Top 20 Parts That Everyone Gets Stuck at in Video Games

“Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” (2002)

Despite the game being over two decades old, it’s safe to say that this Vice City mission still haunts gamers to this day. You’ll be tasked with remote controlling an RC helicopter to transport bombs and planting them in various spots within a construction area. This all sounds simple enough until you realize how absolutely awful the RC controls are. Making matters worse is the fact you’ll have to avoid all of the security guards, as well as finish the whole thing before the time limit ends. It’s no surprise at all that this is where many players gave up on the game entirely.

“Final Fantasy X” (2001)

As one of the major antagonists in the game, you battle against Seymour several times through Final Fantasy X. But his Seymour Flux form encountered on Mt. Gagazet takes the cake with its absolutely grueling difficulty. With “Lance of Atrophy,” Seymour will inflict zombie status onto one of your party members and will then follow it up with “Full-Life”, instantly KO-ing them. If this wasn’t enough, towards the end of the battle he’ll start using “Total Annihilation”, which will cause massive damage and down your party if you’re not high leveled enough. For some, Yuna’s pilgrimage ended right here, and it’s not hard to see why!

“Digimon World” (2000)

Digimon World for Playstation One is surprisingly a very dense and often convoluted game, but for players who are patient enough to learn the ins and outs, they’ll find it endlessly fun and rewarding. One section that does not apply to, however, is Monochromon’s store. See, in order to beat the game you need a high enough population in your Digimon town. To get this guy to join said town, you need to work at his store and earn an adequate amount of money. The problem is, this section is almost entirely reliant on RNG. Odds are you’re not going to hit that quota and you’ll have to start over again. And again. And again. That becomes a huge problem when you take into account Digimon World’s built in timer and the fact that your partner digimon has a finite amount of days until it DIES. Many a Digimon has perished while the player was attempting to recruit Monochromon.

“Assassin's Creed II” (2009)

It may be hard to believe, but this simple climbing section is one of the most notorious moments in the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise. During one of the dream sequences, you’re tasked with climbing a tower in order to get to Altair’s lover Maria. Part way through the climb, you’ll have to jump onto a ledge that has a lantern hanging from it. In order to do this you must perform a very specific type of jump, one that many players had no idea they could perform. This led to a lot of people being stuck at this very specific spot for hours, with some even falling to their deaths just to get up there.

“Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne” (2003)

Anyone who’s played SMT3 will tell you of the legend that is Matador. The demonic bullfighter has been the source of many memes for years within the fandom and for very good reason. Early on in the game, just as you’re about to exit the Great Underpass, you’ll be thrown into one of the hardest bosses in the game. For a game heavily reliant on weaknesses, Matador does not have one, meaning you won’t be able gain additional press turns against him. Not only does Matador have some extremely powerful attacks, but he also has the Red Capote skill, which increases the fiends accuracy and evasion. This boss fight is a tough lesson to all players that if you’re not going to use buffs/debuffs, you’re not going to get very far in Nocturne!

“Star Fox Adventures” (2002)

In order to end the war against General Scales, Fox McCloud must gather the remaining
Krazoa Spirits through a series of tests. Standing out amongst the rest due to its sheer difficulty is the “Test of Fear” which is located in LightFoot Village. Instead of the standard combat that players had become accustomed to, you must instead go through a long cinematic scene where Fox takes on various enemies, while you control a fear bar at the top of the screen. The red slider will sway from side to side at varying speeds and it’ll be up to you to control it and make sure it doesn’t leave the green area. And if that wasn’t already annoying, if you fail you’ll have to start all the way from the beginning again.

“Mega Man” (1987)

For over 35 years this yellow menace has been terrorizing anyone who attempts to get into the Mega Man series. While all of Wily’s creations up until this point were no walk in the park, this is usually where players get filtered. The yellow devil takes up a good chunk of the screen and breaks apart piece by piece to reach the other side. Even if you’re patient enough to master the timing on the jumps, his tiny hitbox and short susceptibility timeframe means that you’re very likely to miss, get frustrated, and end up getting hurt anyway. There’s a very good reason why most players end up using the pause exploit to beat this guy.

“Sonic 3 & Knuckles” (1994)

Now this one totally left a lot of us stumped during our childhood! During the later half of Carnival Night Zone Act 2, Sonic will find himself locked in a room where the only way he can get out is by moving the “Spinning Wheel”. Fans have dubbed this Spinning Wheel the “Barrel of Doom” due to the fact that it’s not clear at all how they’re supposed to move it out of the way. Many would try to move it by jumping on it, to no success what so ever, leading to the timer running out. What you’re actually supposed to do is move the D-pad up and down in order to move, but nowhere else in the game did players ever have to do this, nor was it ever hinted at. During a Sonic fan event in 2011, series producer Yuji Naka would make a formal apology for the barrel of doom’s inclusion.

“Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree” (2024)

Fromsoftware’s games are no stranger to excruciatingly tough boss fights, but their latest entry had a lot of people up in arms over its final boss. As soon as you enter the arena, Radahn will immediately leap towards you, giving you no time at all to summon your spirit ashes. His attacks are absolutely relentless, and will require many, many tries for you to memorize all of them. Things will go from bad to worse when he enters his second phase, as not only is he faster, but will cast wider AoE attacks. Even if you collect all of the Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes, it’s going to take you a great deal of hours to conquer Radahn.

“God of War” (2005)

The original “God of War” is arguably the toughest in the franchise, however there’s one section that stands above the rest and fills fans with dread whenever they think about replaying this classic. Towards the end of the game, Kratos falls into the underworld and must battle his way through the path of hades. In order to progress Kratos must climb up a rotating pillar, all while avoiding the sharp blades that stick out of it. Now this might not sound like the worst thing ever, but the climb is ridiculously long, and if Kratos gets hit even once by these hard to dodge blades, he’ll fall all the way down to the bottom. To add insult to injury, once you finally manage to get past it, the game treats you to another much longer one!

“Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (1993)

May the force be with you BIG TIME to get through these levels alive. From the moment the game begins, you are completely bombarded by a ridiculous number of enemies that either charge head-on or attack from a distance. To make matters worse, you need to move forward and time jumps with extreme caution, as there is a higher chance of falling into an instant-death pit as opposed to landing on safe ground. Games from the 16-bit era are remembered for their challenge, but this one definitely turned to the dark side of video game difficulty. So, be prepared to see nothing but this first stage for a while.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (1989)

This level is frustrating due to design as opposed to genuine challenge. So, let’s break down this recipe for a disaster, shall we? Firstly, the player needs to quickly and carefully navigate through an underwater trench: water plus gaming equals bad. Secondly, there are bombs to disarm while fighting against a time limit. Thirdly (and this is the real kicker), the passage is extremely narrow and covered with electrified obstacles. Don’t let your health drop too low either, or else an irritating beeping sound will play. Thanks game, I wanted my ears to bleed today! Be sure to check your blood pressure after playing this highly stressful level.

“Dark Souls” (2011)

Blighttown is the definition of a vicious circle of punishing gameplay. You have to keep moving, because there are monsters trying to kill you every few seconds. But if you move around too fast, you may fall to your death because you can’t see a darn thing. But if you don’t move around at all…. you’ll never find the exit and get out of this nightmare of a level! Nearly any move you make has the possibility of severe consequences, so be ready to scream and swear at your TV a lot. Oh, and the frame rate drops quite a bit in this area as well, so have fun with that while trying to focus on not dying.

“Pokémon Gold and Silver” (2000)

Pokémon players around the world all hit a roadblock when confronting the Goldenrod gym leader Whitney. Compared to what the player would have available to them at that point in the game, Whitney is placed at a seriously unfair advantage. Her Clefairy can be subdued if you know how to play it smart, but things really get nuts when she puts her Miltank into the fray. From both an offensive and defensive standpoint, Miltank seems to have a counter-move to everything you do. It can heal itself in the remake versions, and it can cause any male Pokemon you have to stop fighting with its attract ability. How many of you were caught off guard by that move?

“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” (2004)

All we had to do was ‘follow the damn train’, that’s not so hard, right? Well, actually yeah, it kind of is. The game expects you to not only follow alongside a train at breakneck speed, but to also be simultaneously aware of your surroundings so as not to crash into anything. Furthermore, you can’t drive too fast or too slow, as your companion Big Smoke needs to be able to shoot the gang members on top of the train. His weapon also seems to be pitifully underpowered, causing the process of him gunning down said gang members to take a very long time. You’re going to need a lot of patience and precision to survive this exhausting endurance test.

“Deus Ex: Human Revolution” (2011)

Human Revolution is a first-person action-RPG that encourages player choice, in either taking a stealthy and pacifist approach or go all out guns blazing. That’s all well and good, until you get to the first boss battle, which REQUIRES an offensive battle strategy, effectively ruining any chance of the player having a perfect stealth run, or worse: being ill prepared. This sudden shift in format was due to the fact that developer Eidos Montreal outsourced the boss fights to another studio: Grip Entertainment, who’s President admitted that they knew very little about the Deus Ex series. You know it's bad since they fixed this problem in a Director's Cut edition.

“Battletoads” (1991)

We’re willing to bet that this level has left scars on the emotional psyche of gamers across the globe. Up to this point, the game was a straightforward beat 'em up, but then out of nowhere it drops you into this vehicle section without any clear explanation of how to play or what to do. There is never a chance to catch your breath, as the level moves at such a breakneck speed and obstacles suddenly appear leaving you with split-seconds to react. There are hard levels, there are impossible levels…. then there’s turbo tunnel. The only thing moving faster than the stage are the controllers that you’ll be throwing across the room in furious rage.

“Silent Hill 3” (2003)

We hope you paid attention in English class. The problem here isn’t that this sequence can’t be solved with trial and error, intuition or problem solving skills like the other puzzles in the Silent Hill series. The goal is to properly arrange a row of fallen Shakespeare books, but in order to do so, the player has to have prior knowledge of the writer’s material. The game displays passages from Shakespeare’s popular works: Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet etc. and the player needs to carefully dissect the words in order to decipher a hidden code and move forward. You know, we could have sworn we sat down to play a video game…not study for a literary history exam, what the heck is this insanity?!

“Driver” (1999)

Many of the other frustrating sections on this list occur later in the game, but Driver kicks things into high gear the second you boot up the game. The player is immediately tasked with performing a vague list of tricks and maneuvers before they can progress forward. The issue here is that the area is a tad too small to efficiently pull off things like high speed and reverse 180’s. If that’s not bad enough, the player has to pull this off within a strict time limit. The sad truth is that this garage was the entire game for some people, as they were never able to experience what came afterwards.

“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (1998)

Well known among the gaming community for all the wrong reasons, the water temple from Ocarina of Time was an infuriating and monotonous slog. The constant necessity to backtrack to the same rooms to raise and lower the water levels inside the temple in order to reach areas and move along was altogether tedious and confusing. There are tons of horror stories of wasting keys on the wrong doors, entirely screwing up puzzles and just roaming around the temple for hours without feeling like any progress was made. You know how you don’t bring up religion or politics at a dinner table? Well, you don’t bring up the Water Temple around gamers. It’s that bad.

Have you ever gotten stuck at a certain part in a game for a long time? Let us know in the comments below!