Your worst "Oh hell I am dumb" gaming moment.

[Bad Jim]

Playing Portal. I was in the chamber with a portal gun mounted in a stand, slowly rotating and firing a blue portal every 90 degrees. I was there for about an hour before I bumped into the portal gun and realised I could pick it up.

 

[Dornedas]

A chance to talk about how stupid I am that's always welcome.
There are 2 examples I can think of right away.

The first one is from this rather obscure RPG you most likely never heard of.
Hint: It's Baldur's Gate

The antagonist in this game is called Sarevok.
And at one point in the story you suddenly meet a guy called Koveras.
Koveras says he knew you foster parent and wants to give you a magical ring.
He is REALLY persistent that you have to take the ring almost to the point of it being creepy.
Well the next day you are charged with murder and the ring Koveras gave you is used as evidence against you.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. Afterwards a NPC even says something along the line of: "Sarevok just read his name backwards. How could anyone fall for this."
Thanks Baldur's Gate that's exactly what I need in that moment.

The other one is from a game that's nearly as niche as Baldur's Gate.
It's Skyrim
And I know you think right now: "But Dornedas the only puzzles in Skyrim are the picture matching ones how could you possibly fail these?"
I'll tell you how. Well not exactly. I still beat them via just testing all possible combinations but that's not the point.
The point is: I never tried to turn the dragon claws around.
The solution to these "puzzles" is right there in my inventory and I am to stupid to look at it.

 

[Bizzaro Stormy]

I think anyone who has played a first person shooter has had the moment of trying to strafe around a corner and blowing themselves up with a rocket. "Wait that's supposed to be a hallway, who put this wall here?"

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Everyone of us had at the very least one moment when we couldn't progress in a game not because it was hard, or buggy, or anything else, but because our brain decided to shut itself down for the moment.

Take me for example. I was playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall. During one mission I hacked into a server and I could type in 3 things to get an intel for sell. 2 I entered without problems. The third one, however, was a bit difficult. I had to find info about a thing called "Formula 17". So, I enter the following:

Formula17

Doesn't work. What the hell, thinks I. I enter it again, then again, then again. Nothing. I hit Google, I search forums. Nothing.

The it hits me. I type in the following:

Formula 17 (with space between "Formula" and "17").

Worked like a charm.

I felt so damn stupid after that.


What about you, people? Had you ever had situations like this?

haha I read "dragonfall" and knew exactly what this was going to be about, I ALMOST did this myself but I paid very close attention to the spacing just to make sure.

OT: I've been playing battlefront II again recently, and I completely forgot ships could "sprint"...

I've been lucky if I was able to land in their hanger bay before that point, I WENT SO FUCKING SLOW trying to get over there so I could plant demolition charges on everything.

which is weird, because I knew how to sprint just fine when not in a ship...*hurr derr moment*

 

[putowtin]

Silent Hill Piano Puzzle - I decided to play this game about a month ago on a nice dark to grey blizzardy morning.

So when I finally made it to the school and came across this puzzle I vowed I would figure it out without a guide.

And damn it, I did, the only problem is I was doing it the wrong way. I was hitting the keys that chimed instead of the keys that simply clicked. I eventually gave in and looked it up and when I saw that, 3 slaps to the head.

I worked in a game store when Silent Hill was released and we had that many people asking for the solution that I kept photo copies with me at all times (we had one copy of the game guide but some arsehole ripped the page with the answer out of it)

 

[Fox12]

Well, I've pretty much got FF7 down pat. I have the best Enemy Skills, maxed out health and magic, all the secret attacks, and I can beat pretty much any boss in my sleep. I lost one time the entire playthrough. One time.

To this guy:

Spoiler

While my sister watched. And I blabbed about how this wasn't even a boss, and it was a joke. I don't know what happened, but I did everything wrong. If I had done one thing right, I would have won. I think I healed him at one point (and not because my character was confused). My lowest gaming moment ever.

 

[Alcamonic]

While playing Zelda: The wind waker.
I am at this mountain temple, wherein I must reach a lower level below a rope and wooden bridge.

Now, of course the most sensible way would be to ever so slightly go to the edge and try to fall down to the ledge below.

WRONG! Then you die. So I proceeded to sneak all the corners and jumphack myself the best I could, even going back all the way to find a possible second entrance.

I gave up after an hour. Looked it up.

You simply have to attack the rope holding the bridge up. -____-

 

[Rattja]

My worst has to be back when I played FFX for the first time. There is this fight before you enter Sin, where you fight it on top of the airship, but you have to go up there to trigger the fight.

On my first try I was so unprepared that it just wrecked me, so I just started farming and traveling all over to be better prepared to beat it. The problem however was that once i felt I was finally ready I had totally forgotten where it was and how I got to the fight in the first place. So I ended up doing basically everything in the game, getting the best equipment and all that stuff while trying to figure out where it was.
That moment after 250+ hours thinking "Fuck it, I've been everywhere now I give up!" I sort of just happened to take the elevator that leads up to the top of the airship and realizing I could have gone up there at any time...

I facepalmed so hard and just wrecked the rest of the game, it was just a joke at that point.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

There's a puzzle in Devil May Cry 4 that took me forever to figure out and I felt like a fucking moron.

Basically there's a maze, and the only clue you have about how to solve it is the phrase "follow the sun."

My brain decided "I can't see the sun since the camera points down, so I should just run whichever fucking direction I want until I brute force my way through."

After about 20 minutes of trying every combination of turns I could think of I realized that all I had to do was look at the shadows on the ground to figure out the position of the sun. The puzzle took all of 30 seconds to solve and I felt like a moron.

I will admit to having a similar moment with that very puzzle... But Devil May Cry isn't exactly known for the clearest of level design; the damn castle in 1 had me lost for days. >.> I still haven't finished it. Maybe I should find a cheap PS2 and do just that....

You could just get the Devil May Cry HD collection. That's probably way cheaper than buying a PS2.

 

[Signa]

I can't remember what FPS it was, but I do remember that it was the game that made me realize that on a controller you don't have to hold down the right stick to sprint. I could have saved my poor thumb hours of pressing down.

I know Borderlands was the first game I personally played that had that feature. So if it wasn't Borderlands, maybe something that released close to it?

 

[CrystalShadow]

Every adventure game I've ever played has several of these.

But my personal worst (and keep in mind this was before I had easy internet access) was getting stuck in Ocarina of Time because I didn't have the fire arrows.

So I call the helpline, and sure enough, they say, 'get the fire arrows'. Where are they? Shoot the sun on the island in lake hylia, after having done the water temple...

Which is exactly what the clues given make obvious.
And as soon as I heard it I was kicking myself for having forgotten.

My only excuse here is that you typically read the clue long before you actually have the chance to get the item, so there's a lot of room for forgetting about it.

Funny thing is how far you can get before not having fire arrows messes you up. You don't need them until something like the 3rd or 4th path inside the final dungeon - the one where gannon is hiding...

But, sure enough, you run into a puzzle you simply can't solve any other way...

 

[broadbandmink]

I've had many of those moments whilst playing graphical adventure games throughout the years...

I wouldn't say it's my worst, but it still irritates me. Slightly. Anyway, when I was a kid I played Shadowgate on the NES, but I never beat it. Then, about ten years later, I decided to dust of my old console and see just how far I'd got.

It turned out all I had left to do was to do the old "try-to-combine-everything-with-everything-in-your-inventory" procedure, and then use the resulting item in the very last room you unlock in the game. The End.

I still shake my head at that fiasco on occasion.

 

[visiblenoise]

In Metal Gear Solid 3, I could never seem to sneak up behind anyone until I realized that you don't walk silently unless you use the D-pad.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Fallout: New Vegas: Getting the sheriff for Primm from the prison... Had no idea at the time were the prison was.

KOTOR: The Dantooine puzzle to get the first star map. Now it's so obvious.

Mass Effect: Getting out of the port on Noveria.

Doom 2: Beating the icon of sin. It took me forever to figure that out... Then again I was like 8 at the time.

Fallout 2: Getting in to Vault 15, getting into Navarro with out starting a big fight, and getting in to the Brotherhood of Steel.

 

[lacktheknack]

In The Shining Force, I didn't realize that fire magic roasted zombies in Chapter 2 really easily.

Those fights are BRUTAL until you figure that out... and because I was a terrible, terrible tactician, Tao would already be dead every time before I got to the zombie blockade, I'd have no fire to throw at them and I'd get murdered to death.

Another good one: In "Day of the Tentacle", there's a puzzle where you have to enter a mummy into a pageant (I swear this makes sense in context). I figured out that I could put the roller-skates on the mummy to move it, but it just stood there. It took me much more time than I'd like to admit to realize that I was supposed to "Push - mummy".

 

[Mikeybb]

Most recently the moment in "Alien Isolation" when you bring power back online in the room with the large model of the station, just after arriving.

I could not figure out what to do next and it was waiting for me to just press a damn button.

If you watch the Markiplier playthrough (which I'd avoided for spoilers sake) he does the exact same thing.

 

[Nazulu]

After finishing Half Life 2 the first time I felt like a complete moron for not knowing you could run, and that you could get the buggy through the car blockade where you fight the flying gunship. Just didn't see the run button prompt at the beginning.

 

[Fijiman]

The only one I can ever remember was in Oblivion during the Shivering Isles DLC when I was going after Sil. I got to a small round room where I needed to find the button to open the secret door. I probably spent ten minutes running Round the room looking for a way to progress and actually had to pull up a walk through and felt dumb as fuck when I realized that if I had just turned around and walk around the room in the other direction I had been I would have already found the button.

 

[Ima Lemming]

I played through all of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest not knowing what the seeds did.

(Answer: they restore your MP)