Games are all suppoed to be about fun, right? But all too often, some designer throws in an incredibly dull/tiresome/frustrating task that makes you wonder if they are either crazy for thinking people could ever enjoy doing it, or bitter, twisted people wanting to make our lives a misery. I've just experienced another of these situations and thought it worth a thread, to list these evils and try to fathom why they happen.
In Final Fantasy X, to get the Celestial Weapon for Lulu, you need to dodge Lightning bolts in the plain of thunder. Bolts happen every few seconds or so if you stand still, much more rarely if you move around. They're preceeded with a screen flash and you dodge them by pressing X. Some bright spark decided gamers would enjoy getting the Celestia weapon by dodging a number of these consecutively. They decided 200 bolts was the optimum number. That's like 10 to 15 minutes, standing on the spot pressing the X button after a flash. You can't save your progress part way through. If you fail just once, you have to start from scratch. I found an ideal position where the bolts were regular, happening in twos, giving me time to blink while staring at the same screen for 15 minutes. And guess what? Yep, I got to 146...and *zap* all that effort down the drain (I put on a CD to pass the time). Who the hell thought that would be fun?! Why?! Why do they do this to us?!
So whether it RPGs where you need to slog away to level up to use a certain item, or RTS's where you totally outclass the enemy and there's no way you can lose, but you still have to spend two hours hunting down and killing every unit before they let you finish the level, or action games with next-to impossible missions where it takes 1000 attempts to get it right (Driver 2...), or puzzles so complex and repetive no-one can complete them before going insanes, what are your worst-chore experiences?
In Final Fantasy X, to get the Celestial Weapon for Lulu, you need to dodge Lightning bolts in the plain of thunder. Bolts happen every few seconds or so if you stand still, much more rarely if you move around. They're preceeded with a screen flash and you dodge them by pressing X. Some bright spark decided gamers would enjoy getting the Celestia weapon by dodging a number of these consecutively. They decided 200 bolts was the optimum number. That's like 10 to 15 minutes, standing on the spot pressing the X button after a flash. You can't save your progress part way through. If you fail just once, you have to start from scratch. I found an ideal position where the bolts were regular, happening in twos, giving me time to blink while staring at the same screen for 15 minutes. And guess what? Yep, I got to 146...and *zap* all that effort down the drain (I put on a CD to pass the time). Who the hell thought that would be fun?! Why?! Why do they do this to us?!
So whether it RPGs where you need to slog away to level up to use a certain item, or RTS's where you totally outclass the enemy and there's no way you can lose, but you still have to spend two hours hunting down and killing every unit before they let you finish the level, or action games with next-to impossible missions where it takes 1000 attempts to get it right (Driver 2...), or puzzles so complex and repetive no-one can complete them before going insanes, what are your worst-chore experiences?
..basically turns the game into a totally different genre..
Silly amount of attempts though. I have a friend who bought a PS to play Driver he loved it so much, and gave up on Driver 2 it was so hard.
