Game designers being plain unfair

[Mythago]

Well, this is more an example of the game developers making a joke about their earlier game, but:
In Fallout 1, you had a timed quest to find a water chip to replace the a broken one in your Vault. The game actually ends unless you find it in a certain number of game days.
In Fallout 2, you keep finding boxes full of water chips in several places. Naturally, you don't need them for anything in this game.

[PSY]

There's some situations in CRPGs where you feel that the designers are being plain unfair. I don't mean unwinnable fights or impossible puzzles (although there are some of those as well). I mean things like:

- Near the end of Betrayal at Krondor, after passing the last possible shop in the game, you find a treasure chest with more money than you'd ever need.
- In Lands of Lore, you find a "very good item" (like weapon of massive damage or endless healing potion), get to play with it for a while, and then have to give it up to continue.

Can you think of other things like these?

Dude, you have failed to mention the game where you feel like ripping the designers' head off More precisely, 2 successive games.

SO, HERE'S TO THE EPIC WAY TO DRIVE YOU INSANE (Thanks DEVS!!!)
1) Play Maniac Mansion, find the chainsaw, and go ballistic trying to find the fuel
2) Wait 1 year, play Zak McKracken, find fuel 'for chainsaws only', bang your head against the wall for having wasted the past year searching for the fuel, going nuts in the process

L8er,
PSY

[Can-o-paint]

I remember one adventure game that was like that.

Called Future Wars, there was alot of moments where if you hadn't picked up the right item at different points of the game you ended up being stuck without it and had to either load a previous save or start-over.

[PSY]

Anyone remember Space Quest 2 - the kissing alien ?

[Saice]

Anyone remember Space Quest 2 - the kissing alien ?

Honestly all the old school Text or Point and Click adventures where full of auto kill choices. But in the framework of the games at the time it was not so bad as little was lost. You reloaded from your save and that was that. There was not to much in the way of getting stuck mid game because of something you did early game. Heck a lot of Space Quest was completed on the old system of Save then Try. If it worked YAY! if it didn't reload.

[PSY]

Honestly all the old school Text or Point and Click adventures where full of auto kill choices. But in the framework of the games at the time it was not so bad as little was lost. You reloaded from your save and that was that. There was not to much in the way of getting stuck mid game because of something you did early game. Heck a lot of Space Quest was completed on the old system of Save then Try. If it worked YAY! if it didn't reload.

True, but in that special case, the consequence of the alien kiss took effect later in game (when you wouldn't expect it anymore)

[Saice]

True, but in that special case, the consequence of the alien kiss took effect later in game (when you wouldn't expect it anymore)

yeah but it was not to far later. Sort of like the prostitute in LL 1 i think it was. You only get a little bit away before it kicks in if I recall.

[PSY]

yeah but it was not to far later. Sort of like the prostitute in LL 1 i think it was. You only get a little bit away before it kicks in if I recall.

Yeah, the prostitute. Man, that was fun Loved the series.


Space Quest:

Alien kiss : 169 of 250 points
Death caused by alien kiss: 230 of 250 points.

It takes 40 minutes for the alien embryo to break through your chest on normal game speed. After all, that's quite a bit compared to other games

Cheers,
PSY

[Isaac]

Michael Cranford was said to be of the opinion that anytime you died in his game, he won.

Well, this is more an example of the game developers making a joke about their earlier game, but:
In Fallout 1, you had a timed quest to find a water chip to replace the a broken one in your Vault. The game actually ends unless you find it in a certain number of game days.
In Fallout 2, you keep finding boxes full of water chips in several places. Naturally, you don't need them for anything in this game.

Bottle caps either. Typhon sends you on a treasure hunt for his stashed wealth ~and it's a bag of 10,000 bottle caps.

[Disasterrific]

Space Quest, Kings' Quest, Police Quest... All of these games were abysmally designed. Simply not fun to play. Wasn't there a section in one Space Quest were you had to amass money and the only way to win was to save then play the slot machine until you won? Yeah very clever... I'm surprised Sierra lasted as long as they did!