Payne to the Max! Payne in the butt! (Worst levels in gaming thread)

Ruedyn

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GeneralTwinkle said:
ruedyn said:
GeneralTwinkle said:
This saves me time, everything he said minus the last bit about BF3.
What?! You don't want battlefront 3?
Madness....
It's 2:49 over here and I'm really tired and mistook that for Battle-FIELD 3. I really only skim through comments. But yeah Lucas Arts needs to get on that, or I'll break more of their windows.
 

Signa

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I half-understand how you feel OP, but it was part of the narrative, and there was a quick-save function in the game, so whining about checkpoints is completely your fault. The baby's cry could have used a bit of toning down though.

My worst level that I can think of is this one Cybran level in Supreme Commander where you open the next section of the map and instantly have to save an outpost. There is little warning to amass your forces before you auto-fail the map. It was a huge challenge the one time I played the campaign without saving mid-level.
 

Sean Hollyman

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GeneralTwinkle said:
You found Hoth difficult? Really man, the only hard mission of that campaign was Polis Massa. Fuck that asteroid.

OT: The Death Star in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, on Sith Master difficulty. Lasers flying at you from all angles, Emperor's guard, shadow troopers, AT-STS, Jet troopers, snipers, and the like, all it fricking once.

Man that game was rough.

And that pressure control junction in Batman: Arkham Asylum on Hard.
Imagine being stuck in a small room, filled with enemies, with entrances on all angles, with TITAN guards in the crowd charging at you.
This dude makea it look easy. Oho it wasn't.
 

General Twinkletoes

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Sean Hollyman said:
GeneralTwinkle said:
You found Hoth difficult? Really man, the only hard mission of that campaign was Polis Massa. Fuck that asteroid.
I thought polis massa was fairly easy. More difficult than most, but hardly on the level of hoth.
 

Sean Hollyman

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GeneralTwinkle said:
Sean Hollyman said:
GeneralTwinkle said:
You found Hoth difficult? Really man, the only hard mission of that campaign was Polis Massa. Fuck that asteroid.
I thought polis massa was fairly easy. More difficult than most, but hardly on the level of hoth.
Did you get to play as Vader?
My memory is fuzzy, but I remember playing as Vader and massacreing everything.
 

General Twinkletoes

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Sean Hollyman said:
GeneralTwinkle said:
Sean Hollyman said:
GeneralTwinkle said:
You found Hoth difficult? Really man, the only hard mission of that campaign was Polis Massa. Fuck that asteroid.
I thought polis massa was fairly easy. More difficult than most, but hardly on the level of hoth.
Did you get to play as Vader?
My memory is fuzzy, but I remember playing as Vader and massacreing everything.
I'm pretty sure you didn't, although I'm really not sure.
I'll have to reinstall it...
 

Rathcoole

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The only one I can think of is from dragon age origins. When you visit the mages tower and get sucked into the fade. You then get to send ages running around a bunch of annoying mazes solving stupid little shape shifting puzzles for no reason at all. It's not so much that it is difficult it is more the fact that it just seems so long and unnecessary.
 

GiantRaven

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SaneAmongInsane said:
The worst offender though is the 2nd nightmare level. Not only is it an ungodly maze, you can't fucking see anything and when you fall into the abyss the cry baby lets off an ear shattering wail.
My favourite part of Max Payne was the intense run through the burning building. You know, the part where you run into a room, guess at which direction to go and burn to death over and over.

Just kidding. It was really the level that contained all the insta-kill laser tripwires that were completely impossible to see unless you moved at a snails pace (that was made easy with Max's complete inability to walk). There's nothing I love more in my fast-paced shooter than flow-breaking!

Or perhaps my favourite section was the decent through the car park, where practically no painkillers could be found and single enemies deal out good proportions of damage. I particularly love that dying and reloading from a checkpoint means you still have the same amount of damage when the game saved. It's just so much fun when you have no painkillers and can only take a single shot before death, with no way to restore your health.

Actually, I lied. Truly the most awesome part of the game was it's climax. It's intense finish, where you finally confront the big bad and finish them off in a ridiculously cool gunfight, much like how the rest of the game played. Oh wait, your final shots of the game go into some wires and pylons. How unbelievably exiting.

krazykidd said:
There was a time where every other gamer didn't whine about everything . When we had to suck it up or quit . When games actually provided a challenge . Times change . This was the norm back then . Now we have to be considerate of people who find every other game too hard when there wasn't a checkpoint everytime an enemy sneezed .
There is no excuse for bad design. People need to take off their nostalgia glasses.

Now that I think on it, another aspect of Max Payne I loved was his inability to walk in a straight line. All the tight platforming sections were extra specially fun when Max would veer off on a tangent for no particular reason, sending me plummeting to my doom.

The sad thing is that there was a great game hidden behind all the bullshit. Great setting, tone and most of the gameplay was a blast. Shame all the stupid crap ruined the experience.

TopazFusion said:
The second game is better imo.
In that one, you can't actually die in your dreams (like you can in the first).
Also, it has proper ragdoll physics.
And they made the cutscenes skippable.
Another fine improvement Remedy made was to remove the autosaving present in the first game, and replace it with manual saving. The real masterstroke here was to not mention this in any way before you die for the first time and have to start the whole game again.

Has their been any other game series where the method of saving your game has been changed mid-way through? I struggle to think of anything. Why? Because it's fucking stupid.
 

teebeeohh

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Rathcoole said:
The only one I can think of is from dragon age origins. When you visit the mages tower and get sucked into the fade. You then get to send ages running around a bunch of annoying mazes solving stupid little shape shifting puzzles for no reason at all. It's not so much that it is difficult it is more the fact that it just seems so long and unnecessary.
this is something that is brought up a lot when it comes to annoying levels and i just don't get it, i always found the fade to be rather easy and you get free stat-points and it's not actually puzzles since it's basically enter an area, grab the shapeshift, go to area where this is needed and repeat 3 more times. and look everywhere for free stuff.

also: how do you complain about a game not having checkpoints when it has quicksave?

ot: any forced tutorial, it's just fucking annoying being treated like a moron when i am replaying the game for the bazillionth time.
and 2fort, i hate 2fort
 

GiantRaven

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teebeeohh said:
this is something that is brought up a lot when it comes to annoying levels and i just don't get it, i always found the fade to be rather easy and you get free stat-points and it's not actually puzzles since it's basically enter an area, grab the shapeshift, go to area where this is needed and repeat 3 more times. and look everywhere for free stuff.
I think the problem is that it comes out of nowhere, and doesn't seem to serve any purpose beyond it's own existence. You essentially walk into a room and BAM - do something completely different for way too long. It's a complete sidetrack from what's actually on your mind and what your goal is.

It also looks completely dull.
 

Shocksplicer

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Casual Shinji said:
SaneAmongInsane said:
The load times are terrible, the lack of check points, the ingame cutscenes you can't skip.
Not much has changed in Max Payne 3, has it?
Load times in Max Payne 3 are fine, the Checkpoints are a bit annoying, but the unskippable cutscenes were fucking payneful. I've played it through about 4 times now, and those cutscenes REALLY should have been skippable. It's even more annoying with that little "Still Loading" thing flashes when you try to skip. NO YOU FUCKING AREN'T!

OT: Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (AKA Hey let's make a Final Fantasy Clone and set it in the Lord of the Rings universe). I never got past the battle for Helm's Deep, because there came a point where you had to fight off several waves of powerful enemies, including several Trolls. Not too hard, especially with Aragorn helping out. Then the call to fall bak to the keep comes. Except the main character apparantly took a few too many Orcish maces to the skull, because he randomly takes the order to retreat as a personal insult, and jumps back into the fray.

Now, with your party already at reduced health from the heavy fighting, you have to fight off a whole shitload more enemies, including even more Trolls, without Aragorn's help this time. there hasn't been a checkpoint for quite some time now. I have no idea how long this bullshit goes on for, because the odds were so ridiculously, impossibly against me that I never got past it.
 

teebeeohh

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GiantRaven said:
teebeeohh said:
this is something that is brought up a lot when it comes to annoying levels and i just don't get it, i always found the fade to be rather easy and you get free stat-points and it's not actually puzzles since it's basically enter an area, grab the shapeshift, go to area where this is needed and repeat 3 more times. and look everywhere for free stuff.
I think the problem is that it comes out of nowhere, and doesn't seem to serve any purpose beyond it's own existence. You essentially walk into a room and BAM - do something completely different for way too long. It's a complete sidetrack from what's actually on your mind and what your goal is.

It also looks completely dull.
maybe it was different for me because i played a mage and you start that origin in the fade and thus i didn't think it was that out of place.
except of course that the whole "the bad guys try to trick you into giving up by power of illusion" just doesn't work as a setpiece in a video game.
 

Major_Tom

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What fucking checkpoints? You have a quicksave! The loading times were terrible only if you were playing on a 386. And cutscenes? Seriously? Are you actually talking about Max Payne 3? I never liked prologue missions too, but they weren't that hard (I was 12 when I played it, and didn't have to skip anything).
 

Scarim Coral

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Ha I remember that level. I was able to get pass that level with a few falls but my (former) mate back then couldn't get through it. The difference was that I was playing it on the PC (my bro pc) and he had it for the PS2. I guess that level is alot harder using the PS2 controller.

Anyway I guess for me that would be the final level in the SNES game UN Squadron (Area 88). The level is an underground cave so it was hard to navigate in small spaces along with everything else that are trying to kill you. Once you get through that there is still the mini boss and the final bos itself to deal with aswell.

To this day I have not completed that game.
 

Rathcoole

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teebeeohh said:
Rathcoole said:
The only one I can think of is from dragon age origins. When you visit the mages tower and get sucked into the fade. You then get to send ages running around a bunch of annoying mazes solving stupid little shape shifting puzzles for no reason at all. It's not so much that it is difficult it is more the fact that it just seems so long and unnecessary.
this is something that is brought up a lot when it comes to annoying levels and i just don't get it, i always found the fade to be rather easy and you get free stat-points and it's not actually puzzles since it's basically enter an area, grab the shapeshift, go to area where this is needed and repeat 3 more times. and look everywhere for free stuff.


It's not that it is hard it just seems like unnecessary filler they stuck in to pad out the tower section. You get sucked in to fade, run around for awhile doing pointless crap. then leave and it's never mentioned again (as far as i can remember). it plays no part in anything else in the game. I just don't see the point of the whole thing.
 

VeryOddGamer

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I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned, I'm going with Peragus from KOTOR 2. It's an overly long tutorial level. Gah. Also, obviously, every example that has been and will be posted here that are from games that I've played.