5 games I was too dumb to finish as a child

If you've been playing games for long enough, then you will probably have gained at least a few gaming skeletons in your proverbial closets. 

However, there is no time in your life more prolific for producing unfinished experiences than childhood and we all have our fair share of games that, as a kid, we just couldn't finish for a variety of reasons.  Here are just a few examples of games that have done that for me.

1) Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PC)

(Image property of TT Games and LucasArts)

If you were alive in the early-to-mid 2000s, there is a very good chance that you played one of the Lego games.  However, before the game was able to shape my childhood on my PS2, I first played in on the PC.  My parents had this weird thing where they thought that playing games on the garbage family PC would make me just give up on them as a hobby.  That went well.  

On this occasion, I was so unbelievably excited to play through some of my favourite films through the medium of my favourite toy.  That was before I started playing.

Upon starting the first level, I was ready to dive in but there was a problem.  My partner character wouldn't move.  This was an issue because Lego games didn't have split-screen yet and so, if you wanted to move through the level, your partner character had to come with you or else they'd weigh you down like cement shoes.

I know now that the problem was caused by my PC thinking I had two people playing on the one keyboard and, if I simply got one to drop out, I could play single-player with an AI companion instead.  Hindsight is 20/20 and I was 8.  

This resulted in me, as Princess Leia, slapping my companion to push him forwards through the entire first level.  This all-too-literal slapstick scene continued into the second level until I reached a jump that I couldn't slap my partner across.  I quit the game shortly afterwards.

I count myself lucky for giving the game a second shot on the PS2 because, for a moment at least, I very nearly didn't continue one of my favourite games because I was too dumb to get it to work.

2) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (PC)

Sticking to my PC phase, my next game I didn't finish had nothing to do with technology.  Just 100%, good old fashioned smooth-braining on my part.  

(Image property of KnowWonder and EA)

The first Harry Potter game on the PC was very strange.  It was a completely different game to the PlayStation version, it included spells that were made up for the game and you learnt them by drawing their symbols with your mouse?  I promise this is real.

Despite this, I really loved it.  It was one of the first games to ever absorb me, making it arguably the starting point for me ending up on here.  I guess that's a positive thing.  However, I never actually finished the game.

The metaphorical cube that my smooth child brain couldn't fit into a round hole was the final boss, Voldemort.  The fight took place in a room full of pillars that you could destroy and a mirror in the middle of the room that you could spin (like I said, the mechanics were odd).  

My problem was simple, I couldn't do any damage.  I couldn't cast spells at Voldemort, just break some pillars and spin a mirror.  The only time I ever did damage was when I once spun the mirror with Voldemort nearby.  My child brain interpreted this as me slapping Voldemort with the mirror like an impatient Princess Leia but I couldn't replicate this phenomenon so I had to give up.

That was, until 2010.  A few years older and less smooth-brained, I realised that you needed to either knock pillars onto Voldemort or use the mirror to reflect his spells back at him.  Not exactly MMO raid levels of complex but, as you're probably gathering, child-me wasn't the best problem-solver.  Once I realised how the fight worked, I finished the game fairly easily.  It only took me 9 years since the game released.

3) Cars: The Video Game

(Image property of Rainbow Studios and THQ)

I loved this game.  It was like a very poor man's GTA III for me.  Its open world and radio with about two songs on it absorbed a lot of my time as a kid.  Those two songs are now burned into my brain, presumably blocking out important information like loved-ones birthdays.

The game was fun.  However, if you payed close attention to that last paragraph, you might remember that I didn't mention actually playing through the game.  This, dear reader, was the problem.

As you'd expect from a kids game based around motorised transport, most of the game's missions were races.  However, like most things short of breathing in and out, this was a problem for childhood me.  I was many things as a child, a good loser was not one of them, and a game based exclusively around competitions against other drivers was a recipe for disaster.  

I made it some way into the game before the difficulty curve started to challenge me but, as sure as the rising of the tide, it eventually did.  Once that happened, every race got 2-3 attempts before I gave up.  Eventually, I ran out of races that I was willing to try.  Because of this, I have never seen the credits of Cars: The Video Game.  I wonder what I could've become under different circumstances...

4) Prince of Persia (2008)

(Image property of Ubisoft Montreal)

Remember Prince of Persia?  It was a Ubisoft series that was witty, fun and had great gameplay but never all three in the same game.  Nowadays it's lying dormant after a series of failed reboots and a sub-par film adaptation with the only glimmer of hope being a current-gen remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Prince of Persia (2008) was one of those failed reboots.  They overhauled the world and characters, cell-shaded up the graphics and Troy Baker-ed the voice acting before throwing it into the world to see if it stuck.  It did not, hence the need for a re-reboot in 2010.

The problems were the gameplay and story.  You know, small things.  

The story changed a lot in the reboot.  It wasn't like a Harry Potter situation where it was based on a different bit of the lore.  Something about darkness spreading across the world and releasing a slumbering demon or whatever?  I don't know, I just did what the female support character told me to do like a good little protagonist.

This wasn't the end of the world, though.  This was not the first game that I played without any idea of what was happening.  What broke me was the combat.  I've never been much much of a blocker in melee combat games.  It might be my inner cave man but, the way I see it, you have to hit your enemy to win, so if you're blocking, that's wasted time.  The game was having none of that and so it very quickly got to slapping me around off all available hard surfaces.

Between my own stubbornness and the story which I was immersed in like a grown man being christened in a paddling pool, the game lost me pretty quickly and was forgotten to the unfinished shelf.

5) Portal 2

(Image property of Valve Corporation)

Portal 2 is a masterpiece.  It's incredibly tightly designed, builds on the first game by maintaining its identity and it is excellently written.  It also holds a special spot on this list for having two different campaigns, both of which I failed to finish.

The two campaigns in question are the single-player story mode and the co-operative campaign to be played with a friend on the same system or online.  Both are incredible.  However, in both cases, despite enjoying them, I still did not see them through to the end. 

Starting with the single-player, I made it up to potato GLaDOS and was starting to ascend back into the testing chambers.  By this point, the game had introduced me to the various fluids that had different properties which supplemented my portals to solve puzzles.

Embarrassingly though, I just didn't really get them.  I'm not sure if it was because I couldn't remember which colour did what or because I felt personally attacked every time water washed away the fluids I was using but, either way, it wasn't clicking.  This made me disenchanted with the game and eventually move on to playing 007 Legends, a terrible James Bond game, but one that my stupid self understood.

As for the co-op, I played through it split-screen with a friend and, like my experiences with the single-player story, it was fun until it actually started challenging us.  We decided to give up around the time that we were contemplating physical violence against each other, hereby making Portal 2 a game that I failed to finish not only solo but even with help.

It's funny to look back on these not just for the nostalgia factor but also because it feels quite telling both of me and of these games that I only returned to some of them, like Lego Star Wars and  Portal 2.  Perhaps it's just my personal preferences but I like to think that its a sign that a truly good game will often shine through, regardless of your first experiences with them.  Playing them, failing to finish and then still deciding to return to them is a testament to how iconic some of these games are and how some experiences really are worth persevering for, even if it means coming back years later.

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