Top 10 Most Frustrating Mini-Games in Video Games

By Jef With One F Tue., Jan. 22 2013 at 6:00 AM

8. God of War II (Necklace of Hera): The God of War series has a somewhat ridiculous amount of pushing around blocks in it for a franchise based on rampaging murder, but I understand that you need a little non-violent stimulation to curb your boiling blood. Getting the Necklace of Hera in God of War II is one of those puzzles. You have to fit a variety of Tetris-like stone pieces perfectly together.

To make this work, some of them have to be pushed onto a circular platform and rotated. It's not too difficult, but just like moving your furniture around you shove some pieces over here and some over there to make room. If any bit of a stone piece collides with another piece in the platform while you're rotating, it knock that pieces just enough out of the z-axis to render the puzzle almost impossible to solve without resetting.

7. Lost Odyssey (Funeral): Lirum is one of Lost Odyssey's sweetest characters, and when she dies it's pretty heartbreaking. We've all seen this sort of thing in games before, but I never recall a game making you help out with the damn funeral arrangements. Moments after she dies they order you to fetch flowers and torches, then you have to perform ceremonial torch duties at the funeral itself. It's not that the mini-game is hard, it's just seems really inopportune and out of place.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Sledding): To obtain a Piece of Heart you have to beat a Yeti snowboarding down a sheer mountain. This is the second snowboarding race of the game, but the first is laughably easy in comparison. The Heart Piece race requires you to make zero mistakes and take a very dangerous shortcut that will through you off the mountain to your death at least a dozen times. It's white-knuckle stuff that you will never, ever use again in the course of the game, and it's been the recipient of more than a few controller tosses.

5. Persona 4 (Fishing): I talked a little bit back about untranslatable cultural idioms between Japan and America, and fishing mini-games is one of those things. The Japanese seem to be willing to drop them into a completely unrelated type of game at the drop of a hat. Of all the ones out there, Persona 4's seems to be the hardest. It requires a split-second timing to set the hook, and an incredible amount of button mashing on top of it.

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Joey.C

I woulda put the early IX minigames pretty high. I swear that jump rope didn't have a rhythm and I didn't know anybody in school that could get all 100 nobles impressed, those elitist douches.

X wasn't too bad, but I agree that several significant sigils were immensely difficult to obtain unless you read some guides and did some homework. The Thunder Plains in particular had a certain spot that lightning was more predictable and only took about 20 minutes, but it was best attempted only after you got the No Encounter ability and a good source of caffeine in you.

jrayderr

I didn't remember the Blockheads because I had them blocked from my memory.

FattyFatBastard topcommenter

The Yoshi one was about timing it to the music, but it had to be exactly right. If you go back and play it trying to hit the button when you expect to hear the beat, you will pass it. Don't even pay attention to the screen. Just hit the buttons like they were an instrument.

redneck3

What? No mention for the harp-playing in Zelda: Skyward Sword?

J.A.Justice topcommenter

That card battle game from Final Fantasy took me four or five attempts to figure out and just 4 or 5 more to figure out I hated it. I still played it like 600 times.

JefWithOneF topcommenter

@J.A.Justice In IX it's because no matter what happens the attack power of a card is still randomly generated. Plus, at the time they teach you to play you likely have about 10 crap cards, including a rare Genji or Cactuar, so you get your ass handed to you. Ugh, the only reason I didn't include it was because I couldn't let X off the hook and didn't want to go into FF overload.