Top 10 Most "Rage Quit" games

We’ve all been there, right? “Ok, I’m into this game, I’m progressing well, enjoying it and having fun… La-la-la-la”. Then, some random, completely unexpected thing happens that kills all progress! WTF and a bag of cabbage! You have no choice but to QUIT THIS PIECE OF SHIT GAME, and DAMN IT TO HELL!!! It’s the only reasonable thing to do! At some point, after the calming effects of time, deep breaths and/or alcohol, you may return to try again, be it years, months, weeks, days, or even minutes later, but you also may not. If this has happened more than a few times with any particular game, these are the games I’m talking about. I’m not focusing on multiplayer, just the single player experience, but feel free to express any MP games, too if you like.

Here are my top 10:

  1. Dark Souls - I gave it far too many chances to make me like it. I realize and accept that I’m missing something, but I’m so very done with this fucking game.
  2. Rainbow Six series - No saves allowed during highly tense missions, so there were definitely more Rage-Quits than normal, rational quits executed. Despite this, I’ve finished every mission multiple times. Go figure.
  3. Braid - How many rewinds before giving up? Not sure, but they were a lot.
  4. Hell - Excellent gameplay, but insane difficulty sucks all fun out of it.
  5. Legend Of Grimrock series - While I did finish and replay both 1 and 2, there were many frustrating moments of rage-quitting.
  6. Party Hard - First few levels were deceptively fun, but later levels…
  7. Sorcerer King - Probably missing a certain strategy element, but after enjoying many hours, then getting seemingly inexplicably destroyed, done.
  8. Assassin’s Creed series - No need for comment, I think. It is known.
  9. Shadow Of Mordor - Another exception, as I did finish, but there were many rage-quits involved.
  10. State Of Decay - NO! NOT [Insert really liked character name here]! HE/SHE CANNOT DIE!

It’s very hard for me to rage quit a game. I usually give up pretty peacefully if it’s too tense or unfair or something. There’s only one game that makes me rage to the point of quitting immediately…

…FIFA.

I am usually a laidback gamer, but oh-my-god Super Meat Boy. There was something about it that tested my patience like no game before or since. Games from the same era with similar difficulties like VVVVVV and the Binding of Isaac never really induced rage quits in me. In fact, I had a constant grin while playing VVVVVV no matter how many times I died doing the same section. Meanwhile, SMB had me swearing at the monitor and running my hands slowly through my hair.

Hmmm, difficult to think. I admire your Assassin’s Creed choice though. I suffered through the original and declared I will never play it or its sequels if they would arise ever again. Hilarious how many did and what a joy I avoided all of them. But I was dismayed how its gift-wraped developer package open world design leaked into other games I played (Far Cry 3 and Shadows of Mordor)

I’ve been very careful ever since.

Honestly…

Pillars of Eternity. I gave up in frustration on a lot of fights for quite a while.

Super Meat Boy. That first boss. I was always so close to beating it, but never ever did. I can do each sequence of jumps on any given run. But to string them all together in one run? It never happened.
N+ - I have to string together five levels? I guess that’s okay when they are only moderately hard. But when levels get super hard later? Screw you. I’ve got better things to do with my time than redo levels I’ve already finished dozens of times in order to get to the levels giving me a problem.
State of Decay, mostly for what it did while I wasn’t playing.
Arcanum, never could figure out its combat system. Green dots, red dots, what the hell is going on? Where did I put the manual?
Descent 3 - Reached an open area with dozens of enemies, with limited instant hit-ammo that runs out, forcing you to switch to lasers which the enemy dodges easily. WTF Parallax? I was loving the game up to this point.
Spelunky - it just feels so clunky and imprecise and hard to control. I just don’t get the appeal.
Final Fantasy XII - Why can’t I hunt down this damned chicken? WTF Square? Why are you even having me hunt down these high level creatures when I’m so low level right now? What do you mean it’s optional? Screw you.

More when I think of them.

It’s kind of funny, rage isn’t really my thing but I certainly am ok with quitting, I’ll bail right out if I feel like I’m wasting my time. I did for that “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” or whatever game, looked like fun but just wasn’t.

My friends and I love to play co-op online games together, and they’re the kind of guys who will be fine just replaying sections, dying and doing it all over again but that will totally frustrate me after a certain point. I remember in the first Gears, there’s that section where you go into the plant and have to ride coal cars, get separated from your partners while you’re plinking and getting plunked by bad guys. And for various reasons one of us would just keep dying here, we played for maybe an hour and I was getting so frustrated. Think I just bailed at one point.

Also, I had the opposite of a rage quit one time, and as luck would have it right in front of my wife. This was maybe 15 years ago, I was playing a fighting game, I think Soul Calibur 2, and I’m just not very good at these. But I beat someone that had been giving me a ton of grief and I spiked my PS2 controller and totally destroyed it. My wife still gives me grief about that.

Darkest Dungeon. Yay I have my great party finally getting a few levels, they are really great. Entire party one shot in one round before even getting a turn. Throw keyboard, un-intstall, write nasty letters on steam discussion etc.

In general, I hate one shot mechanics in games, that will usually set me off.

This one is simple. Shark Tale Game on Xbox. Got it for my 7 year old son because he liked the movie. The Dance Dance games were impossible. I did my best to try and get him past them. I remember my relief when we finally beat the first one. I naively thought maybe that would be it. Nope the second did us in. Most stupid thing that I have ever seen in a video game…well besides that time when if you uninstalled the game it reformatted your hard drive…around 1996. Can’t remember the name.

I’m a pretty patient guy, and generally have avoided things wchich bug me.

But the most rage quit moment I ever had was while playing the original Test Drive, I believe. Extreme rubber banding ai is one thing that bothers me hugely. When I’m going down a straightaway and my current speed is faster than the top speed of the AI car, yet it passes me?

Or when I’ve run a perfect race until the last corner, and a minor miscalculation causes me to be instantly passed by 3 cars?

We’re done here.

Late 90’s to mid 2000’s racers were notorious for that obnoxious garbage.

Two words:

Blue shell. ;)

I don’t tend to rage quit, per say, but if I’m frustrated I take a break and come back a little later on. That stupid alien that keeps one-shotting me in Prey? Come back a few hours later, and I take a completely different approach, no big deal. More fun if you have 3 different games that all induce the same feeling, you can just bounce between them. Thanks a lot, rogue legacy…

Same here. That’s why I just made a list of games that I quit because they got too hard for me for one reason or another. Either because I was too lazy to look up the manual (Arcanum) or because it was like throwing my head against a brick wall (Descent 3, N+, Spelunky).

Don’t rage, myself.

But…

Screw Battle Brothers and Darkest Dungeon.

Two games I love to hate and hate to love.

Conan Exiles. Spend days grinding to make some gear, lose it in seconds because the server crashed.

Eve-Online. showing off a ship to a semi-interested acquaintance. The ship burns and dies. He goes ‘eh’ and I watch hours upon hours of ‘work’ go to dev/null. fuck that lol.

Elite Dangerous. much like it, tho i was alone that time. Taking a fer-de-lance to a CG. Take a couple bounties on the way. Get absolutely facemeltingly pwned by some stupid AI boats because my setup stank and my piloting was below the level of a stoned badger with a palsy. Pay the rebuy and start the journey again. getting anywhere in a combat-fit FdL takes long because of its abysmal range. Get fucking blasted again before docking it. Twice in a fucking row then quit already.

AION
AION
AION
AION
AION

if you’ve played it, it needs no explanation why…if not, imagine getting to +14 on something and then having it fall all the way back to ZERO !!!

those korean developers can rot in video game hell for all i care

Both Tomb Raiders. The big boss in the first one drove me nuts. I hadn’t played a non-mmo in decade and the QTEs drove me nuts. The second one I kept running out of ammo. I had gone past the “you can’t turn back” warnings and was seriously considering restarting the game just to get enough ammo to try the boss.

I got through them. but those two fights really soured me.

Original Tomb Raider. Many of those jumps need to be pixel-perfect and my patience ran out.

I was playing Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on the ZX Spectrum and my mate went about 4-0 up and had been beating me in every game that evening and I had had enough and pressed the quit key. Not my finest hour. But I was proper fuming.