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Unwinnable/doomed game saves.

While I was slogging through Jak 2 HD, I got up to the part where you enter Mar's Tomb or whatever it is, and got to the point where you play as Daxter, and have to run away from a pursuing Spider. I got to the point where you start jumping up a vertical shaft on spider web trampolines, and somehow jumped right through the geometry, and got stuck inside the wall, promptly dying. When I restarted, it started the chase over again, but I was still stuck inside the wall, making it impossible to proceed. Reloaded the auto save, same issue- it takes me back to the prior checkpoint, but makes me get stuck inside the wall and die, in an endless loop.

Now I'll never get around to playing the much better seeming Jak 3, because I can't bring myself to skip ahead without finishing 2, and I won't start 2 over again, because playing up to that point is one of the most consistently miserable, awful feeling times I've had in video games yet. I guess at least I never have to play it again, though.
 
akidnamededdy said:
There's a neat flip side to this for the very first Silent Hill game. The game has four main endings, two good and two bad, and there's a different last boss for the good endings than there is for the bad endings.

The Bad boss is grounded, but the Good boss flies just out of reach of your melee weapons, meaning you have to use guns to kill it.

So since running out of ammo would make the boss impossible, they made it so it dies automatically if you run out.

It also dies automatically at the very beginning of the fight if you enter the room with no ammo.

I've never actually fought this boss as a result.
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Holy shit that explains it. I thought I had been lucky by killing it with my last bullet lol.
 
Condemned 2: Bloodshot

It was the level Black Lake Lodge and, no, it has nothing to do with the bear. It was during one of the last sections of the level where you have to find bombs placed in the cabin and throw them out the windows before they explode. There's this one bomb near the end that, even if you throw it out the window, if you're standing anywhere remotely close to the wall, you'll die from its explosion and right at that moment BOOM CHECKPOINT. If you hit Restart Checkpoint, you'll start with the explosion going off and die immediately. The only thing you can do is restart the whole darn level and hope you can book it to the next room before that bomb goes off outside.

It happened to be twice before I could avoid the blast and it happened to a friend of mine as well, almost exactly the same way a few years ago when he played it. As far as I know, it was a fairly common issue that was never fixed (not that I think it could be) and was just very annoying.
 
Drayco21 said:
While I was slogging through Jak 2 HD, I got up to the part where you enter Mar's Tomb or whatever it is, and got to the point where you play as Daxter, and have to run away from a pursuing Spider. I got to the point where you start jumping up a vertical shaft on spider web trampolines, and somehow jumped right through the geometry, and got stuck inside the wall, promptly dying. When I restarted, it started the chase over again, but I was still stuck inside the wall, making it impossible to proceed. Reloaded the auto save, same issue- it takes me back to the prior checkpoint, but makes me get stuck inside the wall and die, in an endless loop.

Now I'll never get around to playing the much better seeming Jak 3, because I can't bring myself to skip ahead without finishing 2, and I won't start 2 over again, because playing up to that point is one of the most consistently miserable, awful feeling times I've had in video games yet. I guess at least I never have to play it again, though.
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Just skip jak 2.

Jak 3 is amazing, dont give up on it.
 
I saw FFX mentioned but no Yunalesca? C'mon guys.

Yunalesca-enemy-ffx.png


This bitch. Ugh.

I'm sure she's ruined hundreds of play throughs.

She destroyed my first play through. The game is pretty consistent in terms of difficulty with a couple of spikes but when you hit her you're slammed with a huge curve that's completely brutal.
 
My first playthrough of The Last Remnant, at the end of the first disc there was a point of no return warning..thought I was ok for it..didn't rotate my saves. Ended up getting to a boss underpowered that would pretty much 1 shot all my unions, and with no herbs for healing skills.

In the 360 version grinding weaker enemies actually made you weaker vs bosses. so I was completely screwed.
 
I know it's been said a hundred times but Wiegraf really takes the cake. There is no real warning and it's pretty easy to be unprepared enough to make it nearly impossible to pass. The fight afterwords is mostly just RNG. It all depends how the assassins and Elmdor decide to deal with you and Rafa, so sometimes it can be easy, or other times there is nothing you can do but watch Rafa be a complete idiot. Wiegraf is so cool, though, I can't even be mad.

Fucking Rafa, though.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Huh. Are you sure? I never had a problem in this game, but a friend of mine got completely stuck at the last boss because he ran out of ammo. I don't remember if he had the flying boss or the grounded boss and the latter was just too hard for him to melee, but I vaguely recall it was literally impossible so I assumed he had the flying boss.
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Positive. I did another playthrough on my PS3 back in February or so, discarded/fired off every last bullet I had before crossing the point of no return, sat through the cutscene, and the boss immediately dropped dead.

I haven't fought the grounded boss in ages (likely since the game first came out) so I can't recall the logistics behind trying to melee it to death (I've read that it's possible, but it doesn't say how hard it would be), but I do know the no ammo thing only works on the flying boss.

Jotamide said:
Holy shit that explains it. I thought I had been lucky by killing it with my last bullet lol.
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That is awesome, lol
 
Ys Book 1&2 for TG16 CD. In Darm tower I somehow saved in front (practically on top of) of an enemy with only the smallest sliver of health left. No matter how many times I loaded I would die in 1 hit. Had to restart. Thankfully getting through Ys 1 doesn't take much time at all.

Oh, and Weigraf. I had heard stories but he got me good. Coming back and ripping him to pieces with a super dual wield monk felt so good. Restarting the game made me pay closer attention to my builds so it was all good.
 
xxracerxx said:
I never finished KOTOR because of the prison bug.

I am still salty over that.
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This. At least I think it's the one I'm thinking of. "Oh you didn't craft computer splices the whole time through the game? Well too bad. Now you're either stuck in a room or you'll be executed because you can't hack you're way out of the room. Hope you have more game saves.."

ffs Bioware
 
Skunkers said:
Wiegraf.
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By skin and teeth that I've cheesed out that battle. If there was a bad save in my life then this was it. Nothing else comes to mind. There were certainly a couple of more but this is the first thing that springs in my mind.

GrumpyAlien said:
Ys Book 1&2 for TG16 CD. In Darm tower I somehow saved in front (practically on top of) of an enemy with only the smallest sliver of health left. No matter how many times I loaded I would die in 1 hit. Had to restart. Thankfully getting through Ys 1 doesn't take much time at all.

Oh, and Weigraf. I had heard stories but he got me good. Coming back and ripping him to pieces with a super dual wield monk felt so good. Restarting the game made me pay closer attention to my builds so it was all good.
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I remember doing something similar. I've saved mid battle seconds before game over screen. Only rng gods and good positioning would save me. Can't remember what game it wa though!
 
Primal on the PS2. I was in the Aetha realm and had to make Scree climb down a well but it just wouldn't work. I watched videos of people doing it easy but for some reason he wouldn't do it in my game. I never beat that game :'(
 
Lightning Count said:
I remember getting stuck in this situation against the Tyrant in Resident Evil Code Veronica when you must fight the Tyrant inside the cargo bay of the plane.
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This a million times over. During my playthrough to review the game, I got stuck here with virtually nothing on me. So I had to learn to beat him with knife only trying to take no to minimal damage.
 
There was probably a way to get out of this, but I was a kid and terrible with the battle system - I got caught in FFVIII in what I think was the Lunatic Pandora. (It was on Disc 3? I'd been playing the game for so many bloody hours by that point.) I managed to get there, but I wasn't strong enough to win against anything in the area, and I don't think there was any way to go back. Was there a Raijin and Fujin fight, or something? I couldn't kill anything, and stopped playing. It's even more mortifying if enemies scale to your level - how was I that terrible?

After that I learned to have multiple game saves spaced out a bit better, which has saved my ass over the years. Thanks for the harsh wake-up call, FFVIII! I will restart you someday.
 
I've also had this happen in Ether One actually, I'm surprised It didn't occur to me until now. I was stuck in an infinite death loop falling through world because the game decided to auto-save me while falling. At first I thought it was just part of the game because of the weird shit that was going on before it happens with doors flying around and whatever, so I was waiting a bit before restarting. So yeah, that game fucked me. Thanks PS+.
 
Bioshock Infinite. Went from 70% to 30% cause the 360 confused the saves' date. Never finished that game.

We're going to get a Bioshock Collection/Remaster anyway, right?
 
Dead Man Typing said:
You can defeat the Code:Veronica plane boss without firing a shot or taking damage.
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Yep, I've never done it myself but I do know hitting it with the crate damages him each time. I didn't quite have enough ammo to beat him alone so I needed 2 or 3 crate hits along with ammo to beat him.
 
Demons Gate in FF7. My first play through and very first RPG at 11 years old. Hadn't quite grasped the concept of levelling up and grinding and was running from random battles, eager for narrative progression. Entering the fight I was drastically under levelled as a result and didn't then have the RPG nous to eek through the battle. Quit that save after countless failed attempts. Thankfully I persevered and started anew; FFVII went on to be my favourite game of all the times.
 
I'm in a pretty rough spot on my AKUMU mode save in The Evil within. That difficulty mode is BRUTAL and not a whole lot of fun as it turns out.
 
Happened to me a few years ago in Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut.

Had a save before Barbatos, but I had a very crappy party lineup that was terrible for fighting him.

Unfortunately, the way the Bonus Dungeon works, you can only use your characters for a number of floors, and if you die, you lose all your accumulated EX Points up to that point (which takes a good 2+ hours to get through the whole thing).
As such, Party Configuration for every floor is key.

No matter my party configuration from that save, I couldn't beat him so I had to bite the bullet and lose the fight to get booted back to the start. All that progress lost... :(

(Needless to say, I planned a lot better for the next excursion into the Bonus Dungeon and I stomped Barbatos w/a revamped party.)
 
In Metal Gear (the original) I got locked in the room with the Metal Gear and didn't have enough C4. I did have enough earlier in the game, but I didn't realise the amount I could carry was determined by my level, and a couple of hostages died when fighting the guy with the boomerang.

I hate games that allow this stuff in the design.
 
EpicBox said:
In Metal Gear (the original) I got locked in the room with the Metal Gear and didn't have enough C4. I did have enough earlier in the game, but I didn't realise the amount I could carry was determined by my level, and a couple of hostages died when fighting the guy with the boomerang.

I hate games that allow this stuff in the design.
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Lmao I was going to use the same exact example. I was so damn mad when I realized I'm fucked and wasted my time. Never beat the game because of that. This was probably around 4 years ago.
 
I once for some reason overwrote my only save in Record of Lodoss War for Dreamcast in the middle of a giant horde of enemies.

I don't know what I was thinking.
 
ElFly said:
I came here for Fire Emblem stories, people, come on.

Particularly the first american GBA one. I have to imagine someone somewhere beat a level with only the lord surviving and then was fucked on the next level.
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I have one: before Fire Emblem 7 came out in America, I was playing the SNES FE games, particularly Thracia 776. There were these levels were your units had to escape the map (this one was the prison map in the beginning). Back then (around 2006) I thought that the main objective was for the lord (Leif) to escape first and then the other characters will follow automatically follow. Holy shit I was wrong: you are required to have everyone exit the map with Leif exiting last and I saved right after that map too... i started the next level just with Leif on his own and the characters that were meant to join you but I probably left behind like 5-6 characters.

Luckily this was in the beginning of the game so starting over wasn't too bad.
 
Was playing Final Fantasy VI Advance, and I saved in the Dream World. I think I might have been too underleveled, and now I can't for the life of me figure out a way to level up safely (I don't think I have a lot of potions). I'm no slouch either with that game, so I think I might just be in a really bad position haha
 
AerialAir said:
Bioshock Infinite. Went from 70% to 30% cause the 360 confused the saves' date. Never finished that game.

We're going to get a Bioshock Collection/Remaster anyway, right?
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Are you sure that had nothing to do with your 360 internal clock?


I had the bad luck of having that happen to me too, the game tries to load the latest savefile, as in date, when you try to play it, if you messed with date and time, or you had an power outage that problem might arise.
 
Orakio Rob said:
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (GC), the most bugged game I've ever played. I saved next to the portal that leads to the final boss. When I touched the portal... it didn't work. Reloaded it. No dice.

It is a known bug. The saddest part is that my game was doomed days earlier, when I accidentally went through a portal in a different section and then came back. Somehow, this bugs the final portal.
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I had the same problem, except I played on the Xbox version. I still haven't finished that game or played any of the rest of the series, that's how badly the experience soured me.
 
Meaty said:
Are you sure that had nothing to do with your 360 internal clock?


I had the bad luck of having that happen to me too, the game tries to load the latest savefile, as in date, when you try to play it, if you messed with date and time, or you had an power outage that problem might arise.
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Yeah, that was the problem. I tried looking into all the saves and couldnt get the one I was looking for. Oh well, my 360 always gave me problems with its internal clock. Never had this on the PS4
 
mtodavk said:
I'm pretty sure I'm there with Wolfenstein: TNO. I'm at the part where you're on rails in the boat shooting things in the sewers, but I only have 20 health and I'm playing on the hardest difficulty....can't seem to get past it.

No, I'm not turning the difficulty down.
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You realize you're not winning any brownie points for screwing yourself over, right? Situations like this are why in-game difficulty options exist.
 
I've had two real bad saved game-ending glitches in Metroid: Other M and one of the PS3 Ratchet and Clank games, but nothing like the OP is suggesting. Closest to the OP would be a save I had in Dark Sector where I was near death and about to fight a boss. Sadly, that machine was stolen so I lost the save, but I probably would not have been able to advance anyway.
 
In Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness you could save anywhere, and I saved in this room with damage over time poison gas while I was on really low health.

It was the first level so not, the end of the world, but it was after about 30-40 minutes of gameplay.
 
MegaMan Battle Network 1, right before the fight with
MagicMan
, I saved too close the the line where the cutscene triggers for the battle to begin. So everytime I reload the save, it automatically goes to the cutscene. There went my chance of doing any of the post game content.
 
It hasn't happened to me. But ever since I heard (I think on giantbomb) that you could theoretically save state with the xenomorph hot on your trail in Alien Isolation, I'm always super cautious about when I save the game
 
ZangBa said:
I know it's been said a hundred times but Wiegraf really takes the cake. There is no real warning and it's pretty easy to be unprepared enough to make it nearly impossible to pass. The fight afterwords is mostly just RNG. It all depends how the assassins and Elmdor decide to deal with you and Rafa, so sometimes it can be easy, or other times there is nothing you can do but watch Rafa be a complete idiot. Wiegraf is so cool, though, I can't even be mad.

Fucking Rafa, though.
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The first time I played FFT, I beat Wiegraf without giving it much thought. Didn't know it was a big deal until years later. But then I got stuck on Elmdor so bad I ended up just restarting the game. Played it again and beat that, not changing much (Wiegraf was still not a big deal).
 
This is basically Code Veronica: The Thread.

Between failing to get the Empty Fire Extinguisher, failing to pick up the sniper rifle, failing to give enough items to Chris/Claire when you switch players, and the general "Classic RE Formula Dialled To 11" nature of the game it is incredibly easy to fuck up really badly.

On my first playthrough I left the Empty Fire Extinguisher in the metal detector. Meaning that I couldn't get the Magnum at the end of the game. Meaning that the last boss was a lot harder. Meaning that I just deleted my save and started again.

Chromium.Wings said:
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X

This one wasn't so much unbeatable, just that I didn't realize I could get around it. I was stuck at the part where you
have to run from mutated Steve
, and I had only one healing item. I didn't know about the secret that you could use to get through the part unscathed. I restarted the game, and played through with a lot more caution.
Click to expand...

There's a way to do this?

The Henery said:
Demons Gate in FF7. My first play through and very first RPG at 11 years old. Hadn't quite grasped the concept of levelling up and grinding and was running from random battles, eager for narrative progression. Entering the fight I was drastically under levelled as a result and didn't then have the RPG nous to eek through the battle. Quit that save after countless failed attempts. Thankfully I persevered and started anew; FFVII went on to be my favourite game of all the times.
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This was basically me as well.

Demons Gate can really fuck new players up. Quite simply because there's no way of levelling before the fight. It took me a month or so to beat him, and after that I basically grinded for 5-10 levels to make sure it never happened in future bosses.
 
oh boy - two games I badly wanted to finish but never did because of this

Resident Evil 4 - ran out of ammo and had to deal with the spider in the mansion/haunted house?

Silent Hill 3 - again ran out of ammo about 5 hours in... Silent Hill 2 is one of my favourite games of all time...

I really need to get back into these two games.
 
Call of Duty 2 (360) on Veteran, and it was one of the British levels in the desert. At the end of the ambush level, you shoot a turret (flak gun?) at planes as they zip by overhead, and it's typically an easy part, even on Veteran. But I threw a smoke grenade right before the check point, and the smoke appears and lingers for several seconds (10+). I could not aim at the planes to shoot them down because the smoke was all over my turret, and I lost continuously for like 10 minutes without any chance before restarting the whole level :(

It's at the very end of the level too!
 
I managed to hose a GC Twilight Princess save in a completely different unwinnable way than usual.

The first time you get to the hidden village, you have to clear it out of bad dudes before the old lady will come out and unlock the next story progression. Well, I killed all the monsters, and then discovered one of those howling statues...

when I came back, I immediately saved. Huge mistake, since the game wouldn't advance, wouldn't respawn enemies. Teleported around the map, reloaded, etc etc.

The game would also crash every time I warped directly to Death Mountain.
 
PeskyToaster said:
My halo 3 game auto-saved while I was falling off an edge. F that.
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That is not even close to unwinable/doomed, because the game recognizes it and sets you back to the checkpoint prior to this "faulty" checkpoint.

You can do this with every checkpoint you don't like (granted you don't kill anything) and it's in Halo games, since Halo 2.
 
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