Salvador's Top 7: Rage Quit Moments

Welcome to another edition of Salvador's Top 7! This week, we are looking at some of my top rage quit moments.

For those who don't quite know what rage quitting is, here's a handy definition via Urban Dictionary:
Rage Quit: To stop, cease, or discontinue a game due to aggravation from being constantly bested (pwned) in any type of challenge within the game.

Most people attribute it to competitive games like Street Fighter or Halo but as the definition states, it can be applied to any gaming situation.

So relax and hit the jump to see what controller chucking indecencies I've experienced.



7) Halo Series: Legendary Run


The Halo series has to be one of my favorite franchises of all time. But as some of you may know, I didn't play Halo for the story. I was multiplayer all the way.


One day, I finally decided to play through the story in Halo 2 and was absolutely destroying it. So I went into the menus and saw the fabled Legendary option. The description read:


"You face opponents who have never known defeat, who laugh in alien tongues at your efforts to survive. This is suicide."

My choice was made, and into battle I went. 

A Monument To All Your Sins.

Minus Halo ODST and Halo Wars, I have done a solo legendary run on each game and each time I wonder why the hell I put myself through this time and time again. Enemies are smarter, they do more damage than you, they take less damage, all of them are sharpshooters, and you might as well be walking around with paper as your armor considering how fast they tear through your shields.

This is actually made of paper.

Hell, Bungie even makes Legendary co-op runs difficult. In Halo 2, if one of you died then both of you restarted at the last checkpoint. In Halo Reach, the enemies scale up in difficulty according to how many players there are. It makes the Love, Bungie notes that Bungie leaves at the end of the Halo games almost a sadistic joke.

Sure the Call of Duty franchise has the Veteran difficulty, but there's a reason that Halo's hardest difficulty is called Legendary.

Sum's it up perfectly.

6) Pokemon Gold/Silver: The Legendary Beasts

Say what you will about the Pokemon series, but there's a reason that each version of the game sells millions upon millions of copies. Though the roaming legendary beasts surely isn't one of them. 

From left to right: Suicune, Raikou,, and Entei. Ho-oh is above them. 

The roaming beasts are probably my least favorite part of the Pokemon Gold. See, they are called the roaming beasts since they do not stay in one place unlike other Pokemon. Whenever you walked into a new area or walked in or out of a building, they changed which place on the map they would be at. So running into them was almost a stroke of luck.

Needle in a haystack just doesn't cut it.

Now if you do run into them, that means you just got to battle them till you can capture them right? Sort of. Pretty much on the first turn they got they fled the battle. So you had to have a Pokemon that was fast enough to get a hit in or hit them with a status effect like poison or burn. Any damage and status effects you might have been able to cause to them before they fled carried over to the next fight. Sounds really annoying and tedious doesn't it? Well it was.

Now, I had been whittling away at these beasts for a while. Pulling every trick in the book to get their health down low enough where you can throw a Pokeball to finally nab one of them.

This time, I had run into Raikou. He was poisoned and I had him down almost to nothing. I had been using a move that did very little damage so that I could whittle him down to the perfect health. Pretty much the sequence was to attack and bring his health down and then throw a Pokeball the next turn to see if it was enough.

After what seemed like hours, the battle was drawing to a close and I knew one more attack and his health would be low enough for an almost guaranteed Pokeball capture.

I hit attack, and CRITICAL HIT!!! RAIKOU FAINTED! YOU WON THE BATTLE!!!

Yeah, something like that.

I had to turn off the Game Boy, load up my last save from however many hours ago, and try again. I eventually did catch Raikou, but he went straight into my PC Storage and stayed there.

5) Duck Hunt

All I have to do is point you to the picture below and you all know the grand annoyance that we have all experienced in this game.

Stupid dog! You made me look bad!

It's bad enough when you feel like an idiot for missing a duck when playing this game, but this dog makes sure to pour salt on the wound and then rub it with a lemon just to cement the idea that you are a failure at a NES game.


4) Battlefield Bad Company 2: Atacama Desert Spawn Camping

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is amazing. No class feels overpowered compared to the other classes and even the vehicles aren't overpowered. Overall it is a very balanced game.

There's four on each side. Balanced.

There is only one time that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 makes me want to hurl the disc like a Frisbee for a dog to chase and maul, and that involves getting spawn trapped on Atacama Desert on the Conquest game mode. If you know what I am talking about, just take deep breaths and stay calm. It will all be over soon.

Big map is big.

See, when you die you are given three spawn options. Spawn at your base, spawn on a point you control, or spawn on a squadmate. Now, if your team happens to suck and you don't control any of the points then you are left with spawning on either your teammates or your base. Now normally this isn't too bad, unless the other team somehow managed to get into your base and steal your helicopter. Then be prepared for some of the worst spawn camping of your life.

"This is Delta 2 to base. Ready to PWN some scrubs."

They will roll in their tanks and every other heavy vehicle they have and sit there and destroy any vehicles that may spawn in your base in between killing you every time you spawn. Meanwhile, the helicopters will be passing overhead carpet bombing the base in case the vehicles miss you. And if you happen to somehow avoid the tank shells and double helicopter carpet bombing, you still have to deal with the rest of the other team sniping any poor chap that happens to survive all that.

You know the sniper is humming Ride of the Valkyries  right now.

At least you can quit and try to find another match or else this would be higher on the list.

3) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: 'One Shot, One Kill' Veteran

When I first played Call of Duty 4, I played it through on normal. The sniping missions (All Ghillied Up and One Shot, One Kill) were amazing then. They had the perfect blend of stealth, tension, and action and no other missions have better exemplified the series than those two missions.

For those of you who might have not played the best Call of Duty, in this mission you and your partner Macmillan are dropped into Chernobyl to take out a high profile/value target. You had to sneak around patrols, tanks, and dogs without EVER alerting the enemy to your presence or else you would never get to the sniping spot.

Oh Shi........

Once you're past all that, you finally get to put a bullet into the bad guy! Except all his soldiers, which would rival an army of some small nations, find your location and swarm you. Hell, they even send helicopters after you!

DON'T GET TO THE CHOPPA!!!

Now if you happen to survive the small army and helicopters chasing you, while your carrying your injured partner mind you, you find out that your helicopter pickup is a few minutes out and that you have to hold the landing zone and survive till they show up. Prepare for the beating of your life.

Not Pictured: All hell breaking loose.

On Veteran difficulty, this part of the mission feels nigh impossible. Enemies come running in from everywhere, everyone is a military grade sharpshooter, and they throw grenades with the accuracy of of an MLB pitcher.

The icing on the cake though is that your partner is invincible and will shrug off enemy fire and grenades as if he were getting hit by cotton balls. Your character on the other hand will fall over dead from getting hit by a pebble.

At least you get some awesome quotes on your death screen. Expect to have them memorized you die so often.

The game is nice enough to give you a few minutes to set up some C4 and claymores before the enemies swarm your position though. But that's like getting a head start in a race against a cheetah, it really isn't going to help you much.

I spent days trying to clear this stage. I tried every single position to hide: Next to Macmillan? Dead. Behind the ferris wheel? Lasted another thirty seconds. In the ticket booth? At least I lasted minutes. By the bumper cars? Oh wait, this is working!

I was able to dodge the grenades and flashbangs, it had a decent funnel point, and I wasn't getting shot at from across the stage. And after what seemed and eternity our pickup finally arrived!

I ran and got Macmillan, hustled our way over to the chopper, my screen was becoming redder and redder by the moment. I could see the soldiers eyes filled with hope as their outstretched hands urged us onto the back of the chopper. I was home free!

And then I took a bullet to the back of the head less than a yard from the chopper.

RAAAAAGGGGEEEE!!!!!!

The Mile High Club mission was ten times easier than getting through that damn mission ever was.

2) Trials HD: The Entire Game

When I get really into a game I will try to do everything that game offers. That's why I love games that keep track of how much percent of a game you have complete. For newer games it's the trophy and achievement system.

A few Summer of Arcade promotions back, a little game called Trials HD came out and I was hooked. I knew I was going to beat every single track in this game.

What a fool I was.

Man that dude has no idea what he's in for.

It is very reminiscent of Excitebike on the NES except with some physics and puzzle elements thrown in. Like Excitebike, it is really easy to get into and all you have to do is worry about the gas, brake, and leaning your dude forward or backwards.

Besides that, all you have to do is get from point A to point B as fast as you can with as little faults (crashing) as possible. Check out this video to see how cool this game is.

Neat, huh? But did you happen to notice the twenty seconds at the end of the video where the guy is just shown absolutely failing over and over? That's because it's an omen of things to come.

The game is called Trials HD for a reason. It's because the game goes from "hold down the gas and that's it till the end" easy to "wake up your neighborhood with your cursing" hard.

If you don't believe me. Check out these two videos of the same guy running through some of the tracks. The first video he runs through all of the beginner tracks in a little over three minutes.

You don't have to watch the entire thing but hit play just so you can get a better idea of the game.

Now in this second video is the hardest track in the game, Inferno II. It takes him almost the exact same time to run this one track as it did to run all of beginner tracks. That's just how @!#$!@ insane this game gets.

I have never cursed so hard at a game. I would make people on Xbox Live blush with some of the language I had to create to express the amount of rage I felt when trying to get through the Hard and Extreme tracks.

Inferno II probably almost broke my TV, controller, and Xbox 360. The first time I tried it I found out the game not only has a time limit as to how long you can attempt a track, but it has a fault limit as well. 500 is the maximum number of faults allowed on a track and I almost hit it on my first try of this track.

That last track was so hard that of all my friends that have played Trials HD, only one of my friends has beaten it as well.

And he got a better time than me! &%$^#!!!

But few things beat the feeling you get once you manage to plow your way through that track for the first time, otherwise this would've been higher up on the list.

1) Final Fantasy VIII - End Game (Kind of)

Final Fantasy VIII was an epic adventure on the original Playstation. This game took place everywhere from a military academy, to a space station, and even through time and space itself This game was so epic it spanned FOUR DISCS. You can only imagine the amount of time you need to invest to get to the end of the game.

EPIC.

The payoff about these games are the story of course. It's why we grind for hours upon hours just to get to the next story bit or the next cutscene and hopefully to see the biggest payout: the final cutscene!

This is all we want!

After spending what seemed like a hundred hours and collecting all the Guardian Forces and finding every character's ultimate weapon, I felt like I was finally set to take on the games final area and be done with the game.

Such an inviting place.

You literally have to travel through time and space to get to Ultimecia's Castle, but once inside you can go right up and fight Ultimecia if you'd like. That is if you think you can take here with Attack as your only option and not being able to use magic or items.

See, once you step inside Ultimecia locks all of your abilities like Magic, Items, and even Summons. All you are left with is just the Attack option, and in order to unlock the other abilities you have to fight a boss in the castle for each ability you want to unlock. That means eight boss fights just to unlock all of your abilities.

D-A-R-K-F-L-A-R-E

Once you are done with the Guardians of her castle and have regained your abilities, it is just a straight shot to the final boss and the end game. Prepare for an epic battle.

A challenger has appeared!

Ultimecia has not one, not two, not three, but FOUR phases. The first phase is the form pictured above, a normal looking human with wings, a crazy hairdo, the ability to travel through time, and the ability to posses other sorceress throughout time.

Oh, and she randomly chooses which characters you start off the fight with and if any of them get KO'd there is a chance they will be absorbed into time and you will be unable to get them back. Final bosses and their cheap tricks.

After you beat her first form she decides to create the ultimate Guardian Force out of thin air and let's it sub in for her while she rests.

Hey Squall! I came from your psyche! Plus I'm BAMF.

Stupid Griever and instant killing my Guardian Forces and using draw to cast my own magic against me. He is pretty much just an embodiment of your team being used against you. I guess since he came from Squall's psyche it's just Ultimecia playing mind games with your team.

After you're done with Griever, Ultimecia decides to up the ante by junctioning her power to Griever to create on of the ugliest bosses I have ever encountered.

This is what happens when you try to make yourself a god.

This abomination has the ability to not only use your magic against you but Ultimecia's powerful sorceress magic as well. And since it is actually to creatures in one you have to take out both parts in order to continue on.

Once Ultimecia-Griever is finally KO'd, Ultimecia decides she's done playing around and decides to absorb all of time and space into herself in order to become a god.

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

At this point it had been at least an hour since I had started this final battle. I was down to about four characters and still had this full health boss to deal with. She can knock your entire parties health to a single hit point with one attack, has another attack that does over 6,000 points of damage, and can destroy any spell in your inventory as well. She pulls no punches when it comes to being cheap.

The only way I managed to beat her was through the beauty of auto-potion on Selphie. She literally was the only character I had left on my side of the screen. All I had was X-Potions and Megalixers so she managed to keep herself at full health the entire time.

So through accidental planning, I managed to deal the finishing blow to Ultimecia. So it was time to sit back and enjoy the ending cutscene!

Or so I thought.

This is what I got to see! For the next four hours....

This is my number one rage quit since I have never seen the ending in it's entirety. At some point during the ending cutscene, the game froze. It was somewhere around the part pictured above where it froze.

I remember sitting there, completely dumbfounded at the fact of what just happened. Getting completely lucky and beating the game just to be denied the final cutscene by the console freezing up.

I tried opening and closing the lid to try to force the system to read the disc. Nada. We even left the system and TV on during the day to see if at some point maybe the game would magically continue playing the cutscene. Didn't work either.

Finally we just cut the system off and I haven't tried to beat it since.

Final Thoughts


AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Honorable Mentions:

Making a Gold Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII
That stupid Sun in Super Mario Bros. 3
Street Fighter IV: Seth Boss Fight
Call of Duty 2: The Silo on Veteran
God of War: Climbing the spiked wall in Hades


Super Special Honorable Mentions:

Yellow Light of Death

Red Ring of Death

The Nintendo Wii