Most Cringeworthy Moments in games

[CaitSeith]

Other M's final battle.

Spoiler: Warning: Click at your own risk...

I understood Samus attitude towards Adam (he was a very influential part of her life when she was younger). I tolerated the incoherence of not allowing Samus on using her equipment whenever she wanted (Varia suit or nearly burned to death? Meh, she needed a tan anyways...) I barely stood Samus being rescued from Ridley because she was paralyzed from fear (total rescuing score: Samus 1, Anthony 3). But the last battle. THAT LAST BATTLE!

A cinematic with all the exposition just ended. The place is a mayhem, swarmed with enemies; and the responsible from this madness (MB) is just at the other side of the room. In first-person mode, you clear your view of fire towards her, press the missile button and... ending cinematic happens: MB gets frozen by an ice beam shot by the real Madeline Bergman, and shot down by the space marines machine guns. Madeline is almost taken by the Federation (and you can't do anything because you are an "outsider"), but Anthony (who saved you earlier appears twice), states that the rescue mission gives him the authority for keeping Madeline out of their reach, and soon all three are in your ship, flying through space, while Samus monologues about if MB should be considered the evil one? The End.

WTF!? Metroid should have this epic final boss battle where you can get to beat its ass with your best skills, or at least obliterate it at your leisure. Saying that Other M's version was anti-climatic is the understatement of the freaking decade! You don't even get to shoot the final boss once! Sure, there is a bonus after-game boss battle and a escape sequence. But not in hyper mode.

 

[CaitSeith]

The entirety of Ride to Hell: Retribution. Just pick any part of it and it's pretty cringeworthy.

On a more serious note, the later half of Fallout 3. The amount of pointless and avoidable deaths in the later half, starting with your dad and ending with you(unless you have Broken Steel), was mind-numbing.

Also, I'd suggest checking the Darkspawn's lore. They've always been Saturday Morning cartoons, just with more blood and rape. Their only reason to exist is to kill or corrupt anything and everything that isn't them and turn all the women into broodmothers.

Oh, yeah. Fallout 3 ending. I tried it with Fawkes. Totally hilarious:

- Without DLC: "I'm sorry, my companion, but no. We all have our own destinies, and yours culminates here. I would not rob you of that."
- With DLC: "Aha! Of course! My inmunity to radiation makes ME a better candidate for surviving in there."

 

[GrumbleGrump]

Any time anyone says "La-Lu-Li-Le-Lo" in the Metal Gear Solid series. It's kind of a magic word that destroys all drama.

Spoiler: Oh, oh! And...

Emma's death scene in Metal Gear Solid 2:

"- E.E!!!!

 

[sageoftruth]

Any time Mu 12 appeared on the screen in the Blazblue series. Heck, even she knows how ridiculous she looks.

Also as a mildly OCD cringe:
Milla's hair in Tales of Xillia. Any scene with her has me grinding my teeth and wishing someone would comb down that enormous strand of hair hanging far off to the side of her head.

 

[Ryallen]

Hmmm --- well --- probably most of the cut scenes from The Last of Us.

Sorry to burst your bubble, dude, but hating The Last of Us with a fiery passion that exceeds the intensity and blaze of a thousand suns achieving supernova is my schtick.

OP: I have a few, truth be told. Well, one of them doesn't really count, as I was just told about this, but when I heard about it, I just kinda... yeah. Lost a good amount of respect for the lead writer. I'm talking specifically about the mission in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, where Mr. Torgue calls "friend-zoned", then, in the weird present-future timezone, calls the concept "misogynistic", when the idea itself is very real, just not as experienced nearly as often, and never by people who claim to be in it. Not to mention that even bringing up the subject reeked of the lead writer, aka Anthony Burch of HAWP fame, showing his bias and mini-lecturing an entire audience about a subject that everyone either already agrees with or will not convince those who do not. But I digress.

The second one is in Xenoblade Chronicles. This, while a moment that I didn't personally experience, I saw in a Let's Play, and I regardless just cringed at it. The part (or parts, actually) were any part that involved Shulk and Fiora being together just talking, and it nearly sickened me that this game actually had the balls to not have them going out before a good portion into the game. It almost physically hurt to watch them dilly-dally around their obvious attraction to one another, and for either of them to not have addressed it ever up until the point I just mentioned. In real life, this can be and is a thing for many people. But not in a video game. Two people, of opposite genders, are never this close for no reason, in any sort of narrative, and ESPECIALLY not in a Japanese video game.

 

[Nazulu]

Yep, Genocidicles, that was pure awfulness. Thank you.

I can't beat that, but the reason I couldn't take Starcraft 2 seriously at all is because of it's horrid dialogue and story end. And the forced humour in Portal 2 made it especially difficult to finish. Many say the first Portal is harder, but I couldn't beat the 2nd one again if I tried.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Any scene from any Metal Gear Solid game. It's beyond me how Kojima got a storyteller rep :/

 

[Elijin]

I dont have time to explain why I dont have time to explain why certain dialogue makes me cringe.

 

[darkstarangel]

It's been mentioned several times & even defended by some FFX tool of a fanboy but yep, The FFX forced laugh scene. This really wasn't the best entry in the series & this scene really didn't help.

And before any fanboy suckholes start retorting in it's defense, I have played it through & finished it (Yevon: The most disappointingly easy final boss fight ever). I do understand the situation & context but there are plenty of classy ways to confidently & charismatically cheer up a girl in distress. Forcing out a most cringe-worthy fake laugh like an absolute dickhead is not one of them. And it really doesn't improve the story or character development either.

 

[Eddie the head]

There's some dialogue in starcraft 2 heart of the swarm where kerrigan says "hey jim remember i slaughtered millions as the queen of blades".

It's one of the most obvious and terrible attempts of injecting exposition I know.

Most of the dialogue in StarCraft 2 is just awful. Nice cuteness though.

Also Borderlands. Much better game if you turn off the sound. That said it's still a boring slog, but it's a less annoying boring slog.

It's been mentioned several times & even defended by some FFX tool of a fanboy but yep, The FFX forced laugh scene. This really wasn't the best entry in the series & this scene really didn't help.

To be fair wasn't that the point? Wasn't it meant to be cringe worthy and awkward? I mean I've never played the game, but based on what I've seen it was meant to be like that to show something I'm sure what. Although I guess that doesn't make it any less cringe worthy. Death of the author and all that.

 

[Seanfall]

Hawke's brother, Carver, from Dragon Age 2. He constantly made me cringe with his pathetic whining about how much better Hawke was than him. It's all he ever did was whine and moan at Hawke, there really needed to be an option to give him a good backhand and shut him up.

Carth Onasi from Knights of the Old Republic was much the same with his constant whining of how he doesn't trust the PC.

"Oh so you.." *Hawke raises his hand.* "Hold that thought carver." *Opens up a portal to the ME universe.* "Pardon me Shepard, can I borrow...that...Renegade Trigger of yours?" Shepard: "Sure." *Portal Closes* "Please Continue Carver."

"Oh so you.." *RENEGADE TRIGGER: FROZEN BITCHSLAP OF DOOM* *carver is hit so hard he spins in midair before he hits the ground.* "Now shut the fuck up."

Yeah I took him to the deep roads and watched him diiiiiiieeeee. hee hee hee hee hee.

 

[Saetha]

Snipperooney

Deus Ex spoilers here:

Spoiler

You know, I actually like the "Destroy Panchaea" ending of DX:HR. I guess it's because I tend to roleplay Jensen as a Death Seeker type. The game makes it clear that regardless of how Adam views his augmentation now, he wasn't exactly taken with it when he first woke up. Plus the fact that his dog and girlfriend are dead, I imagine that he spends most of the game in a deep, quiet depression, but he can't really bring himself to end it. So when the end of HR comes and he's given this chance to kill himself under the guise of "letting humanity decide it's own destiny," he just goes for it.

...Okay, okay, his method of suicide brings hundreds of innocents and billions in technology down with him, so Jensen's still an asshole. I'm okay with that. It's just that this interpretation makes me like the Panchaea ending a little better.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Snipperooney

Deus Ex spoilers here:

Spoiler

You know, I actually like the "Destroy Panchaea" ending of DX:HR. I guess it's because I tend to roleplay Jensen as a Death Seeker type. The game makes it clear that regardless of how Adam views his augmentation now, he wasn't exactly taken with it when he first woke up. Plus the fact that his dog and girlfriend are dead, I imagine that he spends most of the game in a deep, quiet depression, but he can't really bring himself to end it. So when the end of HR comes and he's given this chance to kill himself under the guise of "letting humanity decide it's own destiny," he just goes for it.

...Okay, okay, his method of suicide brings hundreds of innocents and billions in technology down with him, so Jensen's still an asshole. I'm okay with that. It's just that this interpretation makes me like the Panchaea ending a little better.

You know someday they may even make a Deus Ex game where the ending CAN'T be an arbitrary last minute decision. That's been my chief objection with the whole series (note that Invisible War had other problems). For instance, you can spite the Illuminati every step of the way in DX 1 then turn around and do their ending anyway, and even though you spend most of IW shooting the Templars right in their racist, power-armored faces, their leader is still all "hey kiddo still time to kill all cyborgs" when you get to liberty Island.

 

[YCRanger]

Pretty much every line of dialog in Destiny.

"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain"
"The stories have stopped now, people are afraid anyways"
"You're interesting, but not entirely interesting".

When you accept that the story isn't coming you can appreciate the game for what it is, but if you are expecting some sort of plot to come to form these moments are truly maddening. If the plot was just 'darkness bad. go fight.' it would be much more tolerable than the gibbering nonsense that pulls you through the story missions.

 

[Evonisia]

I actually cringed at Cortana's closing scene from Halo 4. It's really quite emotional and has genuine heart in it, but it's built on a blatantly obvious deus ex machina so I spent the entire scene cringing and becoming more embarrassed for both the Chief and Cortana. Then the ending happened and my cringe ripped half my face off

...

Master Chief: Our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity. Whatever the cost.

Lasky: You say that soldiers and humanity are two different things. Soldiers aren't machines. We're just people. I'll let you have the deck to yourself.

Master Chief: She said that to me once. About being a machine.

*CRRIINGGE*

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

The ending of Persona 4 gets a bit wank-y and too meta for my liking. I always cringe when games try to address broad cultural problems directly, and it came off as a bit ham-fisted.

I still love the game to bits though.

Also anytime Assassins in Assassin's Creed talk about being Assassins to Templars. Those pieces of dialogue are always poorly written and it sounds like a grade schooler's idea of a political debate between totalitarianism and anarchy. Then again, the writing for all of those games wavers like all hell when that stuff is mentioned.

Just once, can we have a game where the Assassin's are just as full of shit as the Templars? AC III hinted at that, but never did anything with it. Just please, Ubisoft, can you stop being so incredibly French for one second?(as if the dashing rogue protagonists, parkour traversal system, freedom>all and general disdain for authority figures wasn't enough >.>)

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Some quality posts chaps. Thanks

 

[Ambient_Malice]

DON'T MAKE ME AN ANCHOR!

 

[ERaptor]

God of War 3, at the end. That whole "Hope"-shtick.

I literally sat there facepalming, at how awkward, forced and out of place that scene seemed. I think they could've only failed harder at ending that game by sticking Kratos in a bunny costume in the final cutscene.