Cheapest thing a Game has done to Cheat you out of a Win

[Fractral]

It hurt itself in confusion.
It hurt itself in confusion.
It- *Throws DS*.

I was already in a bad mood and then the last guy on my team had to get killed by a wild zubat. Grrr.

Actually that's not all that rare. There is a 1/2 chance of hurting yourself due to confusion, so in 3 turns thats a 1/8 chance, not something smaller. Its a pain that the game has these RNG events, such as critical hits, (always screw me over on Pokemon Online- about to KO their last pokemon when they get a random critcal hit, Bam, back down the ladder you go) but if you know the chances you can make educated decisions. Might not work, but still better than nothing.
Its even more annoying when you're trying to do the Super Singles train where if you lose at any point you have to start from train 1.

 

[Lunatic High]

Mortal Kombat (the new one)

I swear to fucking god that Khan was easier to beat in the older version, none of that glowing invinciblity bullshit

 

[Kizi]

Certain attacks in boss battles drive me fucking nuts. I was re-playing the original God of War the other day and the final battle with Ares was nothing short of making me smash the controller through the screen. He kept spamming this attack where he does critical damage with his sword, then proceeds to whisk his weird back weapons at me. It was completely undodgeable and he did this on and on.

Also, the dragons in Skyrim; I have to mention them. They sometimes grab you with their mouth, swing you around and throw you like litter, causing you to die. Always. The worst part? Sometimes I'm behind them and they still manage to glitch me to death with that attack.

 

[karloss01]

Playing Devil May Crt 3 Special Edition: HD Edtion for the collection and had Cerebrus go god mode on my ass when he had a sliver and i had like a full bar. good thing i'm not playing the non special edition of DMC3 or it would have murdered me even more.

 

[Siege_TF]

FFXI: Gaze attacks (attacks that only work when you are facing the mob's front) tend to be rather devistating, but if you pay attention you can turn away to avoid them. Unless there's four or more people around then the lag means you've been screwed.

Borderlands: You go down, the enemy runs, and doesn't come back. Fucking squirrly bastards, using effective tactics.

Drake's Deception: As Yahtzee pointed out it seems like bad guys can apear from anywhere at any time and murder you, the only thing you can do is momorize where and when they pop up. I seem to recall a lot of other games where bad guys would also be trying to escape the sinking ship, crumbling ruin, or burning house and only stop to take a few pot shots or lock doors after them, forcing you to take an alternate route.

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2: As above, except you die easier.

 

[boag]

Super Robot wars OG 1 and 2 on the GB Advance.

what? the enemies hit rate is 12%? LOL more like 100%

oh you got a 98% hit rate? LOL MORE LIKE 5%

had to spam skills every freaking time late in the game, and god damn if you didnt level up Cybuster you are asking for it to get raped.

 

[solaris32]

Not sticking to cover properly is pretty high on my list lately (Mass Effect 3). "What's that? You want to get into cover? Well fuck you!"

The absolute worst thing any game can do is turn off or crash on you in the middle of saving for absolutely no reason.

Or:

The game checkpoint saves 2 seconds away from being WTFpwned by some big baddie. Too fast for you to do anything about it once it reloads. Reload, die, reload, die...

And it's extra-extra bad if the game doesn't have a "Load the last earlier checkpoint" option, so you're stuck in the death loop and can't get out without restarting the whole mission over. *curseyouhalogames(except reach)*

I just had to post to let you and everyone else know that ALL Halo games have it setup so that if you die within 5 seconds (or something like that) after spawning from a checkpoint about 4 or 5 times in a row, the game will automatically revert you to the previous checkpoint. You can test this by committing suicide.

 

[RedLister]

Saints row 1 for me.

I can be in the exact same style of car as the gang members chasing me yet magically they are able to go faster and with perfect driving skill. (also the case if i then stole there magical car it would never go that fast for me only for the A.I)

 

[Snotnarok]

This has happened a few times in different games but the one I remember most was Gears of War 1 because it was co-op and it was late and it was silly. The last boss I thought was impossible, we couldn't beat it and it was just crazy, we tried everything, to the point we had no ammo left from dumping it into RAAM and them some from the mounted gun.

Turns out the game bugged and he had infinite health and we literally had to reset the system for the game to correct this. Again I've had this sort of bug several times in different games, I'm known by my friends as a glitch magnet.

Alternatively, there's Saints Row 2 where my console red ringed before the end cutscene .

 

[RJ 17]

What I hate the most is when projectile-based enemies attack in directions they're not facing. For instance, last night I was playing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (I'm 2 years late to the party, I know ) and was playing as Charlotte trying to farm Dracula's Hellfire spell. I found the best way to avoid is Dark Inferno and Flame Pillar attacks are to simply jump over him and stand behind him. Well that's all fine and good until you notice him lifting the arm that signals Pillar or Inferno, jump behind him, and have the inferno balls fire out backwards through his cape to nail you in the face and kill you. >.>

And lets talk about the AI-thrown grenades in Mass Effect 3. I can't tell you how many times I'd be in a flanking position on some Cerberus soldier, attacking him from the side, for instance, only to have him stand and chuck a grenade - while facing my squadmates - perpendicularly at a 90 degree angle from the direction he's facing to have it land right at my feet. The worst I've seen of this, the guy straight up threw it behind him while facing and "throwing" forward.

Then there's the grenade indicator on your Hud...apparently the up and down arrows don't mean "in front of you" or "behind you" as you'd expect them to. No, apparently the up arrow means the grenade is still in the air, and the down arrow means it's officially on the ground. So you see a grenade get thrown and all of a sudden there's a red flashing arrow pointing down. CoD instincts would have you say "OH SHIT!" and try to roll or dodge forward, away from the grenade. Well in ME 3, 9 times out of 10, you just rolled right on top of the grenade and are now officially kerploded.

And of course, there's the times when they pull off psychic trick-shots with their grenades. Apparently knowing that your instinct will be to rush their position and do a heavy melee when they throw the grenade at you, they'll intentionally throw it too high so that it bounces off something on the ceiling and falls right by their feet. You arrive to deliver the melee and BOOM! Shepard gets his legs blown off. >.>

Edit: Oh, and apparently some Cerberus soldiers have the Martyrdom perk, as they'll drop/throw grenades despite being caught in a Pull or Singularity.

 

[SuperNova221]

Insane AI in SC2 is just... insane. Thought I had a clever idea, would just go for a really early cheese rush with some marines, but by the time I had my (mind you, proxied) tier 1 marine rush, the AI was doing a push with a few thors...

Edit: To say more specifically why it cheats me out of a win... insane AI harvesters gain about 2x the number of minerals and gas you do, so it's not as if they just play really well, they flat out cheat for extra resources.

 

[Ddgafd]

I'm suprised that no one has mentioned how cars in sandbox games always change lanes so you crash into them. Ragetastic, especially during a timed mission. Saints Row 2 and Simpsons: Hit & Run are the worst offenders I can think of right now.

 

[Exocet]

Since the op started with Rome total war, I'm going to give an example from it too.

I was (re)taking a Greek city that had just rebelled for the 19th fucking time in 20 turns. This time I wasn't going to take any shit from them, and I would garrison a full army.
Comes the day of the battle, they come out of the castle to meet me in an open field right before I can besiege it.

Day of the battle: a pleasant summer's night in a Greek prairie.
I'm fielding a classic composition of legionnaires, archers, some praetorian cavalry and a few arbalests.
Another army is coming as reinforcement, with fire piggies ( pigs dosed with oil, set on fire and set into enemy lines), with javelin auxiliaries and a catapult.
Against me is a HORDE of random units. Most of them very powerful melee units.

I start moving in, close enough for my javelins to have just enough time to fire off a couple missiles before retreating behind my defensive line. Then I move in my fire piggies, and let my archers open fire. The enemy understandingly doesn't appreciate and rushes in. I sic my piggies on them, which would allow my archers to fire at routing, confused, hurt units.
The piggies run forward....forward.... then they decide to have some revenge on me and double back.
I swear, those fucking pigs went through my ENTIRE line, zigzagging for maximum carnage. My javelins? Still busy running every which way and get trampled by barbarians. My legionnaires? Still reeling from having flaming pigs running into their junks at mach 2, are decimated in seconds. Archers as squishy as hell and could barely do anything, and my artillery that was SUPPOSED to fire at routing targets, fired right into the fray, killing probably more of what little left there were of my men, than my enemy.

To this day, I refuse to use fire pigs, and any AI faction seen using them is presented by an act of war.
FUCK.
FIRE.
PIGS.

 

[Quaxar]

Auto-balance in Team Fortress 2.

Think you just won the game because you managed to ubercharge your team through to victory?

lol nope.

The split second you die right before the game ends you die to a facestab and get autobalanced to the other team.

Right, I am with you on that one. I hate it so much if you do all the work, spend ages strategically placing sentries and teleporters to gain ground for the team and just as you're in the fight for the last control point you get swapped to the other team. Under these special circumstances I usually ragequit because screw that.

 

[Terminate421]

My empoleon was frozen by a kyogre.

My penguin made out of steel with a water typing that lived on the Antarctic with a 4x resistance to ice, froze.

What the fuck?

 

[LostCrusader]

I decided to try Medieval 2 TW on Hard once. I picked Sicily because I thought I would have some decent positioning. 10 turns in, I am 30K in debt because the 5 separate computer groups decided to send a full army to my island without declaring war and just patrolling around and causing devastation to kill my income.

captcha: mother country.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Any fighter that reads inputs. 15 blows in a row at randomly varying heights? Blocks every single one, no problem then later it'll let you get away with murder because it's decided it's time to start lettng it hit you again. -.-

Jst makes for the worst losses where you randomly are unable to get in a single hit for entire rounds.

Not just that but perfect sequences of combos with move after move that would take five to nine button presses.

Older games from the arcade era pulled cheaper tricks all the time, since time was money and they wanted more quarters.

The most prevalent of these for me, we light gun game boss battles.

The bosses would spam the screen with missiles that completely covered your view and you had to shoot them all down and take massive damage. If you miraculously managed to survive, the boss only appears on screen for a split second in the distance/behind cover/moving frantically before doing another spam attack.

I would've never beat the House of the Dead if my company didn't reserve an arcade for a party that unlocked freeplay.

 

[OctalLord]

Super Robot wars OG 1 and 2 on the GB Advance.

what? the enemies hit rate is 12%? LOL more like 100%

oh you got a 98% hit rate? LOL MORE LIKE 5%

had to spam skills every freaking time late in the game, and god damn if you didnt level up Cybuster you are asking for it to get raped.

Not to even mention the bosses in the second game that have Double Image,(A effect which gurentees them a 50% dodge rate against any attack unless you have the very specific skill that can counteract it. A skill precious few party members have) and another effect which lets the boss regenerate 1/4th or more it's total health at the end of its turn.

I've stopped playing OG2 because one of the final bosses has that combination, couple with him being at the end of a long stage brimming with other similer bosses makes it gameboy smashingly difficult. It's not even the secret stage boss, I don't even wanna know what that guy is like.

 

[lord.jeff]

Dark Sims from Perfect Dark, not only do they have the highest AI settings, meaning they can have perfect accuracy with every weapon, but they have more health and move faster, they are impossible to kill.

 

[baddude1337]

Any game where your character can be attacked whilst getting up from a knock back attack. The worst offenders are those where an enemy can constantly knock you back until you die. (I'm looking at you Lost Planet 2!)