress and keeps draining her for health and if you do area of effect attacks you'll hit her as well, which happened to also be the basis of my play strategy so my regular attacks were piss weak. Oh did I mention this boss liked to spam really powerful attack spells that did massive damage to my entire party? No? Well it does that too. So yeah, I can't get out of this tower, the last save point used was beyond the point of no return, so I can't leave to seek better weapons or anything, and I have no earlier save to go back to. So I finally got fed up with it and said "fuck this!"

You have my sympathy. Exactly the same thing happened to me. I put the game down, not for a month but permanently. I even have to admit to buying and completing FFIX before I eventually went back to VIII. I hated that bit, it's probably what stops me replaying it.

 

[Nanaki316]

Sorry double post!

 

[Christars]

During the tutorial level of Deus Ex (the original), you are supposed to practice with the sniper rifle. I accidentally hit my keyboard, resulting in the character throwing the sniper rifle into the firing range.

Which you can't access.

I snapped. Kinda feel like that glitch cost me a good game, but that tutorial is too long to bother doing again.

 

[Apollo45]

Many times, but the one I remember is in the Ocarina of Time Water Temple there was a box that if moved accidentally could block your path off and you'd have no way of finishing it. Considering that it had saved over my save space by the time I found out it was irritating. Then my sister did it on her run, and I did it again years later.

Did the same damn thing. That was my second attempt at the level though; the first one I used up a silver key in the wrong spot, which prevented me from getting in to another room to find the other keys I needed, and ended up screwing up my entire game. Had to restart from the beginning twice because of that particular combination of errors.

 

[ANImaniac89]

My first Fallout New Vegas file, but that was more because of glitches.
My first copy of Pokemon Red, because of Gameshark related Hyjinx (damn that truck)
3D Dot Game Heroes, Just stuck nothing more.

 

[Halceon]

Oh yeah, constantly. Is that supposed to be something unusual? Well, ok, I'm considerably biased, because my gaming mainstay is strategy games, wherein usually you can see that the game will drag on for another 100 turns and then you'll be conquered.

 

[JamesStone]

In the end of Fallout New Vegas. I kicked legion´s ass for NCR, and then General Oliver came to thank me. Or so I thought. The guy jumped until the sky, and then came that stupid bug that projected him like a gauss rifle critical strike. No way to get out of the Legate´s camp, no way to finish the damn game. Banged my head against a wall for a few seconds then reloaded.

Damn bugs.

 

[Mark Chipperfield]

I ruined the saboteur on one mission where i had to assassinate some guy for this chinese dude,I failed the first try then when i came back to try again, he was not there. Maybe he got the hint he was being targetted and ran away.

 

[Slash Dementia]

In Morrowind, I killed someone that was important to the main quest (I don't remember who), and then accidentally saved instead of loaded. The reason I killed the person was because I wanted the clothes he had for my character. Later in the game, I found that clothes at a store.

Also, in Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, the autosave system got me into a room where I have one health block, and there's a mech and two guards. Every time I open the door, they see me and fire. There's no where to backtrack either.

 

[dimensional]

Moonstone on the Amiga 500, my game had a bug so it would crash if I fought the dragon (Basicly you had to compete with 3 other knights to get the 2 halves of the Moonstone, take both halves to the summit and beat the boss) the dragon had one half of the stone.

Of course I could let one of the other knights beat it and then steal the stone off them, but I had pounded them so hard that the dragon would just steamroll them.

/CAPTCHA: erianag believe!

Ah moonstone yeah I remember that great game except being buggy as hell I had a similar problem it would occasionally crash on the dragon but if not you could rely on it to crash on the final boss still have never finished it because of this.

Others would be prince of persia sands of time it was in the hall of light I believe and I must have moved the blocks in the wrong order because Farah would refuse to crawl through a gap and pull the lever her side making the puzzle unsolvable. Fortunately I had a save a little while back and she did what she was supposed to when I moved things differently.

prince of persia warrior within I have no idea what happened I was near the start of the game saved next day when I reloaded my save I am in some weird place and am permanently stuck as the dark prince loosing health and I cant get anywhere because I dont know where I am supposed to go or what I am supposed to do and every time I wall run off the platform some guy intercepts and kills me.

Loads of old adventure games as prieviously mentioned had this problem. I remember a friend telling me he had trouble finishing GTA 4 because of bug about a job interview half way through or something, apparently it would say you missed it even if you were there and another one at the end where the helicopter would just crash into the sea before he could catch up to it.

 

[Rosco IIIrd]

I think I ran 5 characters in Fallout before I got the stats right. THat's just how games used to be.

Like everyone else in history ever I also screwed up the purple and green tentacle bit in maniac mansion

 

[Arfreid]

Twice, One in Resident Evil code Veronica, I just spent too much ammo and health at the final scene that I got to the final boss battle with decent health but no ammo. The result was that sometimes I could kill the boss but I couldn't get past the last scene, very frustrating.

And the second was in Lunar 2. That one hurt the most, I didn't re-stock mana items for the last dungeon and the final boss pwned me because I ran out of mana to heal my characters.

My entire game for a f***ing mana potion...

 

[Canadamus Prime]

KOTOR. My first playthrough was a light-side Jedi Guardian. I did not have ANY force powers to destroy Malak's extra sources of health in the final battle. I was annoyed, to say the least as I had no saves before Lv 20.

I did that too, which is why on subsequent playthroughs I took Force Lightning despite the penalty (cause I still played Light Side) just so I could destroy Malak's extra sources of health.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

The Resident Evil remake on gamecube. I saved too much and ran out of ink ribbons, bullets, and herbs, right when they introduced the dogs into the mansion. I probably could have gotten past it had I grinded through, but I just didn't think it was worth it. I couldn't stand pre RE4 Resident Evils.

 

[RuralGamer]

Broken Ones:
Jade Empire; after my second playthrough, it glitched somehow so whenever I recruited Silk Fox, the fight after that would be incompletable; the guards didn't spawn properly so I couldn't leave the area...

I nearly had to restart Fallout: New Vegas; I couldn't complete rescuing the President, as Colonel Moore wouldn't talk to me, so I ended up having to work for Yes Man in order to proceed.

Unwinnable Ones:

snip

Had that situation before and oh yes that sucks so much; I had a practically invicible Space Marine Captain on my team with massive health regen and health; his doppleganger was the same and ultimately neither could prevail and no one else could damage them quickly enough to kill them without them jet-packing away.

A lot of my Empire: Total War campaign end up with unwinnable wars because either all the other major powers left hate me or one of them is unbeatable because they seem to have infinite money, unbeatable armies and navies and their people love them.

I nearly was unable to win my first KOTOR playthrough because I could barely beat Malak in the final fight; seriously, he's many times harder than the nearest challenge. Later I found the solution is to only level up to level 4 (lower if at all possible (not really ultimately; by default you have to reach 2 anyway)) on Taris and then start levelling up when you become a Jedi; makes the early game a pain, but the last few hours so much easier.

 

[silver wolf009]

Yeah, autosave in a deathtrap... No hard saves... Nuff said.

OUR AVATARS! Are you my brother?

OT: Just the other day. Was playing a PS2 era Warhammer game. Someone got us stuck behind some clipping issues, and we ran out of grenades, so we couldn't suicide. Not fun times...