Cringe-Inducing Gaming Moments - Joel, please get up...

[Coelacanth]

Can't believe these two fuckers haven't been brought up yet.

These two are arguably the worst video game characters ever. And I'm not saying that because I don't like SwSh. Everything about these two were done wrong.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

View attachment 1441802
I was scared of this the entire time? Damn was I a bitch. Thanks Youtube thumbnails.

Spengbab is canon?

 

[trent]

Didn't think the first was too bad. The forced shit in the 2nd one though was cringe.

I quite liked the first one and BTS but the second one was dire.

The entire thing was written to "pwn Gronald Drumpf" but all the characters were unlikeable cunts so i didn't give two shits about what happened to them and i was actually actively rooting against the protaganists at points.

Completely killed my interest in another installment unless it goes back to the story from the first.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Didn't think the first was too bad. The forced shit in the 2nd one though was cringe.

"Gotta blame somebody otherwise it's all my fault and fuck that!" "Use and abuse your power!" "HELLA!!!"

Before the Storm is even worse, because it was dedicated solely to that not-yet-bluehaired cunt.

The entirety of the plot of Far Cry 3. Both villains do everything possible to sabotage themselves and native niggers are even dumber. Yeah, force this guy, who's spent all game rescuing his friends and brother, to kill them all, I'm sure he will bite. And when he tells you to fuck off, try to stab him, even though he genocided half of these islands by this point. Endless cringe.

That one time when Chris Redfield tried to win a fistfight with a rock.

For a million things that Silent Hill 2 has done right, this one isn't one of them.

Add to this "boss fight" where you just shoot this fatty point blank.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The entirety of Ride to Hell: Retribution, let's be fair. There's a reason it's widely considered the Big Rigs of the 2010s. Specifically:

- You need to blow up a power plant just to get through an electric fence.
- The moment where the PC goes, "GRRRR! ARRGGHHH!" at the sky randomly with a stupid expression on his face.
- Clothes-on uncanny valley sex scenes
- Dialogue that, in any larger-budget or "AAA" game, would have been a meme within minutes. "I like her, she makes me read books."

I mean, an action adventure set in the world of outlaw biker gangs in the 1960s isn't a bad idea, but it was executed so shittily and half-assedly. They just didn't care. That 1% on the box refers not to a badge used by outlaw bikers but the amount of effort put into the game's production.

Okay. Now for cringe moments in good games:

- Witcher 1's sexy postcards for successfully boning a woman. CDPR themselves later admitted it was stupid; in Blood and Wine you can go into a brothel in Toussaint and one of the girls thinks you're one of "those role playing types" who insist on pretending to be a witcher and that she's a succubus and "it usually ends with them insisting I give them a card of some sort."
- The romances in Baldur's Gate II. Okay, they're quite well written in and of themselves. But their existence (which was genuinely a surprise because they weren't advertised or trailed at all) gave rise to all manner of godawful mods which inserted new companions who were all giant Mary Sues and with whom you could have romances. Particularly I'm looking at Solaufein (because we all need gay Drizzt expies in our lives), Chloé (Madam "Have I mentioned I am lesbian today?"), and of course, Saerileth (a loli aasimar paladin who talks like a pastiche of a Shakespeare play and indeed rips off the bard, has a portrait stolen from a dodgy Korean MMO, and won't stop fucking talking about herself.)
- Mass Effect 2 has some extremely bad dialogue involving Jacob. "Heavy risk, BUT THE PRIIIIIIZE."
- The mere existence of Damsel in VTMB. She's just annoying and has no character beyond "ugh, Cammy!" And guess which of the original characters from the first game is coming back in the sequel? That's right, Damsel.
- Gabriel Knight 2 is one of the few FMV adventures to be actually rather good, but some of the acting is hammy even by the standards of the genre. Like, the interactions between Gerde and Grace have those two ladies obviously hating each other for no good reason and you just want to go, "ugh, a saucer of milk at table four."

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

- Witcher 1's sexy postcards for successfully boning a woman. CDPR themselves later admitted it was stupid; in Blood and Wine you can go into a brothel in Toussaint and one of the girls thinks you're one of "those role playing types" who insist on pretending to be a witcher and that she's a succubus and "it usually ends with them insisting I give them a card of some sort."

Witcher 1's sex scenes in general were so strange it was hilarious. My personal favorite was Celina who says that she'd fuck anyone who would give her a ring that looks better than the one her sister got. Thing is, she doesn't actually care what ring you get her, just that you give her a ring at all, and she just hops on Geralt's dick on a nearby rock.

It's so out-of-left field in a game filled with sudden and inexplicable sex scenes.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Tales of Symphonia has pretty much one of the greatest JRPG dubs of all time, but there are a few issues...
Genis screaming at the sky after finding the truth out about Marble. (Plus the two villagers voiced by Scott Menville and Jennifer Hale)
Colette kicking the dog (literally) in Meltokio.
Krilia killing Governor General Dorr (voiced by Bill Farmer aka Goofy) in the most lulzy way. Add to that Genis's reaction: "HOW could you DO that to your own FATHER?!"
Mithos kicking Yuan at Altessa's house while laughing maniacally. Bonus points in that you can literally just leave it run forever.
Zelos's death on Kratos' route
THAT'S LORD MAGNIUS VERMIN *necksnap*

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Witcher 1's sex scenes in general were so strange it was hilarious. My personal favorite was Celina who says that she'd fuck anyone who would give her a ring that looks better than the one her sister got. Thing is, she doesn't actually care what ring you get her, just that you give her a ring at all, and she just hops on Geralt's dick on a nearby rock.

It's so out-of-left field in a game filled with sudden and inexplicable sex scenes.

I'm still a little alarmed that giving food to an elven refugee netted me a sex card.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

The sex scenes from Dragon Age and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Found myself making the cringe face more often than not while watching those. Especially the ones with the giant Ox dude in Inquisition.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The sex scenes from Dragon Age and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Found myself making the cringe face more often than not while watching those. Especially the ones with the giant Ox dude in Inquisition.

Thankfully I never saw those. But the DA ones were more than enough. The fact you could have a foursome with Zevran, Leliana, and Isabela was frankly just gratuitous fanservice, even if they all kept their pants on.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I'm still a little alarmed that giving food to an elven refugee netted me a sex card.

I missed that one entirely because I went with the Flaming Rose in prior missions. Still, an interesting little twist should I ever replay the game and go with the Scoia'tal.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I missed that one entirely because I went with the Flaming Rose in prior missions. Still, an interesting little twist should I ever replay the game and go with the Scoia'tal.

Yep. That means you get to bone White Rayla.

If you go with neither, two random nuns from the order of St Lebioda appear and reward you with an ecclesiastical threesome card.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Thankfully I never saw those. But the DA ones were more than enough. The fact you could have a foursome with Zevran, Leliana, and Isabela was frankly just gratuitous fanservice, even if they all kept their pants on.

Makes me wonder how the animators felt animating that cringefest.

That reminds me there is another cringe moment. Getting to the end of Dante's Inferno and then watching the final boss' big flopping dick bounce around with all it's fully physics glory as you fight him.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Yep. That means you get to bone White Rayla.

If you go with neither, two random nuns from the order of St Lebioda appear and reward you with an ecclesiastical threesome card.

I got the nuns because I realized early on both groups were fucking awful so I went neutral. Didn't even know you could bang White Rayla.

Honestly, White Rayla is probably the worst reward for sticking with the Flaming Rose. She was just plain loathsome.

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

The choice was completely irrelevant anyway, much like those in the second game. And the third if I'm being honest...

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Makes me wonder how the animators felt animating that cringefest.

They probably enjoyed it, for the same reasons as Drucko clearly faps to Owen cornholing Abby on a loop.

I got the nuns because I realized early on both groups were fucking awful so I went neutral. Didn't even know you could bang White Rayla.

Honestly, White Rayla is probably the worst reward for sticking with the Flaming Rose. She was just plain loathsome.

Well she's the only vaguely canon character from the books who is both a woman and associated with the Flaming Rose (originally she was Black Rayla in the books but then found the Eternal Fire after being disfigured by a Scoia'tael group. Interestingly, she was also half-elf herself which was a bit of a missed opportunity there, lads.)

Anyhow. Need for Speed: Most Wanted. 2005, of course. A good game and one of the best Need for Speed titles IMO. However, the acting in cutscenes straddles that line between hilarious and ridiculous. Like after having beaten the final blacklist member, Sgt Cross turns up and it's revealed he's been working with your mission control woman to arrest all the blacklist members. But she then reveals that you, the PC, have driven off in your reclaimed BMW M3 GTR Strassenversion and he sends out an order, "Everyone, chase that BMW!"

"Everyone?"

"EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The predecessor title, Need for Speed: Underground 2, is also a good game and goes into quite an autistic level of detail in tuning your cars. Unfortunately it hasn't aged well. Trying to cash in on the rice-burner tuner scene of the time which was big thanks to The Fast and the Furious, they firstly licensed a job lot of terrible mid 2000s "look at how affluent I am" glam hip hop as the soundtrack. They then incorporated questionable cod urban slang into every single line (what the shit is a flammy run???) which came off painfully "how do you do, fellow kids." Your mission control / grease monkey in that game, while in the tuning screen, would subject you to a voiceover as to what each aspect of the tuning screen did. Every single voice over started with "Yo" and featured such gems as "Nitrous Oxide! We're goin' B-I-G big!" and "We're cookin' now, brah! Turbos!"

Shudder.

Thankfully, if you turned off the background music in game you could run a music mix from your own collection in the background via the magic of Alt-Tab. This was a huge improvement and also drowned out the shitty attempts at urban slang and being "street" or "hood" or whatever they thought it was being.

You couldn't hide the incredibly intrusive product placement though. Every block of Bayview seemed to have multiple Burger Kings and Best Buys, and you couldn't escape the huge Cingular Wireless logo that formed a permanent part of the HUD and was not removable.

Hmmm. I should stream or Let's Sperg some of these. I did enjoy playing both Underground 2 and Most Wanted. My laptop at the time was just about capable of running them at an acceptable framerate in low settings.

 

[ShortBusDriver]

Anyhow. Need for Speed: Most Wanted. 2005, of course. A good game and one of the best Need for Speed titles IMO. However, the acting in cutscenes straddles that line between hilarious and ridiculous. Like after having beaten the final blacklist member, Sgt Cross turns up and it's revealed he's been working with your mission control woman to arrest all the blacklist members. But she then reveals that you, the PC, have driven off in your reclaimed BMW M3 GTR Strassenversion and he sends out an order, "Everyone, chase that BMW!"

"Everyone?"

"EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I always thought that was a homage to Gary Oldman's character in The Professional.

The predecessor title, Need for Speed: Underground 2, is also a good game and goes into quite an autistic level of detail in tuning your cars. Unfortunately it hasn't aged well. Trying to cash in on the rice-burner tuner scene of the time which was big thanks to The Fast and the Furious, they firstly licensed a job lot of terrible mid 2000s "look at how affluent I am" glam hip hop as the soundtrack. They then incorporated questionable cod urban slang into every single line (what the shit is a flammy run???) which came off painfully "how do you do, fellow kids." Your mission control / grease monkey in that game, while in the tuning screen, would subject you to a voiceover as to what each aspect of the tuning screen did. Every single voice over started with "Yo" and featured such gems as "Nitrous Oxide! We're goin' B-I-G big!" and "We're cookin' now, brah! Turbos!"

Shudder.

Thankfully, if you turned off the background music in game you could run a music mix from your own collection in the background via the magic of Alt-Tab. This was a huge improvement and also drowned out the shitty attempts at urban slang and being "street" or "hood" or whatever they thought it was being.

You couldn't hide the incredibly intrusive product placement though. Every block of Bayview seemed to have multiple Burger Kings and Best Buys, and you couldn't escape the huge Cingular Wireless logo that formed a permanent part of the HUD and was not removable.

Hmmm. I should stream or Let's Sperg some of these. I did enjoy playing both Underground 2 and Most Wanted. My laptop at the time was just about capable of running them at an acceptable framerate in low settings.

Underground 2 is hands down my favorite NFS game of all time but I agree 100% it was a product of the era from the Pimp My Ride craze to the branding everywhere (Best Buy, Cingular, etc...)

At the same time being in my early 20s back around that time the local car scene really was like that, at least for a year or so.

Not sure if you played Carbon, it was no where near as long as NFS:U2 but I enjoyed it a lot more than Most Wanted.

NFS2 did give us this gem though which in allot of ways was a product of the era as well.

 

[Balr0g]

They probably enjoyed it, for the same reasons as Drucko clearly faps to Owen cornholing Abby on a loop.





Anyhow. Need for Speed: Most Wanted. 2005, of course. A good game and one of the best Need for Speed titles IMO. However, the acting in cutscenes straddles that line between hilarious and ridiculous. Like after having beaten the final blacklist member, Sgt Cross turns up and it's revealed he's been working with your mission control woman to arrest all the blacklist members. But she then reveals that you, the PC, have driven off in your reclaimed BMW M3 GTR Strassenversion and he sends out an order, "Everyone, chase that BMW!"

"Everyone?"

"EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

You should play it with German voice acting:

"Sie meinen alle?!

"JA, ALLE!" and in a voice tone I can only laugh at.

Oh and the foursome between Leliana, Isabella, Warden and Zevran in Dragon Age Origins was not animated. It was just a "Fade-to-black" (Unlike the "sex in udnerwear" with the companions and the Warden).

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Not sure if you played Carbon, it was no where near as long as NFS:U2 but I enjoyed it a lot more than Most Wanted.

I did play Carbon and I still have it somewhere. It was basically Most Wanted at night with classic muscle cars, of which I approve (although several were conspicuous by their absence like the AMC Machine, Olds 442, original Dodge Challenger, Shelby Mustang, and so forth). However the scenery felt bland. Also, the whole random events, "a rival crew is trying to take over your turf" moments seemed to be there just as filler and to stretch it unnecessarily.

It also had some of the worst facial animation I've ever seen that made the in-engine character appearances look like mutants.

I did like, though, the customisation of paintjobs and vinyls and suchlike. You could get some stuff that looked pretty sharp if you were willing to play around with it. Unfortunately you weren't able to import your own decals and similar, probably because all the edgelords would end up importing swastikas and penises in multiplayer.

Sigh. I might give it a reinstall. See if I can find some patches or mods that make it run at 4K (that era NFS only supported 4:3 resolutions for some reason) and go from there.

 

[Nathan Higgers]

Pretty much every Hunt Down The Freeman cutscene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbqTDH2EqFQ&t=2201