(techno beep) - [Narrator] A lot of games
are pretty casual nowadays. They don't make assumptions
about your skill level and they leave your hand down the path, but you can only do that for so long without getting sick of it. Hi folks, it's Falcon. And today on Gameranx, 10
games that got tired of noobs. Starting out with number
10, it's "High on Life." At the start games these days
tend to be pretty forgiving. Even tough games nowadays don't
typically insult the player. Souls games don't straight
up tell you to give up. They don't demoralize players
right out of the gate. But when you've got a comedy
game like "High on Life," they're allowed to paint
outside the lines a little. A lot of modern games assume that you have an incredibly fragile ego and do everything possible to massage it. And yeah, they're not wrong. A lot of us can be pretty
brittle and sensitive at times, but "High on Life" basically tells you to get your head out of your
during the opening minutes. You get a gun, the game
tells you how to fire it, but if you just run around
without firing a single shot, the game will notice. - Do you really not know
what button to press? Just keep hitting buttons,
triggers, all of them. One of them is gonna make me shoot. (upbeat music) Try pressing anything!
Go nuts, mash them all. Is this your first (beep) game? - [Narrator] At first it
starts pleading with you to please start shooting. Just press, press a button, anything, before getting fed up and asking if this is your first F-ing game. If you press pause, he
gets actually more irate and just calls you an idiot. That's not the only time
he goes off on you either. If you take too long using his alt fire, he'll get annoyed as well. It's hard to imagine somebody not knowing how to shoot in an FPS game, but I guess every game is someone's first. - All right, you're having,
you're having some trouble. That's fine. Listen, just
keep trying until you get it. You know I'm gonna be patient 'cause it's my cool glob shot. Oh crap, try again. Come on,
do you need any help aiming? - And number nine is the "Legend
of Zelda: Skyward Sword." Here's a case where noob
behavior is somewhat justified. In "Skyward Sword," at least
the original Wii version sword things were
controlled by the wiimote. Up until this point, not
much finesse was required to defeat your enemies. Just swing wildly and problem solve. So when you reach the
boss, this guy Ghirahim, he could be a bit of a
brick wall of difficulty for people unable or unwilling to actually understand
the motion controls. The trick with this guy is
that he holds out his hand and if you attack normally,
he'll grab your sword, toss it aside, and then taunt you by saying in so many words
that you are a novice who is just flailing around. Which as I said, up until this point in
the game has been fine. (playful music) It's kind of a wake up call battle and for most people it's probably the toughest
fight in the game. To actually hit this guy, you need to bait him
into holding his hand out and then attack from a different angle. Basically, you need to fully
grasp the motion controls to have any chance of winning. Stick to noob tactics and he
will embarrass you every time. (playful music) And number eight is "Spider-Man,"
the 2002 video game. Treyarch's Spider-Man games
have their highs and lows with an absolute highlight
of Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame as
the narrator/tour guide. His sadistic delivery made even the most basic
tutorials entertaining. And while he's kind of making fun of you the entire tutorial, there's one part in particular
where he really goes hard. This is the part of the tutorial where you're meant to fight an enemy. This guy's meant to be
the ultimate pushover, but it's possible to die somehow. And if you do, Bruce really
goes for the jugular. Describing it doesn't do it justice, you really just have to hear it. This is what he says
when you lose this fight. - [Game Narrator] Okay,
well you just got pounded by the weakest enemy in the entire game, that's not something you're
gonna want to brag about, all right? Now luckily for you, you can practice here until guys like this are just speed bumps on the way to bigger bad guys. Of course, if you suck,
you'll just stay here forever. - [Narrator] I mean if
it wasn't Bruce Campbell, I don't know how big
of a deal it would be, but it is Bruce Campbell. Coming from him, this is
absolutely devastating, but frankly, if you did
actually lose to this guy, you kind of do deserve it. You really almost have
to be trying to lose in order to lose to this guy. - [Game Narrator] Now this
doohickey is the height meter, not to be confused with the width meter. It lets you know how much
higher or lower you are from the next objective. Now you are the little red
dot and your target is blue. So now's your chance to
self-test for colorblindness. - [Narrator] And number seven
is "Styx: Shards of Darkness," a 2017 stealth game. That's actually pretty decent
as far as these things go, as long as you're willing
to put up with Styx and his alleged humor. Most of the jokes are not going to elicit
much more than a groan, but his best bits are
probably the death messages. Every time he die Styx pops up on a screen to bust your balls about
getting killed again, sort of like the Arkham games. But instead with Batman popping up and telling you to stop
sucking rather than villains, - You realize using the controller with your feet is not gonna
gain you an achievement, right? - [Narrator] Most of this
stuff is pretty gentle ribbing, but there are some pretty good
lines buried in here like, "Did you stream that?" "I want a percentage on your
best goblin death compilation." Most of them operate on that level, but the one where he says that
he's not gonna tell anybody that you turned down the
difficulty, that one stings a bit. This isn't an easy game. So you'll see these screens
more than a few times depending on who you are. You might find them kind of
funny or you might hate him. At least the game lets you
turn them off in the settings if you do get sick of Styx. - Did you stream that? I want a percentage on your
best goblin death compilation. - [Narrator] And number
six is "Chrono Trigger." You remember Gato of course, the singing robot who's got metal joints. Beat him up and earn 15 silver points. Of course, you do, he
is the combat tutorial. And losing to this guy
is, it's very, very hard, if not practically impossible. He's extremely easy. Literally all you have to do is press the attack button a
few times and he goes down. He's so easy, I assumed it
was possible to lose to him. I couldn't even find any evidence online of someone losing to him. But it is possible I have footage of it. The only way anyone
could possibly see this is by trying to lose or by being the biggest
RPG noob imaginable. You have to sit there
not touching the controls for minutes at a time. So when he does beat you, the inevitable putdown is pretty vicious. (playful music) He might as well just give
you some green eggs and ham. It's that much of a taunt in rhyme. What do you say to that? Nothing. Like you say nothing to
it. It's truly incredible. And number five is "'Splosion Man." 2009's "'Splosion Man" was one of the first
big Xbox Live exclusives and one of the many games on the platform that helped kick off the indie game boom, that's still going strong today. The concept here is very simple. You're a man who explodes and you've got to get through a series of difficult platforming levels. Sort of like a 3D "Super
Meat Boy" with a triple jump. (upbeat music) This game can be pretty rough. They included a way to help out
players that are struggling. And this being 2009, they did it in the most
insulting way possible. If you die a bunch of
times on a single level, you'll get the option to
take the way of the coward, which lets you just
skip to the next level. And the way they do that is bad enough, but when you actually start the level "'Splosion Man" is
decked out in a pink tutu just to make it explicitly clear what the game thinks of you. They really lay on the
insults pretty thick if you need any help at all, but it's a lot more funny
than it is frustrating. (upbeat music) And number four is "Phoenix
Wright: Ace Attorney." These games are basically visual novels, but the courtroom aspect
does give you some room to really screw things up sometimes. Usually the game is pretty forgiving when you make the wrong choice or use the wrong piece of
evidence during a case. But, sometimes the gloves come off or maybe they just didn't
fit in the first place, in which case, obviously,
you must have quit. Sometimes a bad choice leads
to a devastating double penalty that snaps like 90% of your health. But other times all the game needs to do is hit you with a particularly
cutting verbal barb for you to really turn off your switch or close your DS in disgrace. One of the most brutal put downs comes extremely early in the games, during the tutorial, the first turnabout. The judge starts by asking you a few extremely basic questions. Like who is the defendant?
Who is the victim? What is the cause of death? You know, the most
absolutely basic information, like stuff the lawyer would need to know going into the case. And when I say need to know, I mean like would probably know this stuff long before getting
anywhere near a courtroom. (techno music) Like even in the wacky
world of "Ace Attorney" where anything goes in the courtroom, you at least need to know the basics. If you're not paying attention at all, you might be dumb enough to select the, you know, wrong cause of death. Like the opening clearly shows the victim bleeding from the head and you can choose strangled
as the cause of death. The judge completely demolishes
you with his comeback. "If you wish to hang yourself, Mr. Wright, you're welcome to, but
not inside my courtroom." Ouch. The judge is usually portrayed
as a easily swayed dullard. So for him to just put
you on blast like that is, I mean, maybe you don't
expect anything at this point 'cause you haven't really been
playing the game very long during the tutorial, but if
you know him, it's unexpected. Totally deserve it though. If you can't get that
basic question right, what hope do you have in this game? (techno music) And number three is "Braid
a puzzler" from 2008, a very popular game. Another featured Xbox arcade game that's synonymous with that
early indie game scene. For better or worse, the game is great. Not every game that gets tired
of noobs is joking around. Sometimes they're completely dead serious. And the interesting thing about this one is that this example doesn't
come from the game itself, but rather the game's official website, which is by the way down, but you can easily access
it via the Wayback Machine if you do so wish. There you can find a helpful page for the official Braid
walkthrough and cheats, which I'm sure sounded helpful
to any noobs out there, but it is bait. And yes, it does switch things up. Classic bait and switch move, yes. The first page plays it
straight and describes exactly how to get the trivially
easy first puzzle piece. But if you click the link to part two, the whole thing falls apart. It's actually just a big message about how you shouldn't use a guide, which comes off as very sanctimonious. I get encouraging people to
play the game as intended, but I don't think this is helping. Any self-respecting noob is just gonna want to use
a guide even more now. Like that's how noobs work. (tranquil music) And number two is "The Messenger." This game is, well, it does something
similar to Styx, let's say. But for whatever reason it just comes off so much more cutting when it gives you those
death messages here. The gimmick is that when you die, this little demon named
Quarble appears to revive you. (upbeat music) He is not doing this out of the kindness of his heart though. After bringing you back to
life, he follows you around and steals any time shards
that you might have, which is by the way, the
currency in this game. Every time you summon him, he makes some little
quip about how you died. But unlike Styx, many of
the messages only appear if you die a certain way. Like if you get killed by spikes, he says, "Pro tip, avoid the spikes." Sensible advice, if not a little obvious perhaps insultingly so. If you get hit by a projectile, he says, "Oh, come on, that was an easy dodge. Are you playing with mittens on?" Some of the message cut just
a little too close though, like this one that says, "If someone's watching, you can pretend there was input lag." There's even a series of messages where if you die a
couple of times in a row, he says that you might as well
give the controller to him because he's doing everything. Thanks Quarble. You might be sick of me as a noob, but I think you have a
stupid name, Quarble. (upbeat music) And finally at number one
is "Ninja Gaiden Black's" Ninja Dog. This game suffers no noobs. If you wanna play "Ninja Gaiden
Black," you gotta be good. Many tough games work like that, but this one goes a step further by making not just the
first level very difficult, it straight up insults
you when you die enough. For players starting out dying five or six times in the first level is probably pretty common. Especially if you're not
used to playing action games. And if you do, then the game
offers a new easier difficulty called Ninja Dog. If that's all that happened,
it wouldn't be so bad. But if you select this difficulty, there's an entire cut scene
where you get insulted by Ayane and are forced to wear a purple ribbon for the rest of the game, so everyone knows that
you're playing on easy. - Master Ryu, or should I
say young Ninja Ryu Hayabusa. It seems I have greatly overestimated you. Oh well, we have no choice but to proceed. I will support you in
every way that I can. Don't be overconfident. Just do what I say and perform your duties
as competently as you can. You must complete your task without fail. - [Narrator] These guys just
really want you to suffer regardless of difficulty level. Either you're getting killed constantly or you're being embarrassed by the game. Of course, getting made fun of a little and getting a little bow
is a small price to pay for making the game easier. But it seems like the devs really don't want to put in the option for an easier difficulty. Probably was an obligation
or I don't know, maybe they just thought this was funny. It could be either way.
It is funny to be fair. (sword swishing) That's all for today, leave us a comment, let us know what you think. If you like this video, click like, if you're not subscribed,
that's a great time to do so. We upload brand new videos
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right here on Gameranx.
