5 Missions That Almost Ruined Great Games

There’s nothing worse than a bad mission in a great game. One second, you’re moving through the campaign, having a blast, and then the developers hit you with a dud, killing your momentum. Thankfully, the horrible missions below didn’t completely ruin the games they’re in, but they came close. If it weren’t so sad, it would almost be amazing that these exceptional games nearly killed their potential with these incredible stinkers.

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Here are five missions that almost ruined great games.

5) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Zero’s RC Shop Missions

All three of Zero’s missions in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are terrible. There are no redeeming qualities to be found between Air Raid, Supply Lines, and New Model Army. That said, Supply Lines is the one that tripped most players up because those RC planes are nearly impossible to control.

The only thing keeping Zero’s missions from taking the top slot is that it’s completely optional. Unless you’re going for 100% completion, you can safely skip these. However, knocking out that achievement is a goal for many GTA fans, making this string of missions one of the most frustrating of all time.

4) Driver – The Tutorial

Most of the missions on this list take place midway through their respective games. You have plenty of time to learn the game’s mechanics and are familiar with any quirks. That’s not the case for the tutorial mission in Driver for the PlayStation. You’re plopped into your car in a parking garage and asked to complete a series of tricks before you can start Undercover Mode, which is Driver‘s campaign.

Unfortunately, you are not told how to do any of the tricks, and you only have a minute to complete the list. If you crash more than a few times, you’ll have to start over, and this parking garage is not spacious. It’s one of the worst tutorials of all time, killing momentum before it can even start. Thankfully, it turns around soon after, giving players a solid PS1 racer.

3) Marvel’s Spider-Man – Don’t Touch the Art

Feel free to replace this mission with any of the Mary Jane missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man 1 or 2. It’s such a weird choice to go from the freedom and creativity of controlling Peter Parker in the open world to playing as MJ in bad stealth missions. Look, having a slower-paced mission to give players a chance to breathe can work, but not when it’s this boring.

All of Mary Jane’s sections suck the air out of the room, destroying all the fun you’ve been having swinging around the city. The only positive is that they’re not very long, so you’ll be back to saving the city as Spider-Man relatively quickly. Hopefully, Insomniac doesn’t include a similar set of missions in Marvel’s Wolverine.

2) God of War – The Path of Hades

The original God of War is a gorey, fast-paced action game. Combat is frenetic. Kratos is spilling buckets of blood during every level. It is not a platforming game. At least, it shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, toward the end of Kratos’ journey, things take a turn in the wrong direction.

Kratos has to brave The Path of Hades, which consists of annoying platforming jumps that can be frustrating to line up and spinning logs filled with razor-sharp spikes that’ll kill you in an instant. Once you figure it out, The Path isn’t too challenging, but getting to that point is a slog. The real issue is that it just doesn’t feel like you’re playing God of War anymore. That’s not exactly the way you want to finish your all-time great action game.

1) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – The Water Temple

Ocarina of Time is one of the best games of all time, taking the Legend of Zelda series to the next level on the Nintendo 64. Given how successful A Link to the Past was on the Super Nintendo, that’s an impressive feat. While many fans believe Breath of the Wild has now passed it as the best Zelda game, Ocarina of Time is still one of the greats.

However, that was almost ruined by the Water Temple. The sixth dungeon in Ocarina of Time is filled with cumbersome mechanics. You have to raise and lower the water levels to get around, and the Iron Boots can be frustrating to deal with. It was seen by many as a huge roadblock for Ocarina of Time, with many younger gamers unable to get past it back in 1998.

Heck, even Nintendo agrees that the Water Temple was too difficult. Director Eiji Aonuma even apologized to fans for how impossible players found it. When the company remade Ocarina of Time in 2011, it added several changes to the dungeon to make navigation much easier.

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