Video games hold a bizarre sway over our emotions. Flame wars build up our rage like nothing else, horror games take most people half way toward crapping themselves and many share the collective excitement of digitally capping their friends in the ass. Games also have the power to irritate and annoy beyond our wildest nightmares. Whether it is by design flaw or intention, here are ten moments that really grind our proverbial gears.
10. “Too secret” secrets
We are used to following objectives in our gaming lives. Kill the evil king you say? No problem. Score a million points? Child’s play. It is thus that we are thrown and frustrated by those hidden objectives we have to discover for ourselves. Seriously, who the hell decided secret achievements were a good idea? The worst offenders of this particular atrocity are games with secret endings that practically require an FAQ for you to uncover. Valkyrie Profile, I’m looking at you…
9. The final dungeon
This is more of a genre specific frustration I reserve for RPGs, but there are many other titles that fall foul of “the final level.” So having gone through your long long quest or campaign and exhausted all the plot the game has to offer, you’re put into the final dungeon where you need to finish the game’s antagonist once and for all. The problem is that, without the incentive of any more story, the final level’s needless length and difficulty means you just have to suffer through it to reach the end. I’ve taken many JRPG’s through to their final level only to give up short of the conclusion in anguish. Sort it out developers.
8. The death of a character
Despite being one of my favourite games, FF7 does fall foul of many of these frustrations
You finally get that really cool looking guy from the trailer on your party and, in your excitement, you load him up with all your best gear and level him up like a speed-riddled succubus. Then, in a cruel twist of fate, he dies in a story scripted event; never to return. Some games are merciful enough to return the character’s gear to you, or immediately replace him with another fighter of a similar level, but the pain never goes away. Neither does the frustration.
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