Favorite Part That Everyone Hates

[EdenCoven]

We recently posted this on bsky:

Every videogame needs a part that sucks and everyone hates so everyone can go "oh fuck that part" its called building a community through shared adversity

It was about 75% earnest, but the responses have pushed it to like 95% earnest, from the straightforward (Sonic 2 Metropolis Zone) to the more colourful (Sandy Petersen). We love hearing these now. It's not just about disliking some nonsense, but about publically disliking it with your pals.

At the time, two particular segments were on our mind. First, the ant tunnels in Medievil. It's a long and extremely confusing maze, unlike anything else in the game and accessible well before you actually need to do it. Everyone familiar with the game we talked to hates that part, and many of them have said so unprompted. It rules.

The second was the original Marathon's classic level "Colony Ship for Sale" which revolves around a massively annoying platforming puzzle that requires backtracking all the way around the level to try and line up some platforms correctly. Unless you grenade jump your way past it anyway. Everyone always brings that one up umprompted too. We love it.

Critters: what's the part you love to hate with your pals?

[Lolo De Puzlo]

Ones that I thought of

• Maridia in Super Metroid
• The entirety of Episode 4 in Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst
• Buebeam Trap in Mega Man 2

I'm sure I can think of more...

[TheGreatMilksteak]

The infamous Bear/Cow levels from Katamari Damacy.

For the unaware: Katamari Damacy is a game where you roll a bunch of stuff into a ball to turn into stars to replace the ones God drunkenly destroyed. It's a fun time.

Until the bear/cow levels.

Your task for these levels are simple: Roll up a single bear or cow (what animal depends on the level, the concept remains the same in either case). Complete this, and the level ends.

Sounds simple right? You would think that, fool that you are.

The hard part is, in order to score well on the level, you don't need just any bear or cow.

You need the BIGGEST bear or cow.

Well, that still doesn't sound to hard. Just play the game like normal and get a big bear/cow, right?

Well, remember what I said earlier about the level ending when you get a single bear or cow? That's not optional. The level WILL end when you get ANY bear/cow.

And they. are. Everywhere.

Roll up a small sign with a bear on it? That's a bear! Level over! Time for God to judge your small bear!

Accidentally bump into a cow patterned traffic cone? Congrats, that counts as a cow! All your hard work is for nothing!

What is usually a relaxing and whimsical game turns into a fight for survival.

These levels are terrible, but at the same time I can't stay mad at them. Their very existence is very silly, especially for those who don't know what they are getting into. They are designed to be as annoying as possible and force you to play the game a very different way than normal. You can also skip them if you aren't a masochist and just want to get to the rest of the game. The game is fully aware that these levels are terrible, so much so that in the sequel there is a level where you have to do the same concept in a stage filled with bears AND cows. Because in Katamari, God is alive and he hates you.

[Flint]

The beginning of Fallout 2 is an infamous one in the PC RPG world. After the sudden success of the original Fallout, the dev studio Black Isle was told to push out a sequel ASAP and whilst they were generally left to their own devices, the publisher Interplay forced the devs to add an enforced tutorial segment at the start of the game, so as to make it easier to get into for anyone who had perhaps skipped on Fallout 1 or didn't want to read the thick manual's "how to get started" section.

Problem is... the tutorial area (titled the Temple of Trials) is an obvious five-mins-before-pub-closes design job and only chooses to obfuscate the game and make it less welcoming. In summary, the player is told to complete a small "dungeon" which is meant to teach the basics of combat, exploration, using items in the environment and yourself, and introduce the concept that problems can be tackled in multiple different ways. But...

• All the combat in the dungeon is melee-based, so if you built your character anticipating any other kind of weaponry, enjoy every combat section taking forever because your punches and kicks keep missing.
• One of the enemy types are baby giant scorpions, which have a chance to poison you. Antidotes found in the dungeon are in very limited supply.
• The game still doesn't teach anything you're meant to do, it simply presents you with the issue and then expects you have the know-how from the previous game to understand what to do or that you've read the manual to understand how the UI works or how to pass these sections. Which defeats the point of this being a tutorial.
• There's also something to be said about this being a post-apocalyptic RPG taking place in the US Southwest, and the game's start feeling like it's snagged from a cheap DnD campaign between the dungeon layout, the decidedly non-sci-fi tribal aesthetic and the prominence of melee, healing powders, etc.

If you know your way around Fallout the tutorial can be cleared quite breezily (depending on how often the RNG is in your favour when doing those 30% chance-to-hit punches), which then turns it from a tacked-on ineffective tutorial into a tacked-on waste of time ahead of the actual adventure. It's bad at what it was designed to be, it's a clear rush job with minimal thought put into the design and it's a complete waste of time for everyone. People finding ways to get around it (via mods, ini tweaks or save editors) has been a constant ask online since the game's release.

[beeps]

Lotta folks who played Spore seemed to dislike the space stage of the game, but the city and space stages were my favourite parts.

Those are when the game stops being about surviving against being eaten and more about proper resource management, diplomacy and/or warfare.

[a_random_fox]

The Capra Demon is an often disliked boss in Dark Souls, mostly because it has two dogs in its arena that can stagger you, which allows to get the boss some easy hits in. It was one of the easier bosses for me, certainly less of an issue than the Bell Gargoyles or the Taurus Demon. To be fair, i did have the luck that i actually missed the door for lower undead burg for a while so did some exploring elsewhere and ended up finding the Wolf ring, which boosts poise, a stat that helps prevent stagger.

[Enbyeon]

Marble Zone in Sonic 1 is the biggest slog after such a cool opening.

[Bobinator]

I feel like this is a really basic take, but I gotta shoutout Hades from the original God of War. Specifically, the multiple towers of sawblades the game wants you to climb up. They forgot to include Sisyphus as a character, but they wanted to give him some representation in the level design, you see.

[Moot]

The infamous Bear/Cow levels from Katamari Damacy.

i might be remembering this wrong but i'm positive in one of the games one of these stages is set up in such a way that if you just blindly push forward like you have done for every other stage up to that point, you'll run into a cow/bear adjacent object immediately and fail out of the level. its such an incredible asshole move but i respect the sheer audacity of it

[Beancatte]

I like Labyrinth zone in Sonic 1 unironically.

[EdenCoven]

hell yeah about all of these. I got a new one

Doom 2 Archviles

[Enbyeon]

hell yeah about all of these. I got a new one

Doom 2 Archviles

I think having a specific enemy that everyone hates but is still "manageable" is always good. Archviles fit that slot, but for example I think the Marauders in Eternal are terrible but they're more polarizing than Archviles.