Zen and the art of **** level design

[dreamylittledream]

The most recent one for me is the 'Descent into Hell' level of Spawn Armegeddon which rather like in Buffy turned whole scale from a fun if derivative DMC clone with the occasional bit of jumping into a platformer from hell.

Two bloody days I was stuck on that evil level....and then afterwards the game goes straight back to normal again and concludes without ever being particulary tricky.

I hate ridiculous difficulty spikes in general...like bosses that are almost impossible to beat....Drakengard suffered from this....why ruin a fun game with a stupid curveball that player really has to struggle to overcome?

(having said that I struggled with the final few DMC bosses and a couple of Metroid Fusion's but still loved playing them....I guess its the gap between seeing the possible and thinking 'I'm never going to beat this damned thing')

[Ady]

How anyone can think the Water Temple in OOT is poorly designed is beyond me. Taking maybe. The Shadow Temple, OTOH wasn't very fun. Too many annoying, repetitive little sections wrapped in a garish, muddy brown-green hue.

Galerians : Ash was one whole games worth of poorly designed levels. That you start by fighting the end boss from the last game twice isn't a good start. The indoor sections often have you running around bland, samey, featureless coridoors, many of which have dead ends, or empty rooms.

[mid]

Just remembered another one:

GTA 3, the drug-laden Ice Cream Trucks level. Its the point where I gave up on the game, and sits uncompleted to this day. Don't expect me to make it across the entire map of the game, finding object that haven't been there before, nor appear on the radar, in a tight time-limit. Its pointless, stupid, lazy games design at its most basic. There is no good reason to not have them show on the map, other than it wants you to replay the level until you've found them and learnt their positions.

There are many good things about the game, but I guess I'll never see more of them.

Also, Kuri Kuri Mix - the music level. I really don't understand what I'm doing at the end of level boss at all - I can stay alive for arbitrary amounts of time, but just can't figure out what you're supposed to do to hurt the thing.

[Flabio]

How anyone can think the Water Temple in OOT is poorly designed is beyond me.

The only thing that got up my nose in the water temple was that there was no quick way to toggle the boots on and off. Just being able to bind them to one of the c buttons would've removed all the frustration from it.

[chevkoch]

DC MDK2. The visuals, atmosphere, gameplay and physics are all fantastic were it not for the total arbitrary distribution of save points. I recently completed that title, but it's been unnecessarily tough.

Still can't figure how Bioware could produce such a wholesome title in many ways and f*k up to the unbearingly extreme in the difficulty QA. The placement of said save points throughout the levels is so beyond the unfair, I've never encountered anything only close as disappointing. The later PS2 incarnation had allegedly an adjusted difficulty level, but I never got to play that version.