Games you could never complete

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

I'm not really into modern consoles- my favourites are old Sega games and arcade games.  When I was a child, I remember playing the New Zealand Story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Zealand_Story) in the launderette.  I got it for the Sega and despite not having to chuck in ten pence every time I lost my lives or kicking the shit out of the machine in frustration, I never finished it.  I tried it again recently, and it still fiendishly difficult.  You pretty much die on one hit and because of that, I'm not sure I'll even try again because I might smash my computer.


_{I fucking hate this little bird.}

What games, despite your best efforts, have you never completed?

[Mary is not amused]

What games, despite your best efforts, have you never completed?

All of them, the fucking cunts (except Bruce Lee, obviously).

And Neil Strauss's.  The cunt fucker.

[Consignia]

Meh, those old arcade games are designed to eat coins from your pocket rather than be able to finish.

From my childhood, there was that fucking dam level from the Teenage Mutant Hero[nb]For it edited name we were given in the UK[/nb] Turtles. I'm sure I complete it, because I remember the final Boss fight from it, but it can't have been with the use of pokes.

These days I find any (J)RPG with a bad battle system isn't worth the effort if I get stuck. FF12 and 13 have both been high profile offenders, but a couple of lower tier titles hae falled pray as well.

[Ambient Sheep]

Xenon II Megablast on the PC; it turned out that there was a bug in it that stopped you doing so.

Likewise, Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum for the same reason, although I semi-famously hacked that so you could.

[Mary is not amused]

Likewise, Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum for the same reason, although I semi-famously hacked that so you could.

This impresses and excites me really rather a lot more than it should.  Kudos!

[El Unicornio, mang]

Despite having played hundreds of games over the years, I've only ever completed a couple, mainly because I'm not that great at games, and I get bored quite quickly once I've seen most of the places to explore (this doesn't apply to sports games though which I can play endlessly). The GTA series, for example, once I've unlocked the last island, I'm pretty much done. If there was some great reward at the end I'd be tempted but usually it's just a cheesy cut scene.

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

With GTA I pretty much stopped playing it once I discovered cheats.  Then I just activated them and went on total rampages.  It was more fun.

[Spiteface]

Sonic The Hedgehog on XBox 360, aka Sonic '06.

It doesn't help that the game clearly wasn't in a fit state to be released at the time, playing like it's still a beta version, and so, so broken.  Then once you have waded through all three characters' stories (Sonic, Shadow and Silver) and completed those, you unlock the "last" story.  This is the now-typical "good guys and bad guys team up to take on bigger threat" story that has existed since Sonic went 3D.  But this one borders on sheer dickery, in what it makes you do.

In the rest of the game, there are points where you switch characters from your main one of 3 selectable, to a secondary character (sometimes one of the other main characters, depending on the story at that point in the game), these secondary characters mainly play even worse than the main ones.  The story is that Sonic is now dead and there is a transcendent being that exists across all of time and space and will DESTROY EVERYTHING.  So all of Sonic's friends have to now retreive the Chaos Emeralds to resurrect Sonic and beat Solaris in the past, present and future.  This means you now have to play sections of previous levels to find them, as these shitty secondary characters.  Only it's even worse than that.  There are these big eye things that push and pull you all over the place, throw shit at you and cause INSTANT DEATH if you touch them, even if you have rings.  Imagine all THAT combined with long-ass loading times, broken gameplay physics and broken camera.

To this day it remains the only main-series Sonic game I have failed to finish, and I have since got rid of it.

I never get anywhere in GTA games either.  My typical pattern if I buy a GTA game is this:

Start
Do the first couple of missions just fine
Hit a complete brick wall VERY early on
Give up and trade in for a game I will actually enjoy.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Jurassic Park on the SNES. It was a massive Zelda style open world affair, but it contained no save or password system. I don't know if Ocean were in league with the electricity companies, but that's the only reason I can think of for such an oversight.

[Steven]

I use to enjoy New Zealand story in the arcades, but when I bought it for the Amiga it actually came with cheat codes in a little envelope inside the box because it was practically impossible. I wonder if there is something like that King of Kong thing where some guy has spent 20 years taming the beast.

I remember completing this game on the Amiga but I probably used cheat codes, I don't remember, constantly in danger of drowning whilst being stalked by the ghost of your dead aunt and it has one of the most painfully cruel anti-climatic endings ever...

Amiga Longplay [350] Flood

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Jurassic Park on the SNES. It was a massive Zelda style open world affair, but it contained no save or password system. I don't know if Ocean were in league with the electricity companies, but that's the only reason I can think of for such an oversight.

Yes. Left that thing on for hours. Never did get Dennis Nedry's access card. Obviously there are plenty of strategy guides online so I really should dust off the old SNES and nail it, if just for the, presumably, hugely disappointing end sequence.

[Buchstansangur]

The end sequence is a prompt asking if you would like to save.

[Geraint]

Jurassic Park was I think the second game I owned for SNES, so I played that fucking thing to completion (which involved leaving the SNES on overnight). I had to ring up the nintendo hotline to find one of the keycards - might very well have been Dennis Nedry's in fact - and the end sequence was actually far more irritating than Buchstansangur's joke post there. The FIRST game I owned was Super Mario World, so when I completed that I was rewarded with a great 10-minute sequence highlighting every single character in the game, all the backgrounds, and a nice 'game over' screen to end it. When I completed JP I was expecting something similar. What I got was the intro sequence (a crude 5-second bit of mode-7 zooming in towards the island) in reverse. With a 'helicopter' sound effect. That was it.

[madhair60]

From my childhood, there was that fucking dam level from the Teenage Mutant Hero[nb]For it edited name we were given in the UK[/nb] Turtles. I'm sure I complete it, because I remember the final Boss fight from it, but it can't have been with the use of pokes.

I beat this game on an emulator using savestates, and it was still a total cunt-pig.  It made me so angry I completely lost my mind and became racist, repeatedly and bafflingly calling Shredder the N-word while my friend Ken looked on aghast.

Got there in the end, saw the final sequence, and I haven't said anything racist in a coon's age.  ! DAMNDAMNDA

[Ambient Sheep]

This impresses and excites me really rather a lot more than it should.  Kudos!

<blushes>  I got my name printed in a computer magazine for doing it an' everyfing.

Is that Valhalla in your avatar, by the way?[nb]D'oh, of course it is, I've just belatedly realised where your username -- which has been bugging me for ages -- comes from.  Christ I feel stupid (and old, and forgetful).[/nb]  I took that apart too, at the request of a magazine editor.

I wuz m4d teen4ge h4x0r l0lz.  I didn't allow myself near a modem until I was nearly 30 as I wasn't sure I could be trusted with one, from a phone-bill point-of-view if nothing else...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Any Mario game.

[Ambient Sheep]

...I get bored quite quickly once I've seen most of the places to explore...

I can relate to this.  For me, the primary attraction of games like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc. (yes, that's how behind I am in these matters) was exploring the maps; killing the monsters was just a necessary inconvenience that I rarely enjoyed very much.

For example, going back even further, I loved Atic Atac on the ZX Spectrum, and with the help of a couple of friends[nb]Nick & Julian "Chaos etc." Gollop, he said, name-droppingly.[/nb] I lovingly drew out the whole map in felt-tip on nine sheets of squared paper (two each for floors 1-4, one for the level 5 attic).  Once I'd done that though, I rarely played it again.

I'm sure that, like you, if I was playing one of these modern sandbox type games, as soon as I'd explored everywhere I'd stop playing entirely.  Which is probably why I don't buy them.

[Jemble Fred]

I must admit that, despite being an obsessive, I never really completed the very final Dizzy opus, Spellbound Dizzy. But in my defence, it's because I blagged so many different preview builds – starting out with a version of the game which was just three screen and a trampoline – that by the time I got to play the finished game, I'd been through it all too many times, and seen too much cool stuff in advance, without working for it. Spellbound was a huge game, and the hours it took to get to the final section, constructing and flying the kite to escape, were hours I didn;t feel I could afford.

[Uncle TechTip]

Likewise, Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum for the same reason, although I semi-famously hacked that so you could.

You're the attic bug guy? Crikey. Did your name end up in a magazine?

[madhair60]

I must admit that, despite being an obsessive, I never really completed the very final Dizzy opus, Spellbound Dizzy. But in my defence, it's because I blagged so many different preview builds – starting out with a version of the game which was just three screen and a trampoline – that by the time I got to play the finished game, I'd been through it all too many times, and seen too much cool stuff in advance, without working for it. Spellbound was a huge game, and the hours it took to get to the final section, constructing and flying the kite to escape, were hours I didn;t feel I could afford.

I can only beat Prince of the Yolkfolk, to my eternal shame.

[chand]

I can relate to this.  For me, the primary attraction of games like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc. (yes, that's how behind I am in these matters) was exploring the maps; killing the monsters was just a necessary inconvenience that I rarely enjoyed very much.

For example, going back even further, I loved Atic Atac on the ZX Spectrum, and with the help of a couple of friends[nb]Nick & Julian "Chaos etc." Gollop, he said, name-droppingly.[/nb] I lovingly drew out the whole map in felt-tip on nine sheets of squared paper (two each for floors 1-4, one for the level 5 attic).  Once I'd done that though, I rarely played it again.

I'm sure that, like you, if I was playing one of these modern sandbox type games, as soon as I'd explored everywhere I'd stop playing entirely.  Which is probably why I don't buy them.

So you like exploring maps, but you don't like sandbox games? I can't understand why someone who likes to wander round maps would rather do it in Wolfenstein than an open-world title.

[Mister Six]

I must admit that, despite being an obsessive, I never really completed the very final Dizzy opus, Spellbound Dizzy. But in my defence, it's because I blagged so many different preview builds – starting out with a version of the game which was just three screen and a trampoline – that by the time I got to play the finished game, I'd been through it all too many times, and seen too much cool stuff in advance, without working for it. Spellbound was a huge game, and the hours it took to get to the final section, constructing and flying the kite to escape, were hours I didn;t feel I could afford.

I never completed Spellbound, but mostly because it felt vast, empty and unengaging and I disliked what they'd done with the lives/health system. It was made out of house, wasn't it? It showed, too.

Actually, the only Dizzy game I properly completed was Fantasy World Dizzy - and even then only because Your Sinclair or something told me where all the hidden cherries were. God, they were a stupid design decision.

[Jemble Fred]

I think I'm right in saying all the Dizzy games after... was it Fantasy World? – were farmed out. Spellbound was by Big Red Software.

I'm sad enough to be able to pinpoint pretty much any puzzle and tell you the solution to any of the main Dizzy games. But the final sections of Spellbound – all that flapping about in the flooded electricity stations, picking up the ingredients of the kite, allied to no save system – were too much for me. Not too difficult, just too much effort, especially when you've already cheated your way to the final screen before.

[Jumble Cashback]

My brother was about to fight the final boss in 'Zool', but just as it was about to come on screen, he accidentally pulled out the power cord for the computer with his foot.  It was not a good time to be in the room with him.  We had another Amiga game where, as he was about to fight the last boss, the game crashed and came up with an error message.  That was a pirate copy though.  The guy told us it was our tracking and then tried to sell us a copy of 'Four Weddings'.

[Benjie Trufflesnort]

Jet Force Gemini on the N64 which started a hate-hate relationship for me with Rare, which was thrown into further relief with Donkey Kong 64.

The former was fun all the way through and then had the most ludicrously hard finally boss battle. I must have wasted 40 or 50 lives trying to defeat it to no avail.

I gave up feeling cheated.

DK64 was one step worse. In order to get to the final boss battle you needed two DK Coins. One was got for something or other trivial, but to get the other one you had to play through the original Donkey Kong arcade game twice with just one life. It was horrendous and entirely unessecary to make you do it TWICE for fuck's sake.

I gave up there again and felt cheated.

I've not bought a Rare game since - although I understand they're now shite anyway.

[Phil_A]

I think "Magicland" was the only Dizzy I beat entirely on my own, without any cheats or anything. And I only managed it once, as I kept on messing up on the same infuriating water jump. I think I even had to resort to using the keyboard controls for some of the trickier bits, as the joypad/joystick control was too imprecise and you were more than likely to just slip and die.

You know what? Rainbow Islands. That game used to drive me insane. I tried and tried but could never get further than World 4. Which makes it all the more galling to see some guy on youtube breeze through the entire thing in half an hour. Did I just suck at games or something?

[madhair60]

DK64 was one step worse. In order to get to the final boss battle you needed two DK Coins. One was got for something or other trivial

(A very low score on Jetpac/k)

but to get the other one you had to play through the original Donkey Kong arcade game twice with just one life. It was horrendous and entirely unessecary to make you do it TWICE for fuck's sake.

See, I replayed the game earlier this year, and I was dreading this bit - but when I reached it, it only took me about three goes.  Diff'rent strokes.

[gmoney]

Most games I've ever played. I've completed the first three Monkey Island games, Final Fantasy VII (with the aid of a walkthrough), Goldeneye, Mario 64 (not all stars) and one or two others and that's about it. I'm astonishingly crap at most games and I get easily frustrated. Similar to the story above, I once got to the last level of Super Star Wars on the SNES and my brother accidentally pulled the cord out while walking across the room. It's an injustice that has stayed with me. 

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Jet Force Gemini on the N64

How the fuck do you do the bit where you shoot the gems into the machine to stop the moon crashing or something? I could never do that bit, and guides always just say "shoot the gems into the machine" or similar. BUT IT DOESN'T WORK AAAGGGHHH.

You know what? Rainbow Islands. That game used to drive me insane. I tried and tried but could never get further than World 4. Which makes it all the more galling to see some guy on youtube breeze through the entire thing in half an hour. Did I just suck at games or something?

I had the CPC port and world 4 sounds about as far as I could get as well.

Another game I had for the CPC called Shogun I got all the requirements to become Shogun and win, but nothing happened. Fucking hinnou.

[bitesize]

I've not bought a Rare game since - although I understand they're now shite anyway.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was brilliant. i finished it.