SPOILER

I've never actually had a problem with it, but I think it was a poor design choice for the final puzzle of EMI to have required the Monkey Kombat notes from earlier to do. I feel sorry for anyone who had thrown their notes away before the end, as there was really no reason to think to keep them. The Ps2 version has the charts, though, so I guess this is only a problem with the PC edition. I really, REALLY think it was a mistake to have the moves change from game to game. I love that last puzzle though. :)

Riddle of Master Lu's maze was the one down note to an otherwise great game. I wouldn't have minded it so much if it didn't take so damn long for Ripley to pull the ropes, so you have to wait for that animation in every tiny little room.

Compared to that, Inherit the Earth's maze wasn't bad at all. With a sheet of graph paper it was downright simple, really.

kq6's catacombs...

i didn't have the right item (the brick), so it was impossible to find a solution. i tried in vain for two years, on and off, hoping to find that secret room that would allow me to continue on with the game; not knowing i had already come to a dead end.

that's what i love about lucas arts games; they don't have dead ends.

kq6 is still my favorite game though. maybe because my childhood is tied with it. i know if i were to replay it now, a lot of memories will surface. mmm, yum.

Strange. I see a lot of people having problems with this puzzle, but I got it in like ten minutes. It was all about opposites and closing the perimeter with the gems.

The youkol village in Syberia II is chockful of puzzles that were very frustrating.

That one's weird. Both times I've played through the game, I've solved that puzzle accidentally, without knowing what the hell it was that I did.

Because of the fireberries.
Those things only lasted for a short while, and then you got attacked by some monsters and had to start over again.

Yeah, but as people have pointed out a bunch of times now, you can drop them and then they last forever. There's really no reason to die in the labyrinth if you figure that out.

Yes, the rope pulling was incredibly frustrating, because it meant that even if you already had mapped the whole thing, you still had to pull rope after rope in order to get somewhere. And because it was stupid.

The Othello-like game in 7th Guest. Hard, hard, hard. And the pixel hunting and time puzzles in the well named "Countdown".

I've got a number of nominations, but I'll just mention one. It's the maze in Myst. I don't understand why they had to put that in. I had to map out each route to make sure I didn't miss something or that I didn't go through places twice.

Oh, i didn´t know that.Thanks for the tip.

The disguise puzzle in GK3 was fine (although the part where you had to get the fur from the cat was a bit daft!)

Wasn't the clock puzzle in GK1 - in the attic at Gabriel's gran's house?
I can't remember a puzzle like that in GK2 (maybe I'm mistaken?)?

Hehe :D The weird thing about this puzzle is that the first time I played this game I solved it after about 2 or 3 attempts.
But recently I bought The Syberia Collectors edition, which contained Syberia 1 + 2 on one DVD. I thought I would replay the first game to get me back into the mood before starting Syberia 2.
Would you believe the only problem I had with the whole game was that dammned cocktail puzzle :frusty:
No matter what I did I just couldn't get the right combination, even though I had previously solved it!!!! :o

I think this post should be divided into 2 halves - one called "the most frustrating puzzle" and one called "the most illogical puzzle" :D

There seems to be a mix of the 2 here!

That was a real "bastard" of a puzzle!! :frusty: :frusty: :frusty:
Even after consulting a dreaded walkthrough it was sooo annoying to have to wait for another attempt!!!

In Grim Fandango the puzzle with the car in the forest where you have to find the correct spot to put the sign - aarrgh!!!!
And the puzzle where you have to make the machines vibrate in the right sequence!!!

Those two very nearly made me uninstall that game and throw it out my bedroom window!!!!

The cuckoo clock....I'm pretty sure that was in GK2.

Please - somebody needs to to settle this :D

I remeber some sort of clock puzzle in GK1 - Gabe is in Granny's attic and has to set the arms of the clock to the right time in order to open the secret compartment!! I am 100% about that!!!

If there is a similar puzzle in GK2 would somebody pleeeeeeaaase let me know!!!
Maybe I'm just :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

Which is why mazes are generally a pointless challenge. It isn't difficult at all to map it out, and all it does is pointlessly waste paper. So what exactly is this for? Do developers hate trees or something?

Unless the maze can be memorized or has some method other than that to keep track of it, it is just stupid.

This maze didn't require mapping.

Spoiler:

Only your ears.

To clear up the dispute there is a clock puzzle in GK1 and a cuckoo clock puzzle in GK2. So everyone is correct.

And to further pad my post count, I'll say that I haven't really encountered many frustrating puzzles at all. It is the things that aren't puzzles like pixel-hunting, dialogue/event triggers, and watching excessive and pointless animation that frustrates me.

Did you play the Goblins series? Those were basically a ton of trial-and-error puzzles strung together.

Though I love the series for some reason...

Damn it!! I was sure I was right - I really can't remember the cuckoo clock puzzle in GK2 and I only replayed it a couple of months ago.

Yeah, when my dad and I first played that game, we spent ages unsuccessfully mapping it, (because our sense of scale was way off,) until my dad commented, "I wonder what those weird sounds mean?"

I didn't find that too hard. I got the sequence right on my first try. Maybe it was luck.

It took me like three tries - I had a hard time judging the distance to lower it! Otherwise I got it right though.

FGM

Well, a few puzzles that really frustrated me come from the GK series - especially the first part. There are so many pixel hunts in the game it's not even funny, and some puzzles aren't too logical either (they make sense in retrospect, but it's not like you'd ever get the idea to act like that in real life... like the pantomime thing).

Jane Jensen is such a talented writer - her stories and characters are oozing with atmosphere -, but if she ever designs another adventure, she should seriously consider a co-author for the puzzle design.

There's a sadistic surreal maze in the Labyrinth of Time.

Spoiler:

The path is non-linear - you actually need to backtrack along a path you've walked to get out.

I'm not even sure that classes as a puzzle because, if I recall correctly, there are no hints given for that one.

I just finished playing this game a couple of days ago, and I'd have to agree. It was if the developers stopped putting any thought into the puzzles once they got to that stage.

It started with the pixel hunting nightmare that was required to stop the drums. Then, I somehow managed to thaw the ark without ever being told that it needed to be unfrozen in the first place. There's nothing less satisfying than finding the solution before you're even presented with the problem.

Then there was the issue with getting the Youkie back to the ark. I thought for sure he was still on the train since we never saw him leave it, and I thought that giant claw was somehow meant to retrieve him.

No, I haven't. At least, not that I recall. It's not unusual for me to forget games I have played though until I see them again.

Anyway, if they are truly just trial and error, then I wouldn't consider them puzzles. There has to be some way to deduce the answer other than by chance for it to count in my book.

Gobliiins screenshots
http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,2/gameId,1154/

I only played the first one - Gobliiins (with 3 i's).
There were three goblins. One of the goblins could do magic, one had technological expertise, and the last one was really strong. You had to experiment to find out what effect clicking on things in the scenes did and what a particular goblin could do with an object. Once you found what options were available to you, it wasn't usually too difficult to figure out what you had to do.

I started Gobliins 2, but didn't like it and didn't finish. There were only two goblins and there wasn't any differentiation between the goblins' abilities. Also there were a lot more timed sequences than in the first game.

I never tried Goblins 3. Apparently you only have one goblin in that.

And this is not more logical than the actual solution... sometimes an adventure game developer makes a puzzle which fits the game's logic, not the player's one. I don't mean absurdities like where you had to cook butter in Runaway, but the classic "you have to empty a swimmingpool by getting a wrench, a fuse, a bomb, blah blah, combining those together or maybe one before the other...". Pick Monkey Island 2, for example, which many times is everything but obvious or straight in its puzzles.

I didn't find the pixel-hunting in Syberia 2. Maybe because I still have memories of those Coktel games, or because the (awful) first two Frogwares adventures are still wandering in my nightmares. Indeed I am one of those souls who loved Syberia 2 because it got rid of many things that didn't work in the first part, and added puzzles and subtlety. But anyway.

Ah, that's wrong. One of them (Winkle - the blue one) is annoying and kind of reckless, while the other one is careful and rather nice towards others. Both of them will interact with the environment in vastly different ways.True, but you often have companions that you can control too.

That's the best of the lot, in my opinion, and as Stalker said, you get to control a lot of other character than the "hero". The puzzles make sense, in a way, but they're also very very hard, probably because the aformentioned "way" is twisted as can be.
All in all, I'd recommend it to inventory puzzle lovers.

Of course!! :rolleyes:
I remember it now - its just that when cuckoo clock puzzle was mentioned I was thinking about manipulating something on the clock to open a secret compartment ) or something like that anyway.

The one in GK2 wasn't really a clock puzzle - the problem was getting the doorman away from reception - obviously you had to use the clock, but it was just one of the instruments used to solve the main puzzle. :D

Someone already metioned the pinball puzzle in Shivers That's at the top of my list along with the chinese checker puzzle. How is anyone expected to solve that without a walkthrough?

A lot of people didn't seem to like Monkey kombat. I enjoyed that and though it was unique. granted it is time consuming even if you know waht to do. monkey kombat and insult swowd fighting from MI3 are amoung my favorites.

I agree! I especially disliked the where-to-put-the-sign puzzle; I found that to be a complete and total drag--but I loved the game, overall!

HELLO?!!!

Definitely the puzzle in MYST REVELATION, at the end, when you have to make the monkies go out of thei shells, in the right order, to bring them to the right possition, so the white beared one could hit the dinosaur looking animal and take it down. Seems easy? You have to get their attention by creating sounds that'd match thei own, so they'll react and move from one place to another. IT TOOK ME LIKE A WEEK!!!!!! :crazy: