Well, it's been a while, but I did flounder rather poorly in Riven and couldn't figure our where even to go or where the first Linking book was.

The only thing in Myst I have trouble unlocking is the dammed Selentic age. Which isn't much of an issue, as that age sucks anyway.

I don't recall clearing the first world of Bit Trip Runner but once.

I've never made it past Fostoral in Vangers. But that has to do with how absolutely arcane the actual game is and the rigmarole you have to do to unlock the other worlds.

I don't recall having progressed very far in Super Meat Boy either.

There are also situations where I haven't progressed due to a lack of effort too. But I don't think those really count, or otherwise I'd say I quit the story mode of Block'hood due to it's message being about as subtle as an anvil to the foot. Not even halfway though the tutorial.

Edit: As always, dtgreene manages to remind me of something. I did try Actraiser 2 as well, but with it absolutely lacking any Sim elements, I can't say I can't be bothered to attempt more than a single stage due to the horribly unintuitive controls of the flying brick of a hero.

Quited because I kept dying in the tutorial: Mount & Blade. The tutorial fight was meant to practice sword+shield skills and not obligatory to start the game. But figuring that I kept on being defeated in a tutorial battle, what use would it be to start up the real game, if I couldn't even survive the practice fight? It's like going to war after you fail at weapons training.

Al-Qadim - The Genie's Curse. Whoever put that maze in the beginning should have been tarred and feathered and never allowed to make another game in their llfe.



ADDED: Although to be fair, a lot of my difficulty may stem from playing it in dosbox. Perhaps it was a little easier to control the character back when it ran on a real dos (and real slow) machine. I dunno.

This happened to me on occasion with PC Gamer demos back in the late 90's. I'm sure there were more, but I can only remember Soultrap, Space Bunnies Must Die, and Seven Kingdoms. Oh yeah, Tomb Raider as well (how embarrassing). As for the full games I owned, there was only one instance where I couldn't beat the first level. When I played Poseidon: Master of Atlantis many years ago, something must've gone wrong during installation because the interface button for building Common Housing didn't work. Obviously, this rendered the game unplayable. Thankfully, I'm not experiencing that glitch anymore.

Ah yes of course. I'm not sure if I ever beat the first level, but even if I did then I definitely didn't make it past the second level :P

Turok 2 Seeds of Evil... I could not figure out how to leave the first area. It was basically the first 3D game I ever played. The most advanced game I played before that was Super Mario Bros.

SPOILER ALERT

You have to break a barrel to reveal a passage behind it. Very embarrassing, since even SMB has destructible tiles and stuff. For 3 months I simply couldn't play that game. Then my cousin came over to check out my PC, she played that game and destroyed the barrel after a minute.

But that is not all. That game had a very complicated level design, with different keys and abilities needed to access certain areas, etc. It took me 2 years to complete the entire game. Could have been even more, but I got Internet and found the cheats that helped me. OBLIVIONISOUTTHERE !

Never played it, but I would've dropped in the game disgust once I discovered there was no city building :\

I can't think of one, but I can think of games that took me many days to beat level 1.

Already mentioned is The Elder Scrolls Arena.

Also, the first Driver game.

Admittedly, these were with playing in the hardest difficulty level (I didn't replay them with some lower difficulty, as to me that feels like cheating):

Forsaken (PC-version)

Rise of Nations Gold, albeit it might be I accidentally picked some more advanced campaign, not the one you are supposed to play first. Starting the game was a bit confusing, you just had several campaigns to choose from and it was not clear which campaigns were from the base game, and which were from the expansion pack, and in which order, if any, you were supposed to play them. Did you play it in realtime mode? I think the game lets you choose which mode you play it, turn-based or realtime. I played it turn-based so there was no time limit, but there was of course a turn limit which I guess is the same thing (in turn-based mode).

I don't recall how many missions I finished, at least some, but I also stopped playing at some point (I think I was playing on the hardest difficulty). Things I remember:

- The tutorial missions felt odd in that the campaign missions were quite different, full of things which were not taught in the tutorial. It was almost like the tutorial missions were from a different game, they didn't prepare me well (almost at all) to the campaign missions.

- Yes I found the turn limit silly and irritating. Why did every mission need to have it?

- The enemy AI seemed quite good, almost too good, making the gameplay tedious. Like if the enemy was attacking your base and you retaliated, they'd turn and flee right away, making it a frustrating cat and mouse play.

I think the game is on the ice for good for me, I just didn't enjoy playing it.

Ditto

I don't think the first game had a realtime mode? But yes, I meant to say turn limit, and I'm dismayed to hear that more campaign levels have them :P

Still, I massively enjoyed the custom levels even though I somehow never managed to finish one. I really loved the game's atmosphere. The sound effect especially were really good.

I managed to squeak through the first level, thinking "this is going to be great!" And then got stymied by the second level. D'oh!

Maybe explains why I haven't been back to RTS games in quite a while: seems like they've moved beyond me these days.

Ahhh..... the horror.... ǝɹǝɥ ǝɯɐs

To be fair, it could just be bad.