Obvious stuff you never discovered or solved while playing..

[Tig]

...I just had to press B at the big button next to the gate.
I don't believe I could not work that out!

****! I would *never* have remembered that... it seems sooooo long ago, but I remember making the same mistake on my first play. I didn't know B was an action button, see? Should've RTFM.

[PeteJ]

I rented the first Resident Evil upon release, and in my rental time I managed to reach an area with a fountain that must have been close to the end. It was obvious what you had to do - place the two books from earlier in the game in the correct places - but whatever I tried just would not work.
I returned the game at this unfinished state.

The next week I checked out a tips magazine. Apparently you had to open up the inventory and press X to open the book, revealing a key.

Shame this feature wasn't used *at all* in the rest of the game, making it almost impossible to work out this is what you had to do. Never did finish that game, or the remake.

I agree that these things are usually poor design, and I too was stuck on the same section of Ico for a long time.

[Kubrick]

The bit in MGS where you had to plant the C4 to blow a hole in a wall had me stumped for a while. Never thought to look in first-person mode...

[Spatial]

Remembered another one

The Dig for PC ( excellent game by the way ). I spent ages trying to work out those light bridges.

I tried turning the lenses in all directions, tried pressing the buttons countless times, and loads of different lens direction / button press combos.

I even went on to finish the game and still couldn't figure them out

Turns out, instead of pressing the button you just had to hold it down till the bridge was charged - indicated by a big fecking glowing line to make it even more obvious

I'd spent ages taking the long way round, trapsing through location after location, using the shuttle orbs and back tracking over and over....

Doh !

Still, must have made the game last at least five times its expected play time

[Lyris]

Timesplitters 2 on Gamecube, I beat the whole game without realizing there was an alternate fire button... I just didn't think anyone would ever use the Z-button.

[Magnakai]

Ooh, I have a couple of good ones in Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis.
There's a bit in the Team path, I think, where you need to get a hot air balloon thingy from a guy on a small island. Except you need a form saying that it's for you. Thing is, there's a little box for a hot air balloon thingy in a very obvious location. I tried looking inside it hundreds of times... but i didn't try CLOSING the bloody LID.

Also, there's a puzzle where you have to line up a sight through some bullhorns. I did it in about 30 seconds, except that it didn't work. Why? Well, I hadn't lined it up at the very EDGE of the horns. That one took me about two weeks. Luckily, you didn't need to do it for the Wits path...

[Alf-Life]

I completed F-Zero X Master cup without knowing what a boost was. Hehe, OK maybe not. But here are some real ones:


Actually, that GoldenEye on pressing B on the first gate stumped me for a few minutes on my first play, again, I didn't know B was 'action' I think I pressed it once when I got there but I reloaded.
Similar thing happened first time on Perfect Dark - I was stumped for a couple of minutes when I didn't know I could hold A and get the descrambler thing and use it on that computer.

More Goldeneye: I bombed the yellow cylinders in Facility thinking they were the 'bottling room tanks', and the magnetic watch stumped me for a few minutes.


Oh, and completing all the 00 Agent objectives in GoldenEye first time through on Agent because I'd read the briefings properly was... cool. (eg blowing the gun emplacements in Runway.)


Next up, Zelda; ashamed, but it was my first Zelda game, and I finally referred to a walkthrough or something because I had no idea I had to stand on King Goron's doormat and play a bloody lullably to open the door. :/ Kept trying to light the bombs on the shop and all that to blow his door open and everything.
Oh, I was also stuck on Dodongo for a couple of hours because I never hit him with my sword after I bombed him. Again I say, my first Zelda game sue me.

Finally, ICO. Because it was such a beautiful game I tried not to look at any walkthroughs whatsoever, however stuck I was. And I succeeded.

The first stuck point was actually just after the crane... in that room with the rafter you can walk on. You have to bomb the pillar, but I didn't know those crappy little things were bombs... I was stuck for a couple of days running about, then gave up for several months. Then euraked it when I zoomed in after accidentally picking one up.

The next point, I saved just at the couch where there's a horizontal lift to get Yorda across... and I was stuck here, couldn't figure anything out and left it again for about half a year while I played other games.
... in the previous "room" (or area, really), there's a switch you have to get on a box to reach, I went up to it after trying everything and jumped and pressed action and thought (because of the perspective) that I must have already pressed it many months ago when I first saved it.
After a long absence again, just after Christmas I played again and got the crate there and was able to carry on.

Finally, the last sticking point was that bloody watermill. It only stumped me for maybe a couple of hours... but how the hell was I to know I had to time my jump on the cog thing to launch me up an unrealistic height? I eventually stumbled onto that answer and was able to finally finish the otherwise beautiful game.

Oh, and through no fault of my own, my copy of Half-Life must have been bugged because when I got to that final pit where the spider with a hewj testicle falls down and you have a finale, he stopped up top and I was left quicksaved in the pit. It'd taken me 2 days to get there, but I stayed stuck for a week (rather than starting again, d'oh) and kept trying to lob AR grenades up at him. Eventually, through sheer messing around, I detonated all my detpacks and emptied my rockets and the place they exploded broke open the hole in the floor that I assume the spider breaks when she/it dies, and so I just jumped down it into the teleportal.

I also went through Halo on Legendary without knowing what the black button did... [/color][/quote]

[Moodmon]

Just got another one. It took me a couple of hours, and many falls, to work out you could draw your sword on ledges and thing walkways in Prince of Persia. Damn bats!

[mid]

I suffered the same Goldeneye gate problem as everyone else, so I don't feel too bad about it.

I'm quite impressed that I managed to complete Doom on Hurt Me Plenty, on keyboard, without using the strafe buttons. Going back now I can't get anywhere without them...

Ico just infuriates me; I think I spent over an hour getting out of the second room before I realised that Yorda can open those doors, which unfortunately set the tone for the rest of the game; there have only been about three puzzles in the whole thing I've been able to solve off my own back somehow.

[Reef]

Zelda: Windwalker...

Someone had to tell me that you need to get some water from the pool and put it on the bomb-plant right at the begginig on the Flying peoples island.

You're not the only one!

[Ady]

I was stuck near the end of Castlevania : SOTN as it didn't occur to me that waearing armour cleverly named 'Spike Breaker Armour' would get me through the coridoor lined with spikes.

I was stuck on the part in FFVII where you need to do something or other at an excavation site (it's been a while since I played that game).

To address an interesting point Superkully made though, I don't consider these temporary show-stoppers to be indicative of poor game design. It's when the soultion isn't at all obvious and you're left wondering "How the hell was I meant to know that!?" when do do finally get it that there's a problem.

Silent Hill's zodiac puzzle springs to mind.

[Darwock]

Have been stuck for 2 weeks in the first dungeon of Link's Awakening. First Zelda game i've played, I didn't realise if you pushed this nondescript block that a door would open. Well I'm not psychic! I had to look it up unfortunately.

I've also started playing the original Zelda, and I have a feeling it's going to go the same way. If bombing random walls is the only way to find solutions (so I've heard) I may not stick it out.

[Blu3Flame]

MGS on the PSX :\ The damn bit where it said to look on the back of the cd case for the frequency, I spent hours at that part in the game searching every room for a cd case before I clicked it meant the ACTUAL cd case the game came in.

[mid]

I actually had to have someone explain that to me, after leaving the thing sit on the shelf for a month because I was stuck...

[TheShend]

I spent nearly an hour on the first dungeon of Zelda: OoT in one room.

I was looking for ever more ingenius ways to open a barred door in a previous room that i completely missed that you only had to hit the eye symbol above the same door with a slingshot.

Doh.