TOGSolid:
Can something be frustrating not because it's hard but because it's badly designed?

If so, then I nominate Halo 1 in which you follow the little blue ball thingy (shows how much of a 'fan' I am eh?) through this area. The flood start pouring out of the walls and what not and everything starts off good and great. I'm getting through it just fine, and then I start noticing something after about the second or third area. They're identical. Each god damn section was identical to the last...and they kept going on...and on...and on...I shut the game off and so began my hatred for halo.

For me it just spawned an acute hatred of libraries.

Going for the geometry wars 2 acheivement where you go through 30 circles without shooting or getting shot... ive got 29 bout 100 times.. i cry.

Maybe my driving skills are that bad....but in Mercs 2....the part where you need to test drive that off road SUV through a sand pit area and you have to do it before time runs out.

Must have seen that finish line dozens upon dozens of times, where I fail at last checkpoint. And have to do the whole thing all over again.

Emperor Inferno:

JMeganSnow:
Fighting the dragons in Baldur's Gate II drove me insane. I eventually fastened on a strategy that involved Feeblemind, which would prevent the dragon from doing anything provided it failed the saving throw (not often). There was an amusing moment, however, when one of my wizards spontaneously Disintegrated the dragon in the second round of combat, leaving me staring open-mouthed in shock.

That and finding some godawful "Immune to Physical Stoneskin Lightning Enchanted Multishot" boss in Diablo II was enough to make me restart my game. You just have to acknowledge that you are NEVER killing that sucker.

The second chariot race in Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones followed by the Twins fight inspired some truly amazing profanity, as well. I don't break things, but I certainly cuss.

Kick those bosses' asses every time. If your a barbarian, the key is to have magical weapons, and you don't have to worry too much about life since the barbarian is a survivor, really tough. Whatever character class you are, they key is to keep up a relentless attack while simultaneously pretty much freebasing health potions. It can be a long, hard battle that involves spending a lot of money, but you can do it. Like I said, the main strategy is to just keep hitting him, give him a super kick-ass barrage. I spent ten minutes killing one that way once, but it worked, and I didn't die one time myself.

EDIT: also, if possible, stand at a distance. If you do, you'll be able to avoid a reasonable amount of the lightning that comes off him when you hit him, since it spreads out and eventually just fizzles into nothing.

Heh, I don't know which version of Diablo II YOU played, but once you get to Hell difficulty (the only place you'll find a boss with that many attributes) you're not going to kill something with only the little dribbles of elemental damage you can get from magical weapons, which puts the Barbarian and a spear-Amazon in an awkward position.

Add to that the fact that lightning-enchanted multishot emits massive gobs of electricity that can 1-hit level 80 characters with 5K+ health and maxed-out lightning resistance even at extreme range and you've got a recipe for serious annoyance. It's just not worth killing the boss at that point.

Bosses with thorns at that level become pretty nasty, too. Very often you do more than enough damage to one-hit yourself on their aura. :P

Level 3 Sniping challenge in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

I lost four or five times because the car didn't explode fast enough.

Ultrajoe:

Danzorz:

Ultrajoe:
Assassins creed; going perfectly silent on a mission only to have some fucking drunkard you dont see around the corner push you into a guard.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE

The exact same thing but the lepar pushes you into water and you die! AND YOU HAD TO TRY 50 TIMES JUST TO FINISH THAT LEVEL

DAMN YOU LEPAR!!!!

The Lepers (spelling ire, deal with it) are a pain, but your supposed to avoid them by going along the boats and dockpoles in the harbor.

And just to show off my brain-muscles, there are only Drunks in that section.

Sorry to interject and correct you further, but you used the wrong version of "you're/your". Yes, I judge you when you use poor grammar. I'm sorry. Now, back on topic. The final stage of the arena in Fable 1, when you haven't gone back in and are looking at a 100k gold prize for beating your partner from the team round. That girl is so fast and annoying, and I usually had no healing potions and very little HP left by this point.

JMeganSnow:

Add to that the fact that lightning-enchanted multishot emits massive gobs of electricity that can 1-hit level 80 characters with 5K+ health and maxed-out lightning resistance even at extreme range and you've got a recipe for serious annoyance. It's just not worth killing the boss at that point.

You know what's worse? even a couple of hits on a Multishot/Lightning Enchant will spawn more gobs of lightning than the game engine can render, so you can be standing somewhere you think is perfectly save when bam, you're dead to something you couldn't see.

Heres 2 of my all time favourite moments -

1 - Missing with 95% accuracy in Fallout (any) Seriously, it happens WAAAAAAAAAAAY too frequently. I know that 95% accuracy represents a 1 in 20 miss chance, but even so its just stupid. I mean the molerat was almost eating my gun barrel...how do you miss from that range!?

2 - Civilisations IV. Here is the scenario. Babylonian crossbowman on a hillside. Modern Infantryman on a neighbouring hillside. The game gives me a 98.6% chance of victory. I attack, and fail. Im sure i speak for a lot of people when i say this, but random chance mechanics in combat can FUCK . RIGHT . OFF

I was joyfully playing 150CC Mario Kart Wii.
I was in first place, closing in on the finish line. Everything was fine and dandy. Then, blue shell. Ouch. Oh well, still first. Red shell. Ouch. Down to 4th. Then, someone with a green shell ring hits me. I end up in 9th.

Ultrajoe:
Assassins creed; going perfectly silent on a mission only to have some fucking drunkard you dont see around the corner push you into a guard.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE

I hate that, problem is I dunno if they are drunk, or have a mental illness. Because I got no problem killing them if they are drunk, but I would if they were mentally ill.

But I'm gonna say the whole of Haze, and Turok.

Lemony:
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, ye gods, Ice Dungeon was the toughest place I've been to. Took me weeks to finish it.

Tough? Yes. Frustrating? No. After I finished it for the first time I was actually impressed with the dungeon design. Every dungeon in Link to the Past is simply brilliant, as long as you remember what you've done, what you're doing and what you're about to do.

Emperor Inferno:
Here's a frustrating moment for you: the quick-time sequences during the fight with the Emperor at the end of Force Unleashed. (press x to not die-really, really fast!)

I was frustrated by the last 3 or so bosses in TFU. It seemed like they were immune to everything and the only way to hurt them was to get a lucky strike in to knock them down and then hit the shit out of them while they were down. This was especially true for the end fight with Vader. I must have tried that 10-15 times and barely hurting him every time until I got that lucky hit in.

darthzew:
That one part in Call of Duty 4 where you're waiting for the helicopter to pick you and Captain MacMillan up. It's easy on regular... but on veteran? I spent a good three hours on that one damn level...

...but then I discovered that if I snuck around to one of the apartment buildings where the enemies were spawning I could just sit there and nobody (except the odd soldier or two) would come. Seriously. I just hid there for the entire time and everything went fine.

I've tried that, but in the end, I could never get Captain MacMillan onto that chopper in time. It was by luck alone that even allowed me to beat that level on Hardened, methinks.

As for the topic at hand, I seem to have more of these than I care to count. However, dumb luck almost always propels me through them.

The demo level in Mega Man 9. So. Freaking. Cheap. I'm not even kidding when I say that enemies will pop up out of holes and knock you down them after you killed the last one.

this is something that i garuntee has happend to you

your in a COD4 match
its going normal
you got a 3 kill ,nice,
then you get a stylish double kill
call in airstrike
only kill 1 person
you think no worries just gotta get one more kill
see someone go into place where grenade toss can easily kill
get grenade ready cook it to make sure
throw
DUN DUN DUN!!!

it hits the wall and bounces right back at you
you blow up

now thats real annoying has happend atleast once to everyone

P.S. heres my one i got 7 kill streak first time (im excited as hell) about to call heli then DRRRN match ends!!!

Chasing the damn helicopter at the end of Driver for Playstation, made me hate my life.

I hate when I'm in-game in Fallout 3 and it crashes and then when I try to re-start it, it just keeps crashing about 2 seconds after loading my save game. As for non-bug relatred issues, just a few days ago I was at a friends house playing a Halo 3 Deathmatch on Snowbound. it was the two of us against 4 idiots who would circle-bag EVERY kill. I say circle bag, cause the best way to describe their "tea-bagging" is to imagine someone having a seizeure when crouching while rotating in a circle. Now, their team had double the players and they tea-bagged EVERYTHING. Even if 4 of them ganged up on one of us, and took him down even after he killed two of them, they'd tea-bag. Now tea-bagging isn't too bad sometimes, after a great kill, but this was a little over the top. So, what did we do, we taught them a lesson, of coures they all sucked and only won through sheer numbers, so we got together and opened a can of whoop-ass on them. Final score, us 46, them 50. And we spent half the game insulting their circle-bagging, team stacking and shitty playing skills. Our only reply was a whiny voice calling us noobs because it was tea-bagging, not circle-bagging. After that, they all hauled ass outta our party, I can't blame them, they didn't have one good insult between them.

Any fight in KOF 1994. I got lucky at times, but the Brazilian team is cheap, especially the guy with knife and the guy on the Korean team with the ball and chain. China's team pisses my off too. I will have my vengence one day.

In any RPG where you have a party, when one of your characters have low health, and you make the one who has the highest attack, who un-ironically have the lowest health, attack and suddenly find out that the opponent pulled a special attack out their ass and turn the main attacker into a pile of ash. The worst part, you had planned to use an item on him right after his action.

Murdering mobs in Diablo II only to be cursed with Iron Maiden and i two-shot myself. HOLY SHIT THAT SPELL IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ANNOYING. I hated Blizzard for that.

Slayer_2:
I hate when I'm in-game in Fallout 3 and it crashes and then when I try to re-start it, it just keeps crashing about 2 seconds after loading my save game. As for non-bug relatred issues, just a few days ago I was at a friends house playing a Halo 3 Deathmatch on Snowbound. it was the two of us against 4 idiots who would circle-bag EVERY kill. I say circle bag, cause the best way to describe their "tea-bagging" is to imagine someone having a seizeure when crouching while rotating in a circle. Now, their team had double the players and they tea-bagged EVERYTHING. Even if 4 of them ganged up on one of us, and took him down even after he killed two of them, they'd tea-bag. Now tea-bagging isn't too bad sometimes, after a great kill, but this was a little over the top. So, what did we do, we taught them a lesson, of coures they all sucked and only won through sheer numbers, so we got together and opened a can of whoop-ass on them. Final score, us 46, them 50. And we spent half the game insulting their circle-bagging, team stacking and shitty playing skills. Our only reply was a whiny voice calling us noobs because it was tea-bagging, not circle-bagging. After that, they all hauled ass outta our party, I can't blame them, they didn't have one good insult between them.

People like that make me want to haul ass to their house, take both of their weapons and beat their bastard face into the ground.

Trying to make all of those jumps when being chased by a scrab in Oddworld.

I have a few:

Tekken 5. In particular Jinpachi. I have played against some damn cheap bosses in my time. I-No from Guilty Gear is one. But this was like the scientific distillation of every cheap boss ever. If I wasn't raging at him I would have probably stood back and admired his perfectly crafted cheapness. There is a dent in my table upon which I have drawn Jinpachi and dubbed it the "Jinpachi Wound". He caused enough rage to make me dent a table.

Hitman. Now I love every game in the Hitman series with a passion. However, the second game can just be so frustrating when going for those Silent Assassin ratings. The enemies have a sixth sense and tend to turn around JUST at the wrong time.

Assassin's Creed. Pretty much every person you encounter later on in the game makes me want to punch a baby. The guards will attack you for even thinking about climbing, the beggars/drunks are more numerous and will ALWAYS be in spots where you have to sneak. I personally took a stance of "if they make me have to reload, they die". Thus if one pushes me, I'm not taking that shit. Bang, he's dead. I'll have to fight 4 hojillion guards, but its worth it. I think I got really vindictive with that game. You know if you'd start climbing and some prick would say "I hope he falls and hurts himself!" I would stop, find that person, and kill them. Then shout "Who's hurt now, motherfucker??!".

The latter half of Force Unleashed, when you enter the hangar bay of the Death Star in all its foreboding infancy. Two AT-ST's, eleventy-billion Purge Troopers and every Stormtrooper is flown in from the far reaches of the outer rim to brutally assault you into a bloody festering pile of midi-chlorians and epic fail.

I even slid down the difficulty to "'tard" (or was it n00B?) but to no avail, the emminent non-tourage of the Empire's best continued to blaster-rape me to death until I relented.

I relented so completely that the game is currently collecting dust among my collection of more viable (exempla gratia: CoD4) and less exasperating games.

George Lucas, why don't you just hand over the entire story and all it's hackneyed canon to a real writer (e.g. ME!!!) and let the story not suck for once?

This one happened to a friend. He's a chronic recipient of bad luck in video games.

In Fallout Tactics, on the first level, he took a critical hit for about 500 damage (he had about 35 hp maximum)

Reloaded the mission, this happened 3 more times (in different spots).

Nagamasa_Azai:
Heres 2 of my all time favourite moments -

1 - Missing with 95% accuracy in Fallout (any) Seriously, it happens WAAAAAAAAAAAY too frequently. I know that 95% accuracy represents a 1 in 20 miss chance, but even so its just stupid. I mean the molerat was almost eating my gun barrel...how do you miss from that range!?

2 - Civilisations IV. Here is the scenario. Babylonian crossbowman on a hillside. Modern Infantryman on a neighbouring hillside. The game gives me a 98.6% chance of victory. I attack, and fail. Im sure i speak for a lot of people when i say this, but random chance mechanics in combat can FUCK . RIGHT . OFF

Civ 4 actually seemed a lot better as far as random chance than Civ 3. I attacked only with Modern Armor whenever I could, and took the Raider upgrade; this typically resulted in 100% success chance (literally; it said it right on the screen) for anything less than a modern defender. In Civ 3, I've had times when my modern armor loses to a spearman. Rare, but annoying. However, they lose to civil war style infantry way the hell too often (chances of that are almost nil in civ 4)

Metalgear solid 4 trying to get through the whole game with no kills, no deaths, no aterts and in under six hours.

Shinobido: Way of the Ninja's garden. After nearly every single mission you complete, barbarians assault your backyard for no apparent reason other than to piss you off. And with every lot of them you kill, more come in the next attack. I don't understand why the barbarians actually attack your cottage instead of the garden, but hey, I'm not a game developer! What would I know?

Or when I killed Moriarty in Fallout 3 when nobody was looking with a Silenced 10mm, and everyone in Megaton instantly knows I'm up to no good and rapes me with .32s and combat knives. Not to mention Jericho with gah-billion HP and his Chinese Assault Rifle of ass-whippin' tearing into me. If you try to escape Megaton? That goddamn sniper will gun you down in seconds if the Protectron doesn't.

C Lion:

Dommyboy:
Every boss fight in Lost Odyssey for me :)

Fuckin seconded here, man. And I didnt even get off the first disk...

I never got off the first real boss which was that huge bird. A game stops being fun when it is too difficult.

I remember playing GTA VC and this one mission where you have to beat this guy in a race even though he has a great car and you have a shit one. It took me hours to finally kick his ass.

DKC2, Animal Antics.
You control the damn parrot.
Through a maze.
In the air. (Effectively, a water level)
Completely surrounded by death spikes.
With wind.
That changes directions randomly.
Did I mention the endless swarms of death bees?

I've never been angrier at a game or level. Parts of Rayman came close for me, though. Space Mama comes to mind...