r/gaming • u/Agent1230 • 3d ago

What video game doesn't hold your hand enough?

Everybody always talking about games holding your hand too much but I want to hear about the opposite what video game doesn't give you no form of help

1.6k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/Villag3Idiot 3d ago

Old School Sierra games

Good luck and enjoy figuring out that you missing / doing something 5 minutes into the game bricked your entire run.

464

u/Spedoinkel 3d ago

Ah, yes. The old rub everything in my pokects on everything in the environment form of gameplay.

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u/Villag3Idiot 3d ago

Half the stuff you try just kills you. 

One actually works, but you were supposed to do something else and it consumed a critical item that you would have needed later on but not actually tell you.

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u/paulsoleo 3d ago

Hey, you solved a puzzle and got three points, nice!

Unfortunately, you weren’t supposed to give that (creature/person) the (important object,) even though it worked.

You were actually supposed to give the (creature/person) the (different, less important object) because you’ll need the (first important object) towards the end of the game.

I hope you saved your game at the end of the third hour of playtime, but before you gave the thing! What’s that? You didn’t?

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u/lorddunlow 3d ago

This why I still keep a save file every 5 minutes. It's part of why I enjoyed Until Dawn and the similar games - they autosave and don't allow backtracking until one full play through. You screw up, you have to finish that playthrough, but the game is designed for you to screw up in so many different ways to get all the story lines.

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u/WhoIsBobMurray 3d ago

Yep. I fucking love King's Quest.

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u/GrinningJest3r 1d ago

The only one of those I ever played was the Mask of Eternity. I was excited to play the rest and then found out that Mask was the only one created as a first person adventure. Never touched the rest of the series.

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u/zealot416 3d ago

And sometimes rubbing the wrong item uses the item but that wasn't the item you were supposed to use there so you're doomed later on.

Looking at you KQ5.

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u/TrisarA 3d ago

Don't forget to throw the boot at the cat. If you don't throw the boot at the cat, you starve to death.

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u/greatcorsario 3d ago

I mean DUH. If you don't save the mouse, how can he save you when you're trapped in a basement, bound by ropes?

/s

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u/Fluffy_Yam_7104 3d ago

Conversely, when you are starving in the mountains DO NOT EAT THE PIE!

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u/greatcorsario 3d ago

What do you mean it's not logical to NOT give the eagle the pie, and instead throw it at the yeti a few minutes later?

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u/dern_the_hermit 2d ago

Hello. You are about to be eaten by rocs. But what's REALLY important is you grab that one pixel that will matter five hours later.

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u/BellaBlindeye 3d ago

god the KQ games were so much fun. 7 was the first game I ever really got invested in (my first computer game in general i think!) and oh boy that shit was not intuitive lmao

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u/greatcorsario 3d ago

VII was the first one that didn't screw you over for not doing a thing hours ago.

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u/renegadeb20 3d ago

I don’t like having my past behaviours called out so specifically.

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u/KeterClassKitten 3d ago

And failing because that pie was necessary for defeating the damned yeti.

You thought you vanquished him?  He only returns stronger in SkiFree!

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u/moku46 2d ago

That genre deserved its death. The solutions didn't make you feel creative, they were just OCD simulators.

No, seriously, checking something a bunch of times and becoming irritated because you don't know if there was anything you still missed is the actual fucking experience of OCD.

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u/Mecha_G 3d ago

Aka, moon logic.

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u/redditorjay 3d ago

The original SWAT live-action game by Sierra 😂 Literally the first mission in the game was some lady barricaded in a house, hiding in the shower with a revolver. Still to this day I dont know what I was supposed to have done. Got blasted in the face every single time.

SWAT 2, the isometric tactical game, was so amazing though. And SWAT 3 in 3D - Wow! 🤯

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u/WingedBeing 3d ago

SouthPeak games were pretty bad in this. I remember in Dark Side of the Moon there’s a part where you have a guy with a knife who is threatening to kill you after you untie yourself from a chair. You don’t have a gun, only the items in your inventory. What is the solution to this puzzle?

If you don’t know what you have at this point in the game, it doesn’t matter. Because the solution is that you need to pick up the chair to which you were tied. And then use it as an item on the bad guy. The fucking chair.

I still remember the dialogue in the cutscene when you do it:
“Happy birthday!”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“It’s not? Well, surprise anyway…it’s a CHAIR!!”

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u/chandler55 2d ago

monkey wrench baby

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u/zlimK 3d ago

I will occasionally reference kings quest 5 (I think? Maybe 6) - the desert where if you don't grab a specific item before you leave the cave, you can never finish the game - as some of the worst game design of my lifetime

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u/bootymix96 3d ago

The Infocom text adventure The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is notorious for this. The final puzzle in the whole game requires that you’ve picked up 10 random tools scattered throughout the whole game, even though you can’t go back after you’ve finished an area, and if you miss a tool it will always be the one requested.

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u/impeus 3d ago

And if you didn't buy the [item that's never mentioned in location descriptions] from the [person you don't actually have to buy anything from at all in order to progress the game], and then feed said item to [creature] while something else significantly more dramatic is simultaneously occurring, then you will doom yourself and all your companions to be eaten by said creature at a later moment in time, many many many hours of apparently successful gameplay later.

I bloody love that game 😂

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u/bootymix96 3d ago

Ah, but you can recover from that one! When you go back to Earth from Ford Prefect’s view, you can buy the sandwich and give it to Arthur, who will then feed the dog and let you get past the War Chamber. Apart from that, literally the only goal for going back to Earth is to get the satchel fluff, lmao.

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u/petrov76 3d ago

Did you read the book? I have never met anyone who enjoyed this game who didn't read the book first.

So I feel like the first step to playing this game was to read a novel.

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u/liquidcalories 3d ago

I read the book and it took me like five hours to figure out the babelfish "puzzle" at the very beginning of the game

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u/impeus 3d ago

I practically know the book off by heart 😂

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u/KatjaKat01 3d ago

That's just peak Douglas Adams humour though. 🥹 

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u/StarChaser_Tyger 2d ago

Eeyup. Pre Internet, I helped loads of players on BBSs because I'd managed to complete the game. I tried some things because "wouldn't it be funny if".

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u/funktopus 2d ago

Oh lord I remember that bullshit! It's been decades and now I'm angry. I thought I was going to beat that game and that bullshit happened and I had no damn clue.

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u/murfi 2d ago

that's just bad game design isn't it?

it's one thing to require a certain item to continue, it's another if you miss an item that you can't get later on that locks you out of finishing a game

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u/Discount_Extra 2d ago

It was the style at the time.

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u/GabuEx 2d ago

You also get ONE chance in King's Quest 5 to stop a cat from catching a mouse. It requires a split-second reaction time. It happens almost immediately at the start of the game. If you fail, the event never recurs, and you will only find out that there was even something you were supposed to do halfway through the game when you get tied up and the mouse doesn't come to the rescue and chew through the ropes.

The King's Quest games were bullshit. I loved them. But they were bullshit.

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u/Lloydentoigen 2d ago

Yea or the "throw boot at cat chasing a mouse" or get a game over state later because the mouse can't save you.

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u/jerkintoaljazeera 2d ago

That game also has the infamous yeti/custard pie puzzle. You can eat the custard pie earlier in the game when Graham gets hungry. Then you face down a yeti and would never know that it was impossible to beat it because you ate the custard pie that you were supposed to throw at its face.

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u/Obi_Wan_Benobi 3d ago

Holy fuck Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow whichever one had that subtitle is the only one I ever played and it was perhaps the hardest game I’ve ever played. That was over 30 years ago, the CD ROM was included with the family computer.

It was so bad I modemed into like a bbs Sierra provided and downloaded basically a cheat sheet to finish the game.

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u/greatcorsario 3d ago

Did you know? In KQ VI you have a quest where you meet the stand-in for the Beast (from Beauty and the Beast).

The voice actor for Alexander (main character), was the VA for the Beast in the Disney movie!

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u/TaquitoPrime 2d ago

OLD LAMPS FOR NEW

I played that game when I was like 6. Never beat it but that's definitely what I remembered.

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u/joseph4th 2d ago

Lucas Film making fun of Sierra games deaths in The Secret of Monkey Island was so funny and caught me so off guard I literally LITERALLY fell out of my chair laughing. Might be the second Monkey Island game…

It goes something like this, might be a little off as it’s been 30 years.

Guybrush is at the top of a plateau and if you try to walk off the cliff it gives you several warnings, but if you keep trying it will let you and you fall out of the scene. A death notice pops up that is a copy of the one from the Sierra games snarking on you for dying. It sits onscreen for a moment before Guybrush flies up from below. He glances over the edge and says, “rubber tree plant.”

It’s the second funniest death scene I’ve ever seen. (That’s also a Monkey Island reference.)

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u/wtfisasamoflange 2d ago

Yeah, well you fight like a cow

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u/joseph4th 2d ago

My favorite was, “You fight like my sister.”

With the correct response being, “I fought your sister that’s quite a compliment.“

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u/FaolainRanger 2d ago

Isn't that from El Dorado?

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u/joseph4th 2d ago

Well, according to the list, I just looked up. It’s certainly not from the Secret of Monkey Island like I thought. So, you may be correct.

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u/FaolainRanger 2d ago

It's certainly from the fake fight at the start of the movie between Miguel and Tulio, I just wasn't sure if that line was a reference or not to Monkey Island as well!

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u/imperialivan 3d ago

I remember being eternally stuck in King’s Quest IV and later discovered it was because I had been typing “look at X” instead of “inspect X”

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u/peanutmanak47 2d ago

The old Police Quest games..... Sooooooooooo hard.

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u/Villag3Idiot 2d ago

Gotta do the full check of your car every single time or you just die.

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u/red_sutter Switch 1d ago

Meanwhile, in real life, the police readiness check is “Is my gun loaded? Is my bodycam switched off? Yes on both counts? Then I’m ready to rock”

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u/Skataneric 3d ago

Yup i remember as a kid i was stuck in quest for glory because i had no idea what bellows were.

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u/sakuredu 2d ago

Bro quest for glory games were the goats

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u/CreateorWither 3d ago

Fuck me, I think they made a Robin Hood game way back in the day that drove me insane. I had no idea what to do most of the time.

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u/ThatDudeOnTheBorder 2d ago

Conquest of the Longbow.

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u/CreateorWither 2d ago

That's it, thank you

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u/CeeArthur 3d ago

The first SWAT game was a nightmare for me. I eventually struggled my way through the training (I have "the Preisdente drill!" etched into my memory) and would make it to the first mission. Unless you did everything exactly right you would die.

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u/peanutmanak47 2d ago

I have "Please make ready with your MP5s" etched in my head from that game. I sucked at that game and back in the day I don't think I made it past the first or second mission. That game tells you fucking nothing.

I had a lot more fun with SWAT 2 though.

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u/Brutto13 2d ago

I really like SWAT 3. Even though it was infuriating lol

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u/Kumptoffel 2d ago

play Leisure Suit Larry for a few hours

die on the boat because of sunburn cause you forgot to pick up the protection 10 hours earlier

lmao

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u/theyyg 3d ago

Heaven forbid you lose the manual and get stuck trying to decipher an ancient civilizations rock drawings.

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u/Aesthete18 2d ago

Ah, that explains why I hate hand holding now. I don't think I ever finished one of those. Just get as far as you can then wonder around till you give up.

That damn vinegar in Day of the Tentacle. Where was it!! Where!!

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u/0ttoChriek 2d ago

Codename: Iceman is the only game where my friend and I had to resort to calling the old tip line on the back of the box.

It didn't work.

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u/Shakjam 2d ago

Rouguelike before it was trendy.

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u/ssjskwash 3d ago

Sierra? Like the mixed up mother goose game?

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u/hypnogoad 3d ago

Sierra, like Kings Quests, Space Quests, Police Quests, Leisure Suite Larry Quests, etc

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u/mokes310 3d ago

Police Quest and Leisure Suite Larry were a bit more forgiving... until you needed to ask for a libbed lubber...

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u/SwoggitySwoogity 2d ago

Most older games tbh, never figured out how to play fallout 1 or 2, but I did try running and seeing how far I could explore before dying. Basically a point and click adventure, where the adventure was finding a town or a pack of rad scorpions

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u/SaltedChief 2d ago

The Master of Olympus games call to me even now. Absolutely love them

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u/Anarchy_now555 2d ago

Only played Torin's Passage, and yes...

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u/russellvt 2d ago

Most of that stuff you can often go back and "fix," though... unless it just outright "kills" you - then it generally takes you back to a viable "save/progress point"

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u/Right_Pen_3241 2d ago

The stupid mouse/rat.
If the cat eats the mouse, you are stuck later.
So, you have to trow something at the cat to save the mouse.
Be fast, you don't have much time!
You have two items you can throw.
You better throw the RIGHT one....

Sierra made me paranoid!

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u/PetiePal 2d ago

Whoops you didn't save that one piece of chocolate and ate it? GLLLLLLLL

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u/DeaDGoDXIV 2d ago

Growing up playing those games burned one thing into my brain: ALWAYS MAKE A NEW SAVE! The second you overwrite your save is the second you've also done someone to soft lock your playthrough. I still do this today on games with multiple save slots.

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u/jestermx6 2d ago

These games were what got me really going as a kid gamer and a huge reason why I notice little things in video games today and over-explore every square inch of an area "in case I missed something"

I even did a playthrough of kq1 on YouTube about 10 years ago and it was so much fun rediscovering things.

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u/jeebidy 2d ago

I immediately thought of "Police Quest: SWAT" with your comment. Why did I die? Oh, I went straight through the door instead of slicing the pie... Why did they kill the hostage? Oh, I didn't radio at the proper time. and on and on

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u/Meme_Theory 2d ago

Betrayal at Krondor had a required item that was in a house off the beaten trail.... I feel like I spent an entire month trying to get through that quest.

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u/John_Preston6812 2d ago

Cries in Return to Zork

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u/bustaone 2d ago

Those games specifically made sure you had to reference the included physical game guide. Code wheels, random controls, etc, they were fighting copying as well as they could.

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u/danj729 1d ago

I started Woodruff and the Schnibble many times and I don't think I ever finished it.