[Ninth]

Originally Posted by beat!the!champ!

... which reminds me of the underwater part in Grim Fandango. It took forever for that singing guy to walk by you. And if your idea doesn't work, you gotta wait another few minutes for him to come back. And that song! Of course, I could do a quicksave/reload, but it was annoying enough during his first couple of passes.

Ooh yeah, this one was bad.
Sometimes it's hard to understand what designers where thinking. Even talented designers like Grim Fandango's ones. Not that Grim's main qualities are it's puzzles, really.

[Renegade]

Originally Posted by edlglide

I know exactly what you mean about the cocktail puzzle in Syberia -- I figured it out, but the drink was always wrong anyways. So I finally went to a walkthrough only to read that the solution was what I'd already figured out and had been trying to do. And finally it worked............I don't know if it was a bug in the game or what.

For me the worst part of that puzzle was the pixel-hunting to find the ingredients. I also missed how to get the recipe, but that was just me being dense and was actually well designed. I could see that I needed honey and lemon to put in the machine, but I just couldnt find them. Eventually, two hours later my mouse passed over the correct part of the screen and from there I actually had no problem making the drink. It was especially annoying because I'd done every single puzzle before that part without any help, and it was that close to being the first adventure game I'd independently completed. Alas.

Another pixel-hunting horror was finding a rock in Sanitarium to throw at the bell. Of course, you can't pick up just any rock lying around - it has to be the EXACT rock Max was destined to pick up. Jeez...

Nonsensical puzzles do annoy me too. TLJ's stupid rubber duck+clamp+bandaid to get the key was just lame. I think I've even seen Ragnar Tornquist admitting the silliness of it on his blog.

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Bastich

The real problem with it was that you had to watch the dog-slow animation for every turn. It was a classic example of developer error IMO. Never bore the player with lengthy repetitive animation. Probably 99% of the game time was spent waiting for your turn.

Good point, especially if a lot of pieces were being taken at once since it did all the conversion animations separately.

Some option to turn off the animations (and maybe that freaky "SHLORP" sound they made) might have made this enjoyable for more people.

[Zanthia]

Almost all puzzles of the discword 1

[Antoinetta]

Almost everything in the last segment of all three Gabriel Knight games. These are some of the best Adventure games ever made, so why did Jane Jensen have to go and end each one with a bunch of frustrating action elements?

Antoinetta

[LeisureSuitedLooney]

Also the puzzle in the X-Files game where you had to move to a vehicle and enter it, and if you didn't do it right, you would get shot. That one was the puzzle that made me uninstall the game. And all of the timed sequences in Blackstone Chronicles were pretty annoying as well.

[EasilyConfused]

I actually didn't find Runaway very frustrating, except for some reason the coffee part. I hated the darn Rainbow Bridge puzzle in Beyond Atlantis, a game I alone seem to have played, and which I had trouble with even with a WT. And there was one other one I was going to mention . . . Oh yeah, almost every action sequence in BS3, but especially the one with the guard and the microwave. ARGH.

[Stalker]

Originally Posted by Nude

One puzzle in the dig was impossible I think... If I remember correctly it was about operating an alien machine to pick up something but you had to input some data in it which wasnt mentioned anywhere in the game so you had to guess the combination... other than that it was a great game

I'm certain there was a hint somewhere. After all, I finished the game in two evenings or so without looking at a walkthrough at all.

[Ninth]

The gem puzzles in Legend Of Kyrandia, which relied entierly on luck, were awful... (I can only think of one right now, but I think there were more than one)

[Crypto]

Monkey Island 4

The part where you had to trace Peg-nose Pete. That old man didn't know what he was smelling...

Monkey Kombat! This ruined the whole ending for me.

[Hamham Chan]

Legend of Kyrandia:

The maze is so frickin´hard, even if you have a map.
I´d like to play the game again someday, but i probably wont because of that damn maze.

[RumRogerz]

The underwater alter puzzle in Longest Journey really started to piss me off after a week of toiling with it

[syntheticgerbil]

Actually, I think Kyrandia has the only good maze ever in an adventure game. It wasn't as bad as maybe Inherit the Earth's. Really, how is the Kyrandian maze hard? You just write it down. You said it's hard even with a map? How is a maze hard with a map? It's not Zelda, where the map is pretty nondescript.

I mean I felt the same way when I was eight about Kyrandia, but come on.

Also, this thread reminds me to tell all of you to not buy anything Runaway related ever again. You're only hurting yourself.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by syntheticgerbil

Actually, I think Kyrandia has the only good maze ever in an adventure game. It wasn't as bad as maybe Inherit the Earth's. Really, how is the Kyrandian maze hard? You just write it down. You said it's hard even with a map? How is a maze hard with a map? It's not Zelda, where the map is pretty nondescript.

I mean I felt the same way when I was eight about Kyrandia, but come on.

Also, this thread reminds me to tell all of you to not buy anything Runaway related ever again. You're only hurting yourself.

I like Kyrandia's maze too, in a masochistic way. It's not that it's hard really (it was 10 years ago, though), but it's tedious. Without a map, there's no way to get out of it alive. And drawing the map takes a long time.
I wonder whether it was Kyrandia's map or Riddle of Master Lu's one that took me the longest to draw...

[kitzingmarko]

The link orgy in Ahooney in Uru - Path of the shell

[Stalker]

Originally Posted by Ninth

I like Kyrandia's maze too, in a masochistic way. It's not that it's hard really (it was 10 years ago, though), but it's tedious. Without a map, there's no way to get out of it alive. And drawing the map takes a long time.
I wonder whether it was Kyrandia's map or Riddle of Master Lu's one that took me the longest to draw...

I've said it before... no, it wasn't. You could map the whole maze without ever dying on your first try if you were careful - at least I never died on my second playthrough about 7 years after I played it for the first time. The only time you actually have to walk into a room without fireberries is if all other rooms you can reach are dead-ends. Of course, you had to realize that dropped fireberries don't detoriate further...

Granted, Kyrandia had some trial and error puzzles, for example mixing the potions in the second half of the game. The maze isn't one of them, though.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Stalker

I've said it before... no, it wasn't. You could map the whole maze without ever dying on your first try if you were careful

What exactly are you answering to?
I said "Without a map, there's no way to get out of it alive.".

[Stalker]

Originally Posted by Ninth

What exactly are you answering to?
I said "Without a map, there's no way to get out of it alive.".

Oh, I thought you meant a map from a walkthrough or something, not a map you write down yourself while playing the game... since (unlelss you have a very good memory) pretty much all mazes are hard to escape unless you map them down yourself while playing.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Stalker

Oh, I thought you meant a map from a walkthrough or something, not a map you write down yourself while playing the game... since (unlelss you have a very good memory) pretty much all mazes are hard to escape unless you map them down yourself while playing.

Well, most of the time, the good old "always turn left" method works fine for me.

[Fairygdmther]

Originally Posted by EasilyConfused

I actually didn't find Runaway very frustrating, except for some reason the coffee part. I hated the darn Rainbow Bridge puzzle in Beyond Atlantis, a game I alone seem to have played, and which I had trouble with even with a WT. And there was one other one I was going to mention . . . Oh yeah, almost every action sequence in BS3, but especially the one with the guard and the microwave. ARGH.

That rainbow bridge WAS difficult. I worked on that for a week, and never realized that you could/should rotate the pieces. Since you couldn't see them that closely, though, I did appreciate the little man who walked it through to show you where your errors were. This was a nice device to assist the player in problem solving. For me, the hardest part of this game was the spiders - the first wasn't too hard, but the second and third were tough for me. I loved the maze in "Hell" though where you could go upside down. This game, in 2001, was my first adventure game, and I still replay it from time to time.

FGM