Whilst I am a gamer of almost 20 years, I admit I am far from good at it. Coupling that with a hair-trigger temper when it comes to inanimate objects and visual entertainment displeasing me, I’ve embarrassed myself plenty of times while gaming by flying into a temper tantrum reminiscent of myself at five years old. I thought I’d compile my top 5 gaming moments that fanned the flames of fury in me, and sometimes led to smashed controllers… Or discs.

Sigrun, the Valkyrie Queen – God of War (2018)

God of War was my GOTY last year, unsurprisingly as I’m sure it was most people’s (And my 40th platinum, PA-POW!!), but it spent a great deal of the year at the pinnacle of my shit list. The Valkyrie Queen fight beat me up and down the garden path despite having a recommended level of 7 whilst I was sitting pretty as a high level 10, thanks to being at the end of a New Game+ run. Her unpredictable barrages had me seething at the mere mention of the game for months, and dubbed it the biggest disappointment of the generation for the developers deciding to ramp the difficulty up right before I could get the bastard plat!

After all that though, and with some wise counsel from William on this very site, I returned to the game about three months later and annihilated her on the very first attempt with about 25% of my health left, returning the Ghost of Sparta to the glory I remembered him for from the PS2/PS3 era.

Hork the Defiler – Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014)

I played Shadow of Mordor for around 200 hours on Xbox One (And 40 on PS4) as I got absolutely hooked on butchering those Uruks, no matter how charismatic some may have been. There was one such Uruk, very early in my Xbox run, who no matter what I did just refused to let me tear his head from his bitchass shoulders, and kept impaling Talion on his spear… Introducing, Hork the DEFILE-LAH!

As you may know, every time an Uruk kills you, they increase in power and standing with other Uruks so he proved quite impossible to beat until the story led to a region that was thankfully Hork-free. By the time I returned, fully levelled from the second map, I couldn’t bring myself to kill him when he appeared and branded him one of my trusty Warchiefs. A role he has retained to this day.

Late-Game Races – Need for Speed: Undercover (2008)

This was my very first racing game, and one of my earliest memories of being introduced to a difficulty curve that bitch-slapped me right across the chops for having the audacity to play the game. The reason this game remains in my memory so well is that, following getting totalled 50 metres from the finish line of a pretty long race, I launched my PS3 controller at the sofa next to my gaming chair only for it to hit the arm and bounce back to strike me in the face. As any normal person would, I cut my foot in two places stamping on the little plastic bitch.

Barthandelus (First Form) – Final Fantasy XIII (2010)

I like to tank fights in games. I always play on the easiest difficulty and just throw stockpiled healing items around whenever I need to. For quite a while, FFXIII seemed content to play along with this until it was time for the first fight against Barthandelus, the Fal’cie freak with no patience for my shenanigans in the slightest. Wading in with a Commando, a Ravager and a Medic, with absolutely no regard for a much-needed Sentinel or Synergist, he seemed quite content at first to allow me to chip away quite happily at his health…

…However, after about 20 minutes of chipping and taunting, he saw fit to cast Doom on me, so in no time at all my whole party was dead (Much like my 22nd birthday), and I was back to square one. My mother had to come in and remove the controller from her howling, incandescent 19-year-old manchild son.

Helms Deep – Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (2004)

First of all, I adore(d) this game, I only wish I hadn’t snapped my disc of it.. A steady difficulty curve, great characters and an incredibly satisfying turn-based combat system, the fact this game is not available (Ideally digitally) on current gen is testament to EA not being as money hungry as the populace thinks. I played this game to completion several times, but on my most recent run something just snapped, not including the disc.

The endless waves of enemies at Helms Deep, not helped by the many pints of beer consumed before playing, just broke my tiny mind and the next thing I knew, the game was in bits in my hands. You may argue that you can save at the sparse save points every few fights, but the fact they are so many long fights apart they strike me as equally smug as they are helpful.

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the void of my gaming brain, let me know what games reduced you to a shell of your normal self on Twitter @MaliceVER and don’t forget to follow @RespawningUK if you’re not already. Kthanksbye!!