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Awful Levels/Segments in Otherwise Great Games [roundtable]
 
Wet-Dry World in Mario 64

I always hated this level, whenever I play this game now this is always one of the last ones I finish. I don't know, I guess it just feels really boring and unpleasant.




The Riverboat in Half-Life 2

True story, I played through the first part of Half-Life 2, loved it, made it to the riverboat, hated every minute of that, and stopped playing the game before I picked up about 8 months later. Very glad I did, but that section I have no desire to ever play again.



Flood Levels in Halo Games

The flood have always been a chore to fight and these missions consistently are the low points of each of the main trilogy titles.



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11/19/10, 08:49    Edited: 11/23/10, 09:55
 
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@Renjaku I forgot all about that. Having a crappy boring stealth section at the beginning of a Zelda game was a terrible idea.



I don't remember how I felt about cave areas in Pokemon as a kid (though I do recall trying to avoid them; I bypassed the Seafoam Islands entirely in the original Blue version by surfing south from Pallet Town), but nowadays I find the puzzles in them really easy. About 95% of the time I move the boulders using Strength into the correct position my first try. The random battles can get pretty annoying though, but Repels really come in handy right then.
11/19/10, 22:44   
I got one- the on-foot levels in Rebel Strike.
11/19/10, 22:46   
Deerock69 said:
I got one- the on-foot levels in Rebel Strike.

word.
11/19/10, 23:05   
@Deerock69

The worst was otherwise great missions ruined by an on-foot portion somewhere in the middle.
11/19/10, 23:12   
autokymatic said:
Deerock69 said:
I got one- the on-foot levels in Rebel Strike.

word.

Yeah but there were too many of them to even consider the game great. Those levels sucked ass.
11/19/10, 23:14   
Pandareus said:
The only thing that comes to mind right now are the underwater and space suit segments in KOTOR. They serve no purpose except making your character walk half as fast.
Oh man, I loathed those parts of the game. At least they were rare enough to where it wasn't really a problem.

And the car mission in Act 2 and the entirety of Act 3 (especially the mine cart ride) in Gear of War comes to mind. They weren't really awful, but they were quite annoying. Between the kryll and the lambent wretches it was just a pain in the ass, especially on insanity.

And I'm surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet; the tear collection in Twilight Princess. God, that was one of the most tedious, mind-numbing, most boring thing I've ever had to do in a video game. It was so bad that it made me quit playing for a while because it was so irritating. Really the whole Twilight Realm in general was annoying, but that damn tear collecting was the worst.
11/19/10, 23:30   
Edited: 11/19/10, 23:30
CB200 said:
Pokemon Caves WERE NOT that hard. Wow...some of you people are just WUSSIES and you call yourself gamers?

I beat those things back in junior high with some simple trial and error in less than an hour. The only tedious parts were the random battles but otherwise the puzzles weren't that bad or hard to figure out. I can understand the Water Temple with that one floating block that uncovers a hole to get a necessary key, and the constant switching of the Iron Boots on and off...those parts are annoying to be sure.

As for other games that had annoying levels/segments...gonna have to think on those for a bit to recall some.
I remember playing the original Pokemon games on the brick game boy. I would alter the tint of the screen and could vaguely see the linings of the wall including shadows of the other trainers. Who needs flash when you got tint?
11/20/10, 01:08   
Weird driving missions in Jak II and III.

The Water Temple and Naked Raiden rocked.
11/20/10, 02:41   
Edited: 11/20/10, 02:42
Deerock69 said:
I got one- the on-foot levels in Rebel Strike.
That I will agree with. I have no idea what Factor 5 was thinking when they put those in there.
11/20/10, 03:13   
SM64 Wet Dry World - I liked it. Better than the other water levels in SM64, for sure. And they weren't that bad either. My feelings match X-pert's.

Halo Flood Levels - Agreed.

MP2 Dark Aether - I remember being a little annoyed, but only a little. I'm more stubborn nowadays so I'd probably be more annoyed.

HL2 Anti-citizen One - Agreed. I got lost a few times there. And the squad AI was god awful. The antlions were so much smarter than the humans.

TT Endoscopy - YES. My arm got tired pushing that snake so far up children's rectums.

WW Forsaken Fortress - Agreed.

Galaxy gimmick levels - Nah, those were sweet. All of them. Which surprises me to this day. Even more than that, I'm surprised that I MISS them in Galaxy 2. Great pace-changers.

SMG Bee Mario - I agree with Carlos, Bee Mario is probably my least-favorite powerup in the Galaxy games. He moves so slowly, and clinging to the honey is a little wonky. Though I guess he just didn't like the aesthetics. I don't like Bee Mario, who inhabits those levels.

Other M pixel hunts - Agreed. Most of them weren't bad, but the goop in the grass was crap. Also, for some reason, when I was looking for the "way out" while hiding from Ridley, pointing at the door wasn't doing anything. I must have tried it five or six times before it finally worked.

Pokemon dungeons - Yes. Anything with moving blocks and multiple levels is tedious, but it's even more so when you've got Geodudes and Seels asking for change every five steps.

KOTOR space/water segments - Yep, pointless. I hated the whole water planet in KOTOR.

Rebel Strike on-foot missions - Absolutely. The space battles were better than ever, and the ground vehicles weren't bad either, but there were so many on-foot missions...

Tear Collecting in Twilight Princess - Agreed, I remember taking a while on the very first one and getting annoyed.


My additions

Over-the-shoulder parts in Other M. They were pointless.

Chrono Trigger's DS-exclusive fetch quest. So tedious and time-consuming. I was marveling at the game's fantastic pacing, but when I hit that point, I was like "am I still playing the same game?" Turns out I wasn't.
11/20/10, 04:33   
Edited: 11/20/10, 04:35
@casper884
Honestly, I don't think the on-foot levels were even 5% of the entire game. The two-player stuff was some of the best in the entire last generation.
11/20/10, 05:04   
Hey! I LOVED Wet Dry World, probably one of my top three worlds in the game!

@GelatinousEncore

Is that Rock Tunnel from RBY?! I wholeheartedly vote for that and the Water Temple in OOT.

Also, New Pork City in Brawl as well.

And now that I think about it? PRetty much any escort/protect mission in GoldenEye. So freaking stupid.


EDIT:

missypissy said:
OMG the caves in the Pokemon games also annoy me. I especially hated the ones where you had to use Flash to even see. So many Zubats and near death experiences. I don't think I've really ever left a cave with more than 2 people (in the red) alive in any Pokemon game.

YES. The Flash thing was REALLY effing annoying in the early games because Flash was so gawddamn useless! It forced me to either make an HM Whore (and hope it could even learn Flash or would have room for it), or waste one of my team's precious move slots... just to get through one area.

I said "screw that!" in RSE, since they give you just enough of a spotlight to fudge your way through - went though that cave blind, lol.

And...ah yes, Zubat and Geodude. They are likely the most hated Pokemon in existence for just how freaking common they are in like, EVERY region.
11/20/10, 05:53   
Edited: 11/20/10, 06:00
11/20/10, 06:07   
@Dillo64

Awesome.

nate38 said:
Chrono Trigger's DS-exclusive fetch quest. So tedious and time-consuming. I was marveling at the game's fantastic pacing, but when I hit that point, I was like "am I still playing the same game?" Turns out I wasn't.
TOSE strikes again.

I'm sorry to hear these hacks soured Chrono Trigger for you.
11/20/10, 06:18   
Edited: 11/20/10, 06:24
@nate38
I thought the over-the-shoulder segments in Other M added to the atmosphere and didn't take away from the game in any way.
11/20/10, 11:00   
They tried to instill a feeling of uneasiness, but made it abundantly clear that nothing would actually happen by not letting you do anything but walk. It was all false tension, and I didn't buy into it. For me, it was just padding before the next cutscene where something actually happened. I guess the only time it was truly awful was in the exam center. That whole sequence was kind of crappy.
11/20/10, 19:17   
comet said:
CB200 said:
Pokemon Caves WERE NOT that hard. Wow...some of you people are just WUSSIES and you call yourself gamers?

I beat those things back in junior high with some simple trial and error in less than an hour. The only tedious parts were the random battles but otherwise the puzzles weren't that bad or hard to figure out. I can understand the Water Temple with that one floating block that uncovers a hole to get a necessary key, and the constant switching of the Iron Boots on and off...those parts are annoying to be sure.

As for other games that had annoying levels/segments...gonna have to think on those for a bit to recall some.
I remember playing the original Pokemon games on the brick game boy. I would alter the tint of the screen and could vaguely see the linings of the wall including shadows of the other trainers. Who needs flash when you got tint?

LOL, I never thought to do that.

CB200: It's not that it was difficult - not at all. It was just so... TEDIOUS! Later games aren't nearly as bad, but in RBY? I hated caves more than anything in the world. Just long walks (or bike rides) littered with Geodudes and Zubats.

It was especially agitating in the early going because unless you picked Squirtle or Bulbasaur as your starter, you didn't have a lot of damage-inflicting options for either (especially Geodude). Heh... now that I think about it, fighting Geodudes and Onix in caves is probably why Bellsprout became such a fixture on my team when I played through it way back when.
11/20/10, 20:28   
Half-Life: Residue Processing. My overall favorite game of all time still has a chapter I find tedious. The first few times was really annoying but now I got every pixel of that game memorized like the back of my hand it's not so bad cuz I can just speedrun through it.

You lose your weapons, there's nothing but easy and tedious platforming, and the area is mazy and unnecessary. It's a strictly transitional area. That's my vote for Half-Life.
11/20/10, 20:37   
I just played through a part in Deadly Premonition where you fight this enemy that turns invisible and you can only attack it when it's getting ready to attack. So you run up to it, run away, fire a couple shots, and repeat like 25 times. It was a mini boss of sorts, and super tedious.

Then later in the level you fight another one.

And then another one.

And then ANOTHER one.
11/21/10, 05:29   
God of War: The section where you have to push something uphill while fighting monsters.

Ocarina of Time: Water Temple.

Chrono Trigger DS: New quest.

Zelda II: Death Mountain

Mortal Kombat saga: Endurance Rounds

Megaman ZX: Using the damn map.

Final Fantasy X: Blitzball.

Kingdom Hearts: Gummi Ship and Little Mermaid levels.

Metal Gear Solid 2: The fight with all the Metal Gear Rays.
11/22/10, 10:11   
Edited: 11/22/10, 10:12
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