Share your moments when Games are too smart for you.. (Spoilers?)

[rk47]

Gears of War PC Version
I like it, it's a very shiny 3D Contra-like game. I don't like the quiet and night parts (where's night vision when you need one). But I had a cockblock that made me think I'm just not as smart as I was before in gaming. I spent around 3 game session trying to beat it, but I couldn't. My pride wouldn't let me ask or check a game guide.

So here it is:
Gears of Wars :Angry Titan
My dude and his partner went to this giant cave. When suddenly one spider like creature just dropped down on us. They call it a corpser, something like a giant spider. I gave it five good tries in my last session before I gave up. Here's how it goes:
1st attempt: Squished by a claw. Nothing much learned. 
2nd attempt: Learned dodging! See...when the claw goes up...I just double tap like crazy.  Nyah Nyah....Hmm Maybe if I snipe....Splat..ow. 
3rd attempt: OK. I got the dodging down pat, now I'm shooting at him like crazy. Lemme grab that ammo to the left. Splat. 
4th attempt: Hmmm I noticed when I hit his stomach, he sounds like he's in pain.  Imma kill him. Full auto on the stomach!!! Splat. Fuck.
5th attempt: OK Dodge. Snipe stomach. Dodge. Snipe Stomach. I got this. I fucking got this. Clack clack. Outta ammo. Switch to autorifle. Clack clack. Pistol. Clack clack. Grenade. ....Nothing left. By now, my AI team mate said: "There must be some way to kill him!" no shit, Sherlock.    I gave up. Went to gamefaqs....oh cool. so you hit his stomach. THEN hit his mouth while he's screaming in pain. GEEEZ  gamez too smart for me nowdays 

[schild]

Shit that smiley structure is killing me.

[Sky]

GoW has console-style boss battle nonsense? Fugdatsit.

[rk47]

if anything it's a script-shooter genre just like Call of Duty. You enter an area. Battle theme plays, enemy troops start appearing from every openings, you duck into cover grind them down one by one any way you like. Then as you kill the last guy, the music dies down. Proceed.

[stray]

GoW has console-style boss battle nonsense? Fugdatsit.

What's wrong with boss battles? That's the essense of gaming right there, yo!


[edit] Would use a less corny word than "essense", but can't think of one.

[edit] Oh, and for the record, I haven't been stumped in a game since I was a kid. I think. Although Ninja Gaiden almost fooled me once. Almost.

[Riggswolfe]

I occasionally get stumped, but I think I've learned most of the tricks Devs use. For instance in that GoW battle, I figured it out fairly quickly because well, his reactions seemed to give me that opening.

[murdoc]

I get stumped by games all the time, but I'm not very smart.

Also, complaining that console games having console-style boss battles is retarded.

[Wolf]

[edit] Oh, and for the record, I haven't been stumped in a game since I was a kid. I think. Although Ninja Gaiden almost fooled me once. Almost.

Dude, Ninja Gaiden kicked my ass all the time. Not in the "Can't figure out how to do it" way, but more in the "DUDE I SUCK AT THIS THING I JUST GOT MYSELF KILLED FOR THE 25th TIME ON THIS FIGHT". I suck at consoles :(

[schild]

Some puzzles just "don't work" in my brain.

It's like, "whuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?" And then, somehow, I get some brutal puzzles nearly immediately. I think it's just a matter of where my brain is that day.

[Sky]

Also, complaining that console games having console-style boss battles is retarded.

Unless it's on a PC. And made by a PC developer.

Bad mojo ahead. Also, I wasn't really complaining so much as glad to hear it so I can get off the fence on this title. I don't buy games that I don't like :P I don't know that it's a game outsmarting you, though.

I'm like Wolf, I don't find it fun to sit and repeat the same battle ad nauseum until I figure out the 'trick' that lets me win. Give me a Crysis, where I want to repeat the same battle because I can 'win' in numerous ways, each one creative, driven by the player and interesting. I guess it's an emergent gameplay vs scripted gameplay thing?

[stray]

Finding out the trick IS gameplay, as far as I'm concerned. I don't have any idea what else gaming could be other than that.

[murdoc]

Also, complaining that console games having console-style boss battles is retarded.

Unless it's on a PC. And made by a PC developer.

Bad mojo ahead. Also, I wasn't really complaining so much as glad to hear it so I can get off the fence on this title. I don't buy games that I don't like :P I don't know that it's a game outsmarting you, though.

I'm still trying to figure if you called me stupid or not, so you can see why games stump me.

There's a whole thread saying how Gears is a better console game than it ever will be as a PC game. I'm not sure how the desciption of one 'Boss Battle' would have changed that. It was made for a console and it shows. It's a port to a PC and was definitely not designed with that platform in mind. I'm not sure why you made a comment about not buying games you don't like, I would think most people try to do that...? 

[ajax34i]

Been stumped by Riven (gave up, didn't finish), Phantasmagoria's demon fight sequence, and like half an hour into whatever that game was that was its sequel.  On the other hand, got to the end of all the other Myst (single player) games w/o needing manuals.  Oh yeah, stumped by Zul'Aman's second boss, gave up after trying 5 times to figure out how to not die (we didn't read spoilers), then I left guild and stopped playing due to unrelated reasons, and so haven't had a chance to try again.

[geldonyetich2]

Sometimes it's not that the game is too smart for me so much as the game is too dumb for me.  The developers didn't intend it to be difficult but were too lazy to make what was supposed to be done next clear.  That Gears of War example sounds like one of those cases to me: when players are exhausting all their ammo doing something that seems to be making a dent but in fact were only setting up the conditions that make a dent.

That said, when I'm stumped and it's a deliberate design thing, I get psyched.  Here's a game that's actually trying to challenge me for a change.  Zelda and Phoenix Wright games do this a lot, and I tend to only reach for the hint book if I'm unable to solve it after screwing around with it for a day or so.  I think that perhaps this bit of masochism brings me a bit closer to appreciating the game itself.

[Rasix]

Sometime my brain just isn't working on the same wave length as the designer.  Thank god for Gamefaqs.   I don't like hammering away at something for 2+ hours if I'm just not connecting with how a puzzle or battle is meant to be solved.  Gamefaqs can at least get me going in the right direction.  Shadow of the Colossus had me stumped on one or two of the fights.  I found the battles more fun than scratching my head figuring out how I was going to grab onto this hairy creature's back.

Games lately tend to have poor documentation and the insistence of some RPGs to continue not having journals can also lead a person to wonder what the hell they supposed to be doing/what they've completed. 

An unfortunate side effect of being red/green color blind is a general difficulty with seeing visual patterns.  This can manifest itself in a number of ways, but it really makes me incredibly poor at pixel hunting.  Old school LucasArts style adventure games were near impossibilities for me. 

[rk47]

If you think LucasArts game were bad...Sierra was worse. I don't mind getting stumped in adventure games, really. It's all about puzzles isn' it.
But when they start punishing you for not being hardcore enough in Sierra...."Save early, Save often" is the motto. Without item X, you CAN still progress but when you hit a certain point LATE game where missing item X would equal death and they are not kind enough to give you other options either. 

[Phildo]

How about the stuff in the old Sierra games where you had to leaf through the instruction manual to find hidden codes?  Damn you, Space Quest!

[geldonyetich2]

You can blame software pirates for that one.

[Kail]

How about the stuff in the old Sierra games where you had to leaf through the instruction manual to find hidden codes?  Damn you, Space Quest!

Or the motherfucking "Space Quest Collection", where they packed all the games onto one CD, but forgot that you need the manuals to get past the copy protection, so they didn't include all of them.  RAAAARGH!!!

[Phildo]

Haha, actually they added .txt files with all of the necessary info.  You just need to alt-tab out of them game to find them.

[Kail]

Haha, actually they added .txt files with all of the necessary info.  You just need to alt-tab out of them game to find them.

Really?  I tried that, and couldn't find them.  I found some PDF file which had the manual for the old Space Quest Collection (which only had SQ 1-5) plus one of the manuals for SQ 6, but not the one with the copy protection.  It just seemed unfathomably stupid.  Particularly because it wasn't obvious copy protection; it was just that one of the solutions to one of the puzzles (about an hour into the game) was based off a puzzle given in the manual.  If you had the manual, you could see the whole "How to turn your Datacorder into a Homing Beacon" article and guess that it would maybe be important when the only item in your inventory was a Datacorder, but if you didn't have the manual, there was no indication that you were supposed to be looking anywhere outside the game for the solution.

Yeah, checking back through the CD, I still can't find it...

[Phildo]

Sorry, I meant the PDFs.  I haven't played it in a while.  They should have everything you need in those.  Maybe?

[rk47]

Haha, actually they added .txt files with all of the necessary info.  You just need to alt-tab out of them game to find them.

Really?  I tried that, and couldn't find them.  I found some PDF file which had the manual for the old Space Quest Collection (which only had SQ 1-5) plus one of the manuals for SQ 6, but not the one with the copy protection.  It just seemed unfathomably stupid.  Particularly because it wasn't obvious copy protection; it was just that one of the solutions to one of the puzzles (about an hour into the game) was based off a puzzle given in the manual.  If you had the manual, you could see the whole "How to turn your Datacorder into a Homing Beacon" article and guess that it would maybe be important when the only item in your inventory was a Datacorder, but if you didn't have the manual, there was no indication that you were supposed to be looking anywhere outside the game for the solution.

Yeah, checking back through the CD, I still can't find it...

what the fuck? it was a copy protection? I did a brute force puzzle solving ala Legend of Kyrandia (fuck u westwood) 'here's 20 colours, now find a pattern' style. I succeeded too! But after using the beacon the game just crashes on me and said 'OOPS YOU DID SOMETHING WE DIDN'T EXPECTED' and that was the end of it.

[Fordel]

The Actual puzzles they put into games almost always seem to stump me. Such as those KoToR number sequence puzzles, or those damn coloured rings on the pillars. I'm just not very good at them, and it's a frustrating break in my game play. I'll give them a few tries, but I am off to the spoiler sites pretty quick.


I also always seem to do things 'wrong' in games. I'll miss an obvious item/door/npc somehow, then end up reconstructing a quest backwards. I'll break into the dungeon, save the princess, then on my way back I find the quest to give me a map to the dungeon I already uncovered and once back in town I find the quest to rescue the princess that I already saved.   

[Tebonas]

In a game I would likely hate that to happen, but right now I smile at the idea of the people in town telling me "We would have paid a fortune to rescue the princess, but some sucker already did it for free." Well, I wouldn't put that beyond The Witcher! I'm not done yet 

I got routinely stumped in old Adventures, Discworld was the worst I think.

[rk47]

someone here finally mentioned math quest in KOTOR..yeah fuck that shit I really have no idea why the developers think it's a great idea to put math puzzle in RPG, that just screams 'lazy content'. It's like they browsed the interweb for some obscure IQ test and copy + pasted it over on their game.

[murdoc]

Without item X, you CAN still progress but when you hit a certain point LATE game where missing item X would equal death and they are not kind enough to give you other options either. 

Kings Quest III hooped me on this BAD. You could get to almost the very end of the game without creating a spell at the very beginning of the game, and if you didn't make that spell, or already used it... RESTART.

[Sky]

someone here finally mentioned math quest in KOTOR..yeah fuck that shit I really have no idea why the developers think it's a great idea to put math puzzle in RPG, that just screams 'lazy content'. It's like they browsed the interweb for some obscure IQ test and copy + pasted it over on their game.

Heh. My favorite part of KotOR.

[Yegolev]

In the "old days" the boss' mouth would have been a more obvious target.  With a spastic flashing or something.

I actually have quite a few of these moments, but I'd rather not rehash them.  I actually pretty bad at games.

[Morat20]

someone here finally mentioned math quest in KOTOR..yeah fuck that shit I really have no idea why the developers think it's a great idea to put math puzzle in RPG, that just screams 'lazy content'. It's like they browsed the interweb for some obscure IQ test and copy + pasted it over on their game.

At least some of the KOTOR2 puzzle quests would auto-solve if your character had a high enough intellect. :)