Games designed by people who hate you

[anephric]

Yeah, you! Hate you like on a fundamental, misanthropic level. Like hate the spaces between your atoms. Like would go back in time to punch your grandaddy in the balls.

The prosecution brings (obvious) Exhibit A:



Takeshi no Chousenjou [Takeshi's Challenge] (Famicom)

You know this one. Sing karaoke again and again. Don't touch the game for an hour. A boss that's undefeatable for all intents and purposes. Takeshi, he laugh with expressionless dead eyes long and hard at you, Famicom Boy, because he hate you. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!

It's often been surmised that this game is a cruel joke on gamers by Takeshi and it's not hard to see why. Almost abstract in its misery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqV7e5xLERU

Exhibit B:



I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (PC)

Harlan Ellison, that infamous sci-fi firebrand midget, designed this old DOS effort based on one of his celebrated short stories. In case you didn't know, Mr. Ellison notoriously is a potty-mouthed chap who likes to sue everyone for ripping him off. He also hates the intarwebs and PC "hackers" who hang about said nebulous place, for he believes they have caused the death of the artist and are probably ripping him off this very second.

Hence, the game of IHNMAIMS is inhumanely, brutally difficult to the point where it's impossible to beat without the infinite patience to repeat the same actions, Groundhog Day-style, over and over again (but without having a clue which bit you've done wrong and will make you have to repeat the whole thing ad nauseum) or without simply playing through with an FAQ.

Basically, in the game an insane supercomputer makes you confront your worst fears. Because it hates you. The voice of the supercomputer is Harlan Ellison himself. He voiced it himself because he hates you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mun-6GQGL4Y

[MattyD]

Yeah, you! Hate you like on a fundamental, misanthropic level. Like hate the spaces between your atoms. Like would go back in time to punch your grandaddy in the balls.

The prosecution brings (obvious) Exhibit A:

Takeshi no Chousenjou [Takeshi's Challenge] (Famicom)

I just knew you were going to say that.

All I can think of right now is Dead or Alive et all. Tomonobu Itagaki is a complete rockstar-wannabe prick.

[Wools]

Yep Dead or Alive 4 would be one of the most frustrating games I've played in years.

The Hardcore and the Developers said it is meant to be punishing to whittle out the weak and for you to learn from that difficulty. The kings of the fighting genre in the shape of Soul Calibur, Tekken 5 and Virtua Fighter 5 ease you in so you can learn, adapt and practice.

I dont mind if the game wants to be like that, I'll just sell it. But that infurates me, why try to alienate people who actually want to learn the games mechanics?

[dataDave]

I didn't find DoA difficult at all over the 2/3 days I kept hold of it. It was pretty **** though and Itagaki is a knobend if he thinks it's anywhere near Tekken even.

[elkatas]

Brutally difficult to the point where it's impossible to beat without the infinite patience to repeat the same actions, Groundhog Day-style, over and over again (but without having a clue which bit you've done wrong and will make you have to repeat the whole thing ad nauseum) or without simply playing through with an FAQ.

Brutally difficult? Game was actually pretty logical and easy (finished it within two weeks), especially thanks to hintbook that you always carried. But the actual bugs pissed me off.

[anephric]

I didn't find it particularly logical at all (although my memories of playing through it are a decade old), and there are plenty who agree with me. I suppose logic is in the eye of the beholder, though.

"Ellison actually wanted to design the game in such a way that the players cannot win."

[Juste]

I like Dead or Alive XBV for Xbox but find it very frustrating sometimes. I think even today nobody knows how the gifting system works 100%. You can find lots of tutorials but they take lots and lots of practice to get them to work. Tecmo wouldn't publish any Strategy guides too except for gallery/complete item catalogue books. Lots of people have asked Itagaki in interviews how things are meant to work in the game but he won't tell anybody. Stupid Itagaki. (^_^)

[H.I.]

Takeshi's Challenge sounds like a great concept. It's hard to believe it went into production. The Penn & Teller game had a similar concept ("Desert Bus") but to my knowledge it went unreleased and you can only get a bootleg.

[BaudAttitude]

Copypaste from blog for sheer laziness. I've been trying to clear out my backlog this year and this is the only game so far that I've gotten 90% of the way through, put back on the shelf, and looked up the development staff and what they'd done since so I could be sure not to accidentally buy any of their games ever again:



-----
Y Buffy Kant Swim?

So this week’s games have been P.N. 03 on the Gamecube and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Xbox. I haven’t gotten far enough into P.N.03 to really talk about it, but I’ve seen a bit more of Buffy, enough to decide to put it aside as not worth finishing.
This is a harsh statement, particularly painful because the game starts brilliantly, the story is enjoyable, and the combat system is simple, but lets you pull off some really cool moves once you dig into it.
The problem is this: In about the second level of the game, you have to fight Spike. Sorry for the spoiler. He’s a tough enough fight on his own, and then you need to face off against a bunch of other vampires while you’re already low on health and short healing items.
This is the only time in the game where you are at any risk of dying to a vampire, zombie, or any form of demon. Seriously. The game throws healing items at you left and right - to the point where I kept having to skip picking up more because my inventory was full. From then on, it’s demon bashin’ fun with Buffy and an assortment of dangerous toys - it’s surprisingly fun to dismember zombies with a shovel or sledgehammer.
What’s left to provide a challenge? The environment. Buffy can’t swim, for instance. Levels have lots of water in them. If you fall into water - instant death. There’s lots of molten metal, too, in one level, but I don’t have any complaints about that, if it weren’t for the next factor:
Buffy is dumb. I mentioned Ico a few weeks ago, and if you’ve played that you probably have a few harsh words for Yorda. Buffy makes Yorda look like a genius.
“Hey, Buffy! In front of you is a bar you can hang on to, and also a pit full of molten metal! When I press the jump button, which will you choose?”
She seems to instinctively pick the lethal option. It’s worse if you have to do any combat near a hazard, because her combat animations tend to chain into each other and you can punch and kick your way right into the aforementioned lethal water.
Even with that, it was still worth playing, until I got to the next-to-last level. This is where the developers thought to themselves, “Wow, this game is actually kind of short. How should we make it longer?”
You get a level that, yes, has a few things in it to fight, but they’re never any real threat. Ignore them. What will kill you here is that the level is a series of platform jumps, where missing any of the jumps means an unrecoverable fall to your death. Miss one jump - or fail to jump off the platform you just jumped TO in time - and it starts you over at the beginning of the level. I will also mention that making Buffy jump in a straight line instead of at a weird angle seems to be a matter of pure dumb luck.
Buffy the fighting-vampires game is a really great game, and I recommend it. Buffy the platform game is a mess. It’s a shame that they come on the same disc.

[Ryo Saeba]

I think Gran Turismo 4 is such a game. It's just there to suck out your lifetime and bore you with mindless repetition, while capitalizing on the "collect 'em all" principle.

I love the idea of Takeshi's Challenge for NES.. at least it's honest in its disrespect and hate.

[Brodie]

Buffy the fighting-vampires game is a really great game, and I recommend it. Buffy the platform game is a mess. It?s a shame that they come on the same disc.

Totally agree - it's one of my favourite Xbox games for the combat but that moving platform level in the demon dimension just sucked my will to live. Don't think I ever went back to it after that.

[kernow]

Viewpoint on neogeo, simply because it is beyond hard.

[Daragon]

Ninja Gaiden (xbox and PS3) - how a game can be THAT hard must be a crime of some sort. Even on normal mode I found myself hurling my controller across the room in anger near enough as soon as I started the second level.
Dog mode on Black was "supposedly" easier, but I didn't manage to get much further on that either.

Illusion of Time/Gaia is another "love to hate" game - I found myself stuck on one particular boss for literally months before I realised what I wasn't doing to make it easier for myself. The game's instruction manual had the complete walkthrough at the back of it for some odd reason and yet that didn't tell me what I needed to know. Purely by chance did I stumble across a hidden save point where I could switch from "boy with pointy stick" to "big grufter knight with chuffing huge sword"

Dragon Quest: JotCK has been the most recent game to cause me undue grief - many of the boss encounters are simply evil and never has there been a greater need for grinding outside of an MMORPG and those damned Metal slimes seemingly set to auto-flee still haunt my dreams at night.

[Prophet Hero]

V - Commodore 64

(This title came to my mind last night after reading about extraterrestrial life in The God Delusion. My mind really is that fractured.)

I seem to remember that the game started off in a locked hanger bay of one of the alien motherships. To get out you had to crack the code with your mini computer. However, the code used strange alien symbols. IIRC the instructions didn't explain the symbols or the code-cracking. Perhaps I was just dumb but I couldn't crack the code. All I could do was run from end to end somersaulting on the game's starting screen. I got rid of the game.


I'd disagree with the seemingly extreme difficulty of Ninja Gaiden, particularly the PS3 version. I'm on this at the moment and it seems to be easier than the Xbox versions (I consider myself an average gamer at best although one with a lot of patience).