I love the original Hotline Miami but I’m not a big fan of the boss fights like the ones in Neighbors (Biker) and Deadline (Van Driver). I find it kind of slows down the game and limits the strategies you can take.
Another example would be Fallout 3. I find the tutorial section in Vault 101 can feel a bit long after a fifth run but maybe that’s because I was spoiled by Fallout New Vegas’ ability to run off in your own direction immediately after leaving Doc Mitchell’s house.
Chapter 5 in RDR2, what were they thinking.
Ravenholm in Half Life 2 cause I get scared. Why yes. You are correct, I am a wussy little piss baby.
The sewer section in Vampire Bloodlines. It’s a long action/combat sequence that totally does not fit with the rest of the gameplay.
Sewer count
It’s so long, especially if you get turned around. Which is easy to do, since it violates one of the core rules of combat level design: have a clear path forward. And it’s interspersed with “puzzles” that are really just exercises in frustration.
There’s a specific command to skip the ocean house, but I didn’t mind that. I wish I could skip the damned sewers.
Half Life: Xen. All of it. I hate it
Super Mario RPG: Having to jump up to nimbus land fucking sucks
Chrono Trigger: First time going to the Dark Ages before Kajar/Enhasa…just boring really
Have you played Black Mesa? I felt it did a great job Xen. Probably one of my favorite parts of the game
I’ll echo OP and say that if you haven’t tried Black Mesa, I highly recommend it. The xen intro is breathtaking in my opinion.
Dark souls. Everything after Anor Londo is a bit of a slog. Once you’ve beat Snorlax and Pikachu the game gets a bit worse in terms of quality.
Nonsense, bed of chaos was the highlight of the series!
/s
Don’t forget those chicken leg demons they were easily the best designed enemy in the game.
Going back to Anor Londo in DS3 was so fucking great. Especially revisiting the elevator.
The fucking archers
Half-life’s Xen levels are particularly infamous for this sort of thing. There’s a reason the Black Mesa remake overhauled it.
And they are still bad, IMO.
Doom 1993 I do not like Episode 2 very much. Episode 1 has masterful level design, and Episode 3 has the abstract hell levels that are visually interesting, even if they aren’t that great to play. Episode 2 is just kind of boring. It does have the Tower of Babel tho, that’s a highlight.
Im a pokemon “gen unner” kinda gal, so take what I say with a grain of salt, I like collecting weird creatures exploring all the funky stuff I can find but…
I hate grinding and actually fighting random battles.
The gyms and elite 4 are cool tho
I’ve been saying for a while now that we’re just beyond the world of grindy, random encounters. The early games weren’t fun because of the dozens of zubats we had to deal with. They weren’t even “harder” for these reasons, despite the absurd opinions you’ll stumble across online. Remembering to stock up on repels isn’t really a skill check. Completing the set challenges that you are aware of and planning around then is fun. Having to smash “A” through random encounters and opening the menu to hit a Fresh Water every once in a while is not.
Yeah seriously but when you bring it up, may arceus have mercy on your soul
KOTOR 2 - Has quite a few pain points for me, usually when they make you swap characters. But by far the longest stretch that makes me reconsider replaying is the surface of Telos. It’s just a bore until you Atris and feels like it takes forever.
I actually like Pergaus outside of the T3 part though, which I guess makes me a KOTOR 2 heretic. The atmosphere and mystery is just fantastically done.
I loved peragus the first time through, but the more I replay it the more it’s just having to run around to all the terminals in the right order while being slowed down with the easy but tedious fights, esp with not a str or dex build and harder difficulty.
And that conversation with the hk is so annoying, like I know you’ll tell me the password, but it always takes me so much time to find the dialog path to get him to say it in the voice for some reason.
I really like the character swap sections though, especially the onderon ones. It adds more difficulty and makes party builds matter. Otherwise I feel like I just blow through everything with mc even solo
I love Cyberpunk 2077, probably one of my favourite games ever and i’ve beaten it probably a dozen times. I still hate talking with Evelyn and doing the heist. It’s such a slog once you know what to expect. At least they made the BD tutorial skippable.
A dozen times? Damn that’s a lot lol. I’m about to play out my second since the expansion is out. My first playthrough was a Nomad sniper / Gorilla Arms / baseball at wielding punk. I think my second time I’ll go with a Corpo stealth net runner.
I call Nier:Automata “the best game I will never play again” and it’s because of 9S’ combat.
What were they thinking? No one cares about 9S anyway! But he’s your playable for well more than what should only have been his one-third the game, and his combat is AWFUL! If I wanted to play Asteroids I’d play Asteroids. You have two other playable characters, both of which chop up robots with giant swords! THAT’S what people are here for, know your audience!
For me all of nier automata’s gameplay was terrible, and the story too but that is something I know not many people will agree with me on
Personal 5 Royal - Okumaru boss & End boss (vanilla).
I love this game, truly do but that particular boss is so bullshit (Okumaru)
cyberpunk2077. running through the fuzzy bd like space to find johnny and then playing as him.
and a lot of other parts where its just people talking at legnth - its only interesting the first time, but its almost half the game and really detracts from replayability
those you can at least fast forward a bit but it would be nice if it had more of a real skip.
The new wolfenstein. My god so many cutscenes. Is it too much to ask to just have fun game mechanics/dynamics? I bought a game didn’t I?
GTA: San Andreas, OG Loc mission. I’m much better at it after all these years, but I still run into at least 5 walls and fall of my bike every time. It’s way harder than the train mission.
