10 Annoying Video Game Moments That Made You Turn The Console Off
Dark Souls ain't got nothin' on Crash Bandicoot.
Transcript
00:00 Unlike in previous generations, most video games now are made to be as accessible and
00:04 player-friendly as possible.
00:06 But even though contemporary releases have moved away from design philosophies like limited
00:10 lives, time restrictions and manual save areas, and just let you kick back, relax and switch
00:15 your brain off for 10 hours or so, developers still seem obliged to include moments that
00:20 make you want to throw the whole console out the window.
00:23 These player-hating moments aren't just reserved for your Dark Souls or Super Meat Boys either.
00:27 Even in the most kid-friendly games, you still find moments where it feels like you're doing
00:31 nothing more than repeatedly running into a wall for hours trying to make some progress.
00:36 Whether that's because of a difficulty spike out of nowhere or plain old terrible design
00:40 that decides to introduce you to new mechanics that don't fit at all with the rest of the
00:45 game.
00:46 Moments like these can completely ruin an otherwise excellent gaming session, and if
00:49 they're really bad, an otherwise good controller.
00:52 I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Annoying Video Game Moments That Made You
00:57 Turn The Console Off.
00:59 Number 10 - Stealth Suicide Bombers in Rainbow Six Siege
01:03 Providing a genuinely difficult challenge either alone or with friends, Siege's terrorist
01:08 hunt tasks you with using the environment to your advantage to clear out a map full
01:12 of enemies.
01:13 It all sounds simple enough, but the low health, high damage gameplay the series is known for
01:17 is in full effect in this mode, meaning even one enemy is deadly enough to take you down.
01:22 Which would be fine if ridiculously tough suicide bombers weren't roaming the hallways.
01:27 Storming at you as soon as you're in their line of sight, it takes sometimes as much
01:30 as a full clip or a well-timed headshot to take these guys down before they blow you
01:35 completely to smithereens.
01:37 Not only that but they're equipped with regular weapons too, so they can chip away at your
01:40 health even if they don't get close enough to strike a crippling blow.
01:44 Also, if you crank the difficulty up to realistic, then you might as well just wave your sanity
01:48 goodbye.
01:49 Being bombarded by these heavy breathing horrors is annoying enough on lower difficulties,
01:53 but here a single one can easily force you to restart the session all over again.
01:58 Number 9 - Battling Fontaine in Bioshock The original Bioshock isn't really remembered
02:04 for the quality of its first person shooting, so it's no surprise that the game's final
02:08 boss fight, which revolves around simply hitting Fontaine with as much firepower as you can
02:12 get your hands on, is barely ever brought up as a series high point.
02:16 In fact, it probably would have been forgotten about entirely if not for how horribly frustrating
02:21 it proved to be for most players.
02:23 Not only does the level bank on you already having plenty of upgraded weapons and a huge
02:27 stash of ammo going into the fight, and only reduces your ability to acquire these resources
02:32 as you continue to lose money from dying, but Fontaine himself is much faster and much
02:37 more aggressive than any other enemy encounter in the game.
02:40 Bioshock was so good at playing with expectations and delivering a subversive plot, so it's
02:45 such a shame that it had to end on such a sour, trite note.
02:49 Number 8 - Getting Killed Offscreen by an Enemy in Hotline Miami
02:53 Hotline Miami is a purposefully infuriating game at times.
02:57 While the top-down shooter gives you the opportunity to pull off ridiculously brutal kills in a
03:02 brilliantly 80s inspired world, it makes achieving these feats of ultra-violence feel earned
03:07 by constantly killing you over and over again until you have enemy placement and the map
03:11 layout completely memorised.
03:13 But the top-down presentation of the game can lead to some pretty cheap deaths, especially
03:17 if you let your guard down.
03:19 Getting shot by someone you didn't even know was lurking offscreen can be horrible,
03:23 and if you think you've mastered a level only to be clipped by one remaining guy you
03:26 didn't even see, well, it could be enough to make you quit out entirely.
03:31 You can inflict some outrageous amounts of pain in Hotline Miami, but the game always
03:35 has a habit of pushing just as much of it back onto you.
03:39 Number 7 - Being Forced Back to an Old Save in Dead Rising
03:42 The structure of the original Dead Rising's campaign was pretty unique, giving you a 72
03:47 hour window where you had to balance story missions with free-roaming zombie smashing
03:51 fun.
03:52 Get too distracted and let the clock run down and you could miss out on entire quests or
03:56 even the game's ending, but jump into them unprepared, without the right weapons or skills
04:00 at your disposal and you could suffer the exact same fate.
04:04 To make matters worse, you could only save at bathrooms located around the game's virtual
04:08 mall and you only had a small number of slots to utilise tactically throughout.
04:13 There were no checkpoints and if you died you'd be kicked back to your latest save,
04:17 meaning you could royally mess up hours of progress with one measly mistake.
04:21 Consequently, if you used your saves wrong and didn't leave yourself with enough time
04:25 to get to the next objective, you could literally ruin the whole game for yourself, forcing
04:29 you to restart the whole thing over from scratch.
04:32 So whether you lost only 40 minutes of progress or whole hours though, it always ensured that
04:36 you wouldn't be touching the game for at least a few days afterwards.
04:41 Notoriously considered one of the most frustrating video game levels of all time, the uniquely
04:49 nightmarish aesthetic of this creative combat-free sequence from the original Max Payne wasn't
04:54 enough to save it from being a complete misery to play.
04:58 Taking place within Max's subconscious as he remembers the night his family was killed,
05:02 the player is made to follow a series of blood trails in an otherwise pitch black environment.
05:07 Not only is it confusing to understand where the hell you're even going, as you try to
05:11 get from one end of the level to another without doubling back on yourself, but taking a wrong
05:16 turn and following the wrong trail could lead to you falling to your death thanks to some
05:20 insidiously placed traps.
05:22 The scene is unnerving for sure, but after the 20th death it becomes horrifying for all
05:27 the wrong reasons.
05:29 Any game with an insta-fail stealth sequence, whereby being seen by an NPC results in a
05:38 game over, needs to be thrown into the f***ing sea.
05:41 Prevalent in multiple blockbuster releases over the years, we can thank the Assassin's
05:45 Creed series for the rising popularity of this horrible mission type.
05:48 Repeating quests that force you to patiently tail potential targets and enemies without
05:53 being seen, the franchise is full of different variations on this same gimmick.
05:58 But the one constant is that every time one of these missions pops up, you'll want nothing
06:02 more than to switch your console off entirely.
06:05 Being caught and having to restart a section of a level is one thing, but when that restart
06:08 comes after you've had to follow an agonisingly slow character over a huge section of a map,
06:14 it feels like a personal slap in the face.
06:16 Just walk faster, god damn it!
06:19 Every second of the high road in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
06:24 If you're booting up the N. Sane Trilogy for the first time since your childhood, you're
06:27 probably going to wonder how you ever got through these challenging platforming games
06:31 as a kid.
06:32 The original Crash Bandicoot in particular is ridiculously demanding, and a good chunk
06:36 of its later levels could have easily taken up half the slots on this list.
06:40 But it's the infuriating high road section that had players up in arms when the game
06:45 released.
06:46 Forcing you to traverse a narrow, unreliable wooden bridge, with pitfalls, trap planks
06:50 and wild hogs all out to get you, the high road shows the true masochistic colours that
06:55 hide behind Crash Bandicoot's seemingly lovable exterior.
06:58 It's a level that was admittedly always hard, but with this remastered developer, Vicarious
07:03 Visions opted to use one jumping system across all three games, and unfortunately, it's
07:08 not the one that this challenging area was made for.
07:11 That doesn't really soothe the pain when you continue to fall, fall, fall, fall, fall
07:16 to your death after being certain you should have nailed a jump though, and it makes the
07:19 high road one of the most infuriating levels ever created.
07:24 Number 3 - Shao Kahn's never-ending combos in Mortal Kombat
07:28 Even now, the scars earned during Mortal Kombat 9's final boss still haven't healed.
07:34 Being able to hit you with the same overpowered combos over and over again, MK9's Shao Kahn
07:38 could absolutely ruin an otherwise promising attempt at beating him with one single move.
07:44 Every tactic was useless.
07:45 Get too cocky and he'd punish you as soon as you overreached, but try to goad him out
07:49 and chip away at his health and he could take you apart just as easily.
07:53 Even worse is that there wasn't much you could do to cheese a victory either, except
07:57 for a couple of unreliable trial and error techniques.
08:00 And unless you were really lucky or really good, and let's face it, it was probably
08:03 the former, you almost certainly had to resort to one of these cheap tactics to avoid being
08:08 pounded into oblivion.
08:10 If you can't beat him, you might as well join him, I guess.
08:13 Number 2 - Escorting Emma in Metal Gear Solid 2
08:17 About two thirds of the way through Metal Gear Solid 2, the whole game crashes to a
08:20 halt.
08:21 You're sent on a mission to save Emma Emmerich, a vital asset and also your ally Otacon's
08:25 sister.
08:26 The title forces you to literally hold the character's hand as you escort her around
08:30 the mostly destroyed and submerged sections of the game's offshore plant.
08:34 Because she's stricken with a condition that leaves her barely able to walk, you have to
08:38 very slowly help Emma around enemy infested levels until you can get her to safety.
08:45 Leave her alone to clear out an area first, and you risk her being noticed by a guard
08:48 you missed, but take Emma along with you and you might end up getting her killed in an
08:52 unintended firefight if you're not careful.
08:55 It's all boring and plodding stuff on its own, but because it comes in between some
08:59 of the most challenging and labyrinthine underwater sections in gaming history, it's enough to
09:03 make you love the character completely.
09:05 But then, and then, after all of this, in the end she ends up being killed anyway, making
09:10 the whole section feel like even more of a waste of time.
09:13 Thanks for that, Kojima.
09:15 Number 1 - Getting Flattened by Ornstein & Smough in Dark Souls
09:19 Look, no matter how much of a Dark Souls pro you might claim to be, there's no way that
09:23 the fight against Ornstein & Smough in the original game didn't completely break your
09:27 soul.
09:28 Dark Souls is at its worst when it forces you to face off against multiple enemies at
09:32 a time, often leading to cheap deaths that feel particularly frustrating because of the
09:36 game's otherwise tough-but-fair approach to difficulty.
09:40 But these encounters are bad enough when it's just regular enemies you're fighting.
09:43 Never mind two bosses who did a PhD in kicking your ass.
09:47 Because it's such an intense game of trial and error, a good chunk of players probably
09:51 only completed this section through sheer luck and perseverance, and honestly, I don't
09:55 know if I could actually replicate another successful victory if my life depended on
09:59 it.
10:00 It's even worse when you come close to getting that victory only to be denied it at the last
10:04 moment, as the hope is crushed and you feel your own will to live being sucked out just
10:08 like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
10:12 All of the bosses in Dark Souls are difficult, sure, but battling Ornstein & Smough is like
10:15 throwing yourself at a brick wall made of death and misery until your mangled body somehow
10:20 slips through the cracks and onto the other side, and can completely and utterly go f***