I’m talking about an end of level boss that made you pull your hair out and gnaw your finger nails down to the stumps. A race in a driving game that you just could not win. Something that you think that trying to complete it is as futile as resisting the Borg (Star Trek not the tennis player).

My particular nemesises, nemesis’s the ones that caused me the most trouble were the last level on Driver, and the driving school on GTA San Andreas.

Driver

Driver was an immense game. Bomb round various cities doing missions for bad asses and it rocked. But it only rocked until the last level, then it sucked. The Presidents Run. 3 words that still fill me with dread.

The mission – drive the president through NYC to an underground car park on the other side of town. Over and over again I tried, left at Central Park, then right. Then straight through the middle plowing through the flowerbeds. Slow down when the limo’s bear down on you, then speed up. Go really slow so they don’t see you, then try to lure them down the wrong way. Try to time it right as you cross their paths at a crossroads.. and on.. and on.. Not a single one of those tactics worked.

And then it just clicked. I sailed through central park with just a couple of near misses, dodged a limo at the critical right turn (or left turn if you hung a right at Central Park) and tentatively made my way into the car park. Job done, Game Over.

I’ve never loaded the game since – I don’t think I could go through that again.

GTA San Andreas

The driving school was a pain. There were loads of tests to do and you could pass them in varying degrees of success – bronze, silver and gold. Most of them were fairly easy but there were 2 really hard ones, “City Slicking” and “Burn and Lap”. And getting Gold on those wasn’t just hard, it was ROCK hard.

Drive across town and back again in less than 100 seconds. Oh, and you can’t put a scratch on the car. Nearly did it a few times but I swear the game had it in for me and threw a random car in at the last corner just to put a little dent on the front wing.

After many many nights spent on the driving school, I finally finished them and got posession of a Hotknife, whatever one of those is.

Any others?

There’s got to be other games that have caused you a few problems and I’d love to hear what they were. Had particular trouble getting a gold award on Gran Turismo? Or maybe you found Rainbow Islands a bit tough – let met know whatever it was!

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