Levels That SUCK

Games
1

This year I’ve played more level-based and mission-based games than usual, and I’ve noticed that every level-based game seems to have at least one level that just sucks, even if the game overall is very good. GTA Vice City was a truly great game but that frigging bank heist car race was damn near impossible - I had to cheat to pass it. I enjoyed Freelancer but that also had a suck-donkey race mission. I’ve heard about CoD’s Damn Dam mission, “SniperTown” (I forget which game) and many more. Right now, I’ve been playing MechAssault on the XBox which is great fun in a lightweight way and I am totally hating the “Size Matters” mission (the Elemental part).

In more open ended games, sucky quests or mini games can often be avoided. But in a mission based game, when you get a sucky mission, you just have to get past that sucker, or give up. This can be a totally game wrecking experience.

What makes a SUCK level? I can think of four criteria:

1)The level requires a different form of skill than the skill that got you through the game this far. Freelancer’s race mission is a classic example: precision maneuvering was simply not at all required to get through the game except for that specific race mission. Decent aim and good upgrade strategy were the keys to the campaign and then whack you suddenly have this precision flying, timed race thing.

2)The level has little (or no) margin for error. (This is especially sucky if combined with #1 above - you have to do something you are not used to, really really well, or be doomed to infinitely repeat this hellish experience over and over and OVER). This was the problem with the Vice City bank race: it was beatable, but a single tiny error in cornering would cost you the entire race b/c the competition was implacable.

3)The level just seems out of place in the context/spirit of the game. This is my problem with Size Matters in MechAssault. MechAssault is all about being a hulking Mech stomping on puling little infantry, kicking trucks end over end, and crashing through buildings like Godzilla. It’s a game with arcade-y but slowish combat that really gives a different kind of action feel. I feel like a big tough mech when playing most missions. Then you have to play as a little tiny wussy in power armor, where you have to run and dodge instead of stomp and kick ass. Plus to pass the mission you have to dodge a lot, and you also have to know the map. This leads to #4:

4)The level requires fore-knowledge of the map, forcing you to “learn by dying” which I always feel is a hallmark of bad game design. Plus I generally enjoy tactics over puzzle solving (at least for action games). There’s nothing worse than a level that just randomly kills you, especially via some means you had no way of anticipating or avoiding, just to teach you how to pass it. I gave up on the Indiana Jones and the Lost Emperor’s Tomb game for this reason: I hit a level with randomly appearing spinning-blades that would decapitate you unless you knew the pattern ahead of time. Since I am not psychic, I just said “back in the box you go foul game”.

Of course the totally worst levels combine all 4 of the above: a crappy level involving unknown skills, that requires you to die a lot to figure it out, with no margin for error, and that feels out of context in the game. The ending of Gabriel Knight 3 is the capper here: after a long and rather good adventure game (ignoring the freaking mustache puzzle) you have a finale that involves finicky action sequences, with clumsy controls, lots of random death, with very very high difficulty, and that felt totally out of place in a Jane Jensen game. The only reason I finished that game was that unlike a totally mission based game, you could save partway through and thus I didn’t have to replay the whole finale over and over (just certain parts, over and over, and over and over, and… you get the picture). Blech :0

So what are your nominees for all time suck levels? And are there are any more criteria for total level suckage? Plus the eternal question, why do even great games have at least one pure suck level?

Dan

2

“Race missions” in general tend to more often than not end up on most gamer’s hate lists.

Mafia’s race level comes to mind as yet another example, and a number of space sims seem to have had the requisite “fly through rings very fast” level as well.

3

Everything in any of the Rogue Squadron games that isn’t a cut-scene.

4

Derek Smart

5

This sounds suspiciously like one of those “list your gaming pet peeves” threads.

  • Alan
6

There’s a mission in Dynasty Warriors 3 that I was thinking of when I read your post. Instead of a giant battle with allies and enemies going at it everywhere and you having to rush to hotspots to influence the battle, there was just you and your bodyguards having to fight your way through hundreds of enemies alone within a very strict time limit. I hated that level so much, and never beat it.

7

There are a few Interstate '76 levels that still give me nightmares. Horribly difficult game at times.

A large number of levels from operation Flashpoint. A great game, sure, but they could have cut out about half of it’s levels and had a stronger overall game.

Anyone ever spend some time playing Killing Cloud? Some of the dogfights in the fog were so difficult I was ready to cry.

8

That race in Vice City was terrible. But there was a trick to it. You just had to clip the other guy’s back end when going down Washington. Do that right and he’d completely wipe out, maybe roll, and by the time he got going again you’d be at least a quarter mile ahead. Of course, the mission was so rigged against you that he often could still catch you before the finish line if you were anything short of perfect the rest of the way. I did the clip trick to perfection one time after an hour of failing the mission over and over, got a huge head start, and the bastard still came from behind and blew past me half a block from the finish. Man, I think I started to cry.

As for the whole suck level thing, I’ve always been amazed at this. They stand out so blatantly that I can’t believe developers let them go. Everyone seems to pick out the same trouble spots in every game, too, so the devs must know about these trouble spots. Anyhow, my nomination for all-time worst suck level would have to be the sewer level in Dark Forces. Confusing, boring, and almost no Star Wars atmosphere. Came early, too, so it really derailed the game for a while.

9

The first time I played Halo, I cursed just about every one of the 80-90 minutes I spent playing through “The Library”. Everything about the level screamed “we needed some filler to pad the game out, and this was the best we could come up with on short notice.”

The level might as well have been named “Flood Machine”, because that’s what it felt like you were in. The entire level looked like 3 or 4 areas cut-and-pasted together a few dozen times, and every 30 paces, the game would dump another large wave of Flood enemies on you, probably about 100 times from beginning to end. Heaven forbid you tried to race through the level – at times the game would say “we’re not going to open this door until to you finish fighting these guys.”

And, just to be cruel, I guess, enemies would constantly be dropped on you from all sides, regardless of how fast or slow you progressed. I don’t care how much people say they like the Xbox controller – it’s not the proper tool for fighting a hundred enemies coming at you from all sides, and I died a LOT. (By comparison, I finished the same level on the PC in just under 50 minutes – almost twice as fast. Sure, I knew what was coming, but … still. )

I remember finishing the first stage of the level on the Xbox 20-25 minutes, reaching the elevator platform and thinking “wow, that really sucked. I’m glad that’s over” … only to have to do it THREE MORE times. By the time I was done, it was a miracle I hadn’t smashed the then-ginormous Xbox controller.

Halo had some great levels – I really hope they don’t have any horrible filler like this in Halo 2.

10

Stealth sequences.

11

The entire time I was reading this thread I was thinking…oh wait, nevermind. Sluggo handled it. Studying for a history test at the library beats playing that level.

12

Also:

Levels where you have to protect some guy from some other guys. Includes: Escort missions. I think there might have been a time when they were a welcome twist, but that must have been a very long time ago because I can’t ever remember enjoying one.

13

[quote=“Brett Todd”]As for the whole suck level thing, I’ve always been amazed at this. They stand out so blatantly that I can’t believe developers let them go. Everyone seems to pick out the same trouble spots in every game, too, so the devs must know about these trouble spots. [quote]

I really don’t get it. Pretty much all of the levels we’ve listed thus far stand out pretty sharply. In some cases, the mismatch of the level and the game are just obvious. In others, the fact that the level is just not enjoyable should be obvious to anyone with a clue.

And yet, almost every mission based game has a few duds. Is this just more poor QA? Or are these just examples of designers not understanding what makes their games good? (The corollary being they don’t understand what makes a game bad either).

Dan

14

The dumb ‘man the turret’ missions in kotor.

The keyboard controls were more responsive than the mouse, and you could only fire one shot at a time. Sweet, guys, this really feels like I’m in a Star Wars movie now!

15

God, those turret things were awful, and exactly the kind of console shit I don’t want in my RPG. Thanks for making them unskippable, Bioware.

16

I remember being warned about many levels in Vice City… the only one that held true though was that car race. It was a lot of luck, you had to clip him just right, then drive like a demon before he caught back up. And hope that the game wouldnt just throw a car wreck right in your face. Several times I was incredibly close to both my opponent and the finish, and a couple of cars would veer wildly across the road.

17

Agree about stupid levels in general, especially racing mini-games, but as it happens two of those mentioned aren’t on my hate list – the end of GK3 (don’t remember it being that difficult) and the KotOR turret shooting (very easy and great fun!).

So I guess there’s a possibility that someone at the developer studios actually likes those annyoing racing sequences, too.

18

I found the KotOR turret deal boring, but acceptable enough since they took like 5 seconds to beat. The 30 seconds of booing for botching up a swoop race was far more annoying.

Did someone say Vice City?

Vice City had a huge problem with crappy missions. Starting with the one where you rescued what’s-his-face (Vincent?), it gave you this decent car and sent 3 enemy cars barreling at you head on. I couldn’t down the street without getting hosed unless i got OUT of the car and made liberal use of the minigun. Next time was on one of the Voodoo missions, where you had to get some briefcases or something. The cop AI was so vicious in that game that they’d go as far as to shoot out the tires of their OWN vehicles so i couldn’t take them. 75% of that mission was completed on foot. That one race though was reletively uneventful for me though. I just heeded prior advice and parked the fastest car in the game in a spot where it wouldn’t inexplicably disappear. After that, it was just a matter of other cars not following their odd habit of crossing into incoming traffic.

The perfect example of what Sharpe listed has to be Jedi Outcast’s stealth level. The rest of the game had problems, but that level was just begging for noclip to be used.

19

Can’t understand the hate for KOTOR’s turret missions. They got very boring after the first few times but they were so easy I can’t imagine even worrying about them.

I liked the concept behind them (easy space combat to give it a Star Wars feel) but after the first time they were always the same. I’d like to see more sequences like this in a KOTOR sequel, but a bit more varied.

20

Jedi Knight II Outcast had that one mission where you had to sneak past storm troopers and not let them hit the alarm. It was stupid, when they hit the alarm the game cut to a cutscene showing about 6 strom troopers walk up to you, you drop your lightsaber an put your hands up then its game over.

I was like WTF im a Jedi who has killed hundreds of storm troopers by now. Why does it force me to surrender.

Basically any game thats not built around stealth gameplay but has a stealth mission is going to suck.