Purposefully Pissed Off
Video games that include gameplay mechanics or features that intentionally piss off the player, either in service of thematics or just outta plain old spite. Suggestions welcome!
45 Games
Detective work that involves knocking on over 100 apartment doors.
The action stages of Stone Buddha are performed at a very slow walking speed, and enemies spawn infinitely until you reach the end. There's also no HUD elements at all, ammo and health and remaining distance are a complete mystery, impossible to tell which gunshot is going to kill you, and there's no checkpoints.
The city exploration stages have the same walking speed, and end only when you get home and take a sleeping pill, BUT you can run out of pills (again, no HUD) and the pharmacy closes at night. There's activities, but they're not any fun to perform, and most don't even pass the time any quicker.
The city exploration stages have the same walking speed, and end only when you get home and take a sleeping pill, BUT you can run out of pills (again, no HUD) and the pharmacy closes at night. There's activities, but they're not any fun to perform, and most don't even pass the time any quicker.
Makes you believe your Xbox 360 is about to RROD / your GPU is melting
The player learns of a legendary gun called Bane, and is sent on a difficult, lengthy sidequest to retrieve it. While the Bane has some pretty serious damage for a submachine gun, it slows the player's movements down to a crawl, making it useless in all but a few very specific combat situations. It also has some pretty annoying sound effects when switching weapons, firing, and reloading.
Includes an optional collectable that can only be reached after waiting two real world hours for a cloud to move all across the map. Required for 100% completion.
Has a lot of NPCs that purposefully lie to the player to throw them off, while a few others have important information needed to progress the game
one of the ''''best'''' weapons, Nemesis, fires flamebolts normally but shoots harmless rubber ducks instead if you max out its level
Crazy Frog makes that damn noise!!!
where do i even begin
Includes a platforming minigame that feels awful to play, conveying the hopelessness of attempting to escape
The player can equip a mysterious pendant serves absolutely no purpose
When Diablo 3 launched, many players felt the new graphics were "too bright" and "cartoon-like." Blizzard's response to this criticism was to make a secret level called Whimsyshire, which features teddy bears, pink flowers, and unicorns as monsters, with all the normal world objects are replaced with cute objects.
The game’s mere existence, as acknowledged in cutscenes
Drakengard
Countless little time-wasting niggles, like the waterfall wait and pizza delivery. Itoi has gone on record as acknowledging these were practical jokes and attempts to enhance the game’s sense of reality.
Turns off your TV and then simulates the deletion of your memory card data.
When entering Shinra Tower, you can enter through the front door and encounter more danger and combat, or you can stealthily take the stairs. However, the stairs are a copy-pasted winding bit of nonsense, one the characters acknowledge is exhausting and tedious to walk through.
you know
The developers intentionally leaked a pirated copy of their game on to torrent sites that considerably buffs the effect of software piracy on a player's game dev business, which in turn makes the game unbeatable.
Directly acknowledged in the narration that the game has been designed to piss people off
Asks you to beat the game again upon completion in order to see the ending
core gameplay philosophy
has one really long level with copy/paste arenas and hallways everywhere and the characters constantly complain about it not being over yet, lol
Trico is purposefully designed to disobey commands, make solving certain puzzles tedious, and even hurt you or get you killed to convey that this is a giant man-eating beast that you can't control so much as learn to work with. I think the player is supposed to be pissed off at Trico for a lot of the game until something clicks and they learn how to work with him/her.
Rewards the player with a literal pile of shit for getting all 900 Korok seeds.
King Zora scooches over
On the final screen of the Death Star Escape level there’s a hidden door that only Stormtroopers can enter. On your first playthrough, this requires you to walk back to the beginning of the level to collect a Stormtrooper disguise and then walk all the way to the end again without getting hit. Upon opening the door, a large silver trophy that serves no functional purpose is revealed.
In mm battle network 3's postgame, bubbleman v3 is a coward and will only reencounter you if your health is below 20% or so
Plenty of options here, with the Snake bait-and-switch and Rose’s codec calls probably the most targeted attacks on a specific type of audience member
your felyne chefs who are meant to help you prepare for quests can easily give you food poisoning if you choose the wrong arbitrary ingredient combination. it also never records the effects of each ingredient combination, and these effects change wildly based on how many chefs you have.
When you reach the Black Knight you have to fight him to progress, it's very simple and almost impossible to lose.
HOWEVER, it also gives you the option to play as the Black Knight, a very long
tedious, sluggish and difficult fight viewed through a narrow helmet visor. If you manage to win, killing King Arthur, you get a game over screen and have to restart the game.
HOWEVER, it also gives you the option to play as the Black Knight, a very long
tedious, sluggish and difficult fight viewed through a narrow helmet visor. If you manage to win, killing King Arthur, you get a game over screen and have to restart the game.
Chores.
You have to acquire 99 tofu for a trophy, and have to buy them one at a time.
Search for General White
Everhood has a secret ending locked behind a 1000-screen hallway. Around halfway through rocks start appearing that block you from just AFKing while holding right.
Everhood has a secret ending locked behind a 1000-screen hallway. Around halfway through rocks start appearing that block you from just AFKing while holding right.
The sequel leans in a different emotional direction in my opinion but the original Pathologic absolutely has a lot stuff that provokes an exasperated anger at the town and it's inhabitants.
In order to become a mage, the player must fetch a witch some groceries from the market. Rather than asking for everything at once, the witch repeatedly sends you across town for each individual item in an attempt to teach you about patience and hard work. In order to collect some of the groceries, the player has to go on nested sub-quests for other merchants in town.
An NPC will trade his Haunter with you, but it’s holding an item that will prevent it evolving into Gengar
“Ahhh, not this shit again…”
See: I Wanna Be The Guy
Tripping.
The O.G. for this list. A practical joke of a game that’s designed to be unfair to the player at possible at every turn - Kitano said the fact that the game would be mostly played by children made this cruelty even funnier to him. A virtual Beat Takeshi berates the player for completing it.
A fighting/brawler game that is defined by its creative longform punch/kick/throw combo system ends with a boss battle against a guy who can just shoot a gun that kills you instantly. The game encourages you to try dodging the bullet.
A hidden puzzle inside of a 56 minute long lecture about why you shouldn't hide secrets that is started at the beginning of the speech and can only be completed at the end. Pausing the game resets the video entirely.
has a special pin that is particularly powerful once upgraded to its fifth stage and put in a set with the other stages. however, if you overlevel + overevolve it, it'll go right back to its first evolution stage (or in the japanese version, turn into... 1 yen.)
37 Comments
'Heatstroke' might be one of the most antagonistic games ever made. I'm not sure I'll ever have a review for it because of just how mean it is to the player and demanding but it stands in a class of its own, no doubt. It stays on my mind for weeks at a time.
This comment was deleted
Ok I'm actually blind and said Pathologic even tho it's in the list, so let's hope I sisn't miss this one: Battletoads. The speeder bike level is infamous at this point and for good reason. Also I guess Everhood could count, it has an optional passage that takes like three hours to reach the end. It does result in a secret ending, but still, pretty fucked up.
Rain World: the entire thing
Final Fantasy 7: When entering Shinra Tower, you can enter through the front door and encounter more danger and combat, or you can stealthily take the stairs. However, the stairs are a copy-pasted winding bit of nonsense, one the characters acknowledge is exhausting and tedious to walk through.
LISA: The Painful
The sacrifice system
The sacrifice system
TailoredMuffin
1 year ago