5 Ways to Make Your Video Game Impossible

A common complaint among people who never beat video games is that they are too easy. Which is funny because that's the exact opposite feeling they should be having, right? And then some people who do beat video games wish they were harder as well. I do find myself thinking this at times, but really if every game was super hard it'd just be too damn stressful. And some games aren't about difficulty to begin with! For example, Fable is about trying to get married and divorced in the most hilarious ways you can figure out. And Kingdoms of Amalur is about trying to waste as many hours of your life as possible. Nevertheless, the people have spoken! So I'm here once again to help the dev's of the world out!

5. A Stealth Game Where the Enemies Never Stop Spinning

One of the big ways to get caught in a stealth game is when the NPC's don't have realistic animations and just arbitrarily perform 180 turns when you completely don't expect it. And isn't that great? All that patience from waiting and watching thrown down the drain to weak AI design?

So why not just have ALL enemies spin around at ALL times? Clearly this is the best way a guard can patrol his beat. Just make sure to stand in the center of a big opening and make like a top; nothing with get past your gaze!

Of course, in real life the guard would just see nothing but blurs and then fall over. But worrying about stuff like that is for stupid people!

4. A Beat-'em-Up Where the Enemies Never Stop Swinging

Generally in a beat-'em-up every enemy already enjoys having higher priority on their attacks than the player and they also have either higher health or higher numbers. This means that in order to survive, the player will need to wait for the enemy to be done attacking before he can work in some damage safely.

Why DO the bad guys stop attacking? Right now I'm playing Darksiders 2 and there's an enemy who performs something like a 10 punch combo while both dashing across the screen and locking on to the player's location. If he just kept doing that until I died, I'd stand no chance!

And just imagine an ocean of fists all just mindlessly swinging at the air. There's no way a player would be able to move through that! Again, in real life people would get tired and probably hit their own buddies a million times each, but whatever. Details!

3. Random Holes in the Ground

Yeah, ET the game. I went there.

This one's maybe more personal. I'm not talking about just general death traps that the player is meant to jump over. That's just a platformer. But sometimes a level will inexplicably have a very hard to see death hole in the middle of a big combat arena. I'll be distracted playing a video game, and then all of a sudden my character will disappear and I'll be informed that I've died. When I respawn I start looking around at the ground. You know, when my screen isn't full of bullshit. And I notice, "Ah, yes. Someone has placed a death hole here in the middle of the otherwise stable-looking ground. Good plan."

You see, the thing is the human eye is pretty good at spotting these things in real life. But when your eyeballs exist 10 feet behind you and are at a slight angle and the color scheme of the level is all meshing together, I often times miss these things.

So yes, bad guys? Just dig random holes in your base and put spikes in them. Don't worry about where to put them, just anywhere like: your main hall, your courtyard, your own bedroom. Don't think about things like "flow" or "traffic." It'll work out.

2. Impassable Objects

Definitely can't fit between those bars. Nope.

Heroes can jump from helicopter to helicopter, off buildings and onto the wings of a moving plane, from car to car, over a 50 yard well of hot lava, but they can't jump over debris. Like, just a few rocks and some broken wood. It just doesn't interest them.

Bad guys, don't bother building a complicated and impenetrable fortress. Don't waste money on clever traps and henchmen. Just surround yourself with a 3 foot high wall of garbage. No one can beat that!

1. More Breakable Objects!

This was one that had me laughing out loud when I encountered it in Max Payne 3. There were all these windows all over the place, and I just had to break them all (as Bart Simpson explains, "Smashy smashy!") Then- without any prior warning or indication or a timer- the game said I took too long and that I lose.

That got me thinking about other games where breakable objects actually have stuff in them. So if a bad guy just hid a bunch of moderately valuable stuff in a bunch of barrels and never told the player his plans or motivation, the player would never make it in time!

I know this one is less unbeatable than the lower numbered entries. I just love the idea of this counter-intuitive gameplay. Hell, with all the collectable achievements going around this one already sort of exists. Trick the player with shinies! Yes!