Matthew's Journal

I'm not a great gamer, and I'm not very good at computer games. I don't expect to be able to complete the "expert" mode in any of the games I own, and that's fine. The fact that I've yet to complete angband, nor expect to ever complete Burnout 3 doesn't really bother me.

What annoys me are games where some small bits are vastly harder than the rest of the game. For example, Lego Star wars is generally a very easy game to play, and if you die it doesn't really matter. Except for the vehicle levels, where you have to be pretty precise to get through them, and dying kicks you back to the start of the level. Those were frustrating because they were so much harder to get through than the rest of the game. Similarly, one of them had a level towards the end where you had to chase over platforms to avoid lava - it was very tricky to get right, and one mis-step took you right back to the start of the level.

Dungeon Hunter II is rapidly annoying me for a similar reason. I got hooked on it playing it on jacquic's iPad, so downloaded it for my iPod touch. It had been gentle fun (sometimes a bit challenging, but never especially so), right until the end-of-game boss (who you have to kill to unlock the harder difficulties, which you need to max out your character). This boss is proving impossible to kill - you have to destroy three versions of him, the last of which has two attacks that if you fail to evade them will kill you outright. The game has a "potions" mechanic whereby you have a stock of potions that restore your hit and mana points, but you can never carry more than 12. So once you've exhausted them fighting the boss and you get killed, when you respawn you have to go off and acquire another stock of 12, and then come back and start all over again. I've been through this process probably 6 times now, and it's become very annoying. I accept that the boss-fight should be harder than usual, but IMO, this one is just too hard, and leaves a sour note about the whole game.