Have you ever gotten a game into an unwinnable/unfinishable state?

[Formica Archonis]

Most Infocom games.
1. Hitchhiker's Guide: Feed the dog a sandwich, WTF?
2. One of the Enchanter series: What do you mean, I can't dismiss the magical light I cast on myself to find the damn painting? Why would making myself a light source in a world with grues EVER be a bad idea? (Also, as far as I remember it IS a sensible thing to do in at least one other game in the same series!)

Got killed in Maniac Mansion a few times. But I was being rather stupid when it happened, so.... Zak McKracken on the other hand I never beat until the Internet came along and I had a walkthrough to explain my game-breaking mistakes.

I beat but got the bad ending for Strife because I misheard ONE line of dialogue.

John Carmack's ancient Dark Designs games had a few ways to screw up but they were so well-labeled I don't count 'em.

One of those Time Machine CYoA-style books, the King Arthur one. You had the choice of taking sugar or matches at the start and one of them forced you into an infinite loop about halfway through. Fortunately, it's rather easy to cheat with a book!

Eye of the Beholder 2. My job is to kill stuff and get things, how dare you punish me for it that one time! (Though that one was obvious sucker bait, so fortunately I saved beforehand.)

Though my personal favorite unwinnable was Final Doom. Evilution MAP31, which due to a bug made a needed key inaccessible in single player. Trivially easy to fix for someone like me who level edits, or for the genius speedrunners who used sequence breaking to obviate the need for the key entirely, but horrible for anyone else.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Wind Waker, got to the start of the last temple and silly me didnt have any potions or anything and I had to fight two massive and fast knights with only like 3 hearts. Which to me, I could not do.

 

[Zakarath]

In Oblivion, one of the things I needed to get rid of my vampirism never appeared. The witch I needed to talk to would never talk about, "Hey, you're a vampire. Do you want to get rid of that?" in some fashion. I even tried coming at night or braving the unforgiving sun.

No matter how many times I reloaded, went to other places, loaded the disk onto the console, nada.

SO I kept making a new character, and another one, and another one. Same problem persisted, mostly because I had a hard time doing the necessary mission without being infected. So then I just gave up and chucked the game somewhere.

My brother is finding that he's having the same issue, except its the mages that seems to disappear on him.

Are you sure you were a full vampire at that point? there's a few days between getting the disease and actually becoming a vampire. And in those few days, you can easily cure the disease with a cure disease pot/spell/chapel.

OT: I was playing through Halo 3 when the game decided to give me a checkpoint while my mongoose was going off a cliff. Cue endless deaths.

Or there was that X-Com game where I must've put my base right on top of an alien one, as I had a base invasion 20 days into the first month. That was hopeless.

 

[scorptatious]

Ninja Gaiden 2 for the 360.

I believe I was on the chapter with the two flaming armadillos. After I beat them, I moved forward and entered an unskippable cutscene that freezes right as the camera zooms into this green structure. I figured this was just a bug that happens randomly, so I reseted the game. I watched the cutscene again, it freezes again. So I reset again, cutscene freezes.

I thought something maybe wrong with my copy, so I went out to Hollywood video and rented a copy and reset, watched the cutscene, THE CUTSCENE FREEZES.

I wasn't able to finish the game and I shelved it for two months. Later on, I found out the reason it kept freezing was because of a patch the developers put into the game. How do you mess something like that up?? Why would you make a patch that breaks the game??

They did eventually make a second patch to fix it, and I was able to finish the game. But as I stated previously, I couldn't play it for two months.

 

[Sky Captanio]

In the original Deus Ex one of the characters is stuck behind a barrel so I can't talk to him. Sometimes it seems to think I've already had the dialogue but I can't leave the area.

 

[ultimateownage]

Many times, but the one I remember is in the Ocarina of Time Water Temple there was a box that if moved accidentally could block your path off and you'd have no way of finishing it. Considering that it had saved over my save space by the time I found out it was irritating. Then my sister did it on her run, and I did it again years later.

*EDIT*
Oh, and on Call of Juarez 2 near the end when you're walking through a tunnel your vision goes all wobbly and then it starts loading, and the loading screen freezes every time. I couldn't describe the level very well, but it's a bit after a duel and you play the level as both brothers I think.

 

[CleverCover]

Are you sure you were a full vampire at that point? there's a few days between getting the disease and actually becoming a vampire. And in those few days, you can easily cure the disease with a cure disease pot/spell/chapel.

Being outside running across the forest during the day killed me faster than having my character mauled by a bear, so I'm guessing I was a vampire. And that still doesn't help my poor little brother. I think the game disc is either defective or hates us both.

 

[neil1990]

In Halo 3, the mission before the flood arrive for the first time, I drive a Mongoose out of the Cargo Bay doors and I was driving too fast so I end up going over a cliff and falling to my death. Checkpoint occurs literally a second before I nose-dive to my death. Had to restart naturally

 

[GonzoGamer]

There was New Vegas but I don't know if that counts: it wasn't because of anything I did; that game was just broken.

 

[gutterball17]

Back in LOZ: Origin of Ages I was in Jabu-jabu's belly and activated a switch that drained out the water. I found out at a later point that there ws a treasure chest in the area i couldn't reach anymore because i drained the water. However the switch to raise the water back up was in the area i couldn't reach anymore. *initiate facepalm*

 

[Atobe-sama]

I still think it a glitch, but I got to the big boss battle before the final dungeon in Legend of Legaia. Here I am, stuck in this little area that I teleported to with nothing but the boss and a save point. I have used the save point, but for some reason it does not allow me to leave the area, like every other save point (Which is why I call it a glitch( and so I'm screwed trying to fight the boss without any revive items and limited healing items. That was a really hard dungeon leading up to the boss, and of course the boss was no easier. Man still never finished that game. I'm surprised it never hit PSN.

 

[Mauso88]

On Morrowind GOTY. I was up against Almalexia and was too weak to kill her. I saved right as she attacked me. I had no save outside the Clockwork City of Sotha Sil and you couldn't use teleportation spells to leave. Every time I loaded the save file she would knock me down and 1 shot me.

 

[Warbandit]

In Tales of Legendia I beat one boss in a series of four, but only scrapedby, used all my revive items, no way to back track, and the only way forward is to beat thenext bosses, but there's no item buying onthe way, you just have to hope you can get through flawlessly. Too bad I didn't. Threw the game down in frustrattion, don't even know where it is anymore.

Also, same game, infitrating an enemy camp you have to sneak through a series of guards, but some of the paths you have to sneak through are available for milliseconds before a guard turns around. If he sees you, you fight. Souns easy enough, kill the guard, blast way into fortress, right? Hooooo no, see, when you're caught, you fight the guard and then run away back to the beginning of the area.

 

[Zakarath]

Are you sure you were a full vampire at that point? there's a few days between getting the disease and actually becoming a vampire. And in those few days, you can easily cure the disease with a cure disease pot/spell/chapel.

Being outside running across the forest during the day killed me faster than having my character mauled by a bear, so I'm guessing I was a vampire. And that still doesn't help my poor little brother. I think the game disc is either defective or hates us both.

Well, I doubt it would work at all if the disc itself was bad... have you patched the game at all? It was pretty damn buggy on release.

 

[bliebblob]

Red alert because I was a kid and had 0 strategy so I just couldn't do it. I don't really care though.

The one I do care about: ffx-2. I'm sorry yuna, I loved ffx so I really REALLY wanted to reunite you with tidus but I just... can't. There's just too many rediculous hoops to jump through. And because of the chapter system it's super easy to miss your chance to jump through a certain hoop alltogether. I tried several times, even with a strategy guide, and I just can't take watching those derpy cutscenes one more time.

 

[Nuclear_Suspect]

Moonstone on the Amiga 500, my game had a bug so it would crash if I fought the dragon (Basicly you had to compete with 3 other knights to get the 2 halves of the Moonstone, take both halves to the summit and beat the boss) the dragon had one half of the stone.

Of course I could let one of the other knights beat it and then steal the stone off them, but I had pounded them so hard that the dragon would just steamroll them.

/CAPTCHA: erianag believe!

 

[RaikuFA]

secret of evermore

that fucking pyramid

if you walked over certain bridges a certain amount of times theyd colapse. you could make it so youd be stuck forever and you could save as well, so youd be stuck forever

 

[TheDoctor455]

Yeah... after grinding all of my skills for an hour in Oblivion, I leveled up to around level 12...
and suddenly I couldn't kill anything before it killed me.

That, and also I couldn't get the real ending for Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within because there was a life upgrade which you can't get again after you've finished the game, and I didn't want to replay the game, so I watched the ending on youtube. Also, I almost got stuck a load of times in half life because of awkward auto save timing. Mostly it was just because I had low health and/or very little ammo (mostly at the start of the game), but one time, I jumped off the cart and landed on the electrical tracks (taking damage), and the game auto saved just as I jumped. It took me like 1 hour to get past the level (due to heavy damage from the rails, and I didn't have very much health in the first place).

Edit: Also, I can't seem to get Prince Of Persia 2008 to work since it crashes on the first cut scene (where Elika's dad cuts down the tree) every single time. I don't know if its my computer or the game, so I'm not sure it counts.

No, you can get the life upgrade... you just need the sword that breaks through walls... and then you have to do A LOT of backtracking. No less stupid though.

 

[newwiseman]

Dead Island I did the mission where you get into the gun shop and managed to get a checkpoint with one of the NPC's stuck in the door. I can't kill him and he doesn't run from grenades... So I'm forever stuck in the gun shop.

Fortunately I've been backing up my saves ever since the first over file limit error happened to my first character. I've also gotten very good at hex editing my save files in the last few days.