We love video games, but let's be real: sometimes they're just annoying. For this week's Big Question, TheGamer's editors are not-so-fondly reminiscing about the times games have made them furious, from annoying escort missions to cheesy bosses. It's healthy to vent occasionally, so let's get mad together.
Grand Theft Auto 4
Andy Kelly, Features Editor
GTA 4 is the best GTA, but some of the later missions are rough. I can't remember its name, but there's one in Alderney where you have to fight through a dark, gangster-filled warehouse with mobster Phil Bell in tow. Sounds simple enough, but the escort AI in this game is abysmal. I lost count of how many times I failed the mission because stupid, useless Phil had gotten himself killed off-screen. It sucked because I had no control over it. He'd just die suddenly in the middle of a firefight, and I'd have to drive all the way back to the mission each time and try again. I don't think I've ever swore more at a video game.
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part II
Andrew King, Evergreen Editor
This is a recent example, but The Dark Lord from Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part II is one of the most frustrating final boss fights I can remember. Basically, it's a heavily armored, extra difficult, big boy version of the Marauder, that controversial baddie that id introduced in the base game. If you don't recall, the Marauder is more like a Souls enemy than a traditional Doom demon. It can blast you with a shotgun if you get close, throw energy axes at you if you stand too far away, and send phantom hounds on your heels if you try to run. Taking it on requires finding a Goldilocks zone where you're just near enough, then keeping a close watch for the moment its eyes flash — your cue to hit it with the Super Shotgun. The Marauder is first introduced as a boss, but soon after, it's getting thrown into the fray with the rest of hell's armies, just one more monster to manage.
I can go either way, depending on the day, but I generally don't mind the basic Marauder because it provides an interesting change of pace from the rest of the game. But The Dark Lord fight is so tedious that it almost makes me reconsider. For one, you have to defeat it in five consecutive phases. Two, if it lands a single hit on you it recharges its health bar to where it was at the beginning of that phase. So, you can't just slowly chip away at it over the course of a fight, picking up health when you can. Instead, the Dark Lord requires perfect execution from the beginning to the end of each phase. It's a deeply irritating way to end an expansion that is otherwise pretty good.
Cuphead
Stacey Henley, Editor-in-Chief
Despite being a games journalist, I could in fact beat the tutorial of Cuphead. Eventually, after a lot of broken controllers, sweat, and tears (so many tears) I beat the entire game, but not without a lot of dying. The worst part of Cuphead wasn’t the difficulty (we knew that going in), nor the flying missions (there was an art to zipping in and out), but the nonsensical spikes along the way. That damn dragon was harder than the seven bosses who followed it, and while that was eventually a relief, it didn’t stop the dragon from being the most annoying thing I’ve ever encountered in a video game.
Resident Evil 6
James Troughton, News / Photo Editor
I got into Resident Evil during the first UK lockdown, playing 2’s remake, then diving back to 1, 0, and 4. All the while, my friend - a certified Resident Evil fanatic - was introducing me to the co-op games with 5 and 6. The former was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a co-op game, punching boulders and farming eggs, but I felt every second pass in the latter. The guns are weightless, the controls feel like you're trying to drive a car while sitting backwards, and the enemies are responseless sponges that aren’t at all satisfying to take down. Ammo is scarce, bosses are drawn out, and the set pieces feel like watered down Michael Bay movies. But we persevered, tackling every campaign, and believe me, I felt every waking moment. We went from bantering about how bad it was to noticeable exhaustion. No game has ever sucked the life out of me quite like Resident Evil 6.
Yakuza 4
Joshua Robertson, News Editor
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the early Yakuza games. I love them for their stories and goofy side quests, but hate them for their boss fights. Yakuza 4 is particularly frustrating, mainly because the game gives you four different characters with unique combat styles and asks you to “git gud” at all of them or suffer.
Tanimura’s combat style that focuses on grappling enemies one by one was my least favorite and would ultimately be my downfall. His final boss fight has you up against Munakata, a weedy police commissioner whose only tactic is to throw a dozen heavily armored goons at you while he shoots you from a distance and runs away when you get close. Whenever he successfully hits you, he laughs while you struggle to get up. I still haven’t finished Yakuza 4.
Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Justin Reeve, News Editor
I’m going to come right out and say that while I was deeply annoyed by them, I really liked both Xenoblade Chronicles and the more recent Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The problem is just that I’m a completionist. This of course means that I have to do absolutely everything in the games that I play and these two had way, way too much stuff to do. This wouldn’t be so bad if most of what they had me doing was meaningful, but I wound up spending far too much time on pointless fetch quests for characters that I had no real reason to even care about. I spent a solid 350 hours between the two of them and I enjoyed every minute, but the going was incredibly tedious at times.
Any Quest NPC That Requires You To Follow Them
Helen Ashcroft, Evergreen Editor
Yes I could narrow this down, but no I won’t do so. This is quite simply because I cannot recall a single follow quest that has not made me swear at the NPC involved. They either walk at a snail’s pace so you are jumping around asking them to hurry up, or they enjoy walking at a steady speed that is unrelated to any events around them. This usually means they’ll wander off while you are fighting mobs trying to kill them forcing you to locate them after the fightr or worse, you’ll fail the quest because they are too far away.
This irritation includes any character you have to rescue as well. Quest NPCs are notorious for putting themselves in danger, making situations worse, and never, ever going at a comfortable pace. I hate them all.
Magic: The Gathering
Joe Parlock, TCG Specialist
I love Magic The Gathering, especially the Commander format. What I don’t especially love sometimes are the other people who play it. I almost never shout, am almost pathologically conflict-averse, and will cry at the first sign of even a remote disagreement. So the one time I flat-out shouted at someone to “either shut the fuck up or leave” still makes my chest pound a good year or so after it happened. The player was one of those players. A true ‘Every card you play is wrong. Why are you playing X when you could play Y? I need to explain how your own cards work to you’ type player, except they also didn’t really know how to play the game. They were enraged that their deck based on combat couldn’t get through my deck entirely based on stopping people from attacking me, and they didn’t have any answers to what I was doing. After two hours of them sighing, calling my deck ‘bullshit’, and saying I ‘wasn’t really playing Magic’, I snapped and shouted. They were ruining everyone’s fun with their awful attitude, and sometimes you just need to shut someone down with a short, sharp shock. Since that game I’ve learned to stop playing with random strangers, and only play with friends who know how to communicate like adults. It’s been a hell of a lot better.
Modern Warfare 2
Jade King, Lead Features Editor
I feel like this entry is cheating somewhat, because my frustration with Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t stem from the game itself, but the circumstances in which I was trying to play it. I grew up in a field in Wales, meaning that our internet was painfully slow and made possible by a collection of discordant wires and power lines spread across a sequence of hedges. We’d often lose access for weeks at a time, which meant growing up as a gamer when digital games and online multiplayer had become increasingly common was far from easy. Modern Warfare 2 was huge when I was in secondary school. Almost every day after school I’d log in to play alongside friends as we grinded challenges or filled private lobbies to engage in custom deathmatches. It was a magical time for the series, but my spotty Welsh internet meant that connection problems and the omnipresent evil of lag was impossible to avoid. I’m not an angry person, but when a gamer girl is stopped from earning killstreaks because of endless rain and a mediocre internet provider, then I get mad.
Tekken 5
Lu-Hai Liang, News Editor
Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag were some of my favourites games on the PS1 and PS2, respectively. But as we moved into the HD era, this classic Namco series seemed to fall by the wayside a little, slipping out of the line-up of games you simply must have. I picked up Tekken 5 on the PS3 on a whim. I found it enjoyable going through the story/arcade mode once again. That is until I encountered the final boss: Jinpachi Mishima. This overpowered 100-year-old, once he transforms into his demon form, was super annoying and unplayable. He shot fireballs from his stomach over and over and over again. These fireballs were unblockable and inflicted terrible damage. Overcoming this patriarch of the Mishima clan was such a joyless grind that meant endless restarts, and I had to do it with every character. Total arsehole.