Have You Hit a Gaming Wall?

Stephen Totilo, at MTV Games, has hit a gaming wall. At the newly un-flashed Multiplayer site he talks about the bane of gamers everywhere, what developer Jamie Fristrom calls a 'shelf-level event': a gaming wall that makes it hard if not impossible to complete a game. While a lot of gamers can overcome difficulties to reach the end credits, there are some frustrations that can suck all the fun out of play. He cites the bosses from Final Fantasy X and Super Paper Mario as dealbreakers. I personally am playing through God of War again, and the incredibly frustrating spear trap in the 'Paths of Madness' section of the game never fails to provoke hysterics. Have you run into any such obstacles lately? What game obstacles have caused you toss away a controller in frustration and swear off a game entirely?

via /.

I remember my first gaming wall. It was the first boss on Earthworm Jim 64. The rest of the game had been tolerable for me, young as I was, but that damned marble-collecting minigame that they called a boss fight left me turned off to that game forever. I beat the boss once, got so happy that I puked, then found out that the next boss was just a harder version of the same boss fight. I was broken.

FFX-2, the place where you have to gown down 200 floors in Beville and play for 2 hours and you suddenly hit a 90 degree difficulty curve. Note that it isn't needed to beat the game, but to get 100% completion for videos you can just watch on youtube.

One game that frustrated the heck outta me was Gauntlet 2... did that game ever end? It was fun but like 5 hours later and your on lvl 126 you start to wonder.... wtf?

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Originally Posted by FireStag

One game that frustrated the heck outta me was Gauntlet 2... did that game ever end? It was fun but like 5 hours later and your on lvl 126 you start to wonder.... wtf?

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eheheh...the same happen to me...:)
did anybody ever finished that game?

however, the last boss of axelay is my gaming wall:eek:

Disk 3 of Legend of Dragoon. At one part, you get sent through a one-way teleporter that has a save point on the other side. I saved and continued on my merry way. Later, you fight a boss that happened to be much stronger than all of my characters. One of them was blind due to me not bringing anything to cure that ailment and not knowing I could buy his Dragoon spirit at a shop. Too weak to level up, too weak to be the boss, and no way of returning t the other side of the portal until I beat her.

My first gaming wall was in the original Zelda game for the NES. The last Dungeon (9) where you must face Ganon was incredibly diffucult for me. Navigating that dark dungeon and trying to locate the silver arrows, red ring, then Ganon was very hard for me.

Pathetic now that I think back to it. But I was a very young kid. I went back years later and once and for all, defeated Ganon.

I never did play through all of the 2nd quest though. I'll be doing that now on my PSP thanks to NesterJ.

Sephiroth on KH1 and 2 got me quite annoyed. That boss did, however, make the game fun for about 5 more hours of leveling up.

I think we all might agree that making a game too easy is better then making a game thats too hard.

mega man all of them for some reason ive never been able to defeat sigma

i dissagree shadowblind, a very hard game is much better than an extremely easy 1. and the final boss of mgs3 (boss) was freakin' painful. i never really beat her, i just got bored and sold the game

I'd have to say the first gaming wall was in Alex Kidd In Miracle World. How freaking hard was that game?! It was hard enough getting up to Janking's henchmen and beating them trying to beat Janking himself was a nightmare. Even if you get the item to read his mind, he changes from rock to paper to scissors so damn quickly it would make your eyes bleed ;) I NEVER finished Alex Kidd even to this day. I still have nightmares where I'm playing Janken to with my life on the line :p

My first and probably worse gaming wall had to be the final battle with Ripto in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage for the PSX.

I could get past the first two of three battle sequences just fine, but when it came down to the final leg, a dog fight in the air, I always lost. I rented that game at least enough times to buy it at full price 3 times probably, over a 6 month span, after I got my PSX for Christmas in 1998.

It became so bad that, my family developed a keyword system in which all I had to say was one word, when I was called to Dinner or chores etc while I was playing videogames, I was then given exception to stay and play for a few extra minutes without having to jump up and run, when I was in the high stress, tense gameplay mode, like when trying to beat Ripto in the final battle. The keyword was "Ripto". That lasted a few years after that era.

Although, I did finally beat Ripto, and what a joyous day it was. My entire family rejoiced. They were just glad it was all over. lol. I was 8-9 at the time, nowadays I think Spyro 2 would be easier. But there are still a few challenges in Spyro 3 that piss me off to no end. For example, the thing in one of the worlds where you have to keep those stupid turtles or whatever from jumping into the kettle. That to this day will still bring me to chuck the controller.

indiana jones ,buffy the vampire slayer, i have a mountain of unfinished games that killed my enjoyment because of stupid impossible jumps or boss's.....

Ninja gaiden for the x-box. The boss alma.

She's an evil devil woman that's way harder then any boss in any "game" deserves to be!. I did finely scrape by. But still that's the most difficult thing i've ever done in any video game ever.

Oh, speaking of gaming walls and a recent game for the PSP. Has anyone defeated the last boss on Mega Man: Powered Up on HARD mode?

NO matter how many times I tried, I couldn't. I am going to have another go at it soon though.

::EDIT::
Yeah, I know I mispelled the games title.

ive treid and as you probably read i cant beat any megaman boss lol

some of the advanced licenses in gt3 were pretty imposible, .... for me anyways....

I have rarely just "given up" on games, but the last one I did was the lousy, sucky, completely imbecile game "Futurama" for the X-Box.

Now... I am a *HUGE* Futurama fan, but this game just sucked. Given that I paid $20 for a used copy, I decided to play it all the way through, no matter how lame it was.

Then I go to the Leela level on the city on the sun where you have to play for 1/2 hour to get to a jumping puzzle the requires PRECISCE jumps to make it. I wasted 30 Leelas on that level...decided a crappy game was not worth this kind of frustration…popped out the game and sold it on eBay for $30 :thumbup:

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Originally Posted by Tron_Fan

I have rarely just "given up" on games, but the last one I did was the lousy, sucky, completely imbecile game "Futurama" for the X-Box.

Now... I am a *HUGE* Futurama fan, but this game just sucked. Given that I paid $20 for a used copy, I decided to play it all the way through, no matter how lame it was.

Then I go to the Leela level on the city on the sun where you have to play for 1/2 hour to get to a jumping puzzle the requires PRECISCE jumps to make it. I wasted 30 Leelas on that level...decided a crappy game was not worth this kind of frustration…popped out the game and sold it on eBay for $30 :thumbup:

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blasphemy!! you cant be a futurama fan and not like the game, TAKE IT BACK ! lol

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Originally Posted by Shadowblind

Sephiroth on KH1 and 2 got me quite annoyed. That boss did, however, make the game fun for about 5 more hours of leveling up.

I think we all might agree that making a game too easy is better then making a game thats too hard.

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I'd have to disagree, I so want someone to make an RPG I can't beat, even Nemesis on FF-X was just an one-hour beat down. DQVIII had some difficulty to it but I thought it was kinda boring. So far the only RPG I can't get 100% on is Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time.

I would not say it is so much frustration that causes me to stop playing a game but lack of plot and repetitiveness.

All that aside, the only thing that stops me from trying to finish a game is finding the game rather easy or just slightly difficult and then being owned by a game end boss that is ten times harder than any other enemy in the game. I mean, I do not intend to level up for the next 2 hours just to see what happens when I kill the last boss character. Another thing that would cause me to postphone playing a game for awhile is being stuck after loading a saved game due to a glitch or the lack of an important item that I can no longer retrieve.

The best thing I do to get over a gaming wall is to leave the game alone for at least a couple weeks and then come back to it. It's usually not a problem with leveling or strengthening my character, its tactics. When you come back to a game at a later point in time, you approach it differently.

The longest standing wall that I have hit gaming would be 10 years, and that is getting through the final hallway in TMNT for NES without off-screening the jetpack enemies. I'm talking the cart, not save-stating on an emulator. Also the Clinger-Winger stage in the original Battletoads on NES.

Recent walls include Jordan from GH2 on Expert, and I just recently beat Six.

Six was a complete gaming Zen experience. I knew that I was in the zone and that success was imminent before I picked up the controller. I was a zombie of uncontrolled gaming excellence. Those are the best times when gaming!

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Originally Posted by Aryn

I would not say it is so much frustration that causes me to stop playing a game but lack of plot and repetitiveness.

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Actually, that statement is actually very true. Perhaps the "gaming wall" lately is bland boring games.

Its not fair to say this about all games but a large percentage of games just don't have that magic that a lot of classic games have. Games don't seem like they are made like they used to be.

I'd much prefer a good story, character depth, deep customization and strategy with cartoony graphics or sprites. All the games lately that just have you blowing up everything and killing everybody just don't really appeal to me.

I've hit several gaming walls in my day. You had the jump at the exact moments like in Ninja Gaiden or Megaman, the dodge and shoot moments in Ikaruga, and the times in tons of games where you've inspected every nook and cranny and have no idea what's next. But like somebody else said, set the game down for a couple games and come back. If that doesn't work you can always consult GameFAQs.

First a conquered hurdle story, then an electrified acid spitting brick wall on fire never to be felled...

Go back 40+ Megaman games ago (yes really) to the history altering event that was MEGAMAN 1. Long story only slightly less long: The de&reconstructing orange blobman that was the {unbeknownst 1st} boss of the Dr. Wily level{s} had me stumped. So much so that I decided that it wasn't worth the frustration of trying to beat him just to see the ending of the game... Looking back on my 32 years of life, I've only once been more wrong (never date a Swedish lingerie model, just trust me). After a week, a friend (we'll call him "Jeff Paris") convinced me to let him borrow the game, and a few days later I got the call-- not only had he beaten the blobman, but there were more levels to the game. Awesome levels. Capcom boss levels. I must've sworn 100 times that he was lying, that this was some cruel joke that I wouldn't give in to... so he put the phone up to his basement tv, and that's when I heard it: NEW MEGAMAN MUSIC! It's vibrato casio riffs -- unmistakable... it's melody -- unknown. (at this point I'll admit that in a particular social low, my friends and I played a game where someone whistles/hums a megaman level's music, and the first person who guesses it's boss gets to go next...huh, I just realized what a great drinking game that would be.) So I ordered him on pain of loosing my friendship (remember when that meant something?) to leave the game on pause until after school the next day so we could both see it through to the end, which we did. That poor little NES must've been 1000 degrees by the time we got there, but it held stout, we completed our mission, and the wicked Wily fell... for the first of 40 some-odd times. *FIN*

That being said: HAS ANYONE EVER BEATEN ATHENA ON THE NES?!!?!? If you have, PM me. I seriously think I have a daemon copy of that game! Not only is it the cheapest most inexplicably malevolent game ever (oh really? The BACK of that ricocheting arrow just grazed my HELMETED head, and somehow I lost 17 bars of life and am doing the "black screen breakdance of death"? REALLY?!?), But eventually I hit the "blue-spider-sperm-boss" thing and I can't even damage it no matter WHAT weapon I have (read: even when I DON'T get screwed with a blue sword or red club at the last second)! He's just a level boss, mind you, NOT the final boss. I know that because a few times I found some doodad that let me SKIP that level... ONLY TO WIND UP IN SOME NEVER ENDING BUT TIME LIMITED MAZE LEVEL THAT EVEN REVISITING IN MY 20'S I COULDN'T FIND MY WAY OUT OF!!! I WANT to give it a go on NesterJ, but every time I try.. I black out and wake up in Las Vegas 13 days later... and I live in New York, so it's a mother of a commute back.
That is all.
CAPITAL thread btw, I hope this gets hundreds of posts!

Very Hard on Ninja Gaiden (xbox) was my wall. I finished it in normal after over a hundred hours and many many many many...... many controller throws... and curse words. (my roommates kept asking why I didn't stop playing) But on very hard, I got as far as the long stairway that spirals down a cylindrical hole in the ground of what I think were catacombs, fighting the undead dino-men skeletons just as I got my kick-ass nunchucks and then realized I didn't have enough life to get to the next area. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't survive the long road back up. Damn... I think I'm going to go play that game again.

Later.

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Originally Posted by shadowprophet

Ninja gaiden for the x-box. The boss alma.

She's an evil devil woman that's way harder then any boss in any "game" deserves to be!. I did finely scrape by. But still that's the most difficult thing i've ever done in any video game ever.

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Oh yesh, I remember her. She was pretty damn hard. I tried at her for probably close to 5 hours. She was slightly harder than the dragon. The (memory fails me in my slightly inebriated state) octopus dude(? some city level boss where you get shut into some street/court yard) seems to be memorable enough that it must have been pretty damn hard too.

The puzzles in that game were sometimes pretty hard too. Especially when you had to collect all those parts in the end... what were those, portal keys or something. It's been too long. I can't remember. I do remember Alma though... she was hot and hard. :thumbup:

The Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. Hours ... days ... WEEKS of my life were wasted on that damned water temple! I never did get past it. I think I'd missed a key right down at the bottom, or something. I've since tried to get back to that point but I just don't have the time I used to.

The other one I remember was the truck level in T2 for the Megadrive. SO. DAMNED. HARD. Of course I've long since lost the Menacer so I can't have at that one now either, not that I think I could do any better. My gaming skills seems to have nosedived as I got older.

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Originally Posted by GobboFett

I'd have to say the first gaming wall was in Alex Kidd In Miracle World. How freaking hard was that game?! It was hard enough getting up to Janking's henchmen and beating them trying to beat Janking himself was a nightmare. Even if you get the item to read his mind, he changes from rock to paper to scissors so damn quickly it would make your eyes bleed ;) I NEVER finished Alex Kidd even to this day. I still have nightmares where I'm playing Janken to with my life on the line :p

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Exactly the same mate. Only thing is i really wanted to see the ending so i used save states. Its better you didn't finish the game - the ending is depressingly bad.

GTA games, not so much hard, my interest just dissolves rapidly from the repitive nature of the games as a series and the archaic controls. Most games i see through to completion though. except BGII, that never reall grabbed my interest, throne of baal, on the other hand, was great

Faxanadu - NES

I was stuck a few months in the misty areas



Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon - N64

I could'nt beat the Impact level, I gave up and never played it again!



I hardly ever hit gaming walls, I just keep playing and playing until I either finish the game or get extremely bored trying!

Right now it's FFIII for the DS....going at the crystal tower in one shot is rough, and losing 2-3 hours every time you die is even rougher

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Originally Posted by Vangar

Exactly the same mate. Only thing is i really wanted to see the ending so i used save states. Its better you didn't finish the game - the ending is depressingly bad.

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Depressing you say? Does Alex become king of Miracle World and decree that Janken shall determine all disagreements in the world? *cues Janken music* Now THAT would be an ending :D

FF8, i threw in the towel at the raijin and fujin encounter, have never played it since.
And FFX, seymour flux + yunaleska i got stuck on for a LONG time, now im stuck on the sin where you have to nuke him or he causes game over in one move. Annoying difficult game.

Ridge Racer 1 & 2 for PSP, the last tour, I think it's the Max tour.

Anyway, there must be a magnet inside your car because every time you try to overtake an oposing car, it's like you're magnetically attracted to it's bumper so you end up ramming into the back of it and sending it straight ahead of you. And when you finally DO overtake an oposing car with a turbo boost, a few seconds later, the "magnet" kicks in and they're right up your arse again! :mad:

The game was Gundam Battle assault 2. In order to unlock something you had to beat the game on very hard with "gundam Maxter" which is a horrible character/gundam. Needless to say after 16 hours straight , maybe 30 minuets total of break time, I chucked the PSX controller at the nearest wall, gave the game a nice toss as well, and took a long walk to reflect on my first video game wall ever, and reclaim my sanity and vision ( 16 hours straight, from 4:00 PM to 8:00-ish in the morning.)
I also hated the license tests in Gran turismo 3 very much, that was my next wall.