Most video game characters have understandable weaknesses. Bullets kill you. Lava burns you. When a Hunter comes flying at you with its claws extended and it connects with your neck your head goes flying across the rooms exactly as heads shouldn't. We get that.
Then again, some games pick some very arbitrary kryptonites to inflict on their people. It can be tough to toe the line between believability and just making sure that a character advances the story or level as the designers intended, but damn some of this comes out of left field.
We gave the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword very high marks when it debuted for really upping the ante on the Zelda game playing experience. Sure, Nintendo took the opportunity to make most of the opening play more like Pilotwings than a hack and slash adventure, but hey, Pilotwings is cool.
What's not cool is the whole new shield dynamic they built in. In a ridiculous quest for realism your shield deteriorates with each hit, and eventually breaks unless taken to a repair shop. Sure, you can buy more resilient shields over the course of the game, but all of them can still be broken except the Hylian Shield available only through a grueling sidequest.
The dumbest part? It's totally inaccurate historically. Most basic wooden shields were perfectly durable, which is why they were still used until the 15th century in Europe. The only reason that the practice stopped was because knights began to favor small bucklers over standard shields, and since they were smaller they could be made of metal and not weigh as much.
We got into the original Portal from Portal 2, so we were pretty well prepared for how the game thought and how it wanted the puzzles solved. We only needed to look up an FAQ once, and the reason is because that particular puzzle is really stupid.
Basically, you have to progress through an airvent, and if you jump you can see into the air vent. However, you apparently can't reach it even though any reasonable human being, let alone one of Chell's obvious physical skill, could simply hoist themselves in and move along.
Instead, the game forces you into a very convoluted puzzle that necessitates getting a rocket turret to shoot you through a portal, dodging and having the rocket hit a companion cube delivery chute. Then you carry the cube to the air vent and step up.
Look, if you wanted to play the fun rocket game, why not just make it so the rocket destroyed a glass barrier or something? All that did was make Chell look too weak to do a single pull-up.
Of all the imposed weaknesses we understand this one the best... not that it makes it any less backwardasstastic. Clearly Rocksteady would've had a whole slew of logistic nightmares if Batman was allowed to navigate the waters of Arkham City with impunity.
Plus, we'll even admit that it makes a kind of sense. After all, that suit has got to weigh at least 40lbs. Any one of us who fell into water over our heads wearing all that and carrying a bunch of sharp pieces of metal to hurl at the mentally ill is going straight to the bottom. That's why it's stupid...
Because it's Batman. The goddamn Batman. Batman has thought of this. Even the one level where falling into the water is instant death because of the Penguin's pet shark is silly because of exhibit Batman up there.
Famed Mimic Gogo is one of our favorite Final Fantasy characters, though we're much more fond of his playable version in VI than him as a boss in V. Number one, he got a much sweeter looking costume in VI. Number two, because his boss fight is embarrassing.
If you try to take on Gogo in a conventional manner he will own your ass and sublet it to a guy running a meth lab. His attacks do 9,999 damage, his magic just as well, and once you get him down far enough in HP he triplecasts Meteor which should wipe out all but the most needlessly over-leveled party.
The true way to beat him is literally to not do anything until he gets bored and gives up. It's one of the only boss battles in the history of the series that you can win by taking a piss break. Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3.
Of all the frustrating weaknesses mentioned here, this is the one that had us screaming incoherent things about the sexual proclivities of a fictional character's fictional mother because of its inanity.
Being set in Ancient Greece, the God of War series features Medusa like enemies that can turn you to stone. It's not really fatal. You can bust out of it, and you'd better do so quickly because enemies can smash you with one good hit.
The problem occurs when you get hit with the stone beam during a jump you crash to the floor and bust into pieces immediately. Even if you are only a little bit in the air. C'mon, Kratos has taken punishment that even the God couldn't stand up to. We know what Sony was going for, but the beam is unblockable in the air, and undodgable as well. This little weak spot is the only thing that has made us throw a controller across the room since the bird in Ninja Gaiden.
