For me, one of the biggest 'no fair' moments comes at the end of the first disc of Baten Kaitos for the GC.

You actually play the role of a 'spirit' that somehow finds itself in the game's world - so you don't have your own avatar as such. You still control the main character, and every now and again he'll break the 4th wall and ask you what you think about a given situation, but for the most part the game is a pretty neat JRPG with an awesome turn-based card game combat system.

Anyway, for almost the entirity of the first disc your party is hounded by the evil 'Empire' who are always one step ahead of you. You begin to suspect one of the party members is an Empire spy - and each of them has at least one good reason both for and against being the spy. The only person it couldn't possibly be is the main hero, whose brother was slain by an Empire Commander... except of course, if he'd been lying to everyone the whole time.

It's not fair! You're not supposed to question the hero. I don't think I've ever felt more betrayed.

Evil Genius. There are several moments which grate my nerves. Firstly, John Steele, the super agent. He just irritates me whenever he enters the island. Actually, I hate ALL the Super Agents. John Steele blew up my entire armory, despite it all being Disguised Holding Cells. Also, Mariana Mamba killed one of my henchmen... can't remember which. There was also this one time when all the super agents were on my island at once. I think I blocked the events that followed out of my memory because I cannot for the life of me remember what happened next. Just a big blank. I do, however, remember immense sadness afterwards T.T

I don't know if this counts, but... Spore being delayed to September T.T

Dear lord, this thread brought up some bad memories.

How about F-Zero GX's story missions? Most notably the GP race where everyone seems to get the Mario Kart advantage of being able to catch up to you whenever they like.

Moving back a bit, some of you mentioned games like R-Type and Gradius. All games like this have the flaw of teaching you to move in such a way that enemies don't hit you, then throwing something at you that you had no reason to anticipate, had no possible chance of reacting to, and were probably forced into by the enemies you were dealing with at the time. Anyone who's been killed by the terrain suddenly deciding to reposition itself the moment you need to use it as cover or a boss pulling out a previously unseen two-frames-of-animation attack on the previously safest spot in the room knows what I'm talking about. I love the fast paced move-now-or-die style of space shooters but the fun is in reacting to them, not memorizing them.

One final unfair moment (ok, two) that pissed me off was in Rouge Squadron on the 64. I just picked up the game on remembering the fun I had with it back in the day. What pissed me off a bit while playing it again was how whenever a friendly target exploded anywhere near me it was somehow my fault. This included a moment where I had a tie fighter up my a** and a few of the shots that DIDN"T hit me exploded an allied building, resulting in my allies screaming at me to stop doing that. Excuse me for not soaking ALL the shots so a few nameless villagers could live on only to die later to the imperials because my own craft would then be a smoking wreak.

Even worse is trying to protect targets that the enemy WANTS to shoot at. I can understand the desire to mix up the usual "kill them all dead" objective but the requirements to win these missions need to take into account the fact that your allies-in-need are always completely retarded. I'm talking about the "save the AT-PTs" mission for those of you who haven't guessed yet.

I apologize for the long post but this one really needs an explanation for those of you who haven't played it because it really is one of the best examples of a game purposely trying to screw with you. The objective is to save a small group of AT-PTs (which are basically shoe boxes with legs) from fast tanks with machine guns, tie bombers, various laser and missile turrents and at least three AT-ATs. Even worse, you're forced to use the snowspeeder, which for some reason has been chosen by headquarters for half the missions in the game even though it has the worst accuracy and flight control of any craft in the game. I'm not lying, I have a better chance against tie interceptors in a Y-Wing. As you begin the mission the AT-PTs are already getting shot at by an AT-AT and you have to fly for about 20 seconds or so to even get to them. Now here's the worst part. After destroying the AT-AT your allies start to shoot down a massive gate that's keeping the AT-PTs from escaping. Now that's all well and good except for the fact that there's another AT-AT and a ridiculous number of small tanks waiting on the other side. I do my best to clear the path for them (on my own mind you, your allies seem content with fighting the gate and calling it a day), but all of their viewscreens must be broken because they all march off along the path to the safe zone with no regard to the hazards in front of them. They DO shoot at stuff occasionally, but if it gets to the point where that matters they're probably dead anyway. I'm sure everyone here has played some sort of "protect the defenseless allies" scenario but this is the worst I can recall coming across.

Quite a fair bit of COD:4.

For starters, the fact that on Veteran, all the enemies become psychic snipers with telescopic X-ray vision and AK-47 sniper rifles, and gigantic balls. Case in point: on the Safehouse mission, I'd just cleared out the building on the right of the burnt-out one. Had gone upstairs for sniper ammo, then decided to jump out the opening and do a runner. Was dead before I hit the ground. WTF chuck? And then, trying again, had set the chopper attacking the Tavern, ran out the back door. Dead. Fucking sniped again. THERE WAS A BLOODY CHOPPER BLOWING THE SHIT OUT OF THE PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And all the bosses in Stranglehold. Use that aiming Tequilla bomb, perfect headshot, and they lose shit all health. Much controller throwing. And the rooms later in the game where you have to fight off a metric fuckton of enemies in half a million goddamn waves, and you NEVER have enough ammo and wind up fighting with the bloody 9mm pistols.

Anarchemitis:
The inexplicable ability of the rare moment when people shot by a missle launcher/stepped on a mine/ on an exploded grenade survive without damage and somehow manage to kill me with an inferior weapon in Star Wars Battlefront. This is even more emberrasing when the target is an NPC. Of course this only happens in online multiplayer, thank goodness.

Worse... Finding out that it is your ex-wife's 16 year old former online boyfriend.

Call of Duty 4 on Veteran mode is a long string of "NO FAIR!!!" moments.

Particularly the Mile High level on Vet. After hours of trying to get it finished, I finally get to the hostage and promptly shoot him in the face.

CoD4 definitely gets my vote; ground-floor of the TV station on Veteran, with Lt. Vasquez so desperately not asking or telling that he steps in front of my RPG (after I've started the firing animation, so I can't stop the shot) at two different locations to take it in the prostate and tries to run up my arse when I'm backing away from grenades.

Dumbass incompetant Lieutenants... can't even frag him for the good of the Corps, as would be traditional.

-- Steve

Mass Effect. Hardcore difficulty. It is really hard to fall back to repair your Mako when EVERY GODDAMN ENEMY has a ridiculously long range. Much longer than you could possibly hope to have. Not to mention the fact that you cannot move at all when you are repairing.

Kingdom Hearts.

"Oh hey, Platinum match unlocked, let's see what the next Arena match is!"
*Sephiroth spawns in, Donald and Goofy are nowhere in sight*
Holy crap, no fair!
*I die in two hits*
No fair!
*I try the match again, avoid his 6 meter sword, launch a 10 hit combo at his head, his health bar does not decrease a single pixel*
No fair!
*I die in two hits*

It took me a while but I got him.

Tales of the world: Narikiri Dungeon 3
During the last stretch of the game, you have to fight Barbatos. So I enter the battle with 2 spellcasters, one with an all heal spell, and another with all offensive spells, and one non specialty character. I enter the battle and the dude keeps spamming off the same 2 spells a million times (which take about a second), almost consistantly interrupting my own. My healer got a heal in every now and again, and my offense mage got some hits, but they didn't regester any hits, and then I realize it.

The dude is invulnerable while he's casting spells. Not a zero coming up, he just doesn't get hit.

So I'm like Dubba-ya Tee Eff? Lazy bastards! He's casting spells like 90% of the time!

If it wasn't absurdly easy to get items, I would've died that level.

Guitar Hero III

No really.
There is no Guitar Hero game where the difficulty curve can be so absolutely f****'d.

On Hard Mode - I can get 5 stars on virtually every song.
(Okay, not BLoodrain...) but pretty much I can get max ammount of stars with ease.

I try out the same songs on Expert-mode, and I can't even get past the INTRO to the song.

I get angry and mad and after 10 tries I give up and play teh song on Hard-mode instead, and I get 5 stars on it.

They seriously messed up the difficulty curve of that game...

My moment would have to be Prince of Persia. Just mistimed a button press and falling to my death (a usual problem one encounters when jumping ontop of ancient structurally unsound buildings) and using the rewind button... and getting bumped by your roomate. Hit rewind, released for like a milisecond and blegh. You could keep rewinding but that litttttle bit of sand you used up being JUST SHORT of putting you back on the ledge your were jumping from.

Oh hells, either of two Warcraft related scenarios during which either having spent a week with your guild getting together enough people for a major event your connection blows itself to smithereens, or the alternative in which whilst trying to level some blazing assbasket corpsecamps you to the point where you go watch CSI or something while waiting for them to get bored only to return and find your name plastered across the forums with some rant involving the word "nub" underneath.

I'd say the lamest video game thing was playing Ikaruga on a dreamcast emulator. After dying twenty times for no apparent reason realize that the emulator was bugged and didn't even render the thing that kept killing you. The weird part was that everything before that one room full of spinning, black and white orb emitting, invulnerable things was rendered fine. Ikaruga is hard enough by itself.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma, after taking like 5 mins climbing my way up to the surface to then meet the last boss. Realizing i cant buy any more health drinks (cant remember what their actually called) and having only one health drink left. I then die and have to do all the climbing ALL over again only to get raped by that last boss once more.

Turok co-op, running up that tree to get insta-killed by that damn rocket launcher dude. Those guys feel so cheap, if you fail to shoot him first you will most probably die. Not to mention the soldiers that come to rape you from behind just before you take him out.

Crysis on delta:
-Every single opponent in the game does more damage with a single shot then both your health and shields combined, rendering the latter obsolete.
-Enemies with pistols have a flawless accuracy and will kill you the instant they can see you.
-Enemies can take an entire clip of anything(this includes 120mm shells) to the chest and their only reaction is to instagib you in return.
-Boats are even worse because half the time they can see through your stealth.
-Even with a silencer from 150 yards away, everybody immediatly knows where you are as soon as you shoot.
-Most foilage doesn't conceal you at all.
-Attack choppers are telepathic and chase you even when stealthed/out of los.

Example:
On the first mission you have to clear out a base and disable a gps jammer. There are 4 guys gaurding it, 2 with the dreaded pistols. As soon as one of them sees a corpse, they will call for reinforcements, consisting of a machinegun car that detects stealth in a moderate area and another soldier. Also, there is a boat circling arround with a driver and a gunner.

Try 1:
I sniped the first rifle soldier from a platue about 50 yards away, which somehow alerted the boat on the other side of the bay(over a mile away). It moved toward me constantly firing, lucky for me their aim as imperfect because they were moving and i managed to hide behind some rocks. From there i stealthed to another ledge further away and sniped the boat driver(i could have shot the gunner but then the boat would just retreat and fetch a new gunner, along with some more reinforcements). The gunner instinctively knew in which shrub i was hiding and killed me before my decloak/fire animation finished.

Try 2:
I sniped a pistol soldier, which alerted the jeep and it took position near the road. I relocated and killed both rifle soldiers while they were trying to get in los of my old location. Even tho i was behind an enormous pile of flora and i was using silencers + stealth, this angered the car(he couldn't even see they guys i killed...) and he started shooting madly at me. Thankfully, car mounted machine guns dont have the pinpoint accuracy of pistols or boats and i dodged it by running behind a rock. The reinforcement rifle guy and the second pistol user came at me and i abused the strenth throw = instant kill by hurling a twig at the pistol guy, which sent him flying backwards into the rifle soldier, instagibbing him as well. For some retarded reason the boat sensed where the one ft long piece of wood that killed it's friends came from and added a new orifice to my forehead from acros half the map away again, through a ton of sight obscuring foilage.

Try 3:
I used godmode to kill all 8 soldiers in that area. I disable godmode while in a shack while picking up some new weapons. I move infront of a window and suddenly find myself staring at a bloodstained floor with a "game over" message in the middle of my screen.

I open the map in the editor and check which ai spawn could have gotten LOS on me there:
1: The pistol soldier who was standing there before i owned him.
2: The boat that got destroyed by my TAC cannon.
3: A soldier in a watch tower, on a peninsula, 3.5 miles away.

Try 4:
I godmoded everything again, gave myself a realy good scope, stealthed infront of that window and zoomed in on the tower, seeing the guy standing there with his back towards me. My cloak runs out, he spins arround in less then a second and fires a single shot, instagibbing me.

Yes we like a physics engine that can render stuff 4 miles away. How about NOT giving the AI omnipotence and pinpoint accuracy across that entire distance?

thebobmaster:
Mass Effect. Hardcore difficulty. It is really hard to fall back to repair your Mako when EVERY GODDAMN ENEMY has a ridiculously long range. Much longer than you could possibly hope to have. Not to mention the fact that you cannot move at all when you are repairing.

You do know you can snipe with the Mako cannon, right? Hold LT to aim then click the right stick. You can fire ludicrously far. So much so that most enemies will be dead before their first shot has laboriously travelled to your position.

GloatingSwine:

thebobmaster:
Mass Effect. Hardcore difficulty. It is really hard to fall back to repair your Mako when EVERY GODDAMN ENEMY has a ridiculously long range. Much longer than you could possibly hope to have. Not to mention the fact that you cannot move at all when you are repairing.

You do know you can snipe with the Mako cannon, right? Hold LT to aim then click the right stick. You can fire ludicrously far. So much so that most enemies will be dead before their first shot has laboriously travelled to your position.

I know, but if you are .1 cm off, then you can watch your rocket fly gaily through the air, completely missing the enemy.

Was playing Mario Party 7 for a while. In story mode, the final level in the game pits whichever character you played as against Bowser in yet another ridiculous looking death machine. How this one works is you're situated on an elevator-looking thing, and in order to win you have to make it all the way to the top floor. This is accomplished by hitting 4 dice cubes in the 4 corners of the square playing area, (The total amount is how many floors you move up.) all the while dodging Bowser's (And later Bowser Jr's) projectiles. In order to get to this stage you need to get a star on the board.

Okay, I'd say that's enough context for now...Here's the "No Fair!" Moment:

If you end up losing before you can get to the top floor, you don't end up being sent back to the bottom floor, but when you try again you start at the floor you left off. (If you lost on the 85th floor, when you come back you'll start at the 85th floor.)

But here's the thing: Your computer opponents can start there too. If you lost first on the 85th floor, when the computer opponent comes around, THEY'LL start on the 85th floor.

So you can imagine my seething fury, when time after time, the computer opponents continued to win the game, benefitting from my hard-earned progress.

I nearly crushed the Gamecube controller in my hand.

Halo 2-3 in MP when you spawn or turn a corner and you find yourself having a date with a rocket/spartan laser/shotgun or a plasma grenade -.-

The time the apples fell SIDEWAYS in "I Wanna Be the Guy." That's a really obscure reference, though, so...

I'd say any moment in a game where it expects you to do something contrary to the core gameplay is reasonably unfair. Like the ONE TIME you need to do stealth in an action/adventure game. It's usually more frustrating than fun in a game where you could and WOULD just as soon stab or shoot all your enemies as try to get around them without being noticed. Fable did this. Jedi Outcast did this. Wind Waker did this too. It just isn't fun when the challenge is contrary to the core activity of the rest of the game. Imagine if Ratchet and Clank had a segment with a ton of civilians running around amidst a ton of bad guys and you got severely penalized for each civilian you killed. Imagine it. A game based on indiscriminate firing of rockets, bombs, lasers, lightning bolts, ducks, and fireballs and rewarding collateral damage and for one segment of the game they penalize you for it. Wouldn't that suck SO BAD?

Melty Blood:
Tales of the world: Narikiri Dungeon 3
During the last stretch of the game, you have to fight Barbatos. So I enter the battle with 2 spellcasters, one with an all heal spell, and another with all offensive spells, and one non specialty character. I enter the battle and the dude keeps spamming off the same 2 spells a million times (which take about a second), almost consistantly interrupting my own. My healer got a heal in every now and again, and my offense mage got some hits, but they didn't regester any hits, and then I realize it.

The dude is invulnerable while he's casting spells. Not a zero coming up, he just doesn't get hit.

So I'm like Dubba-ya Tee Eff? Lazy bastards! He's casting spells like 90% of the time!

If it wasn't absurdly easy to get items, I would've died that level.

I haven't played ND3, but I might have an explanation for that.

In the last battle against Barbatos in ToD2, if you attempt to cast a spell he'll counter with a big spell of his own. Most likely the same thing happens in ND3, and since you entered the battle with two mages...

-- Phelps

I was playing Portal when the dumbest thing happend. I had just arrived at the ending fire pit, when I thought it was a cut-scene. Why? My Xbox 360 controller turned off! Not looking to see if it was on, I relised that it was to late, and tryed to save my KFC style butt, and I died. Amazingly, I got back to that point in two trys, and I almost blew up with anger.

James bond on the N64 , secret agent mode the train map..just infuriating..

In RE4 when you have to fight this claw guy in the castle, he kills u in 1 or 2 hits, and it takes most or all of your ammo to kill him. I still haven't.

[quote=[HD]Rob Inglis]In RE4 when you have to fight this claw guy in the castle, he kills u in 1 or 2 hits, and it takes most or all of your ammo to kill him. I still haven't.[/quote]

He has a weak point on his back...

ok i've been seeing a lot of dead rising, but nobody has said the most fustrating part in the game for me: "recovering" from gunshots. i have major issues with that game's controlling, and this is a big part of it. imagine you are fighting some psychopath, like carlos or those f*ckers that like to hang out in the park. they shoot you, you lose some life and fall down. you SLOWLY climb back to your feet, only to have your ass shot back down again. and again. AND AGAIN. how the heck is that fair?? you can't sprint, and the aiming in that game is absolutely horrendous. that fight against the gun shop guy almost made me break my controller. i'm surprised i actually willed myself to beat that game.

and getting the real mega buster? you can't call that unfair; you want the extra gun, you gotta do something stupid to get it (i.e. waste many hours of your life running over zombies with a car). it's always been that way. getting the achievement is not the unfair part, it's that when you finally get it, it only shoots ONE shot at a time at a slow ass rate. no triple shot like the REAL mega buster? come on capcom.

Phelps:

Melty Blood:
Tales of the world: Narikiri Dungeon 3
During the last stretch of the game, you have to fight Barbatos. So I enter the battle with 2 spellcasters, one with an all heal spell, and another with all offensive spells, and one non specialty character. I enter the battle and the dude keeps spamming off the same 2 spells a million times (which take about a second), almost consistantly interrupting my own. My healer got a heal in every now and again, and my offense mage got some hits, but they didn't regester any hits, and then I realize it.

The dude is invulnerable while he's casting spells. Not a zero coming up, he just doesn't get hit.

So I'm like Dubba-ya Tee Eff? Lazy bastards! He's casting spells like 90% of the time!

If it wasn't absurdly easy to get items, I would've died that level.

I haven't played ND3, but I might have an explanation for that.

In the last battle against Barbatos in ToD2, if you attempt to cast a spell he'll counter with a big spell of his own. Most likely the same thing happens in ND3, and since you entered the battle with two mages...

-- Phelps

Yes, but the thing was Arche's broom (Or black hole), Chat's eternal pow hammer, and Keele's Freeze lancer went right through the dude whilst he was charging his spell. The spell itself wasn't the thing (annoying, but Mage A got a heal in every now and again), but you can't hit him BEFORE he uses it.

The entirety of "I wanna be the guy". That game... it punishes...

Asehujiko:

I open the map in the editor and check which ai spawn could have gotten LOS on me there:
1: The pistol soldier who was standing there before i owned him.
2: The boat that got destroyed by my TAC cannon.
3: A soldier in a watch tower, on a peninsula, 3.5 miles away.

Lol. Funniest thing I've read all day. I was jealous of being a console tard and not being able to experience the magnificence of Crysis (namely, I thought the "bad guys speak Korean" mode sounded totally badass). Now, I'm a little bit less so.

What HaliWali said earlier...only in my case the game was Link's Awakening and I was stuck on the puzzle to get the Roc's Feather in the Tail Cave.

I was stuck there for A YEAR AND A HALF.

Then I discovered walkthroughs. Yeah, I was 11 and a right newb when it came to gaming, my only previous experience being Stargoose, and Pacman on my dad's Atari 2600.

Most "no fair" is one of those random SPAM noises poping up in the middle of a shoot-out on CS:S and you fall out of your chair while the other team gun's ya down.(SPAMMY LITTLE ****'*)!!!

Beating Death Rally on the "Petrol in my veins" difficulty. You can't even start playing. Almost every godamn race would be lost or be won with your car with 99% damage, which is not encouraging since the repairs cost more than the money you actually make. The Loanshark ,which can be very useful if in a pinch, won't give you a godamn dollar because your car is a vagabond (the first car you get).