Most bullshit level/mission in a game

[Vendetta]

Nemesis from above, in the Arena. Let's make a boss who can only be defeated by spamming Quick Hit for max damage with Haste!

Guess you never saw Penance either then. Twelve million hitpoints, and damages that range from 26000 to 99999, even with your characters' defence at absolute maximum, and he'll automatically stone/shatter you if you try to use Auto-Life.

Just getting set up to fight him will take you hundreds of hours of nothing but grinding round the sphere grid, getting money to pay bribes to get the right equipment synthed onto armour, and generally wasting days of your existence you simply won't be getting back.

At least Trema in X-2, though he'll do reasonably equivalent damages and is stupid fast, only has a million HP... (Plus, y'know, he's this wizened little old guy. Someone at Square found out about Rule #1.)

[Lazarus]

I remember a level in Jedi Knight 2 where the only way to proceed at one point was to go through a grate, on the upper side of a wall when you turn a corner, so its almost invisible. I was wandering around that level for about 4 weeks, gave up, and only found it thanks to a walkthrough about 3 months later. This goes under 'Not giving me a fucking clue what I'm supposed to do now'

Also, Emperor: Battle for Dune, when the enemy build artillery units of some form, then sit and hit your units, who are too stupid to move or return fire. And of course when you try and go out and kill them, a sandworm or enemy forces will kick your ass. This goes under 'Stupid-ass AI'

[NecronLord]

I remember a level in Jedi Knight 2 where the only way to proceed at one point was to go through a grate, on the upper side of a wall when you turn a corner, so its almost invisible. I was wandering around that level for about 4 weeks, gave up, and only found it thanks to a walkthrough about 3 months later. This goes under 'Not giving me a fucking clue what I'm supposed to do now'

IIRC, there's about two points like that. One where you've got to jump up and get into the roof-space over a hangar control area, then drop down and fight zillions of troopers, and another where you have to then run through past an infuriatingly competant set of guards while the lights are off, without being seen or breaking anything.

My personal hate is Star Trek Elite Force Two. The bit where you have to use this auxiliary pulse phaser to knock out engines, weapons and shields on an attacking ship. Okay, neat. But you fail the mission if you blow the enemy ship that's about to destroy the Enterprise up.

[Bounty]

Jet Force Gemini. Great game, loads of fun, until you got to the bit right before the end where you have to fix the ancient Tribal shuttle to get to Mizar's asteroid. The last part you need to get going is *right there*, but the Tribal leader won't give it to you unless you rescue ever single Tribal.

Let me repeat that : while an asteroid is heading for Earth, a goddamn three-foot teddybear won't give you the spark plug for the only ship that can get there in time unless you backtrack through over a dozen planets and save every last of the little shits.

Making this even more fun is a system where you need to save every single Tribal in a level in one go (so if you miss *one* it counts as a fail; you end up saving the same Tribals over and over until you finally find #35 hiding behind a crate), a Tribal AI that's set to panic and run into any crossfire it can find and an enemy AI that'll blast any Tribal it sees to bloody chunks.

I almost gave up the game there and then. I'm glad I didn't, because the ending is great, but still...

[SirNitram]

Nemesis from above, in the Arena. Let's make a boss who can only be defeated by spamming Quick Hit for max damage with Haste!

Guess you never saw Penance either then. Twelve million hitpoints, and damages that range from 26000 to 99999, even with your characters' defence at absolute maximum, and he'll automatically stone/shatter you if you try to use Auto-Life.

Only twelve? Huh. I could take him, then. At the end, I could have Wakka spew out most of that through his Overdrives, which he absorbed from the other two party members. If I was stupidly built for speed and max damage and nothing else.

Just getting set up to fight him will take you hundreds of hours of nothing but grinding round the sphere grid, getting money to pay bribes to get the right equipment synthed onto armour, and generally wasting days of your existence you simply won't be getting back.

PRetty much. 255 in every stat is kinda fun, but...

At least Trema in X-2, though he'll do reasonably equivalent damages and is stupid fast, only has a million HP... (Plus, y'know, he's this wizened little old guy. Someone at Square found out about Rule #1.)

Rule #1 forever.

[Vendetta]

Only twelve? Huh. I could take him, then. At the end, I could have Wakka spew out most of that through his Overdrives, which he absorbed from the other two party members. If I was stupidly built for speed and max damage and nothing else.

Trouble is that if you so much as dent the shine on his main body whilst his arms are alive (they have 500,000 HP each and he can resurrect them), he kills your whole party with no way out.

Attack Reels is actually not that useful against him, because it just means Wakka won't be able to act for a long time, and he'll rape you whilst you only have two healers. You actually need to divert all overdrive power to Rikku, so she can mix up Final Elixirs to prepare you for the next mega-attack. (he will either do 25,000 damage to everyone or between 25,000 and 99,999 to one). Again, it's all about the Quick Hits.

[Alyeska]

My personal hate is Star Trek Elite Force Two. The bit where you have to use this auxiliary pulse phaser to knock out engines, weapons and shields on an attacking ship. Okay, neat. But you fail the mission if you blow the enemy ship that's about to destroy the Enterprise up.

What they don't tell you is that you can shoot down the enemy weapons. Once I figured that out it was absurdly easy to beat.

[Pick]

I beat every aspect of the initial USA release of FFX, and I don't know if I'd say the Chocobo Racing thing for Tidus' weapon or the 200-dodge thing for Lulu's was more bullshit. That was a goddamn *summer*. It took me more time to get Lulu's sigil than it did for my ENTIRE speed-run game of FFX.

[Nephtys]

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. There's this stealth mission where your command ship and two escort stealth frigates need to sneak around a bunch of asteroid shadow, avoiding patrolling ships. It hurts hard because you move slowly and can't manually navigate.

Heroes of the Pacific: You, a level 99, super ultra heroic all american fighter plane, in a F8F Bearcat which it says is a turbo ultra prototype, blow up every single japanese man, woman and child on Okinawa, by yourself, without a scratch. Then this super japanese ace comes in with a plane that can outfight an F-22, and devastates you.

Incidentally, I flew like a genius and hit his plane with a 2000 pound bomb, directly in the cockpit. It knocked his health down only 20 percent. He then gunned me down in a hail of gatling 40mm shells and rockets

Wing Commander 2: There's a mission where you need to rescue Stingray, using a slow as hell broadsword which can't turn at all, when you get engaged by 8 Salthi fighters, and two cruisers. You're incidentally, big enough to be hit by the main armaments of both cruisers.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Any RTS mission where they only give you a handful of units and no way to make more.

Except for the Command and Conquer 64 Commando missions. Those were a nice diversion.

[Alyeska]

I loved the RTS missions with limited units. They are making you think your way through the mission. And those missions are rarely difficult.

[Noble Ire]

I loved the RTS missions with limited units. They are making you think your way through the mission. And those missions are rarely difficult.

Indeed; by necessity, RTS levels tend to get fairly repetative, at least in terms of base building and unit construction. Forcing the player to work with a very limited resource set, or in this case, none at all, is generally a satisfying change of pace, and makes the more boring parts of the more typical levels more bearable.

[Ace Pace]

RTS games need to stop being resource wars and actully concertrate on strategy.

Which is why the universe gave us Groudn Control. Which gives the player his forces and nothing else.

[Edi]

Wing Commander I, the first mission when you meet up with Bhurak Starkiller. It's an escort mission too. I think I failed it a hundred times before I finally beat it.

<snip>

The other thing is any mission escorting a confederation capital ship. YOu'd think that these suckers would at least have some means of thwarting a swarm of incoming fighters, but evidently they're just big flying target dummies.

There's a simple reason for that: They do not have any weapons at all despite the manual saying they do. So they are nothing but target practice for the enemy.

The worst missions that I remember from Wing Commander are some of the force-scripted shit from the end of WC3 and something from the tail end of the expansions of WC2.

One of the worst strategy game missions was the first mission of the barbarian campaign on Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Goddamn but it was fucking stupid because the initial stacks of enemies grow so fucking quickly that it was almost impossible to beat on Champion difficulty. I spent more time on that single mission than I did on the rest of the fucking campaign.

Freespace and Freespace 2 also had their share of annoying missions where it was an ordeal just to stay alive, never mind successfully protecting some of your objectives.

I've also got a counter to all those who say all insta-fail stealth missions suck: Sneaking into the guard headquarters to frame an officer in Thief 2: The Metal Age on Expert difficulty. Get spotted once and you fail. And it was one kickass mission. There was another one as well, Casing the Joint, where you need to sneak to a heavily guarded mansion to scope it out and getting spotted or attacking anyone failed instantly.

Edi

[wautd]

This one level in Advance Wars Duel Strike that I am still stuck on. You have 15 days to wipe out the enemy on both fronts or a volcano will erupt and kill you all. (Technically, you only need the primary front, but if you lose the secondary front, or not win it quickly enough, you're screwed.) 15 fucking days! I always end up one day short of victory. That mission is a bitch!

Oh yes. YES!!!. Same here. Tried it like 5 times and still stuck. havn't played it since

[Yogi]

So Bullshit Bosses count as well? If so, I nominate the Chariot Sequencs followed IMMEDIATELY (no save point) by the Axe and Sword brothers in Prince of Persia, the Two Thrones.

[Rogue 9]

The Library in Halo.

-Let's see, we got the flood, which are predictable, easy to avoid, and are not scary but annoying and stupid, and get repetitive after killing 5 of them, and we need to build a level around them. I know! let's make a room and corridor, put 150 of them in it, and then copy-paste it 30 times over in sequence!

Yes lets!
-Most annoying mission ever in my book as well.

Thirded.

The hardest part about the Library is getting a shotgun. After that, about the only part that's difficult at all (assuming you keep running) is the one bit where there's two Flood at the end of a hallway with rocket launchers that blow the fuck out of you as soon as you turn the corner. Walk into that once, go back to the checkpoint, lob a grenade around the corner before running down the hallway, and blast your way through to the Index. Cake, and boring as hell.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I've also got a counter to all those who say all insta-fail stealth missions suck: Sneaking into the guard headquarters to frame an officer in Thief 2: The Metal Age on Expert difficulty. Get spotted once and you fail. And it was one kickass mission. There was another one as well, Casing the Joint, where you need to sneak to a heavily guarded mansion to scope it out and getting spotted or attacking anyone failed instantly.

Edi

Except that Thief is a stealth/sneaking game, You bought it for the bloody stealth stealth.

I bought Jedi Knight to kick ass with SW weapons, the force and a lightsaber not to sneak around. (This is the reason non optional sneaking levels always annoy the piss out of me when they're shoved in)

[Alan Bolte]

Nearly every Star Wars trench run level ever. I've never even seen one that didn't involve blasting towers on the way to the port and thus passing lots of guns that weren't in the movie, and if they even bother to include Vader he just sits and shoots at you the whole time and there's nothing you can do about it except lead the AI targetting around in boring circles. The worst though is the obstacle course. There wasn't any fucking obstacle course! The trench wasn't filled with bridges and walls! And they certainly weren't covered in easily destroyable guns!

[Star-Blighter]

The second-to-last Order mission in DoW Winter Assault. Yes, because naturally a LAND RAIDER escorted by SPACE MARINES needs to trundle along at less than half of unarmored foot infantry speed, while trying to blitz through hostile-controlled territory. Fucking contrived tension.

Vehemently seconded. Does anyone want to tell me WHY my resourcing rate has been cut down to half the norm, when I have capped nearly every fucking stratpoint and placed LPs and turrets everywhere. I have trouble just getting guardsmen squads out after my initial resouces are depleted. And where the fuck are all those beserkers and orks coming from?!?

What the fuck did they expect me to do? Why escort the convoy when you can obliterate everyone? Atleast thats what I should have been able to do...

The WA campaign isn't even worth replaying once, its so fucked-up.

[squidman001]

Nearly every Star Wars trench run level ever. I've never even seen one that didn't involve blasting towers on the way to the port and thus passing lots of guns that weren't in the movie, and if they even bother to include Vader he just sits and shoots at you the whole time and there's nothing you can do about it except lead the AI targetting around in boring circles. The worst though is the obstacle course. There wasn't any fucking obstacle course! The trench wasn't filled with bridges and walls! And they certainly weren't covered in easily destroyable guns!

If your talking of the "Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2" game, i found that mission absurdly easy. When Vader is shooting at you, just hit the brakes and he flies right over you. Then Proceed to shoot him. Repeat as needed.
The mission i have trouble with in that game is the last one in the Death Star core. I can never get out fast enough before im engulfed in flames. Every Single TIME!

[Lazarus]

I've always had a tendency to swear at games when I lose and blame said defeat on some flaw in the game, rather than my own incompetence. However, there are definately quite a few times when it IS the game at fault, and not the player. To add to my previous ones:

When you lose through crappy controls, not lack of ability. There have been many examples of this, most recent is the forect race levels in GTA:SA, where you are given a sports car that has ice wheels so it spins, even if you don't touch the controls. The harrier missions also are more or less impossible with PC controls, at least so say I...

Lack of save points. This may well be my worst offender, and a top one may be X-Wing Alliance. Right, so I have to sit on this here station, in my fat arse freighter, while enemy fighters strafe me? And all I can do is take shots at them with my crappy lasers? Great. And when I die, I have to repeat the whole 20 fucking minute mission all over again to get to that point? I just agve up on XWA after a while, after going back to it twice, it just pissed me off until I started breaking stuff.

Forced stealth. Right, so I have to sneak past these four guys or the mission fails, depsite the fact that I could quite easily kick their arse? Rubbish.

Any game where the only way to beat it is to break it. If I'm forced to legging it past enemies rather than engaging them, or pulling some contrived glitch stunt to achieve the objective, rather than do what is asked because it is clearly impossible, then its Not A Good Thing.

[Alan Bolte]

I'm talking arcade games, X-Wing, other Rogue Squadron games, even fan-made mods and freeware.

[Pablo Sanchez]

IWhen you lose through crappy controls, not lack of ability. There have been many examples of this, most recent is the forect race levels in GTA:SA, where you are given a sports car that has ice wheels so it spins, even if you don't touch the controls.

Never had this problem, I kicked ass through both races.

Now, at other times this "you have to race but your car sucks" shit gets seriously annoying. In SA the most egregious example is the shit-wagon in the last part of the mission where you retake Mad Dog's mansion. The drug dealer races away in an awesome sports car, and the game gives you a car that doesn't handle for shit, so you can chase him down in the twistiest area of the entire game. I don't think I've ever completed that mission without ditching that piece of shit and getting a new vehicle.

The harrier missions also are more or less impossible with PC controls, at least so say I...

Nah, they weren't bad at all. I found those missions rather easy, to be honest.

My least favorite missions/levels of any game ever would have to be the several segments of DOOM 3 where everything is completely dark. Because, you know, it's really fucking fun to play an FPS where you can't fucking see. Really ratchets up the tension, doesn't it?

[Alyeska]

When you lose through crappy controls, not lack of ability. There have been many examples of this, most recent is the forect race levels in GTA:SA, where you are given a sports car that has ice wheels so it spins, even if you don't touch the controls. The harrier missions also are more or less impossible with PC controls, at least so say I...

Reattempt the races when you have more driving experience. And get a joystick for flying. Makes the Harrier mission a blast.