Your most embarrassing moments in gaming

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

There's been a few, whether it's taking embarrassingly long to work out straightforward puzzles in Tomb Raider or Resident Evil, or spending an age in open-world gaming going completely the wrong way. But they're small.

Firstly is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done. After excitedly buying The Nomad Soul I was enjoying the lead-in to the game. A few cut-scenes where your character is introduced, only for some demon to throw you around and suck out your essence. So far so weird. But then it's your turn to take over. You are put in 3rd person view and get to walk out into the cool cyberpunk world. Hurray! It's all very exciting. You head towards a crossing. Then an odd thing happens- the screen goes black- then it cuts to this candle burning out and the credits roll. What happened there? Am I dead. I try. Again, and again and again. The same thing happens. I flip out wondering what the hell is going on. I call Eidos to desperately work out if my game is buggered or something- I couldn't have died, I didn't do anything!

When I return upstairs after the man on the phone can't work out what I'm talking about I discover that the candle burning out and credits is still going on. And now David Bowie appears to be singing. And far from it being the death sequence it's more city exposition and showy direction. It's THE INTRODUCTION TO THE GAME. One slight save for me here is that the opening bits of the titles has a really 'Game Over' type feel to it. However, it's still by far the most ridiculous sequence of events in my entire gaming career.

Secondly, as we were discussing Halo in the other thread, the Warthog Run, the final chase to get out of the facility, into the spaceship and away before Halo explodes. It's going brilliantly. It's my first attempt. I am completely clued in to its ropey handling characteristics, I'm avoiding the sort of 80's level pratfalls they've devised along the way (I know space facilities don't exist, but when they do I'm guessing they won't have purposeless humps in the middle of gangways and paths that go in curvy S-shapes), and even though I don't know it yet, I'm making good time (it's a race against the clock really). The general theatrics of it all are quite challenging to cope with on the first time, even though the general theme is Go Forward Keep Going Forward. I negotiate what seems like the final series of jumps, absolutely nailing one of them, and think 'right, nothing will go wrong now'. Then for some unknown reason, with the final massive jump ahead I panic. I think it's a cliff to certain death. The jeep swerves, I lose all balance of the vehicle and it throws me out. I land ages away from where I would've been in the jeep. The jeep is the other side of the chasm, there are enemies everywhere. I have to choose between running for it or running for the jeep. I have to do it on foot. Unfortunately this isn't Unreal Tournament. Master Chief is slow, slow, slow, and the time runs out, and everything goes bad. I fuck humanity in the gob for all time, not for the first occasion. It then takes me another 5 goes before I do it properly and finally get to see the closing credits.

Please divulge your FAILS.

[momatt]

Does getting caught wanking over strippers in GTA4 count?

[Famous Mortimer]

Metal Gear Solid 3.

Why is the X button taking me to this sub-menu all the time, and not into the main game?

Turns out I should have been pressing Y. Took me two days and a trip back to the shop for new discs before I figured it out.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Does getting caught wanking over strippers in GTA4 count?

Oh, it counts alright.

[buntyman]

Metal Gear Solid 3.

Why is the X button taking me to this sub-menu all the time, and not into the main game?

Turns out I should have been pressing Y. Took me two days and a trip back to the shop for new discs before I figured it out.

Your embarrassment has only just begun - Playstations don't have Ys!!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It gets fucking confusing for the SNESers when they have to adopt todays new fangled almost identical controllers:

[pk1yen]

Majora's Mask. When you first meet the injured witch in the forest (I think), really near the start ... and you have to give her a red potion to heal her.

The mechanism for giving people objects had changed since Ocarina of Time, where just pressing the c-button with the appropriate item gave it to the person who needed it outside of conversation - in Majora's Mask, you had to do this during the conversation.

So I spent half an hour repeatedly pouring out potion after potion after potion on the ground in front of her, unable to fathom why she WOULDN'T TAKE THE FUCKING THING.

Weirdly, I mentioned this to my friend a while ago - and he'd done EXACTLY the same thing. Only he'd given up completely at that point, utterly stumped by the complex task of handing someone something, and so he traded in the game.

So I guess I win. (Though I suppose he still has the joy of playing through Majora's Mask for the first time when I eventually get round to getting it on the Wii or if it ever comes out on DS or 3DS ... so maybe he wins.)

[madhair60]

Playing any Kingdom Hearts game, hoping nobody is going to walk into the room.

[gmoney]

I stopped playing Monkey Island after taking the gag about inserting disk 11 to get through a hole in a stump at face value. Assuming my brother had lost the rest of the disks, I gave up thinking completion was impossible. I was about 10, in my defence.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Oh plus once I ran Graeme Hick out on Goochy cricket and we lost.

[weekender]

Please divulge your FAILS.

Cunt.

[buntyman]

Oh yeah, he totally nicked my story from that thread too. This is not on.

[Harpo Speaks]

In San Andreas there was a mission that involved a boat chase. A mission that I decided I'd try and be clever on, and instead of chasing said target across a large stretch of water, I'd get out of the boat and simply shoot the target I was following with the Rocket Launcher before it got too far away.

Unfortunately, I failed to remember that the Rocket Launcher always fires ever so slightly lower than the sight indicates, and therefore managed to clip the Bow, destroying the entire boat. This wasn't the amusing part however. I was wearing body armour at the time, and in cartoonish fashion the explosion implausibly left me alive but with a sliver of health. Alive and stuck on the stationary charred remains of a speedboat as my target sped away over the horizon. Lamely, I dived in and began to swim after it.

Mission Failed. The Target got away.

[madhair60]

In an attempt to record a "Let's Play" of the original Super Mario Bros, I ran into the first Goomba on the first level.

[Consignia]

Following on from madhair's potential Kingdom Heart's embarrassment but in the opposite direction, I have to be really careful when I play Criminal Girls, lest anyone walk in and get the wrong impression during "Punishment" mini-games.

[madhair60]

Nah, that's on PSP!  I can just tuck it down my trousers.

Haha, when you say "wrong impression", there isn't really any other impression to take, is there?  I'm fascinated by that game, what is it?

[Consignia]

Criminal Girls? It's a fun if fairly standard dungeon crawl RPG, with the big gimik that in order to level up abilities you need to punish the girls with a numerous minigame techniques. So far I've got spanking, stun-gun and water torture punishments.

....I'm playing it for the plot, honest.

[An tSaoi]

Restarting the No Russian level from CoD Modern Warfare 2 when I got killed, thinking I must have done something wrong.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Failing to land on the lifts in Chuckie Egg and falling into the void is a constant source of embarrassment for me :o(

[VegaLA]

Mass Effect.

After the praise mthat game got here on the board I voiced my interest to those around me and that crimbo I had my mitts all over it. The Missus sat with me when I started the game as we were expecting a visual treat of a story and all was going well in space land, up until the point where I had the option of going elsewhere via  some form of transport and three destinations were open to me, I chose one at random and spent the next 30 minutes or so looking at a spacecraft with some flashy light ball just there in space not doing much else.
After the 3rd attempt I put it down to the disc being faulty and went about getting a replacement, and later that day I was back there at the transport terminal again. Selected the same destination and yet again I was confronted with cool spacecraft theer in space not doing much else.
Eventually I broke my stubborness and selected another destination from that same menu and wouldn't you know it, I was back in the game.

Now, either there is a bug, or the location you are currently at is available on the options, sending you to some eternal loop void ala' Jet Set Willy's Hades level which to me is a bug anyway.
I never did get an answer and I never did get that much further with Mass Effect.
I'll wait for the movie thankyouverymuch!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Cunt.

I agree to subsume the now more popular thread I've created into yours, thus making an amicable situation out of a fractious one, and a consolidated base point for all games losers to congregate and pool their pathetic wintery tears.

[Zero Gravitas]

Mass Effect.

After the 3rd attempt I put it down to the disc being faulty and went about getting a replacement, and later that day I was back there at the transport terminal again. Selected the same destination and yet again I was confronted with cool spacecraft theer in space not doing much else.

you mean on a screen like this:

[Steve Lampkins]

I keep thinking that the 'heart-dropping' thread is about this. As an 'oh shit, what did I do' / heart-stopping thread.

Can't think of anything big, I mess up in in Battlefield BC2 all the time, for example. But it's usually funny.  Like the other day when I was a gunner in a tank, hopped out to repair it, but instead of pulling out the drill, accidentally shot it with an RPG point-blank, blowing myself up. Luckily Friendly Fire was off.

[glitch]

I'm on the receiving end of this Tomahawk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzPgZoi4jWc

[hoverdonkey]

When I was 10, Mum and Dad bought me a Commodore 64. I didn't really get the concept of game coding etc and thought that if you put in a blank audio cassette tape and typed in 'Load Football Manager' - the computer would eventually find the game.

Imagine my excitement when, after about 10 seconds, up came the prompt 'Found FM' before the screen went back to blue. I sat there for two hours waiting for it to load.

To think my three year old son whizzes his way around my iphone and demands to play on Trials HD on the 360...

[padougy]

When I was young, perhaps 10, my friend lent me FFVII. Near the start, the first boss you have to defeat is a big scorpion. I listened to my friend's tales of always attacking it when it's tail was up like the game told you to and then always dying. I did the same, and kept dying. The game seemed so stupid. Only when my brother played it did he tell me how much of a fucking idiot I was - you were obviously meant to attack it when its tail was down. Once I got past that bit, I couldn't be bothered going through the next three discs.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

One of the first quests in Morrowind's main story is travel to the Dwemer Ruins of Arkngthand near Balmora and retrieve a Puzzle Box. I went there, spent hours killing things and searching, but couldn't find the damn thing, so went off and did a load of side quests. I went back after a while, only to discover it's up a ramp I had missed, a few feet from the entrance. Bastard.

That's not so bad though - I know a certain other verbwhore (who has probably forgotten this) who when playing Morrowind for the first time, looked ages for the Seyda Neen siltstrider, couldn't find it so decided to walk to Balmora (despite the strider being massive and actually on the route) and ended up being killed by a rat.

[Capt.Midnight]

Ugh, I was playing team deathmatch on modern warfare 2 and talking to myself, proper stream of consciousness style mumblings, i only realised a few hours later that my headset was on (I usually wear it anyway in case any friends come online) Now, I wasn't swearing or shouting or anything, but the idea that a large group of anonymous players could hear my mundane, non-sensical ramblings and inner-most thoughts was more harrowing.

[Dead kate moss]

I only played Dungeons & Dragons once. I got killed by a donkey within ten minutes.

[uglybob1986]

That's not so bad though - I know a certain other verbwhore (who has probably forgotten this) who when playing Morrowind for the first time, looked ages for the Seyda Neen siltstrider, couldn't find it so decided to walk to Balmora (despite the strider being massive and actually on the route) and ended up being killed by a rat.

Thanks for reminding me, you bastard!
Honestly, you'd expect a character skilled in long blade to be able to handle a tiny knife, and as for the silt strider, it's a very foggy game. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to 'em!
And those rats are huge
AND I had something in my eye, and a headache, etc