Masochistic gaming, or "If you hate it so much, why are you still playing?"

[King of Asgaard]

Demon's Souls, but I found that fairly easy.

I play Dark Souls from time to time, but I give up on it so often because of just how bullshit the game is. It's terribly unbalanced and filled with glitches. I absolutely loath people who say "you only die in Dark Souls because of something you did wrong, not the game". It's complete bullshit and it's the reason why I'll never finish Dark Souls.

I'm not saying you're wrong for disliking Dark Souls, but what unbalances and glitches are you referring to? After hundreds of hours in PvE, I don't recall any such problems.

OT: Ni No Kuni. The gameplay was fine, the aesthetic nice and the soundtrack gorgeous. However, the story was told in a way suitable for toddlers and children, and it held your hand the whole way through. I have no idea how I managed to actually beat it, but it didn't feel particularly fulfilling.

 

[trollnystan]

Well, I finished Infinite Undiscovery, swearing and hating it the whole way through. So there's that.

Oh and I just finished Thief 2014, but I can't say I hated it exactly. It disappointed me, with it's crap AI, buggy scenery, and lousy story-- but the gameplay was alright, if a bit meh. I probably would have given it a 3 out 5 - or a 6 out 10 - if it had been a new IP instead of piggy-backing off the name of an existing one. Glad I didn't pay for it either way. (Steam shared library FTW!)

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Pokemon X/Y. Well, part of it only, the breeding part, trying to get those 31 IVs in the 4 stats you want. It's maddening if you have poor luck or the RNG hates you. Made even worse by all those people who tell you "it's easy, I just did it in a couple hours tops" when you've been trying for a freaking week. I don't think I ever wanted to punch someone through my screen so much as then.

 

[Battenberg]

FTL. Really any game where blind luck can have as much, or more, influence on your success as your own skill/ choices is capable of driving me up the wall but some games, like FTL and XCOM are just too damn good for me to be put off by that. The actual design of FTL is great, it's unbelievably awesome piloting your own spaceship and exploring the universe and having fights using a cracking combat system. For me all that makes it worth hitting the retry button when it all goes wrong, even though I know odds are it'll end the same way again. Weirdly I don't think I'd enjoy it as much without the stuff that drives me nuts although it doesn't feel that way sometimes.

 

[Captain Kips]

The game I hate more than anything is a minigame inside another game. Gameception. Anyhow, It's called Chocobo Catcher in FFX and has to be one of the most frustrating minigames around. I mean, It's easy enough to beat the Chocobo Trainer and beat the record, But the time you need to actually unlock the ultimate weapon for Tidus is a time of 0 seconds. It took me several days and countless hours.

WHOS YOUR GOD NOW *****?!

 

[ReservoirAngel]

I don't have any specific games I go to that I can definitvely say that I actively hate in any way.

But on the broader subject, after a certain point my reason for continuing becomes the personal pride of not letting some smug programming fucker in an office somewhere have the satisfaction of having made a series 1s and 0s that are able to best me in a test of skill or intellect.

Really, only one game I can actively recall has ever forcefully broken me on that attitude and that was Dark Souls. Anything else I can usually push through after enough bludgeoning or I just lose interest in for other reasons or getting distracted by something else. Until Dark Souls where I gave up out of sheer hatred and frustration.

 

[BarkBarker]

When I play Smash Brothers Brawl:

Oh god these fucking hitboxes are terrible.

WHY do you have super armour on a smash attack?!

THIS IS BULLSHIT, WHY IS HIS ATTACK PRACTICALLY UNPUNISHABLE, I'M JUST A FUCKING PUNCHING BAG HERE.

Me recently playing Ragnarok Odyssey Ace:

No...NO NO NO NOOOO! *sigh* what is with this game and thinking a button pressed 2 seconds ago in the combo means I want to continue after the end of the combo?!

WHY are these tiny bastards everywhere, they provide me with nothing but useless drops.

WHAT IS WITH THIS GAME AND TINY CREATURES?! WHO TAUGHT YOU GAME DESIGN?!

Oh he just took all my health in a massive widespread attack that I have to see coming the second he telegraphs it....fucking 6 meter off screen cos the lock on is ass. Who ever thought massive boss fights on the Vita was an ass, and its even worse that they didn't appropriate it for the PS3 version.

Whoever said "hey, lets have them fight 11 enemies with massive lasers that can hit the skybox and can hit you across the map" deserves to be castrated and force fed his testicles.

Let it be known that SSBB has the most hours I've ever put into a game, and I've only played Ragnarok for two sittings.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Dead Island for me. It still ranks as one of the worst video games I've ever played (put there mostly for technical reasons), yet I finished the campaign three times and have another character waiting for a eventual fourth playthrough.

Maybe the fact that I played it so much was because there was a lack of good zombie games at the time and I was desperate for a decent undead killing simulator. That said, I would never recommend Dead Island to anyone and can go on for hours about how incompetent the entire development of the game was. Weird how that works.

DayZ Standalone is another one. It's a fucking mess (most likely always will be) and it makes me rage like nothing else I've ever encountered, but I still play it.

 

[TrevHead]

Challenging games I'm fine with, It's the boring and easy games that are masochistic for me, especially open world games like Skyrim that get very repetitive after awhile.

 

[Something Amyss]

A typical game for a singleplayer example would be Super Meat Boy. You can cruise through that game for fair chunks, but then you will just start hitting these brick walls of difficulty and will just die repeatedly for ages, but there is something pushing you to get to the goal and progress.

I I'm not huge on "difficult" games per se, and I love Super Meat Boy. Never had a problem in terms of frustration. I mean, I've died a lot, but with the super tight handling it's more or less my own fault.

OT: These days, little will keep me playing if I'm not enjoying myself. A bad run might bother me, but if I hate a game, I don't bother. I grew up with a lot of classic "Nintendo Hard" games, though, and I pathologically did not want to be "beat" by them.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

The game I hate more than anything is a minigame inside another game. Gameception. Anyhow, It's called Chocobo Catcher in FFX and has to be one of the most frustrating minigames around. I mean, It's easy enough to beat the Chocobo Trainer and beat the record, But the time you need to actually unlock the ultimate weapon for Tidus is a time of 0 seconds. It took me several days and countless hours.

You actually need a time better than 0:00. I got 0:00 once, and I didn't get the prize. The worst part being that the balloons are placed somewhat randomly, so you need to be lucky with the placement to win the crest (or is it the sigil? Can't remember).

 

[Artina89]

My masochistic game is probably Dark souls and Dark souls 2. The reason why I will continue playing these masochistic games is because I will not admit defeat no matter what. I refuse to be bested by a game, it's that childish competitive streak that people tell me I have.