Gaming

Hollow Knight. I love that game but I am in my mid 40s and my reaction time isn't what it used to be. And it's not even the bosses. I just can't make it past the spike section where you have to air-dash all over the place and can't be a millimeter off or you die.

Jedi Fallen Order. I've tried a couple times because I really WANT to like the game. But I just can't stand the fucking souls style of everything comes back when you save. And the boss fights are just too punishing (for me). It's so frustrating to get stuck on a boss or lost in a zone and come to the realization that I WAS having fun and then the game got in the way of that.

Elden Ring. I had a lot of fun with the game restarting and playing through the first zone on like 6 different characters to try different styles and see what I like. But at some point in the second zone I realized I was just stressed out all the time. It wasn't fun, it was stressful. I can appreciate the game and I don't regret spending the money on it, but I realized it just wasn't for me.

I think I'm done with souls games. They're just not for me. I really wanted to play Jedi Survivor but I suspect the new cool stuff will just make me more frustrated with the souls aspects, Oh well.

I mehhed out on Outer Wilds because of Brittle Hollow and Hourglass Twins. Great game certainly, magnificent atmosphere, clever-in-a-good-way plot and premise, just not quite for me. Watching my daughter play through it was more fun than playing it myself.

I thought about playing the good and bad endings of Undertale, but it started to feel like work so did not. Plus I estimated that the Sans fight would've made be break something.

Dark Souls and souls games in general. But the difficulty is just half of it. I have beaten hard games before. The problem is that everything is so bleak I can't even feel motivated to try. I'll do a thing only for some NPC to go "it doesn't matter, everything is pointless and you're so insignificant". Inevitably being spoiled I know that even the single optimistic NPC is not getting it great. Y'all can mope, I'm gonna put my effort where it's appreciated.

So so so many. Right off the top of my head:

• Guild Wars Season 2, one of the later missions. It was stealth gameplay. I hate stealth. Paid someone 100g to run it for me.
• FTL's boss.
• Warframe's Glassmaker season fight with Nihil.
• Currently, Ace Combat 7's Pipeline Destruction.

I usually never complete the "extreme" challenges present in some games, like path of pain and the pantheons in Hollow Knight, or the B-sides in Celeste. I try them, but when I realize that completion will require lot of time and effort, I really don't feel bothered enough. But I'm ok with that because this kind of stuff is optional, and it's actually cool seeing more talented gamers deal with them

Minecraft, I tried summoning and defeating the Wither and was woefully unprepared. The entire world near the fight was filled with craters from the explosions. I was getting ready to throw the entire world away. Then I decided to just cheat and turn Creative Mode on for 1 second, the Wither disappeared and I was able to continue playing, now with PTSD.

It didn't help that I was playing on Bedrock (switch), which apparently has a much more difficult fight than in the Java edition.

Botw master mode sword challenge. Made it to stage 6

I have this weird thing where I love a game to be challenging because it's not engaging if it's easy, it makes the game boring to me, but at the same time I despise grinding and generally rote gameplay with the only purpose of amassing more points to be able to challenge the next boss. But very few RPGs I like are like that. Baldurs Gate 1/2 are excellent games that I love but I get extremely frustrated by some encounters which just feels like absolute bullshit and require extreme grinding or going off to do a myriad of side quests to bump up your level. Same holds true for Pillars of Eternity which I also love.

Though I tend to be a stubborn person so I generally come back a week or month later if I get stuck but I tend to put the game down once I've dealt with the immediate challenge and realize that I need to do all that boring stuff again for the next boss and then I just don't start.

If Hades didn't have God Mode (which actually works in a pretty interesting way and isn't just invincibility or whatever), I would have given up incredibly quickly.

Once I enabled it, shit started to actually feel fun for me.

Now it's one of my favourite ever games.

Bramble: The Mountain King

I ragequit half way through the final boss after having died for the thirtieth time. The game is absolutely beautiful, but fuck me some of it is tough.

Ended up watching the last bit on YouTube. No regrets.

If I picked Wolfenstein: The New Order back up today, I'd probably have a better time with it, since it's been a decade since I touched it last and my gaming abilities have improved since then, but for whatever reason this game was ridiculously difficult for me, even on the easiest setting. It finally came to a point where I just couldn't finish it, and I'm not sure if I ever will.

I had a lot of games on PS4 where the difficulty isn't "why" I stopped, but the lengthy loads when I died was.

I'm perfectly happy dying a bunch of times in a row, provided the deaths are fair and consistent. I have a big issue with waiting 5-10 minutes to replay a section that doesn't last meaningfully longer than that.

Getting a PS5 let me go back to a lot of those games and properly enjoy the brutal difficulty without the headaches.

Control. Liked it despite being in 3rd person view up until the mezzanine fight an hour or two in, then realized that the enemies are just dumb high DPS bullet sponges, the PC is a low DPS squishy and fighting from a cover or any other tactical approach I'm used to doesn't work.

EDIT: There was also a spellcrafting mod for Skyrim where the endboss was immunebto all magic and would teleport away as soon as you got too close while summoning a bazillion powerful minions. At level 50...60 it was litwrally impossible to figjt the bastard. After many tries I just console killed the bugger and was done with it.

A bunch of old Sierra games. Like the Space Quest series.

Great games, but unforgiving. Having a walkthrough on hand is a must as a few sections are close to impossible without one

I couldn't get past the second area(I think?)of Cuphead, there was a dragon boss that was just a wall for me.

A lot of puzzle games, especially ones by Zachtronics. Eventually I get to a point where my brain just can’t keep up and at that point I consider it done.

Dark Soul serie. After dying for the nth time i gave up. I don't have enough time to red again and again the same path.

Getting over it, well it do save your progression, especially your mistake.

Subnautica and amesia. I fear void place and it's too scary.

State of decay 2 lethal difficulty. You pretty much can't fast search. You can't have a follower because they start brawls needlessly by attacking zombies and they don't disengage, making running away from brawls impossible. And without a follower a feral spotting you is pretty much a death sentence. Add the insane food usage, overly eager plague hearts / sieges and the undying hostile npcs and I have no idea how people play that

Fire Emblem: Awakening on Lunatic mode. It just wasn’t fun and I already didn’t like enemies popping up and getting to attack in the same turn.

Stephen's Sausage Roll.

I play a lot of puzzle games. Some of them are pretty hard (the later levels of Tametsi take quite a while to crack).

But this one is on a completely different level. If there is a more brutally punishing sokoban-family game on existence, I have no idea what it might be.

Stephen, if he exists, is most likely condemned to roll sausages eternally in hell, for the sin of making this game.

I play most games on hard difficulty. But i gave up finish Nier Replicant on hard, not because i got stuck, but the hp of the monster was way to high to have fun.

Back in my teens one summer, I was playing Resident Evil Code Veronica by day at my friend's house and Doom 3 alone in my basement at night, got about halfway through both but quit because of the constant nightmares. Lost to the psychological damage I guess.

Gave up on gaming in general. Moved to Linux back in October. Had issues getting my games to play because of various issues between Nvidia 535/545 and Wayland, Xorg, or the steam/proton/lutris/aagl/hgl things I tried. Then work got too busy and I've put gaming on the back burner 'til I have more time to troubleshoot it (hopefully with new Nvidia/Wayland packages).

I don't think I've stopped in the middle of something without planning on coming back. If something is difficult I'm more likely to do better the next day.

But something that I know I would not have fun with is platinum any Yakuza game. And honestly, I'm glad this game taught me to not worry about not completing things I don't care about.