That One Level/Video Games/Wide Open Sandbox

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Just because you can go anywhere and do what you want doesn't guarantee you'll survive, especially if you "accidentally" find your way into these levels.

Grand Theft Auto

  • Grand Theft Auto III has a mission in which you're given the crappiest, slowest, worst handling car in the entire game and told to go to another island and shoot up dozens of members of an enemy faction. Anyone who's ever played a GTA game can tell you it's hard to even get to your destination without wrecking the car you're currently driving; now imagine having to get there, deal with a good amount of armed gang members and get back to where you started, all with a car that's ridiculously easy to flip over (flipping over a car in GTA irretrievably destroys it) and with the police relentlessly chasing you all the time. Oh, did I mention you cannot under any circumstance leave the car? And to top it all off, when (not if) you wreck the car, the goon that's traveling with you is revealed to be its owner, and he and his pal get pissed and proceed to shoot you full of holes.
    • The ambulance optional mission is ridiculously difficult. You have to collect all 78 patients necessary for the infinite run unlock in one go. You cannot fail after so many patients and build up to a total, as you can with the fire truck, police car or taxi optional missions. The ambulance is also one of the crappiest vehicles in the game: it handles like a brick, can take very little damage, and tips if you so much as turn a corner at half-speed. Accidentally running over any patient forces you to restart, and the cops refuse to give you even this much free reign--ding a cop car and you are still fair game, humanitarian mission or not. Sure, it is optional, but that infinite run is very, very useful, even if you are not after 100% Completion. Expect to spend lots of time on it.
    • "Big 'N' Veiny". Picking up magazines while using a none-too-good and rather unstable van, over a long and timed route. You start with 20 seconds on the timer and each magazine adds only two seconds. It does not help that you can lose the trail briefly and waste valuable time trying to pick it up again. Sure, there's a "shortcut" method involving pushing the van all the way to the end so you can kill the eventual target and spare yourself the trouble, but it is real time-consuming.
    • In the final mission, "The Exchange", you are stripped of all your weapons and dropped in a courtyard outnumbered and outgunned by Cartel members. Then you have to negotiate the wharf, which is a sniper alley, followed by shooting down a helicopter with a rocket launcher from a long distance away. If the chopper gets away, you start the whole thing over again.
    • The "Espresso 2 Go" mission. Nearly impossible to hit all the espresso stands in time unless you look for them all first(they show up on the map when you see them), very tiring. Even more tedious finding a good route.
    • Pretty much impossible if you do it after a certain story mission which turns the Mafia hostile, causing them to kill you with two or three shotgun blasts as you slowly drag the van up the hill into their territory.
  • The race against Hilary in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, on so many different levels it is utterly infuriating. This one little mission has spawned countless pages of text on GameFAQs explaining every theory and method in this world to beat it. To give some background, you're setting up a back heist and you need a good driver. No doubt you are one, but for the purpose of the story it needs to be someone other than you. That someone is Hillary, a very effeminate man with abandonment issues who insists that the only way he'll work for you is if you beat him in a race. Sounds fair, right? Let us count the ways it screws you over.
    • Hillary gets a supercharged muscle car. You get with a puny little family sedan. No, you don't have a say in the manner. You are driving the sedan. Period. There is no way in hell you can win a straight race, because your car is in every way inferior. You have to cheat, i.e. knock Hillary off the road, to win.
    • Not two blocks in, the cops get on your tail for street racing. And only your tail. They don't even see Hillary.
    • Due to game mechanics, your are further punished for getting too far ahead of Hillary. Normal traffic is dynamically spawned within 100 meters or so of your car. If the distance between your car and Hillary's is great enough, you get bogged down in traffic while he has a clear road with no such obstacles, either allowing him to catch up (if he's behind you) or get yet further ahead (if he's in front of you). Either way, much hair has been torn out.
    • And there's a glitch where you might fall straight through a bridge just before you cross the finish line. Hoo, boy.
    • The worst thing about this mission is that it doesn't even make sense. Hilary is supposed to be the best driver around; that's why you want him. So why would you have to race him first? If he only works for people that can beat him, he's obviously NOT the best driver. If you hire a plumber, you also don't have to prove to him that you're better at plumbing than he is, because if you were, you wouldn't need him. Abandonment issues are no excuse. This guy has effectively locked himself out of his own profession by personally ensuring that he will look incompetent to anyone that hires him.
    • The real insult to that mission is that, despite the effort you go through trying to recruit him, Hilary ultimately proves to be completely useless for the heist. He's there to drive your getaway car, but all he ends up doing is getting shot and killed, so you have to make the escape yourself.
    • I'm not sure how how entirely fair calling the Sentinel a puny little sedan is, but I don't get why he got a Sabre GT. I mean, if he was going to be using a taxi, he should have raced with it! And the fact you have to drive there and he gets himself shot up by SWAT are some of the lowest points of the game. But, what can you expect from an optional mission in a 2003 game.
      • It's technically optional, but everyone suffers through it anyway because you get $30,000 for the bank robbery, and $10,000 a day for completing the night club asset missions. Money that provides for powerful weapons and a comfortable cushion in the final mission where Sonny Forelli's men start robbing you blind while you chase after Lance to kill him.
  • But possibly the really most jerk-ass mission in all Vice City is "Death Row". See, you have found that it was Díaz who spoiled the drug transaction upon your arrival at Vice City, so you are quietly drawing closer to him to time the perfect moment to take him out. However Lance can't stand working for him anymore because he was the one responsable for his brother's death, and so he attempts to kill him, but fails, is kidnapped and brought to the city's dump to be tortured to death. Right after you are given the mission, a bar appears on the screen indicating Lance's life which is diminishing, and you have to dash to the dumps (note that you start the mission at the very night club mentioned above, and the city's dump is across the other island of Vice City), break through a car's barricade blocking the dump's entrance, gundown everyone there to make Lance's escape safe (and take into account that you are being fired with fully automatic weapons from all sides, even from above in the dump's cranes!), and then take him to the Downtown's hospital while sports cars keep pushing and chasing you. After you finish the mission, you are given no money. You would indeed desire to have Lance killed.
    • While you don't get the money for mission itself, you actually get quite a lot of money from Diaz mooks if you kill them. Probably the only redeeming thing from that mission
  • 'Checkpoint Charlie' from the same game. A checkpoint race where you need every single second to do the course... and you have to do it in a boat, which means that you can never predict how you'll come off of a wave, or how you'll land after a jump. Not something you'd ever want to do again.
    • There are two missions with toy helicopters. The first is tolerable, because the helicopter is only slightly awkward in its controls and you're not up against too much resistance. The optional one, a checkpoint race, has controls so damn sensitive that you'd plow into the ground if you so much as pressed forward. You literally have to tap the keys as light and as fast as possible just to make controlled movements, and it's still the most awkward thing in the entire game. Even the full-sized news chopper isn't as bad, and it's the worst of the four helicopters.
      • Pffh. Even on the PlayStation 2, those levels had migraine inducing controls. It's a wonder that anyone completed those levels without wanting to break the game disc. You think the developers learned from their misfire, and decided NOT to create MORE annoying and ungodly difficult flying missions for San Andreas... NOPE.
  • Most of the missions in Vice City Stories. Boomshine Blowout, High Wire, the ATV race... it's maddening, man!
    • "Jive Drive", which must wholly be blamed on the PSP's lack of a second analog stick. After a hair-raising drive to an abandoned lot, being shot at all the way there (thankfully this isn't terrible as your car has decent armor), you must survive a gauntlet of fire on you and your brother. Lance is useless with a gun and if he dies, WHOOPS, start over. The fact that you can't get a clear look around you with the PSP's limited control scheme is the main reason you will fail this mission.
  • The races in Grand Theft Auto IV were pretty awful too, especially "No. 1" since you couldn't cheat your way out of it (calling Brucie to cancel a race before crossing the yellow arrow yourself guarantees you first place).
  • Flight school in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Hours upon hours upon god-damned hours at failing to pull off perfect barrel rolls and loop-de-loops, and it's necessary to continue the game.
    • The worst part is that flight school starts off deceptively easy. The first two challenges involve simply taking off and landing the plane, respectively, and they're both really easy. But on the third challenge, flight school takes a steep nosedive into the depths of Hell. It's "Circle Airstrip", where you have to take off and fly from corona to corona, all while you're most likely wrestling with the wonky plane controls. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to fly through the damn coronas - which are rather small targets - nigh-perfectly. And when you finish that one, guess what the next challenge is? You have to do the exact same thing, only when you're done you have to land the plane, which is incredibly easy for beginners to screw up. What fun! You CAN make all the flight school challenges a bit easier by just switching to first-person view, but it's still a huge pain in the ass.
  • Driving School is not much better compared to Flight School, despite that the school is not necessary for progressing in the storyline, but it could be a nightmare for those going after 100% completion. The first four challenges aren’t exactly that difficult, but then it hits you with Burn and Lap: you’re in a Banshee and you must drive 5 laps around a very compact rectangular course. If that isn't hard enough already, in The 90°, you must fishtail your Banshee into a parallel parking position, brake timing and throttle control is crucial for completing this challenge.
    • But the final challenge, City Slicking, is the one that takes the cake. You're tasked with driving from the school to a showroom across town , without stopping or damaging the car too much, in under 2 minutes. What makes this challenge so difficult? First off, you’re now out of the school ground’s confinements and out on the streets of San Fierro, so you'll have to dodge endless bouts of traffic along the way, worst of all are cars that change lane and make turns at intersections without warning. Secondly, that car you're given, the Super GT, is one of the worst handling cars in the entire game, taking a corner just a bit too quickly will cause you to loose control and spin. It's also extremely fragile, so much as driving up a hill a bit too fast will dent the front bumper. All in all, this mission will lead to a LOT of broken controllers.
  • The New Model Army mission which is the remote control mission from Hell. A form of escort mission where you control a helicopter ferrying about things, having to precision drop items and bombs, all in a tight time limit.
    • It's easier if you completely ignore Zero from the start and make all the enemy vehicles asplode.
      • At least you cannot be busted or wasted doing this mission.
    • Zero's first mission was truly frustrating--for a while, it made even the next two seem manageable--in that you stand on a roof, shooting down model bomber planes with a minigun so they don't get a chance to destroy Zero's transmitters. These little buggers just keep coming from every single direction and worse still, our pacifist "friend" Zero simply won't stop whining at you.
      • Note than in PC Zero's first mission is really easy.
    • And those are cake compared to Supply Lines. You have to fly an RC plane around San Fierro gunning down five couriers that can spread through out the entire city if you don't know the exact routes they take and then land the plane on Zero's store. The catch is you have a ridiculously low amount of fuel to do it with.
      • That mission's actually a lot easier in the post-Hot Coffee editions of the game. The problem with the original is that your fuel acted more as a time meter, i.e. draining even when you weren't accelerating. In later editions, this is fixed so that fuel is consumed only while you're holding the gas button, making the mission much more manageable (but still by no means easy).
    • And how about the mission where you have to act as some sort of air pirate and jump from your plane to another one in order to kill four mafia assassins? It's not just the difficulty of the mission (flight school is way more difficult) but the sheer ridiculousness of not choosing to just gun them down after they land. And also the minutes you spend flying until you get to the place where you intercept the incoming airplane.
    • The one where the government guys land at your airstrip, and you have to drive up the ramp of their plane as it's taking off. All while dodging the guys still on the airstrip and the barrels falling out of the plane. The barrels fall right in your path, but if your speed drops even a tiny little bit to avoid them you won't catch up to the plane. Gaahh!
      • The easy way to do this is just drive off to the side and cut back over at the last moment.
    • "All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!"
      • Which is actually an easy mission once you figure out one thing, specifically leave some space between you and the train, so your passenger can shoot the Mooks on top. Until you have figured this out, though, expect to play this mission several dozen, incredibly frustraing, times.
        • Good it compensated us by making Smoke return the favor as we become the one shooting in Just Business, at least we are not as a bad shot as Smoke was. Motorcycles and fat folks don't mix.
        • Another solution is jump on the train yourself and finish off the guys. Just make sure you have shotgun or AK since these dudes have absurdly high HP. It takes 4 headshots WITH A SHOTGUN to kill each of them. Apparently Smoke is not that bad a shot.
        • Hell just any mission where you are the driver and the passenger is in a motorcycle is That One Level for San Andreas, most of them are bad shots.
    • Don't forget the two Wu Zi Mu races in a car that has basically no traction on the dirt tracks that make up most of the courses. Unlike Zero's missions, these are not optional and definitely reduce San Andreas' replayability. The second race made matters worse by not giving you the liberty to choose your own car, instead you're stuck with a ZR-350 which has a tendency to oversteer and bounce off uneven surfaces. Also, the track you're racing on is simply the previous track in reverse, meaning that there's one shortcut you can no longer take.
    • Flight School's not so bad by comparison, once you realize that N.O.E.'s not far off. A long flying mission wherein you have to keep very low to the ground over hilly terrain to keep from being spotted on radar as you fly halfway across the state. And then you have to fly back again - still under the radar.
      • Hilly, forested terrain. And to make it worse, if you so much as clip a tree (which is easy to do) your plane catches fire and explodes, leaving you miles from the airfield every time you fail.
      • There is one way to make "N.O.E." a little more bearable. Instead of going straight to the target, just fly out over the ocean and go around all the mountains and trees and buildings until you get to the corona. Get back out over the ocean until you get to the airstrip and land. Still annoying, but far less frustrating than doing it the normal way.
    • "Robbing Uncle Sam". If the sloppy handling of the forklift doesn't screw you over, it's Ryder's horrendous aim, causing him to die before killing a single guard. I found myself constantly getting of the forklift just to keep him from dying.
      • That mission becomes a cake-walk when/if you realize that you can access the garage and forklift before opening the gate for Ryder. Just organize the crates so you can quickly load in one after the other, let Ryder in, and you'll be finished in no time.
  • There're two missions from Catalina which qualifies.
    • The first is Tank Commander in which you'll have to drive into the red marker outside of the Dillimore gas station to trigger a cutscene. Afterwards, you'll get in the cab with Catalina and back it directly into the trailer to attach it to the cab. Catalina knows of a buyer in Flint County, which is quite a ways away from Dillimore. You have to be very careful when driving the tanker, because too sharp of a turn will detach the trailer which results in a mission failure. The two gas station attendants will pursue you and try to destroy the tanker; the trailer will explode if the health bar the top-right quarter of the screen reaches zero.
    • The other is Local Liquor Store, primarly because the quadbike you're driving is very sluggish and difficult to control. And since this mission is part of the earlier stages of the storyline, your driving skill will most likely be shoddy (despite being classified as a bike, the quad’s overall control ties in with your car driving skill). In this one, you are tracking down some guys (four of them) who robbed a liquor store, each of the robbers holds a briefcase full of money, so your job on the quadbike is to get Catalina close enough to gun them down. You can use your own SMG if you're carrying one, otherwise you're limited to driving. If the robbers get too far ahead the mission is a failure. You'll have to be especially careful on dirt roads, because if the Quad tips over, it will be nearly impossible to catch up with the bandits. The trick is to bring your own vehicle of choice to the mission by parking it in the red mission marker, and as soon as the cutscene ends, ditch the Quad and get back into your vehicle.
  • Any of Maria's missions in Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories. 90% of the time, the missions consist of her making you help her buy drugs, the buyers trying to screw you over in some way, and then you have to chase them down on a motorcycle. Keep in mind, you have to go top speed to keep up with them, which increases the likelihood that you'll crash into some other jackass who comes out of nowhere, which wastes even more time than usual because, again, you have to do so with a motorcycle, and when you crash into something, you are sent flying off of it.
  • Any of the missions in Grand Theft Auto IV where you need to chase someone in a vehicle and gun them down at the same time. The shooting-while-driving mechanic is well implemented; it's just really hard to track your target effectively while avoiding the obstacles inherent to driving at top speed. And you'll always have to drive at top speed. Complicating this is that half of the missions require you to kill your target while they're still driving and the other half have scripted events where the target gets out of their vehicle and goes on foot (and they're invulnerable until they do this)--and the game usually doesn't give you any indication of which it's going to be.
    • The motorcycle chase ones are the worst, because you'll usually fall off your bike from the slightest brush against any obstacle (at which point they'll invariably escape by the time you can get back on.) I nearly broke a controller on the mission "I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots, And Your Motorcycle," in which you have to chase and gun down a professional stunt cyclist mob guy who starts the mission with a block's worth of lead on you, while the game throws every conceivable obstacle at you, up to and including trucks overturning right in front of you. I finally got it after I managed to shoot out his back tire (while this was a recommended tactic, it only happened out of sheer luck.)
    • You're forgetting the mission in which you must chase two motorcyclists through a subway tunnel. Eventually they split up, and don't forget how many trains are coming at you.
    • After completing the "Ruff Rider" mission Weazel News chatter on the radio reports something like 'two men on motorcycles chasing through the streets'. To which the answer was 'Sod that'. Just jack a nearby car, crush the biker under your wheels and chuck a grenade into the mix. Kaboom. Ker-ching'.
      • Really? It was supposed to be a bike chase? This troper always assumed you had to use a car, and that's why it took him 15 tries to beat it. :(
    • Speaking of Ruff Rider, the mission right after that, Undress to Kill, can be extremely annoying for beginners, especially if you don't know tricks like knifing the first strip club manager. Not to mention it's possible to get a Game Breaking Bug where Playboy won't open up the next mandatory mission, The Holland Play, after completing Undress to Kill, making the story unwinnable. Fun!
    • Any of Phil Bell's missions, but Catch the Wave in particular. Holy shit. Having to fight a couple dozen Russian drug runners with automatic weapons in a cramped building with only one entrance is bad enough...but it's a fucking Escort Mission on top of that, and Phil happens to be a Leeroy Jenkins who frequently gets himself killed. A common strategy is position the truck in a certain way so Phil gets stuck in the door when he gets out, keeping him safe until you clean out the building.
  • The Snow Storm is really annoying, too. You have to fight your way into an abandoned hospital with a dozen or so gang members in it in order to get some cocaine. That isn't all that bad, as you can take cover or flank them with a ladder, but the confined spaces make guessing when you can even hit an enemy and when you can't ridiculous. But that's not the bad part - after you get the cocaine, police special forces (NOOSE) storm the building, so you have to defeat a bunch of elite mooks all on your own (hope you got enough ammo). That, however, is not the worst part, either. After that, you must get out of the only exit while there is a police car with several cops in it coming every few seconds, they practically respawn. You must push through their lines and get to a car, after which you are chased by the police at a three star wanted level (which means, they aggressively ram you, keep shooting your car and have a helicopter) that you must get rid of. It's ANNOYING.
    • One more wrinkle: the mission takes place on Charge Island, so assuming you get to your getaway car, there's only one bridge off,with heavy traffic going out and cops coming in. A traffic jam is highly likely. The saving grace is that once you get off the island, you can usually outrun the cops on the extra-long north-south streets of Algonquin.
    • The worst part of this mission is the ending. We find out that Michelle, Niko's first girlfriend, is working for the goverment and was the undercover cop the entire time and takes the coke from Niko and thus dumps him. Not only you go through a lot of trouble to get the coke, but the first girlfriend in the game flat-out tells that she was undercover. This made entire effort you put into the missions pointless.
  • "Holland Nights", which is annoying for the exact same reasons "Snow Storm" is. You have to make your way through a project building to get to a target on the roof, all while fighting off enemies. This part isn't that bad if you have good weapons, plenty of ammo and full health and armor on Niko, and they do give you a few health packs throughout the mission. But after finding your target (and either killing him or letting him go), guess what? You've got a 3-star wanted rating to shake, and have to escape the building while fighting off cops. And then, you have to lose the wanted rating while those damn pigs just torment you to no end. And if you die, you have to do the whole long mission again. RAGE.


Other examples

  • Driving cars in Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven is rather awkward, due to their erratic controlling--realistic, because the game's set in 1930's when you didn't exactly have great manouverability in cars. This doesn't really bother normally, but then the game throws in a level where you have to win a race with such a car in order to advance the story. Despite the developers releasing a patch where you could choose the race's difficulty level, the racing bit still causes very uncomfortable memories for many.
  • The final mission on Driver: Parallel Lines It's pretty reasonable until you have to chase down Corrigan, first you have a strict time limit to escape from a tunnel after Corrigan blows it up, not only do you go very fast while narrowly avoiding falling debris, but seemingly every single car is actively trying to drive right into your path to slow you down. Then you have to chase after and shoot down Corrigan's helicopter, which isn't a problem if you have plenty of SMG ammo(it also helps if you max RPG ammo, but it's pretty tricky to time it just right so that the rockets hit him) but the heavy traffic can really slow you down, and you'll fail if you take too long to catch up, and later on Corrigan flies over areas with lots of bumps and hills where it's real easy to accidentally flip your car over and fail the mission, so you basically have to fire RPGs and SMGs at him nonstop, hoping that you'll get lucky and be able to finish him off quickly before he flies over the rough terrain areas.
  • Sosa's mansion, the final level of Scarface the World Is Yours. Three bosses, a ridiculous number of Mooks armed with the same weapon Tony gets to use and no checkpoints. Sure, the first one is an Anticlimax Boss... but that bunch of Mooks you need to kill to get to him will reappear if you let Tony die and are booted back to the start. The second one is fairly okay if you've still enough health on Tony, but the third and final boss is effectively Implacable compared to the others before. Alejandro Sosa takes multiple chest shots from the otherwise-one-hit-kill Desert Eagle and can dish it out as good as he can get.
    • Put your guns away and fight Sosa hand to hand. He doesn't retaliate.
    • Delivering heroin once you have a good number of fronts can be a harrowing experience. The first few aren't so bad, but every delivery ratchets up your Gang Meter by a goodly amount until your car is under constant fire by Max Mad-style street rovers and every front you try to deliver to will be under attack by a small army. All the money you make is kept in a tally until the delivery sequence is complete. If you die, not only is all that money gone, but so is the supply of heroin you tried to deliver, which cost a small fortune or tedious sidequest to get in the first place.
  • Sibrand's assassination in Assassin's Creed. Insta-death water. Jumping from pole to pole over said water with mechanics that don't work very well.
    • Go the other way, through the land strip. You just have to kill a bunch of soldiers and make sure you make the last group of templars come at you by killing one of them with a throwing knife. After that, when you go for Sibrand, he'll flee towards you.
    • And the level leading up to Robert de Sable, which involves nothing but mowing down legions of soldiers again and again, is plain dull. Historically King Richard went back to Europe because he didn't have enough troops to hold the city he'd just captured--now we know why.
    • Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has almost every mission where the Full Synchronisation requirement is no detection or damage. What really makes this annoying is that simply going back to the last checkpoint via death will not reset the Full-Synch requirement back to its fulfillable state - you have to restart the whole bloody memory. And Ubisoft didn't bother fixing this for Revelations, well done guys! But I digress. The part in Sequence Eight where you need to get to the courtyard in the Basilica di San Pietro within a time limit is also very annoying due to its Full-Synch requirement of not killing anyone, combined with the guards getting on your case with abnormal speed.
    • The Bonfire of the Vanities DLC for Assassin's Creed II has a number of these, but the Port Authority mission is by far the worst. It's yet another case where being spotted by a guard is an auto fail, and the assassination target is on a ship that's crawling with them, including several that patrol. The general strategy involves hiding on the edge of the ship and yoinking them off one by one, but a fair amount of tricky timing (and luck) is involved.
  • The final bossfight in Prototype: Giant monster with tons of health, your normal attacks are useless, the military are constantly shooting and bombing you while you fight, and the only way to get health is to stop and grab a human to eat. Oh yeah, and you're on a timer. Good luck!
    • The Stolen Body. Specifically, the part where you have to hold off a bunch of Infected and Hunters and keep them from breaking through a (rather tough, but far from indestructible) plate-glass door into a secure lab. Not so hard, right? Except that you have to fight them without any of your combat powers, reducing you to your regular punches, kicks, and throws, as well as the few guns left lying around. What's worse, if you fight right next to the glass (which you will, since most of the enemies will pretty much make a beeline right for it if they're left alone for more than half a second), your own attacks can end up damaging it as well. Have fun!
      • Not that hard a mission as all enemies except hunters can be grabbed and insta-killed by being consumed (which gives you health on top of that). That combined with some of the crowd clearing moves makes the mobs easy. And the game gives you a ton of machine guns and rocket launchers to deal with the hunters. Oh, and trucks to throw at them too.
    • Rescuing Dana, specifically the part where you have to escort the thermobaric tank around the infected part of the city. You'd think the military would be glad to have a Nigh Invulnerable unstoppable Badass that is clearing everything in their path for them... But no. There can be hunters, runners, even a leader hunter tearing up their armour and they STILL go out of their way to attack you.
      • Yes folks, you read right. This is the first escort mission in the history of escort missions where the forces you are trying to protect will attack you, and only you, at the expense of nearly everything else.
      • You can always disguise yourself as a Marine and drive the tank yourself, as long as you don't graze your guards with the giant fireball cannon. Yes, this is an escort mission where, possibly, the units you're guarding will attack each other.
    • The Altered World: This has to be the most annoying level of all. Let's summarize: you have to use the detector hacking skill (which you will never use again), the countdown is like, five seconds, The correct numbers appear too slow, making hacking the last two detectors depend on luck, You can't destroy the detectors, 'cause the mission fails if you do, the area is swarming with baddies that can also damage the detector (with the same result) and to top it all off: The detectors themselves send strike-teams on your ass if you fail to hack them on time.
    • Trying to fill out the Web of Intrigue pits you against the games most nefarious enemy. It is an enemy who has been against you since nearly the first mission. He has made you miserable for many a stage, but with the last few Web Of Intrigue missions, this foe is relentless, cruel, and merciless. This enemy? THE FREAKIN' TIMER!!! You have to cross the city multiple times in less than two minutes to take out the target. Oh, and many of them will be on ground level, in hostile territory, where enemies WILL kill them with you less than an inch away. And even if you get to the final guy at the last second, since it takes you several seconds to "digest" the target unless you manage a stealth kill, then you still can and will fail. Even on easy mode, the time limits are a constant, and it's nearly impossible to pull off these missions even WITH the maximum speed, jump, and glide upgrades. Have fun, tropers!
    • The one mission where you have to lure out Elizabeth Greene, and in order to do that, you have to defend a small bloodtox pumper from a HORDE of leader hunters, at least two hydras, and soldiers firing stray bullets that damage the vehicle by accident, and if you die (which is extremely likely, regardless of having both the strongest weapon mutation in the game, several guns at your disposal, and body armor that makes you even harder to kill than normal), or if the pumper gets destroyed, you have to start the whole thing over again. Need I mention that the Hunters have that annoying sprint-attack that knocks your ass across the area, or even kills you, along with a bunch of other annoying traits? I swear, the number of F-bombs I dropped would have leveled all of Russia.
  • "Anything for Trish" from In Famous. You have to protect a bus full of sick people for your Ex-Girlfriend, a paramedic who blames you for her sister's death, and whose trying to get them medical help at the hospital, while the ceiling is constantly being electrified to keep you powered up for the trip, so you don't have to get off to recharge. Seems good, but not only you have to fight literal legions of bad guys from one island to another, the bus moves at a snail's pace and to top it all off, from any corner an enemy can appear with an RPG. And happens every time, so before you even get to the end of the street you'll be in critical damage. And then there's the factor that you can get killed there yourself. The only way to finish this mission is to die over and over so that you advance from checkpoint to checkpoint until you're done. And that's before the bus gets thrown in the hospital's ceiling
    • Actually this trope is adverted for this as the bad guys don't attack the bus they attack you, leaving the bus doesn't end the game, and better yet getting off the bus stops it so you don't have to chase it down. So as soon as you see the enemies on your minimap, you just need to hop off the bus and kick all their butts before returning to recharge on top of the bus. It is easily possible to complete this mission (and a similar side mission) without any damage to the bus.
    • Played more straight with the Helicoptor mission, as you can't jump off.
  • The fucking dry ice mines in Brutal Legend. For starters, this is your first full battle against the Drowning Doom. And boy are they tough. Ratguts will absolutely destroy you if you so much as get near them. And unless you spam Fire Barons you will be steamrolled.
    • Alternatively, you can take advantage of the fact that the AI never defends the left flank and send two or three units of roadies to their stage. Takes a little time to get there, but once you do you'll win in about twenty seconds.
    • How about the LAST full battle against the Drowning Doom: the first Stage Battle at the Sea of Black Tears. An endless supply of large groups of Reapers being thrown at you, an insta-death force field, and a giant... tree thing. Results do occasionally vary, as many a player has beaten the game easily on Brutal difficulty, only to go back through on Normal and get so completely stuck on this battle that they have no choice but to give up. There are a few tricks, though, mostly involving flying solo around the side of the force field and attacking the enemy with your car or whatever creature summon you've managed to earn from the Hunter missions.
  • The Tribe Stage in Spore, when you take an aggressive stance and attempt to attack other tribes. A friendly stance makes it hideously easy.
    • Doing the tribal stage on aggressive isn't QUITE as bad if you bribe the other tribes first with a gift basket and then attack them one by one ensuring that you won't be attacked by the other tribes while you're away fighting. But there's still a ridiculous difference in difficulty between passive and aggressive.
  • One Saints Row 2 mission has you infiltrating a police station in order to hack their computer system. As designed, it's pretty straightforward: You walk in (disguised as repairpeople) and go straight for the computer room. Shaundi begins hacking, which sets off some sort of alarm, raising your police notoriety to four stars. This triggers waves of cops, whom you shoot. Eventually, Shaundi declares that she's finished and you escape in the conveniently-provided helicopter. This would not suck at all if a later patch hadn't given police helicopters (a number of which hang around the police station) the ability to shoot freaking guided missiles when your police notoriety is at four stars (which it is, unavoidably). Under these circumstances, you're doing well to even reach the conveniently-provided helicopter before you explode in a shower of mission failure. (After over 20 attempts, this troper found it easier to go back downstairs and steal a car.)
    • On the same token, that one mission where you have to rescue Johnny Gat from the hospital in what basically boils down to a drawn-out Escort Mission. First, you have to wheel Johnny's injured ass out on a painfully slow gurney to the front door while Ronin forces pop out of every conceivable corner and shower you in gunfire. After realizing the door is locked, you backtrack to the beginning of the mission while even more guys come at you. Once you make it to the roof, you and Johnny get in a conveniently-placed helicopter that's even slower than the gurney you just pushed around while the Ronin pursue you in a fully equipped gunship that has the aforementioned guided missiles all the way back to your base on the other side of the city.
    • Heli Assault in Saints Row 2 is generally terrible, simply because of Stilwater's design - every time an enemy manages to close in on your ally, s/he will immediately drive under a bridge or railway just to prevent you from defending them. Trying to get low enough to shoot under the bridge will generally result in crashing into a tree or the cramped buildings to the sides, because the helicopter controls are overly-sensitive. And then they have the balls to yell at you as if you're not even trying. The Third generally makes the entire activity much more fun, solely because Steelport has far fewer roads that can't be seen from a helicopter, even if the trade-off is less cover from police or Morningstar snipers when you have them after you..
    • Saints Row 1 has several, but the two that stand out are the last missions for Los Carnales and the Vice Kings. In the Carnales mission you and Dex have to drive to the airport and kill their leader before he escapes in his plane. Sounds straightforward right? Well, once you arrive you'll notice two things. One, there are about 20 mooks with rocket launchers that can kill you in about three hits. Two, your vehicle is on a set path. This means that unless you aim perfectly you'll get blown away before you can even get close to the plane. Even better, you'll have about two or three cars shooting up your ass as you try to avoid getting blow away by the RPG's. The cherry on top? YOU HAVE TO RESTART FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MISSION AND WASTE TWO MINUTES DRIVING BACK TO THE AIRPORT EVERY. TIME. YOU. DIE. But that's just the first mission. The Vice King's mission? You have to drive King's car (it HAS to be King's car, no switching out if it gets too damaged) to Impressions and interrogate Stefan by driving while King holds him outside the window. The whole time more and more police show up to clusterfuck you into a corner where they will blow your car up and force you to start over. But wait! The mission isn't over after you interrogate Stefan, oh no. You then have to storm the Vice King's stronghold. If you die during the fight? All the way back to the very start for you! Have fun listening to Stefan whine for the 5th time. Thankfully, Saints Row 2 has checkpoints in its missions.
  • The final missions of The Simpsons Hit & Run (the same one in three parts, actually). To sum up, you have to drive from the power plant to the school carrying a barrel of toxic waste strapped to your bumper which will fall off and explode if you so much as ding a wall with your fender. The path is also extremely unforgiving and the car controls for this game are very sensitive. Did I mention it's a Timed Mission? Because I can't stress that enough. If you lose the barrel, it forces you to run all the way back to the plant. But wait! That's a Timed Mission, too! One that will likely be outright impossible to complete if you've gone even half the required distance, forcing a restart. Oh, and there are certain points where other cars will try to ram you, and if you don't manage to get far enough from them before they turn to chase you, they'll catch up and bump into you, destroying the barrel and starting the above nonsense. Finally, because all the above just isn't enough, it's the only mission without a Mercy Mode...
  • The stealth missions in True Crime: Streets of LA.
    • Even worse is "Cary in Trouble", which pretty much requires you to have both an encyclopedic knowledge of real-life LA streets and a faster car from a previous level. Thankfully you can replay the previous levels.
  • Just Cause 2 brings us Black Gold. You're piloting a fighter jet, and have to blow up an oil rig. Jet controls are difficult to figure out at best. And if you die? Well, good job, you just locked yourself out of 100%. In severe cases, you can lock yourself out of finishing even that mission.
    • Actually you can just use a helicopter instead of a jet for that mission, it makes things MUCH MUCH easier.
      • Also the 100% thing is a glitch that's easily avoidable, just make sure to get 100% on the oil rig BEFORE you start the Black Gold mission.
    • The Raya Race. At over twenty minutes long, it's easily the longest race in the game, and it takes you around a good portion of an island. This, in itself, isn't too bad. It's that you'll have to use a sports car if you hope to win. The game's driving controls get incredibly loose at high speeds, making it easy to spin out, and if you do, you'll have to pray that you can find another fast car, in an area of the map that doesn't normally have them. Oh, and did I mention that it all takes place on the wrong side of a highway?
  • Red Dead Redemption has its generally smooth and enjoyable mission layout interrupted by the hated "Liars, Cheats, and Other Proud Americans". Apart from being one of the few missions where you can't shoot your enemies, you have to compete in a cart... um, chariot race, and dear god, you will hate that cart. It's slower than a horse, far less maneuverable, has sluggish and occasionally glitchy controls, easily tires out your horse will crash often, has the turn radius of an aircraft carrier, and is just barely smaller than the road that you're supposed to ride it on. Worse, the course itself is punishing, filled with turns, sheer cliffs, and rail-less bridges over water... water that will eat your soul the moment you dip your toe in it. Add to that the facts that you can't use your own Kentucky Saddler or War Horse in the race, that visibility tends to be poor, and that the nearby civilians tend to put on khaki camouflage and stand right in front of sandy slopes, and you've got a level that will have you smashing your TV in fury.
  • There are a few missions in Mercenaries 2 World in Flames that are like this. But among the worst are:
    • Any of the Pirate Smuggling missions. They all involve the same thing: driving past armed checkpoints with an unsecured cargo in a pickup truck that can fly out seemingly on a whim. Sometimes you have to deal with Helicopters armed with homing missiles. And if you play the missions late in the game, sometimes the Allies shoot at you. Almost EVERYTHING they have has homing missiles.
    • Eva's Recruitment mission. Drive a bouncy, unarmed and unarmored monster truck through a quarry equipped with super-hydraulics that make you fly thirty feet. It's timed, you have to leap over a bunch of stuff, but that's not so bad. It gets bad when the VZ show up. They shoot at you, drop logs on you, and at the end you have to avoid a tank in just the right way, or you will get blown up in one hit. Die at any point and you have to start all the way at the beginning of the course.
    • The Final mission for China. When you do this mission for the Allies, it's actually rather easy, as all you have to do is destroy a few anti-aircraft guns and the Chinese main base. Not so with the Chinese version of the mission. In the Chinese version, you have to take out several Allied buildings along with the HQ. This would not be so bad, if nearly everything the Allies used did not have some type of homing missile. Their helicopters will shoot you down, their APC's will blow up your tank, and grenade-launcher equipped Humvees will blow you to pieces. Good luck trying to capture the HVT at the end.
    • The Ambulance Escort Mission for China. One unarmored, slowly moving ambulance. Lots of landmines. Allied Soldiers making sure to back up the landmines. You have a Chinese APC armed with an infantry-killing machine gun or a cannon more likely to kill your own ambulance than the missile-armed Allied APC's. Have fun.
    • And the worst one of all, the PLAV mission "Paint the Town". You have to liberate Merida from a heavy VZ occupation. First you have to destroy several buildings to get the VZ's attention. To do so, you have to go through a gauntlet of tanks and RPG's. When you are done doing that, you have to defend a church, which is easily one of the the biggest buildings in the town. Making matters worse is that you are "helped" by PLAV troops with explosives. If one of them runs in front of a cannon you are using as you fire it, they will all turn hostile against you the moment you hit the ground, and try to kill you with said explosives. While you are standing in front of the church. Then reinforcements show up, in a helicopter which can blow up on the church's roof. Then you have to capture or kill the VZ commander after about five or so minutes of this madness. When you get there, if you want the full cash bonus for capturing him alive, you have to make sure to not only not kill the commander yourself, but make sure he does not kill himself, his "allies" don't accidentally blow him up and to blow up the stands in the stadium he is using as a base so that the guys with the Stingers and rocket launchers don't blow up the helicopter you have to throw him onto. And to rub salt in the wound, the bonus objective? "Don't Kill Civilians". The same civilians who casually walk about a battlefield. The same ones who think the safest place to stand to avoid a tank is in front of it.
  • The "Amazing Discovery" quest in Space Pirates and Zombies. Wave after wave after wave after wave of medium and large enemy ships, all sporting extremely powerful weaponry. You will be forced to grind in order to stand a chance.
  • Dead Island has a quarantined section of the city map that constantly spawns waves of Infected all the time you are within it. Unfortunately, the Third Head Of Cerberus quest requires you to explore this area. Even if you take to the rooftops and run as much as possible, you are almost certainly going to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.
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