The Official Nintendo Players Guide Book
Black cover with big bold letters? I think I still have it in my closet somewhere. I love that book. So valuable.
As a kid, my friend had it. I assumed the first level WAS the game. We never went anywhere beyond it. I would show up and he would be playing it, always in the same level. For years I thought it was just a dolphin swimming around for fun game.
I don't think I ever actually beat the first level. I mean, it took me probably years to figure out you needed to jump out of the water and over the rocks. My god, talk about a game that I NEVER made in progress on.
The second to last level of Ecco the Dolphin is a five minute long auto-scrolling maze. If you make a wrong turn in the maze, Ecco is crushed to death. The scrolling direction changes directions every few seconds, and the level is full of enemies. Also, in the US version, if you die to the final boss in the next level, it sends you back to the start of this level.
What's wild is that Ecco the Dolphin is a game about a dolphin *using a time machine they found in the sunken ruins of Atlantis to travel back in time to fight the alien queen that ate his family*. And nobody had any idea because nobody ever got past the first level.
I remember plying this level specifically on a long car ride and the light through the window would backlight my gameboy just enough at the right angle that I could see outlines of the cave.
Speaking of poison, when I was like 8 and playing for the first time, basically non-stop, I turned my game off because the game was flashing and I thought I had damaged the game itself somehow.
I think I left it off for a few hours to "let the game rest".
This activated a core memory, holy cow. I don't think I turned the game off, but I was definitely freaking out thinking that something was broken and I think I had to ask a friend.
It's also bound to happen to you fairly early on, given all the early-game Weedles and such.
I had Bulbasaur. I skipped Lt. Surge not because I didn't know, but because I got sick of the puzzle and just decided "Nope, not doin' it," at eight years old. I mostly just followed the walls around like I was in a maze, because that's pretty much what it is. I didn't go back and fight him until I got to the part where you get your badges checked walking into the Elite 4 and they said "no, you don't have the Thunder Badge. You shall not pass."
Sequence breaking doesn't really work in Red/Blue, but it's there.
I asked my dad to do this for me when it first came out. I got stuck in the cave while we were on holiday.
He had never played pokemon, and barely used my gameboy. I had no idea where I was or what I had to do..
4 hours later he hands it back to me, he got through the cave. I was so impressed!
I need to go hug my dad.
I graced the next generation with this one. I think its actually harder on fire red/ leaf green due to not even being able to see the outlines of the walls. All you get is a little circle around the player
It's me, I'm people.
I was so excited to be done with that area. Got teleported to another area where things were interesting again. Finish all that up just to find out there was a part 2 to the Hell.
No thank you.
Holy crap I never knew this existed! And it's on a huge sale for the steam summer sale! It's my lucky day!!
Edit: And it's VR supported!! Man, I can't wait to get home from work!!
Descent II had this amazing 3D map that i had to spent so much time into as my dad was totally unable to read it.
He used to pilot while i turned around, aimed and shot. Good times
There was logic to it and you could navigate it, it’s just that there was no “in game” map of the area and every single area looked *exactly* the same, so it was impossible to know where you were unless you kept track from the moment you entered.
Some people have mapped it out, so when I replayed it years later for Zodiac Age I absolutely looked up a map.
I had to draw my own map. It was not easy. It's been like ten years, so I'm a little fuzzy, but iirc the position/orientation of the paths between platforms isn't consistent between teleports. Took me forever to figure that out.
Might be a controversial opinion but I absolutely loved how convoluted and difficult to explore the HoT maps were. It really forced me to learn how to use my Tempest to survive while pushing forward, and drove home the fact that you’re in an extremely unforgiving environment
I completely agree.
Heart of Thorns is an absolute masterclass in level design, imo.
The amount of verticality coupled with the paths that twist and turn into themselves and each other, really gave you a genuine sense of exploration and achievement as you made your way through them.
> drove home the fact that you’re in an extremely unforgiving environment
This is a big one, too.
You're in a bad situation, in a dangerous place. Things want you dead, and they **will** kill you.
As much as I like Path of Fire, I was kind of disappointed after coming from Heart of Thorns. Especially as they decided to remove the teeth from the open world mobs, bringing them down to near-Core Tyria levels of easy.
I don't want every encounter to be a pack of Pocket Raptors, but *some* challenge outside of Champs would have been nice.
100%. Nothing else I've played has even come close.
As confusing as it is, though. I honestly think it is one of the best maps in the entire game, even pre-mounts.
When I first set foot in there, it had been so, **so** long since I played an MMO that had a genuine sense of exploration and that feeling of getting lost within a world.
So many MMORPGs now just have such boring, soulless open worlds, and Heart of Thorns brought that joy back.
Even now, I only use my glider when navigating the HoT maps.
I love how my wife's defense for loving that map is "It's so easy to get anywhere once you know the map." Like, THAT'S THE POINT! If you don't know the map yet, it's just a nightmare.
I think they meant until the *lighter* image is barely visible, as in completely washed out. Otherwise it’s too dark to actually see the scary shit
Right?
I restarted dark souls recently and had the brilliant idea to go to the tomb early, forgetting that you cannot pass a certain point without the lord vessel. That was not fun making my way down there, and it was extra unfun trying to get back out.
The first time I played dark souls I ended up down there really early, it was definitely awful crawling back out. I probably formed some kind of trauma from those pinwheel skeletons
I went down there immediately after ringing the first bell. They said to go down, and instead of the weird out of the way staircase down from Undeadburg, I went to the skeletons, because I knew that would be "down".
I spent several hours slowly pushing my way past the skeletons, using Force to throw them into holes until I could reach their necromancer and kill them permanently. Then fell in a hole, found the blacksmith, and got stuck at the pinwheel skeletons for 4-6 hours and leveled up a bunch. Eventually killed Pinwheel himself, got to the actual Tomb of Giants, and finally got the hint that what I was experiencing wasn't "Dark Souls difficulty", it was "Hey idiot, you went the wrong way".
This sounds similar to me beating the Shadow Temple without the eye of truth when I was a kid.
edit to be clear I beat the boss without being able to see him 😂
I'm just surprised that in a post about confusing to navigate video game levels, I see a comment about an Ocarina of Time temple and it's *not* the Water Temple
There is a dungeon in Elden Ring which has 4 identical levels, making you feel like youre running in circles. It also has teleporters to maximize confusion. You literally need to drop coloured stones to tell the rooms apart.
It's actually sick as hell when you look at how they engineered that catacomb from a 3d model perspective.
The "levels" are all mostly-identical and stacked one on top of the other. so when you "drop down" from the end of the first level, you're actually dropping to the third and then making your way back up to the 2nd (which you assume is the 1st). And then they hit you with the same trick at the end of the second floor, except now you're in a completely separate level 4 which only connects back to level 2's start point.
I want to just open up the "world scene" in blender and imagine the psychopath at Fromsoft who dreamed this up.
Something I've always dreamed of is a way to just freecam explore every video game.
e: thanks so much for the responses yall, gave me some really interesting new content to check out!
I just encountered this last night at the bottom of the subterranean shunning grounds by the lobsters (which I actually came here to top-level comment because those pipes are awful)
They even fool you with a fake door opening on the first drop, so you think you beat it, but then when you go back there's no bonfire where there should be. Blew my mind yesterday.
There's a type of troll in Mario Maker called a "twice twice" where the player ends up in a copy of a level section without realizing. I had a dumb grin on my face when I realized that's what the Elden Ring dungeon was doing. Fromsoft loves to troll us.
Not only that, they put a corpse of the same enemy that you killed on the first floor in exactly the same place you killed it. I was utterly convinced I was back in the same area.
Dark Forces has some really bad ones, I recently got the remaster and I have no idea how the hell I managed to figure out levels like Anoat City as a kid without any guides
Most people aren't old enough to know how bad this one was. Boomer shooters were already notorious for hard to navigate levels, but for me Dark Forces had some of the hardest. This is how us kids learned about no clip cheat codes.
To all those struggling to this day : you can skip them. Walk out of the doorway to the first turn and jump left as far as you can, you'll JUST make it over and skip it all.
The question gave me flashbacks to the Tarzan world specifically. Playing it again as an adult it's definitely easier than I remember, but still horrible to navigate
I have tried to play that game 3x and I ALWAYS got lost in the Alice in Wonderland levels forest and gave up out of frustration. I just bought it this morning on Steam… I’m gunna give it another shot with my teenage son… I’m hoping he’s smarter than me.
I remember going there early on playthroughs to cheese kill guards by hiding behind a pot where they couldn't reach me. Then selling their armour to the Creeper.
Best Bethesda city ever made imo. The thing about Vivec is that you just stumble upon Vivec. It's not more or less important than other cities. But it's fucking huge. So huge that you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's mostly inaccessible. Nope, it's all accessible. Then it dawns on you that you could probably spend the next 30 hours exploring Vivec.
That kind of magic game design still holds up today, and tbh, Bethesda was never able to hit that high again.
The player will then eventually figure out, "hey, I can levitate up to the moon hovering over the city" and explore that
No game has come close to the level of exploration Morrowind has
There's a meteor floating above the city held in stasis by a living god and being used as a prison. It's only accessible by levitation.
After the events of Morrowind, when the god disappears, it falls back to the ground and causes Red Mountain to erupt, which is why the Dark Elves had to flee Morrowind and Solstheim is covered in ash in Skyrim.
You like to dance close to the fire, don't ya outlander?
I cannot express how fucking good Morrowind was. I beat every quest I could find, read every line of dialog and bit of lore, and just generally have never gotten so into a game since. Reading the Daedric Artifacts book and wondering how many were obtainable was thrilling, especially when I finally collected some of them. I stumbled upon the Umbra fight pretty late, but still one of my most distinct memories from that beloved experience.
My girlfriend and I thought the ship was too loud for the fish, so we only went into Dark Bramble in our space suit.
Finding Feldspar before running out of air should have been an achievement
It's funny when you remove the fog with a mod you can see that it's not that big. But yeah, the fog does help a ton with making that place feel creepy the first few times you get in...
I was going to say the Halo level where the one symmetrical room is copy-pasted a bunch of times... and then you have to backtrack through them all. You enter a room and don't know if the bodies are there from the first time you made your way through, or if you go turned around and are in the room you were just in.
Had to google it, I think it was a section of assault on the control room.
To expand on this for other folks, at the start of the level, you descend into a facility in a fairly linear fasion, insofar as to say there are illuminated doors, and really only one way to proceed. Other doors throughout this facility are locked.
Halfway through this level, you're forced to escape this facility under... substantial, increased duress... however, now several of the previously locked doors are broken open, and there's at least one route that takes you back to the original elevator you descended in on. This is a dead end, as the elevator explodes and collapses, forcing you to backtrack on your backtrack and find the correct route, all while under pressure from... things.
Follow the doors with green lights.
*Edited for spelling
The disorientation is intentional though. It's your first exposure to the Flood and the latter half of the mission is designed a bit like survival horror and getting you directionally confused is an effective means of building tension.
Crazy I had no idea about the elevator and I’ve played through the game a number of times, guess I was always lucky subconsciously remembering the right route.
I’ll also add: at their “increased duress” point you’re being constantly bombarded by little flood infection form enemies akin to the Half Life head crab, where they do a tiny bit of damage but it adds up to a problem over time. This is the same stress concept that is the basis for many forms of torture.
And depending on which version you play, it adds a unique challenge. The original Halo CE graphics at this phase are dark and subdued as this is the horror phase of the game where The Flood is introduced. The Anniversary Edition remaster made all of these levels whimsically bright but also added a ton of extra texture to doors that make their “green light” a ton harder to notice especially at a distance.
Bro I came here to say the Library. But I do remember back in the day trying to figure out where to go in Guilty Spark was a pain. Especially noteworthy for us was just trying to find the right way and the beginning in the swamp and the room inside where you have to go up on the boxes to get to the upper level to proceed.
Still I think the Library as a whole has the potential to be even worse. God what a great game though.
I think it was vault 22, the one with all the plant people, in New Vegas. I was so lost for probably an hour just looking for the flooded area to get a unique weapon, and just navigating for the quest item too.
I did surprisingly well on navigation in my last playthrough of New Vegas.
But holy shit did I get lost in Vault 21. I was walking around in circles for an hour. Every time I found a door or stairwell it just looped me back to an area i was just recently in.
What helped me immensely was just completely ignoring the map, it's incredibly hard to navigate using it. Instead I would follow the signs on the walls and had a much easier time finding where I needed to go. There were several points that I would have to go the complete opposite direction from what the map said to find an objective. I love that game to death but the map was really subpar.
Remedy have said that navigating the map with difficult was more of a feature than a bug. I kinda liked that it kept with the team of a labyrinth but at times I just crapped out and looked up guides. In several of the bigger and messier spaces it was a pain in the ass to navigate while also fighting off respawning enemies
I've seen so many people say this but I found the map really helpful. It told you which direction the exits to each room were, which is basically what I'd expect from a map.
Fun fact:
When you find a control point you can fast travel and upgrade stuff in, or complete another objective that opens more areas, you see the building rearrange itself.
But when you meet Ahti, the building secretly gets rid of the entrance you used and puts a wall behind you.
That's right. The building changes when you're not looking. The lobby you find after the conversation is mirrored, and one of them has a side office the other doesn't.
I keep reading about people having trouble and straight up giving up on the game because of this but I almost never had any issues with it. Very early on, before the first boss iirc, i understood that I should just act like I would IRL and read actual signs instead of the pause menu's poor excuse of a map
I got lost a couple of times midway through the game when it opens up but it wasn't that bad.
If you explore it fully, it's really small and mostly confusing because all of the hallways link up.
First few playthroughs, you're doing everything in your power to *not* explore it fully.
Honestly almost everywhere in DS1 can be confusing for at least someone.
I played the first one mant years after it first came our, when the difficulty level was well known. Well stupid me never found the small ramp/hill that led to the first area, so I kept dying to skeletons, or dying shortly after riding one of two elevators. I think it took me hours to finally realize there was another path, and at that point I was severely overleveled for the basic mobs it had.
I was in there for 5 minutes. Said fuck no, and looked up a speed run of it. Followed that and skipped like 95% of the dungeon. I am horrible at platforming and yeah FFXV was not built to be a platforming game lmao
World of Warcraft surprisingly. There is a secret mount called 'Lucid Nightmare' which has a very difficult level called the endless halls.
It's a two dimensional maze, invisible trap room that teleport you to random spots in the maze, four runes you need to move to the destinations, but once you move them you lose their reference points.
A relatively simple puzzle in theory, but takes most folks 2~5 hours (or more) to solve.
https://warcraft-secrets.com/wp-content/uploads/Lucid-Nightmare-Anatomy-of-an-Endless-Halls-Maze.jpg
edit: forgot to include, each person's map I believe is unique. So there is no definiative map of it.
Had to scroll way too far to find this. It resets every 24 hours too, or something like that. That teleport trap absolutely rekt me. Such a well executed concept.
How I met my friends in high school.
was in 10th grade, no friends really (small school).
ate lunch alone and was walking to the library, overheard a group of people talking about using the hookshot to drain the level, and stopped dead in my tracks. Turned and looked at them, and said "are you talking about the water temple in ocarina of time?"
Proceeded to pull out 7 pages of hand drawn guides on how to complete the dungeon I was working on.
I never ate lunch alone again. Still friends 20 years later.
The kids today are pushing back on the water temple being difficult. They don't understand the struggle of having tried to navigate that as one of, if not the, first 3d games we'd ever played, with totally new mechanics and unfamiliar level design/patterns, and with those damned boots that you have to go through the menus to equip. It's hard to explain how we had *no idea* what the solutions to getting through a dungeon at the time might be, there were no generally recognized best practices or evolution of design elements that we were familiar with. This was the era of "If you stand in a particular spot and press A fifty times you'll get a secret character" *and sometimes that shit was true*.
And yes by "kids today" I mean all of you in your mid-20's or whatever.
My brother told me if you got 100 coins during Bowser’s battle in Mario 64 you get the 121 star and can ride Yoshi. The look on his face when I had 100 coins…
He then deleted my game. I can still hear Mario’s scream.
My brother (older by several years) while we were playing Mario Party 4 convinced me I'd get two stars instead of one if I said "no" when Toad or whoever asks if you'd like to buy a star. To this day I've never forgiven him
It's also likely the younger people are playing the rereleases of OoT, which have a different, easier version of the Water Temple than the original N64 version.
The ones where you can bind the boots to the quick menu? Please I need to hear the "boodooloodoo" every few seconds from entering my menu and swapping boots just to go up and down
The 3DS version is so amazingly easy compared to the N64 version.
What did they change?
There's lines on the walls. That's it. Just lines that show you what level connects to what level.
Oh, and a hotswap button for the iron boots. Instead of having to pause menu everytime you want to put on the boots, just tap the shoulder button instead.
AND there's the one key that requires a floating platform to move off-screen.
In the 3DS remake the screen moves to that room and shows you what is happening, which is HUGELY helpful.
In the N64 version you just had to know it was there and go find the opening.
I can't believe I had to scroll so far down to find this. Especially because I had one od the N64 cartridges that was bugged on the jump yournsupposed to make.
You know how much that messes with you when your 10!!??
[Example](https://youtu.be/t_EmsXKTChw?si=t7aAet75CxxGgPwu)
It took me way too long to get to that ship in the very first level. I don't know what it was but I'd start heading towards where I thought it was, checking the map, and seeing I was way off.
I think there was a small gap I had to squeeze through in a couple places and they weren't marked well. I got frustrated and switched to playing something else at least two times.
The only reason I havent platinumed it yet. There's literally an echo I think I've missed and I know it's at the bottom and I just can't muster up the effort lol
For me the main issue was the lack of fast travel. If you missed a chest at the bottom of Kashyyk it was a 40 minute journey down and back out while getting lost along the way.
It's difficult if you want to get to a specific area because the 3d map overlaps each section. The Arkham games waypoint system would have helped the game out because it points you to doors instead of just the general direction.
Honestly, I can't recall which Tomb Raider it was, but holy fuck, the amount of back and forth to unlock puzzles and key progress items was so wild. I'm talking about going back 2 to 3 levels kind of back tracking.
I was using a guidebook (if you guys recall those) and basically knew that there was NO way I was going to solve anything without that book.
I think that was the last time I played Tomb Raider, but damn do I miss that challenge.
Final fantasy 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Haven't played this in almost 20 years, but I'll remember this part forever...
After you fall into lower Midgard, you have to navigate your way through the slums till you reach sector 5. At one point, you must walk up a plank of wood to continue to the next area.
This is the first piece of wood you can do this on
There is nothing indicating to use the plank.
There is rubble and crap everywhere
This was my first 3d game, so the pixel difference between characters and interactive objects was none existing. It was a computer image over beautiful backgrounds, so no pixels hint to something being able to move, switch, slide, etc.( think legend of dragoon, shining force, etc.)
My parents got me the game for Christmas, and by March, I asked for a strategy guide for my birthday.
STRATEGY GUIDE ASSUMES YOU AREN'T DUMB so it just says, "Continue on to sector 5"
I stumbled onto the bridge after throwing my ps1 remote out of the month of frustration, and in an instant, I had accidently figured it out.
Bit of an obvious answer but original Wolfenstein. My already really bad sense of orientation totally made this a guessing game for me. Rapid pixel switching gave me nausea too.
I finished beating levels that were supposed to last 10 minutes in an hour fear of missing something too.
I've recently played Metroid (NES) for the first time properly and man, the exploration is much harder with no map.
I was so glad I got that big Nintendo Guidebook back in the day for my birthday. It was loaded with maps.
The Official Nintendo Players Guide Book Black cover with big bold letters? I think I still have it in my closet somewhere. I love that book. So valuable.
Back in the day it was graph paper and make your own map as you play
The best part about making your own map is that the very act of doing so commits it to memory for a very long time.
Zero Mission is a remake of the original with maps and other enhancements and it was recently added to Switch Online.
First level of Ecco the dolphin
Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one. I rented Ecco and spent 3 days just meandering around that 1st level
I don’t know anyone who actually played the game.
As a kid, my friend had it. I assumed the first level WAS the game. We never went anywhere beyond it. I would show up and he would be playing it, always in the same level. For years I thought it was just a dolphin swimming around for fun game.
I don't think I ever actually beat the first level. I mean, it took me probably years to figure out you needed to jump out of the water and over the rocks. My god, talk about a game that I NEVER made in progress on.
Ah, traumatic childhood memories unlocked.
The second to last level of Ecco the Dolphin is a five minute long auto-scrolling maze. If you make a wrong turn in the maze, Ecco is crushed to death. The scrolling direction changes directions every few seconds, and the level is full of enemies. Also, in the US version, if you die to the final boss in the next level, it sends you back to the start of this level.
What's wild is that Ecco the Dolphin is a game about a dolphin *using a time machine they found in the sunken ruins of Atlantis to travel back in time to fight the alien queen that ate his family*. And nobody had any idea because nobody ever got past the first level.
The rock tunnel in pokemon red/blue version without flash because i was 5 and too stupid to know how to get HM flash.
I only made it through because I got poisoned. Every few steps when the poison effect flashes you can see the whole cave.
This some next level shit I love it
I remember plying this level specifically on a long car ride and the light through the window would backlight my gameboy just enough at the right angle that I could see outlines of the cave.
Speaking of poison, when I was like 8 and playing for the first time, basically non-stop, I turned my game off because the game was flashing and I thought I had damaged the game itself somehow. I think I left it off for a few hours to "let the game rest".
This activated a core memory, holy cow. I don't think I turned the game off, but I was definitely freaking out thinking that something was broken and I think I had to ask a friend. It's also bound to happen to you fairly early on, given all the early-game Weedles and such.
I had Bulbasaur. I skipped Lt. Surge not because I didn't know, but because I got sick of the puzzle and just decided "Nope, not doin' it," at eight years old. I mostly just followed the walls around like I was in a maze, because that's pretty much what it is. I didn't go back and fight him until I got to the part where you get your badges checked walking into the Elite 4 and they said "no, you don't have the Thunder Badge. You shall not pass." Sequence breaking doesn't really work in Red/Blue, but it's there.
That pitch Black tunnel that I eventually learned the layout by just following one wall till I was out? 😂😂
I asked my dad to do this for me when it first came out. I got stuck in the cave while we were on holiday. He had never played pokemon, and barely used my gameboy. I had no idea where I was or what I had to do.. 4 hours later he hands it back to me, he got through the cave. I was so impressed! I need to go hug my dad.
Common dad W
I graced the next generation with this one. I think its actually harder on fire red/ leaf green due to not even being able to see the outlines of the walls. All you get is a little circle around the player
Anime Londo in Code Vein. Absolutely haunting.
Yeah the cathedral of sacred blood is very big and very white
Literally ruined the game for some people, lol.
It's me, I'm people. I was so excited to be done with that area. Got teleported to another area where things were interesting again. Finish all that up just to find out there was a part 2 to the Hell. No thank you.
Being able to virtually see the entire map around you, but still going in circles. What fun it was.
I still don't know if I think this level is high art level design, or total garbage.
I know I'm old and you probably never heard of it but I do remember having headaches after playing the good old Descent
The first time you get into a fight and when it's over you have **no frigging clue** where you came from and where you wanted to go. Good times.
Overload is essentially the modern remake - it was done by the original Descent team. It plays identically.
Holy crap I never knew this existed! And it's on a huge sale for the steam summer sale! It's my lucky day!! Edit: And it's VR supported!! Man, I can't wait to get home from work!!
Haha after trying sublevel zero in VR, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be ignoring that option here. The words "barf simulator 2024" come to mind.
Man wasn't meant to experience 6DOF from that perspective.
It didn't help when they started introducing INVISIBLE ENEMIES
Descent II had this amazing 3D map that i had to spent so much time into as my dad was totally unable to read it. He used to pilot while i turned around, aimed and shot. Good times
Oh god I'm this old too and that is a great answer
The great crystal from Final Fantasy 12
Goddammit I had forgot how stupid this was Was there even logic to the teleports or was it RNG? Somehow I never looked it up.
There was logic to it and you could navigate it, it’s just that there was no “in game” map of the area and every single area looked *exactly* the same, so it was impossible to know where you were unless you kept track from the moment you entered. Some people have mapped it out, so when I replayed it years later for Zodiac Age I absolutely looked up a map.
I had to draw my own map. It was not easy. It's been like ten years, so I'm a little fuzzy, but iirc the position/orientation of the paths between platforms isn't consistent between teleports. Took me forever to figure that out.
Tangled Depths in Guild Wars 2
Might be a controversial opinion but I absolutely loved how convoluted and difficult to explore the HoT maps were. It really forced me to learn how to use my Tempest to survive while pushing forward, and drove home the fact that you’re in an extremely unforgiving environment
I completely agree. Heart of Thorns is an absolute masterclass in level design, imo. The amount of verticality coupled with the paths that twist and turn into themselves and each other, really gave you a genuine sense of exploration and achievement as you made your way through them. > drove home the fact that you’re in an extremely unforgiving environment This is a big one, too. You're in a bad situation, in a dangerous place. Things want you dead, and they **will** kill you. As much as I like Path of Fire, I was kind of disappointed after coming from Heart of Thorns. Especially as they decided to remove the teeth from the open world mobs, bringing them down to near-Core Tyria levels of easy. I don't want every encounter to be a pack of Pocket Raptors, but *some* challenge outside of Champs would have been nice.
100%. Nothing else I've played has even come close. As confusing as it is, though. I honestly think it is one of the best maps in the entire game, even pre-mounts. When I first set foot in there, it had been so, **so** long since I played an MMO that had a genuine sense of exploration and that feeling of getting lost within a world. So many MMORPGs now just have such boring, soulless open worlds, and Heart of Thorns brought that joy back. Even now, I only use my glider when navigating the HoT maps.
I love how my wife's defense for loving that map is "It's so easy to get anywhere once you know the map." Like, THAT'S THE POINT! If you don't know the map yet, it's just a nightmare.
Tomb of the giants without a light source.
"Adjust the brightness until the image is barely visible". No I don't think I will.
I think they meant until the *lighter* image is barely visible, as in completely washed out. Otherwise it’s too dark to actually see the scary shit Right?
I restarted dark souls recently and had the brilliant idea to go to the tomb early, forgetting that you cannot pass a certain point without the lord vessel. That was not fun making my way down there, and it was extra unfun trying to get back out.
The first time I played dark souls I ended up down there really early, it was definitely awful crawling back out. I probably formed some kind of trauma from those pinwheel skeletons
I went down there immediately after ringing the first bell. They said to go down, and instead of the weird out of the way staircase down from Undeadburg, I went to the skeletons, because I knew that would be "down". I spent several hours slowly pushing my way past the skeletons, using Force to throw them into holes until I could reach their necromancer and kill them permanently. Then fell in a hole, found the blacksmith, and got stuck at the pinwheel skeletons for 4-6 hours and leveled up a bunch. Eventually killed Pinwheel himself, got to the actual Tomb of Giants, and finally got the hint that what I was experiencing wasn't "Dark Souls difficulty", it was "Hey idiot, you went the wrong way".
I have trauma from Sen’s Funhouse. But oh my the visual of Anor Lando after the demon lifts you up after getting through that hell hole is majestic
This sounds similar to me beating the Shadow Temple without the eye of truth when I was a kid. edit to be clear I beat the boss without being able to see him 😂
I'm just surprised that in a post about confusing to navigate video game levels, I see a comment about an Ocarina of Time temple and it's *not* the Water Temple
I turned the brightness on my TV all the way up.
[удалено]
There is a dungeon in Elden Ring which has 4 identical levels, making you feel like youre running in circles. It also has teleporters to maximize confusion. You literally need to drop coloured stones to tell the rooms apart.
Dudes be like "I know a place" and take you to Auriza Side Tomb
Friend of mine wanted me to be his tour guide for his playthrough of Elden Ring. 100% sent him there when he was close.
It's actually sick as hell when you look at how they engineered that catacomb from a 3d model perspective. The "levels" are all mostly-identical and stacked one on top of the other. so when you "drop down" from the end of the first level, you're actually dropping to the third and then making your way back up to the 2nd (which you assume is the 1st). And then they hit you with the same trick at the end of the second floor, except now you're in a completely separate level 4 which only connects back to level 2's start point. I want to just open up the "world scene" in blender and imagine the psychopath at Fromsoft who dreamed this up.
Something I've always dreamed of is a way to just freecam explore every video game. e: thanks so much for the responses yall, gave me some really interesting new content to check out!
Check out the Boundary Break series by Shesez
I just encountered this last night at the bottom of the subterranean shunning grounds by the lobsters (which I actually came here to top-level comment because those pipes are awful) They even fool you with a fake door opening on the first drop, so you think you beat it, but then when you go back there's no bonfire where there should be. Blew my mind yesterday.
I loved that dungeon honestly. Once it set in what was going I had such a wtf moment being stuck in that loop. Love that feeling.
I think the sewers are pretty confusing for a similar reason. Rainbow stones definitely got crafted in my first playthrough in both locations.
There's a type of troll in Mario Maker called a "twice twice" where the player ends up in a copy of a level section without realizing. I had a dumb grin on my face when I realized that's what the Elden Ring dungeon was doing. Fromsoft loves to troll us.
Not only that, they put a corpse of the same enemy that you killed on the first floor in exactly the same place you killed it. I was utterly convinced I was back in the same area.
Dark Forces has some really bad ones, I recently got the remaster and I have no idea how the hell I managed to figure out levels like Anoat City as a kid without any guides
Most people aren't old enough to know how bad this one was. Boomer shooters were already notorious for hard to navigate levels, but for me Dark Forces had some of the hardest. This is how us kids learned about no clip cheat codes.
Those stupid blood trails in Max Payne with the constant screaming.
That's as far as I got as a kid. Too hard and too scary
To all those struggling to this day : you can skip them. Walk out of the doorway to the first turn and jump left as far as you can, you'll JUST make it over and skip it all.
That was creepy as hell. You really need headphones for that section because you want to walk toward the cries.
Inside the whale in Kingdom Hearts 1.
Tarzan world too, I have a feeling because of that they added the auto progression hints in KH2.
I got stuck going in a loop in Wonderland
The question gave me flashbacks to the Tarzan world specifically. Playing it again as an adult it's definitely easier than I remember, but still horrible to navigate
I have tried to play that game 3x and I ALWAYS got lost in the Alice in Wonderland levels forest and gave up out of frustration. I just bought it this morning on Steam… I’m gunna give it another shot with my teenage son… I’m hoping he’s smarter than me.
Monstro! TBH most of the levels in KH1 could get a little confusing and recursive. Even as an adult I'd find myself getting temporarily lost.
My friend, let me tell you about a little place in Vvardenfell called Vivec.
I remember going there early on playthroughs to cheese kill guards by hiding behind a pot where they couldn't reach me. Then selling their armour to the Creeper.
Good old Creeper. Sod the mudcrab merchant hanging out in the arse end of nowhere, Creeper's got you covered in civilisation.
Best Bethesda city ever made imo. The thing about Vivec is that you just stumble upon Vivec. It's not more or less important than other cities. But it's fucking huge. So huge that you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's mostly inaccessible. Nope, it's all accessible. Then it dawns on you that you could probably spend the next 30 hours exploring Vivec. That kind of magic game design still holds up today, and tbh, Bethesda was never able to hit that high again.
The player will then eventually figure out, "hey, I can levitate up to the moon hovering over the city" and explore that No game has come close to the level of exploration Morrowind has
Sorry WHAT?!
There's a meteor floating above the city held in stasis by a living god and being used as a prison. It's only accessible by levitation. After the events of Morrowind, when the god disappears, it falls back to the ground and causes Red Mountain to erupt, which is why the Dark Elves had to flee Morrowind and Solstheim is covered in ash in Skyrim.
Levitation, or a precisely aimed jump with Scroll of Icarian Flight...
Get me my colovian fur hat!
You like to dance close to the fire, don't ya outlander? I cannot express how fucking good Morrowind was. I beat every quest I could find, read every line of dialog and bit of lore, and just generally have never gotten so into a game since. Reading the Daedric Artifacts book and wondering how many were obtainable was thrilling, especially when I finally collected some of them. I stumbled upon the Umbra fight pretty late, but still one of my most distinct memories from that beloved experience.
Dark Bramble
My girlfriend and I thought the ship was too loud for the fish, so we only went into Dark Bramble in our space suit. Finding Feldspar before running out of air should have been an achievement
You guys are nuts. That must have been *tense*
It's funny when you remove the fog with a mod you can see that it's not that big. But yeah, the fog does help a ton with making that place feel creepy the first few times you get in...
+Brittle Hollow, during my first playthrough
Or the fucking caves in the ash twins.
\*space suits tenses and cracks\*
Lyndell Sewers Elden Ring
343 guilty spark
I was going to say the Halo level where the one symmetrical room is copy-pasted a bunch of times... and then you have to backtrack through them all. You enter a room and don't know if the bodies are there from the first time you made your way through, or if you go turned around and are in the room you were just in. Had to google it, I think it was a section of assault on the control room.
Halo ce has a lot of repetitive levels
To expand on this for other folks, at the start of the level, you descend into a facility in a fairly linear fasion, insofar as to say there are illuminated doors, and really only one way to proceed. Other doors throughout this facility are locked. Halfway through this level, you're forced to escape this facility under... substantial, increased duress... however, now several of the previously locked doors are broken open, and there's at least one route that takes you back to the original elevator you descended in on. This is a dead end, as the elevator explodes and collapses, forcing you to backtrack on your backtrack and find the correct route, all while under pressure from... things. Follow the doors with green lights. *Edited for spelling
Took me so long to find the exit my pants dried
I just replayed this level for the first time in ages. Forgot how confusing it was. Such a great campaign though.
The disorientation is intentional though. It's your first exposure to the Flood and the latter half of the mission is designed a bit like survival horror and getting you directionally confused is an effective means of building tension.
Crazy I had no idea about the elevator and I’ve played through the game a number of times, guess I was always lucky subconsciously remembering the right route.
I’ll also add: at their “increased duress” point you’re being constantly bombarded by little flood infection form enemies akin to the Half Life head crab, where they do a tiny bit of damage but it adds up to a problem over time. This is the same stress concept that is the basis for many forms of torture. And depending on which version you play, it adds a unique challenge. The original Halo CE graphics at this phase are dark and subdued as this is the horror phase of the game where The Flood is introduced. The Anniversary Edition remaster made all of these levels whimsically bright but also added a ton of extra texture to doors that make their “green light” a ton harder to notice especially at a distance.
Bro I came here to say the Library. But I do remember back in the day trying to figure out where to go in Guilty Spark was a pain. Especially noteworthy for us was just trying to find the right way and the beginning in the swamp and the room inside where you have to go up on the boxes to get to the upper level to proceed. Still I think the Library as a whole has the potential to be even worse. God what a great game though.
Idk about everyone else, but the abandoned vaults in 3 and New Vegas had a way of feeling like a hamster lost in another hamster's cage
These, and the Dwemer ruins/Blackreach in Skyrim give me similar vibes. Part of it is a not very good map, the other, is it's just so freakin massive!
"... and I'm back in Blackreach."
I think it was vault 22, the one with all the plant people, in New Vegas. I was so lost for probably an hour just looking for the flooded area to get a unique weapon, and just navigating for the quest item too.
I was going to say, this vault and trying to follow the quest indicator nearly made me uninstall
It should be here! The fucking compass is pointing right here! Ohhhhh, it's down here
I did surprisingly well on navigation in my last playthrough of New Vegas. But holy shit did I get lost in Vault 21. I was walking around in circles for an hour. Every time I found a door or stairwell it just looped me back to an area i was just recently in.
Antichamber has to be up there
“Ill go through this door and…hmm I think I should turn around and go back the way I came and…oh. Oh no.”
"Well, I'm presented with two options and neither one work...OH FUCKIN' HELL!"
I was confused as fuck with the Building Control takes place in, but it's kinda easy to navigate once you know the layout.
What helped me immensely was just completely ignoring the map, it's incredibly hard to navigate using it. Instead I would follow the signs on the walls and had a much easier time finding where I needed to go. There were several points that I would have to go the complete opposite direction from what the map said to find an objective. I love that game to death but the map was really subpar.
Remedy have said that navigating the map with difficult was more of a feature than a bug. I kinda liked that it kept with the team of a labyrinth but at times I just crapped out and looked up guides. In several of the bigger and messier spaces it was a pain in the ass to navigate while also fighting off respawning enemies
I've seen so many people say this but I found the map really helpful. It told you which direction the exits to each room were, which is basically what I'd expect from a map.
I just gave up on the map like half an hour into the game and used the signs on the walls.
Fun fact: When you find a control point you can fast travel and upgrade stuff in, or complete another objective that opens more areas, you see the building rearrange itself. But when you meet Ahti, the building secretly gets rid of the entrance you used and puts a wall behind you. That's right. The building changes when you're not looking. The lobby you find after the conversation is mirrored, and one of them has a side office the other doesn't.
The building changing after meeting Ahti for the first time really sets the tone for the game from here on out.
The trick is to TAKE CONTROL
I keep reading about people having trouble and straight up giving up on the game because of this but I almost never had any issues with it. Very early on, before the first boss iirc, i understood that I should just act like I would IRL and read actual signs instead of the pause menu's poor excuse of a map I got lost a couple of times midway through the game when it opens up but it wasn't that bad.
I like so much that you literally have to look at the plans on the walls, like a real building
After countless replays I remember it by heart but definitely The Depths in Dark Souls 1
If you explore it fully, it's really small and mostly confusing because all of the hallways link up. First few playthroughs, you're doing everything in your power to *not* explore it fully.
First playthrough is a panic run to find the ember you need then sprint back to the blacksmith
Honestly almost everywhere in DS1 can be confusing for at least someone. I played the first one mant years after it first came our, when the difficulty level was well known. Well stupid me never found the small ramp/hill that led to the first area, so I kept dying to skeletons, or dying shortly after riding one of two elevators. I think it took me hours to finally realize there was another path, and at that point I was severely overleveled for the basic mobs it had.
Yeah it’s rough. Especially including the basilisk area.
Corvega Assembly Plant. Trying to find the entrance to Goodneighbor and going around in circles. Many Fallout levels, really.
The gaddamn snake woods in bloodborne. Love that game to death but fuck those woods.
But it makes it that much more shocking when you stumble upon fucking actual aliens.
I get lost in computer games all the time, it's a real problem. So, all of them?
First Max Payne, the bloody walls -crying baby labyrinth. A bit too upsetting for young me.
Echo the Dolphin on Sega Genesis. Dude those winding, narrow caves are way confusing, especially as it gets darker the deeper you go.
That dungeon from Final Fantasy XV. If you've played it you know
I was in there for 5 minutes. Said fuck no, and looked up a speed run of it. Followed that and skipped like 95% of the dungeon. I am horrible at platforming and yeah FFXV was not built to be a platforming game lmao
I'm currently playing Hogwart Legacy, and the Hogwarts castle, as beautiful as it is, is a nightmare to navigate
That part is at least accurate to the books lmao.
I have many problems with that game and its story but by Merlin, the castle is everything I ever wanted out of any game set in the wizarding world.
World of Warcraft surprisingly. There is a secret mount called 'Lucid Nightmare' which has a very difficult level called the endless halls. It's a two dimensional maze, invisible trap room that teleport you to random spots in the maze, four runes you need to move to the destinations, but once you move them you lose their reference points. A relatively simple puzzle in theory, but takes most folks 2~5 hours (or more) to solve. https://warcraft-secrets.com/wp-content/uploads/Lucid-Nightmare-Anatomy-of-an-Endless-Halls-Maze.jpg edit: forgot to include, each person's map I believe is unique. So there is no definiative map of it.
Had to scroll way too far to find this. It resets every 24 hours too, or something like that. That teleport trap absolutely rekt me. Such a well executed concept.
The Great Crystal in Final Fantasy XII. I get confused just thinking about it.
The correct answer is the water temple in Zelda Ocarina of Time.
How I met my friends in high school. was in 10th grade, no friends really (small school). ate lunch alone and was walking to the library, overheard a group of people talking about using the hookshot to drain the level, and stopped dead in my tracks. Turned and looked at them, and said "are you talking about the water temple in ocarina of time?" Proceeded to pull out 7 pages of hand drawn guides on how to complete the dungeon I was working on. I never ate lunch alone again. Still friends 20 years later.
A lovely story but don’t punish yourself still, enjoy your long awaited lunch.
You never ate lunch again? What?
sorry. never ate lunch alone* again. my bad. I fixed it up top.
I read the title and instantly assumed this would be the top answer.
The kids today are pushing back on the water temple being difficult. They don't understand the struggle of having tried to navigate that as one of, if not the, first 3d games we'd ever played, with totally new mechanics and unfamiliar level design/patterns, and with those damned boots that you have to go through the menus to equip. It's hard to explain how we had *no idea* what the solutions to getting through a dungeon at the time might be, there were no generally recognized best practices or evolution of design elements that we were familiar with. This was the era of "If you stand in a particular spot and press A fifty times you'll get a secret character" *and sometimes that shit was true*. And yes by "kids today" I mean all of you in your mid-20's or whatever.
My brother told me if you got 100 coins during Bowser’s battle in Mario 64 you get the 121 star and can ride Yoshi. The look on his face when I had 100 coins… He then deleted my game. I can still hear Mario’s scream.
My brother (older by several years) while we were playing Mario Party 4 convinced me I'd get two stars instead of one if I said "no" when Toad or whoever asks if you'd like to buy a star. To this day I've never forgiven him
It's also likely the younger people are playing the rereleases of OoT, which have a different, easier version of the Water Temple than the original N64 version.
The ones where you can bind the boots to the quick menu? Please I need to hear the "boodooloodoo" every few seconds from entering my menu and swapping boots just to go up and down
>boodooloodoo I heard this. You nailed it
The 3DS version is so amazingly easy compared to the N64 version. What did they change? There's lines on the walls. That's it. Just lines that show you what level connects to what level. Oh, and a hotswap button for the iron boots. Instead of having to pause menu everytime you want to put on the boots, just tap the shoulder button instead.
AND there's the one key that requires a floating platform to move off-screen. In the 3DS remake the screen moves to that room and shows you what is happening, which is HUGELY helpful. In the N64 version you just had to know it was there and go find the opening.
I can't believe I had to scroll so far down to find this. Especially because I had one od the N64 cartridges that was bugged on the jump yournsupposed to make. You know how much that messes with you when your 10!!?? [Example](https://youtu.be/t_EmsXKTChw?si=t7aAet75CxxGgPwu)
To this day I still credit the Citadel in Mass Effect 1 as having destroyed my sense of direction in all video games forever after.
I may just be an idiot but I was forever getting lost in Jedi Survivor
It took me way too long to get to that ship in the very first level. I don't know what it was but I'd start heading towards where I thought it was, checking the map, and seeing I was way off. I think there was a small gap I had to squeeze through in a couple places and they weren't marked well. I got frustrated and switched to playing something else at least two times.
Jedi Survivor is hard to navigate, but Dathomir on Fallen Order is *impossible*
Even when I was going in the right direction on Dathomir I always felt like I wasn't.
Yeah Survivor can be rough to navigate but it’s definitely better than Fallen Order was
The Fade in Dragon Age Origins
There's even a mod to skip it, which shows how people felt about it.
*gestures broadly at the lands between*
The entirety of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. My god was that tough to get around
You’re missing one plant for your Terrarium, and it’s on Dathomir.
The only reason I havent platinumed it yet. There's literally an echo I think I've missed and I know it's at the bottom and I just can't muster up the effort lol
Why does Cal never think "Hey, I'll just open this door with my Lightsaber..."?
Doors are expensive
How could you get lost with such an easy to read and coherent map?
For me the main issue was the lack of fast travel. If you missed a chest at the bottom of Kashyyk it was a 40 minute journey down and back out while getting lost along the way.
Then you go back and get it and it's just an ugly poncho.
It's difficult if you want to get to a specific area because the 3d map overlaps each section. The Arkham games waypoint system would have helped the game out because it points you to doors instead of just the general direction.
Especially zeffo, got lost each time I had to go there, and even more when I 100%ed it.
Dathomir can do one!! Must have been in a loop so many times because of that terrible map
The library from Halo. Think that's what it's called anyway, I just ended up disorientated from fightingthe flood.
That fucking monkey level on the old lion king game
The layout of The Citadel in the original Mass Effect is pretty confusing until you’ve learned it.
Honestly, I can't recall which Tomb Raider it was, but holy fuck, the amount of back and forth to unlock puzzles and key progress items was so wild. I'm talking about going back 2 to 3 levels kind of back tracking. I was using a guidebook (if you guys recall those) and basically knew that there was NO way I was going to solve anything without that book. I think that was the last time I played Tomb Raider, but damn do I miss that challenge.
That would be *Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation*, 4th game.
Final fantasy 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Haven't played this in almost 20 years, but I'll remember this part forever... After you fall into lower Midgard, you have to navigate your way through the slums till you reach sector 5. At one point, you must walk up a plank of wood to continue to the next area. This is the first piece of wood you can do this on There is nothing indicating to use the plank. There is rubble and crap everywhere This was my first 3d game, so the pixel difference between characters and interactive objects was none existing. It was a computer image over beautiful backgrounds, so no pixels hint to something being able to move, switch, slide, etc.( think legend of dragoon, shining force, etc.) My parents got me the game for Christmas, and by March, I asked for a strategy guide for my birthday. STRATEGY GUIDE ASSUMES YOU AREN'T DUMB so it just says, "Continue on to sector 5" I stumbled onto the bridge after throwing my ps1 remote out of the month of frustration, and in an instant, I had accidently figured it out.
From recent examples. Shadow Keep from Elden Ring got me questioning my survivability.
Dark Souls 2. Horsefuck valley
Code Vein's Cathedral of the Scared Blood. Oh and the Howling Pit as a follow-up
Guildwars 2 - Tangled Depths map. Even though it's not really what you'd call a level. Even after years, I still struggle navigating that area.
Bit of an obvious answer but original Wolfenstein. My already really bad sense of orientation totally made this a guessing game for me. Rapid pixel switching gave me nausea too. I finished beating levels that were supposed to last 10 minutes in an hour fear of missing something too.
OG Legend of Zelda lost forest
Hallow bastion, monstro. KH1
Warframe, not levels but how to follow the story
Not a level, but before you understand NFSU:2 that GPS arrow has dislexia for sure.