I'm just playing Evil Under The Sun at the mo & I really like it in a lot of ways - the graphics are lovely, it has a compelling story, the characters are interesting (although some of the regional accents are way off!). I am trying very hard to play this without referring to a walkthrough, not succeeding & even then I'm getting stuck. There is a lot of walking back & forth, revisiting & to my mind a little bit of hit & miss! It's driving me mad!
Just wondered what other games you've really enjoyed but every now & again feel you'd like to take the disc out & use it as a frisby?

At least you can double-click on exits to get to the next screen immediately. So it doesn't take that long to get around.



Stauf's comments in 7th Guest.

The length of time it took to save or load a game in Nine.

The timed underwater "maze" in Loch Ness.

The mummy sequence in GK1.

The boar in Atlantis: Lost Tales.

The chores in Nancy Drew White Wolf (though even without the chores I don't know if I'd have enjoyed it much).

Dreamfall had a good story and characters, but the stealth, the bad combat sequences, the stupid timed matching game every time you had a door lock, the touchiness of the navigation system, and the scarcity of real adventure-type puzzles got me really annoyed with it. Then I came to the multiple cliffhanger at the end and that was quite possibly the biggest annoyance of all -- like the developer mooning you in the face.

Hi chrissie, Good topic

Oh Boy there have been several for me...

More recent one is Next Life..I just hated it...This was a game I thought would be a goody....was very disappointed...

Oh Well

Dreamfall and Broken Sword 3 are at the top of mt list. Primarily due to the awful interface combined with senseless fighting annoying stealth and one million crates. Both great games with serious handicaps.

I almost totally agree with you, oldmariner, except for the crates, I liked them. Weird, I know, but that's the way it was for me. I was always wondering what about those crates annoyed so many other players when I thought they were fun.

I love the crates too sierra, but then again I love sliders as well!

Ana

My list off the top of my head:

- The timed puzzles in Myst IV
- Dreamfall (running from the twins and running/hiding from the troll -- hated the controls as well)
- Broken Sword 3 (the stealth and running away sequences -- some crate puzzles were okay but it got old and boring for me)
- The wolf "maze" in GK 2
- The walking & back and forth in Limbo of the Lost
- Monkey Island 3 - the insult matches
- Monkey Island 4 - monkey combat and the stupid swamp sequence!

Hey chrissie

Many games. But for me is Broken Sword 3, Penumbra Overture(very action and combat for me).

First game that comes to my head is Next Life. The gameplay and the movement of Adam was very annoying.

I absolutely loved Dreamfall, one of my favourite games, but the stealth and subsequent running and hiding from Big Bad Troll in the underground caverns just about drove me crazy. The second time I played the game through I relied on one of my old saves to get me past this truly horrible bit - and thank goodness I still had them.

Putting out the forest fire in Silver Earring was a bit of a stinker, until I realised that clicking away like a maniac wasn't going to make Holmes move any faster. This took many, many tries to get through.

The Fox & Geese puzzle in ND White Wolf!!! Oh boy, don't get me started on this one.

I love Timelapse except for the rabafratzin Anasazi arrow puzzle. I was bald for weeks after that one.

Obsidian is another favorite but for the shifting button puzzle at the end. My eyes are still crossed because of it.

I liked the Omega Stone, but hated the mazes, especially the garden. I worked my way through school as a fry cook so you know which ND, makes me angery. Wasn't to fond of the game in Aztec, either. It's funny but I liked all of the above games, just hated parts of them.

Charllotte
I still haven't finished 80 Days because of the timed puzzle at the finish.

Hi

Dreamfall and Broken Sword III are most definitely amongst my list of good games marred by frustration

The controls, the action and the stealth .... with the timed bits just making matters worse

Cheers.

Mad

"The Awakened" is a good example:
- There is a documents inventory. Unfortunately the writing in these documents is so tiny that you can't read anything. I decided to let it go and use a walkthrough if I missed some hints. Then I reach a puzzle where you're supposed to work with a map that has the same tiny writing. It was impossible!
- There were a few stealth sequences where you could not know where you were supposed to go and where you would get cought. One of them was really bad - you had to go in the direction where you were clearly shown you couldn't go.
But the worst part of the game was:
- You have to put out a fire. So you find a bucket and go look for one barrel among several which contains water. You have no way to guess that this barrel has water, and all the barrels look alike so this takes a while. But the worst part of it is - you're on an island! you could just walk two feet to get water.

"Next Life" was a big disappointment to me. I couldn't wait to play it--then I was sorry I even bought it. Puzzles were annoyingly difficult.

When I think about it there seems to be very few games that don't have one aspect or another that infuriates somebody!

Out of the games mentioned that I have played I would agree with most of the 'annoyances'! - the troll cave & the twins in Dreamfall (I didn't mind so much the stealth & combat); timed & stealth sequences,crate puzzles in BS3; monkey combat in MI4 (but I did like the insults in MI3 ): the chores in White Wolf - also for me the skating pond puzzle, the snowmobile chase & the repetitive snowball fights but I did really like the fox & geese game! & the game overall. I didn't mind the wolf sequence in GK2 too much but hated the swinging axe ending to GK3.

I don't mind sliders & the only thing that stopped me loving The Awakened was the control system that made me feel nauseous.

There was a little too much wandering back & forth in Limbo of the Lost but to get back to the game that started this - Evil Under the Sun - for me the worst is wondering what you have to do or where to go to next to progress the game & having to keep going back & forth to different locations in the hope that you bump into the right person (or object):) The double-clicking to exit quickly from a scene does help!!

I hate it in an adventure, when I get really, really stuck because of some extremely small hotspot or a hotspot that was inactive at the time that I passed it, but got active when I do something in the game. Especially the last one I hate.

East Side Story for example. There is one hotspot which is not available when I first passed it. When I triggered an action, then there was a hotspot. I spend a few hours walking around, talking to people but I couldn't find it. As a last resort, I looked into a walkthrough. I hate walkthroughs, it is a way of cheating I don't like. Especially since it is not my lack of adventure skill.

The same goes for Time Stand Still. You can work on a puzzle, but until you do something else, it is impossible to solve it. I spend hours working on that puzzle. Again I used a walkthrough and I found out that I spend all those hours on a puzzle, I shouldn't even have access too.

But I love all four Carol Reed Mystery adventures. It is terrible that those things make me use a walkthrough.

Another example of a game I love with something I hate. The recent Wii adventure Zack & Wiki. I loved it, until the very last level. You have to use the Wii Remote to swing something around like a lasso and release it when it is at top speed. However, the controls to release it are very very broken. I just didn't work. It felt really random well it wasn't. Normally, to release a lasso, you throw it in the direction you want to throw it. Not in this level. You have point to left. Totally illogical and very difficult and frustrating to pull off. You can also do something wrong in the game, without it giving any feedback that you actually did messed up. Thankfully the levels are small. But there are a few levels that I forgot one thing in the beginning of the game, which resulted in me, spending a decent amount of time, wondering what I did wrong, well I was actually really stuck from the very beginning. Very bad. But I still love the game.

I probably have a lot more examples of games I love, but elements I hate.

You swing the Remote like a lasso? Really? Hmmm. It sounds wild!

My example of frustration in a game I otherwise enjoyed -- the timed maze with changing camera angles in Odyssey: The Search for Ulysses.

It should be great, but it just didn't work. And that's a shame in a otherwise great end fight.

The game that I loved in spite of frustration was Grim Fandango. It was the first keyboard controlled game that I played, and it was a shame that the controls were so hard to use. Poor Manny spent most of his time either turning around in circles or smashing into walls and doors!!

But the game was so good that I endured the frustration of trying to move Manny around--and by the end of the game I was moving a little better, I'll admit...

I think the absolute worst timed puzzle was the finale of Shivers II. You started the puzzle on one disc, then had to change discs to complete an imposssibly short timed mechanical puzzle. Of course, when you failed and it was "Game Over", you had to go back to the previous disc to load your saved game, then switch discs to try again. Needless to say I never finished
this puzzle.

Lady Kestral, how well I remember "Shoot straight as the wind blows". I was ready to kill that Indian, if only I could have turned around and found him.

SuMac -- you actually had to switch disks in the middle of a timed puzzle? Folks, I think we may have a winner here.

SuMac, that is an absolute winner for frustration, and here I was going to throw in the floating island puzzle in Journey to the center of the earth. I love that game though and keep a save on a floppy.

Was that actually timed while you were switching the discs? Or did the timer stop during the disc swap time? I remember Shivers 2 had a lot of timed puzzles.

At first in Dreamfall my desire to have more of the old game made me frustrated with the fighting sequences. (I have played shooters, but not hand to hand fighting games). Once I learned the keystrokes for DF I really got into it. My Vista liked it so much that I had to redo it on the XP. I'm currently replaying it on the XP and totally enjoying it. I sorta bad mouthed it at first, I think. In fact, it's up there with the original for me now. To me the first one was hurt by the talking trees, giants and mole-people. I won't discuss Abnathus, or whatever/whenever his name was.