I think we here at GW focus on the positive side of gaming too much. We never really stop and think back to the time when we broke our controller when we lost an hour long race by only .5 seconds, or when we all threatened to kill our best friends because they kept beating us in our favourite fighting game.

So let's do that now.

What are your worst gaming experiences? They can be anything from just really, really shitty games that you played which were no fun at all, or times when you just went berserk playing a game.


I think my worst moment combined both of the things I just mentioned. It was a really, really bad game and it also pissed me off to no end. That game was Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth. The game which nobody liked. The game which everyone gave a bad review except RPG Advocate (for some odd reason).

Why the game sucked: I forget what the specific genre is called (strategy RPG?), but it was an FFT rip-off.. Which failed miserably. The game appeared to have maybe four or five music tracks in total, terrible ingame tutorials, and no real storyline. Add to this the fact that the game was very cruel and unforgiving. If one of your characters died on a map, that was it.. They were dead. Forever. You could not bring them back. You had to go recruit a new character for some really stupid price. They would also start at LV1 with awful equipment. Then you had to run them through the "Tower of Trials" over and over again just to get them up to a decent level. Also the overworld map was boring as hell.
But on the plus side, the game had some pretty decent art.

Why the game angered me: My favourite characters kept dying. It felt almost impossible not to be able to beat a map without having at least one (or two) characters die, at least. So... By the fifth or sixth map I was lucky to even have any of my original team left! The last map I played I tried continuously to beat. I would level up and buy new equipment, but that did no good since the enemies scaled with you. One day on that horrid map that I could not beat I just lost it. I smacked the Playstation's open button, ripped the game out, stabbed it with scissors and then lit it on fire. Game over.

Your turn!

Yeah Hoshigami sucked hard. When it took me about two hours to go through the FIRST FUCKING MAP, I decided it wasn't worth my time. The SEALS system was annoying and cumbersome and it just wasn't any fun at all.

Since you did that game tho, I'll go with a different one.

You'll probably all disagree with me but

XENOSAGA EPISODE 2

Why it sucked: Everyone knows the Xenosaga's story is overly complicated philosophical mumbo-jumbo with unhealthy doses of pseudo-intellectualism thrown in, but man the bosses pissed me off too. Even some of the later enemies. The entire battle system is based around the Break system, which involves executing specific attacks in a specific order with no break inbetween them. Later bosses REQUIRE you to go through a stupid annoying longwinded process of buffing your party's attacks with whatever element the boss is weak against, building up your Boost meter, and then breaking the enemy, followed by unleashing as many attacks as possible before they recover. Maybe it sounds STRATEGIC, or SATISFYINGLY CHALLENGING, but it really amounted to frustration.

Why it pissed me off: I got through the bulk of the game, and got down to the last area which, in typical RPG fashion, involves multiple boss fights with little time between them. Then I hit Cathedral or something (I forgot the name). I spent about 20 minutes setting up my attack, carefully buffing, building boost, and discovering the boss break order. Then I unleashed hell... and accidentally did a LOW attack when I meant to do a HIGH (LOW/HIGH/SPECIAL is the three types of attacks I think, and each is mapped to a button on the PS2 controller). Blamo. All my time wasted as my character used the wrong attack (there's no confirmation or anything) and my entire delicate house of cards came tumbling down and I was promptly wiped out. The bosses have a tendency of using cheap ass attacks when their health gets lower, or recovering ridiculous amounts of HP, forcing you to defeat them in one turn. I said "fuck this", took the game out of my PS2, and never touched it again.

I think we here at GW focus on the positive side of gaming too much.

Actually I think this is the opposite of the truth because it seems to me that we like to bitch a lot and if you are willing to admit that you like something you'll probably be criticized for being weak-willed and not cynical enough.  But maybe that's just internet culture and I'm that way too so.

My worst gaming experience is with Mortal Kombat Trilogy on PS1 and isn't related to the game itself but the events surrounding it.

MY BAD EXPERIENCE WITH MORTAL KOMBAT TRILOGY:

What happened: My older brother (who was at the time several hundred pounds larger than me) and I played through the single-player on the hardest difficulty which is tough because the AI cheats in Mortal Kombat.  We switched off because it was so frustrating and spent hours doing it.  Eventually we got to the end of the game and we were so proud.  But then came the question of which bonus to pick; if you remember MK Trilogy, after beating it you choose which reward you get.  The rewards were things like game features, secret characters, or watching the ending scene for that character.  You only get to choose one.  My brother and I disagreed on which one to pick; I wanted some feature, and he wanted to see the ending scene.  In a clever move, he punched my arm, giving me a charlie horse, snatched the pad, and chose what he wanted.  Furiously, I hopped up and shut off the Playstation.  I defiantly boasted WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT NOW HUH FATTY???  He went red with rage, charged me, and beat the living shit out of me for like half on hour.

Why it sucked: Well I can't put my finger on it but I'm pretty sure it sucked because I got my ass kicked.

action 52...  $200 for 52 games...  about 20 worked, and none were any good.

serious review though:

Friday the Thirteenth (NES)
An action-adventure/horror game for the NES.  It didn't follow the movie(s) as far as I know, but I've heard it's a hybrid of the first 3, but set in Crystal Lake (wasn't just the first one there?)  There were six counselors 3 guys, 3 girls.  There was 1 fast person, 1 slow as hell person, and an average speed person of each gender, and the only thing that differed was jumping height.  2 of the counselors were useful (Mark and Chrissy, iirc), wheres the rest were wastes of time.  Oh, you also had to stop Jason from killing the 20 kids at the campgrounds, who are located in the isolated houses on the lake.  There's also a cave and a forest.  The forest gives you vitamins (health items, used when your current guy dies, and revives him with about 10 ticks of health), faster than anywhere else, and the cave you fight Jason's Mother for: Day 1 - Machete or Axe (4th and 3th best weapons respectively), Day 2 - Sweater (halves damage done by Jason), Day 3 - Pitchfork(best weapon)
Now enough of the overview

Why the game sucked
When you first start, the only idea you have on what to do is the intro on lighting fireplaces(which nets you the second best weapon on the game), but there are 30 odd houses, and they are confusing to navigate, and I've spent an hour stuck in one once.  The enemies consist of zombies, wolves, crows, and Jason.  Wolves and Crows I can see (It's a campground after all), but why zombies?  Those weren't in the movie.
Also, Jason looks weird, his suit is purple, and his mask is blue.  What the hell?  He's also really fucking hard to kill.  You're standard weapon, the rock takes three hits to remove one tick of his lifebar, and he has 30.  Though he does run off after 10 or so hits.  There are also 3 ways to encounter this murderous bastard.  1: Trail, the easiest to win.  Hit him ~10 times, he'll run away.  2: Cabin fights, 2nd hardest to win, again hit him about 10 times. 3: Swimming encounter - unavoidable, he'll swim through the water as you check on the kids, and cause about 5 ticks of damage (you have 30 also)
To beat the game you have to kill him, not once, not twice, but 3 times.  All without him killing all the kids, or counselors.  If he kills all of either group it's game over.
What pissed me off?!
Jason is fucking impossible to kill, I mean, yeah he's a Psychotic killer, but this is a game, and you are required to kill him. Three times. Plus he gets faster, and does more damage every "day" (days pass when you kill him), plus the fact that you can't get your good stuff (sweater, pitchfork) without sacrificing some children.  And after I did manage to beat it(cheat), the ending screen was not worth the trouble.  I'll find a link to it later.
I did mention Jason is fucking hard.  He comes in 3 varieties(or wields 3 different weapons), when indoors.  1st - He'll punch you to death.  Every punch does about 6 ticks of damage. 2nd(after chasing him off once) - He'll use his trademark machete...  9 ticks for each hit, iirc. 3rd(after chasing him off again) - Axe, 3 or 4 hits and your dead.
I have yet to kill Jason even once without cheating.  Mainly cause my 2 fast people die, and the other 4 are incredibly slow (compare the Scout and Heavies speed from TF2, now have the heavy spin his barrel, and compare speeds...  yeah)

That's probably my worst gaming experience.  Mainly cause I was about 6 or so when I first played it, and back than it was scary.

Ending

Game: Wario's Woods

Why the game sucked: Ok I didn't even play this game but I saw it in Nintendo Power when I was young and it was like the only NES game being covered and I was like OH GOD THE NINTENDO IS DYING

same goes for New Frogger for SNES

I should've been excited about the SNES but for some reason I wasn't - I forget if I really liked the NES in particular or maybe my parents held out on getting an SNES for a while so it was just like NO NEW GAMES EVER - I do remember we rented a Genesis and rented/borrowed a Turbografx-16 so maybe they were hesitant about it - how much was the SNES initially anyway?

So yeah come to think of it is must've been awkward for anyone's parents back then because even though there was Sega Master System it was basically like there's this one box you need and it's the Nintendo - so it must've felt just like a given like VCR PLAYS MOVIES NINTENDO PLAYS GAMES and then these 3 boxes come out and parents everywhere were probably like oh shit we're going to have to do a second mortgage

Edit: Also even though SNES games were classic I think Nintendo Power started sucking as early as the SNES - I vaguely remember the very early NPs felt almost like a comic book or something (well they also had all the different comics like NESTER but I also think everything sort of segued into each other like it was one long gaming comic strip) or maybe it teed me off that the early NPs had less of a format like the article on Final Fantasy might've been 20 pages long and had this MEDIEVAL SCROLL motif to it so it felt less like an article in a magazine and more like EPIC SAGA OF THE GAME

Edit: I had coffee btw

Edit: Also even though SNES games were classic I think Nintendo Power started sucking as early as the SNES - I vaguely remember the very early NPs felt almost like a comic book or something (well they also had all the different comics like NESTER but I also think everything sort of segued into each other like it was one long gaming comic strip) or maybe it teed me off that the early NPs had less of a format like the article on Final Fantasy might've been 20 pages long and had this MEDIEVAL SCROLL motif to it so it felt less like an article in a magazine and more like EPIC SAGA OF THE GAME

Yeah, I remember that and I sort of miss reading Nintendo Power back when it was so cool.  It certainly wasn't game journalism and was more like some sort of clever marketing strategy but reading the magazine was almost as fun as playing the games it was about. 

Edit: I had coffee btw

Awesome man.

WORST GAMING EXPERIENCE:

losing sctfl (soldat capture the flag league, the largest and most active soldat league there is) final twice in a row....

why is that so bad thing? you're keeping up the finnish sports traditions 8-)

I bought Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage for the N64 like 2 years ago and it was total crap. Despite the god-awful graphics and the general "WTF am I suppose to do?!" feeling I got the whole time I played, I did play it for a couple of hours just because I like RPG's. The graphics just plain sucked even with the high-def expansion pack thing that you could buy for the N64, and yes it had an option in-game to use the high-def expansion. Everything blended together and was uber pixelated. The best way to describe the "lost" feeling I had is to say that the world was pretty big, gave vague indication of what to do, took a long-ass time to get to places where you think you're suppose to go, and didn't have any side-quests from what I played (and I looked a lot of places). So you basically had to scour the world looking for one little place that would progress the game for you at all.

Why the game sucked:
Gran Stream Saga (PSX)
I had played the demo; and it was awesome! However, the actual game was as barren as the graphics.
Why the game angered me:
The demo showcased the first real boss, and a peek at the dungeons. It all seemed really cool at the time... however when you step into the real game you're met face-to-face with this boring, pain in the ass game with about as much imagination as a rock. Which is consequencially what the graphics looked like. Being PSX I won't score it too hard on graphics... but this is out when FF7, MGS, and others are kicking... At least they could have -tried-. The battle system was cool and all, but it got really frustrating later on because it was always a struggle. Even random encounters could kick your ass if you didn't put some effort into it. Nothing wrong with challenge, mind you, just killing a random skeleton in the hall shouldn't be this epic battle, methinks. All in all, the game pissed me off because I was expecting so much after that awesome demo, and was let down.
Like being offered Final Fantasy, and being given RPG Maker RTP Alex's Huge Cool Adventure.

i felt like such an idiot for buying eternal sonata late last year.

Why the game sucked:
Gran Stream Saga (PSX)
I had played the demo; and it was awesome! However, the actual game was as barren as the graphics.
Why the game angered me:
The demo showcased the first real boss, and a peek at the dungeons. It all seemed really cool at the time... however when you step into the real game you're met face-to-face with this boring, pain in the ass game with about as much imagination as a rock. Which is consequencially what the graphics looked like. Being PSX I won't score it too hard on graphics... but this is out when FF7, MGS, and others are kicking... At least they could have -tried-. The battle system was cool and all, but it got really frustrating later on because it was always a struggle. Even random encounters could kick your ass if you didn't put some effort into it. Nothing wrong with challenge, mind you, just killing a random skeleton in the hall shouldn't be this epic battle, methinks. All in all, the game pissed me off because I was expecting so much after that awesome demo, and was let down.
Like being offered Final Fantasy, and being given RPG Maker RTP Alex's Huge Cool Adventure.

Man, I often wondered about that game after I played the demo. Guess I'll scratch it off my "old games to check up on" list.

Why the game sucked:
Gran Stream Saga (PSX)
I had played the demo; and it was awesome! However, the actual game was as barren as the graphics.
Why the game angered me:
The demo showcased the first real boss, and a peek at the dungeons. It all seemed really cool at the time... however when you step into the real game you're met face-to-face with this boring, pain in the ass game with about as much imagination as a rock. Which is consequencially what the graphics looked like. Being PSX I won't score it too hard on graphics... but this is out when FF7, MGS, and others are kicking... At least they could have -tried-. The battle system was cool and all, but it got really frustrating later on because it was always a struggle. Even random encounters could kick your ass if you didn't put some effort into it. Nothing wrong with challenge, mind you, just killing a random skeleton in the hall shouldn't be this epic battle, methinks. All in all, the game pissed me off because I was expecting so much after that awesome demo, and was let down.
Like being offered Final Fantasy, and being given RPG Maker RTP Alex's Huge Cool Adventure.

Worst game in the Soul Blazer series by far.

Alundra 2

Why the game sucked
It was just a terrible game overall. The graphics were horrible, primitive polygons with ugly washed out colors; Bubsy 3D would be comparable. The sound and music were bland, and the voice acting was atrocious. The gameplay itself was simple, mindless, and boring. It's like a poor man's Zelda with Down's Syndrome. The story is unremarkable. The entire game isn't even really worth the paragraph I'm giving it.

Why the game angered me
Because the first Alundra was one of the most awesome games I've ever played. Considering that, I thought that the 2nd one would give me a similar experience. Upon learning it was the exact opposite, I wanted to break my disk into pieces.