[General Discussion] Games that make you feel retarded

You know what I'm talking about - walking around for half an hour, completely lost, until you finally trigger something randomly that seems so damned logical that it makes you cry thinking "wtf, I am the most retarded person on earth ".
As you probably know, this isn't a phenomenon solely present in puzzle games - sometimes a game just rubs you wrong and all you're left with is trial and error.

Share your stories, insights and tales of pulled hair
Also, speak about games where gameplay was complex, challenging yet easy to grip and understand - just to provide contrast and possibly educate future game developers. (if any hang around here)

I'll share some of my own experiences. (Hopefully I won't lower the thread IQ too significantly )
I remember playing Warcraft 3 when it came out, and I could not, for the love of god, ever figure out the balance I'm supposed to achieve within my kingdom. I would always end up having too many buildings/peasants and not enough soldiers, always too many soldiers and not enough barracks to replenish them, always too many hereos and not enough of anything else .... it drove me nuts trying to get the hang of the game. I never could figure it out, and I gave up on it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It happened to me really early in Metroid Prime Hunters for DS. I was stuck in the same room for about an hour and ended up restarting from the beginning. Of course this didn't help and I got stuck in the same room once again.

Finally, pretty much by complete chance, I examined the big crystal in the center of the chamber to continue the game. I thought I had done it already, but apparently I had not.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The most recent is Star Ocean 3

I got stuck in the Bequerel mines. So I am going along and I come to a pedastal before a room that says, "Weave 2 strands of Shadow into one." and go on to the next room. 2 torches and not much else, so I go back and forth between that room and the begining of the dungeon for the next hour.

Spoiler:

stand directly between the 2 so that both of the shadows you cast form a straight line

>.>

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

FFVII in midgar at the junk yard thing because of the camera angle i couldn see the slope upwards i was stuck 4 days on that.

Double Post:
FF VII in midgay at the junk yard thing because of the camera angle i couldnt see the slope up i was stuck about 4 days...

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

FFVIII did that to me.

Not that it was my fault, just that the triggers were to damn hard to activate. I'd spend an hour trying different things, only to give up feeling dumb, look it up, and have the internet to tell me to do the very first thing I tried. It was very frustrating.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I remember the first time I played Goldeneye. It was the first FPS game I ever played, outside of a few minutes of Wolfenstein on a friend's PC back in 1993 or 1994, and I was so confused. After killing everything in the first area of the Dam level, I spent about half an hour running around trying to figure out how to continue in the level. I ran around, shooting crates, running into walls and ladders, throwing the little covert modem thingy at the truck, without any success. I eventually had to call Nintendo's tip line to figure out how to finish the stage...this was before GameFAQs was huge, mind you.

The problem? I didn't know that I could open those big sliding doors by using the B button on the huge red switch next to them.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Lion King for the Mega Drive was my first 'oops'. Still remember I couldn't cross over a high wall on the stage where the hyenas chase you. Called the hotline and the guy said "ok so you're at the bit where you grabbing onto a rock (in the bgackground) to swing up onto the higher ground?" - and I was like er.. oh yeah, a lil' jut to swing from! From that day on I always turned up the brightness on all my games!

FELIPE NO

Math Blaster for the SNES....... I'm serious.

Spoiler:

Okay, I'm kidding. But most likely Parasite Eve 1. When the giant defeated blob thing is chasing Aya around the aircraft carrier, you eventually get cornered in a communications room. Suddenly, the blob STOPS. I freaking stood there wondering WTF happened. Finally, I figured I should try to go around it after some minute of waiting and get sandiwched by the blob. Did some researching on the wonderful internet and discovered that's supposed to happen. Supposedly giving me a chance to run around and "trick the blob."

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

There were several moments in Xenogears like this. I remember wandering in a dungeon for about two hours because there was a ledge that I didn't realize was next to the one I had been stuck on. The camera was at an awkward position and I never saw the rest of the stage.

The first real dungeon in Terranigma puzzled me for a while as well, but I managed to clear it after realizing the obvious.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Usually getting stuck in a game and then finding out the solution only makes me think "Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?!", so I can only really think of a few point & click adventure with slightly less illogical puzzles that have made me go "oh, duh", and from console games, Vagrant Story.

I got stuck in the Great Cathedral near the end for a good three or four hours, I think. I ran back and fourth between every single room, hallway and passageway I'd cleared and would soon clear, and it was made especially difficult because of the slightly maze like structure of the maps (to get to the other room in floor 2, you'd need to go up to floor 3, from there down to floor 1 and then through another room and finally up to floor 2, etc) because most of the cathedral was destroyed and crumbled from old age, till eventually I noticed a small (large by any standards, but small in the sense as hard to notice) lever by a locked door at the end of a large hall. The last time the game had had a lever was in the second room at the very start of the game. You pulled the lever and another door unlocks in another floor. Going there and continuing would eventually unlock the locked door next to the lever.

The lever was on top of a small platform of sorts, to the left of the locked door, in a corner, so you wouldn't immediately think to look (or jump over) there since most of the hallways in the game were largely abandoned save for a few chests. I didn't really feel silly I hadn't found the lever, but rather I felt silly I must have entered the hallway dozens of times from the door on the other side of this large gap in the middle of the room, seen the locked door at the other end and gone back thinking I'd only need to come back later.

What's even better is how two years later I replayed the game and got stuck AGAIN on the same lever for two hours or so. I had completely managed to forget about the damn thing and felt even sillier when I finally noticed it.

Still, wonderful game, wonderful, wonderful storyline regardless <3 ;_;

There's nowhere I can't reach.

rayman revolution just finished a level and i was on that world map thing and it said my next destination was to the east i went east kept goin but nothin was there then i saw a big arrow in the east area followed it and i voila i felt retarded

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by tifashot123

FFVII in midgar at the junk yard thing because of the camera angle i couldn see the slope upwards i was stuck 4 days on that.

I got stuck there too. I gained so many levels fighting those houses or whatever they were there.

Final Fantasy VIII too, near the beginning, when you have to find the "secret place" behind the training area. I couldn't find the secret place because it was so far back from my view and such a small door. So I spent hours upon hours fighting T-Rexaurs.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Pitfall II for 5200: I got to the end of the walkway at the bottom of the first cavern. I had no idea there was even a second cavern, but I could see that there were more rooms up ahead. I just couldn't see how to get to them. I jumped in the drink and swam up to the rock barrier. It was like this for probably a year. Then, finally, I just stood there, trying to think of something, and all of a sudden this balloon comes along. WTF? A balloon? It had never appeared there before. Had I done something to trigger it? Who knows... but I grabbed it and floated upwards, and the rest is history.

I swear I stood at that exact spot many a time, for just as long, and no balloon appeared. A glitch? Who knows...

I was speaking idiomatically.

Xenogears - The Tower of Babel

I've played through Xenogears four times, and every single fucking time I play that game, I get stuck in the Tower of Babel for at least an hour doing platforming jumps. Fucking rediculous, I tell you.

A couple puzzles later in the game took me forever to solve as well. The worst part was that every time I played through the game, I'd forget the damn solutions to the puzzles.

Actually, I'm due for another playthrough soon...

How ya doing, buddy?

Phoenix Wright - The 5th Case.

I probably spent a good two days looking around all the areas in the 5th case trying to find the trigger to advance the story. This was before the trial started and you need to find the muffler... in the muffler. I had checked the car plenty of times, but little did I know you actually had to look there to get something.

I felt retarded about it because when all my other friends played the game and that case, they would get it in an instant. I had to look on GameFAQs for that one, and I never had to look at the guide for any of the cases until that point.

FELIPE NO

I know you'd rather I didn't post a puzzle game, though the game itself isn't one, I was stuck in a couple of trials in FFX. One in particular.. I can't remember the name.. was really confusing. It took me quite some time to figure it out.

I couldn't figure out where the key to the ancients was in FFVII. I even gave the darn game up for -months- because of it. And when I finally figured out to go underwater, I felt preeeetty dumb.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Golden Sun and its sequel were fun games, but there were parts of the games where I had absolutely no idea what to do next. The parts where I was confused on consisted of either using some obscure Psynergy that I completely forgot I had or getting lost on the world map (primarily Golden Sun 2).

"I wonder what these puddles on the dungeon floor are doing here."
... after ten minutes of fruitless exploration...
"Oh yeah! I can freeze them!"

Pure genius.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Shining Force II. Got stuck for over a year, and all I had to do, was search the force sword with the A button instead of the C button.

Also, lets not forget X-Men for the Genesis' "Hit the Reset button.... Yes, get off of your ass and actually hit the reset button on the system" debacle

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Probably the most shameful one was Carnival Night Zone on Sonic 3. You know, the bobbing platform that you can't move past unless you press down on it while you're spinning on it? I didn't figure that one out until last year. I'll let you do the necessary math and come to the shameful conclusion.

Also, Down the Tubes from Eathworm Jim 1. There's this part where you have to carefully navigate a glass bubble past craggy rocks before your air runs out. At one point you're given 99 seconds. I felt I had that part down to a science, but could never reach the finish line in time. Fast-forward three years later, while thumbing through an old Nintendo Power, I discovered that there was an air-refuel pump behind an illusionary wall midway through that 99-second part. I don't remember anything after that.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The reset thing in X-men was fun. I remember it. But, since I only managed to get that far in the game maybe 3 times, I couldn't get to solve it till emulators came in.

Most of the puzzles in the Neverhood were similar too, if you can call "walking past 50 screens" a puzzle. That was a very sadistic thing from the makers of the game.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

ICO left me feeling pretty retarded a couple times. I mean the puzzles are pretty simple, they really are just common sense. But I know there were occasions where I was just fucking clueless.

I must be lacking.

How ya doing, buddy?

Sphinx and the Curse of the Mummy really had me stuck a lot of times. A friend recommended me the games already telling me that it was extremely hard to get through without a FAQ. They had given up an used a FAQ but I decided to try without one.

Ine of the hardest parts I remember was getting passed those towers that attack you once you were in their range of strike. I was spending hours trying to find paths around them, just to find out you were suppose to do something to this large boulder for it to fall and destroy the towers.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?