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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

The OBI Point; or, where giving up becomes the sane thing to do

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13:57 / 20.02.06

I would like to know if many people have reached the "Oh, Bugger it" point in games recently.

For example; in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas everything was going very smoothly up until the 'Flying Lessons' set of missions, at which point I found myself frustrated beyond comparision by the simple fact that the plane would never achieve enough lift to reach a hoop on a particular challenge. Never. Trust me, I tried it enough times. I was forced to assume that at some point in the game prior to this I was supposed to have spent some quality time in light aircraft to build up the flying skill. However, it became so frustrating that I stopped playing, and have not been back since, which is a shame as the rest was fun enough.

This put me off gaming for a while, it has to be said. The OBI point isn't always something like this, either; it can also be the point at which the imagination behind a game obviously gave up, as I almost reached this point on Burnout: Revenge over the weekend, as the stages, although sparkly and beatiful, become repetitive after some play. Oh, all right, three and a half hours of play.

However, the mark of a good game can be when the OBI point seems to peak early, but because of the overall quality you're encouraged to keep trying; I bought God of War this afternoon, and the Hydra proved very frustrating, until you notice the crates and cranes, just to the side... (And yes, I know this is disgustingly early in the game.)

So, the question is dual, really; have you ever reached the OBI point in a game and walked away frustrated, but also have you noticed excellence in games that transcends the OBI point and, if so, care to point them out?

* For those curious about the summary, "OST" Refers to "Oh, Sod this" and "TA/IOOH" refers to "That's it, I'm out of here". Although that was probably guessable.

14:53 / 20.02.06

The problem with GTA is most probably that you're not retracting your landing gear, it's got nothing to do with flying skill. Pressing in one of the analogue sticks does the trick. I felt really stupid when I first figured that out, because it does actually say.
Remember though, that some of those lessons are still frustratingly difficult first time around.

All Acting Regiment

19:19 / 20.02.06

I was having some trouble with a certain helicopter-bound arsehole in Far Cry, and stoppped playing it for a bit, but then came back and gave my all and played on.

20:32 / 20.02.06

F-Zero GX. There's one point in the story mode where it becomes impossible to continue without having a hefty amount of luck on your side - you're racing in a GP and only stand a chance of coming first (and thus successfully completing it) if you

A) manage to use your amazing powers of precognition to predict where and when the fastest racer in the pack will be overtaking you on the starting grid, and steer into his path in the half a second beforehand, hoping to fluke the collision so that he'll go spinning off the side of the track and out of the race, or

B) end up doing nothing to cause it yourself, but have the two fastest racers take each other out of contention all on their own.

A) is highly unlikely. B) is highly unlikely. This leaves option C) give up and never play the game again.

Project Zero features a Resident Evil-style digital rotational movement scheme for character control. It places you in tight corridors, Resident Evil-style. Unlike Resident Evil, it places such severe restrictions on health items and ammunition that you'll only complete the game if you constantly quit out and reload every time you take damage or miss a shot. If you don't do that, it's inevitable that you'll have to start all over again from scratch because you've run out of one of the two and can't make any further progress.

Oh, and those movement controls? Fine in Resident Evil, where the baddies are slow moving and have similar restrictions to your own. Not so fine in a game where the enemy can travel through the fucking walls.

20:38 / 20.02.06

Meludreen - you are a Saint, and I am a fool, right now.

With the landing gear up, it's all so much simpler.

So, any more for any more? Step right up and hopefully either feel better for venting the frustrations or, with luck, someone will balm and soothe your troubled brow...

22:21 / 20.02.06

My friend was playing Angel of Darkness and got to the point where you have to make a jump from display case to display case in the Louvre over a bunch of moving lasers.

No matter what he tried he couldn't get the timing right. He looked it up on line and everywhere just said 'Make the jump', like there was no big secret to doing it.

My friend is really good at gaming, and not just out of his depth, but it simply wouldn't happen.

So yeah, he reached the OBI point in that.

22:48 / 20.02.06

This is one of my top tactics in game playing. I usually dump the game on level 1 or alternatively play right up until the last level/boss/whatever and after ten shots decide 'fuck it I couldn't really care what the endscreens look like anyway' and look for something else to play.

If I do complete a game it must be either piss easy or have really captured my interest.

Having said that I am a sucker for repetative games - give me an F-Zero death match and one controller and I'll be happy for hours.

02:24 / 21.02.06

I got to this point in Darwinia.

The ninth level, where you have to take over the islands of red darwinians, and then send the green darwinians over to kill all the red Darwinians. I have grown to seriously hate the red Darwinians, as they just keep coming in droves, it's pure insanity for me. I don't like it when great games become extremely hard at the end; one thing I loved about Half Life 2 was that the last level was a stress release, super gravity gun joyride that never let up, until the very end and was a really nice break from the tense pace up until then.

08:44 / 21.02.06

Metroid Prime: Echoes

The f---ing moth boss. I spend half an hour (literally, IIRC) plugging away at that poxy flipping swimming maggot. I kill it.

"GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY! AT F---ING LAST!"

It turns into a moth. Another half hour of unsuccessfull attempts to get the f---ing grapple to lock onto the correct thing. Samus pegs it, I scream and throw controller at ground. The best part of an hour wasted on a bloody cartoon MOTH!

I can't even be arsed to put the cheat codes in for infinite life. It's not just the trickiness, it's the sheer bloody *slog* of it. An hour! Okay, possibly exaggerated, but it bloody felt like it.

11:01 / 21.02.06

I'm with you on F-Zero GX, Randy.

I was a big fan of the N64 F-Zero X because the balance in that was just right, I never bought GX though, cause I played it round at friends and saw the exact sticking points you describe. Shame.

I'm really bad for finishing RPGs and it's not due to any difficulty thing. I'm not really sure why it is, but I almost always get to the last dungeon/boss and just never play the game again. It might be because this is the point I go to Gamefaqs to look up all the cool stuff I can do in the overworld, and all the ways I should be powering up my characters. I do that for a bit and then sort of drop off playing altogether. It took me a couple of months before I did the last bit of Skies of Arcadia, and it was a full year after getting to the Mako pit in FFVII before I actually went more than a screen in and finished the thing.

Superstar Saga for the GBA did this to me, but in that case I actually got to the boss. I can do her first form easy enough, but then she takes your health down to one point, changes into her second form and then unleashes a load of attacks before you can heal. She kept wiping me out before I could do anything and I'd have to go back and do her all over again. I'd never really get used to them because I'd switch the GbA off and not play again for a week or two.

I managed to beat her once, at which point you have to escape the castle in about two minutes before it blows up. Trouble was that it'd been so long since I'd properly played the game that I'd forgotten how to do something simple and ended up running out of time and dying, making me go back and do her all. over. again.

I've still not finished it.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:45 / 21.02.06

I was really, really enjoying Gun, but having been traumatised by it at least twice (keeping things as spoiler-free as possible: the bit where you have to sneak around stealing horses, and the bit where you're trying to take the Fort, specifically the last cannon), I crumpled in the face of the bit where you're going through the mining tunnels with the cannon, having to hop on and hop off it in order to kill/destroy different things. There's something particularly frustrating about the way your character dies in Gun - "sunnavaBITCH!" - and it broke me. And now I'm scared to go back.

lord nuneaton savage

15:08 / 21.02.06

Oh bollocks. I was really looking forward to Gun and I'm really easily fruatrated with computer games. Could it be that me and the way of the Gun are incompatible?

15:17 / 21.02.06

I gave up on GTA:SA just after the flying lessons; think it's the first flying mission, and I just kept getting shot outta the sky/crashing into mountains. I was just largely fed up of the game at that point, though.

rising and revolving

16:27 / 21.02.06

GUN wasn't very hard, ultimately. I finished it, and enjoyed it, on PS2 and on morphine. So it can't be too rough.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:09 / 21.02.06

That last boss in Silent Hill. Fucking lightning bolt shithead bastardfuck.

21:35 / 21.02.06

RPGs are an odd one, Mel. I think what happens a lot of the time is that you're so into it for the majority of the game, loving the feeling of exploration and discovery, that when the last corner comes into sight your brain switches off - kind of, "well, that's it, nothing else to see now."

Ultimately, you're often not playing them to see the resolution of the storyline - you're there for the journey leading up to it, which makes the destination all the more pointless.

Probably because you already know exactly how it's going to end.

02:51 / 22.02.06

tloz: wind waker. collecting the bits of triforce was so goddamn tedious i just couldn't be bothered. maybe one day i'll pick it up again, but i doubt it...

06:55 / 22.02.06

You should do. The few sections left after that are quite easily some of the best videogaming moments ever.

It's such a shame that the mind-numbing dullness of the Triforce hunt means that few people are likely to see them. It's not even as though the hunt - or any of the game, come to that - is difficult, it's just that it feels like a slog. You're unlikely to regret pushing through it, if you can.

09:59 / 22.02.06

You'll find a few points in GTA:San Andreas that are frustratingly difficult (there's a flight-based mission later on that is near impossible with a keyboard and mouse).

The problem is that the GTA series, and especially GTA:SA has a habit of the the missions occasionally bottlenecking down into just one mission, which must be passed in order for the game to continue and new mission givers to appear.

The point of this post is to let you know about this excellent service, offered by the GTA Forums. If you're stuck on a mission, just register, upload your savegame with instructions as to the mission(s) to be passed and where you want the game resaved afterwards. One of their volunteers will then do the mission for you and upload your new save, ready for download, so you can carry on after the tricky mission.

12:25 / 22.02.06

E. R9 - I totally agree with you, the end of Windwaker is one of the bestest sequences I've ever played. The graphics alone in the final fight are worth the entrance fee, but the triforce hunt almost killed it for me too. I'd go for months without playing it - in fact, I finished it over Christmas after getting it over two years previously. Take a deep breath, and get back in there.

Also, you people struggling with San Andreas should be ashamed to call yourselves gamers. Try flying the plane in GTA3 and then tell me that SA's planes are hard, ya wee jessies. Wait'll you get to the last mission, it's evil incarnate.

Pretty much the only games I have and haven't finished are Metroid Prime (the first) on the GC and Mercenaries on PS2. Metroid, while being a fantastically rich, rewarding game is also crippled by it's own controls and it's annoying-as-hell bosses. I fucking hate bosses and always have, they're horrible, and Metroid's are awful. I think I've nearly finished it, but I just can't be arsed with the grind of taking down an artificially hard monster.

I think it's a problem with console games in general, especially FPS's/action games. Without a quicksave, really hard games that are already hampered by the joypads are just no fun. Why bother playing something that makes you throw stuff, and shout at you loved ones? It ain't worth it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:58 / 22.02.06

Does anyone else find that when they're really and truly stuck in and fucked off with a game, going away and playing something else for a couple of months and then returning often seems to make the offending section much easier? It's as if you've fallen into bad habits that are bound to make you fuck it up every time, and coming back with a clear head and having unlearned them makes shit a lot better?

I've lost count of the number of games I've given up on, only to return a few weeks later and breeze through the very bits that had me flummoxed.

17:47 / 22.02.06

I'd actually forgotten that while I was hacked off at being unable to progress past that specific point on San Andreas I wandered off and did some random things. Most notably including going to the Casino in Las Venturas, gambling till I hit the Million Dollar limit, saving, then betting a million and saving if I won once or twice.

Which is silly, but, then again, I was irritated. So I now own all the ownable property, which is of course a bonus.

Stoatie - you're absolutely right. If at fifty-first you don't succeed, wander off and do a couple of other things for a month or two. This has worked several times for me, and it's always a little satisfying progressing past the point of frustration.

John - Mercenaries, huh? I am perpetually stuck on the final mission, which seems to be past the point of hard, over the hills, and far away. I can get about halfway in, then it just gets... silly.

20:48 / 22.02.06

Stoats> Yeah, me too. The first Amped game was a killer for it - you make some progress, hit a fucking great big wall, try and climb over it, give up in frustration. Because it's a great game, you feel even more pissed off about the possibility of not being able to see any more of it. Then you forget about it for a few months and rediscover it while looking for something else. Whack it back in, get past the sticking point first time.

Then play for another couple of hours before becoming stuck again.

Complex scoring systems have a lot to do with it, I find. Shoot 'em ups, for example - I'll do pretty well on my first few runs through a new one when I don't really understand how the scoring works and I'm trying to figure it out, then once I've got it down and start playing for score I fall apart. It takes a good couple of hours' play before I start hitting the kind of totals that I was getting on my very first go.

John> I've had this argument many times before, but the controls in Metroid Prime are in no way broken. The thing to remember is that it's not a FPS - it's a first-person platformer. Combat is way down the list of importance after exploration and navigation. Also, the initial clunkiness of the system is an intentional design decision - similar to what I was saying about Gunvalkyrie in the 'Steampunk' thread hereabouts, the clumsiness of movement enhances the feeling that you've been bolted into a great chunk of metal.

Also, once you get used to it, movement no longer feels clunky. Instead, it becomes strangely graceful and balletic as you learn to quickly switch from turning to strafing, to abuse the lock-on when in mid-air in order to perform slinky aerial cornering. It begins to feel unique, and not in a bad way.

23:51 / 22.02.06

I'm very upset about Darwinia.

If a person in this thread can't do it I certainly won't be able to.

02:54 / 23.02.06

I routinely reach Critical Frustration Mass with games, often badly enough to sour me on all video games for a month or two. In lesser cases, or ones where I really want to find out what happens next, I'll activate a cheat or two. In really frustrating cases I'll simply give up on the game.

Tenacity is not my watchword.

One of the worst offenders I've played has been Jak II. It's such a lovely game, so finely crafted, but the only way to advance often seems to be to hit one very specific sequence of buttons in perfect time. I don't find this kind of Skinnerian conditioning particularly gratifying.

To make matters worse, I've got a copy of Jak III waiting for it's turn to play.

ONLY NICE THINGS

05:09 / 23.02.06

I'm very upset about Darwinia.

My mistake was trying to play it on a trackpad.

Fallout 2 for me was one big OBI point, just because it was so sprawling, and you could never escape the sinking feeling that there was probably a bug somewhere that would make it impossible for you to finish. Looking at the walkthrough now, it's amazing how much left there was to do after what must have been in excess of a hundred hours of gameplay. Arcanum I had the same problem with, but faster - it just felt too vast and too buggy, so I gave up shortly after arriving in my first city. Which is a shame - I loved Troika so much, and yet could not love them enough.

09:05 / 23.02.06

E. R9 - I wouldn't necessarily say Metroid's controls are broken, per se, they just need another analogue stick. I also get mad finger-cramp using the GC triggers, which makes locking-on a literal pain after a few hours play. Still, I do find the game mesmerising, in a 'just-wait-till-I-get-round-this-corner' kinda way.

Btw, when you say the controls were intentionally hard/borked, is that true? Nintendo designed the game with controls that make it harder to play? Grrr. The one thing I dislike about Prime is the platforming elements - no FPS game should ever rely on pixel-perfect platforming, especially one thats tricky to look down quickly. If it had a thirdperson camera for these sections, I'd probably have finished it by now.

16:16 / 23.02.06

Yeah, the controls were built that way on purpose. The Cube pad has a second analogue stick, after all - they made the decision not to use it.

It's not to make it harder to control, necessarily. In fact, Retro went out of their way to say that the controls were built to make it *easier* for newcomers to a first-person perspective to play - take the demand for controlling the two analogue sticks at the same time out of the equation and you remove one of the biggest barriers to entry for a lot of people. We've had people say in this forum how they find it impossible to use dual stick mechanisms, so there's a lot of truth in that.

Thing is, while making it easier for those who don't get along with dual sticks, it's inevitable that you erect a whole new barrier for those who are already used to twin sticks to clamber over. And that's been the case - the only complaints I've heard about Metroid's control scheme have come from regular FPS players.

But yeah, it's also supposed to feel significantly different from standard FP games.

Platforming was handled perfectly, I thought. It really isn't as demanding as you're making it sound - there's always a generous amount of extra space on platforms and you never have to get it perfect. Compare it to something like Turok and you really appreciate how much less demanding it is (and if you do happen to fudge a jump, it never results in an instant death situation, nor a particularly long slog to get back up to where you fell from). Though, if you're struggling with the control setup I can understand why you might be struggling with the jumps - it helps if you can get the hang of automatically looking down at your feet and locking into that viewpoint by pressing and holding the trigger.

I dunno. Whenever I play it, I feel like there's real power and majesty in the character, and that's a lot to do with the controls (unlike most FPSes, where I get very little sense of being inside another person's body).

Definitely try it again, and stick with it for at least one lengthy period of time. It feels fantastic once it clicks (also: gaining the double jump ability removes any possibility of ever stuffing up a jump).

Nelson Evergreen

16:31 / 23.02.06

I'm quite partial to gruelling boss fights, so found both Metroid Prime 1 and 2 to be sheer toothgrinding delights. The Omega Pirate in 1 kept me going for a couple of days, so when the swine finally went down it was that much sweeter... a Last minute goal in cup final kind of moment. In a wretched, geeky sort of way, obviously.

Gruelling bosses without a save point directly before them, though... that's just sadistic design. The last thing you want when being repeatedly trashed by an evil collection of pixels is to spend ten minutes hacking your way back to their lair again every time you get killed. You want to dive back in, observe, engage, locate the weak spots. Viewtiful Joe's a culprit here. The 'Dark Joe' boss killed the game for me, not because I begrudged fighting him repeatedly but because I begrudged running the gauntlet from save point to his gaff repeatedly.

The finale of Windwaker *had* to be good, not only to redeem the triforce hunt but also the yamnsome and artificial dredging up of the four previous boss fights (in fucking sepia, no less) prior to getting it on with Ganon...

17:22 / 23.02.06

Pathetically, I'm afraid I hit this in the meat-packing plant/S&M night club section (ie, level two) of Hitman: Contracts. It wasn't so much the tension, or the atmosphere, or the constant bloody assaults with a meat hook that I particularly minded, it was just the having to do it over and over again... One day, a young man somewhere is going to cite that game as a mitigating factor at his murder trial, and for once, I'm not entiely sure if he'll be wrong to do it.

18:12 / 23.02.06

Hitman: Contracts seemed to me to be one long OBI point, though. Having completed it, I can say that in my humblest opinion the only memorable stage was the escape from the Paris hotel.

(Plus the fact that the game seemed way, way too short. Perhaps that was just following on from the length of Hitman 2, which, by the by, I still like to this day.)

Hitman Contracts just seemed to sap my morale at a very fast rate, however, and there is only a little hope that Hitman: Blood Money , out in May, might redeem the franchise.

(Final aside; I did, however, get a free tiny portable radio with my purchase of Contracts, which has lasted longer than the game.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:19 / 23.02.06

My God. I'm reading the Fallout 2 walkthrough. It's like the Brothers Karamazov.

22:56 / 23.02.06

Nelson> I totally hear what you're saying about VJ. That was another of those games that I became increasingly frustrated with, gave up on, then returned to some months down the line and fell head over heels in love with.

Capcom repeated the exact same mistake with Devil May Cry 3 not so long ago. Die on a boss in the JPN version and you get to continue from the start of that battle. Die on a boss in the US or Euro versions and you get sent all the way back to the start of the level, forced to go through the motions of 'solving' all the puzzles and beating up all the regular enemies yet again. And then again, then again, because - like VJ - beating DMC3's bosses is only possible once you've learned every single one of their attacks, plus the signposts that signal their arrival.

I know it's a superb game. The Japanese original, that is. The other versions are almost destroyed by that one change.

13:09 / 24.02.06

Yeah, I've been in a VJ pit for years now. I loved it, got stuck, stopped, started all over again, got stuck in same place and stopped. By now I've forgotten what to do - I had exactly the same experiences in Superstar Saga as you, Meludreen, and now there's no chance I'll do it if there's a bloody time-limited escape I have to deal with.

The thing is, I don't have the bravery to actually turn my back on all these games that I've stalled on. They remain in my 'now playing' stack - some of them for years. Onimusha 2. Superstar Saga. F-Zero GX. GBA Final Fantasy Tactics. Pokemon Ruby. Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call (sorry Randy). Viewtiful Joe.

And in every case (bar F-Zero, technically) it's a bloody boss that's messed me up. They steal my will, make 5 minutes play feel like an eternity, they demand too much, they're too rigid, they break up the flow of the game. They're too bloody annoying.

22:54 / 15.03.06

You know what? I'm right there now.

Dragon Quest VIII. It's been a fantastic game so far, with the difficulty set almost perfectly - you can progress fairly smoothly, without having to lose any battles, just so long as you think about them carefully.

All of a sudden, it's clobbered me. And kept on clobbering. Think I'm at the mid-game stage - without giving anything away, it seems to be following the classic RPG thing of making you think that it's setting you up for the final boss, before sticking a twist into the tale and making it clear that you're only halfway through. This boss is a fucking nightmare. Well, these three bosses - all in one fight, all at the same time. They've got attacks that hit a single character twice, attacks that can hit all characters at once, attacks that nullify all support magics that you may have cast on yourself.

And because I've sailed through the game up until this point, I simply don't have high enough stats to take him down. It's not a question of my battle strategy being unsuitable, it's just that my characters aren't yet at a high enough level to survive his attacks for long enough to do him any significant damage. That's a fault in design, as far as I'm concerned, and made worse by the fact that the only way around it - doing as many random battles as it takes to get them up to a high enough level - means hours of mind-numbing tedium because the battle system is so basic.

Cotnributing to that is that every time you level a character up, you get a number of skill points to spend on an ability - swordsmanship, axe skills, archery, etc. - but are given no indication as to what benefits choosing one ability to improve over the others is going to have. So I'm now stuck facing a boss who can halve the health bars of all my team in a single attack, without any of that team having access to a spell that can heal them all at once. In short, I'm wedged firmly in a corner and the only way out is to spend five or six hours digging through the wall with a spoon.

I don't like leaving games half-finished, but sometimes you've just got to recognise that you're not going to get a reward that's equal to the work put in.

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