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

[Timedraven 117]

Yes, but it was more due to a lack of skill on my part than any broken game feature.

I was playing Dawn of War, an RTS if you don't know, and it was a 1v1 bot match, me as Space Marines, the bots as Chaos. We'd been playing for a while, and had gotten to the point where we were producing resources faster than we could spend it.

It basically got to the point where we both spammed units from multiple unit production facilities, and smashed them together in the middle of the map, in a constant, unending melee (that also included rockets and plasma).

This battle went on for over an hour, non-stop, neither of us gaining any ground, before I finally called it quits and exited the game. It simply would not end.

Well those arent 'unwinnable' just really fucking annoying and time consuming. although those are usally te best storys, in fact one time i was playing eldar against space marines and i was getting hit horribly, i was losing badly and i thought i wass going to lose. But as a last ditch effort i teleported a banshee squad away to the other end of the cliff and sent them to kill the AIs base, and i WON! battle was epic too once they got past my mine field.

Oh right OT: I think Fallout new vegas once and any time i have to go back on a save losing a significant amount of progress.

 

[Mild_en_Snakz]

It has happened to me a couple of times. There's a blatant design flaw in one part of Resident Evil Zero that you won't notice until it's too late and have to start all over again. There's a hole in the ceiling of a science lab somewhere in the game where you need to use the hookshot with a specific character, I think it was Rebecca. If you let Billy go up instead, you're screwed because you can't go back and only Rebecca can mix herbs, which you need to do up there to progress.

Tl;dr, RE0. Hole in ceiling. Brought wrong character. Can't go back. FFFFUUUU-

There was another on in KOTOR I ran into where I was slightly purposely under-leveled and I got to Rakata and the undersea lab section. There's a part I remember where one of the doors was locked and I had been bashing through all the doors up until this one, which just wouldn't open. There was no way back to the surface and no where to grind so I ended up having to start a new file.

Tl;dr, KOTOR. Rakata sea labs. couldn't bash through door. Trapped. No where to grind. FFFFUUUU-

One last one I remember is L.A. Noire. I had almost finished the vice mission that ends in the movie theater, but I decided to restart because I knew I wasn't going to get a good end rank. So I went back to old missions, restarted and finished my current mission, went back to the main game file, finished my save, and then it took me right back to the main menu. The game glitched somehow where my save kept going back to the end of that same mission and whenever I finished the mission where it saved, it would take me back to the menu instead of the next mission only to find my save is stuck on that one mission.

Tl;dr, L.A. Noire. Restart mission. Finished in old missions. Went back to finish save. Can't go to next mission. FFFFUUUU-

To this day, L.A. Noire is one of the few games I have yet to finish, it took me so damn long to get that far that I'm reluctant to start over.

 

[Versuvius]

NWN's HOTU. Rogue char, started from scratch. Island of the maker. Adamantium golem i had to kill, my main mode of damage is sneak attack to which they are immune. I either missed due to AC or did no damage (No damage message to boot, not just a 0) due to it's damage reduction. Sigh. Fucking constructs.

 

[nokori3byo]

Despite being only about an hour shy of completion, I never finished my second playthrough of DA2. My character had caught the game-breaking Isabel friendship bug and was reduced to moving at the pace of a geriatric dung beetle. Could've finished, but just couldn't be arsed in the end.

Something that happens to me often enough (even now) is the old autosave in a deathtrap bogie, as when I found myself atop the drill tank in Dead Space 2 with no ammo. I was also badly under-equipped for a certain event in DX:HR. In both cases though, cycling back to an earlier save point remedied the situation.

 

[DementedSheep]

I have a few mods in fallout 3 that increase difficulty and monster spawns. I was stupid and decided to walk all the way to rivet city at a low level. I ended up with very little ammo and quick saved right before being attacked by a bunch of super mutants (I hadn?t seen them). I quickly ducked in to the sewer only to find it was flooded with ghouls. My earliest save left was 5 hours earlier. T.T
I hit game breaking bug in POP: WW. For some reason all my saves went screwy and loaded me in odd places in the game.
I screwed over some allot quest in morrowind accidently but fortunately it tells you if just screwed the main plot by killing that random slaver or whatever.

 

[Ayay]

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader i came to what i think was the end ..a boss monster .and i could not get passed it ..did not have the power . i tried for days. A game that hade the two gaming loves of mine dark age setting and fallout combat mix , sadly it was a deeply flawed game.

 

[TheKruzdawg]

When I was playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and I was trying to find all of the life upgrades so I could get the Water Sword and the REAL ending, I somehow found myself in an area that I couldn't get out of. I believe it was the ruins of the main hall that house the switch allowing you to enter both towers, but set in the present. The path I had taken previously in the game had been destroyed by the Dahaka, so all I could do was run around the room. Didn't have a previous save to fall back on to see where I had made the mistake. Still haven't finished that yet...

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Tip: Never save a Pokemon game where your only living Pokemon is poisoned, and you can't reach a Pokecenter in time to heal it and you don't carry any healing items.

And then there was the fiasco that was my experience with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I love that game, and was very much enjoying my experience. And then I got to the cannon room. If you saved in the cannon room before this one guy came into the room you couldn't ever talk to him and in order to leave the room you had to talk to the guy. It ruined one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

Kill yourself using bombs.

 

[goldendriger]

Deus Ex- Pacifist run.
Shot a guy with a tranq gun because i NEEDED to get past him, didnt have enough for invisablility so i shot him, did my thing walked past and saw he was dead...somehow...
I hadnt saved at all, only Auto save and i shot him about an hour before i noticed he "Died" oh and i was 7 hours into it...RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

 

[Cheese = Madness]

In Morrowind I lost the package for Cassius Cosades and couldn't do the main quest.

 

[Josh151]

In my first playthrough of New Vegas, I suddenly could no longer enter the strip. Which pretty much kept me from touching any of the main quest lines.

 

[lacktheknack]

Yep.

Maddog Williams. It's ABSOLUTELY FREAKING INSANE. And if you don't explore this area/don't save this Princess/don't get this potion/don't give the walking stick to this nondescript man, you will get stuck three hours later. And you can't go back.

I think you could break the game about fifty different ways.

 

[LookingGlass]

Homeworld: well, was stupid and let most of my fleet die in that speeding-artificial-meteor-that's-about-to-kill-you "before last" mission. That whole level was a dick move before that last epic fight.

I'm surprised there weren't more mentions of Homeworld. I played through it for the first time recently and I spent the entire second half living in fear that I wouldn't have enough ships for the last mission(s). Had to redo the asteroid mission once.


From another Relic game: Company of Heroes. The third or fourth mission from the end, I think, has you taking control of a hill for a certain time limit. It was tough but I succeeded after a while... with about 4 units remaining and about 50 enemies on the hill just as the time expired. So that was cool.

But... the next mission is the first and only mission in the game where your next mission starts off from your immediate position and with the units you had in the last mission. And I had to protect that area for a long time. Absolutely unwinnable and I really didn't feel like redoing the previous mission.

Lucky for me, the savegame file has a section that has the equivalent of "mission you are up to: [number]". I incremented the [number] value, and off I went to the next mission.

 

[The Seldom Seen Kid]

I killed the radio DJ (dog something) in Fallout 3.

The next step was basically "continue the search for your dad."

I gave up after about 2 hours of running around talking to people.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Okay, without actually reading the thread, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in here who has posted the following:

There's this adventure game based on Homer's Odyssey called <link=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/odysseythesearchforulysses/index.html>Odyssey: The Search for Ulysses, that was released in 2000. At one point in the game, I moved onto a screen that, in true adventure game style, meant unavoidable death once you entered it. I then proceeded to save my game -- using my only save slot, no less -- not realizing what I had done. I literally could not move any further with that save, and had to start all over again.

 

[JMan]

Ninja Gaiden 2. No health items and a huge boss to fight after getting assaulted by about 100 enemies immediately beforehand, leaving me with only one hit to death. Couldn't do it.

 

[Roselina]

mine was in dwarf fortress were i made a peaceful craft building city then all of a sudden 10 groups of 8 goblins each show up to kill me because i needed an enemy or something and slaughtered all but 2 miners and 5 children and they took all my food leaving my civilization to die slowly.

 

[Luffie]

KoToR 2 i wanted to try something out...i basically played as a 'techie' like a bounty hunter sorts, deciding to focus entirely on blasters, ignoring anything force-related and refusing to use or make a lightsaber. It was also hilarious cos he looked just like Foreman from house so i called him as such and set an entire backstory and an 'approach' for situations

anyway. i did fairly well, i got involved in blaster upgrades, explosives, enhancement/stims - the making and usage of each

i started hitting the like 'bosses' and it got a bit tougher. When you start tracking down the jedi.. and killing them (of course, for Foreman is evil and loathes the jedi) i died a few times. and in a few occasions had to be crafty. one fight in particular the area you fight the jedi, you are in quite a few times before the encounter goes down. So i rigged the entire area with mines and poison gas traps and shit. his lightsaber seriously decimated me and i wanted to avoid using vibroblades either

using such similar tactics i progressed. But eventually i just got to a boss near the end where you have no access to the fighting ground before the encounter happens, constantly have him in your face so no breathe-room to use kommando taktiks

i tried a bunch of times, using different approaches, i even modded a vibroblade for deflection. i definitely hit a brick wall that i could not get past without the destroy-everything-game-mincing force powers and glowstick

 

[xXAsherahXx]

Silent Hill 1. I got to the final area of "Nowhere" and I have only a few shotgun bullets, some handgun bullets, no rifle ammo, and some melee weapons. I don't have much health either. One of these days I'll beat that game.

 

[JDLY]

Like a lot of people I had a moment or two in Oblivion. The first time I made a thief and quickly leveled up stealth. Although I didn't kill random people and only stole loads of useless shit, also I found out that if I unequipped all my clothes and weapons, I could sprint past everything in Oblivion and get to the stone without taking too much damage. The issue came when I decided to try out the arena. I relied on autosaves up until that point. Well it autosaves after you walk into the battle area, so I was stuck in a battle when I couldn't beat the enemy and couldn't simply sprint away.

I'm now playing though as a thief again, but I'm leveling up much more slowly and have three saves which I use in rotation. So if I happen to save right before dying, I have not one but two saves I can go back to, just in case.

EDIT: Also one time in the first Mass Effect I couldn't walk onto a certain planet I needed to for the main story without it crashing. Thankfully I had it on PC on Steam, so I simply backed-up the save and re-installed the game, worked just fine.