Guide Dang It/Video Games/Action Game

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Want to get past these? The guide is your only hope.

  • With the growing trend of games adding achievements for some replayability and to reward players for screwing around and finding things, many Achievements can be fit into this category if one does not have a proper list.
    • And even with a list, the description can be a bit hazy, or the requirements rather specific or finicky to the point where you start to doubt your better judgment and grab the guide just to be sure.
  • The two Puzzle Boss fights in Syphon Filter 2. In the first, you have to sneak up on Gregorov (who is really an impostor) and tase him, which players will find impossible unless you know the lights can be destroyed. The second, with the Immune to Bullets traitor Chance, involves a gun that pushes him backwards, which seems insignificant at first. Who would figure it could be used to push him into the spinning tail rotor blades? Even worse, since his armor is shrapnel/explosion proof as well, players might think he would also be impervious to the tail rotor.
  • La-Mulana? More like La Manual! La-Mulana tops the list in this trope: switches that only affect a distant room at the far end of the map, treasures that only appear when a particular enemy is defeated, secret walls that only open when hit with just the right weapon... several times... There's almost always a tablet explaining the puzzle, but good luck finding it.
    • Depressingly, the worst instance is the climactic puzzle, which requires you to read several tablets scattered all over the game, and use the mantras that are written on them. Not too bad, given that you can find a reasonable hint towards their location if you're paying attention. However, what the game doesn't tell you is that said tablets don't appear until you're near the end of the game, AND each tablet only appears after using the previous mantra, AND you have to use the mantras in specific rooms, AND the only way to recognize the rooms is to chant the mantra and see if it works. There are tablets hinting at all of these, but they're rather unclear.
    • And then there are quite a few cases where there are no monuments to give out hints. For instance, an elevator platform takes you to a button in plain sight, but said platform also goes into the above screen for a split second, long enough for you to spot a treasure chest. What you may not spot in that same room is the button necessary to open it, with it being camouflaged by the background and all. The button itself can be hard to trigger without the proper weapon. To top it off, you have to perform a tricky set of jumps to even collect the item. What does it do? Let you damage a previously Nigh Invulnerable monster outside of the ruins. The last bit, thankfully, is explained.
    • And how about the steps to unlocking the Hell Temple? One particular step requires you to go to an area in the Inferno Cavern and drop down 20 screens of a bottomless pool of lava, then go back up to the surface, then go down 19 screens and hit the breakable wall on your right. The in-game hint that you are given for this step is completely irrelevant.
    • There are ROM cartridges to be collected in the ruins, none of which are hinted at in the in-game hints. A few of these are hidden inside random sections of blank wall. However, this game teaches you very early on that smacking random sections of wall is bad and will get you killed: the manual says so, an early hint says that "every place that looks like it has something good has a trap" (and there's a demonstration in that same room), and the early levels are full of walls and other background objects that will hurt you badly if you smack them. The conclusion is: to find every ROM, you...smack every section of wall you find and eat the damage. And that's just the ROMs hidden in walls. This game hates you.
      • How about the ROM combos? Most cartridges are useless and broken, but some of them have different effects when combined. Some are purely cosmetic, while some are incredibly useful and save you tons of time (allowing you to warp to rear grail points, for example). How do you find out? Equip the cartridges randomly until you hear the sound effect, then dick around aimlessly until you figure out what the hell it does.
      • The "wall that looks like you need to hit it to proceed but really just smites you when you hit it" thing is very prominent in the early areas... and then in the later areas, sometimes you actually will have to do it to proceed. To be fair, there are a lot of things that are logically and obviously dangerous to hit (statue of a goddess... big door with symbols all over it...), but sometimes you'll just be whipping away at walls or rocks and you'll get struck by lightning.
    • At the Confusion Gate, there is a room where you must chose between going through a door to the left or a door to the right, being told by a tablet to choose the 'truly wise' choice. What's the truly wise choice? Take a Third Option and climb the INVISIBLE LADDER to the right!
    • In the Endless Corridor, you are required to 'walk the end year of the Aztec Fifth Age' in the second level. While the solution is in the manual, the rest of the puzzle is downright confusing. You have to light four of the twelve-some lanterns on that level in a very specific order. The lanterns are labeled with the numerical glyphs you see around the ruins, but nowhere are the values of the glyphs mentioned; you have to find it out yourself. In addition, the puzzle is somewhat buggy; you can enter the correct solution all you want, but the game will only open the third level when it feels like you've wasted enough time.
  • The 1984 Namco arcade game The Tower of Druaga is one of the worst examples of this trope, unusual in an arcade game. The hero adventures through a 60 floor tower; each randomly generated level contains a hidden treasure whose properties cannot be discerned until obtained (the item for each level remains the same on multiple playthroughs). Some treasures are essential to beating the game, and failing to obtain them on, say, level 4 makes the game Unwinnable, though this fact may not be discovered until level 38. By contrast, some treasures are traps, and obtaining them makes the game Unwinnable, though again this may not be discovered until many levels later.
  • Another Guide Dang It arcade game (and an RPG arcade game to boot): Wonder Boy in Monster Land. To get either of the special items near the end of the game, you have to complete a series of fetch quests, which often involve hidden rooms which there are no in-game hints alluding to, for example, the first stop is the hidden shop in Baraboro, which is accessed by pushing Up in front of a mundane window. To rack up a large amount of gold, essential for getting the higher-level equipment, you need to use the undocumented technique of waggling the joystick in midair at gold coin locations. And the Legendary Sword is hidden in an invisible room which there are absolutely no hints about(not even a ? in the door location). The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is a repeating hallway maze combined with a Boss Rush. The only way to find the right path other than painstaking Trial and Error Gameplay and quarter-munching is to have the Bell obtained from the Guide Dang It fetch quest, or look up a GameFAQs (which didn't exist back in the day except maybe on some BBSes); there were no printed guides as far as I know. And if you die here, "There are no continues, my friend". The SMS version, while less difficult enemy-wise, still had the Guide Dang Its, and no continues whatsoever.
  • While many of the numerous secret doors in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night can be found just by 'rapping on the walls' with your weapon or puzzling out visible switches, one in particular must be opened by passing through a tunnel in one animal form, and then switching to another animal form to backtrack. There is no practical reason to do this, no hint included in the course of play, and the opening door isn't even visible from the tunnel's end.
    • What most people don't know is that there's actually an extra step in releasing that door. The reason most people don't know about it, is that most do it without even realizing it. When you (in all likelyhood) pass through the breakable rock tunnel at the very beginning of the game in your human form, you're actually activating the first part. The secret to unlock the Jewel Sword room is to pass through the tunnel in every form except Mist. In other words, if someone were to go through the game without passing through that tunnel in human form, even most guides wouldn't be enough.
    • Similarly, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is filled with obstacles that are nigh-impossible to figure out just by playing the game itself. The in-game hints range from incomprehensible to outright lies, such as telling the player to hit a cliff with his head to make a hole, when the solution is to summon a tornado with a magic crystal. While this may be chalked up to the game's Nintendo Hard status, subscribers of Nintendo Power at the time were given the distinct advantage of actually knowing how to progress through the game. The Angry Video Game Nerd laments this in his debut video.
    • Most of the secrets in Castlevania 64 require the player to locate insanely-placed invisible platforms that are usually exactly halfway between the nearest savepoints and / or right before the end of the level. There is never any indication of the platform's position, and one even has a gap deliberately placed right before the nearest visible platform to kill you on the way back.
  • The heavily Castlevania-inspired 8 Eyes had several major sticking points when it came out:
    • Defeating a boss will reward you with a new sword that deals double damage to a boss somewhere else. Unfortunately, unlike Mega Man, each sword completely replaces the previous one, so breaking the sequence forces you to battle at least the one that you were supposed to fight next at maximum Nintendo-hardness, that the Game Breaker ice ball wasn't always able to overcome. Each sword was color-coded to match the jewel that the next boss in the chain had, but to know the color of the jewel, you had to be able to defeat the boss in the first place.
    • Two of the levels were The Maze, and while Germany could be figured out with some work, the first staircase in Africa was a textbook example of The Lost Hills. Anyone who didn't know to go down one floor, then up two, would most likely be fumbling through the loop until they died. Also, other staircases in the level proper would lead to a different screen entirely if you went back the way you came. Even worse, one of the pits would drop you back at the beginning of the level, including the staircase!
    • The puzzle at the end of the game wasn't too bad if you had collected most of the clues in the levels. However, said clues (as well as most other power-ups) were concealed inside random wall or floor tiles, some of which required skilled use of your pet falcon to get to. Without the clues, placing the jewels for the first time turned into Trial and Error Gameplay in its purest form.
  • The secret to getting to the true final level of the freeware game Cave Story is extremely contrived; it required you to ignore one of your friends falling into a pit and make an almost impossible jump over the chasm, as well as finding an item inside a boss room before consulting your partner who has found something of interest. Or, you have to hunt down said item while drowning a bit later. One slip-up and no true ending for you... If you can even finish the Brutal Bonus Level.
    • The jump in question is significantly easier if you jump at the exact moment you cross the red mark on the floor.
    • And to add to this, you've not only got to rescue her, drain her of water, recover her memory, and lug her through the rest of the waterway, but also ideally get every powerup in the game. Several players have beaten Hell without the lattermost step.
    • The draining is weird, too... you've got to stop at a certain save cabin, sleep on the bed, and check the computer and the notebook. And even then, you get no indication you've succeeded until much later.
    • And finally, there's the amnesia quest. The Cthulhu (not that Cthulhu) next to her bed tells you about a mushroom that can cure amnesia. You have to remember back to the very beginning of the game (probably five hours ago if you were quick) where another minor NPC mentioned mushrooms growing in the graveyard. Then, go back there, go to the door you couldn't reach earlier, go through a long dialogue tree with a mushroom to get a useless item, examine the item, talk to the mushroom again, defeat it, and take it back to her. Anyone who said they figured that part out without a guide is lying.
    • Also, there's the Spur. To get it, you have to hold on to the Polar Star (a weapon that's pretty much useless after the Sand Zone) for most of the game. Then, when you get back to Mimiga Village after the Doctor has abducted the rest of the Mimigas, you fly up to the first cave and take it back to the gunsmith you stole it from. To some people, it's self-evident that returning something you stole is a good idea. There are no hints for the rest of the world.
      • Not true. If you don't hold onto the Polar Star, when you go back to the cave, the Gunsmith says someone stole it, and it "wasn't even complete yet".
  • Although rather minor compared to the others, most techniques for high-level play in Devil May Cry 3 are not stated in official help files and videos involving them invariably receive questions from newbies.
    • In the third level a series of item trades ends you up with an item with the description "Allows you face the abyss", next thing your wandering around the dungeon clueless. What you have to do is go to the place with an invisible bridge that you can now stand on, the camera angle doesn't help to show it at all.
    • In Devil May Cry 4, there is a secret mission in Mission 8 which requires performing 5 Royal Guards. However, only Dante can do the Royal Guard. If you are not following any walkthroughs, you don't even know you will be able to play as Dante.
  • In the first part of Eternal Darkness, you are required to choose the Big Bad which you will fight against for the remainder of the game by choosing a representative gem. The game makes it obvious that this choice is important, but what the game doesn't tell you is that this also affects the difficulty of the game too. Oh, you picked the red one on your first play? Sure sucks to be you, then, because not only will you have to wait a long while to use the Restore Health spell, but Chattur'gha's monsters are the toughest in the game, and you'll have to face them a lot.
    • Don't forget that the strongest magicks can only be obtained in one specific chapter by activating a few certain (albeit very visible) switches, and then going through a hole in a wall by using a spell which is only needed to be used twice in the game. And which you don't get until some time after you've given up on figuring out what to do with that damn hole, so you have to think of going back and using the spell once you have it.
    • Also, to get the Infinity+1 Sword, you need to pick up three statuettes which can each be found in different chapters -- no going back once the chapter is over -- and are hard to find. In at least one case you can end the chapter by accident before visiting the statuette room, and never know you missed anything until hours later when you find that you can't locate the third statuette and resort to checking gamefaqs.
  • X-Men for the Sega Genesis had a level in the Danger Room where a countdown starts and Professor X tells you to "reset the computer". At no point do they tell you how to go about doing this. The solution most people discovered? HIT THE RESET BUTTON ON YOUR SEGA GENESIS, which causes the last level to load. People playing on a Nomad would be screwed at this point, as that system had no reset button. There is another solution they could use, mind you, but it's even more obscure.
  • Several of the weapons in Drakengard require extremely specific circumstances to unlock. One in particular involves looking at certain paintings in a certain stage in a certain order, and this is a game in which you never have to look at anything that you don't intend to kill or maim in some way.
  • Getting a character's second ending in Bushido Blade requires that you run to the well, during the battle with the first opponent, and leap into it... and then do a No Damage Run. It's not immediately obvious that you can even leave the starting screen, and the only map the game ever gives you of the castle all the fights take place around has no sign of any such well.
  • Koei's flagship Warriors (Samurai Warriors, et al.) series, when it comes to unlocking characters, special mounts and final weapons. The requirements can be so very stringent that even when you have all the details on how to obtain the sought after character or weapon, multiple attempts are almost unavoidable. Particularly when you are saddled with multiple tasks such as: defeat Enemy X in the first 1:30 of the stage, then save remarkably weak Ally Y on the OTHER SIDE of the battlefield 3 minutes after defeating Enemy X, THEN allow Ally Z to die, but only AFTER they kill Enemy A just before cutscene F, and all this without riding a horse or using a Musou Attack. Once you've completed that litany of nonsense, chase down the spy captain before he can escape... did I mention he's only a brisk 20 second run away from the exit? And did I forget to mention that this must all be done on Hard or Chaos mode? And to top it all off, this must also be done on 1 player mode half of the time! The sad part is, this is not a hyperbole. Check the guides on Gamefaqs if you doubt me... Why do I play these games, again? Though conversely, some are tremendous aversions, such as in the case of Lu Bu, who unlocks his final weapon by killing 1000 enemies (which is pretty easy), in one iteration of the series.
    • Slight correction: most of the characters/mounts/weapons can be unlocked in co-op mode, however, Player 1 has to be the one to actually fulfill the requirements (killing enemy X, getting 1000 KOs, collect all the treasures, etc). It still helps to have a Player 2 around to defend your base and do the mundane stuff. Also, unlocking special mounts and weapons is technically optional, and you can play through all the stages just fine without them; they're basically bonus challenges.
    • Earlier games, the only in game hint that such things even existed were blank spots in the UI...
    • If you're familiar with the original story of Dynasty Warriors you can guess some things. Zhou Yu's fourth weapon, for instance, can generally be gotten by pulling off the fire attack at Chi Bi, which was his greatest achievement in real life. Some of them, though, are much more obscure. Cao Cao's fourth weapon in DW3 is achieved during the Yellow Turban Rebellion by killing a few particular enemy generals before any gate captains are lost on either side. Even if you managed this accidentally, there's no way you would realize the gate captains had anything to do with it.
    • It's actually notable that the Massive Multiplayer Crossover series Warriors Orochi averts a lot of this. While the method to unlock each character's "personal item" is severely arcane, they have no actual gameplay effect (unlocking gallery art and backstory material). Finding characters' final weapons is as simple as playing 3-star levels on Hard or any level on Chaos (and waiting for it to randomly drop), most characters are unlocked simply by completing levels, and the requirements for the rest are often easy to figure out (don't let any messengers escape, carry out the ambush successfully, etc.). The sequel even gets rid of that last thing.
      • Actually, Personal Items enhance a character's R1 ability.
    • Samurai Warriors 3 finally eases up a bit, providing a consistent formula for finding the extra weapons: complete all the optional Tactical Bonus objectives and win a given battle on Hard or above. Some are Nintendo Hard, but at least you know what you're aiming for. Which battle is a mystery, but for most characters, this has to be done in story mode, leaving only five to pick from. The other dozen characters have to do the same thing in free mode, with 20+ battles to choose from.
  • The glass tube in Super Metroid has prematurely ended nearly as many games as Sonic's barrel. Drop a Power Bomb inside it. The solution for this problem was actually in the commercial for the game, as Nintendo has a long history of hiding secrets in their advertisements. In addition, if you leave the game alone in the title screen, the solutions to many Guide Dang It puzzles are shown. Of course, performing said maneuvers is easier said than done.
    • Even worse was the puzzle to obtain the Gravity Suit. At no point previously in any Metroid game did you have to roll up in a ball and sit in a bird statue's hands, pretending to be an item. There was no hint that this would ever be done. Of course, now this is a series mainstay.
      • To be fair, this statue (if I recall correctly) was the only thing at the end of a dangerous, hard to cross room. Considering that it was the only apparent object of interest, and that it held nothing in its hands while all the previous statues were seen to hold round objects...
    • On the plus side, however, there was an official release made with a guidebook in the place of a manual, which either stated or properly hinted how to deal with this and other puzzles.
    • The infamous "Noob Bridge".
    • Show me a person who claimed to find the Missile Expansion hidden in the lava in the second superheated room of Norfair, without going crazy and dropping Super Bombs everywhere, or scanning each and every single inch of every single room with the X-ray Scope, and I will show you a damned liar.
  • Pretty much all of the original Metroid. There are places where to continue the game, you have to bomb blocks which look absolutely no different to any other blocks in the surrounding area. Add the fact that the games corridors look pretty much identical to each other, and there's no map, it's a recipe for tearing your hair out.
    • To be fair, there's a pattern to destroyable walls that is pretty easy to figure out as the game pretty much reuses the same square rooms, so if you noticed, you'll find almost every time they apparently re-use the room, where the secret holes would be.
    • You also have to realize that a lot of what made the first one so difficult was that a lot of exploration tricks that have since gone on to be series staples were just getting started. Things like bombing through the floor to find secret passageways are expected in Metroid games today, but back then were much more of a novelty.
  • Metroid Fusion is mostly okay up until the very end. In the tradition of Super Metroid, you get a super-weapon to beat the final boss with. But the boss can still knock you down for tons of damage -- and if you fail to guess that mashing the up button makes you stand up faster, you've had it.
    • Another example from Fusion is the maze just before the Level 4 security room. You have to roll through an invisible hole in one wall... which is the only kind of secret your Power Bombs won't reveal. It's possible to get here without having encountered such holes before, so trying the walls may not even enter your mind.
      • There is a slight hint. A fish patrols the path with the hole and if you watch it, it'll swim through the hole. Too bad if you killed it without noticing that little detail.
    • Also, the early-game section in Sector 2. It seems like a simple job to get the bombs, then the SA-X blocks you in and you spend four hours dropping bombs everywhere, looking for that one block in the floor. It's a nightmare on your first playthrough.
  • Several examples in Metroid: Other M.
    • Virtually all of the compulsory first-person Pixel Hunt sections count.
    • The end of the fight against the Metroid Queen. You finish the battle by using a power bomb while inside it's belly. This wouldn't be too bad were it not for the fact that the weapon in question was unavailable until that very moment, and the game gives you no indication that it's been unlocked, despite giving blantant notifications about every other powerup you unlock.
      • And just to irritate you further, after beating the game and loading your beaten saved game, the game then decides to tell you that you can use the said weapon, after beating the game!
    • And, oh boy, the final boss when MB summons a horde of some never-before-seen monsters to attack. They assault you constantly, you're locked in FPS mode, can't recover, and missiles seem to damage them but you can never seem to kill them. The solution: point the cursor at MB with a charge shot ready, who's standing motionless waaaay back in the background, and the battle ends. Many players finish the fight not even knowing how they did it, and died many times getting there.
  • On the subject of Metroid, Zero Mission assumes you know how to shinespark from playing Super Metroid beforehand. or to have seen the game's commercials. Nowhere in the instruction manual is it mentioned how to do it, and the only thing in the official strategy guide that can help you is one picture in the part about getting the energy tank you need to carry a speed charge from a previous room for.
  • Maximo had a boss, a giant pirate ghost, who could only be harmed by attacking while crouching. Nowhere else in the game is there any use for crouching, and most players had probably forgotten that there even is a crouch button by the time they reach him.
  • Using a guide in Siren is extremely helpful, to the point of nearly being a necessity. It has a branching storyline... but certain branches require you to do something on another level first to perform them -- and this isn't always obvious until it's too late. Or ever. And it doesn't give an indication of which stage unlocks the branch. If you're on a stage that unlocks the alternate path for another stage you have unlocked, it will give you a hint about what you have to do, but these are extremely vague, especially considering the sometimes downright bizarre requirements. For an Egregious example, "Search the Yoshimura house and well" means... find a radio in the house, then put it in the bucket in the well, to lure a wandering shibito over to the well, so that when you kill it, it will fall into the well.
    • And there's one point where a guide is essentially necessary; when lighting the lanterns with Reiko Takato to get the good ending. The in-game hint tells you to watch the praying shibito... but it starts the level praying at the last lantern in the sequence, so listening to the game will probably lead to you failing.
    • In the remake Siren: Blood Curse you unlock a door to a restaurant by running to a diner in an earlier level, and destroying a bowl of food with a shotgun before a zombie cop can come and eat it. This will make him hungry enough to open the door for you in the later level. You're supposed to figure this out unprompted.
  • Jet Force Gemini has instances of this, particularly the need to search for the many ship parts, only one of which you are told how to acquire. The rest are hidden in such ways and behind such puzzles that it seems completely unfeasible that you could find them without a guide. Among the most jarring are the need to find a certain minigame hidden in a series of out of the way air ducts, then get a perfect score at the game in order to receive a set of ear muffs, then find a frigging polar bear on a planet that also requires you to find an out of the way ship pad to reach it, in order to give the muffs to the bear in exchange for a ship part. You are given no hints whatsoever that this is what you need to do.
  • Every The Legend of Zelda game is almost contractually obliged to have a Guide Dang It in it somewhere. The most massive of these is possibly the Kafei and Anju sidequest in Majora's Mask, which requires a long string of specific actions performed at specific times, and which must be completed no less than twice in order to get every possible item from it. The trading sequence required to get the Infinity+1 Sword (well, one of them, anyway) is pretty bad too. In fact, much of Majora's Mask in general is brimming with Guide Dang It moments.
    • One of the problems with the Kafei and Anju quest is that you have to let Sakon, the thief, get away with mugging the old woman from the bomb shop. And, although your meeting with Anju happens at about the same time as the mugging, it's quite possible to get from the Stock Pot Inn to North Clock Town with plenty of time to spare before the old lady shows up, at which point you can foil the thief and ruin your chances of finishing the side-quest.
    • Even getting past the Deku Scrub "prologue" of the game can prove challenging to new players, leaving them baffled for the three in-game days until the moon falls. Seriously, who - on their first attempt - guessed that they needed to find the fairies to get the magic meter to pop the balloon to find the kids to get the code to go to the observatory to get the Moon's Tear to give to the unmemorable Deku Scrub to use his flower to get to the tower... AND THEN wait until the very end of the last day... AND THEN climb the tower and shoot the Ocarina out of Skull Kid's hands? It doesn't help that you're timed, and once your time's up, it's Game Over and you're forced to start again with no clue as to what you did wrong. This is probably the reason the game has more of a cult following compared to its predecessor, since all this must be completed before you actually get your sword - swordfighting being what people expect of Zelda!
    • Also, did nobody else "just guess" that they had to play the Oath to Order on top of the Clock Tower after finishing the four temples? Or was that just me being a dumb kid?
      • It is actually hinted at pretty well. The first giant you meet teaches you the Oath to Order, and the song plays whenever you meet a giant. Also, Tatl says "Swamp... Mountain... Ocean... Canyon... Hurry... The four who are there... Bring them here..." (emphasis in game), which further hints towards the giants. Couple that with the fact that this scene looks almost identical to the scene at the beginning, where you had to play the Song of Time, and if you put two and two together it's not hard to figure out.
    • Mention must also be made of the infamous Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. Scrappy Level at its finest, the Water Temple incorporates a baffling, groan-inducing water raising and lowering puzzle that has caused the early demise of many controllers.
      • The water raising and lowering? How about the hidden block of time behind the longshot!?
        • Or worse, the INVISIBLE blocks of time in the Gerudo Training Ground's lava room?
      • Quoth a fan on YouTube: "With all the other temples, you know where the keys are. You kill a bad guy, you search a room, you get a key. In the Water Temple? Oooooh nooo, there's always some hidden room with some hidden key that you forgot because you changed the water level too soon! So you gotta keep doing it over and over again, it drives you crazy!"
        • Notably, it is completely possible to complete the water temple without that key, and using said technique (requiring a leap of faith jump at a certain water level) AND getting the key allow you to skip an entire section of the dungeon. Of course, doing this gives you the opportunity to use this key on the wrong door, thus leaving the longshot permanently sealed behind a door that cannot be opened. Without prior knowledge of the dungeon there is no hint that this will happen.
      • The Poacher's Saw in the Biggoron Sword sidequest. The only hints you get about who to give it to are that the carpenter boss says "my own son wanders around all day", vaguely telling that his son is the gray-skinned guy who actually only appears at night in Child Link's time, that said son left his saw behind after he turned into a Stalfos, and an unrelated NPC on an unrelated sidequest telling you who the father is.
        • The game actually gives you a bit more help than this: during the entire sidequest, if you look at the map of Hyrule, a flashing arrow will be pointing at the location of the next step. Of course, that doesn't tell you where in Gerudo Valley you're supposed to go.
      • Going to the final dungeon only to find out, halfway through it, you don't have an upgrade (the Fire Arrow) the game never ever mentioned and also doesn't tell how you get it? Delicious. (And to be fair, if you decide to check a random tablet somewhere in Hyrule, the game does hint you about a procedure for... something, but no mention of what you'll get, so without a guide it's pretty much luck if you happen to get an upgrade you'll actually need later)
      • And then there's going to the Shadow Temple and finding out that to enter you must have Din's Fire. Never mind that to get it you have to go back to the Hyrule Castle area, follow the road until it splits, get to a completely forgettable dead end and throw a bomb on a boulder you might have easily ignored up to that point. And of course, you also need to realize you can only find it there, and that it is the only thing that allows you to light all the torches.
    • And how about the second quest of the original? Items get moved around, and every level's entrance is now hidden, with the exception of Levels 1 and 5.
    • The Second Quest also throws fake walls at you. You'd be stuck in a dungeon, having bombed every wall and been unable to find a way out, until you realized that some walls let you just pass through if you walked up to them.
      • Level 5 in the first quest, where you have to go through a looping screen (the Lost Hills) several times. Level 8 is accessed by burning a conspicuous tree with the candle. And Level 7, how would they know the whistle does more than just warp you around? There's also a tombstone in the second quest graveyard that is opened with the whistle.
        • Not to mention that once you get inside Level 7, you're stopped halfway by an enemy who won't attack you and won't let you through his room. All he says is "Grumble grumble..." What do you do? You can't kill him, and he's blocking the only path through the dungeon. Turns out this is the only real use for "Meat." You're supposed to feed him and he'll let you pass.
        • Fridge Brilliance. He's not SAYING "Grumble grumble...", that's his stomach rumbling.
      • The Legend of Zelda has many things, such as shops, heart containers, and free rupees behind bomb squares and burned trees. Sometimes these are required (such as levels 8 + 9), and sometimes they are optional (heart containers). Unlike later Zelda games, there is no visible indication that you can bomb or burn any particular square. The only two ways to find these spots are to bomb and burn every single square on every single map, or use a guide.
        • Actually, there is a clue to level 9 at least, when an old man says, "Spectacle Rock is an entrance to death." The bomb location for level 9 looks like a pair of eyes or glasses.
        • Making things worse are some of those hidden areas revealing old men who charge you for destroying their door.
      • Shigeru Miyamoto has said that he designed The Legend of Zelda to require player collaboration, which is essentially admitting that a guide is required.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past, there is a Great Fairy Fountain in the Pyramid of Power, where the Golden Sword and Silver Arrow upgrades (which, contrary to popular belief, are not actually required for Ganon in this game, but make it much easier to defeat him) are obtained, which can only be accessed with the Superbomb. The Bomb Shop doesn't carry the Superbomb until you rescue the fifth and sixth (of seven) maidens, and there's nothing in the game that hints at this, so the average player wouldn't think of any reason to go back after seeing only regular bombs there. Biggest Guide Dang It in the series other than Zelda 1. Fortunately, the fortune teller (who acts as an lite, in-game version guide by giving you tips for rupees) will still tell you about this.
    • One of the heart pieces in Link's Awakening could only be found by going far out of your way to dive underwater in a corner of the Kanalet Castle moat.
      • In the second dungeon, Bottle Grotto, one of the keys could only be obtained by defeating the enemies of one specific room in a specific order. There is an in-game hint for this portion, but unless you know the names of the enemies from some outside source (because neither the game nor the US game manual tells you their names), then the admonition to "First defeat the imprisoned Pols Voice; last, Stalfos," just sounds like so much gibberish, although the Pols Voice is visibly imprisoned by jars.
      • Also in Link's Awakening, you have to shoot a statue with an arrow to get a key. In no other part of the game do you have to do this, so how will you think about this without wandering around the dungeon for hours before finding an owl who tells you to try that?
        • Thankfully, the statue you have to shoot is in the same room as the owl that tells you to shoot it. If you didn't have a bow yet, though, you may grumble about having to trudge your way back to town and pay the steep price to get one.
      • In the main quest itself, the way to navigate the inside of the Wind Fish's Egg is only revealed to you after reading a book in Koholint Library. With a Magnifying Lens. Which you get after completing the secondary Trading Sequence. If you made absolutely no progress in the trading quest at this point, feel free to bash your head into your desk.
    • In Ocarina of Time, when you come back as an adult to find the place deserted, you have to bomb the one rolling Goron to unlock the rest of the city and the next dungeon. Not only is this only very vaguely hinted at from an optional source that also gives you useless information, it is difficult to do.
    • Spirit Tracks. You will use a guide. New puzzles involve using your entire collection of songs or gadgets until/if you manage to stumble on the one that works. Every single person in Hyrule exists in a vacuum, unaware of the world around them and the people in it. This is a huge problem when you rely on them for critical information. Gameplay functions go unexplained even by the people that need you to use them. Actions that should logically yield a given outcome do nothing. Actions that logically should do nothing are required to progress.
      • Beedle's Air Shop is a store run out of a hot-air balloon, and is the only place to carry the Bomb Bag, which as in previous Zelda games is the only way to carry bombs. Of course, you'll need to get him to land first. He tells you how by mailing you a letter, which you will not receive for some time. Until then, have fun chasing him around like an idiot!
      • Getting all the stamps is a pain. The sand sanctuary one was undoubtedly the worst though. It never would have occurred to me that you would have to go back later just so the resident lokomo would tell that he needs cuccos which, of course, you need to use to reach the tiny island where the stamp station is.
    • In Phantom Hourglass, the secret to getting that mark in the Temple of the Ocean King onto your sea chart definitely qualifies, but it can become Fridge Brilliance if you manage to work it out or a Crowning Moment of Funny if you accidentally stumble on it.
      • Depending on how oblivious to the mechanics of the DS you are, it can take an hour of pointing at every pixel on the screen ten times before you figure it out. Seriously.
    • The Wind Waker and it's horrendous Triforce-hunt. There are whole Game Guides dedicated to nothing but this one, annoying quest!
      • What are you supposed to do after you get the Master Sword? Did you guess "intentionally get sucked into a cyclone and shoot down the frog, so you can learn the warp song"?
        • In all fairness, the game leads you to that part fairly clearly. You learn about Cyclos when you learn the wind control song, which is a mandatory action, and you learn about shooting Cyclos with your arrows when the fish fills in your map, which is an optional task but one that most perform for sanity's sake.
      • The solution itself is more of a Moon Logic Puzzle, actually. If the player has been paying attention, they'll know who Cyclos (the frog in the cyclone) is and, upon losing to him for the first time, it's painfully obvious what he does. (New players will experience this on at least one occasion.) Feeding the Fishman at Mother and Child Isles (which is optional, adding another layer of frustration) will also tell the player that they'll need to drop from the sky to enter, which sounds odd before discovering the Ballad of Gales, but makes sense afterwards. The real Guide Dang It is knowing when to do this, or that it's required at all, since many of Wind Waker's islands exist to host side-quests or provide power-ups.
    • Zelda II the Adventure of Link is mostly fairly simple, except for the vague hints people give you (which isn't TOO much of a problem). Then comes New Kasuto Town, a town hidden under a forest tile. How do you make it appear? You need to use the hammer to smash the forest. Do you remember anyone telling you you could do that?
    • There's also Thunderbird, the 2nd to last boss. The only way to remove its invincibility is to use a certain spell. Which one is it, though? Someone told you "If all else fails, use fire", how about that? WRONG! The mysterious "Spell" spell has to have some use besides turning enemies into Bots and revealing a hidden door. Again, wrong. No, it's the Thunder spell, which costs a majority of your magic bar and is almost completely useless because of it. Not many people suspect the "kill everything on screen for 80% of your magic bar" spell is the one that makes the boss vulnerable.
      • And it's name certainly doesn't help matters. Most gamers will probably assume that, being that its name is "Thunderbird" that Thunder is instantly off the list.
    • Let's not forget about the bridge man for the town of Saria, which caused a lot of people grief when they became stuck after only the second dungeon(or FIRST if they had not gone north yet)! All you are told is "Only townspeople may cross". So do you lure a townsperson over? Do you talk to people around there to be sworn in? Do you have to come back after finding a third dungeon? How about wander randomly in the forest to the north to find a man named Bagu, despite the fact he is never mentioned otherwise? Oh, and his house is hidden, so you have to comb all of those trees, even with the forced battle areas. To top this all off, you need to talk to Bagu, or else you can't get the hammer, which you need to reach the third dungeon!
    • Averted somewhat by a monster in one house. He's asleep, but if you bother him enough times, he tells you to see his 'master' in the woods north of Saria.
      • This scenario is repeated later before the fourth dungeon. You have to find a secret pit at a dead-end in a maze in order to obtain a spell you cannot beat the fourth boss without. Don't forget to bring your true swordsmanship, as there a lot of other pits in the maze that just have several enemies. Happy hunting!
      • How about the very first town? A random kid tells you to go west to get to Parapa Palace. Going west takes you to the second town, Ruto. Going east (through a cave) takes you to Parapa Palace. Even worse if you learned Sheild magic and noticed the old man recommended its use in Parapa Desert (deducing that the palace is named for the desert it's found in), as there is another desert (the Tantari) to the west before you get to Ruto.
    • In a linked Oracle of Ages game is the heroes cave. In one room there's a puzzle to turn yellow floor tiles into red ones like in some other dungeons in the game. You can spend hours of trying to solve the puzzle with at least one tile being left. The solution? Using your Cane of Somaria to create a block on the tile counts as turning it red.
  • A well-known Guide Dang It from Beyond Good and Evil is the location of the Ignis ingifera, "The Animal Everyone Misses." It's tucked away in a secret room whose location is not immediately obvious (it lies in the complete opposite of the direction you normally need to go). While it makes sense once you know where you're going, it can be a head-scratcher. The location of the "shy amoebas" in the Black Isle is similarly puzzling (until you realize that a bridge you lowered in fact had something hidden behind it.)
    • What's hard is taking a picture of Domz Sarcophagii, which you only see twice between getting the camera and the endboss fight, and both times you are in instant combat with them. Stopping in the middle of a fight is both non-intuitive and, if you haven't distributed your PAL-1s correctly, suicidal. And without taking the snap as early as possible on Hillys, you won't be able to catch them all and get the Photo Album m-disc.
  • Wario Master of Disguise. In the final level you come across a room with a blue door, some green mushrooms, and a blue mushroom. To open the blue door you have to turn it green, by stepping on all of the green mushrooms. The blue mushroom is not required and only serves to hinder you, by un-pressing all of the green mushrooms. But there's nothing to suggest this is the case. (And since you don't have to press the green mushrooms in order, you just have to have them all pressed, there's no real reason for that blue mushroom to even be that.) Even worse is when you realize that one of the green mushrooms is invisible and you need Genius Wario to step on it. Again, there's nothing to suggest this would be the case. But hey, at least they only make you do that puzzle in the one room.
    • Biggest problem is that the locked door is marked with a symbol that seemingly indicates what order to press the mushrooms in. After taking forever trying different variations of the order, giving up, consulting a guide, and pressing the hidden mushroom, what does the symbol mean? Nothing at all. Purely stylistic.
  • Astro Boy Omega Factor makes getting to the end of the game much harder than it has to be. To begin, if you skip the credits after playing through the first go-round of the game, you miss one of the entries in the Omega Factor and screw yourself out of a power-up. One key event requires you to jet straight up four times (impossible without having maxed out your Jets or a full EX stock) to reach a hidden character, with no hint that there's anything up there. Another one requires you to destroy a specific door on a background object that gives no indication it's anything other than scenery (in an area filled with rolling statues that kill in a single hit), and another one necessitates you going left at the very start of the stage and destroying a trash can - in a stage that scrolls right, thus giving you no apparent reason to go left. Having maxed-out Sensors only partially helps, because Astro Boy will declare he senses a hidden character but doesn't tell you anything about how to find them.
    • Fantastic game, but the order you have to go through the levels is also very unintuitive. You have to backtrack to several levels, upon which certain plot elements will resolve themselves. Those who skip the cutscenes (with their minor clues) are screwed.
    • Another too-cleverly hidden character (needed to continue the plot) is hidden behind a wall in an elevator scene. So once you miss him, you have to start the stage over again. And again, there's no hint to his location, you just have to know it. Although it's not that hard to access him accidentally.
    • Once you complete the first playthrough, in order to open up Dr. Tenma's house, you have to play through the tutorial again, so that Astro can confront Dr. O'Shay. The problem here is that the game discourages you from doing this, because Dr. O'Shay mocks you by wondering if you've forgotten the basic controls.
  • Unlocking Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat Deception is next to impossible to do accidentally. In order to unlock him, you must be in a specific realm, during a specific hour on a specific day of the month, behind a tent that you seemingly never have any other reason to go to after you beat Jade. Even worse, the game gives you no indication that it's even possible to go around the tent. His alternate outfit is unlocked in very similar fashion, but fortunately in its case it is there for longer than an hour, lies in a more obvious location, and appears once a week instead of once a month.
    • Also Raiden - in order to unlock him, you have to beat him in a fight in Seido only available once a week after beating Konquest Mode. It's in plain sight, but you can have the fight before finishing the game and get a different reward. For that matter, for this fight he uses his Deadly Alliance model (as do many non-unlockable characters in Konquest), which is completely different from his in-game one.
  • The Metal Gear Solid series is usually very good at averting these - even the more obscure puzzles can be answered by your support team in-game if you can't figure them out. However, have fun trying to assemble a full team of special characters on Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. They range from One Game for the Price of Two bonuses (beat the game with Metal Gear AC!D, AC!D2 or Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel on your memory card to automatically pick up Zero and have a chance at picking up Teliko and Venus) to Self-Imposed Challenge rewards (beat the game very quickly, get high medical stat and max out technical stat/beat the Boss Rush minigame to pick up Cunningham, Ursula/Elisa and Gene) to obscenely obscure rescue tasks which require going to totally unrelated areas at times you are usually not given an indication for. Raikov is the easiest, but he does necessitate dumping a spy unit in an area which has no plot importance at a time when you have other things to concentrate on, and to add insult to injury, in order to get him, you have to partake in the mission immediately after getting the spy report or else the mission is labelled as a failure with no chance of ever attempting it before you even attempt the mission. Para-Medic requires you to return to the radio mast after completing the malaria sidequest, and then to complete all your spy jobs (even ones begging for you to collect useless items!) until she appears in the hospital. Sigint is a little easier, but requires you to have picked up Para-Medic, and you have to avoid the enemy or else the resulting alert will cause him to take evasive maneuvers. Sokolov requires an insane fetch-quest: For starters, around the same time you unlock the Raikov recruiting mission, you get a spy message requesting that you investigate Metal Gear parts, which ends with a phone call from Ghost. Fortunately, unlike the Raikov mission, there is no deadline, so you can accomplish this after the Raikov mission. Afterwards, after beating Cunningham, you need to interrogate some soldiers at the silo entrance, and then interrogate some soldiers at the power substation, and finally backtrack to the silo entrance. Finally, you get a spy report that mentions someone locked in the computer room and you get Sokolov. Absolute queen of the pile, though, is EVA. To pick her up, you need to interrogate random enemies, open an unmarked locker in a completely unrelated area which has a number written inside, refrain from capturing certain enemies which it is beneficial to capture, contact her, clear out the airport, wait an in-game week, go to the cell in the basement area of the Western Wilderness, and then she'll join you. You need her to recruit Ocelot, and, to add insult to injury, she's not an especially good character in terms of stats.
    • Similarly, the guide for MPO does mention that there are attack dogs at the Hospital Claymore Mission. What it doesn't tell you is that those dogs only appear during Extreme mode.
    • An inversion also occurs in the same game: The strategy guide details a spy mission regarding the Maintenance crew members where you need to recruit some and interrogate an officer. The problem is, such a mission isn't even found in the game.
    • In the original Metal Gear Solid, Baker tells Snake to check "the back of the CD case" in order to learn Meryl's frequency. He literally means the CD case that the game came packaged with, which shows a conversation between Snake and Meryl in one screenshot.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater pulls a fake death prank during the "battle" with the Sorrow. Having waded up a river filled with the souls of guards you've killed, reaching the corpse at the end kills you, bringing up the familiar game over screen. The solution requires you to bring up the inventory and use the "revive" pill inside Snake's tooth that is actually supposed to be used after swallowing a fake death pill.
      • This one has an extremely subtle hint in that you are never allowed to un-equip the revive pill, even though you can remove the fake death pill. This is probably supposed to tell very Genre Savvy players that the pills will have a mandatory use some time in the game, though how many people understood the hint may not be much. Though it may not even be a hint at all considering where the pills are on Snake's body. He can't remove them even if he wanted to.
      • The Sorrow himself also provides a very subtle hint via his Boss Banter. He tells Snake that he needs to "wake up," and that he needs to return to the land of the living. You can also use the pill at any time during the fight, and by trying to see what items you have, you will notice it's the only one.
    • Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker has dozens of hidden weapons and unlockable levels with no mention in game as to how to find them. This includes its own final boss fight, and many of these were also neglected to be mentioned in the manual.
  • The NES version of |Metal Gear turned the Basement floor shared by Buildings No. 1 and No. 2 into a separate building with two entrances, both preceded by a maze area. The correct path in both mazes is "west, west, north, west", but none of your radio contacts or any of the prisoners you'll save will ever tell you this. At the time the game came out, there was no internet, so anyone who wanted to look up the solution would have to search for it in a video game magazine (such as Nintendo Power) and find out which issue featured the correct path.
    • Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX required the player to either know Morse code or use the manual on two occasions to input frequency numbers required to proceed with the game. Also, the first time Campbell changes his frequency, he tells you to look at the back of the game's packaging. Unfortunately, Konami forgot to put this frequency in some versions of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
    • The original |Metal Gear had many rooms hidden behind unhinted breakable walls. The only way to find these is to punch the wall until you find a spot that sounds different.
  • In the second level of Flashback, there's a jump you need to make that requires a specific maneuver you won't use often. You need to start running, hold the run button, and let go of the directional pad.
  • Karateka does this with the ending. Once you defeat the final boss, you can leave the room and find the Damsel in Distress you came to rescue. To properly finish the game, you have to drop out of your fighting stance and run into her arms. If you approach her in your fighting stance, which most first-time players do after such a long struggle, she will kick you in the face, killing you instantly. Makes you wonder why she couldn't just kick her way to freedom...
  • The Commodore 64 tie-in Batman (of the film which featured Jack Nicholson as the Joker) has one of these right at the end of the game. The final boss, the Joker of course, climbs a ladder leading to an escape craft as soon as you arrive on the roof. If you've seen the film, you'll know what to do - fire the Batrope. If you haven't, consider the fact that no other enemy in the game is hurt by the Batrope and the game gives you literally two seconds to figure out what to do before he escapes.
    • The Amstrad port at least solved it: Since you could kill the mooks with the BaTrope too.
  • Luigis Mansion has a pretty notorious example of this, in the Blue Ghosts and Gold Mice. They drop a large amount of treasure when captured, so you need them for higher ranks at the end. But after being Lost Forever, they can be refound during the Blackout near the end of the game. Problem: The game only tells you to capture the ghost Uncle Grimmly and turn on the switch in the Breaker Room, so there's no indication they appear. Problem 2: About half ONLY appear during the blackout. When it's over, those are Lost Forever. Problem 3: Luigi is being chased by an infinite hoarde of blood thirsty ghosts during the blackout, hence exploring the far off rooms many of these ghosts are found in is near suicidal.
    • Another thing. The coin values required for an A rank were raised significantly from about 100 000 000 to about 150 000 000 Gold in the PAL version. Hence to get an A rank there, you have to beat the Hidden Mansion, which itself is more difficult in said region. Possible other problem is this not being in many guides, due to the versions used for those having a far less difficult Hidden Mansion mode.
  • Ecco the Dolphin, multiple times. Especially notable is battling the Asterite in the past - there's a specific way to beat it, but the game never tells you what this is or even gives any hints.
    • Also in the second game, when you come back from the good future you've got to rescue some orcas. You're supposed to follow one of the babies to the exit, but it's glitchy and disappears if you lose sight of it. The presence of a hilarious glitch nearby (baby orcas rain from the sky if you echolocate at the upper left part of the stage) just complicated things.
    • There's a certain level in the first Ecco where an item you need to progress cannot be seen on Ecco's sonar map. It's one of the prehistoric levels. The glyph is hidden inside a volcano.
  • Some of the armour, gems, and locations of the elite enemies in The Legend Of Spyro: Dawn Of The Dragon. GRAHHH.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: In the Battle for Bikini Bottom and The Movie games, socks and treasure chests are extremely hard to find without a guide. These items are required for a full 100%. And in The Movie, the last treasure chests are found while Shell City is dead ahead. Who the HELL would guess that hitting TOASTERS that appear to be BACKGROUND OBJECTS will give you a treasure chest? Even worse that you need to hit three toasters, and two of them are very hard to find and require the sonic wave guitar. Luckily you don't need all treasure chests for 100% so its more of a Bragging Rights Reward.
  • The final boss of Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force manages to be both an example and subversion at the same time. The boss itself requires no special puzzles and you don't need Attack Its Weak Point, you only need to shoot it. A lot. Unfortunately not only does it not react at all to being hit, it can also absorb more damage than you actually have ammo for, making it look like it actually is a Guide Dang It.
  • The catastrophe that was Star Trek Legacy does not even tell you how to control your ship without sitting through a long, laborious, and boring tutorial... which doesn't even tell you anything beyond the basics of direction, engines, and shooting.
  • Level 9 in Transformers: Convoy no Nazo is a maze similar to certain fortresses in Super Mario Bros., but here, there's no indication that you've taken the right path (i.e. no Endless Corridor looping) until the end of the level, where you get booted back to the start if you took the wrong path. It's also a lot more complex than SMB. I wonder how anyone figured it out before the days of the Internet and hacking.
  • Assassin's Creed II had a side-mission to find and solve puzzles hidden throughout the game. While the first 95% of them are moderate to hard in difficulty, the last few puzzles are exceedingly difficult and obscure, replacing regular modern number systems with antiquated representations of numbers such as Morse code.
    • You won't get very far without either a guide or you just know how to count outside of base ten.
    • Good luck trying to find all the flags on your own in the first two games. There are 100 in each city, as well as another 100 in the massive "Kingdom" area. They are often hidden very well and even visiting every area will likely leave many hidden. Even with a guide it can be a difficult and time consuming process.
  • The "Very Obvious Secret" in Pickory stumped even experienced players who had previously found every other secret item. Oddly enough, several new players found it almost immediately. The solution? Jump off the title screen before starting a game
  • The Bubble Bobble series in general.
    • Any special item in Bubble Bobble has very obscure conditions to make it appear, so much that the many players might think they are completely random. For example, to make the yellow (rapid-fire) candy appear, you must jump 51 times. To get the potions, you have to fall through the level a certain number of times. Many of the special items are also triggered by collecting a certain number of another special item. It's insane. Take a look at this to see the conditions.
    • Bubble Bobble Double Shot for the DS seems easy enough, until you get to Level 81. Then things get tough, and by 83 suddenly turn to a GUIDE DANG IT, if you're playing by yourself. That level is really designed for multiple players, who all need their own copy of the game to play.
  • In the NES Terminator game, to complete the Police Station level, you must counterintuitively toss a box into the middle of the large gap to create a platform. How did anyone figure this out in those days?
  • The original Strider for the NES has several, but an egregious one early in the game is the water passage in Egypt, where the water damages you unless you have the Aqua Boots, but to get them you must Wall Jump up a shaft, a difficult to pull off technique unhinted at in the game.
  • In Viewtiful Joe, there's a boss fight against Bruce the Shark . If he catches Joe, he chomps down on him, shaking him from side to side and taking of a heart every few seconds. The game doesn't tell you that you can wiggle the analog stick to get out of his mouth. It's Press X to Not Die without the prompt.
    • It doesn't tell you because frantic D-Pad/Analog movement is a ubiquitous method to breaking free of enemy grapples in pretty much every game ever.
      • Yes, but if they don't put the prompt, how do you even know you can break out of it in the first place?
    • Speaking of Viewtiful Joe, how many tries did it take you to beat Fire Leo? Come on, we're waiting.
  • Many of the Stray Beads in the PS2/Wii game Okami are like this.
    • Some of the animal feeding locations are like this too.
  • Many puzzles in the Tomb Raider series, particularly the Puzzle Boss fights.
    • One of the most Egregious examples was in the very first game. Most of the "secrets" were stashed in hard to spot but easy to reach areas, or were sitting obviously on ledges the route to which were difficult to see. Towards the end of the game, however, was one that was nigh on impossible to see because it was floating in the air on an invisible platform (the one and only single solitary invisible platform in the entire game), and required a massive leap of faith in exactly the right direction to reach.
    • The third game has two really bad Guide Dang It moments within two levels in a row. If the player chooses Nevada as their last choosable location, they will lose their weapons in the second mission. There is no way of knowing that you should have picked this location first because you can't get some of the weapons back. The next level, a guard sees you shortly into the level. If you don't kill him before he presses a button, he activates a laser that blocks off the MP5, one of the game's best weapons. There is no way to unactivate this laser.
      • Similarly, in Lud's Gate, you must kill a certain guard before he sees you, otherwise one of the secrets will be Lost Forever. The High Security Compound has two switches that both open a secret room much earlier in the level; if you throw both switches, it permanently closes.
  • Jak and Daxter has a jump that requires a roll before it, for extra length. This is mentioned in the tutorial of the second game, and then you only have to use it once in the entire game, with no indication. Otherwise, Jak just keeps jumping into a Dark Eco puddle, which kills him instantly.
  • In Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, retrieving all the hidden treasures is mostly simple (checking the sidepaths in any given area) - however, obtaining one treasure (in Chapter 9) requires you to swim up against a wall in an underground lake, aim your weapon upwards (at a point that has no handholds or accessibility), shoot the treasure and time your "action" button just as it falls past you - otherwise, it sinks in the water and is unobtainable.
    • And lets not forget Uncharted 2, where you can collect 100 artifacts plus an additional Strange Relic. Although the game counts this as artifact 101 of 100, it does not show up as a missed artifact during the chapter select screen, and it can be found in a level listed to have no artifacts, in a sewer down a manhole across the street from where Drake is making his way across some rooftops. You would have to jump down from the roof and go down an unobtrusive alleyway for no in-game reason to find the sewer holding this relic.
  • Batman: Arkham City has several puzzles that rely on the player's knowledge that an electrified remote Batarang can knock out fuseboxes, (most notably, in a plot-specific instance when you're breaking into the Joker's Steel Mill for the second time). The only problem is that you can't shoot those types of Batarangs - you have to electrify it with an outside source before hitting the fusebox with it. This is required for 100% Completion, but it isn't immediately noticeable unless you have a guide.
    • There another instance of this involving another fusebox, only this one has no conviniently exposed wires anywhere near it. Naturally, after you figure out how to destroy rest of them, you're confused on what the hell you're supposed to do with this one, when the answer is to simply aim through a hole in front of it and just shoot it with REC, which would normally be something you'd use in any other game to do something like this if not for the obstacle course involved with every other fuse box.
  • Iji does very well at averting this, for the most part. Logs will give weapon combinations and secrets to destroy tough enemies, and dying to a boss will give you a Player Nudge on how to defeat it. However, saving Dan from Asha is nearly impossible without a guide. Earlier in the level, you find a mine that you can plant on a teleport destination to destroy it when someone tries to go through. A little while later, you enter a room you have to defend from Komato soldiers. The obvious solution (and Mission Control even suggests it) is to use the mine on one of the two teleport pads. To save Dan, however, you have to hold on to the mine and place it on the pad right before the end of the level, which breaks the trap you would otherwise be caught in.
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