Windows Getting Stuck Sucks

I've only ever played ONE game where I didn't get stuck, and that was Half-Life. Anyone else notice this? There's those bad-design/stupid-learning-curve bits in every FPS where you just can't figure out where to go next, or how to do a level. With adventure games it's excusable, because it's kinda the whole point, but in action, arena, FPS, racing sims, etc. it's inexcusable.
So I'm wondering, just in case I'm missing any smooth titles - what games DIDN'T you get stuck on?

(p.s. - some people never get stuck on any games, because they're the kind of gamers that complete Splinter Cell without dying once. You're too good to answer this question - please don't mock me!)

 

Heh, HL2 here too. And Halo/Halo 2 (linear, pretty easy really, but still entertaining). It's not so much me getting stuck, as getting bored. It's rare for me to play a game to finish. I normally get bored and move onto the next game.

 

I forgot about halo. I got stuck on PC, but not on xbox - I swear the elites are harder on PC. Maybe it's just me.
I get bored of games all the time, too, especially RPGs! Guh. Oblivion was jaw-dropping for about 20 minutes, then it became "...so, this is it?"

 

I found HL, HL2 and HL2 Ep1 to be just fine for playing through, the only bit I had a problem with was at the end of HL and you needed to destroy the wall mounted crystals to stop the giant baby (can't remember how to spell his proper name) from regenerating and I had to look that one up.

There are some games that make their puzzles just too hard or worse, too obscure and its almost like you need to get the Strategy Guide or vist their website to complete the game. Some of the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games are quite guilty of that as far as I'm concerned.

I reckon F.E.A.R. was just terrific, quite creepy the first time I played it (not so much going back to it) but didn't have any part where I got stuck that I can remember. I gave up on the add on because my then PC didn't have enough horsepower to run it properly and simply haven't got back to it yet. I also enjoyed SIN Episodes and was VERY disappointed that the rest of the series was canned. I thought the assault rifle in that game was one of the best examples of FPS firepower I've seen so far.

I think the problem with Oblivion is that its just so open ended, you can simply wander off and do your own thing and not even bother with the plot. Remember the first time you played Elite? I remember thinking "okay, so what am I supposed to do here other than set up trade routes?" Then I got on board with the notion that that was the whole point, you could go where you wanted, do what you wanted and not be rail-roaded along a pre-determined path and be a trader, a bounty hunter or even a pirate.

I agree about Halo, I thought I was just not very good on the PC version as I kept getting killed by the Elites but on the X-Box at the same difficulty level I could complete the game. I was so disapointed with Halo2 at the time I gave up after a couple of tries and buried myself in HL2 and haven't really looked at my X-Box since.

 

I've only ever got stuck on one game thankfully, it was resident evil zero on game cube, such a bad design, as it allowed you to swap characters as you please, I made teh mistake of taking teh wrong one up a lift, then found it impossible to complete a task.... grrrrr, should have more than one save slot

 

I tend to jump to a walkthrough after I get stuck for ten minutes, many times it's turned out to be a glitch where I was doing the right thing but the game wasn't recognising it.

The only time I've had to work through being stuck was when I played monkey island as a kid, no internet connection back then. Must've taken weeks to complete each game

 

I've heard scary stories about Monkey Island's difficulty.
Some examples I've recalled of stupid stuck-y-ness:

Final Fantasy XII. You're shepherded into a little room with one door. There's a switch on one of the walls somewhere to open the door. But...get this...the switch looks like every other brick in the wall, and it DOESN'T STICK OUT! aaaaaahahaa! Not funny.

Max Payne 2: the end boss was easy, but obscure: the only way to defeat him was to shoot out these little holding pins to make the platform he was standing on fall down. Yes....very obvious. More obvious than, say, shooting him enough times to kill any mortal being twenty times over, right?

Hitman (the original): enough said.

Chaser: features the most badly-designed and disorientating level, ever. You're underwater, navigating a SCUBA rig through identical corridors in a ship, following checkpoints placed ten corners away that you CAN'T SEE UNTIL YOU'RE ON TOP OF THEM. Classic.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Featured a semi-linear, semi-open-ended and quite BIG world; you could go back and forth along the path of progression as much as you liked - the problem was, sometimes it didn't tell you where you had to be next...

TOCA Race Driver 2: the banana car level. Required a pro knowledge of racing sims and car handling, but was only about the 3rd race unlocked in the game. Never got past it.

Did I miss any? I bet I did.

 

I didn't get stuck on "dirt", I hate racing games especially realistic ones, but that game is sooo much fun. I mean it's a racing game and the game gives you a map and even yells at you if you go the wrong way. Any game you can drive pimped out garbage trucks (yah) in hill climb events is a winner to me.

I got stuck on all the half life games on my play throughs, not huge, having to look through guides type stuck, but I had to look around for a few minutes to find the door or switch or whatever to continue.

the only thing that frustrates me is getting stuck on games due to difficulty, aka my play through of GH2 on expert, although I beat it 2 days ago and only got stock on 3 songs (darn you hangar 18, freebird solo, and crazy on you intro) that has made me put several games down never to pick them up again

 

I wouldn't call having to look round for a couple of minutes "getting stuck", I'd say that was part of the game when you have to figure out what to do next and it does sometimes take a bit of lateral thinking.
Some of the puzzles in Grim Fandango were just too obscure for me, they were what I'd call really geting stuck - especially the frozen vomit to defuse the bomb. I would never have completed the game without the Strategy Guide.

 

In retrospect, getting stuck because of difficulty is the worst kind - lateral thinking (a la H-L2) can mellow the pace of a game out a bit. Ninja Gaiden sucked for getting stuck, the difficulty gradient was stupid. The game wasn't hard overall, but the worst boss in the game happened to be the first one you face >.<

 

Anyone that says they havent gotten stuck once is obviously a liar! We've all done it! I find the worse thing is when you get stuck spend parhaps hours trying to solve it, give up, go back the next day and do it first time. Grrrr

 

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. The level with the fuel switches. Grrrr. For the longest time I didn't know if I was turning the switches on or off.

 

I hate puzzles like that, but generally I like to get stuck and slowed down for a few minutes

 

I didn't think the fuel switches were too bad, I couldn't get them to work at all at first but that was down to the fact that Lando hadn't told me to activate them yet so I think I was ahead of the game script at that point.
I thought the communication codes for Rogue Squadron were a bit tricky but the most irritaing part of that game were those so**ing snipers with the disruptor guns. That reeeeeally annoyed the hell out of me when you were sneaking about trying to get to the top of the level with the garbage barges and you and you suddenly got zapped by one from out of nowhere.

 

I remember the first game I got stuck on (Martello Towers on the BBC) had a number puzzle in it that I came back to with an emulator and spent three days trying to crack with some friends.

The game that got me the worst though was Monkey Island 1, which I got stuck on for about 4 years. I fell for the stump joke, saved, and got convinced that there really was another level in there that I had to get to. When it kept asking for non-existant disks, I got confused, thought it was a puzzle and kept trying to solve it by coming back with different items and at different times. I was only about 6 or 7 at the time though..

 

I love that game! I still have the original disc on my BBC. Screw emulators.

 

OYG

I love that game too, though the puzzle with the guard and the triangular hat always used to stop me. The puzzle that really stumped me though was the mystic rose (IIRC). Couldn't solve it, but maths was never my strong point.

We had the game in primary school. When the school closed (after I was in secondary) I broke in before they could turn the buildings into flats. I used to spend my time revising in the classroom there for my GCSEs and ASs, even though it was all boarded up and dilapidated. I used to look at the old BBC there were some of the most fond memories of my life, recalling how we tried to get a perfect team of players together to play the game - one guy good at maths, one guys good at charming the teachers to let us play it at break, me to press the buttons and one guys to write everything down.

I did plan to actually steal the old BBC since they were going to knock the buildings down, but by the time I got that far the security guards were on to me and used to call the police. All I got was a graphics tablet

 

That was the game that really got me into maths and programming, programmed a mystic rose solver with a graphical display on the BBCs at school.

 

Oh yeah! I just remembed the game I'm stuck on. Freaking Rogue Squadron on Gamecube. The last level is so ridiculous. The Millennium Falcon ALWAYS gets blown up no matter what I do.

 

I'm going with Prey as the game I got the most stuck on. Never because of dying, because, lets be fair. You can't, although some of the puzzles were pretty taxing on the mind (or maybe i'm just a wee bit simple).

Monkey Island games have always had they're fair share of puzzles to work out, and some of them you'd never think of ususally, but it's one of those games, where you just have to keep playing, because you want to know what happens next.