Hardest puzzles?

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DaHeckIzDat
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Hardest puzzles?

Postby DaHeckIzDat » April 19th, 2018, 7:31 pm

What are some of the hardest puzzles you've encountered in video games? For me, the first one that springs to mind is the piano puzzle from Silent Hill 1. Also, every "slide the tiles to make a picture" puzzle, no matter what game it's in. I freaking hate those things.

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Stalvern
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby Stalvern » April 20th, 2018, 2:53 am

Riven is one of my absolute favorite games, but the last puzzle is ridiculous. It actually wasn't too hard to figure out the premises of the solution, but knowing what to do and doing it are very different things, and when I realized how much insane busywork would be involved in working it all out, I broke down and looked up the final answer on the Internet.

In terms of puzzles that are just hard to fathom in the first place, this infamous idiocy from Gabriel Knight 3 takes the cake.

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Atariboy
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby Atariboy » April 20th, 2018, 9:46 am

There's a bomb in Titanic Adventure Out of Time that I've never successfully diffused.

Any time I end up in that cabin, I don't have to worry about an iceberg hitting the ship a few hours later.

CharlieR
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby CharlieR » April 20th, 2018, 10:42 am

From what I remember, those clank clone puzzles in Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time were tough. There were a few in the uncharted games, one I remember in particular was in the third game where you had to shine a light to create shadows.

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Matchstick
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby Matchstick » April 22nd, 2018, 6:34 am

Stalvern wrote:Riven is one of my absolute favorite games, but the last puzzle is ridiculous.


Was that the one with the giant grid, with the set of multicolored marbles? If so, I remember that one! I was absolutely immersed in Riven when it first came out, and managed to claw through the entire game up to that point. I figured that the marbles corresponded to the different colored domes that were scattered across the map, and even made my own grid in my sketchbook, marking the location of the domes in the game world with dots of colored pencil. I was so proud of myself, thinking I had cracked the code and solved the puzzle!

So, what happened? I got back up to the top of the giant gold dome, put the marbles into the spots I had marked in my sketchbook, aaaaaaaand... nothing. Nope. That wasn't the right answer. I was so bummed out, and had no idea what I had done wrong, that I just dropped the game, cold turkey, and tried to get on with my life. It wasn't until I saw the strategy guide at a secondhand store years later that I finally figured out the solution, and managed to finish the game. I *nearly* broke down and ordered the damn guide book that was advertised within the game's packaging, but man, paying the $25 or so after shipping costs was a bit much just to solve one puzzle.

In that respect, I wished Riven had been more like the LucasArts games of the time, and had come with a small guidebook to help you solve the game's toughest puzzles. Instead, it felt to me like the game was made artificially difficult in certain spots, hoping that you would break down and cough up the cash for the strategy guide. I'm 100% convinced that was the business model for the original Myst game, although RIven had a much more focused, logical structure, with the puzzles feeling much less random and out-of-place than its predecessor.

Still, $50 for a new PC game, plus another $25 to help you beat it? No thanks!

eneuman96
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby eneuman96 » April 22nd, 2018, 11:45 pm

This applies more to the entire game than just one puzzle, but the difficulty of the obscure PC-only puzzle game Stephen's Sausage Roll starts off at insane and only increases from there. The puzzles are actually brilliantly designed for the most part, but the $30 price tag makes it hard to recommend unless you're absolutely sure you have the mental fortitude to play it all the way through.

bengalhoel
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby bengalhoel » April 23rd, 2018, 1:06 am

DaHeckIzDat wrote:What are some of the hardest puzzles you've encountered in video games? For me, the first one that springs to mind is the piano puzzle from Silent Hill 1. Also, every "slide the tiles to make a picture" puzzle, no matter what game it's in. I freaking hate those things.


LMAO Yeah those are horrible. I cannot stand them either. The worst puzzles to me are the ones where you flip a tile over and it changes the ones next to it and you have to get all of them to match. Its the only Puzzle on Persona 5 that I have had to cheat on.

Any way, the puzzle that was the worst for me was the Tales of Phantasia on the original Playstation. Towards the later part of the game whoever translated the puzzle put the wrong hint in and it was basically unsolvable. I didnt have a strategy guide or the internet back then so I thought I just couldnt figure it out and I put the game away and never beat it. Low and behold , I just happened to read later about the mistake and I was so pissed because I played that dungeon over and over and over trying to find something I missed.

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Stalvern
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Re: Hardest puzzles?

Postby Stalvern » April 23rd, 2018, 1:15 am

Matchstick wrote:In that respect, I wished Riven had been more like the LucasArts games of the time, and had come with a small guidebook to help you solve the game's toughest puzzles. Instead, it felt to me like the game was made artificially difficult in certain spots, hoping that you would break down and cough up the cash for the strategy guide. I'm 100% convinced that was the business model for the original Myst game, although RIven had a much more focused, logical structure, with the puzzles feeling much less random and out-of-place than its predecessor.

I don't remember having too much trouble with Myst (apart from getting stuck in that worthless monorail maze), but you're right about how random and jumbled it is. Still, while I much prefer the cohesively alien world and puzzles of Riven, which feels like exploring and coming to grips with a strange new culture, the arbitrary mish-mash of Myst's Ages has a lot of romantically surreal charm.

On the other hand, there are two things that really drag the game down for me. For one, the symbols and patterns that you need to work out aren't randomized, so can use the notes from your first playthrough to skip half the puzzles no matter how many times you replay. But that's nothing compared to the real problem: It turns out that you shouldn't be solving any of the puzzles at all! It's a twist that might work in a book but has no business being in a game; whatever narrative meaning it might carry is outweighed by how much of a middle finger it is to the real-life player. In the end, there's zero reason to explore Myst except to look at the pretty scenery, and while it certainly is pretty, so are adventure games in general.

(I suppose that I have spoiled the ending of Myst for anyone who hasn't played it, but if so, good. No ending deserves it more.)


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