Games that f*cked you

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Blackhawk
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Games that f*cked you

Post by Blackhawk »

I came across this video on GameTrailers yesterday. The premise is that they're giving ten anecdotes of games that screwed them over the worst due to game-breaking bugs, design decisions, or mechanics (although there are a couple there that are player driven mistakes.)

I thought it would be an entertaining topic.

A couple, off the top of my head.

The first is pure player error. Quake II was one of my first shooters. I hadn't learned the lesson about keeping multiple hard saves, and just played through on the quick save. At one point, I had no armor. I was at minimal health. Before I went around the next corner, I quick saved. What I didn't notice was that there was a rocket about a foot from the back of my head. BOOM! Quickload BOOM. Quickload BOOM. I got to start over, and learned to rotate saves.

My worst was Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on the 360. I was up to the final couple of story missions, and had held off to finish some of the open world elements - collections, building up the city, and so on. I was at around 90% completion, and had just decided to finish that day. I booted it up, selected Continue, and... wait, there was no Continue. Just New Game. What the hell? Somehow, between the time I shut it off the night before and the time I booted it the next day, the system had deleted all of my saves. I never figured out what happened, whether it was a Microsoft or Ubi issue. I also never went back to the game.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Lordnine »

Arx Fatalis had a bug where if you dropped a key item before entering the final area of the game it was impossible to actually finish the game. The final area of the game locked you out of earlier sections and there was no way to go back. Thankfully, you could spawn the item through a console command, but until I found out how to do that I was really annoyed as I otherwise loved that game.

Similarly and much more modern is Zombi U on WiiU. In much the same way, the end game locks off earlier areas of the game and makes it impossible to continue if you forgot a certain important item in your lockbox. Mind you, Zombi U has permadeath so the idea of carrying around a full inventory is a big no-no in that game. They did eventually patch this to not be a problem.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by hepcat »

Ah, good old Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. It had the added benefit of erasing your computer's system files if you tried to uninstall it. And since the installation was buggy as crap, a lot of people tried to uninstall it.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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hepcat wrote:Ah, good old Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. It had the added benefit of erasing your computer's system files if you tried to uninstall it. And since the installation was buggy as crap, a lot of people tried to uninstall it.
I forgot about that gem. I can't remember if I just let it default naturally, or if I heard about the bug first. But I did manage to avoid the "bug".

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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Oh... Oblivion. I broke the game the first time through and was unable to proceed. There is a story mission where you go into a cave to infiltrate the bad guys by interrupting a ceremony. During the process the main bad guy is supposed to escape through a portal. However, I used stealth/invisibility to get next to him and then hit him with paralysis. I got to the final run of story missions and hit a spot where I was supposed to fight and kill him. Except he wasn't there. Whoops. :oops:

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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by YellowKing »

The only one I remember with fondness was one of the old Command & Conquer games. It may have even been the original.

A buddy of mine was playing, and the AI was doing something stupid. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but the game was not behaving in a way that he thought was fair.

The following is his exact quote:

<non-chalantly> "This is weird."

<with increasing stress> "This is WEIRD."

<screams at the top of his lungs> "THIS IS BULLSHIT!"

And slams his fist into the desk.

"This is weird. This is WEIRD. THIS IS BULLSHIT!" thus entered our lexicon, and I still use it to this day whenever a game (or life) seems like it's screwing me over.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Blackhawk »

hepcat wrote:Ah, good old Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. It had the added benefit of erasing your computer's system files if you tried to uninstall it. And since the installation was buggy as crap, a lot of people tried to uninstall it.
Myth II had a similar bug. It uninstalled by simply deleting the install folder. If you installed it to a root, it would simply delete it.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Jeff V »

Crusader Kings. The nature of the game created an ever-expanding database that would crash hard when it reached a certain size. I tried on 3 separate machines, I was never able to play a single game to completion. Perhaps shorter scenarios worked, but the full campaign never did, and that's what I was interested in playing.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Jeff V wrote:Crusader Kings. The nature of the game created an ever-expanding database that would crash hard when it reached a certain size. I tried on 3 separate machines, I was never able to play a single game to completion. Perhaps shorter scenarios worked, but the full campaign never did, and that's what I was interested in playing.
Ooo... on that note I'll add one for LordMortis. Warlock. As I recall, it would crash if you hit 400 units (or something like that) on the map. I never ran into that, but he likes to play on the largest worlds. Pretty sure he hit that at least once.

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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Battlefield 3. Several of the keys wouldn't remap. They said they remapped but they were still locked to their original function. It never got fixed an I had to use AutoHotKey to remap the keys to my standard settings. Between that and Origin, I quit BF and haven't been back.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by miltonite »

Zelda: Twilight Princess

There is a part of the game where you have to get a canon that is in a cave. There is an NPC you talk to, he leads you into the cave. Then you talk to him again and he leaves and you can get Midna to teleport you and the canon out of the cave. Well in the game I walked down into the cave and saved before the NPC got there. When I continued the game the NPC was not physically in the room but when I tried to teleport out Midna would not do so because "someone would see her". When I would try to leave the room the NPC would ask me where I was going so I could not leave either. That was the last dungeon before going after Ganondorf. I had to start all over. That is the last time that I trusted console save files.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Police Quest 3
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by LawBeefaroni »

miltonite wrote:Zelda: Twilight Princess

There is a part of the game where you have to get a canon that is in a cave. There is an NPC you talk to, he leads you into the cave. Then you talk to him again and he leaves and you can get Midna to teleport you and the canon out of the cave. Well in the game I walked down into the cave and saved before the NPC got there. When I continued the game the NPC was not physically in the room but when I tried to teleport out Midna would not do so because "someone would see her". When I would try to leave the room the NPC would ask me where I was going so I could not leave either. That was the last dungeon before going after Ganondorf. I had to start all over. That is the last time that I trusted console save files.
I can't point to a specific example but I hear that. It's happened to me enough times, along with Blackhawk's Quake II save-right-before-dying issue, that now I always save when nothing is happening/about to happen and 3 or 4 deep if possible.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Isgrimnur »

Front Page Sports Sierra Sports NFL Football Pro '99

Playing the computer, it's 4th and long, the CPU decides to throw for it. Pass is incomplete. They then proceed to punt on the next down.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Isgrimnur wrote:Front Page Sports Sierra Sports NFL Football Pro '99

Playing the computer, it's 4th and long, the CPU decides to throw for it. Pass is incomplete. They then proceed to punt on the next down.
Eh, it happens sometimes.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Blackhawk »

Iron Storm. What a buggy, dull, crappy game. It was an alternate-history WWI third person shooter, and I was playing it for a review. If it wasn't a review, I never would have finished it.

About 3/4 of the way into the game, you come to a mansion. I cleared the outlying areas, cleared the mansion, and killed the boss in his office. I then had no idea what to do next. I spent hours scouring the place for any clue on how to proceed. I made sure I had killed everyone. I checked every corner of the huge level.

Finally, I found an obscure reference to the level on a website. The solution: After you kill the boss, you go through the door next to him.

For probably 20 hours there had been doors in this game. They came in two varieties: already open, and textures on the walls. You did not interact with doors in this game. The game trained you to ignore doors, because none of them did anything.

Except for that one.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Isgrimnur »

Forgetting everything you learned from Wolfenstein 3D. :D
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Isgrimnur wrote:Forgetting everything you learned from Wolfenstein 3D. :D
Never played it. Well, I played it years later as a curiosity, but not more than a few levels to see what it was like.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Isgrimnur »

Every level was lousy with secret doors and rooms. Many hours were spent wall-humping to try and find them all.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Ah. Well, even then it established that walls were things to check. Iron Storm established that doors were things that didn't do anything, and were to be ignored. :grund:
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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I hate when games let you play one way, and then make you play another way at the end. Case in point, the original Witcher. I was mostly focusing on my combat skills and didn't pay much attention to alchemy. There's a boss near the end that requires a potion in order to beat it, but because I hadn't paid any attention to it, either by picking one up or by making one, I entered the boss room and at that point, I think it funnels you through with no going back, and I simply couldn't beat him. All because of that stupid potion.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Jolor »

Prince of Qin: Loved the game but encountered a game-ender for me when I had to talk to the General. Except the gate to his house was locked and the guards wouldn't let me pass. No dialogue options left unlocked, no open quests to finish that would hopefully unlock something else allowing me to make progress. I spent a few months on/off trying to find an online fix to my problem but came up empty and got nothing from tech support.

Darksiders: Oh, save point games how I loathe thee. There is a section where you get no savepoints between waves of enemies (Twilight Cathedral?). I could only make it through wave 1 25% of the time but, obviously, never to the final wave completion. Down on health, I was done. And, so, I was ... done.

Deadlight: You have to execute perfectly to a) race across the corridor b) not get caught in the hordes that can overwhelm you c) make it through the door on the far side and d) pick up the gun, turn, shoot, close the room off by dragging a bookshelf over said room entrance. For some reason, the command to pick up the gun never worked once I got to the room. Insta-death and carpal tunnel.

Psychonauts: Meat Circus. You know what I'm talking about.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Giles Habibula »

Blackhawk wrote:. I booted it up, selected Continue, and... wait, there was no Continue. Just New Game. .
I rarely can finish a game, so I was getting excited as I approached the end of "Sniper Elite: V2". Then that exact thing happened when I booted it up to do my big finishing run.

Also, I'll mention the Volcano Level in the original "FarCry". I can only imagine that this area killed progress for a lot of players. I tried everything I could think of. I tried the Chair Trick. I must have reloaded that save 50+ times. Never finished the game, but I finally called it "close enough".

There was a place in the original "Thief: The Dark Project" that killed the game for me for like 10 years. I had to flip something like 5 switches in 5 minutes, or something like that. I'm pretty sure it was the "Undercover" mission, IIRC. I just never could pull it off. I found all the switches, but could never get them all activated in time. I posted this problem on a forum back in 1999, but nobody else had seemed to have a problem with it. In 2009, I fired up "Thief Gold" and determined to get through the whole game this time. And this time it was no problem. Turns out that the first time I played that mission, I was trying to do it without knocking anyone out. Was this a difficulty setting option? Or was I artificially imposing that difficulty upon myself? I thought my 2009 playthrough was on the highest difficulty setting so I could get the most out of the game, but maybe I'm wrong. So the first time I played it, I was trying to hit all those switches in 5 minutes while at the same time sneaking around to avoid everyone. Which I don't think is possible.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Giles Habibula wrote:. Turns out that the first time I played that mission, I was trying to do it without knocking anyone out. Was this a difficulty setting option? Or was I artificially imposing that difficulty upon myself?
No knockouts was something you were doing to yourself, no kills was the highest difficulty option in the original game. They added the ghost playstyle to the reboot Thief.

I remember one time I failed a mission because I knocked out a guard and he fell in a canal and drowned. :ninja:
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Isgrimnur »

Higher realism than the Batman games. Unconscious in the sewers, thrown over railings into endless darkness, etc. I'm pretty sure some of those thugs are dead, not sleeping.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Isgrimnur wrote:Higher realism than the Batman games. Unconscious in the sewers, thrown over railings into endless darkness, etc. I'm pretty sure some of those thugs are dead, not sleeping.
They're only sleeping.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Giles Habibula wrote: Also, I'll mention the Volcano Level in the original "FarCry". I can only imagine that this area killed progress for a lot of players. I tried everything I could think of. I tried the Chair Trick. I must have reloaded that save 50+ times. Never finished the game, but I finally called it "close enough".
Holy crap, I'd forgotten all about that level. I've finished the game a couple of times, and I know I had to restart and resort to the chair at least one of those times.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Blackhawk wrote:
Giles Habibula wrote: Also, I'll mention the Volcano Level in the original "FarCry". I can only imagine that this area killed progress for a lot of players. I tried everything I could think of. I tried the Chair Trick. I must have reloaded that save 50+ times. Never finished the game, but I finally called it "close enough".
Holy crap, I'd forgotten all about that level. I've finished the game a couple of times, and I know I had to restart and resort to the chair at least one of those times.
I don't think I ever read about a "chair trick". I always found the best approach was to run. Run fast. Past everything. Of course, you had to know the exact path. But once you got to the chopper you were set.

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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Oh. But now that you got me thinking about it... The section just past that was the hardest for me. I think I ended up using God Mode cheats the one time I tried to do it on the hardest difficulty. Just couldn't get through. The "lobby" section. Ugh.

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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Giles Habibula »

TheMix wrote: I don't think I ever read about a "chair trick". I always found the best approach was to run. Run fast. Past everything. Of course, you had to know the exact path. But once you got to the chopper you were set.
I tried sprinting a couple of those times, but it ended pretty quickly for me, so I gave up on that strategy. Thanks though. I'll give it another shot next time I fire that game up.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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I'm intrigued, what the hell is the "chair trick" of which you speak?
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Zaxxon »

Blackhawk wrote:
Isgrimnur wrote:Forgetting everything you learned from Wolfenstein 3D. :D
Never played it. Well, I played it years later as a curiosity, but not more than a few levels to see what it was like.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

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Jaymann wrote:I'm intrigued, what the hell is the "chair trick" of which you speak?
When you first enter the volcano area, you open the door, then go back, find the chair, and push it into the doorway, so the door can't shut (and when it shuts, it's permanent) and keep you from returning to the ammo room. That way, you can go back and get more ammo.

But for me, even with that trick, it wasn't enough.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Blackhawk »

Giles Habibula wrote:
Jaymann wrote:I'm intrigued, what the hell is the "chair trick" of which you speak?
When you first enter the volcano area, you open the door, then go back, find the chair, and push it into the doorway, so the door can't shut (and when it shuts, it's permanent) and keep you from returning to the ammo room. That way, you can go back and get more ammo.
You can also stay inside, which gives you cover, shoot a few shots, take cover, shoot a few shots, go back for health, and so on.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by TheMix »

Giles Habibula wrote:
Jaymann wrote:I'm intrigued, what the hell is the "chair trick" of which you speak?
When you first enter the volcano area, you open the door, then go back, find the chair, and push it into the doorway, so the door can't shut (and when it shuts, it's permanent) and keep you from returning to the ammo room. That way, you can go back and get more ammo.

But for me, even with that trick, it wasn't enough.
Oh.... Disregard everything then. I thought you meant the section where you are dropped out of the helicopter and have no weapon. It's on the volcano slope, right? Right? :oops:

I do remember the chair thing now. I don't think I ever got it to work. Sniping was how I generally handled that. The main problem was the first couple guys that would come all the way up. Assuming you could get them killed, the rest wasn't bad. I think I'd usually lay down right by the door and shoot from there. And then hope I nuked them before they nuked me.

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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Grundbegriff »

Giles Habibula wrote:There was a place in the original "Thief: The Dark Project" that killed the game for me for like 10 years. I had to flip something like 5 switches in 5 minutes, or something like that. I'm pretty sure it was the "Undercover" mission, IIRC. I just never could pull it off. I found all the switches, but could never get them all activated in time. I posted this problem on a forum back in 1999, but nobody else had seemed to have a problem with it. In 2009, I fired up "Thief Gold" and determined to get through the whole game this time. And this time it was no problem. Turns out that the first time I played that mission, I was trying to do it without knocking anyone out. Was this a difficulty setting option? Or was I artificially imposing that difficulty upon myself? I thought my 2009 playthrough was on the highest difficulty setting so I could get the most out of the game, but maybe I'm wrong. So the first time I played it, I was trying to hit all those switches in 5 minutes while at the same time sneaking around to avoid everyone. Which I don't think is possible.
That's hilarious. I don't remember what "Expert" level requires, and I only played this, my favorite game, twice. But I do remember how crazy Undercover seemed after so much stealth and how hard it seemed to navigate without drawing insurmountable wrath from the brothers.
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Giles Habibula »

Grundbegriff wrote: That's hilarious. I don't remember what "Expert" level requires, and I only played this, my favorite game, twice. But I do remember how crazy Undercover seemed after so much stealth and how hard it seemed to navigate without drawing insurmountable wrath from the brothers.
Also my favorite game. Also played twice. Only finished once.

"The Metal Age": I think I only ever (breathlessly) made it past "Life Of The Party", told myself, "Wow, nothing after this could possibly top that," and quit the game on a very high note. There were probably other real life reasons why I just never went back to finish it, but I can't remember what they would be, and prefer to remember it this way. I really do think that I probably started the following mission, but coming off of Life Of The Party, it just didn't grab me as much. Anyway, I still have my original save backed up on a Zip Disk.

Edit: I remember now! I backed it up to a Zip Disk because I had to reformat my hard drive, and after getting my computer back in order, I just never reinstalled the game on it, likely because I wanted my last memory of it to be Life Of The Party, in my mind the greatest mission ever made in any game.
Last edited by Giles Habibula on Wed Nov 04, 2015 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"I've been fighting with reality for over thirty-five years, and I'm happy to say that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
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Giles Habibula
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Giles Habibula »

TheMix wrote: I do remember the chair thing now. I don't think I ever got it to work. .
About 15 minutes of nudging, IIRC.
"I've been fighting with reality for over thirty-five years, and I'm happy to say that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
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Blackhawk
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Blackhawk »

Painkiller.

I remembered this one because I'm playing it now, and just hit the spot that fucked me ten years and five months ago. To quote my younger self:
Blackhawk wrote:Well, my feelings about the game just dropped another notch. I'm just a couple of levels from the end (the Docks level), but I can't load any saves - every time I load a save, it locks up. I've restarted the level from the beginning three times now, and they decided not to include a level-skip cheat.

Screw it. I have other games to play that don't give me stress headaches.
From the look of the thread, I wasn't the only one. I never did go back until a few weeks ago. I'm enjoying the game itself much more this time, FWIW.

Of course, that was the disk version. I remember picking it up used at EB Games back when when used PC games and EB Games were both still things. I'm sure the the patched, Steamed, Black version has that bug fixed.
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Jaymann
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Re: Games that f*cked you

Post by Jaymann »

Blackhawk wrote:Painkiller.

I remembered this one because I'm playing it now, and just hit the spot that fucked me ten years and five months ago. To quote my younger self:
Blackhawk wrote:Well, my feelings about the game just dropped another notch. I'm just a couple of levels from the end (the Docks level), but I can't load any saves - every time I load a save, it locks up. I've restarted the level from the beginning three times now, and they decided not to include a level-skip cheat.

Screw it. I have other games to play that don't give me stress headaches.
From the look of the thread, I wasn't the only one. I never did go back until a few weeks ago. I'm enjoying the game itself much more this time, FWIW.

Of course, that was the disk version. I remember picking it up used at EB Games back when when used PC games and EB Games were both still things. I'm sure the the patched, Steamed, Black version has that bug fixed.
That one screwed me too. There was a destroy all enemies level, and apparently one of them was way up in a crow's nest, and I could never target it. No matter how many times I restarted the level.
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