Completionist's Worst Enemy (video game talk)

[Aragarthiel]

I'm a completionist, and as such, I hate games with massive amounts of bugs. So far I've encountered only two that I was unable to complete 100%, and one (Assassin's Creed: Black Flag) was because it required internet to do more and I didn't have internet at the time.

The other is Fable II.

I know people claim that Fable II is better than Fable 3, but I have NEVER been able to complete all of the post-game quests in Fable II, and the main story quests often had bugs that I had to work around as well. Not to mention, it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to manage having a family on that game, since you go on a single short quest and come back to find that your spouse has divorced you and taken the children (or our kid decided to go on an adventure alone and got himself into trouble). The lack of minimap also made things particularly difficult for me, because at least if you wanted to go to one particular building in a town, you had the minimap in the original/TLC and could get the golden trail to lead you there in 3. In II you just wander aimlessly until you find it.

Has anyone else encountered that ever-frustrating unfinishable game?

[dalesys]

Has anyone else encountered that ever-frustrating unfinishable game?

Yep. Real Life.

[Kal]

Just Cause 2 is one. I believe that to 100% it you need to drive some of the vehicles and destroy some buildings that were removed before launch. There's mods for it but they don't help with consoles.

[Chromatix]

Silent Hunter 5 is the worst game I've encountered yet, in terms of bugginess. So far, I haven't managed to complete even a single patrol in it, for a variety of reasons.

[firecat88]

This isn't because of bugs, but King's Quest VI was a freaking nightmare to finish if you didn't have the game guide. Some of the puzzles were downright diabolical.

[Kheldarson]

This isn't because of bugs, but King's Quest VI was a freaking nightmare to finish if you didn't have the game guide. Some of the puzzles were downright diabolical.

Especially if you went the long route.

[Tama]

Anything to do with the Dragonborn DLC of Skyrim.

I encountered a lot of glitches in it, and not just your bog-standard ones. Two separate GAMEBREAKING ones occurred REQUIRING console command intervention. It's why I've been reluctant to start on it in my current Skyrim playthrough.

Not to mention that the first time I played I had no troubles with Esbern (a freak accident, since I'm now getting the glitchy one everyone else does).

[gremcint]

I've 100% both Metroid Prime 1 and 2 but number 3 has just way too much.

[lordlundar]

This isn't because of bugs, but King's Quest VI was a freaking nightmare to finish if you didn't have the game guide. Some of the puzzles were downright diabolical.

So a typical Sierra game then?

[ApolloSZ]

Not bug caused, but more collectables. Batman Arkham Knight is annoying me, and the earlier ones but to a lesser extent, in that you need to collect multiple hundreds of Riddler trophies. Which is literally fly/glide/run to here, then figure out which gadget instantly solves this one step riddle. Stop with that crap games!

This is why I'm looking forward to Fallout 4. You can go "my main objective is this way" then two steps in look right, go "oooh shiny" and instantly get sidetracked.

[Aragarthiel]

Hubs has played all of the Arkham games except the new one, he HATES the Riddler puzzles. I often have to get in there and tell him what to do, since my brain is better at the type of puzzle-solving required.

I thought of another that had simply too much to complete: the first Assassin's Creed. There were SO MANY FLAGS you had to randomly come across that I didn't even try.

Really, the only puzzles in any game that I have to look up are the "Get the ball from here to here by moving all the blocks in the way" puzzles in the Professor Layton games, and one of the Riddler puzzles from one of the Arkham games (Asylum, I think, it involved standing under a bridge with three question marks you had to hit at the same time).

[EricKei]

Not because of bugs, but because it was absurdly difficult to finish at all, let alone 100% : There's always Infocom's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" text adventure game. The full retail package came with a hint book, and for damn good reason. It's legally playable online for free these days in all of its black-background & white-text glory, if you're interested. It starts off at more or less the same place as the first book, and expects you to use H2G2 logic.

[Chromatix]

Speaking of minigames, the ones I can't usually solve by myself are the sliding-block puzzles. When those showed up in a Rayman game on the DS, I actually put the DS down and went off to write a solver program on a proper computer to get me through them.

Rayman used a particular variant of the puzzle with a 4x3 block matrix. As it turned out, the puzzle I'd found myself unable to solve... was *insoluble*, and my solver program proved it. In fact, 50% of the possible initial block arrangements are unreachable from the solution (and vice versa). That meant that whenever a sliding-block puzzle showed up, you had a 50% chance of getting an insoluble puzzle, requiring you to save-scum to get a puzzle that *could* be solved.

Don't ask me how that got past QA.

[wolfie]

Rayman used a particular variant of the puzzle with a 4x3 block matrix. As it turned out, the puzzle I'd found myself unable to solve... was *insoluble*, and my solver program proved it.

That's plain bad programming. If a game developer wants to put in a puzzle that needs to be solved in order to get to the next stage, they need to be sure that it's one that CAN be solved. Either hardcode one that's soluble (or a bunch that are soluble, with a random pick form the list, if you want it to be different on replay), or put in a test for solubility and reject anything that can't be solved.

[Chromatix]

Or, for puzzles that involve shuffling tiles, generate the puzzle by random moves away from the solution. That guarantees that it's soluble (by reversing the moves, if no other way).