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We've all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I'll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1
Try Platoon on the NES, you get bombarded by ennemies while you have to find your way through this abomination of a maze!
It feels like such a silly example now that I know the game, but tales of symphonia made me give up for about three years before coming back and beating it. There's a section where you're supposed to go to a specific city to progress, but there's a semi-secret long way around that lets you experience a different character's story early. Well, I somehow sucked at following directions and went the semi-secret way, and then couldn't figure out how to get ANYWHERE that let you do anything. I wandered around the same continent for several months (playing a few hours a week) before moving on.
The Outer Worlds is a perfect example of this in the best way possible.
I'm gonna have to go super old school on this, because I think gradually games have gotten progressively better about this as the art form advanced. The absolute worst for this that I know of for this has to be "Below The Root" which, despite this point of criticism was a mind-blowingly advanced game for its time, arguably the first real open world CRPG. I have no idea how anyone could've legitimately completed the game without either using a guide or playing it over and over for years to learn every possible route of progress. I think the confusing nature of the world was in fact simply because nothing of that scale had ever really been attempted before and there was absolutely no precedent for how to adequately guide players through it.
The world was, for its time, truly immense and sprawling with a multiple screen interiors for most buildings, a full cave system hidden underground, ladders and secret platforms aplenty. You could converse and trade with various NPCs in houses and wandering around on many of the screens. And when I say "screens" you have to keep in mind I'm talking about something this size. That is not a lot of context to work with for navigation.
It's also full of secrets and hidden things, and like many games of the time you will need to find and use pretty much all of them, in pretty much a specific order, to actually complete the game. I can't even describe how insane the sequence of events you need to do to actually complete the game is, this guy uses a guide and save states but I think it illustrates the general lack of clear guidance in almost all cases. Combine that with the fact that you "die" easily, your inventory is extremely limited capacity, and did I mention you're on a time limit? Because the "goal" of the game is to rescue a guy and if you take too long, he dies and you can't win anymore!
Many naive players (myself included) weren't even convinced it HAD an ending and just kind of played it endlessly like it was some early version of The Sims.
Jedi Fallen Order has no fast travel and the map sucks, do you often end up lost or backtracking.
Divinity Original Sin is also one that doesn't guide the player particularly well.
Bro nothing will ever beat fucking metroid for the nes.
Main progression literally behind random wall tiles you have to bomb
I've just finished Turok for the first time. Some of these levels are absurd.
A couple times in Linda Cubed Again. The game's next objectives are told to you by characters, or through the in-game voicemail system.
However, there is no "current quest" screen so if you take a break from the game, you can easily forget where you left off.
Also, it doesn't help that the game was only released in Japan (and fan translated only recently) so there's not a lot of walkthroughs you can follow.
I remember there being a few points like that in Megaman Legends 1 and 2.
Legends 1 certainly had more "exploration", as there was nothing to point you to where you should go. Legends 2 has neat red arrows on the overworld map, so you have a decent idea of where to fuck around, though the dungeons got much more elaborate. Fuck the Nino Ruins
Atari's ET. Game was bugged. Every 80's kid that bought this was disappointed. It is the worst video game in history and all unsold copies were buried in a landfill only to be rediscovered decades later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)
The High Score is a great documentary that actually has the guy that developed it. I think he was high when he developed it which explains a lot.
The original Final Fantasy. If you don't have a walk-through open next to you I have no idea how you would naturally beat the game in a respectable time frame.
I’ve probably played a bunch, but the one that most comes to mind is Antechamber. Super weird FPS puzzle game ala portal but with a lot of mindbending illusions, non-Euclidean geometry, etc.
It’s got a metroidvania structure but without much guidance and a lot of stuff will just loop you back to where you’ve been if you’re not getting things right. At some point I was just completely lost. I couldn’t possibly think of where I haven’t tried to go or do. Worst part if I tried to look up a guide I don’t even know where I’d begin to look.
Unreal. I stopped playing when I couldn't find the exit.
Edit: But to be honest that was kind of the norm back then. I hated Half Life for popularising the more linear level design.
I don't know, man, I ran around hugging every wall of deserted Doom and Wolfenstein 3D levels that a) noclip became the default way to play those games, and b) Half-Life felt like an amazing breath of fresh air.
Well, Quake 2 did, I guess. Half-Life felt like the next-gen take on that idea.
I'm sure I can think of several examples but recently I was replaying the original Darksiders and boy howdy did I get lost all the fkn time
