10 Video Games That Mock Bad Players

This particular entry does something that few games do and that’s mock some very specific bad players.

The Secret of Monkey Island was criticised by the press for being abstract with painfully complex puzzles. Admittedly, point and click adventure games are very much a “love them or hate them” kind of affair but, if you’re a fan of a genre, tough puzzles are usually a selling point more than something to be wary of.

As such, when it was time for LucasArts to make the sequel they decided to add two different difficulty modes, one of which was titled “Monkey 2 Lite” and was paired with the description “I’ve never played an adventure game before, I’m scared”. To make matters especially clear, the back of the box stated that this mode was intended for beginners and “magazine reviewers”.

This mode strips down the game’s many puzzles (or in some cases entirely removes them) so that players can get almost zero satisfaction for a job well done and most of this mode essentially amounts to walking from room to room until the game is over. Furthermore, missing scenes cut because of removing puzzles makes the end of the game thematically dissatisfying as well.

Basically, Monkey Island 2 demanded you respect it or it forced you to wonder why you’d bothered by withholding all the good stuff.