Worst Puzzles You've Ever Encountered
While puzzles are one of the main attractions of adventure games, I think we can all agree that we've come across some that have been absolutely horrible. Horrible puzzles may include puzzles that are ridiculously difficult, puzzles that are illogical, or puzzles that are unexplained and cause the player to have no idea what they're meant to be doing. Those are the three most common cases anyway, but puzzles can also be terrible if they're too easy, too cruel, too nonsensical (and not in a good way), involve too much guesswork, etc. - there are many things that make a bad puzzle, and I'm sure we've all come across our fair share of bad puzzles in our adventure gaming experiences. So, here's your chance to vent and tell us what some of your most hated puzzles are, and why they're so bad.
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But the games are "The Dig" and "Scratches"
I needed an online guide for both of those. The Dig was just insane in my opinion. And for scratches, the items that you had to find to progress further into the game at one point was just way out there. I mean, there was no way anyone could have figured that out without help.
As a side note. The original Metal Gear. You had to find a bomb blast suit so you could walk across the roof of the building because of the strong winds. The only hint you got was that it was somewhere in the building..... yeah.... that didn't help much. A whoe week of searching and finally resorted a an online guide. Stupid suit was behind a wall you had to blow up with explosives....how the hell... was I suposed to know that. lol
Duck>Grips>Bandaid puzzle in the Longest Journey was a dazzling moment in which I realized I just didn't see the world as the designer did.
I was able to get that puzzle fine. It was the damn statues puzzle on Alais that I freaking hated. The crystal twiddling puzzle underwater was pretty annoying as well.
These two sights...
...alone may be what prevents me from actually replaying that game (in the near future, anyway).
EDIT: Actually, the first Runaway (the only one I've played, though I do own the others) is full of puzzles like this. Getting water for the train. Retrieving the trowel. Freezing a battery. This game was made of stupid. Peanut Butter's just the one that sticks in my mind the most due to its sheer, utter, complete, epic failure on every conceivable level as a puzzle. Seriously, peanuts do not melt! How do you screw that up?
Here's a more detailed look into that puzzle: http://www.gabrielknight4campaign.com/cat_hair.php
Yes... I think it does .... I still have the nightmares
I think you and I have entirely different ideas about what a horrible puzzle is. To me a horrible puzzle is any puzzle that is too easy. That's about it.
You know the cat and mouse in King's Quest 5? I love that sort of thing.
The idea behind the puzzle was that the false mustache and the drawn on mustache would obscure Gabriel and Mosley's facial features making it harder for the rental guy to tell the difference at a glance. It's still a stupid puzzle, but there was a stupid sort of logic to it.
What was really frustrating was that there seemed to be a more obvious solution to the puzzle that the game wouldn't let you pursue. If I recall correctly, at that point in the game, Gabriel was also carrying around a picture of himself. Any sensible person would have been going around looking for a way to cut out his picture and paste it onto the ID.
I actually didn't mind Monkey Kombat that much (just did me up a little table and trundled onwards)... I didn't realise how much hate it got until I turned up here for Tales.
Is Monkey Kombat not popular? Wow, I've never heard anybody say they don't like it before.
I didn't mean that I don't like difficult puzzles, I just don't like ones that are ridiculously difficult or cruel. These usually involve twiddling or rotating certain objects until you reach the right combination - I hate that crap.
I also dislike puzzles that are too easy, and plainly spelled out to the player. I don't like one extreme or the other.
Even with the ps2 cheat table I hated it. It wasn't funny like insult sword fighting just the tedious parts.
Aha. I like ridiculously cruel puzzles too, but that's mostly because they've become a bit of a rarity.
I knew your kind existed.. there were legends of the gamers who didn't mind Monkey Kombat.. I never thought I would meet one.
The hours spent...
Some cultures hang bits of tin foil in their windows to ward us off.
You and my brother. Every time I play Escape, I get him to do that bit for me, because he likes it.
Though, on occasion, I do write up a table for completion's sake.
Why is nobody mentioning the making scary shadows puzzle. That shit was clown shoes. And Longest Journey is up there in my adventure most favouritest adventuretacular games
What are you, sick?
The statue puzzle is, I think, a prime example of a violation of the Lucasarts rules of puzzle creation. The puzzle itself would be more durable if you were able to experiment more easily more quickly, but travel around the island makes it even more frustrating.
nuff said.
Ok and I love this game too and I don't want to get flamed here, but the locket in KQ5 was probably the worst (that I can think of right now) Just for the simple fact that it was possible to miss it and play almost all the way to the end of the game (across the ocean, through the maze, the maze again (and hopefully you have your fish hook etc) I bombed this the first time through, and had NO IDEA what I had missed, or where to even go look for what I may or may not have missed.
I'm guessing you're not a MYST fan then.
Nope. I remember playing it for a tiny bit, getting bored of it, and moving on to something else. I never ended up working up the motivation to go back to it. But it was about 9 or 10 years that I first played it, just after I was only first introduced to the adventure genre, so I may go back to it and try it out again.
Yay, someone agrees with me
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Another puzzle that I hated (which also involved twiddling/spinning) was this puzzle from 'Escape from Monkey Island':
I didn't mind the latter half of it (finding Pegnose's house), but I wasn't so fond of the actual retrieval of the file. If only Pongo hadn't run off.
I was going to post the obvious but CorruptBiggins beat me to it. This IS the worst puzzle in an adventure game EVER. There is no contest. It's particularly blamed for the downfall of adventure games during the turn of the millennium!
EFMI is full of terrible puzzles. Aside from the previously mentioned wheel o' Petes' and the parrot rocks; there's also the rock chucking chute and the lava flume on Monkey Island itself. Not to mention Monkey Kombat.
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
That puzzle in hilarious detail.
I thought the prosthetic skin on a manhole to create a trampoline was a pretty idiotic puzzle, personally.
I remember that whole walking stick puzzle with Ozzie Mandril was a bit shit for some reason as well.
The Swamps of Time were good though!
I actually enjoyed that puzzle. It was a little difficult, but I thought it was a well-designed, well-thought-out puzzle which wasn't cruel, but simply required some thought from the player.
I wouldn't mind the rock chute puzzle if it didn't throw a fit on computers that run the game too fast. But it does, so it's right up there with all the others you mentioned.
I also hated the tourist in front of Tiny LaFeet's statue. The first time I played, I had gone through plenty of dialogue options that laid it out explicitly that I was looking for the hat, but somehow I managed to miss the one that unlocks the dialogue option for it with Jumbeaux. I swear I was stuck for a good couple hours trying to figure out why I couldn't ask Jumbeaux about the hat.
As I said the game's full of terrible puzzles, I was just listing a few that came to mind. It would probably be much quicker to list all of the good puzzles, as opposed to some of the bad.
I would also like to give a shout out to the puzzle where you have to revive Toothrot's memory by throwing different objects at him. If you threw the objects in the wrong order then the game became unwinnable!
Every time I play the game I forget about that bug and end up screwing myself over. For some reason I always think that throwing the Abomination of Nature at Herman's head is the most hilarious thing in the world and it's invariably the first thing I ever do when I get to that part of the game. :P
Bugs aside, though, am I the only one who liked Escape's puzzles? They were really twisted and clever and Mike Stemmle-y. Certain puzzles, like Monkey Kombat, are tedious to go through on repeat playthroughs, but it was pretty interesting and entertaining the first time around.