Friday, February 8, 2013

I was scared of what, exactly?

I've been replaying DKC4 lately, and something odd happened to me today. I had reached level 7-4 (that would be the Fear Factory rocket barrel level) in a previous play session, and decided to stop there, since that level kicked my ass badly on previous playthroughs and I didn't feel like punishing myself with something like that. I put that one off until later, procrastinated, found every excuse in the book not to do it for days. Then today I decided, dammit, this level isn't going to get the best of me. So I sit down, start playing, and I breeze through it in record time, with a feeling of "that's it? Are you kidding me?" when I reach the end. I missed a puzzle piece and some of the letters, so I went in again and grabbed all that stuff while dying... maybe twice? And that was it. I was scared of THAT?

Has something similar ever happened to you? Have you gotten to a point in a game where you thought, "this is where I die", either by previous experience or by hearsay, only to absolutely curbstomp this so-called "challenge"?

7 comments:

  1. If I recall, I had much more trouble with the rocket barrel level in world 4, the one with the giant bat. So many Kong balloons popped...

    It's Abyssion in Tales of Symphonia for me. I do the Devil's Arms sidequest every time I run through the game (up to 12+ runs now), and the first few times I fought him, he was one of the toughest challenges I've ever faced. I've had runs that took me around 45 minutes, and it was a struggle the entire way. Recently, though, on my last several playthroughs, he's been so easy. I usually beat him in 5-10 minutes now, at higher difficulties as well. I have no idea why.

    Also, I know how much you hate the Latheon Gorge, but I've found it remarkably easy to navigate recently. The bubbles are still a pain in the ass if you miss your opportunity with the wind currents, though.

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    1. Yeah, level 4-5 is just a genocide waiting to happen. That giant bat is probably the number one cause of death in the entire game.

      Heck, rocket barrel levels as a whole are a massive pain. Aside from the one in world 2, they're all blink-and-you're-dead affairs. The last one in the volcano is pure evil too, as I recall.

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    2. Yeah those rocket barrels are pain. And 4-5 is the only level ever in Platform history I started on with 99 lives and actually went GAME OVER that level is just evil

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  2. It happens quite often to me with games like Pokemon and Monster Hunter. Because in these games, you can actually prepare yourself for the so dreaded part you think you're going to fail miserably at. And... I kinda have the tendency of overdoing it. You know, preparing overly complex strategies and bringing way more items then needed "just in case".

    I could give a lot of specific examples from Monster Hunter, but I know I'm nearly the only one here who like those games.

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  3. This happened in my current playthrough of Emerald. I was bracing myself for Norman, and I knew it would be a challenge, but I defeated him on my first attempt. But Brawly - for some reason I was absolutely destroyed by him multiple times.

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  4. Luigi's Purple Coins in Super Mario Galaxy. Knowing which coins are just not worth the effort seems to help, if that makes any sense...

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  5. Actually that did happen to me in Diddy Kong Racing. I was struggling for days against that dragon (the forth boss) and raged quit after a while. Almost 6 months later a then decided to touch the game again and first-tryed the bastard and I was like "...seriously???" But that's actually something that happens quite often, especially in skill-based games as Platformers are. And one thing is to that if you fail once you'll probably fail 50 times so if you don't feel confident you probably shouldn't try it at least that's my experience

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