Game rage

[selmiak]

super meat boy. I hate/love this game
that is for difficulty reasons, seems like I avoid badly designed games somehow (except for OSD...)

[voh]

Trackmania. Ever single time I make an avoidable screwup I'll throw up my hands and go "fuck this!".

I love that game.

[Darth Mandarb]

When I was a kid I used to get FURIOUS at video games!  Mostly towards [losing at] sports games.  I did get angry, as a few have mentioned in here, when I felt that a game had a design flaw that made playing difficult/annoying.  The tipping point for me was ~1997.  I was playing 1080 Snowboarding on the N64... I knew exactly how to pull off the move but now matter how deftly I moved my fingers and perfected the timing it was 1 out 5 times it would actually work and pull-off the move.  There was one night I got so furious I tore the cart out of the console and threw it on the ground.  I grabbed a hammer (not sure why there was a hammer in the room but there was) and smashed the cart into tiny pieces.  I felt a proper fool after having done it and didn't touch another video game (except Tetris on my GBA) for over 6 years. When I got back into games in 2003 (around the time I stumbled on AGS) I realized my "temper" had completely changed.  I still get irritated at games but now if I feel my temper rising I simply walk away.

[Ghost]

I grabbed a hammer (not sure why there was a hammer in the room but there was)

Life is an adventure game, Darth! There's always hammers!

Interestingly, a friend of mine had to buy BattleToads three times because he had a similar reaction to the infamous Hoverbike section. I just watched him. It was great entertainment and did a lot for my vocabulary... 

[DoorKnobHandle]

Playing StarCraft (Brood War or Wings of Liberty) competitively, you get a ton of this:







I myself get frustrated playing the game but I never express it physically (punching walls, the desk, the headset, the keyboard or anything) and I never insult my opponents. With competitive games that feature asymmetrical balance (different classes in RPGs or FPSs with custom equipment or different races with different units in RTSs), getting angry and frustrated at the game's balance is pretty common I guess.

[Jared]

That Starcraft post made me think of Team Fortress 2. It's taken me a long time to get good at that game, but often if I top score I get mocked on the class I'm playing. It seems to me that out of the NINE classes available there are very few that are acceptable to the elitists to play. Medics = no work and easy points, Soldiers = spam, Heavy = more spam, Sniper = not helping team, Engineer = camping + grind, Pyro = no skill. So Demoman, Spy and Scout (providing you're not using the 'noob gun' which I like as scout) are the only acceptable classes. Sigh.

On topic, though Team Fortress 2 makes me rage quite a bit. More often than not, though, at my own team rather than the enemy. Rather than the game becoming more fun as I got better, it's become more frustrating as I notice the large amount of rookie mistakes that get made that regularly cost us a round. Simple things like SHOOT THE GUY WITH THE F*&^ING INTEL!!! I'M A MEDIC ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP! WHY IS IT MY JOB TO KILL HIM??? Really, multiplayer kinda sucks. I only play the game because my computer is so buggy it basically can't run anything else...

Previous rages... playing the original Call of Duty recently.. that game has aged badly. Although massively hyped at the time the friendly AI is god-awful. What made me snap and put on God mode after trudging through over a dozen missions on the hard difficulty (I know saying a CoD game is difficult now will elicit laughter but the original was legitimately tough) was a mission with the Russians where you have a full squad and need to clear out and then defend a large office building in a massed assault. Now, what made this difficult were not the nazis, who by this stage are easy enough to deal with. But my own squad. Who are constantly getting stuck in doorways, facing walls while they get shot in the back. Standing right behind me when I need to get out of the way of a grenade. Never calling out when they see an enemy. Never actually doing anything to hold a position or co-ordinate. Ahh!

When I think about it, I usually don't rage about difficulty (but I have quite a bit) but more often game design. I raged at an adventure game, in fact (Runaway. God damn that game and it's retarded puzzles) and Knights of the Old Republic at those awful final Star Forge levels where you endlessly go between one massive room filled with 20 heavy troopers and another, and the pathfinding on Carth completely failed making me yell "YOU WANNA STAND NEXT TO ME, YA C*%#?!?" Also, Assassin's Creed Revelations where they made the task of obtaining a guard's uniform unusually strict in how it was to be achieved for the series..

I definitely don't like raging, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying a game when all is said and done. Oddly enough I'm not sure I raged during the most difficult game I ever played (Iron Storm) but I did several times during the much less taxing Deus Ex: Human Revolution - I think because the promise of playing the game the way you want to only goes so far when I seem to be getting ambushed by masses of armed soldiers every five minutes toward the end of the game...

[ThreeOhFour]

On the subject of dumb AI, I recently played through Medal of Honor: Airborne, and found that the best way to get a perfect shot was:

-Line up enemy soldier
-Watch squadmate run right in front of my iron sight/scope
-Wait for him to get killed for standing in a stupid position by the guy I was a second away from shooting
-Pull the trigger at my once more clear target

Went through the entire game employing this tactic. No idea how many squadmates I could have saved if they'd just waited 2 seconds for me to take my shot before running *exactly* where I didn't want them.

[Ponch]

I was playing 1080 Snowboarding on the N64...

Ah, the N64. It had the last truly great console control pad (except for that fiddly little stick on the top). I've hated every control pad since.

[Stupot]

http://youtu.be/aGlVtNXLMmA
This guy is funny.

[Tabata]

WOW! - He did about 600 fu***ing attemps??   

Therefor he is an admirably quiet person 

[abstauber]

since we're at it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2QxLpS3aIM
...
...
the master of game rage

[Snake]

I used to get really pissed off while playing Mario Kart Wii online. Mainly because of hackers and people who I just CANNOT beat. I don't let it bother me anymore and now I enjoy it a hell of a lot better. It helps to imagine being filmed racing and imagine being a commentator and such. It's much more fun that way.

I also, as a kid, used to get iritated at various NES games, but nothing too intense. My friend would do this whipping action with the controller and make a big wave in the wire almost unplugging it and yell at the tv. Gah.

[m0ds]

Some people are very vocal when they play games, but I'm the total opposite. My friends often scream and shout with joy, amazement and frustration - sometimes I even feel a bit bad that for some reason I'm not acting as 'excited' as others. The only rage I suffer is when my PC does something annoying, but no - games have never gotten me angry. TV, movies and games do have a psychological effect on me, but I'm capable of controlling them. I've noticed it's friends who are easily amazed at usually mundane things in life that get over-excited at video games. I presume they just have active imaginations But yeah, if I even start to get annoyed with a game, I just turn it off. I only play for fun, not for getting annoyed! I can't think of a single game I've raged at - maybe one, once, I think it was a sniper type game on Xbox 360. But that was just the old "trying to pass one point on one level over and over" type moments. I usually realize that if I turn it off, new solutions on how to beat that part of the game will come to me. Far more than getting angry ever would.. And that has always paid off. Interesting topic though Stu!

Oh, and yeah. Some console gamers become pretty scary people when they're playing games. It's not always nice to be around!

[Snake]

Here, m0ds, check your temp with this. It's sure to frustrate anyone

Here's a video of me playing it on the final stages.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Mods, don't play that game. No one plays that game.

[Babar]

I usually vent my game frustration in-game. Occasionally (like when I'm trying to do  specific segment and I keep dying), I rage out and instead of sneaking and potioning and setting up spells or whatever, I just run up to the boss (who usually has some high-health drain melee attack) and continuously blast things. Sometimes it works!

Actual raging was more done by me when I had a much crappier computer. Things would sometimes work, sometimes not, sometimes hang and quit the game for no reason, sometimes I'd get the bluescreen, sometimes restarting would cause it to hang during the booting up.
I used to alternately smack my computer casing while yelling at it and caress it while saying "Please, just this once don't hang! LET it work! Let me get past this bit at least!", and make promises to it, which I then didn't keep.

[Ghost]

since we're at it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2QxLpS3aIM

Holy sh*t, that's just plain hilarious! 

[Domino]

The Game was Alice: Madness Returns. The game sure fits its name. It was so damn frustrating on the majority of platforming parts that I was swearing like a drunken sailor.

Well, ejected the game from my Xbox360 snapped the DVD in two while cursing at it and the manual while tossing it into the garbage. (I destroyed the case also)

That has been the most angry I have ever felt towards a video game. Madness had returned.

Domino

[CaptainD]

Kick Off 2!!!!!  I spent many hours playing that game as a youth, but man did it make me mad with its cheating!  Especially when their keeper was superhuman and our keeper decided to have a nap while the ball rolled slowly in from an impossible angle.

[Snake]

Mods, don't play that game. No one plays that game.

LOL
You've made my day there, Ryan XD

But seriously, though, he's right. And I don't fucking blame 'em!!1! It's complete ASS!