mhg83

I've been re-playing Jak 2 from the HD collection. Although fun for the first few hours it started to bring back rage inducing moments back when I first played it on PS2.

I don't mind hard or challenging games. One of my favorite xbla games is Super Meat Boy. But Jak 2 feels like the difficulty was made after poor level designs, a broken checkpoint system, bad camera, and endless respawning enemies it's an unfair difficulty. There are times when I wonder if the developers were high when making some of the levels

What are some other games you've played that had poor programming?

Rob V

Empire Strikes Back on the Atari

Michael Corvin

El Shaddai: There is a platforming level late in the game that is rather abstract with nothing but a bottomless pit/sky below you. The jumping isn't particularly good in the game to begin with but navigating this level without a shadow (no ground) to help guide your jump is aggravating to no end.

I gave the level a couple dozen tries and gave up and sold the game. It just wasn't worth it.

Kedrix

The original Hydlide on NES. Hard, unforgiving game that was just poorly made and a pain in the ass to play. I will always remember that game for that reason alone.

RichC2

I remember trying to figure that out on Flashback, for years I only ever played the first stage and just figured the game impossible (I was a kid). Then I went back one boring night in college and played it from beginning to end.

Yeah that was just a hard game.

Michael Corvin

I remember playing Hydlide all the way through but not much else about it. I think I still have it MIB around here somewhere.

Going back that far, the original Ninja Gaiden. Leading up to the final boss wasn't that bad, but he was a bitch and the fact the game sent you back three levels was cheap ass bullshit. Made it to the boss dozens of times but never finished.

K&AJones

Brink...great concept but just insane AI

msdmoney

I'm was just playing the original Sly Cooper for the first time as part of the HD collection and I was experiencing the same frustrations. It probably isn't considered that hard of a game but I definitely had some moments where I wanted to throw the controller due to the checkpoint system and one shot deaths.

The main thing for me is that a game respects my time, and I've found a lot of games, especially in the later stages equate difficultly to punishment by just increasing the length between checkpoints. Sly did this with a final boss where there was three forms with a platforming section at the end, get hit once or fall because of camera difficulty and you return to the beginning. I don't mind if a game is hard, I'm playing Hotline Miami and I've played games like N+ that are difficult to master but don't set you far back in terms of progress. I find it much more frustrating when I have to repeat ten minutes of a game to return to the one difficult part.

Barth

I think I've mentioned this before but, Battletoads on NES. Loved the game right till the "jetski" level. Couldn't get past it after many, many hours and gave up. While the game was plenty difficult to that point that level took me out. To me that's bad level design.

Rival11

So funny seeing this thread as I have been playing GTA: San Andreas for the first time (started about a month ago) I am finally at the last mission and all I can say is this is the most frustrating fucking game I have ever played in my life...even worse than ghost goblins and ninja gaiden (yep, I mean it).

I could literally go and on about how fucking shitty the controls are and how far Rockstar goes to cheap you in this shitfest.

Oh and I am a Rockstar fanboy by the way. I am putting myself through this misery because I've never beat an old GTA before.

With all that said....it's also one of the greatest games ever made as well - they even had alternate cut-scenes in the game (i.e. if you didn't have your swimming skill up for a swimming mission you would receive a different cut scene - after the cut scene you would be notified that you need to practice swimming more).

There are some awesome characters as well - C.J. (who you play) actually shows signs of fear and James Woods and Samuel L. Jackson are exceptional in their roles as well. "The Truth" was unbearable though - so annoying.

San Andreas is huge and I couldn't believe the level of detail they were pulling off back then as well (they even still beat some games today on the current gen consoles).

But, again, the missions are fucking horrid - I didn't like one of them and there are a ton in this game. I don't mind a challenge but this game could have used a difficulty setting ot something.

mhg83

The worst mission i remember playing was the one where you have to fly an RC Helicopter around. I think it had to do with dropping bombs at certain spots in a short amount of time. Took me hours to finish. The last mission i played before giving up was passing the Airplane license tests in the desert. Was pretty pissed cause i was getting closer to the Vegas part.

Rival11

The RC mission is avoidable - that is a mission for "Zero" (Z on the map) you can completely skip all of his missions - I know this because after being beyond frustrated with the game I went online to see what you would be allowed to skip.

I never cheated once though - definitely tyring to see if I can beat it straight up.

Yeah, the "learning to fly" series is horrible. What pisses you off even more is that after you are done with it....the rest of the flying stuff is easy - only that plane you use in the lessons is the shittiest.

Vegas was a bit of a let down (not in the graphic detail department...that's all great) - the missions don't make much sense there and only one series has anything to do with parts later on in the game.

devilshalo

COD:WaW... never-ending fucking grenades and an AI team that runs past enemies.

TheKing

I think all of the GTA games have been disappointing when it comes to the final area you unlock. GTA III's final island was pretty lame. I think in Vice City they did a better job with it as you unlock the entire map pretty early in that game. In GTA IV, the final island again sucks, and you don't really do too much there at all.

In San Andreas, they give you so much to do in the first two cities and almost all of the surrounding areas, that by the time you get to Las Venturas, there's just not much left to do. You don't even finish the game there, you go back to Los Santos! And really, all the cool stuff is done outside of Vegas anyway (the airport, Area 51, getting the jetpack, etc.)

DRG

Yeah, this has always been a pet peeve of mine about this series. Las Venturas was pretty underwhelming, especially considering all the Vegas-inspired stuff they could have pulled off in a GTA setting. The city just didn't feel 'alive'. I understand some of that was due to the technical limitations of the last gen systems, but still I found it the least exciting of the three cities. Dead Rising 2's Vegas sandbox setting felt more alive, and almost everyone was dead.

vballboy51

agreed on this one. i enjoyed the game, but playing it on hard was a waste of time.

dugan

Was surprised at how clunky the controls for Castlevania: Rondo of Blood were.

vballboy51

i refer to that one as CoD:World of Grenades....glad i'm not the only one who felt that way

fujishig

Are we talking about level design or poor controls (or bad camera angles)? Because there are a ton of games where poor controls ruin the game, including most games that force motion or gimmicky controls. Lair was so much more playable after the patch allowed you to use the sticks to control everything. And Steel Battalion Heavy Armor for the Kinect has to be one of the worst games ever when it comes to difficulty and horrid control scheme.

starseed1981

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. The game features a mission based structure with no level checkpoints. You can literally play for hours, die, and have no progress to show for your efforts. Also, later in the game there are a couple of missions that they add a timer to the levels. Argh! I haven't had a love / hate affair with a game like this since Demon's Souls.

atrium

Er... Really?

This might be a singular case in that you had trouble wrapping your head around the mechanics, but I never knew San Andreas to be a notoriously difficult game. Yes some of the missions were very tough (the RC mission mentioned earlier, though it was patched a couple months after so you in all likelihood played the patched version), but imo it was pretty well balanced

GTA 3 was a much more difficult game in that the missions are more challenging and the mechanics more simplified and frustrating

mhg83

They patched ps2 games? How did they do that?

darkside

I stopped playing this one for this reason. I don't have much time to play games anymore and I refuse to spend an hour on something just to have it wasted when I die and no progress is saved. I also got quickly annoyed with the shifting dimensions platforming of Guacamelle and deleted that one off my Vita. Guacamelle I think is on me and just not being good enough at playing it, but the way Luigi's Mansion is set up is just poor design.

ultimaton

Add a third to the list of people giving up on Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon because of the lack of any sensible checkpoints. The boss of the fourth mansion had me wanting to throw my 3DS across the room. Awful, awful, awful.

Matthew Chmiel

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I'll second the RC helicopter missions in GTA:VC and GTA:SA.