Certain über-weapons in some RTS games, towards which there is no other defense than reloading an earlier save game.

To give two examples (I'm sure there are many more):

- Dune 2: Harkonnen's nuclear missile. It is coming, coming, coming... did it hit anything important in my base? Yes? Oh well, reload the game from just before it was launched, maybe this time it will miss the mark and blow up on the empty desert instead.

- Total Annihilation: those long range supercannons, like Big Bertha. Pretty much the same as above, sometimes you just suddenly see your whole base starting to get completely wiped out from across the whole map, with no way of fighting back. I am not fully sure what exactly triggers that, but when that starts happening, all I can really do is to reload the game before that cannon frenzy started, and usually that time I don't have as much problem from the enemy cannons.

I feel those superweapons give the gameplay a kind of "bad luck"-card that I think has no place in a tactical strategy game. If half of my base gets suddenly wiped out, I want it to be to due to my bad tactical skills, and not some bad stroke of luck. This is not a slot machine I am playing.


Just remembered that I feel Starcraft did the same thing right. Terran's had those ghost soldiers which would point a place for a nuclear missile, causing lots of damage... but you could always blame yourself for not being ready for the ghost soldier. Be proactive, try to catch them before they reach their target, or get them to use their nuclear load on some secondary target.

OH, that volcano. I played on normal because i already knew how hard Farcry was (especially without quicksaves) and i still had to repeat that volcano section many times before finally finishing the game.

The last race in NFS Carbon was a huge NOPE for me. Even with the fastest car in the game i still couldn't get even close to beating the final boss. I had to cheat to finish it. In fact, most NFS games suffer from this issue. The last races become IMPOSSIBLE, even if you do a perfect run.

I couldn't beat the final boss in Jaws Unleashed for the PC. Had to cheat to finish the game.

In the last stage of Viewtiful Joe you have to fight EVERY boss in the game again without healing, saving or anything. If you die, it's back to the first boss. NOPE, just NOPE. I still haven't finished that game.

The last fight in Knights of the Temple is impossible.

Ahhh, I myself got out of flight sims around the time of Commanche. There is an attached copy of Commanche for a screen shot to see if that is the one you are thinking of for the heli sim. It is from Novalogic. I remember it because you would be dependent on Hellfires quite often and you got a decent number but they would have missions with just dozens of tanks and they of course don't lock. By that point I then had started moving on to Warcraft and Strategy games more. Then around '99 didn't have a functional pc for awhile and was only about 3 years ago I got one good enough to run PC games. Though I do have Rise of Flight and IL-2 here from GOG. Been wanting to get back in on some but need a flight stick, preferably flight stick throttle combo.

Also, true on the id of jet. I remember also looking through and reading specs on many of them. I had an uncle that was big on jets and remember looking at numerous books on various fighters and learning about Nato Fighters and sadly Soviet. Not that it was bad just remember the whole cold war as I grew up in it. Find it funny sometimes as I have spoken to people that lived their entire lives without the Soviet Union.

I see what you mean. I do believe, though, that their voices are creepier than their looks.

I think it might have been gunship 2000 : http://www.mobygames.com/game/gunship-2000/screenshots
Nevertheless thanks for reminding me off the Commanche series! I played a demo of the 4th one but they removed a lot of the flight sim aspects. I think I have to try and get my hands on Commanche 2/3 which look absolutely brilliant! I think I played a demo of IL-2 a while back but I agree, it needs a joystick. I've been meaning to get a good one for ages now :P

I was a toddler when the wall came down so I couldn't really appreciate it :P Unfortunately 2014 is off to an incredibly bad start from this (peace and reconciliation) point of view...

First time meeting a Schattenläufer in Gothic 1.
(Shadowbeast in the English version, although it means "shadow walker")

I just strolled through the woods and... well you all know what happens then. No chance to run from these.

Much later in the game when I was a mighty warrior, I hunted down and slaughtered every single one of them in the game, tore their horn out, skinned them etc.. and sold their parts for a good price. :D

Yeah. I guess if I encountered the finest scenario schemes of dynamic difficulty I wouldn't be so enthusiastic to continue.
I was frustrated for that very reason with Icewind Dales and Baldur's Gates (a couple of hours in and you still struggle to beat a rat) and eventually dropped all of them. It probably didn't have same system implemented but the sense you are not moving from a starting place it did share.

Another one.

American McGee's Alice, the Insane Children. The twitching, the laughing. . .they creeped me right out.

I remember coming across a room of them, and I didn't just go "nope!" I went "OH HELL NO!" and ran.

Just about anytime Xandro Blooddrinker shows up.

The first time I played Robbing the Cradle in Thief Deadly Shadows I ended up having to finish during the day with the lights on. It very nearly was a NOPE moment for me! I don't do horror very well, but that level still tops my personal best designed level list because it was very well designed and did everything it set out to do!

The monster whatever they were things in Farcry were the end for me in that game. I've never finished it. They didn't freak me, I just couldn't be bothered working out how to deal with them.

In the new version of XCom I was doing nicely, and then lost a satellite and all went to hell, right up to ending up coming straight at a landed behemoth of a space ship crewed by the biggest baddass aliens possible and it was like the difficulty curve went from gradual to vertical. I haven't returned since. I want to go back in from the beginning, possibly with a gameplay rebalance mod and see how I go in future, because I really did like the remake (I also have a soft spot for the original. One of the first games I really got into and played right through).

Last, for the moment, Beyond Good and Evil. That fornicating invert mouse bug where inverting the mouse reverses the X axis as well as the Y axis. I'm an inverted mouse person. This is a common enough choice - enough so that all 1st and 3rd Person games have the option to flip the Y axis. I have met a couple of games that let me flip the X axis independantly, though I have never met anyone who wants to do that. But never have I seen a system besides BG&E where both axes are linked in that toggle. It all but made the game unplayable. This isn't the same kind of thing as coming into contact with the chryssalids or whatever, but it was a nope for me!

Fair enough. It is still a ship that has sailed for me. I can't really say why I didn't like them. It was almost a genre changing twist encounter that I just didn't take to, even though I did play Crysis and loved it, and the alien encounters there were a similar "twist" part way through the game.

Yeah the ship might also have sailed for me on that one unfortunately :P Pity though since I got quite far...

Lots, but one that sticks out is Silent Hill 2 when in the apartment complex and Pyramid Head is just standing there behind a gate...pulsating. Yeesh, then a little later he rapes (?) a pair of mannequin legs that are grafted on another pair of legs which is screeching. Oi. Fun times. Or something.