That One Level/Adventure

Need to get past this section of an adventure game? You might be here a while.

Beware of soup cans and moon logic.

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• Naturally, Sierra games are full of these:
  • In the original version of Space Quest I, you have to escape the Arcada before it explodes. Yet you are not explained ANYTHING about this other than "the Arcada was boarded by unknown assailants".
    • Actually the game leaves it up to you to find this out. You can go to the main bridge, which is actually not too far away from the starting point, and read the console. It will say the ship is set to self destruct and has a time counting down. But you also don't have to enter the bridge at all to continue and you could easily bypass it completely without realizing it was even an option, and the timer is pretty lenient. The VGA remake displays a clear timer.
  • In Space Quest II, there was a maze that was a non-cursor version of a pixel hunt. If you touched the (pixel thick) walls with your (pixel sized) foot, that's it. Boom, dead, game over. Back in the day of playing on 512k floppies, this maze represented one of the most tedious things in the world. The maze isn't difficult - you can see the whole thing from the outside the whole time - but navigating it is incredibly tedious and frustrating. And then, having achieved all this herculean task... you have to do it all over again. Backwards.
    • And for those of you who actually have feelings for Roger, the death described by the game during that area is probably the worst death possible for Roger (And given the myriad of deaths he could have, that is saying a lot.)
  • And speaking of Space Quest, a number of arcade sequences in the series are rather hair-pulling, even by adventure game standards:
    • The Zero-Gravity Skating sequence in Space Quest IV... even on a system slow enough to work at the right speed, it's still damn near impossible.
    • Rescuing Cliffy in Space Quest V... really a Luck-Based Mission, but the odds of your fuel running out are really really against you.
    • Curse you, Astro-Chicken. You are the one thing standing in the way of Space Quest III being the best of the series. Sure, it's not required to beat the game, but anybody who cares about the plot enough wouldn't allow themselves to search for the Two Guys without playing it first. Otherwise, why are you even going to Pestulon in the first place?
  • The stupid cliff climbing section in King's Quest III -- you have to inch Gwydion down a cliff with no indication as to which pixels are the very, very small minority which will not send you plummeting to your death.
  • The desert in King's Quest V. Finding the oases and the bandit camp (and a certain item that you need to complete the game lest it becomes Unwinnable) is trial-and-error, unless you have a map. And even after getting past that one, there's the catacombs of Mordack's dungeon late in the game, with a very confusing map system.
    • Let's not forget the infamous mountains of KQ5, where King Graham will gladly walk to his death at any and all available ledges, he'll freeze to death instantly if he forgets his cloak, you can screw yourself over if you eat the wrong food item or feed the wrong thing to an eagle, and of course, you end up defeating a Yeti with a custard pie. Actually, pretty much the whole game is That One Level when you stop and think about it...
  • King's Quest VI has the Labyrinth, which comes close to V's desert in sheer frustration. The maze is littered with instant-kill dead ends, has an infuriatingly annoying tile puzzle, and getting to the second floor requires you to do something that got you killed every other time you tried it. Most of this was done for the sake of Copy Protection (the manual had solutions for the tile puzzle, for example)...but then there are a couple of items you need to get, or you're locked out of the good ending, and if you enter without the right items, you can't leave to go get them. Fortunately, you're offered the option to return and search the place again, this time having an easier exit. Also it didn't have the perspective skew KQ5 did.
    • The Catacombs in KQ6 aren't nearly as bad as anything in KQ5. Although the falling thing is cruel, an observant player will notice that the floor disappeared where in the instead-death chambers it's gone from the start. Getting stuck because of a missing item is annoying, but because the catacombs are self-contained you don't have to go back too far (unlike in KQ2 where you can end up having to replay half the game if you crossed the bridge once too often). And unlike with the KQ5 Yeti custard pie example, you can actually figure out what you're missing ( if you get stuck in the dark, obviously you need the tinderbox from the pawn shop; and although the brick and the red scarf are slightly less obvious, you can make the connection once you find those items if you've been in the catacombs before).
• Microscope Puzzle in The 7th Guest. Probably 90% of the people who will tell you that they didn't have to skip this puzzle with the hint book are filthy liars. And for good reason.
  • Unfortunately, the AI isn't random in the least--if you do the exact same movements every time, the computer will do the same moves every time, depending on your PC specifications. Even attempting to mimic a YouTube solution video will cause you to lose if your PC is faster or slower.
    • Fortunately, most people that play DOS-Era games today do so with DOSBOX, which allows you to specify a CPU speed. How people did it on the old machines is probably a bigger guide-dang-it than the puzzle itself.
• Any of the bike fights in Full Throttle. They weren't well programmed to begin with, but they're actually unwinnable using ScummVM if you don't just cheat and use the instant win code.
  • Made worse by the fact that the instant win code, in DOS, had this knack for NOT WORKING PROPERLY and screwing you out of an item. oh, and there's only 3 of one specific type of enemy which holds an item required to progress, and if you used the cheat, you'd not only fail to get the item but be unable to cross a destroyed bridge.
  • Also the segment where you have to kick the wall to sneak into the Corley Motors factory. There is literally no indication of where to kick beyond an extremely vague clue that the kicking spot would have been short enough to be reached by a child. So, good luck pixel hunting!
    • HINT: You don't have to wait until the meters go black to test the spot. The spot will make a different sound when kicking it even if the meters aren't black.
• Case 3 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All is often cited as one of the weakest of the saga. For different reasons, including the need to Cross-examine a Clown witness who makes bad jokes at every opportunity, and giving you penalties if you press wrongly on him, for annoying the Judge and the prosecutor. Tip: don't Press him when he's grinning.
  • Case 2 of Justice for All. The thing is that Phoenix is present on the day of the murder, which requires you to essentially sit through TWO days of boring investigation segments before you even get to the first courtroom sequence, and the minigame that makes the investigations tolerable isn't even introduced until the second. Plus, the solution to the case is obvious right from the start, which makes the whole thing something of a trudge.
    • It's certainly less universally hated than Case 3, mostly because it's NOT really an obvious case in the slightest (and it has far more overall plot relevance than Case 3). For people who didn't figure out the twist until they presented a contradiction and everything suddenly made sense, the plot twist is brilliant, making the whole case worthwhile. Also the whole "side of the door" contradiction was deemed too hard to pick up on.
  • Towards the end of case 5 of Investigations there's a long stretch of cross-examinations and cutscenes which wouldn't be too bad save for the fact that there's no investigating portions in between to refill you heath bar. Meaning that unless you've been paying very close attention and have an exceptional memory, you're going to have to keep a very close eye on your health bar and choose you evidence very carefully. Save Scumming is a necessity.
    • Actually, there's a very brief section that is basically just there to get you one last piece of evidence and a quick health bar refresh.
  • The second-to-last Rebuttal of case 3 in Investigations is hands-down the most difficult cross-examination in the SERIES, but for the fact that you have to present a piece of evidence that is completely irrelevant to the current argument (albeit not to the statement in question). Even veterans who have followed the series since the first game had to consult a guide because of the obscurity of this contradiction.
  • Case 5 in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Not only is it very long (the longest in the series), but by the end of it you have 4 pages of evidence, most of which is used very obscurely. This troper couldn't get through it without the help of a walkthrough.
    • And if that wasn't enough, many of the newly introduced mechanics (to take advantage of DS capabilities) will become hell if you don't use them regularly, usually getting you stucked only because you forgot to check some dumb thing on a piece of evidence.
    • Also, the trial has many nasty tricks like giving you the option to present evidence where NONE OF THE EVIDENCE IS CORRECT and a part where you have to find evidence IN A VIDEO (and if you haven't been paying attention, reading and overanalyzing every word of the Court Record, chances are that you'll never find the correct evidence). Gladly the worst video analysis isn't penalized (yeah, you have to analyze that video many times and some of those are penalized).
    • Also, the case has so many subversions that by the end is almost impossible to determine which is the correct piece of evidence to present, all of this is not helped by the fact that you have very little help in this case and almost all of your decisions are penalized if chosen wrong.
    • And to top it off, there is a nasty One-Hit Kill Moon Logic Puzzle almost by the end of the trial, the worst part is that if you haven't being paying all the attention in the world, not only to the Court Record but also to the conversations since the start of the trial, you won't recognize it. And to add even more insult to injury, that part is presented as a simple choice that in other situations would be really easy to pick. If you haven't been saving from time to time, expect to suffer the worst moments of your life (Since the trial is so long that losing almost at the end will trigger Unstoppable Rage in at least 90% of the human population).
  • Case 4 of the third game is actually one of the shortest in the series, but don't lat that fool you, it's really bloody hard. You only have, like, 5 pieces of evidence and ALL of them are Chekhov's Boomerangs, being used roughtly 3 times each, at least one of which WILL be a Moon Logic Puzzle. (e.g. Using a photo of a body in the trunk of a car to show there were scratch marks on the lock) And to top it all off, your reward for completing it is a MAJOR Downer Ending. (Which, to be fair, you should have seen coming, but still.)
• Torin's Passage had the Slippery Slope: a steep slope with few viable handholds, which were totally invisible and only detectable when you moused over it and the talking grass gave an affirmative. A variant of the Pixel Hunt.
• Runaway: A Road Adventure. Chapter One, Scene One. "Hmm, I should write over this board so that the killer after Gina mistakes her for someone else and leaves. Hey, I have a marker, but it's dry ! Hey, I have some alcohol ! But I'd need something pointy to refill it... a pointy container... in a hospital..." Well, good luck finding the 2-pixel-wide zone holding the freaking syringe now. Perfectly logical and sensible puzzle killed by Pixel Hunt again.
• 7 Days a Skeptic of the Chzo Mythos games was particularly painful when the player was being chased about the space station and died if the enemy got within a few pixels of him (in a small windowed game). While the chasing was not TOO bad if you played things safe, the worst parts were the puzzles to defeat said assailant, usually involving doing things that were much more elaborate than would realistically be necessary.
  • Oh, come on; during the chase he can pop out of any door in the ship. Including a locked door. A locked door that you had to stand next to and unlock manually. While it was still locked.
• Zack and Wiki: Barbosa's Island starts by making you pull a trap door that will kill you unless you grab a grate in a split-second (after getting the pointer on screen which was hidden during the previous sequence of course), and goes downhill from there. Especially frustrating is fighting the skeletons with a sword, and the controls are terrible. And the level ends with a minigame where you need to pull a rope just before Barbaros reaches you ... and yes, failing this minigame does count as death.
  • There's also the Frost Breath level, which is a very frustrating mirror puzzle where three incorrect fires of the cannon result in losing a life, or the Dragon Scales level, a long and intricate level with a lot of steps that requires a LOT of forethought or else the player renders the level Unwinnable.
    • Meh, I didn't really mind Frost Breath. However I feel Dragon Scales needs to be expanded on. What you said doesn't even begin to describe how easy it is to make it Unwinnable. To complete it, you must climb into the dragon statue at the start, pull the lever inside the head twice, (once to drop the bridge into place, the second to move the statue's claw into place,) cross the bridge and remove the claw from the dragon statue, put it into the flamethrower statue at the centre, use it to kill the two spiders on the other side, turn the sleeping pirate and one of the aforementioned spiders into a totem and tennis racket respectively, stand on a certain podium, use the tennis racket to hit one of the statue's fireballs back to hit a third spider, (a challenge in itself, and you lose points for every miss,) and turn another sleeping piate into a second totem, before rolling one of these totems and the bridge down a ramp to form a see-saw at the bottom, put the other totem on the see-saw and jump on the other end to throw it across. Take a spider-racket, set the fire statue to push a nearby boulder onto one end of your see-saw while you go on the other end, then plug the nearby lava-drain thing with the totem when you're flung over, hop on the other podium, hit a fireball across with your racket to free the treasure chest and have it land on the see-saw, dislodge a second boulder to have the chest flung to you. Sound difficult and intricate already? Well, if you are to mistime just one step here, you will be unable to finish the stage. ...Yeah.
• Chapter 9 in Ghost Trick. Escort Mission. Lights switched off. Enough said.
• The parlor in Dream Chronicles, where you have to find seven pictures, some of which are ridiculously well-hidden. Then you have to put each of them in the correct spot on the wall, causing the piano to play a melody of varying length, during which you can't do anything. THEN you have to click on each picture and play back the melody on the piano. Oh, and did I mention that after you successfully play back the melody, it plays it back AGAIN and you can't do anything?
• Yume Nikki has the "Hell" maze. Not only does it glow red, giving it a very unsettling look and feel, it's also the largest area in the game, is extremely difficult to navigate, and there's a toriningen or two to avoid. But navigation of it is necessary to obtain a few effects.
  • The teleport maze. Without a map, you will get lost.
• The stone room puzzle in Riven is one of the hardest puzzles in the game. You have to deduce the order in which to choose five symbols (from about thirty in total). This is accomplished by 1. learning the D'ni numbers in the school; 2. noticing the five wooden spheres on the island with the village (note: one isn't reachable in its proper location and can only be found in a completely unrelated place); 3a. notice the sound they make (one of them doesn't make a sound however) and find the relevant animals or 3b. notice that when observed from a certain angle, they form the "eye" in the symbol you're looking for (one of them doesn't have this, though). Although most players will get the sound-based clues, the shapes are hard to notice so if you didn't, tough luck solving the one that doesn't make a sound, especially since that's the one you can't reach so its shape can only be observed through a telescope viewer in yet another unrelated location (and you can't really see the sphere through the telescope either). I've yet to hear of anyone who noticed that shape without hints; those who solved the puzzle without hints either just tried all symbols for the missing sphere, or reasoned that since the sphere was in the water, it should be a fish.