Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven – Fairplay. The 9 worst missions in the best games
Table of Contents
INFORMATION
- What was the mission about? Winning the race.
- Why did we hate it? Because the race car was a capricious beast to control, and rivals always took advantage of the slightest mistakes.
Though the first Mafia was often compared to Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, in reality, these games took a completely different approach and philosophy. Illusion Softworks' game also was set in an open world and focused on crime, but it was much more devoted to linear, mature storytelling and gameplay realism than GTA ever bothered.
Sometimes, it was actually too realistic, resulting in one of the greatest mission-nemesis of players at the time, the now legendary race in the fifth mission, "Fairplay." As a result of an unfortunate turn of events, the protagonist had to participate in a professional competition on a race track, facing professional drivers – and beating them in fair game.
There were two fundamental challenges in this race. The first was that the opponents were doing exceptionally well – we had to drive flawlessly to hope to win. Our worst enemy, however, was our own car, a ferocious beast that we could easily lose control of, ruining any chance of victory. Most of us needed dozens of attempts to overcome "Fairplay," practically learning the track and rivals' behavior by heart along the way. And when we finally managed to win, the rest of the game became child's play. The problems with this mission were so serious that patches were soon released to ease the challenge. Also, last year's remake allowed completing the race without too much fuss.
Medal of Honor Allied Assault – Sniper's Last Stand
INFORMATION
- What was the mission about? Walking through an area riddled with hostile snipers.
- Why did we hate it? Because the only way to complete it was to get shot by every single sniper on each subsequent approach, remember their position, and try to kill them first in the next try.
Long before the war-themed-shooter pie was split between Battlefield and Call of Duty, there was only one king. In 2002, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault brought a cinematic quality never before witnessed in a war game, allowing us to experience scenes straight from movies like Saving Private Ryan or The Dirty Dozen. This was particularly true for the memorable Normandy beachhead landing, which laid the foundations for highly scripted, impressive campaigns that to this day form the backbone of subsequent Call of Duty installments.
Unfortunately, and perhaps curiously, Allied Assault is a game we remember not only for one of the best missions in FPS history, but also for one of the worst. "Sniper's Last Stand" took us to a town overrun by what seemed an entire platoon of enemy snipers. A single wrong move ended with death, usually from a single bullet, and you had to try again.
Not only that – you also needed to figure out where the sniper who killed you was nested, and some of them were hidden really well. You had to take this mission in tiny steps, always scoping for new enemies and checking off those who had revealed their position by being the last thing you never saw. If this was to be a realistic simulator depicting the tragedy and futility of war, the creators deserve a medal. Unfortunately, Medal of Honor was supposed to be primarily entertainment – and during "Sniper's Last Stand" it definitely was anything but.
Call of Duty: WWII – The tank mission
INFORMATION
- What was the mission about? Commanding a tank.
- Why did we hate it? Tragically bad vehicle controls.
The Call of Duty series has been with us for almost eighteen years now, and during its journey to maturity, it has grown into one of the most popular pop-culture phenomenons of our time. Many people accuse them of being highly derivative, the series has really come a long way, developing a highly refined formula, managing to stay relevant in 2020 with the battleroyale Call of Duty: Warzone.
However, not all of the creators' out-of-the-box ideas turned out to be successful. Few people remember the tank mission from 2017's Call of Duty: WWII fondly; we commanded a tank and had to rescue our overran comrades, driving the powerful machine and operating its weapons.
FPS games had already made extensive of this kind of diversion, but in the case of WWII, the developers decided to experiment with the controls for some reason. The result was terrible – instead of feeling like being in charge of a doomsday machine, we felt like we were in a deadly contraption that refused to follow commands and was just waiting for enemies to burn it down. And they took advantage of our creeping speed and vulnerability very, very often.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Wrong Side of the Tracks
INFORMATION
- What was the mission about? Following the damn train.
- Why did we hate it? A number of reasons, mainly because the game didn't make it explicitly clear (apart from Big Smoke uttering the famous line after we failed, but that fool always spoke in riddles) what was it that we actually had to do – depend on the AI to take seemingly immortal enemies, jump on top of the train and try ourselves...?
We have to admit that for one of the best game series of all time, Grand Theft Auto boasts a pretty hefty set of epically messed up missions. We've already mentioned the remote-controlled helicopter in Vice City, but no less infamous was the ill-fated train quest from San Andreas.
"Wrong Side of the Tracks" was a much more typical mission than the "Demolition Man" we mentioned earlier. Our task was to chase a train on a dirt bike, taking down three enemies glued to the roof of the train. The player was supposed to ride a dirt bike, avoiding obstacles, while our compadre, Big Smoke, was blasting the fools on the roof.
Sadly, that man was a fool himself, as CJ rightly points out later in the same mission, and his damage and accuracy were quite miserable. Navigating between cars and other obstacles that appeared out of nowhere required some dexterity, and every failure meant having to repeat the mission. The worst part, though, was that damn line: "All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!" which our companion passionately shouted after each failed attempts, making us want to shoot him instead.
Honorable mention: any escort mission
INFORMATION
- What are escort missions about? Escorting, usually vulnerable characters.
- Why do we hate them? Poor design, poor AI, difficulties with the pace... There are many reasons.
In this case, there's no need to get hung up on specific games – as is well know, escort missions have only served as a tool for developers' grim revenge on players for all their evils, threats, video compilations with bugs. A very mean revenge.
We can give plenty of examples. Escorting Emma in Metal Gear Solid 2. A fragment of Max Payne 2. A whole host of tasks that smothered the joy of mayhem in Just Cause 3. Almost all of Resident Evil 4. Half MMORPGs out there. A good ten installments of Assassin's Creed, before Ubisoft finally realized that they're probably not a very desirable design decision. Since these quests are still featured every now and then, we can presume the developers really hate us. The escort missions are so bad that we dedicated an entire article to them.
ANYTHING WE MISSED?
Of course, we did not list all the frustrating missions that did their best to spoil good productions. If you have any of your own propositions, share them in the comments.
