Wall Banger/Video Games

Yeah, we know, James.

"My face turns beet red, I throw the controller against the ground and start swearin', 'Fucking game long chains. Swear to NEVER play a shooter game again.'"

"What were they THINKING?!"

—The Angry Video Game Nerd

In Video Games, Wall Bangers are often also Game Breakers, and are sometimes called "Controller Smashers" or "Screen Smashers" for the impulses a gamer on the receiving end of a Wall Banger gets. They are particularly frustrating here because video games are all about giving the player control; that makes it significantly worse when the player is railroaded into doing something completely stupid.

See also Gameplay and Story Segregation (and subtropes like Cutscene Power to the Max and Insurmountable Waist High Fence) for more examples that make players angry.

Game mechanics are not Wall Bangers, if you see one listed here, please delete it. Go to Scrappy Mechanic instead.

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• Star Ocean: The Second Story

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Ace Attorney

• In case 1-4 of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, when Maya is actually arrested for contempt charges, coupled with the threat of you being arrested for same simply for cross-examining a decisive witness (made worse when it's revealed that she never witnessed the crime herself). The game tries to handwave legal oddities with Rule of Fun and a backstory that suggests a simplified court process heavily stacked against the player, but this may as well be a kangaroo court. It doesn't even matter that Manfred von Karma is the villain - a prosecutor does not declare law and punishment. No court works that way this side of a totalitarian dictatorship.
• The fourth case of Apollo Justice ends with what many consider to be a major Anticlimax. The murderer breaks down alright, but not because of the evidence you present (which gets shot down); it's because of Phoenix's overhauling of the judicial system. On top of that, Apollo is completely absent between the two trial days, during the MASON System segment--are we playing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, or Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice?
  • What's epically stupid about this development is that, if you lose the case the traditional way (too many penalties) the judge ends the trial immediately instead of handing it over to the jury like he was supposed to.
• In the first case of game two, it's claimed that the (misspelled) name of your client in the sand was written by the victim, naming his killer as he died. Despite the fact that he died instantly of a broken neck. This wouldn't be a problem were it not for the fact that the game doesn't allow you to point this out or even try to provide a reason why they're willing to run with him being capable of writing - instead you have to highlight the spelling error made with the writing of the name. This is already after they've arrested his girlfriend for the crime, when she has no motive, based on evidence consisting of her name being written and misspelled with the wrong hand by a guy who couldn't have stayed alive long enough to do it. The witness's testimony was full of ridiculously obvious contradictions, made even more questionable by his poor eyesight, and he had even left his cell phone behind at the crime scene, complete with a list of numbers of known criminals. If Phoenix hadn't been struck with plot-convenient amnesia, this might have been the easiest case in the series. The cherry on top? The incident is such a tarnish on Maggey's reputation that she is forced to retire from the police force, despite her innocence! What?
  • There has to be at least two times per case where Phoenix or Apollo has much better evidence that could end the trial much quicker, but we are not allowed to use it.
• In 3-2, no one bothered to even mention how Luke Atmey's nose would have posed a serious problem wearing the Mask*DeMasque... uh, mask. They don't even lampshade it, they just ignore it entirely!
• The third case of Apollo Justice: two shots were fired from a high-calibre gun which could potentially dislocate the shoulder of a strong adult if they didn't brace themselves properly while firing it. Your client is a 13 year old boy who has probably never fired a gun in his life, and is completely unharmed. And legally blind. This fact is brought up in the trial, but no-one thinks it would have done more than throw his aim off a bit. It's also later revealed that the accused is only pretending to be blind, but the cops wouldn't have known that at the time of the arrest. Not only that, but it is eventually revealed the gun belonged to the victim, who was an Interpol agent three times the defendant's size and more than capable of fending him off in an assault. And why didn't anyone try to ascertain the time that passed between the shooting and the death? That would have proven Maki not guilty right away!
  • Per your last point, it's impossible to determine exactly when a gun has been fired with any accuracy (no pun intended).
  • As a bonus, the prosecution also figures that the legally blind suspect went back for the victim afterward (who is three times his size, remember) and lifted and carried him onto a raised portion of the stage, requiring considerably more strength than he most likely possessed, leaving himself unconscious, and accomplishing little more than further implicating himself. Why would he do that? Because it fit the lyrics of the song he was performing.
  • Further compounding the insanity is the fact that the prosecution never seems to take the height difference into account. For their suspect to have killed the victim, he would have had to be standing on his tiptoes holding the gun over his head with his arms fully extended in order to get the bullets to go on a perfectly straight trajectory through the victim's shoulder. Because of this, the case became incredibly simplistic once the player realized that the killer would have to have been a man in order to beat the victim in a fight, two new male characters were introduced in the case, and one of them was Trucy's uncle - which by default made him innocent...
• Currently playing through case 2-4 of the series, and it's been rather absurd. Especially since there are multiple times when you have to present the correct evidence in one try or you lose. The part where you have to point out The Nickel Samurai's costume is baggy around the legs in a photo with one try seems especially insane, since you could assume it's because of the angle and the photo being in black and white.
  • A much better contradiction that they should have also allowed was the Nickle Samuri's arm completely fills the glove in his promotional poster but you can clearly see space between the arm and the glove in the picture. Thus whoever was wearing the costume at that time of the picture must have had thinner arms than your client. But the game railroads you into a game over if you try and point this out.
• One of the biggest Wall Bangers about the Ace Attorney series is that even after proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the true killer was there with the victim and pulled the trigger / stabbed with the sword / whatever...you still lose the argument, and the case, if you cannot decisively prove that the killer had a motive. Even though everyone knows and can see that the killer has, without a doubt, killed the victim, motive or not. On top of that, you must always prove the real killer's motive while your clients are routinely arrested without motives and the prosecutors always handwave this.
  • That and the fact that you need to prove who the killer was to get your client off the hook, even if you can conclusively prove your client not guilty. Phoenix is a defense attorney - it shouldn't be his job to find out who actually committed the murder! What makes the whole business worse it that Edgeworth himself said that it is his job to find the guilty party during the Redd White Case and that Nick should stop accusing the witness. Admittedly, doing it any other way would result in a very unsatisfying narrative where you never get to corner the real killer, so this is probably a Justified Trope. Brutally parodied in this comic
  • It is also the start of the events in Apollo Justice where Phoenix starts working behind the scenes to overhaul the current judicial system to one with a jury so that evidence does not have to be THE sole way to convict the guilty party. After a few years of Phoenix Wright having to come up with evidence and use the most insane logic for them and the motive of the killer, it is no wonder that he finally decided to do something about the system geared towards getting people guilty by Apollo's time.
• One of the cross-examinations in Case 3 of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is a constantly cited Wall Banger by many players: You are told by the other characters that in this testimony, you have to prove that the victim and the murderer's girlfriend never knew they were related. Sounds simple, but then, you end up spending over 30 minutes on this one testimony. Then you find out that answer is not to prove that they didn't know they were related but that there were three people involved in the kidnapping case.
• In addition, near the end of the case, Lance admits that he was in on the whole kidnapping plot. However, even at that point, he insists that Lauren killed Oliver. When you finally provide the final evidence that reveals that he did it... he breaks down and admits that Oliver attacked him and he killed him in self-defense. Uh... why didn't he say that earlier? He's already admitted to every part of the crime except the part that's completely justified, and yet he still tries to frame someone else for it? What's the point? While he could have been lying about that as well, the game never follows up on it.
  • What about the fact you first establish a completely plausible crime scene by a thorough explanation of the unusual shape of the wound on the victim, but when the real crime scene is revealed to be elsewhere, no-one bothers to even try to explain the now-unlikely wound again?
• The biggest wallbanger of Investigations for me was when you had to examine the video tape. Just to start with you need to prove that a certain card we see someone holding so as to only show us the back of it contains orders given to him by the boss of the smuggling ring. What part of the picture do you have to show to prove this? Just point out the card the victim is holding. Did they really need the player to do this, in retrospect its so painfully obvious that it seems like it was designed JUST to trip the player up by making them think too hard. Then after that you need to prove that the person sitting in the limo was connected to the nation of Cohdopia. There's a great big shiny metal that has the colors of Cohdopia visible and we later learn there was given to only one Cohdopia hero as a war metal, but guess what its not the right answer! its the black card in the figure's breast pocket its like the game is trying to screw you over at this point!
  • Worse, the limo itself has a Cohdopian flag on it, but the camera zooms in on the window to keep you from pointing this out.
• In one section of case 1-5, the testimony reads 'The man raised up his knife, and... and stabbed Mr. Marshall in the chest...!'. You possess an autopsy report stating that he was 'Stabbed in the back'. Presenting it here will get you a penalty. My face.
  • Along similar lines, earlier in that case a witness talks about how she saw the defendant stabbing the victim with a 10 MM knife, the autopsy report says that they will killed by a stab wound from a 12 MM knife. Trying to point out this CLEAR contradiction will do nothing but put you on the fast train to Game Over land.
• In case 3 of Trials and Tribulations, you have to deal with a claim that a previous witness saw what was going on through a large mirror. The witness talked about how he was trying to read the victim's newspaper prior to the crime. You have the news paper in your court record. Yet, nobody at the trial seems to bother to ask themselves, how the hell could a witness have possibly even tried to read a reflected version of a newspaper...
  • This may be pushing it, but it is possible to read a text reflected in a mirror. However, this requires extreme focus and is very stressing on the brain. Even if the reflection problem was pointed out, there was no way to prove that the witness did not try to read by the reflection, as needlessly taxing as it is.
• The second day of case 5 of Trials and Tribulations is an utter nightmare in terms of the logistics of guilt. As the trial day begins, Iris declares that she was involved in the murder's coverup, but claims that the actual murderer was Maya. For several cross-examinations, you must prove her accusations false. If you fail, the court firmly gives a guilty verdict to... Iris, rather than Maya. Later on, it's revealed that the defendant in the courtroom is Dahlia instead of Iris, and she claims to have killed Maya. Fail to disprove this, and a guilty verdict is given to... Iris. But handle everything right, dispel all of these accusations, and prove that Iris was never at the actual murder scene (as stated by multiple witnesses, including Dahlia), and the case turns to the question of who actually had the opportunity to strike the victim dead. Fail to accuse the correct person, and the court gives the guilty verdict to... Iris. Apparently the court is just that obsessed with arresting the original suspect.

Fallout

• In the ending to Fallout 3, The player must choose to sacrifice either their life or Lyon's in order to activate Project Purity and save the Capital Wasteland. This would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that three potential party members (a robot, a ghoul and a super mutant) are completely immune to radiation and could thus save the day with no one having to die. But no, they come up with an Ass Pull reason why they can't. Worse, the only way to fix this horrible ending is to actually buy a downloadable content pack that alters the ending to account for these plot holes and leave the player a plot reason for why they can still play after the end of the main campaign.
  • Oh, and did we mention that it is possible for The Starscream to have JUST left the room after you convince him to give up? Redemption Equals Death... right?
    • Not to mention that by this point you usually have on your person a massive amount of Rad-X and Rad Away. You could walk into Chernobyl during the meltdown with the amount of radiation blocking drugs you have.
    • Earlier fallout games let you use Rad-X and Rad-Away to do things like strip naked and streak through The Glow, an area so radioactive that it would kill an unprotected human being in less than two minutes.
• The peaceful resolution to the "Tenpenny Towers" quest. Roy ends up killing all the human tenants anyway later on. This in itself is not a Wallbanger, as it fits into the Crapsack World that the postnuclear-apocalypse world is. The Wallbanger is that Roy is still listed as a Good character by the game, meaning you lose karma points if you kill him afterwards in retaliation for the murder of all the occupants who had voted to let him in.
• An early part of Fallout 3 add-on pack The Pitt could be considered a Wall Banger. Three options are open to you when first entering The Pitt Downtown. First, you can put on a slave outfit and pose as a slave; Mex, the main guard, will strip you of your gear. The second option is to claim you want to join the Raiders. The third option is, predictably, kill the guards and sneak in. The second and third options drop you right into an ambush, four Pitt Raiders armed with Police Batons will beat you unconscious and take all your things, leaving you with a Tattered Slave Outfit. Why is this a Wall Banger? Because there is absolutely nothing to stop you from entering while wearing Power Armour that lets you go toe-to-toe with the likes of a Super Mutant Behemoth (a 20 ft tall muscle-bound monster armed with a fire hydrant - yes, you read that right) and come out on top, survive direct hits from missiles and be tough enough to stand in the middle of a bunch of fragmentation grenades with nary a scratch, and carrying enough weapons and ammunition to worry God. And yet, even when you're enough of a Badass to wander right into the bunker held by a multitude of heavily-armed bloodthirsty mercenaries and slaughter the entire lot of them, you are beaten into unconsciousness, unable to fight back, by a few burly idiots with maybe 150 uncontested IQ points between them who are armed with sticks.
  • Which gets even better if you're wearing Chinese stealth armour, which turns you invisible, so even while they beat you to unconsciousness, there's still a message at the top of the screen saying you haven't been detected; i.e. they don't even know you're there and just decided to wail on a doorway in the hopes an invisible person might be standing there.
  • And when you get enough "cred" to be given your gear back after winning the arena fights (for some reason the Raiders haven't split it up and sold it yet, and trust you enough to give it to you despite suspecting you of causing a slave rebellion) you can go on a Raider-killing rampage. You can kill everyone, even the top-guards, without breaking a sweat. It is not explained why you had to be so cautious at first when you end up killing them all in a massive rebellion anyways.
• Little Lamplight. There's a town full of nothing but children under 16. Okay. They kick teenagers out when they turn 16. Less okay. You have to go rescue some of their friends from slavers before they let you in. Less okay, considering that the entrance to their town is a plywood gate guarded by a prepubescent boy with an assault rifle, and the player has access to things like flamers and miniature nuclear weapons. In real life, the player could just grab the Mayor from his post near the gate, pull him outside, and hold him hostage until someone else opens the gate. However, all the kids in Little Lamplight have plot armour, except the one who's just turned 16 and is forced to head off to "Big Town". Leaving aside the question of where the kids all came from in the first place, there's a whole slew of Super Mutants on the other side of the town, all of whom are, like the player, equally unable to get past that plywood gate without assistance. To sum up, we have a town of invincible children from nowhere, surrounded by heavily armed slavers and Super Mutants on both sides, none of whom are able to get past a pair of flimsy plywood gates constructed by the aforementioned children. Did I mention that the kids are all rude and arrogant, precisely the sort of people the PC would want to kill if only they weren't invincible?
  • The developers actually intended the secret of where the children of Little Lamplight came from to be ambiguous, though one could surmise that since teenage girls can still get pregnant by 16...of course, leaving a giant open question like this is a Wall Banger in and of itself.

Final Fantasy

• In Final Fantasy Tactics, every time you meet a bad guy important to the plot and you defeat them, they teleport away at the "last second", despite laying down "knocked out" in battle for the last half-hour or so. You can get the teleport ability but it does have a tendency to fail over long distances, apparently this doesn't apply to them. What's also annoying is that they only die when the plot demands it, there being zero difference between what you did before and what you did to defeat them the second or third time around. Talk about Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • It doesn't apply to them. You learn Teleport, but they have Teleport 2. You can actually hack the ability, and it lets you move anywhere on the map without failure rate. Of course, it doesn't explain the characters without Teleport 2 doing this...
  • In the game you manage to come across one of the twelve or so MacGuffins in the game by defeating a boss, later on the main character gives it to a low-level white mage character for "safe-keeping". Surprise surprise, she gets kidnapped, and the MacGuffin is stolen.
• Final Fantasy XI ended up with a whole bunch due to the fact that Square never seemed to divert their best writers to it:
  • Bastok mission 9-2 (technically part of Rise of the Zilart, but branching off from original content), itself part of a series of plotless backstory exposition on the Galka race, just randomly takes a noble if misunderstood character and derails him into fighting you because the developers needed a big boss battle to end the mission tree.
  • The character of Prishe in Chains of Promathia pretty much turned what could have been an interesting story about ancient arcane civilizations and turns it into a glorified scavenger hunt for a horribly abrasive character and her fawning entourage. For a description of the character herself, she also has an entry in Tsundere Sue (that, alone, should say quite a bit). A more specific example, though, is mission 7-5, which completely derails one of the characters in order to force a boss battle, then just negates it all without anybody so much as even giving him a second glance.
  • The quest "Apocalypse Nigh" (which is technically a continuation of the Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia storylines). Obviously borne out of player outrage at the death of a popular character during the primary Zilart storyline, it comes up with a flimsy excuse to bring her back (which is made more dubious considering the character never gets used again). The moment it hits the wall is when you see every major villain in the two storylines take on every major protagonist in what was a very blatant "making it up as we go along" story.
  • The plot of Treasures of Aht Urhgan hands you the Idiot Ball, putting you through utterly idiotic But Thou Must! choices in order to force the plot along.
  • Time will tell if any consideration is given to the gross negligence towards time paradox situations that the Wings of the Goddess expansion has chosen to ignore for now.
• Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. When you finally caught up to the Judge of Wings (Mydia) and beaten her, everyone, save Fran and Balthier, are all hugs and sympathy. Considering that Mydia had just finished slaughtering her entire race (who I must note had done nothing wrong and were completely innocent) and provided a difficult boss battle, what the hell?! Her motivation was basically "I'm so lonely and my lover's dead and I want to bring him back and possibly get some revenge" while her reasons for killing off her race was "I don't want Feolthanos to use them like he used me" when she could've just ignored them instead of killing them, since when you see Feolthanos, he's basically a giant, immobile crystal. Also, considering that she had gotten some of her anima back, she could've just asked the party for help instead of fighting them.
• From Final Fantasy VII: after getting the Black Materia back from Jenova, Cloud decides it would be best to let someone else hold on to it in case Sephiroth decides to control Cloud again and gives the one that volunteers strict instructions not to give it to anyone.^[1] Later on, said individual is tricked by Sephiroth into coming to the aid of the other members of the party. When he/she arrives, the first thing he/she does is give the Black Materia to Cloud without question, despite earlier instructions, not to mention having first hand knowledge that Sephiroth could manipulate Cloud into getting the materia. Granted, everything more or less works out in the end, but after watching it all unfold you start to wonder if they're worth the trouble.

Mass Effect

• In Mass Effect 2:
  • The quarians must stay in environmentally-sealed suits at all times, even while on-board their starships, to ensure they don't get sick. Outsiders also must wear environmental suits while on quarian ships to ensure they don't spread diseased. Which doesn't explain why Miranda is walking around in her normal Stripperific outfit with the addition of a mouth-nose mask.
    • Hell, every single squadmate has this problem; not just on the Migrant Fleet, but in dozens of places where they shouldn't be able to survive. Particularly egregious, since in the first game everyone had sealed environmental suits. It's little wonder why users on the Bioware forums have yelled loudly after the game was released for all the characters to get, at the very least, a suit of armor. Poor Jack goes through most of the game wearing nothing but some pants and a few strategically-placed strips of material to cover herself. The only cosmetic change she gets after unlocking her loyalty is a shirt, if that because that alternate costume looks more like she got one sloppily added near full torso tattoo.
  • Warden Kuril. It's not idiotic enough that he decided to double cross Shepard^[2] and Cerberus,^[3] Kuril also let Shepard's team keep their weapons. AND actually revealed he was planning on capturing them just as they were about to unwittingly walk into a cell, It really isn't that surprising that he gets killed soon afterwards.
  • What about Zaeed's loyalty mission? Save the refinery workers or go after Vido? Why do we have to choose? Saving the workers wasn't hard! Why couldn't we just have squad member #2 take care of the fire extinguishers while Zaeed and Shepard track down Vido?
    • Especially given that Mass Effect 3 has multiple sequences where you must temporarily fight onwards with only one squadmate, because the other one is occupied performing some extended task offstage.
• Mass Effect 3 has so many off-kilter and headscratching moments that some players have accused Bioware of outright sabotaging the franchise and/or rushing the game to meet a release date instead of fixing the narrative. This document is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stupid plot decisions, and further elaborated upon in these three videos:
  • Shepard's behaviour during the prologue and Defense Committee meeting is bizarrely inconsistent. S/he starts off by telling the committee that it isn't the time to fight, only survive. Seconds later, s/he tells the committee that humanity has to fight or die, completely ignoring that (depending on your playthrough) Shepard has already overcome the odds multiple times by rallying various factions/specialists and accomplishing missions that were previously thought impossible. Later on, when Shepard gets on the Normandy, Anderson has to expressly tell him/her to rally the galaxy, even though Shepard is insistent that the fight is on Earth. Was Shepard dumbed-down deliberately or accidentally?
  • Despite the fact that the Reapers took over the Citadel (offscreen, rendering the time you spent building that "Citadel Defense Force" completely pointless) and shut down the Mass Relay network, they somehow failed (or outright forgot) to shut down the Charon Relay, giving the Alliance forces and amassed fleets the perfect opportunity to get into the Sol System. Furthermore, they wait until TIM gives them the warning about the Crucible to attack the Citadel, which would allow them to control all the other Mass Relays. As opposed to, you know, attacking it immediately so the other species can't unite against them. Were the Reapers deliberately doing this, or were they just being idiots? Who knows? Who cares!
    • Even worse, why did the Reapers bring the Crucible to Earth?!!! Why not move it to more controlled territory, like Thessia (which was COMPLETELY taken over)? And why did the Reapers keep the damn Conduit on? If they had turned it off (or better yet if they had just taken control of Citadel and closed it from the inside and left it where it was), it would be impossible for anyone to penetrate it, and thus the Crucible would be useless, and resistance to the Reapers would (probably) be crushed.
  • Several of the ME2 squadmates' reasons for not joining Shepard on the Normandy (and becoming an assistant/teammate) are downright absurd, especially considering that other characters from the previous game (including Garrus, Tali and EDI) join you without hesitation. While some have good reasons for staying out of the fight (Jack has to protect her students, Grunt is leading Aralakh Company, Thane is too sick), others have no excuse. Miranda has to sneak around all the time to avoid Cerberus forces, but rejects your offer to come aboard (and give her resources) with the statement that this is something she has to do herself. Samara pledges once again to fight for you no matter what happens...and spends the rest of the game standing around in the Citadel. Zaeed (if he survived) is genuinely happy to see you, but sits around in the Citadel refugee ward for the rest of the game talking about how he'll help you take Earth later.
    • Miranda is the worst. Second-in-command of the Normandy, one of the highest-placed members of Cerberus, and what's she doing? Running around looking for her sister. Gee, I don't know, what would have been a better way to use her, hmm? Possibly helping coordinating the Alliance's anti-Cerberus efforts? You don't even need to have her on the Normandy for God's sake! But no, she has to be looking for Oriana the whole game, not just in the very last part. It's as if NONE of the ME 2 squadmembers or the relationships you had with them matter. Jacob cheats with you, Thane dies mid-game and you don't even get the cheevo for him (so sorry ladies, you need to fuck one of the girls if you want that achievement), none of them feature in the final slideshow. Goddammit, Bioware.
      • To be fair, the Alliance put you in jail temporarily just for working with Cerberus. The mind boggles at what they've had done to one of the Illusive Man's longtime lieutenants. Miranda has every reason to stay away from the main plot of ME3 until the endgame; you're back with the official authorities and she has more outstanding arrest warrants than Satan. And sure, she knows you won't arrest her. She also knows that you are at least vaguely accountable to your chain of command again, and also don't need any more political complications than you already have.
  • The endings. So many illogical and downright bizarre moments occur in the last ten minutes that the narrative collapses under the weight of a boatload of silliness:
    • The Crucible. Throughout the entire game, you've been amassing scientists, technicians and special teams of various species to work on this unknown device, whose apparent purpose is to dock with the Citadel and do...something. None of the main characters have any idea what this device does, yet they rely on it as a Hail Mary pass to defeat the Reapers. No one told Shepard how to activate this thing when he finally got to the control panel to activate it? And better yet, why did a continuous cycle of species, over billions of years, add pieces to it without having any idea what it was capable of?
      • Additionally, how did the Reapers never learn about or find the Crucible after all these cycles? How and why did they not find it and attack it while Hackett was assembling all those forces to build it? It's a sitting duck lying in some random nebula. Did Hackett and his forces constantly move it? Did the Reapers simply never find it, or did they not even bother to make an effort to do so, even though destroying it would have wiped out the biggest threat to them and significantly weaken the resistance? Either way, that is an extremely stupid move on the part of the Reapers.
    • The main motive of the Catalyst boils down to "organics shouldn't be killed by synthetics, so I made machine gods that will harvest you every 50,000 years...to save you from synthetics." Why did Shepard not question how stupid and redundant that was? S/he just rolls over and accepts it.
    • The Catalyst (and the plot, by extension) ignores the fact that in spite of its claim that organics and synthetics cannot co-exist, Shepard has spent the entire game possibly rallying both types of life. One instance always occurs (Joker and EDI begin a relationship), while it is possible to broker peace between the Geth and Quarians. Yet, Shepard never bothers to bring this up or throw the Catalyst's claim back in its face, making him/her look like a fool.
    • The Reapers go from being Dangerously Genre Savvy, Nigh Invulnerable, God-like beings of incomprehensible age and power to mass-storage genetic jars that "The Catalyst" decided to store ^[4] the organic races of the galaxy rather than letting them be wiped out by the "inevitable" Robot War. Right.
    • The game ends with (depending on your playthrough) the squadmates you took with you on the final mission somehow teleporting back to the Normandy and crashlanding on an unknown planet. This occurs even if your EMS is low enough that they died on the way to the Conduit (with their bodies lying on the ground as you walk towards it after Harbinger's attack).
    • Immediately following Shepard's choice, Joker is seen flying the Normandy through the Charon relay and attempting to outrun the massive blast wave behind him (to the point that he looks backwards on the ship when there's nothing to see but the CIC behind his cockpit). Let's reiterate: the guy who provided fire support for Shepard and the two teammates s/he took with him/her on the final leg of the Suicide Mission, and the pilot who always had Shepard's back no matter what, is now suddenly fleeing the Earth battle for an unexplained reason, and gets the ship trashed as a result. Character Derailment, much?
    • The "Synthesis" ending amounts to Shepard forcing all organics to become half-synthetic beings against their will (basically, what Saren wanted to do in the original game). The mechanics or consequences of this choice are never dealt with, yet this is apparently presented as the "best" option to pick, as it requires the highest amount of Effective Military Strength to get access to. What???'
    • With this implication that the "Synthesis" option is the "best" outcome, the game really shoots the entire trilogy in the back even more so and in probably the most horrifying and insulting way possible. In effect, it seems to be arguing that Saren was right all along... and, therefore, Shepard's entire struggle from Eden Prime onwards was not only pointless but also "wrong" and thus put the entire galaxy in a worse position. (Facepalm) Seriously, Bioware?
    • Just the entire Catalyst sequence at all. The game ends with the final expository infodump, the final plot denouement, and the final choice facing the hero, all being given to you by the arch-villain. The Catalyst is The Man Behind The Man, the boss villain, the architect of all the misery and death the Reapers have unleashed on the galaxy since time immemorial. It has led the extermination of entire galactic populations every 50,000 years for at least hundreds of millions of years, or, it has wiped out 99% of the known galaxy at least 20,000 times over. That is a body count so high it literally outdoes every other video game villain I can remember all put together. It's a murder tally so ridiculous large that it makes Warhammer 40k's death toll look like My Little Pony. Khorne himself would be reduced to sheer gaping fanboy awe by this ridiculously huge of a bloodletting. And yet the game ends with us not only uncritically accepting everything this thing says, but allowing it to advise us on what to do next. OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
      • To quote from rpg.net -- "Hey, Bioware. Traditionally, when the Shepherd of Man confronts the Father Of Evil in a high place above the Earth, and the Adversary offers him all the kingdoms of the world in return for just one little favor, HE'S SUPPOSED TO SAY NO."
    • Drew Karpyshyn, the writer for Mass Effect and co-writer for Mass Effect 2 actually wrote an ending for the game that would have made sense and tied into the foreshadowing about Dark Energy, and would have offered a meaningful, difficult choice where Shepard has to either destroy the Reapers even though they're probably the best hope for the galaxy surviving the singularity, or side with them because as horrible as their methods and actions are, they may be the only real hope the galaxy has. This was tossed out in favor of a nonsensical rant about how AI's are evil (despite the first game foreshadowing that they weren't, the second game outright demonstrating it, and the supposedly safe, non-sapient VIs having a worse track record for going rogue and killing people).

Mega Man

• Mega Man 6. A bunch of robots are kidnapped by a "mysterious" Mr. X, who claims to have been "manipulating that fool Wily all this time." What's even lamer is that Mega Man is actually surprised when Mr. X reveals himself to be...wait for it...Dr. Wily.
• Much of the plot of Mega Man 9 is explained in a manga that never left Japan. The result is that Roll and Mega Man come off as cold-hearted and stupid towards the plight of the robot masters in the game. Let us remember that, as creations of Dr. Light, they are Mega Man's siblings. In the manga, it's revealed that Mega Man never actually kills any of the Robot Masters in the series, but simply disassembles them so Dr. Light can remove their violent programming. Hey Capcom, it would be nice to know that!
• Then Mega Man 10 comes along. A mysterious virus is infecting robots. Dr. Wily happens to drop by and very conveniently says he's been studying this virus. Mega Man and Dr. Light never question his intentions, despite the heroes instantly deducing Wily's hand in the problems in the last game. Okay, Light, time to put away the ball, you're supposed to be a genius...
• Speaking of, how long is Capcom gonna continue to cocktease us with all of these Red Herring Twists for the definitive connection between the original series and the Mega Man X series? First there was the whole thing with Wily convincing the robots to rebel against their expiration dates in 9, which could've been an awesome starting point for Wily's look into the mindset of how to make a robot rebel for his Maverick virus, but the aforementioned Overly Long Gag was shoehorned in at the last second, then in 10, it's learned that the Roboenza virus was Wily's creation, which could've been the originator of the Maverick virus, but instead, Wily hands out the cure for it himself, at the end of the game. What the hell? Quit teasing us, Capcom, and give us what we want, no more carrot-dangling.
  • Even earlier than that, in Mega Man 8, Wily was screwing around with something called Evil Energy. Granted, that'd mean that a big part of the Maverick Virus would've been from space, but it's at least something. Hell, they could've even had later games allow the protagonists to venture into space to fight against the source of the energy...

Mortal Kombat

• Mortal Kombat Armageddon: The Elder Gods are warned in advance about a coming apocalypse should the titular tournament continue to be held, yet instead of shutting it down pronto, they hand the problem off to a lowly protector god, who comes up with an inane Gambit Roulette involving his two sons, a firespawn created by his wife, two items of war, and a pyramid, which will only be set in motion when the events causing Armageddon have already started. Johnny Cage is the next messiah for the good guys. Raiden joins forces with the bad guys to ensure the safety of Earth, and resurrected Liu Kang's corpse as his enforcer. Jarek is now obsessed with perfecting his Fatality techniques. The Elder Gods gyp Scorpion after he served as their champion. Several characters grow to disproportionate size or become Body Horrors when they absorb godlike power during their ending. None of the loose plot threads of the series are resolved. And to top it all of, the new protagonist's ending - the one that will most likely be treated as canon in the next game - has the Gambit Roulette fail, instead exacerbating Armageddon rather than preventing it. You can't possibly enjoy the game for its story...
  • It gets worse if you listened to Ed Boon, creator and SCRIPT WRITER talking about how it's "Armageddon" and "Most of the Characters will die, leave, or have their stories wrapped up" only to have the game do NONE OF THOSE THINGS!
    • Only if you only take one ending as canon. Mortal Kombat 9 seems to choose not to choose on that subject, so from a certain point of view Boon was right.
    • Well, the canon ending to Armageddon Doesn't have Argus's overly complex plan fail due to Blaze's corruption. Instead, it fails because Taven doesn't fucking win the race to the top of the Pyramid. Everyone is killed, and the one left standing is Shao Kahn. So, the ludicrously inept plan ended up backfiring ridiculously, giving supreme power to one of the main villains (if not the main villain) of the franchise.
  • Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is even worse, with a complete butchering of the storyline for Mortal Kombat 2: Kung Lao is now an aggressive and jealous punk instead of the pacifist he was in the games; Kabal somehow appears in Outworld for no real reason; Liu and Kung Lao accept Shang Tsung/Raiden's demand to keep killing in Outworld to "weaken" Shang Tsung with little argument, despite knowing that the sorcerer grows stronger the more souls he consumes, essentially having their slaughter making him stronger, Kitana being under a spell; Shao Kahn given little acknowledgment until the very end (even though he was the main villain from MKII onward); and Quan Chi is seen, in full Deadly Alliance gear, including glyph tattoos, picking up Shinnok's amulet off of Kahn's corpse (even though MK4 and Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero have already established that he's had the real amulet - and the fake one being still held in the Temple of Elements - for the entirety of the first three games). "Alternate retelling" be damned, this is pure They Just Didn't Care at its worst.
  • Mortal Kombat 9's story mode has continued the fine tradition of the games above in terms of WTFery;
    • Several things in the timeline change independently of Raiden's actions post-visions, namely several MK2 and newer characters such as Smoke, Sector/Cyrax, and Nightwolf appearing in the original game's tournament, and Mileena being made by Shang Tsung during the events of MK2 instead of long ago. Yeah, sure, we expected some things to change due to Raiden's attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but there's a difference between characters winding up in the wrong place due to Raiden telling them to do so, and them being there because the plot says so.
    • The Elder Gods claim that they can't do anything to punish Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm until he fully merges it with Outworld, stating that it's the merger without an MK victory that breaks the rules, and not the invasion without a victory, in and of itself. This is patently stupid, as that's like saying that the police can't arrest someone for breaking into your home unless they stole everything in it, as well. Furthermore, if the invasion doesn't break the rules but their merger does, what's to stop Kahn from holding off the merger until he's taken over the Earth, subjugated its people, and forced Earth to throw the next ten MK tournaments to win the right to merge them "fairly"? No wonder Sindel and Quan Chi both agree that the tournament is a waste of time and the Elder Gods are ineffectual dicks.
      • However, the intention of the punishment is not to protect Earthrealm, it is to prevent the realms being merged, which is implied to release the One Being.
    • In order to save Earthrealm from Kahn's invasion, after the Elder Gods tell him to fuck off, Raiden makes a Deal with the Devil with Quan Chi, offering his soul and those of all of the fallen warriors for his help in stopping the invasion. Note that, according to the leak, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero is not among the events in the series that is altered in this game, meaning that Raiden still allied himself with Sub-Zero the Elder to take out Quan Chi and keep him from releasing Shinnok from the Netherrealm. In other words, he tries an Enemy Mine scenario with someone he knows is both untrustworthy and unlikely to help him, anyway. And what gives him the right to barter the souls of mortal men for Earth's safety? Yeah, he's the realm's protector god (which doesn't seem to mean jack, considering all of the times he's had to go behind the Elder Gods' back in order to intervene on Earth's destruction), but considering what we know of his past - especially his past with Shinnok, who tried something similar with Earth and got him kicked into Hell, as a result, how in the hell was he expecting to get away with this?
    • Raiden surmises, at the end, that Armageddon can be prevented by letting Shao Kahn win, merge the realms, and be punished by the Elder Gods, as a result. Um...how, exactly? Sure, Shao Kahn will be gone, but he's left a Evil Power Vacuum that Quan Chi, and other known Outworld bigwigs have been chomping at the bit to fill, and that still doesn't take care of the issues with Shinnok and the events of MK4, or Onaga's resurrection or deception of Shujinko, or the corruption of Blaze and Daegon and the underlying problem of Armageddon - mainly that all warriors involved tapped into too much cosmic power and became too powerful to control. Hell, some of the characters' bios and endings (mainly Johnny Cage(?!) and Smoke) show that the warriors are already growing too powerful for the multiverse to handle. So, really, killing Shao Kahn in order to avoid Armageddon would be like trying to stop a flu pandemic from spreading more than it already has by washing your hands and getting a good night's rest.
    • One could interpret it as Raiden trying to stop the particular Armageddon scenario seen at the intro; Shao Kahn winning the power of Blaze and ending the realms. This doesn't stop Armageddon in and of itself, only Shao Kahn's victory. Also, at least in story mode, a rather large amount of the powerful warriors end up dying anyways; if it's treated as canon that could stave off Armageddon.

Pokémon

• In Pokémon Red and Blue, the move Karate Chop that most Fighting-type Pokémon start out with was classified as a Normal-type move. That, however isn't the worst thing, considering that Lickitung, a huge lizard-like Pokémon with a tongue that is more than twice the length of its body didn't start out with or learn the move LICK! They fixed this in future generations, but those mistakes are highly noticeable and completely unforgivable.
• Also in the first games, Ghost-type moves are completely ineffectual against Psychic-type Pokémon, despite in-game dialogue specifically saying otherwise. Not only is this a case of the game outright lying to the player, but it means that the only moves super-effective against Psychics are Bug-type, of which there are only three, which in itself is another Wall Banger.
  • Ghost-type moves actually were supposed to be super-effective against Psychic Pokémon, but they were likely rendered ineffective due to a programming oversight or error.
    • And just to top of the concussion, even if ghost type moves WERE super-effective, this would leave the list of moves in the first game that were good against psychic types as follows: Leech Life and Lick (Both extremely weak), Confuse Ray and Nightshade (One does no damage and the other does damage based on levels, so wouldn't be affected by being super-effective anyway) and Pin Missile and Twinneedle (the latter being exclusive to Beedrill and the former to Beedrill and a higher-level-than-reasonably-expected-when-it's-needed Jolteon). In other words, the only Pokemon who, practically speaking, had any useful moves in a Psychic battle was Beedrill, who is not only a somewhat weak Pokemon in his own right, but is a bug/POISON type, rendering him, you guessed it, weak against psychic types. Can we say Game Breaker?
      • That's why the Dark type was added starting in Generation II. It's strong vs. Psychic and Ghost types, but weak to fighting types.
• In the second Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, the freaking Perfect Apples incident. You're supposed to go to Apple Forest to collect Perfect Apples because Team Skull ate the stock. When you get there, of course Team Skull defeats you and steals the stock. At least Chatot would listen, right? WRONG! Instead, he blames you and your partner, and he punishes you by going without dinner and facing the wrath of the Guildmaster. Oh, and the scene with the other guild members sending their food to you the next day because you're hungry did not ease the pain! It's that bad! Even worse, even without the "he said she said" with Team Skull, just from the evidence that can be readily ascertained from basic observation, the basic adventure boils down to "we went to where the Perfect Apples grow and the trees had been stripped bare". Hardly the kind of experience that warrants punishment, let alone being declared failures.
  • What makes it even stupider is after you say that you didn't get any Apples because Team Skull took them all, Wigglytuff starts to cry. You're saved from a temper tantrum by Team Skull coming in...WITH A PERFECT APPLE. One most wonder, where did they get that? It couldn't possibly have been FROM THE TREE, HUH?!
• A thud-worthy moment made its way into Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, combining Hostage for Macguffin with But Thou Must!. After clearing the Hippowdon Temple and gathering the Yellow Gem after a tough Pokémon capture, you leave the temple and receive a "vicemail" from Heath of Team Dim Sun, who had been giving you fake distress signals throughout your mission shortly after Keith disappeared. You've been suspicious of him all along (especially since he speaks You No Take Candle), but when he asks you to exchange the Yellow Gem for Keith, the game won't proceed unless you say "yes", and Keith isn't in that much danger anyway (he's tied up, but the Dim Sun copter is just a few feet off the ground, so it isn't like they could have dropped or shot him or anything). So now, you've gotta go halfway across Almia to get that thing back again!
• Flareon has remained the Tier-Induced Scrappy of the Eeveelutions since Pokémon Red and Blue, where it was unable to take advantage of its monstrous (physical) Attack because of its Fire-typing and pathetic physical movepool. In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, however, the physical-special split of typings has resulted in a powerful physical Fire move known as Flare Blitz. Because Flareon is tied with Ho-oh for the highest Attack of all Fire-types, not to mention the move had Flareon's name on it, it was sure to throw Flareon the bone it truly needed. As of Pokémon Black and White, Flareon has been denied Flare Blitz for the fourth time in a row. At least Entei got it. Eventually.
• The original Pokémon Ranger has a big one in the "Four Challenges" level. After you've beat the first three (annoying as hell) Pokémon, your partner, after being SPECIFICALLY TOLD not to do all four chambers, suggests the two of you go into the fourth "just to check it out". You are not allowed to say "No, Lunick/Solana, I'm tired of these stupid ruins full of irritating 'tests'. Let's go home." No, you have to go in there, and you have to explore it to your idiot partner's heart's content. Now, it's a lava level, suggesting the challenge Pokémon's a Fire-type. Keep that in mind. You get to the back of the chamber and find the Go Rock Quads with a Charizard. You know, Fire-type? You know by now that these four aren't to be trusted, so their "oh, this poor Charizard is suffering" story is weaker than tissue paper. Even though it's so freaking obvious to the player this is the challenge and things will end badly, YOU CAN'T LEAVE UNTIL YOU CAPTURE THE CHARIZARD.
• Okay, so The Battle Frontier makes for a pretty good side challenge for the competitive gamer and whatnot, but why is grinding Battle Points necessary to get anything? By the time HeartGold and SoulSilver came around, the list of things that could only be bought with BP amounts to TM's, evolution items, training items, held items, and even Move Tutors. It wouldn't be such a bad idea if it DIDN'T TAKE FUCKING FOREVER TO GRIND THAT MANY POINTS. The only way you'll get a sizable amount in a decent time is to actually get the chance to challenge a Frontier Brain, but even provided you make it to them, they could still easily whoop your ass and ruin your streak without so much as a consolation prize. Apparently, Game Freak thinks only gods deserve to teach their bugs how to bite things or something.^[5]
  • Thank God for the Trainer House in Viridian City in HeartGold and SoulSilver, where you can battle Cal and other Trainers whose Pokéwalkers you interacted with and win 1 BP per victory. Made better by the fact that you can have up to 10 people (plus Cal) and just have them put low-level Pokemon in their teams when they interact with you. You can get up to 11 BP per day this way, which really adds up fast.
• Another Black and White example. Each one of Rotom's alternate forms have the type of their unique move replacing their Ghost typing. Rotom-S became Electric/Flying-type, but still has Levitate as an ability.
• Delibird earns the prize of most pointless Dream World ability by getting Insomnia when it already has Vital Spirit, which is the same thing. Couldn't it have gotten an ability that would make it less of a Joke Character than it already is?
• Starting in the third generation, wild Geodude would have the tendency to use the move Mud Sport. Mud Sport is a move that weakens Electric Type moves. The wallbanger? Geodude is a Rock/Ground Pokemon and Ground-Types are immune to Electric-Type attacks. In other words, the latter games have a Pokemon with a move that it has absolutely no need for.
  • The point of the "sport" moves is to act as support moves. Use Mud sport with Geodude, and then any water/flying pokemon you have suddenly take much less damage from electricity.

Shin Megami Tensei

• In Persona 4 the characters refuse to tell the cops about the tiny bit about the murders taking place inside a TV because "They would be suspicious" (what?). When someone who is trained in investigating crimes finds out, major progress is made. The fact that Man Behind the Man is with the police doesn't excuse it when the characters have no idea at any point.
  • Near the end of the game a character refuses to believe the idea about the TV world and has you taken to the police station. The problem is there is a TV right in front of you during this scene, and a TV in the room you are taken to, but you never get the option to show it.
    • Even worse than that is the fact that the protagonist has just received a letter from an unknown person threatening his family if he continues to interfere. However instead of taking Nanako with them or making sure that someone stays with her Dojima simply leaves her on her own. What happens next is both easily predictable and would have been avoided if either he or the protagonist had actually been using their brains.
• Both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have another issue that mars otherwise flawless localizations: the ending songs, which are sung, are not translated in any way, even through subtitles. Why is this a wall-banger? Well:
  • In Persona 3, the ending song is a really important plot point in that it's meant to be Aigis singing to the dying Protagonist about how she'll always remember him (and deep down even wants to find a way to save him), and it drives the point that he really does die. It can be much harder to understand the ending if you can't understand the song, and even worse, if you don't understand the song and thus Aigis' feelings at the end, parts of The Answer can come across as nearly nonsensical - and did at first for many Western fans who didn't know what The Journey's end song meant at first.
  • Persona 4's situation is thankfully not quite as dire as the one above; the ending song just amplifies the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming and Tear Jerker aspects of the good endings. The ending does lose a little punch if you can't understand the song, though, and its message of continuing to love and stay bonded to people no matter how much time and distance may separate them, and how without them you can't find that which you once lost - that is, the truth.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• In Sonic Unleashed, towards the start of the game, when Sonic turns into a werehog for the second time and muses to himself, "I just need to be careful who sees me like this." Turns out that nobody in the game cares that Sonic has assumed this new monstrous form - not even Tails or Amy Rose, officially neutering the werehog as a plot device for the rest of the game.
• The Wall-Bangingest moment of the entire Sonic series has to be the entire Last Episode of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. It begins with the Big Bad killing Sonic. The game is bloody named after him, but they went out of their way to make sure you didn't play as him during the final level - which is, by the way, filled with not only even more Game Breaking Bugs, but even more loading screens than usual and instant-death gravity-sucking portals. And then after everyone recovers the Chaos Emeralds to save Sonic, Elise cements her place as the ultimate Scrappy of the series by reviving him with True Love's Kiss. A human princess kisses Sonic to revive him. The final boss barely even puts up a fight. About the only good thing that came out of the episode was the final phase's battle theme - just barely enough to soothe the pain of playing through that wreck.
• Come to think of it, Elise's entire presence in the game is wall-bangy, as she pretty much does nothing but stand around, be kidnapped, and, well, the aforementioned kiss. She's widely considered one of the most useless characters in the series, and the fact that she's a realistic-looking human interacting with Felix the Cat-esque characters really doesn't help. It's even worse if you know that Lacey Chabert, her voice actor, is actually a fan of the series.
• At the start of TLE, Mephiles shows up and shoots Sonic In the Back, in order to make Elise cry. He is a time traveller. He could've done that at any point since Elise met Sonic and bonded with him. One theory is that he simply prefers manipulating people to try and do it for him, and/or is a coward.
  • Elise apparently never cried, not even once, from ages 6 to 16. Not even when she learned her father was dead. Also, killing her also releases Iblis. He could've gotten a car bomb or sniper rifle, since he had literally all the time in her life to try and kill her.
  • They might not have even had to upset Elise to make her cry; smelling some cut onions, having severe hayfever or even using mace spray to shed a few tears, are just a few of many ways that humans produce tears without getting emotions involved.
  • Speaking of making people cry, Robotnik's plan was to gain the flames of disaster from Elise. Yet at the end, he's disgusted by the fact that Mephiles had to make her cry to do so, which was really the only way. In short, Robotnik invaded a kingdom and nearly caused a princess to commit suicide over a plot that he himself believes is morally unjust. Does evil have standards here or not?!
  • In Silver's ending, Blaze seals up Iblis inside her and has Silver transport her into another dimension. This explains both her pyrokinetic powers and how she could be both from the future and another dimension. However, this is completely ignored in future appearances, meaning Sega drew up one of the most plausible plot points in the mess of Sonic 2006, then retconned it for no reason whatsoever.

Tales Series

• Tales of Symphonia has the massive Gameplay and Story Segregation in the Ymir Forest: You have to get some fruit for a little boy whose mother needs it on account of being sick. But for reasons unknown, the character who spends every battle floating a foot and a half in the air has forgotten she can fly, so you have to knock it out of the tree with a blindly charging pig. And then, even though it's within arms' reach, no one seems to want to get near the water on account of some of the fish; it never occur to anyone to get a stick or even use their damn sword, so you have to go through a long and convoluted puzzle of hypnotizing other, smaller fish and getting them to push it to where you can get at it easier.
  • After you (finally) get that damn fruit from the water in Ymir Forest, an optional skit features Lloyd expressing an interest in trying some Ymir fruit for himself. Apparently this fruit is the last in the world, because everyone assumes he means to try the fruit they've just gotten (reasonable, since Lloyd is a shortsighted idiot), they berate him for being such a horrible person as to propose eating this all-important fruit they've just gotten (unreasonable, since if they'd just said, "okay, we'll get some on the way out for you to try", Lloyd, as a shortsighted idiot, would have probably forgotten all about it by the time they left).
  • This can be taken both ways. On one hand, the above is absolutely true. Or, it can just be the total aggravation of the party not wanting to go through that bullshit again.
  • Symphonia is also exceptionally good at ruining its own drama. At one point, Colette seems to turn into an angel and leave the party...and then a message box pops up telling you she's learned a new spell. At another, Your party seems to have been killed off, one at a time, which is made much less convincing by the fact that you can still find new equipment for them in treasure chests.
    • Like They Would Really Do That
  • Near the end of the game's Battle Royale With Cheese segment, Lloyd runs past a series of traps, culminating in an arrow that strikes him directly in the chest and takes down the last party member. At least, it would have, if not for a precious item his trusted friend gave him. What makes this annoying? If you befriended a character who didn't give you an item, Lloyd swiftly dodges the arrow with little effort. This becomes even more of a Wall Banger when you consider that the arrow probably wouldn't have killed him at all even without the trinket, because Lloyd certainly took hits a lot worse than an arrow to the chest by that point.
    • Very true, though by the same token, being saved by the trinket was more of a metaphorical way of saying that person "protected" Lloyd. In Kratos' case he taught Lloyd swordsmanship and gave him advice, even while they were enemies. Zelos used his influence within Tethe'alla several times and was branded a traitor for helping Lloyd, and Collette was willing to sacrifice herself so that the world, Lloyd in particular, would prosper.
      • The original complaint was shortened from a longer writeup that put more emphasis on the way he simply dodges the arrow if he doesn't have such an item. It was less about the use of Pocket Protector and more about its hamfisted use. Anyone who watches both outcomes can see that the item existed solely to deflect an arrow that wouldn't have been effective normally in order to force the protection metaphor. Once you start thinking about the trope in that way, it loses all emotional impact.
  • At one point in the game, you have a seemingly innocuous conversation that actually is used to determine whether someone dies a short while after. Never mind that the conversation is entirely unrelated to the later events, here's how it is implemented: In both situations, he seems to betray you. In situation one, you kill him. In situation two, he is not killed and saves your lives at the end of the game—however, the only reason he doesn't die is that you just sort of...don't...kill him. There's no reason for you letting him go in the second situation and killing him in the first, it just kind of happens.
    • The reason why you don't kill him is because he flees with Pronyma and leaves you to fight some guard angels. In the scenario where he dies the angels flee with Pronyma and he fights you.
    • Yeah, the emphasis there is that he either chooses to fight for you, or die by your hand. It comes down to whether or not he believes he can redeem himself in the eyes of the party. (Scenario 1 Lloyd: Can I trust you? (He dies) Scenario 1 Lloyd: I trust you. (He lives))
• Near the end of the first chapter of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, a man named Magnar occupies a town, orders them to turn over Marta or be killed, receives her, reveals his intent to kill her, and then proceeds to have his men destroy the town anyway. Emil shows up to save her, almost dies, recovers with the help of his Super-Powered Evil Side and saves her. They then fight Magnar in a boss battle ("Pray for a painless death!") that somehow doesn't kill him. And yet, after all of this has happened, Emil continues to beat up Magnar, and Marta yells at him to stop. That's right. He intended to kill her, almost killed Emil, went back on his word and almost slaughtered a town of innocents, he's framing an innocent group for his actions, and she decides that it's wrong to punish him for it?! What the hell? What's worse, he is allowed to leave, and he continues to be a murderous villain for the remainder of the story.
• In Tales of the Abyss, after defeating Grand Maestro Mohs, who had become a monster by this point, the party expresses sorrow and pity for him. This is the guy who forced Anise to betray the party, and the one who murdered Ion, (which led directly to the death of the much more sympathetic Arietta) and the party feels sorry for him when they finally kill him.
  • A worst one is how everyone got on Luke's case about trusting Van, his beloved mentor and father figure, when the only other people on his side that seemed even remotely trustworthy were Ion, Guy, Anise and Meiu. And of the four, Ion was hiding vital information, Guy and Anise were both traitors, Meiu was Meiu, and none of them would have had any reason to disobey Van's orders -- and in Ion's case, actually enabled the destruction of Akzeriuth by following said orders, despite the fact that he was technically Van's superior and knew about the nature of the world already. And when he pointed that out to the rest of the party, they brushed it aside in order to blame Luke, whom they damn well knew was being mind-controlled at the time.
    • The excessive harshness toward Luke's mistakes—mistakes which were mostly based on genuine ignorance and inexperience—seems particularly egregious when compared to the much milder treatment given to outright enemies (Mohs) or deliberate spies/traitors (Anise) who manage to get off with being Easily Forgiven.
    • True, but in all fairness, the rest of the party had expressed suspicion towards Van for a while. The only people who don't... well see the above. They're more angry that Luke chose to follow Van's instructions and manipulate the natural laws despite not really knowing what was going on, and how afterward he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. Given everything that just happened, the arguments on both sides may have been intentionally flawed. Watching a child sink to their death in a poisonous mud pit would frustrate anybody.
• Despite being a generally good game, Tales of Vesperia has some moments that left many players groaning.
  • The general aesop of the game is that sometimes, the law is too inadequate or incompetent to do the right thing. When that happens, there are only two things to do: change the law or, failing that, break the law for the greater good. The problem is that the game uses Strawmen to make this point and it never really offers a different viewpoint other than Flynn (who achieves next to NOTHING on his own when compared to Yuri). So basically, what the story is telling you is that vigilante justice is the best and ONLY true brand of justice.
  • The problem is that Yuri forces it on Flynn, without him getting a say in it. Flynn tells him not to, tells Yuri not to give him the credit and by all means should be dragging Yuri to jail as a murderer because he didn't even wait to see if the law would punish them, he outright killed them without a conviction. Yuri, being the impatient man he is, just assumes he's correct every single time, ignores Flynn's advice and offs the Strawmen. He never once considers the increasingly precarious position he's forcing Flynn into, and doesn't even seem to consider that Flynn is breaking his own moral code to protect Yuri, let alone could get jailed and/or executed for allowing Yuri to walk free dispensing his own view of justice. Flynn isn't entirely blameless because he's so blinded by his loyalty to his best friend that he can't uphold his own code as a knight, because it means putting Yuri on the executioner's block. His idealism falls short when he's forced to deal those laws onto Yuri and he wavers, which eventually leads to their confrontation sword fight, when Flynn finally puts his foot down and says enough is enough. It does take a while, considering how much of a dick Yuri is to Flynn, and these guys are best friends.
    • This also leads to Sodia attempting to shank Yuri, believing Flynn would be better off with Yuri dead... Sodia's logic that killing Flynn's oldest, best, childhood friend will be better for him, and get her in his pants is another wall banger altogether.
• Tales of Xillia has a disappointing story, mostly because it takes plot points from other games in the series, such as the Dual worlds, Alvin being the traitor, Milla not actually being Maxwell, stuff we've seen countless times before. Many fans are starting to complain that Namco needs to hire new writers, and their complaints sound reasonable.

Warcraft

• In Warcraft III, Arthas's journey to evil was caused by his lust for vengeance against the demon Mal'Ganis and fulfilled by his willingness to sacrifice the life of Muradin Bronzebeard, a dwarf friend. However, in World of Warcraft, we discover that both of these characters are alive, absolutely wrecking the story both narratively and dramatically. This is completed with Muradin having amnesia, a second such case on a hero within a year. Then Blizzard Entertainment gives us massive retcon in the new Rise of the Lich King novel, in which it is revealed that Arthas defeated Ner'zhul in the 'battle' for his mind... despite the fact that the entire point of the Undead campaign in Frozen Throne was about Arthas availing his body for Ner'zhul's use, and Blizzard's previous position was that Arthas and Ner'zhul had fused and the latter was in control of the Lich King's thought patterns.
  • Speaking of Rise of the Lich King, in it we also learn what tragic event gradually changed Arthas from an intelligent, good-natured boy into an arrogant zealot willing to butcher entire cities and sacrifice his friends to kill Mal'Ganis: his horse died. For bonus Narm, the first thing he did after seizing Lordaeron? He rezzed it.
• Malygos, the dragon aspect of magic, went absolutely insane when his kin were killed by demons ten thousand years ago. In World of Warcraft, he comes to his senses, and the first thing he decides to do is kill all magic-users in the world to make sure the Burning Legion won't invade anymore. All this despite the fact that the mortal races already handed the Legion's ass to them twice in the first expansion set and magic-users being vital to the battle against all world-threatening evils, such as the Scourge, which lives in Malygos' neighbourhood and uses demon magic all the time. What is more, one of his solutions for solving the whole magic problem is tying the lay-lines of Azeroth to his home, thus preventing anyone outside it from touching the Arcane. The bad news? Tampering with the lay-lines has a big chance of causing an eco-catastrophe which can end all life on the planet. Fans were sure as hell that Malygos was being manipulated by some evil force, but seems Blizzard considers this good character development. It's not.
  • Also related to Malygos, during one of the quest chains in Coldarra, you lure him out in the open. The Red Dragonflight, led by the most powerful Aspect, the Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, put you on this chain. Now, any dragon with half a brain would have Alexstrasza ready and waiting to kick Malygos' tail across Northrend, but instead, they just have a bunch of smaller dragons flying around spitting fireballs at him. This, obviously, does not end well.
    • Alexstrasza herself didn't order the attack, Keristrasza did, and the Red Dragons participating in the attack were the ones already stationed around Coldarra. Keri took it upon herself to be stupid because she wanted revenge.
• Zul'jin's defilement in patch 2.3. Ever since Warcraft III Horde trolls have been saying "Vengeance for Zul'jin". For most of Vanilla WoW it was said Zul'jin was a Messiah and hero for trolls everywhere. with both jungle and forest trolls allied with the Horde praising him and saying he would someday return to lead them to glory. Then comes patch 2.3 comes along and Zul'jin returns...... as an evil raid-boss in a rip-off of Zul'grub with the lame explanation "he was evil all along". Numerous instances of Did Not Do the Research make it all the worse, for example Zul'jin having a Jamaican accent and not regrowing his arm after it was cut off(Trolls having an innate Healing Factor). There isn't a good lore reason for killing him, the players are simply asked to do it by an unfunny redneck searching for treasure. The final kicker is that player trolls still yell "For Zul'jin" and a new troll hero to replace Zul'jin has yet to introduced. What a sad end to such an awesome character.
  • Many also saw the Shatterspear Trolls (dancing troll village)'s treatment in Cataclysm as basically pisstaking a perfectly useful set of NPC's. They started out as mysterious and cool, because it was rather difficult to get into their village and everybody wondered what was up with them. Come Cataclysm, Trolls can now be Druids, and since the Shatterspears are right next to Moonglade, many speculated they would join the Horde and teach the Darkspears the ways of druidism. Instead, they're used as mooks to get killed by new Night Elf players.
    • It also flies in the face of what Word of God said about them anyway. They said that the Shatterspears weren't interested in gaining any more land than they already had. In Cataclysm, they apparently just changed their mind for no reason and decided to try and take away the Night Elf land. And by Night Elf land, I mean some of the most populated Night Elf land in the whole world.
    • This may be one of the worst examples of a character or faction changing alignment for a stupid reason because they didn't even give that much. There is no explanation for why they suddenly changed their minds. The closest thing is a line in a "go kill some Shatterspear" quest text that could more or less be summed up as "the Cataclysm made the trolls angry."
• Kael'thas, the ultimate Big Bad of the Burning Crusade era instance Tempest Keep effectively hands you the means to defeat him. First he sends four minibosses, one by one, then he sends floating mystical weapons, then he resurrects all four minibosses and you have to fight them all at once, then you fight him through two or three more phases. Those floating mystic weapons, once defeated, can and in fact must be picked up and equipped by every single player in the raid (each weapon 'corpse' yields theoretically infinite duplicates, each player can hold one and only one of each, there's a caster staff, a dps axe and dagger, a bow, a sword, shield and a healer mace). Each weapon carries buffs, many of them area-effect, that specifically target and cancel out extremely dangerous effects of the Miniboss Rush and Kael's subsequent phases - several of them basically being full wipes. If he did not manifest and send these weapons after player parties, those parties could not possibly succeed against him. This is either massive hubris or total Idiot Ball, but good lord, Kael, weren't you supposed to be smart?
  • Considering the utter and total Character Derailment he underwent between WCIII and WoW, this troper is not shocked at the addition of insult to injury. See also: the transformation of Illidan into a ginormous dickaroo, and attempted handwavings of Maiev being extremely insane.
• Same can be said for many other bosses. Why in the world would Razuvius just keep two Mind Control Orbs in his room so you can mind control his students? Why does Faerlina keep these Adepts in the room while they don't do much and can dispell her Frenzy? More generally, most of the bosses are able to go Berzerk if you spend too much time killing them: why won't they just do it on the spot and wipe the floor with the raid group, instead of giving you a fair fight? Why can't they just go for the one in a dress?
  • Most of those are Gameplay and Story Segregation. Removing those mechanics might make more sense in the story, but it would make pretty much every boss in the game either really boring or far too easy, or both.
• Being entirely fair to Blizzard, many of their heroes from Warcraft III onward have tended to grab hold of the Idiot Ball rather aggressively. Have we forgotten Tyrande of the Night Elves who spends an entire level slaughtering her own allies, half to rescue Illidian and half to spite Malfurion? Or even Medivh and his plan to warn the world by giving highly vague commands to the notoriously suspicious humans? Really this sort of stuff isn't particularly new.
• You're all also forgetting the whole "Eredar corrupting Sargeras" thing getting changed around to "Sargeras corrupting the Eredar". In the original lore, the Eredar were the ones that corrupted Sargeras when he discovered their race. Now, with the lore retcon, Sargeras was the one that corrupted THEM. That led to a massive Wall Banger for this Troper who's been foaming at the mouth for the past several years as the lore of Warcraft, lore which she's LOVED since she got into it, has started getting screwed up thanks to how Blizzard has been handling their characters. At least Metzen manned up and admitted that was his mistake.
  • Because "Sargeras, after witnessing all of the horrors of the universe, slowly went insane with maybe some help from the Nathrezim" makes so much less sense and is so much less interesting than "The Eredar and the Nathrezim corrupted him with their corrupty powers of doom". The true Wall Banger is how blown out of proportion the retcon is when one throw-away line in a game manual that nobody even cared about prior to this was changed slightly in a way that pretty much affected nothing aside from tying a "new" race in with existing lore. From the way some fans go on about it, you'd think there were three or four books dedicated to the evil plans of the Eredar, and the fact that they had a hand in Sargeras's corruption (instead of it being solely the Nathrezim, or demons in general) was a crucial plot point and changing it completely invalidated any previous lore and made absolutely none of it make sense. The orcs had a bigger, more lore-changing retcon, but does anyone care? No, because they like the orcs, and half of them probably don't even know that their favorite Noble Savages were originally Chaotic Evil, no demons involved. Metzen himself said he cares more about making an interesting story than keeping every little detail consistent. That applies to every race, not just the popular ones.
    • The Legion was told to corrupt races across the multiverse, most races just fell under the influence its influence... except the Eredar and the Nathrezim, whose actions directly resulted in Sargeras' Face Heel Turn. In the original story, they are not mere servants of the God Of Evil, they are the former mortals whose actions resulted in The Paragon breaking down and turning into the Bigger Bad. This troper believes it makes Archimonde and the Eredar much more interesting as vilains. They are way under Sargeras in the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, yet they are more than The Remnant. Note that in the case of the orcs' corruption, the demons acted as The Man Behind the Man, with the orcs genuinely unaware that their lust for conquest was unnatural. It was more of a massive Revision than a Rewrite.
• "The Culling of Stratholme", namely, the behavior of Uther and Jaina. This episode is supposed to be the Moral Event Horizon for Arthas, but the effect is severely undermined, because he's actually right, there's no way to single out Zombie Infectees, and to slaughter the whole population is the only way to quell the plague. All the more jarring is Uther and Jaina' reaction that basically sums up to: "This is bad, mmkay?" without offering any alternative solutions. And you'd think that a paladin, of all people, would be the first person to stop someone from doing something they perceive as evil, but nope. Uther just yells at Arthas, then sits back and watches him do it.
  • It's more a case of doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons. The game gives plenty of reason to believe this is the case, given both Arthas' petulance when talking with Uther, and his obsessive pursuit of Mal'Ganis subsequently. That said, it is more than odd that neither Uther nor Jaina try to stop him, or do things another way.
• Garrosh Hellscream in fucking general. Oh, you're building him up as a legitimate counterpoint to Thrall, being an ax-crazy idiotic bastard that is going to drive the Horde to the brink of war and back to everything that ruined them? Oh, that's OK. That's kinda cool, it serves as a plot to lead in the lore newbies to realize that orcs aren't necessarily "bad." The orcs will overthrow him and...wait, why are you suddenly making him noble to Thrall, whom he previously disrespected, out of nowhere, with no lead in? Why is he suddenly a brilliant tactician? Why is everyone around him praising the shit out of him, even though the vast majority of the player base hates him? Why is Thrall appointing him for the hamfisted reason of "well, the Horde can't bow to humans or something!" when there's much better candidates like Cairne (deceased because of Garrosh) and Vol'jin sitting right there? Oh, because they're old or some bullshit. Garrosh exists basically to market a dumb, fantasy stereotype-friendly Warcraft to pre-teens because it sells better to Black Ops playing console-tards than fantasy races that are somewhat nuanced and break basic conventions. "War back in Warcraft" my ass.
  • Thrall attempts to justify this to Vol'jin by saying the horde needs a strong leader who follows war-based orcish ways instead of the peaceful ways he was seeking to make it stronger. Yeah, right, with Garrosh leading blind, strategyless charges, Sylvanas starting (and on the losing end) of a war with Gilneas, Cairne's death and Baine only staying in the horde because his people need them, and the Trolls knowing exactly where Garrosh is taking them and second-guessing their alliance, the horde's never been weaker or more divided.
    • This is aimed to be fixed in Mists Of Pandaria with Garrosh's full Face Heel Turn.
• Uldum was once a land shrouded in mystery. They'd been teasing it ever since vanilla, and the entrance just stood there, inaccessible, that whole time. So when they finally open it up, you expect it to be deeply involved in the lore and storylines of most of the game, and we might actually find some stuff out about the Titans. What we got instead was a long parody of an Indiana Jones movie, most of it is Played for Laughs. To make matters worse in this, your character is effectively made useless for much of the zone's storyline, forcing you to be rescued over and over again by the Indy Expy.

Other

• In Wing Commander III, a fairly popular character Hobbes turns out to be a traitor. Many players view this as a Wall Banger, particularly if they played the PC version of the game. The scene with him explaining the reason for his treason was cut from the PC version, due to space limitations on PC CDs at the time. The console versions of the game had a scene explaining it, not being so limited.
  • The book Freedom Flight foreshadows this, if somewhat subtly, with the opening scene being a test of the identity overlay, makes the rationale a lot more clear. Even without said book, he had his reasons for fighting alongside Confed, but the events at the time of WC3 were not part of the deal...
  • It's also a bit disheartening, as Hobbes was the first indication that not all Kilrathi are bad (for Blair as well as the player), and to think that he only defected because of an established identity undermines the whole idea behind him.
  • This is also a case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. By that point in the game Conded intends to blow up Kilrathi home planet - in fact, Hobbes' betrayal was what allowed Kilrathi to take out the more reliable of the two human Planet Killer weapons - and if anything can be a solid, dramatically appropriate reason for switching sides, this is. Identity overlay crap seems like a cop-out meant to eliminate any shadows of grey from the situation.
    • Chalk it up to the George Lucas Effect: as Chris Roberts gained more control over the series, he began to purge more and more of the nuance from the setting and replace it with blatantly transparent allegories for historical events. Wing Commander IV is the video game champion of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot—the hype promised the ability to choose between fighting for Confed or The Border Worlds, each side with their own merits and flaws to create an interesting story. In the end, it turned out that the Border Worlds were completely in the right and the whole war was due to an evil conspiracy within the Confederation, led by Admiral Tolwyn, who was newly divested of any of the redeeming qualities he had in the previous games to become a Complete Monster. Then the Nephilim, who seemed intentionally designed to be utterly impossible to empathize with, were introduced. This trend culminated in The Movie, which was so utterly atrocious that it served as a Franchise Killer for the whole series, and featured such absurdities as Kilrathi fighters dive bombing the Confederation Navy's fleet headquarters in a scene ripped straight out of Pearl Harbor!
      • Of course, in the first game they take off from a deck, have transparent cockpits with fixed crosshairs and there's a hand-waving signalman on that air-strip, but after adding sane things like ITTS in the 2nd experimentation on "just how ludicrous we can get?" is not really expectable.
• Vivisector: Beast Inside has two kinds of enemies: human soldiers and cybernetically enhanced animals. Even after you switch sides from the humans to the animals after your XO murders a comrade to gain your cooperation, you're still having to fight both. The reason given? You're not authorized to be on the island (and your XO conveniently never clears you, even though he's the one who wanted you on the island, in the first place), making you fair game for the human soldiers, and the animals are programmed to see humans as the enemy, no matter what. That, my friend, was the sound of a genuine headdesk. Here's some aspirin for the pain.
• In a case of this trope meeting They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, God of War: Chains of Olympus has the basic premise of the sun god Helios going missing and Morpheus, god of dreams, taking over the pantheon and terrorizing the world in his absence. Instead of building on it, it's ditched halfway through the game, where it's revealed Persephone, wife of Hades, had the Titan Atlas kidnap Helios so he could use the sun god's power to topple the column that held the world up and kill everyone, including the pantheon. Her reason: she was sick of being stuck in a loveless marriage and pissed at both Hades and Zeus for tricking her into it in the first place, and felt The End of the World as We Know It was the best way to put her out of her misery and give the two gods the middle finger.
  • • Doesn't mean that they weren't stupid for missing out on capitalizing on the Morpheus subplot. The fact that his takeover of the pantheon during Helios' absence is only given brief mention, you only fight his warriors in one level, and he runs off like a little girl without a fight once Helios comes back makes the setup for him as the Big Bad even more of a Wall Banger.
    • Another case would be the promotional material for the game, which strongly implied Kratos would at some point have The War Sequence with Morpheus' army. No such scene exists in-game.
    • Consider this. At the end of God of War II, Kratos basically has the power to travel back in time and change the past. Now, think about his past and how much he hates all of the unspeakable atrocities he has committed. He has the power to change his past now, and doesn't use it. Obviously that would end the franchise, but still.
• Metroid: Other M contains this gem: Your commanding officer asks you to go to a lava area without the Varia Suit. Which in this series, is the only thing that can protect Samus from the heat and convection of an area full of lava. Hoo boy.
  • To clarify: Samus actually has the Varia Suit already. She's just not allowed to turn it on, and she never asks why. It's not justifiable as upholding the series tradition of gaining powerups over time, either; unless you count the Dark Aether runs in Echoes (and even those had healing beacons and life pickups), there is no prior instance in the Metroid series where Samus needs to go through painfully hot or cold rooms before she can get the Varia. Fusion even specifically told her not to, and that's the game that inspired Adam's role in this game.
  • The biggest wall banger comes from the Power Bombs. You can play with it in the tutorial, but you are forbidden to use it for the rest of the game due to how dangerous they are to other people. You never get to use them except in the fight against the Metroid Queen, but the banger is you are never told by the game that you can use them and it only tells you after you beat the game!
  • She also has the whole "Adam has not authourized X" as a justification for why she can't use certain abilities (See details on the Bag of Spilling page). Except she's an independent bounty hunter, answering a distress call, not even on contract with the Galactic Federation. Malkovich has as much authority over her as he does over the sun and the moon. The only reason she's even helping out is because she respects him. Except we see him do nothing to earn that respect. Some even compared their relationship to that of an abuser and his victim. Even if that's not true, the "Any objections, Lady?" bit seems a lot like sexual harassment, or at least gender-based harassment.
    • He would have no authority... if the Federation hadn't staked out the place first. It's their territory, and Samus (as an independent agent) is only allowed to work there provided she follows their directions.
      • Except that Samus is a galactic hero, experienced at surviving perilous situations, and is pretty much a weapon of mass destruction. If she just called the Federation, they would order the troops to defer to her, as well they should. Even assuming they didn't, there is no reason she can't just leave, and the depicted relationship with Adam gives us nothing worthy of respect. In fact, for her trust, he nearly lets her die, and she refuses to disobey him even when her life is at risk and the measure in question is entirely defensive.
• In Star Ocean: The Second Story, when Claude's military ID number is cited, it's five digits long. For each soldier to have a unique five-digit number, there would have to be 100,000 soldiers or fewer all up. For a global defense force, those are rather paltry numbers. Add to this the fact that Claude's number is in the the triple digits (something like 00200); if the numbers aren't randomly generated, then it doesn't look like they have more than a couple of hundred individuals at their command.
• Most of Neverwinter Nights campaign hurts like hell if you give it two minutes thought (since, after all, the main point of the game was the level editor). For example, Aribeth spends two acts with the Informed Ability of heroic butt-kicking (we only ever see her in two fights, and one of them's against us, in the entire game), making her The Paladin Who Doesn't Do Anything.
  • Not to mention that every NPC was carrying the Idiot Ball throughout. Especially in the first chapter with their complete inability to get the slightest bit suspicious about the obvious traitor.
    • I think the most aneurysm inducing moment comes from aforementioned traitor, who is posing as a high priest of Helm. You know, the GOD of guardians and vigilance? This man and his followers slaughtered Helm's priests, desecrated one of his temples, and spread a plague (that erases ones soul) in his name. What the hell was he doing? Taking a nap? This is the Forgotten Realms campaign, gods interact with mortal lives on almost a daily biases. The fact he let someone slaughter his priests is one thing, but to let them pose and spread the worst plague ever created is nuts. And goes against pretty much everything he stands for, or at the very least is no way lawful.
    • As a sidenote, Tyr the God of Justice isn't particularly on the ball either. The PCs basically work out of his temple for a while but he does nothing to warn of a great injustice visited on the temple of another god metaphorically next door let alone of atrocities against the population of an entire city.
      • Leaving alone the total lack of response from either Tyr himself or any other clergy of Tyr when an ordained cleric of Tyr (Fenthick) is railroaded through a Kangaroo Court and executed. If nothing else, the church of Tyr should have insisted on trying Fenthick themselves under canon law rather than allowing the Neverwinter municipal authorities to preside over his case.
  • Given that the temples don't even have as much as prominently displayed symbols of appropriate gods (like hammers and balances for Tyr), the problems with Neverwinter Nights boil down to two: the engine is showy, but lame feature-wise, and context is "Forgotten Realms" In Name Only with mostly ludicrous quests. The only really good thing about it is the editor with embedded script support.
• The end of Neverwinter Nights 2: Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. The blow is softened if taken with the expansion, when more information is given.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 tries to rectify the rather glaring problems with the original's alignment shifts (such as having literally no way of shifting alignment across half the axes), but it does seem to go over the top on some, and stride brazenly into Wall Banger territory on others.
    • While dealing with a City Watchman who looks like he may be about to accept a bribe, one dialog option results in shifting the PC's alignment one point towards chaotic and then immediately shifting it back one point towards lawful without any interceding input.
• Ultima IX: If the fact that it's barely playable and crashes regularly unless you apply a fan-made patch doesn't make you want to shove your head through the nearest wall, the gaping plot holes and inconsistencies with its previous 8 games will.
  • Not to mention the Guardian's "true nature": Avatar's "evil side" separated from him when he became the Avatar of Virtues. Considering that the Avatar is very much capable of doing evil things in all his adventures since his entitlement, and in Pagan he's required to do morally questionable things, this doesn't make sense on any level. Not to mention how this makes it impossible for the Avatar to directly harm the Guardian without the damage being reflected to himself, but not vice versa. Never mind that the "reveal" of his true nature painfully contradicts everything told or suggested about the Guardian in all 4 previous games he appears in.
  • Don't forget the Avatar's lobotomy. "Blackthorn! I should have known you were behind this!" Uh, yes, you should have, since you were told that literally half an hour into the game, at the end of the tutorial...
  • There's also a large error that is summed up in three words. "What's a paladin?" This is coming from the Avatar, who was good friends with a paladin, and knows what they are. In fact, a lot of the expository questions the Avatar asks, such what are gargoyles are considered Wallbangers because they are a complete insult to the entire Ultima franchise and are only there just in case someone new to the Ultima franchise picked it up.
• In Half-Life 2, Gordon's dumb move in the Citadel: getting into the capture-coffin twice was pretty wall-bangeresque. Wouldn't a trapped elevator or something have worked just as well, plotwise?
  • Lampshaded, of course, in Concerned:

Dr. Breen: That moron. He climbed willingly into what is essentially a steel coffin.
Henderson: A steel coffin that can't be opened from the inside, and we control where it goes.
Dr. Breen: Then it's over. Sheez, that was easy.

• • And, in at least the first case, you can get into the coffin going the other way, which within seconds, takes you to a beam that kills you instantly. It's a bit strange that they don't have more security checkpoints with that kind of trap.
  • There's also the part about how the field mysteriously powers up the Gravity Gun, although it's more forgivable since the part after it gets powered up is one of the best parts of the game.
    • And it's, again, lampshaded in Concerned
      • I was always under the impression that the weapons field was primarily only designed for commonly used weapons, such as pistols, rifles and crowbars and bug bait and other such things. It was supposed to disintegrate matter and when it stumbled onto something that ran on whatever Applied Phlebotinum Black Mesa uses, it spit out a 404 error, namely the Dark Energy Field Manipulator.
• Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. The whole thing. The sad thing is, EA was actually doing all right. C&C3 and Red Alert 3 were both good titles. So what the hell happened? Nearly all of the good plot bits from Tiberium Wars were dropped (no Scrin, no LEGION, etc.) in favor of a half-assed plot about GDI and Nod uniting for little reason, and then getting into a civil war. The plot changes Kane from a Badass Magnificent Bastard to a God Mode Sue trying to save humanity. All of the wars from the first three games were made totally pointless as a result, and the whole game fucks up what mystery and supernatural presence the Brotherhood of Nod had. And no matter who you pick, you more or less get the same ending: The GDI leader is killed, the Non-Entity General player character dies opening a Scrin portal, and Kane and Nod get away with nearly destroying the planet three times over AND calling down an alien invasion, by "Ascending" through the portal. This makes the end of the Tiberium storyline all the more bitter and all the less sweet.
• The Indigo Prophecy (a.k.a. Fahrenheit) started off as a really fun adventure game in which you play as both a man wanted for murder and the cops who are on his trail. About 3/4ths into the game, however, the main character and his girlfriend both die off-screen, he becomes undead (she's not as lucky) and gains Neo-like powers, and fights both a sorcerer and the holographic avatar of the internet. "Holographic" in this case meant "Invisible, and half-covered in yellow post-it notes".
  • And that's not even the worst of it: Suddenly, two of the game's player characters decide they're madly in love with each other and decide to bonk each other's brains out, just in case the world ends tomorrow. Yeah, totally not awkward at all. Also, one of the aforementioned player characters is a reanimated corpse. The other comments about how cold he is, but isn't bothered at all. And how the hell does he get an erection if he not longer has blood flowing through his veins? There is even a further Wallbanger here because, despite being a walking corpse, he is still able to father a kid!
• The indie game Aquaria has a perfectly satisfying normal ending, but going to the trouble of retrieving all of Naija's lost memories gets you to the secret ending, where it turns out her mother, Mia, had set up the entire plot of the game to turn Naija into a living weapon that she could later possess and control. This struck many players as not only being incredibly frustrating, but as being dangerously close to a bad Evil Plan or Deus Ex Machina setup, giving it Wall Banger status in many people's minds.
  • The Wall Banger status for quite a few people was the sudden and inexplicable addition of a love interest halfway through the game, which came right the fark out of nowhere and took over the entire last half of the plot. Many of those same folks agree with Naija's mother when she babbles on about 'spending the rest of your life burping babies'.
  • Extra Wall Bangery is that this secret ending is used to set up a sequel that may never come about since the two guys who made up Bit Blot dissolved the label and went their separate ways to work on other projects.
• For Mercenaries 2, the developers hadn't fixed the "falling 5 feet gives you damage" bug. Thats just lazy.
• Star Wars Galaxies. Started as a great idea, but Sony VERY quickly turned the game into one massive wall banger.
  • Three words: New Game Enhancements.
    • Particularly idiotic is the role Jedi play in the game. When it got released initially, there were no Jedi characters that you could play, which was keeping in canon, the game being set in original trilogy's timeline, thought you could become a Jedi through a VERY long series of finding random crap. Then the expansion gets released, which makes Jedi an available class from the start, leading to thousands of players dumping their old characters and restarting as Jedi. Not only does this completely take a shit all over the established canon of the series, it also pissed off players who had completed the associated Fetch Quest to be Jedi pre-expansion.
    • It was a pendulum overswing. In the initial release, it took nearly two MONTHS for the first person to complete the absolutely and completely hidden requirements to unlock their "Force Sensitive" stat. Several people had already accused the game of lying and that there was no way to make a Jedi. They went too far, agreed, and now it can't be taken back.
• Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: why in the bloody hell would Dracula's castle have a room that you can decorate however you want?! What's the point of it, if the castle crumbles to dust each time you kill its master? And isn't Juste supposed to be worrying about killing Dracula more than interior decorating? Kind of makes you wonder about that guy...
  • The plot of Order of Ecclesia is the epitome of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. Yeah, it's a pretty decent game, but what's the point if the plot makes it more of a Gaiden Game than those rendered Canon Discontinuity?
  • The overall plot of Portrait of Ruin is highly annoying. Monster ass-pulls and Retcon about the Vampire Killer whip for some reason devouring lifeforce - considering the ORIGINS of it in Lament of Innocence, what in the blue Jesus cookies is that about? WHY would it do this? Also, the bizarre and needless redesign of Eric Lecarde, the fact that he and Johnny/Jon Morris die offscreen, and that absurd Nostradamus business...Igarashi, what the hell!?
    • Speaking of that, why didn't John tell his son about the drawbacks of the whip? Jonathan might not have been as resentful of him if he did. But no, he opted to keep Jonathan Locked Out of the Loop, and made his best friend promise to do the same. What the hell John?!
  • Those radio plays. They are worse than bad fanfiction. The veteran voice cast is gone, replaced by a new crew who range from decent-if-strange (Mamoru 'Riku' Miyamoto as Alucard?) to very poor (everyone else, which is shocking because most of them are usually good). Richter is wangsty, Maria is utterly Chickified and reduced to a Damsel in Distress, Alucard's navel gazing is tedious in the extreme, and once again the rules of the Vampire Killer are broken as it starts reacting to something that is not a vampire. The new characters add nothing whatsoever to the story, too. Honestly, the P Achi Slot games have better stories than this. What exactly went wrong here?
• Silver Surfer is very difficult, given the combination of ridiculous enemies, Bullet Hell, Everything Trying to Kill You, you being a One-Hit-Point Wonder, and everything else actually being tougher than you. However, you're playing the Silver Surfer, a character whose powerset includes Nigh Invulnerability. And yet, if you so much as graze a wall, you die, even though you're not even going that fast. "You" means Silver Surfer or any part of his surfboard. That's right, a Wall Banger that actually involves banging into a wall.
  • The reason this is a wall banger is the disconnect of having one of the toughest beings in the Marvel Universe getting killed by a rubber ducky (or anything else for that matter).
• In Untold Legends: Warrior's Code, you must spend the entire storyline protecting the young teenage prince as he is related by blood to the evil usurping emperor and thus the only person who can wound him. He is extremely weak a fighter, is very annoying to protect, and he will willingly run into enemies away from you where you can't defend him. And when you finally meet the evil emperor, it turns out that you just so HAPPEN to share some ill-defined blood relation to him after all and you were able to do the job on your own all along. It just makes you want to beat the hell out of the little runt for every whiny potion request he makes. Was he REALLY supposed to be a hero, and how can his people possibly see him as their leader, honestly?
• For some, the end of Star Fox Adventures went a little something like this: All right, it's the final fight, I'm about to face off General Scales in one final smackdown... Wait, why did that Krazoa Spirit spontaneously come out of him? Why is that Krazoa statue laughing evilly and floating off to space? WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO BEAT ANDROSS AGAIN IN THE EXACT SAME MANNER AS THE LAST GAME(S)? (Alternatively: WHO THE HECK IS THIS ANDROSS GUY?)
  • Another big one occurs in Star Fox Command. In one of the paths, Krystal sympathizes with Andross, calling him a man of pure intentions, only wanting to help Lylat, but was railroaded by Pepper wanting to stop Andross research. She also states that the only reason Andross is the bad guy was because he killed Fox's father. First off, even if Andross was unfairly treated, it still does not excuse his reaction to Pepper wanting to stop whatever research was taking place. Second, not only was Andross responsible for the death of Fox's father, but he also was responsible for the deaths of others in Corneria when he unleashed one of his weapons upon them before the events of Star Fox 64. Finally, there's the matter of him trying to kill Krystal in Adventures in order to restore himself and destroy the Lylat System. Whatever pure intentions Andross had had long gone by the time Adventures took place. Given her personality in the previous games, one would think that she would know better than to stoop that low, even if Fox was in the wrong in kicking her off the team. Oh, and this conversation takes place in a path that led to her rejoining Star FOX for good.
    • And it gets worse than that... Star Fox Adventures, Krystal's introduction to the series, has Andross trying to come Back from the Dead by draining Krystal's life force, killing her and almost causing the destruction of Sauria (Dinosaur Planet) in the process. But wait! It gets worse! There are a few slight implications that Andross was involved in some way, in causing the destruction of Cerinia, Krystal's home planet, of which she is the only survivor. Let's repeat that for clarification: HE TRIED TO KILL HER, MAY HAVE KILLED HER ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, AND WOULD HAVE KILLED ANOTHER, and she, of all people, IS DEFENDING HIM?! It probably wouldn't be surprising to say that Krystal underwent some major Character Derailment in Command.
• In the DS version of Chrono Trigger it's revealed that DALTON of all people is responsible for bringing down Guardia and the potential deaths of Crono and Marle between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. This is a Wall Banger because Dalton is portrayed as a Small Name, Big Ego and borderline Butt Monkey, and is one of the easiest bosses to beat in the game. Both times you fight him, even. How the player is supposed to believe that he managed to kill a grown-up and probably highly-leveled Crono and Marle...
  • There is the scene where, right after Crono has sacrificed himself to Lavos and Schala teleports the rest of the party away, he knocks all three members of the party out with a single fireball spell (Cutscene Power to the Max). Maybe he was using an extreme form of Obfuscating Stupidity, or maybe he pulled a villainous Let's Get Dangerous. It still seems kind of... underwhelming, though.
  • The Japanese explain it by him saying something along the line of "Hey, behind you!", making the main characters turn back and allowing him to cheap shot them.
    • Do they ever explain how in the name of Magus's codpiece Dalton even knew what Guardia is or when it is? Why would the party tell anyone this, and why would anyone they told BELIEVE them?
    • Even with Fanon explanations, this is still a Wall Banger, not for credibility reasons, but for theme reasons: Chrono Trigger is about triumphantly overcoming inevitable fate. Throwing in a random 'and everyone dies in the end', into a sequel that constantly berates the player for having the sheer audacity to try and save a world where Humans Are the Real Monsters, feels like a slap in the face. Plus you still have to use time-travel to save Kid and enable Serge to be saved in the past, so the moral is somewhat twisted when time travel is okay as long as you're saving Masato Kato's favorite characters.
  • We all know this one. In Chrono Cross, you can recruit a fellow called Guile, who strongly resembles Magus. Originally, he was going to be revealed to actually be Magus, and have a subplot about discovering his identity and his connection to what was going on, but it was left on the cutting room floor. They cut out a direct link to Chrono Trigger that would have decidedly improved Cross, yet they left forty-four recruitable characters, many of which are objectively awful. Yes, we want stupid wacky characters like the autistic pink dog and the vegetable knight! Don't give us Character Development!
• Street Fighter character T. Hawk, or Thunder Hawk: he's a Native American, but they can't seem to decide which kind, exactly. For one thing, he fights in stereotypical Mexico, complete with Aztecs in traditional costumes behind him, but he doesn't look at all like one himself, when winning he sits and makes a "How!" gesture like a TV Cherokee, and his victory quote is about his totem, which were made only by the Pacific Northwest tribes. His stage being in Mexico is explained as his tribe being forced to relocate, so he's definitely from the US. The other two things, though, seem to indicate a lack of research.
  • Well, there's the other issue that Dee Jay's characterisation is dead wrong. We have a supposed resort in Jamaica... and the music AND instruments are out of Venezuela or Colombia or something.
  • In the console versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3, when they added T. Hawk to the roster, Capcom couldn't be bothered to make Noembleu, the Shadaloo Doll apparently meant to be T. Hawk's missing girlfriend, into a playable character as well, so they just shoehorned the blatantly German Juli into T. Hawk's backstory by explaining that she's actually Julia, a missing member of T. Hawk's tribe. The Udon comic series attempts to fix this by having T. Hawk search for both, Noembleu and Julia, with Julia being revised into the daughter of a German doctor who befriended the Thunderfoots.
  • Apparently T. Hawk was supposed to be American, but his nationality was changed to Mexican after they realized that were more Americans in SF II (Guile, Ken, Balrog) than characters from other nationalities. Never mind that SF IV has two more Americans (Rufus and C. Viper).
  • Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition added four new characters to the SSF4 roster: Yun, Yang, Evil Ryu, and Oni. Like all of the other characters, they are given rival matches in their arcade storylines. The problem is, these rival matches have no cutscenes whatsoever, making it look like just another match, but with the chosen character's theme playing in the background. Especially jarring for Evil Ryu and Oni, as both have Gouken as a rival. How does Gouken respond to seeing his brother succumb to pure evil and his student succumb to the Satsui No Hadou? "You'll make for an interesting opponent." IE, the same thing he says to EVERY OTHER OPPONENT.
• In Valkyrie Profile, in order to see the actual plot of the game, you have to min-max a stat that has no obvious purpose, wait until a little over halfway through the game to go through a couple of optional dungeons, with no indication that this will have any effect, and eject a certain plot-important character from your party at a certain time, again with no indication that this is important, possible, or desirable. If you don't do every one of these things, the entire game is just a series of unconnected vignettes about random medieval warriors dying, capped off with a final boss a few steps above Giant Space Flea From Nowhere. Meanwhile, you can get practical immunity to all forms of death for all party members using only accessories and skills that it's damn near impossible to miss. Do the programmers' priorities seem backward to anybody else?
  • Do remember that while the connection is very loose, to say the least, the game IS based on Norse myths, and in Norse myths, the fire giant Surtr *was* the one who primarily antagonized the gods during Ragnarok. Which, incidentally, is the event you are fighting in during the normal end. So calling him a space flea from nowhere is... not very justified. Bloodbane, now... he's probably meant to represent the evil dragon Fafnir, but...
    • At least the Norse gods got foreshadowing about Surtr.
• In the first Etrian Odyssey game, you reach a point where you are asked to kill the forest folk to continue the plot. No, you don't get a choice. No, they didn't do anything to deserve it either. The in-setting justification that the mayor does for why he assigns you this task? To defend the town's tourism industry.
  • It gets worse. When you finally confront the Big Bad, he reveals his plan to...revitalize the war-ravaged world using the Heart of yggdrasil. Yes, that's right, the "villain" is trying to legitimately save the world. And the party still kills him and destroys the Heart, ruining hundreds of years of research and possibly dooming the world, all for some pretty trinkets! In fact, one could argue that at this point, Etrian Odyssey is meant to be a Deconstruction of dungeon delving for fun and profit.
  • Even the in the second and third Etrian Odyssey, the villains could be considered Well Intentioned Extremists.
• Who says Super Robot Wars is always a good 'Crossover done right'? OG Gaiden shows how even a plot can be a Wall Banger. Which plot am I talking about? The ODE Incident, which is taken from the OVA, which is already a Wall Banger. It pulls Lamia Loveless into the main spotlight of the plot, but only to see her butt naked against her will, smack her with a Distress Ball on the size of a planet even though she's a mightily competent Action Girl. That's just the OVA, but the game cranks this up to eleven. She is later shot down and killed by a third banana villain, and would've stayed dead if a second banana villain didn't bring her Back from the Dead. She is later restored, but her whole scenario gives her no benefits or development at all, instead it only lets us see how grumpy Kyosuke gets to act un-grumpy, and for Axel to show off that he had an honest Heel Face Turn. That also means that it doesn't matter if she lived, her record will be forever stained that she was defeated by that third banana guy. So basically, despite her being the center of that certain sub plot, she gains nothing out of it and only acts as a plot device for other characters to develop themselves. Now please excuse me as I bang my head to the wall.
  • Unfortunately, even the ODE Incident right from the origins (the OVA) rides on Wall Banger surfboard in order to EVEN SUCCEED. Let's see, what's established after the end of OG 2? Graien Grazman took over EFA, and despite his ruthless method, at least he'll make sure that there'll be no more rebellion, especially incidents like this. Then the ODE System and Bartolls, for no good reason... got past Graien's (crap) radar and supervision (as if he suddenly got lenient). Seriously, you may be a minor character, Graien, but WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED WITH YOUR TOTALITARIAN, SUPER STRICT STANCE that you even let that thing pass!? That's seriously something that would happen if Midcrid was still in control, not Grazman. Mind you, there is a reason why SRW fans shun the OVA and would rather consider the ODE Incident and Lamia's humiliating and pointless moment to be one Non Sequitur Scene (except, you know, the one involving Axel's Heel Face Turn) in OG Gaiden and never talk about it anymore. This trope is the reason.
  • For a non-OG Wall Banger, Super Robot Wars has some... silly choices for secret characters. Well, in Super Robot Wars Destiny you can recruit the diabolically evil, irredeemable bitch Katejina Loos. WHO IN THE RIGHT MIND WOULD RECRUIT HER!? Likewise in J, that unsympathetic, smug bastard Jonathan "Johnny Boy" Glenn will join you pretty late; and in K, Asuham Boone, the poster boy for Disproportionate Retribution and Motive Decay, is playable. WHAT THE HELL, BANPRESTO! WHAT THE HELL! You know we'd rather kick them to kingdom come!
    • Well, contrary to popular belief, Katejina is NOT a Complete Monster, and the writing of the games does make it so that her and Chronicle's conversion to the good side is probable. Did you ever think maybe the problem was never with Katejina and more with Tomino wanting to play her up as evil as possible without ever giving her a chance?
    • Actually, Asuham isn't that bad in K, since he never gets to the Disproportionate Retribution point. The real problem is they let you recruit Fasalina and Michael, who make very little sense to be recruit-able (Specially Fasalina, who has NO justification other than she has big breasts) while Carossa and Melissa... don't get so lucky. Dammit, why can't we save the poor little kids but let the nutcases join?
  • In MX, they FORCE you to not only see Asahina from RahXephon's death but MAKE YOU KILL HER to continue.
    • That's more of a Player Punch.
  • In terms of machines, it looks like the Black Getter is one of those "player bragging rights"-type units. Alpha 2, you start out with this unit and keep unit the end of the Getter Robo story. In Kusuha and Zengar's routes, you can choose to save the unit and Musashi, but he's forced to stay with Michiru, relegating him to a playing sidekick to a somewhat-useless machine. Black Getter? Can only be piloted by the original Getter Team. And I'm sure a lot of people would rather stay with G than Black at that point. Alpha 3 makes it an unlockable unit, but again, with the same restrictions. In Destiny, the Shin Getter Team is left without a Getter after Shin Dragon is left inoperable for a time. However, you still have Getter Robo and Black Getter. I'm sure at that point, most people chose classic Getter over Black because of its three forms.
  • In more Super Robot Wars crossover fail, we have the mere inclusion of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED in Alpha 3, which is a wallbanger on many levels. First, the director of the series shoved it in because he's a fan, even though the story does not fit very well into a universe with a pre-established space colony faction and requires the player to actually swallow that Coordinators and the PLANTS always existed, it's just that no one had any reason to start a war with them until now. It also kneecaps the appearance of Gundam Sentinel, which was going to show up and would have been a logical extension of the Titans storyline from the previous games.
    • And, in a related wallbanger, it also allows you to save Mu La Flaga from his canon death in Alpha 3, which means that not being able to save him in Judgment is rather puzzling, since both games feature similar circumstances that would have made keeping him from getting killed easy to implement.
• In Spellforce, to get your siege units to use their anti-building attacks against buildings, you have to set them next to the buildings without ordering them to attack—otherwise, they'll use weak melee attacks.
• The Bittersweet Ending of Wild ARMs 5. Avril's Laser-Guided Amnesia was explained by her being trapped in a Stable Time Loop, and that the events over the course of the game were just one of many, many times she's done this, and she is doomed to repeat those events for all of eternity, never to be with Dean except for the brief period during the game. You couldn't at least have given us the ability to break the time loop and save her, developers?
  • Also: Big Bad Volsung seems to, at first, be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and the game gets a lot of mileage over how uncomfortably similar his ideals are to Dean's. They both want to tear down the wall between humans and Veruni; Volsung's method was just more violent and, ironically, was the one that worked in the end. His character was genuinely interesting as a result, right up until the point where it's revealed he's actually just as nice as Dean, and was just possessed by some weird...EldritchAbomination...thing that was the embodiment of hatred or...something. Talk about one of the lamest cop-outs ever.
• Jak 3 attempting to disguise its Darrin-ing of Keira's voice...by giving her a staggering one, maybe two lines in the entire game, and disrupting both of the previous game's established romances to try and set up Jak with Ashelin. To make matters worse, the only line of Keira's was in support of Jak, making him look like a high-grade dick. Of course, in Jak X, they just pretend none of this Jak/Ashelin Shipping ever happened.
  • Most fans would say that most of TLF counts, though the one example that really sticks out would be Jak's dismissal of Daxter's Super-Powered Evil Side. Especially considering that in Jak 3, he freaked out over what would happen to Daxter if he was exposed to more Dark Eco (which is exactly how the aforementioned Super-Powered Evil Side came to be), not to mention his reaction to finding out that the Aeropans had a Dark Warrior Program. And yet, his reaction consists of a couple snarky comments. * thud, thud, thud...*
• The opening cinematic of the Xbox Live Arcade version of Banjo-Tooie. The problem starts right around when Kazooie distracts Mumbo and Bottles. A jarring sting should play when Mumbo and Bottles react to Kazooie's declaration of Grunty's supposed return, but instead, it plays after Kazooie swipes the money from them. It gets worse from there, though. Soundtrack Dissonance doesn't even begin to describe the state of the opening as it is. For comparison, here's the opening with the properly-synced music.
  • The problem has to do with the loading times. The music was one 11 minute track that was synced up to everything; even the loading times. However, the 360 loads much faster than the N64. So thus, every time the scene changes, the music gets off-sync even more.
• It'd be too difficult to list all the Wallbangers in Kingdom Hearts coded, but one stands out: the big emotional high point of the game is that Data Sora gets to say "Thank you" to Data Namine, finally fulfilling Sora's promise to Namine from Chain of Memories. There's just one problem. Sora's never promised to thank Namine! The promise Sora and Namine made was to meet again, a promise that was fulfilled at the end of Kingdom Hearts II; Namine said as much! The "Thank Namine" thing was just a thing Jiminy made up to remind the whole group (Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy himself) to thank her for restoring their memories. So when did "Thank Namine" become such a big deal, and why is it attributed solely to Sora (Aside from phasing out of Disney characters in favor of the KH-original ones in importance)?
  • In fact, if you go back to the end of Chain of Memories, it's actually ONLY Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy (the Disney characters) that talk of "Thank Namine", Sora literally said nothing about it, let alone make a promise to thank her. Attributing it solely to Sora nothing....it's being re-attributed to a character it was never attributed to in the first place!
• Regarding The King of Fighters, at the time of KOF 96, they recorded new voice samples for King from Art of Fighting. The voice made her sound like a combination of not caring, lazy, and condescending, but the vocals got rerecorded for 97, didn't they? No such chance. Anyone worth a damn had new vocals except King. Fast forward to 2001 and....SHE'S STILL USING THAT GODDAMN VOCAL COLLECTION. It Got Worse in Capcom vs SNK 1 and 2. There King was playable and....she STILL had her 96 to 2001 (or 2002 Unlimited Match) vocals! Compare that to every other SNK character who had brand spanking new vocals for that crossover! Now that, SNK, was just plain LAZY. They could have AT LEAST given King a bit more love and effort than that, but it just proves that They Just Didn't Care. Thankfully the whole thing was fixed when in KOF 2003 King FINALLY had new vocals for the first time in at least SIX OR SEVEN YEARS.
  • And what she did get sounded like something right out of a Dead or Alive game. Her vocals were re-recorded again for KOF XIII to an even worse result that makes one wonder if SNK isn't trying to lure in Ryona fetishists.
  • Same vein, Geese Howard. Despite he really had his sprite redrawn time after time, his stance animation is still as unsmooth as years ago, EVEN contrary to his son Rock and, one possible exception of this, his Capcom VS SNK appearance. Gaw, come on, SNK! He is your TRADEMARK boss, as well as Rugal!
• While most of the Chzo Mythos story is brilliant, some of the more... unique plot points left some players (including Deceased Crab) groaning, the main example being the Trilby Clones from 6 Days a Sacrifice. The sex scene in the same game runs a close second.
  • Also: "I JUST WANTED TO GO INTO SPACE!"
  • The sex scene is an interesting case, as revealed when Yahtzee himself showed up to discuss the games in Quovak's Let's Play on the Something Awful forums. To cut a long story short, the scene isn't supposed to be titillating, but because it was awkwardly written, we have the unique case where both the creator and the audience are on the exact same page,^[6] but the audience has been given the wrong impression of what the creator was trying to accomplish.
• In Warriors Orochi, Date Masamune is suddenly turned into a frantic Orochi worshipper and think they can't beat Orochi, even when they DO beat him in the first game. What's making it more wall-banging is that when in Samurai Warriors 2, he pulled off The Starscream to the Tokugawa, he didn't do it to Orochi, even after the hidden cutscene when he makes it clear that he still have The Starscream inside him. The fact that the overly confident Masamune is suddenly turned into an extreme ass-kisser and seems to have lost faith to all humanity and it looks like KOEI seems to hate the Date clan and wants him to be the Dong Zhuo counterpart of the Samurai Warriors series is... very wall-banging.
• In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, you absolutely cannot Take a Third Option regarding the fate of Pelleas in your first playthrough. You must play the game twice to get out of killing him. Even though it turns out that killing him is useless anyway!
  • Even worse. Early on, you meet Izuka, the most Obviously Evil character ever. Pelleas is quite trusting of him despite this, which is understandable for various reasons, if idiotic. The real Wall Banger comes from when Izuka feeds Muarim the elixir that turns him into a Feral One. Muarim is saved and Izuka...keeps his job. Despite the fact he crossed the Moral Event Horizon and has been proven to be a terrible strategist, Pelleas STILL completely trusts him. The reason of course is because the plot says so.
• Sly Cooper: It's not too bad an example, as it's immediately followed by one of the series' best boss fights, but Sly referring to General Tsau as the worst man he's ever met. Mind you, Tsau is a nasty piece of work (kidnapping a woman to use her as a baby maker, manipulated her father into passiveness as it happened, left a Chinese village in terror with his crimes and necromancy, and kicked a puppy twice.) But Sly seems to be forgetting about Clockwerk, a Big Bad of the series who was so obsessed with hatred on the Cooper family that he literally lived off it for centuries, terrorizing them for generations before he finally murdered Sly's parents right in front of him, then left Sly alive in the hopes of watching him grow up to be a miserable failure. And Sly spent a good chunk of the last game describing just how horrible Clockwerk is, raising Clockwerk to something close to an Eldritch Abomination. And apparently his evil pales to a really powerful sexist.
  • Except that Clockwerk hadn't been a man in a long time by the time Sly had met him. Or owl, whatever.
    • Honestly, Tsao is probably almost as bad, if not equal, to Clockwerk in terms of evilness. The problem is that Clockwerk affected Sly far more personally then Tsao did, so it's strange that Sly would hate Tsao more. (You could argue that Sly had put Clockwerk behind him at that point, though that feels too much like Fan Wank for my tastes.)
• Abysmal PS3 exclusive shooter Haze doesn't really have that far to fall to be terrible; stand-out moments are when Teare turns down Shane's Nectar administrator with the claim that "his pack is slipping" when Mantel soldiers don't wear packs, writer Rob Yescombe not knowing that you don't call a Sergeant sir ever, and especially not if you're one yourself, the peaceful village having it's own nuclear missile, and a series of confused Metaphorgotten issues that lead to the game claiming that people fight wars due to propaganda, which is a natural resource like oil.
• BioShock 2 has generated a few:
  • It's considered a "good" act to allow Gil Alexander to survive in his profoundly mutated state despite his pleas in his prerecorded message that he desperately wants to die.
  • It Got Worse. Not only are you letting him live, regardless of the fact that his recordings begged you to do it. But it's also implied that he wants to flush himself out into the sea. You're letting a gigantic ADAM bloated monstrosity that's totally insane out into the wide world at large. This is a good thing?!
• Devil May Cry 3 contains a particularly absurd example of Gameplay and Story Segregation towards the end of the game. Lady, the Weak but Skilled Badass Normal, inexplicably becomes capable of tanking Dante for the duration of the fight against her. The fact that she barely seems injured afterwards is just the icing on the cake.
• Devil May Cry 4. Sanctus royally pissed off Credo and Nero, two of his best soldiers, by turning them against each other for little to no reason, then kidnapping Kryie to use her in order to activate The Savior. Dante was better for the plan, and with the Yamato and Sparda in his possession, what else could Sanctus possibly need to lure the guy?
  • It seems like the writers behind the game couldn't focus on whether or not to put plot in or leave plot out of the story. First Vergil wasn't involved in any way. Then, Nero has a freaky right arm that looks an awful lot like Vergil is bound to it since Nero has some unexplained proficiency with Vergil's sword (after restoring it, no less). Then the novel comes out and says that the Devil Bringer is not Vergil's soul bound to Nero's arm, removing his involvement in the story. But oh yeah, Nero is his son, which means Vergil was involved in the events of the game anyway.
  • Throughout most of the game, the player's given control of Nero. One of the best things about his arm is that it can extend to grab/pull things towards him in less than two seconds. Does he use it in the cutscenes to save his girlfriend? No, twice. Would it have helped? Hell yes.
    • I joked once that he has OCD keeping him from putting grabbed things down gently.
    • They could have Handwaved it by suggesting that it would end up killing her due to the arm's strength or something, but they didn't.
  • Devil May Cry 4 certainly seems to have some odd ones. You have to wonder why Nero, someone with the arm of a demon, was allowed to join an organisation as anti-demon as The Order. At the beginning of the game, Nero kept his arm in a sling, presumably to hide the fact but it still makes no sense; don't The Order do a medical? Or a background check? I know they're not exactly too modern but you'd think they'd notice if one of their members—the only one who doesn't wear white, therefore sticking out like a sore thumb—was part-demon. Why was Nero even in The Order anyway? I think it's implied that he joined because of Kyrie but it's more than a little clear that he's not the best ... Orderist, or whatever the term is for someone of the religion. Which leads to a less intriguing plot; Nero didn't feel any big sense of betrayal because he wasn't that involved with The Order to begin with. Wouldn't that have made for a better storyline, made it a revenge piece and given the payoff much more gravitas? Instead, it seems as if Nero is already suspicious of The Order—like the majority of pretty boys in Japanese games, he's portrayed as near-infallible (in this case, to the point that he knows plot developments before they even come up) -- and therefore expresses no surprise when he's betrayed.
    • It's not actually stated, but some brief flashbacks near the start of the game strongly imply that Nero's demonic arm didn't manifest until some incident after he joined The Order.
• While there are many issues with Twisted Metal 3, one of the most annoying one is found in Auger's backstory. In his profile, it was said that Auger was a construction worker who had his buildings destroyed by the Twisted Metal competitors. So he wanted revenge on those people. However, upon finishing the game, the story ending had Auger wishing for "everyone to see his inner childhood." Auger's ending and wish has nothing to do with what had been established in his profile.
  • Pretty much every ending in the game is a wallbanger, as Calypso goes well beyond his classical Literal Genie to pervert many wishes into things people never asked for. Axel explicitly wanted to be merged with the machine he was trapped in so it would be an extension of his body, not be turned into a novelty watch! Also, what police officer would consider a perfectly crime-free environment to be a bad thing, even if it meant you had little to do? No wonder the game is regarded as The Scrappy and Canon Discontinuity.
• The constant stupid gender restrictions in the Smackdown vs. Raw games since the 2006 edition. That version for some reason blocked the players from having female wrestlers in any type of extreme rules match. And they were also restricted to appearing in matches that can only have up to four participants. The 2010 edition cleared it up a bit as the women are now allowed in extreme rules matches (excluding Hell in a Cell and the Elimination Chamber) and this time it's a five-women-per-match limit but the game decided to outlaw intergender wrestling altogether so now the only match where men and women can both be in is a Mixed Tag match but the men get disqualified for hitting the women even if it's by accident. And if a man and woman are legal in the ring one of them has a five count to make a tag or it's automatic DQ. So much for gender equality.
  • The Mixed Tag Match is a Wall Banger in itself. If you're beating up on your opponent and they tag out, then you're forced to tag your partner in or face a DQ. Okay fine. However, all you really have to do is tag your partner back in, which forces your opponent to do the same. Let the beatdown continue!
  • In 2011, you can add the fact that Divas only get one spot on the computer generated Universe cards. Sure you can edit the other matches, but they don't count toward rankings. It reaches extreme Wall Banger territory when you get to Night of Champions, which has the tag line of EVERY title being on the line. At any PPV, only one female championship can be on the line.
  • On the point of the men being disqualified for hitting the women? This can happen in any match (Even those where the opposite gender serves as a manager), even if it's a counter.
  • And the acompanying restrictions for CA Ws. For those who enjoy creating established wrestlers not featured, it will be extremely frustrating to find the only things matching some wrestlers are only available for the wrong gender.
• In Just Cause 2, the ending of the main story sees America take over the island of Panau after tying the last leader to a nuke and using it to blow up the island's rich oil field. Apparently the island suffers no ill effects from having a nuke exploded a couple of hundred metres away from it. And the people are happy to accept American government after they brutally murdered their last leader and sent you to blow up their stuff and support the island's dangerous gangs and drug dealers.
  • America seems like a preferable governor to the previous brutal dictatorship. Also, no-one but the Agency knows that Rico was a government agent - they all think he's a Badass Spaniard mercenary called Scorpio.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces, Fate's Evil Twin Material-L is the only one that doesn't get to fight with her original in the Story Mode. She doesn't even show up in any of the CGs either.
• Modern Warfare 2 has a horrible research failure. Long story short:The shockwave from a nuclear bomb detonated in space destroys the International Space Station. Let's skip the part of an "explosion" in space and skip to the shockwave, this can't work for reasons anyone over the age of 4 can likely tell you there is no air in space (it's been argued that its the EMP that hits the ISS, which is even stupider because it blows the ISS to pieces instead of you know, being an EMP?).
• The ending to the released version of Knights of the Old Republic 2. To be fair, Executive Meddling is responsible, but the ending as presented was still done in the worst possible way. The part where the game outright tells you what happens to your characters was lame, but felt more like the creators throwing the fans a bone than anything else. But the sequence leading up to the final battle is where things really fell apart. We are given a sequence in which Bao-Dur's robot helper is given a subquest by a holographic message from Bao-Dur. There is a reason for this: in the cut content, Bao-Dur had died, and he recorded this message in advance. The subquest is fairly simple: turn on a device on a series of crashed republic vessels. However there's a scene where another character attempts to stop him, and the story never returns to the scene, but the final cutscene in the game makes it very clear the mission is successful (if you get the Light Side ending that is). What was supposed to happen was another character was supposed to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment, but that got cut too. So the question is: why didn't they just cut the scene where the other character tried to stop the remote? Additionally: Why didn't they replace the hologram of Bao-Dur with the real thing, since in this version there was no reason to think he was dead?. And that's without even mentioning the HK-50 Factory. The ending was so nonsensical that several Star Wars handbooks felt the need to directly reference plot elements from the cut content just so they could give a coherent canon.
  • Fans would ultimately have to wait until the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, nearly seven years later, for a canon explaination of what happened to the Exile at the end of the story. That resolution? She went off to fight the Sith Emperor and was killed.
• At the end of Halo: Reach, Noble Six remains behind to defend the Pillar of Autumn as it escapes Reach. To do so, s/he must destroy an approaching Covenant cruiser with a MAC Cannon. Six tells this to Keyes as he arrives in a Pelican to pick the Spartan up. Who else is in the Pelican? A dozen marines. There were several zealots and a field marshal between six and the gun, and lots of incoming banshees and phantoms on the way, so a dozen marines wouldn't have been able to pull it off. However, they could've at least tried to soften 'em up while they were pulling away.
  • Speaking of which, the Covenant dropship comes out of nowhere, from the direction the second Pelican was actually looking. It may have snuck behind the mountain, but the first warning the UNSC men apparently got was the plasma bolts it shot from just off-frame. Apparently, it was invisible until then.
• Heavy Rain: Among many other things, the reveal that the Origami Killer is Scott Shelby, despite the fact that you spend a quarter of the game in his shoes with access to his thoughts. Though the game's ridiculous need to have Madison near or completely nude and constantly sexually assaulted is a close second.
  • Listen more closely to what he's thinking...
  • Actually even if you pay attention to what they are thinking during the course of the game the reveal doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you break down the story. This is mainly due to an ungodly number of plot holes that seem to be handwaved away in an effort to provide tension as to who the real killer is. In most other games they could have been easily fixed but due to Heavy Rain's very strict storyline requirements the holes are left gaping. This is practically a wallbanger in and of itself.
  • A related, smaller one is how Scott was able to perform the kidnappings: by impersonating a cop. Or rather, he was a cop, but retired. And the police just let officers who are no longer working with them keep their badge and ID?
• NBA 2K10 and 2K11: The My Player mode has some real wallbangers. For example, if your team is down by five, there's a minute left, your player is a three point specialist, and is wide open, but if he misses, the game claims "Bad Shot Selection". Guh?
  • But wait, it gets better. You can have a layup turn into a Bad Shot Selection just because someone ran over to you and the animation changed into one of those difficult contact layup animations. Instead of being a foul, you get a missed shot and your teammate grade goes down. And then there's the CPU initiating bumping animations which prevent your player from following the playcall diagrams on the court, breaking the play. If you have a good 3pt shooting PG like Aaron Brooks, watch in helpless anger as he jacks up a fade away 3 because the CPU wouldn't let you set a pick.
• In Valkyria Chronicles 2, at the end of the Yuel mission, The Chick Cosette freezes up in an Heroic BSOD when it's time to help the wounded - nevermind that she treated wounded people a lot of times before that, and must have seen blood by the bucketload, making this look like a contrivance to get the plot going. And what does Avan do to help her recover from that? If you think that this Replacement Scrappy for Welkin Gunther just took his own gun and shot himself in the gut to force Cosette into action... you're sadly right, and this is where I lost hope in the game. Seriously, there's Idiot Hero, and then there is this... at least Avan got called out on his stupidity, though he definitely got off easier than he deserved...
• Before the first battle with the Steel Witch in Luminous Arc, it's revealed she has one of the Lapistier in her body. After the battle, rather than finishing her off and claiming the Lapistier, every decides to leave her there and make tracks. This is reasonable for the main party, being the Neutral Good heroes and all. Vanessa, on the other hand, explicitly joined you for that class alone as an Enemy Mine, explicitly said she'll raise hell in her independent quest for the Lapistier and get them whatever the cost, and has already shown herself to be more than impulsive and pragmatic enough to rip the stone out of her chest, leaving her with no excuse and falling squarely into this trope.
• The Splatterhouse remake, although a very solid brawler, has one glaring flaw. The ending. The Big Bad is defeated in a cutscene, and the "final battle" is literally nothing but a ludicrously difficult Escort Mission. On the plus side, there's a blatant Sequel Hook, so at least there's hope that the next installment won't end on such an Anticlimax.
• Mario Tennis has a tournament mode which allows you to play Singles or Doubles. If you play in Doubles, you get a computer player as a partner. In a game that allows up to 4 players in Exhibition Mode, why, why would they have a Doubles Tourney mode and not let you play it co-operatively with another player? And then for the Nintendo GameCube version, they did it again!
• In DC Universe Online , if you create a hero character aligned with Wonder Woman, you'll meet and work with Zatanna. If you have any knowledge of her character, you'll take it for granted that she'll be shouting stuff like "namtaB tegrof" or "wolb tihs pu!" But for whatever reason (and even though Oracle tells you about her unique spellcasting method before you meet her), all of her lines are delivered straight: "heal ally," "drain Faust," etc.
  • What's incredibly weird is that, according to IMDB, she's voiced by Jennifer Hale, who played Zatanna in Justice League Unlimited and did the sdrawkcab gnitsaclleps just fine.
• If you play through seventh Touhou game, Perfect Cherry Blossom, as Marisa, you will come across a big gate that serves as Hakugyokurou's gate to the world of the living and will be confronted by the Prismriver Sisters. Marisa will insist that they open the gate for her, which leads to the fight. Guess what happens afterwards? Apparently, the gate is just a decoration, and you just need to fly over it, which effectively defeats the point of fighting them.
  • Marisa does say "...Oh." afterwards, which to this troper carried the connotation of a Face Palm - this was a pretty silly moment for Marisa too. Poor Communication Kills.
• Valkyria Chronicles. Faldio's entire plotline is a big, Anvilicious showcase for the game's anti-war Aesops, specifically that escalation and the pursuit of military power through WMDs is wrong, but when you actually look at the events of the war, he was absolutely right. The fact that he shot Alicia to awaken her powers is the only reason Gallia wasn't wiped off the map by Selvaria. If he had only been imprisoned for it, because regardless of his reasoning, he did commit treason, that would have been fine. But no, he escapes from prison just long enough to apologize and then die as an apology in a completely needless Stupid Sacrifice, and Selvaria obliterates all the people he saved in her own Stupid Sacrifice.
• In StarCraft II The Tosh-Nova decision in New Folsom. Letting Nova be a choice between the two people, despite her clear affiliation with the Big Bad. As Tosh best states, "She won't even join you." Ghosts being "classic" and Nova being attractive cannot possibly be justifiable reasons for such possible Character Derailment of Raynor, who spent the last two Covert Missions helping Tosh anyway to get funding for more troops and upgrades to already-attained schematics to put a blow to Mengsk in the long run. The irony in all this is Tosh himself does not prove to Raynor any distrust, and there is nothing which supports Nova in the campaign...at all. Tosh even explains the inhabitants of New Folsom to be political prisoners.
  • The way Zeratul, one of the wisest charachters of the first game, is reduced to an utter moron. Upon seing a ghostly, translucent figure of Tassadar, that announces: "I have come to you from beyond this world", all he can utter is: "But you are dead!" Well, DUH! Another time he engages a Protoss-Zerg Hybrid and incredulously inquires about who could possibly create such monstrosity, despite the fact he met said creator in person and heard his confession!
  • The moment when it is revealed that Sargares...I mean the Dark Voice aka the Fallen One enslaved the Ork Horde...I mean the Zerg Swarm to destroy the Night Elves...I mean the Protoss, and, subsequently, all life in the universe, so that he could remake it In Their Own Image... ... ...THIS. IS NOT. WARCRAFT IN SPACE!!!
  • - Hey, people, we have to destroy the space platforms the Zerg use as spawning ground for their air forces! - Ok, let's Nuke'Em. - We can't! The nests are too deep underground. - So what's the plan then? -Why, we'll go there in full force and assualt the surface-mounted generator...reactor...stabilizer...thingies that, when destroyed, will trigger a chain reaction blowing up the whole platform. - So why don't we Nuke THEM? ... ... ... *facepalm*
• Golden Eye 1997: One word: Natalya. She is the most irritating character ever. You kill her former friend who is in league with the person trying to kill her, what does she do? Thank you? No, she hates you and refuses to go on. You go into a control room and blow up all the computers except one, what does she do? Insist on using the one you destroyed, IGNORING the one you left, running off and telling you to stop 'clowning around'. After all this, it's satisfying to just shoot the damn bitch and be done with it.
• Lego Island 2 was a HUGE offender on Castle Island. Apparently the Brickster broke the bridge between the two smaller islands, and now the neighbors can't battle. First of all, if you look at the bridge, it's a five-foot gap. They could easily just jump the gap, cut down some of the trees and lay them across it, or swim across it, but instead, they make Pepper do all of the work by making HIM repair the bridge himself. Secondly, how the heck is it a bad thing that the war is postponed? Once you get all that ridiculous crap over with, you have to win a joust, and there's one point where you have to get a horse, which the people up in the castle just toss down from the top. How did the horse get up there at all, and how did he get thrown down so easily without a scratch? Once you get the joust done, you have to battle Cedric by using cannons. Okay, if the war was postponed, why couldn't they use the cannons? What's even stranger is how the cannons can't be destroyed if you're not in them.
• Okay Clock Tower, it's time you and me had a little talk. I'll warn you ahead of time that there'll be a ton of spoilers for what little plot the game has in this entry, so if you don't want a 16-year-old game spoiled for you, leave this list be. OK, first of all...
  • In the first game, why wasn't there any effort to protect Dan given his Complete Monster Mama Bear? And my memory of how he "died" is sort of fuzzy, but I think that the can of gasoline just kind of exploded on him? How? Why was there even a tank in the caves at all? And what possible reason did Mary have for bringing the girls to the mansion to torture them anyway, besides For the Evulz? Plots that take wild leaps of logic are nothing new to Survival Horror games, but unlike, say, Silent Hill, Clock Tower just doesn't have that interesting of a plot to even excuse the wall bangers.
  • Then in the second game, we learn that Dan somehow survived in the body of a normal young boy. How? Why? I know that there are fanon explanations, but canonically, that's just an epic Ass Pull to give the sequel a connection to the original.
• How's this for a Wall Banger? Alien grenadiers in X-COM: Terror From The Deep. Despite the fact that the Vibro Blade weapons they carry are supposedly capable of "cracking through the toughest armor", they never use them in combat with your troops - NOT EVEN IF THEY'VE RUN OUT OF GRENADES!
• GTA: San Andreas: Ok, this troper may be remembering this wrong so bare with this one and correct if needed. In San Andreas, the player controls the character CJ, a lower income african american gangsta type who left due to one tragedy and returned due to another. He is met with initial disrespect for his absence the past few years and labeled a Busta by just about everyone in his family and local gang; this wouldn't be an issue if it actually changed by game's end. By game's end the player has probably collected all that can be collected, tagged all that can be tagged, reclaimed all territories, purchased all land, he has connections with the government, fronts a popular rap artist, owns half the country and is the sole deciding factor in his elder brother's freedom from jail, who by the way got his own self in the slammer due to his pig headedness and even after all this, all the stuff he has done for his family, all the shocking reveals of how much CJ's brother just flat out sucked as a leader considering how many traitors were in their midst, his brother still calls him a 'busta' and the absolute biggest Wall Banger of it all, CJ agrees with him. The main character is solely responsible for his brother escaping the daily pole dance in jail and he agrees with him on being basically what amounts to an unreliable loser? Sure Ten Penny needed to be stopped before he came after them again, but come on, show some Backbone CJ.
  • Not to mention that only reason why GSF is back in game is that CJ came back and joined. Also, he is also allied with powerful Chinese Triad. Worse yet, CJ never points out how much he has accomplished in such a short time, no matter how much Sweet calls him out.
• In Bad Company 2 where they just ignore the truckload of gold from the previous game and make no explanation to where it went.
• The ending of Star Wars: Republic Commando. So, right after you complete the final mission by blowing up the Separatist warship with four rocket turrets, one manned by each commando, Boss, Fixer, and Scorch reunite and get ready to be picked up. Sev then radios in and calls for help, as he is being attacked by multiple enemies, and then his radio is filled with static. Delta Squad wants to rescue him, but they are ordered out immediately by their clone advisor, who has direct orders from Yoda to do so. "What is the problem with that?", some you may be thinking. "That's war for you, tragedies happen all the time." My response: yes, but this goes far beyond "tragic necessity" and veers right into "just plain stupid and extremely poorly handled" territory. Why? Because there was no reason to leave him behind. True, the Republic may be beginning its invasion of Kashyyk, but it's not a dire emergency and it's not like Delta Squad is another 501st; they're commandos, not infantry troops. It probably will be a while before they can begin their next mission anyway. Furthermore, the commandos could EASILY have rescued Sev. The four rocket turrets were all in the same relatively small arena (each overlooking the main floor), which by the way has a large opening for the pickup gunship. There is NO reason Delta Squad could not have quickly run back to Sev's position, bailed him out, and have the gunship pick them up from Sev's turret position, considering the design of the arena. If they really are that many enemies, the gunship can just blow them to smithereens, like it did during at the end of the Geonosis droid factory level and the Trandoshan supply camp level. I was never able to view Yoda in the same light again. It shows poor handling on the game developer's part, and, in-universe, all it does is show more reason to despise the Jedi as assholes and idiots. You know it's that bad when, as the novels show, Delta Squad enthusiastically assists in wiping out the Jedi and look up to a new non-clone leader who has developed an enormous disdain for Force users in general.
• Super Mario 64 DS was a remake with plenty of added content that made it well worth playing...up until the end. In the original game, collecting all the Power Stars allows you to access a cannon outside the castle and use it to reach the castle roof, where you can find 3 1-ups, a Wing Cap block, and Yoshi, who gives you 100 extra lives and a new triple jump. In the Remake, you can get to the castle roof without getting all the stars and Yoshi is a playable character, so now there's nobody up there. What was added to make up for this? NOTHING. So there's actually less content rewarding players for beating the remake than there was for beating the original. Needless to say, this was disappointing.
  • Actually, going up to the roof as Luigi will reveal one of the minigame rabbits. Whether this makes it better or worse is up to you.
• In Okami, there's a moment when Amaterasu and Issun fight Orochi in the past era of Kamiki. Before they do so, however, Oki (who recklessly followed them prior) attempts to slay the enemy with a sword that just doesn't work when the wielder only thinks about brute force. The Wall Banger occurs when he is told that a previously missing character, Lika, was under the bell that hid the demon's weakness, and he says he doesn't care at all, because he only thinks about becoming stronger and stronger so he can later fight bigger, more powerful creatures. The good news is, he is deservedly massacred by Orochi.
• Resident Evil 2: By the start of the game the zombie apocalypse is roughly two days old, the Police/Army/Umbrella mercenaries have been nearly completely wiped out, half the city is on fire, and apparently the news of the situation has spread far enough for the government to consider nuking the city. This is where we find a comically oblivious truck driver who acts in complete shock when a guy bites into his bicep. Where and what has he been doing for the last few days... were the thick plumes of smoke and the blood soaked streets not enough of a clue something big was going down?
  • The extent of the destruction is largely only depicted in the sequels to RE2, but it still seems very odd that—as the gun shop owner can attest—no one noticed anything amiss until the streets were completely overrun with zombies.
• Saints Row the Third: As well as massive parts of Hype Backlash, Badass Decay, Sequelitis, Show, Don't Tell, Informed Attribute, overdose of Bottom of the Barrel Joke-type gags, and Took a Level in Jerkass along with a helping of Obvious Beta involving the story, the game really hits the wall in the second last level. After pissing off both Killbane and Cyrus Temple, their resulting factions get into an all out war on the streets. Upon dealing with it to the best of your abilities Angel calls you up to inform you that Killbane is leaving. Wait, but didn't you already humiliate him and destroy his reputation? Angel said just a short while ago that killing him isn't needed. So why do we have to...Wait, now we just got a call from Maria Hill-I mean, Kia, Temple's second in command. She tells you her master plan to frame the Saints as Domestic Terrorists by blowing up a monument along with a hell load of Saints, including Shaundi. Wait, and she decided to call you while you still have time to stop her? So, you have to choose: Kill the man you've already broke along with the game's biggest scrappy, or stop Kia and save the girl who became a scrappy during the plot. If you chose ending A, the boss will have a quick time Curb Stomp Battle instead of a real fight, making the final confrontation incredibly boring. Then, once he's beat, he just waits around until the statue is blown up instead of getting off his ass and trying to postpone the attack. If you chose Ending B, you get a Carbon Copy of the Veteran Child bossfight from the last game, and the Saints go on to learn nothing from their experience and return to being media whores. Thankfully each one leads to a different but awesome final level, this along with various other points in the story is enough to make fans of the previous installment regret buying this game.
• In The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, just before your second fight with Ghirahim, he shows Link a painting that depicts two Gates of Time; one that Impa destroyed in Lanaryu Desert, and other in the Sacred Grove that you're trying to activate, which Ghirahim is trying to find. While Link never reveals its location, he doesn't bother to tell the Priestess that Ghirahim is looking for the gate, which he not only eventually finds, but uses it to drag Zelda to the past and revive his master, Demise, setting up the curse of Ganon's various appearances throughout the series. While there have been moments in the franchise where the heroes or the villains have had their plans thwarted by the Idiot Ball, this one arguably takes the cake.
• Max Payne 3 contains many instances, but one that stands out in particular is when Max finally gets to the location where the wife of his now dead employer is being held hostage, along with another girl he is sworn to protect. You'd expect for his to quietly take down them hostage-takers quietly, or at the very least, wait to they leave. What does Max do? He charges on in loudly proclaiming his entrance, all in front of about a dozen enemies. Not surprisingly, the wife gets killed. At this point, it is hard to buy Max as anything but an incompetent buffoon.

1. ↑ While Red XIII is usually the one to be picked to hold it, it is possible to get someone else to do it (including Barret).
2. ↑ Arguably the most dangerous human in the galaxy
3. ↑ Arguably the most dangerous human terrorist organization in the galaxy
4. ↑ one per cycle
5. ↑ It doesn't help that the shards, the payment for Move Tutors in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, are easier to grind in this game but instead are reserved for berries
6. ↑ That is, two scared, injured morons succumb to their animal instincts as they reach what they think is the lowest point of their mutual lives