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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 "Barrel of Doom"


canderson

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Or, it could be like firing a pistol and never hitting anything, when there's still the possibility that the sight's crooked.
If my shot was a little off, I'd be more likely to believe my aim isn't perfect than that there's a defect in the gun. Sure, it'd probably be worth it to check the sight at some point, if practice doesn't seem to be working, but you've got to remember most of us were stupid little kids when we did this. We'd get an idea in our heads and decide it was right, and if it didn't work the game was just "too hard" and we'd get frustrated and quit.
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I still call bullshit on this, even if only because no sane person would do the same thing for ONE year, let alone ten, and expect to get anywhere with it if it never worked in the first place in this particular scenario. Honestly, you're just acting like a broken record now - are you even taking this point into consideration? I'd appreciate it if you stopped parroting and actually answered this query properly.

Interesting to know that it actually might be possible to bypass it via jumping though. I never managed to get more than a barrel's width of where it started whenever I tried that approach.

Excuse me? Did you honestly try to take that example that seriously? AND act under misguided assumptions to attempt to prove your point? Good lord. Maybe I should've just stuck with the Sonic 2 final boss scenario. *epic facepalm*

In all fairness I feel like you're just repeating the same thing over and over too but I don't get into a huff and have an attitude about it, calm down.

Of course I didn't take your example that seriously, I was just adapting it because I thought that your comparison to the original problem didn't take everything into account.

I think Diogenes put it best. When you're a kid you do these things. I'll once again relate this to the chaos emeralds on Sonic 2 when I was a kid (I never played Sonic 3 as a kid but it still stumped me and required me to ask a friend for help), I couldn't find the chaos emerald on Gimmick Mt Zone. I dunno if you've played it, but on most levels the chaos emerald is usually in the top-right most "quarter" of the level, fairly near the goal. On Gimmick Mt, there is a hidden room in the top right corner containing a ring box, and an entrance to another hidden room, containing a pit of spikes, a small raised area and absoloutely NOTHING else. As a kid I was convinced there was something wrong with my game or I was doing SOMETHING wrong because there wasn't a chaos emerald in the area. Time and time again I'd return to this area in the hope the emerald would just... appear one day or I'd figure something else. Later in life I learn the emerald is (confusingly) in a hidden room in the top-left of the level, breaking tradition by being near the entrance to the level...

This stage suffered from the exact same problem... the game doesn't challenge you... it tricks you, intentionally or not, to create difficulty by completely turning on the expectations the previous parts of the game have set-up. When it comes to challenging the player without frustrating, this kind of thing is known by most people to be bad game design.

It frankly boggles me just a little bit that those who managed to work it out first time (well done, seriously), REFUSE to accept that it was so hard and they just got lucky or just had a less child-like mind than the rest of us.

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It frankly boggles me just a little bit that those who managed to work it out first time (well done, seriously), REFUSE to accept that it was so hard and they just got lucky or just had a less child-like mind than the rest of us.

Exactly. I mean, the sheer numbers of people who got stuck here speaks for itself. Including me... and I'd like to think that I'm not stupid. I'm actually a good problem solver most of the time, but this stumped me.

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Every time the barrel discussion comes up there's always going to be somebody who incessantly bitches about people finding the damned thing difficult either to flaunt off their capacity to get past it on their first try or to save face about them having trouble on it themselves.

We were just kids.

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... No. Not really.

You can jump, or press up and down. Either way, you have a solution. And there are so many barrels in Carnival Night, you should be messing around with SOME.

Here is the thing: All of the barrels that showed up before the infamous one were of the opposite problem, ie. you need to use the barrel to jump higher (correct me if I'm wrong, as I am not positive). In the way those barrels are presented, whether intentional on the part of the developers or not, those earlier barrels appear to work entirely based on jumping physics. So, in that way, human nature takes over, and the infamous barrel is assumed to work the same way (even though the intended results are supposed to be different). If you caught on that the barrel was also influenced by pressing up and down, than power to you, but it isn't fair to assume that everyone should have thought of that when the obvious solution *seems* like it should work if you try hard enough.

Edited by Tornado
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Not to mention that there's no such instance in real life in which you'd need to look up and duck in order to bob something.

It's the mentality of applying actual physics to a game. I don't know what the fuck some people's problems are.

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The point they are trying to make is some people gave up, thinking they just couldn't get the jumping right, then occasionally came back, but gave no consistent effort.
Now this was exactly the kind of answer I was looking for. Was that really so hard?

If my shot was a little off, I'd be more likely to believe my aim isn't perfect than that there's a defect in the gun.
If you were to continue over the course of a decade though, I'm sure it would become obvious the real problem needs a different solution.

In all fairness I feel like you're just repeating the same thing over and over too but I don't get into a huff and have an attitude about it, calm down.
Well what do you want me to do? When a question goes unanswered one doesn't just let it go unnoticed. It's bad enough that most of yours either have very little relevance or can be answered with my original posts.

When you're a kid you do these things.
Where I draw the line, though, is when people go as far as to call it a game design flaw, when it's all just user error in the form of lack of experience. That's like saying Doom's Cyberdemon is cheap and overpowered when you're completely neglecting the Strafe ability.

It frankly boggles me just a little bit that those who managed to work it out first time (well done, seriously), REFUSE to accept that it was so hard and they just got lucky or just had a less child-like mind than the rest of us.
*sigh* I'm just going to put this in big gigantic letters so you stop completely missing the point.

I am not denying the difficulty factor here.

It merely puzzles me that people could get stuck on one puzzle for 10 years and not have thought of something different over that long stretch of time. If you're wondering why I seem agitated about the issue (I'm actually not), it's because guys like you keep beating about the bush and giving answers either completely irrelevant or already answered, and it's really not helping that so many people treat it as if time isn't a factor either. All I want to know about is the mentality behind the issue that causes people to take so long to solve an obvious puzzle (sub-query - how people can't be bothered to think of alternate solutions over a scattered 10-year period).

Is that really too much to ask of you people, or are we going to continue to sift through the "lol BL is angry because people are disagreeing with him" mentality?

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Well, over that long 10 year period, I actually found an alternate solution through glitching through the barrel. At that time, any solution was good enough for me, so I just didn't bother trying to find the real solution. Thinking about it now, if I had not found my own solution, I may have stumbled across the real way of getting passed it eventually.

To be honest, I don't think I ever spent that long stuck on that part. Maybe a week or so before finding out how to glitch through it, 10 years to find out the real way of doing it, probably a few months to actually be able to pass it by jumping.

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Where I draw the line, though, is when people go as far as to call it a game design flaw, when it's all just user error in the form of lack of experience.

I disagree. Unless you are lucky, the game requires you to essentially fool around with the controls to find the proper answer because the logical, obvious one that does work in other, directly comparable and very similar applications does not work in that one; despite giving the impression that it could potentially work if enough practice was applied. There is no other place in the game where the controls are used in such a way, and the game to that point never establishes that such actions would have any effect and in fact implies the opposite. I do agree that it isn't the barrel doesn't completely drag the game down to awful, but the mechanics clearly needed to be worked on more or explained more clearly for it to not have been a flaw.

That's like saying Doom's Cyberdemon is cheap and overpowered when you're completely neglecting the Strafe ability.

:blink:

That analogy really doesn't apply in the slightest.

Edited by Tornado
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Also BL, I can jump up and hit the Death Egg boss while it's up and moving. It's a timing thing.

So yeah.

But really, who spends 10+ years on a puzzle and dosen't think of EVERYTHING?

Tell me, does that REALLY sound any sort of smart?

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:psyduck:

So anyway, speaking of getting stuck in Sonic 3, I think I had a pretty hard time in Knuckles's version of Marble Garden Zone too, since I think I somehow accessed some of Sonic's portion of the level, and I couldn't jump high enough to reach the arrow-spitting stone faces. I spent forever on that one! Talk about a hoot!

Yeah.

Edited by Sailor Jakey
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:psyduck:

So anyway, speaking of getting stuck in Sonic 3, I think I had a pretty hard time in Knuckles's version of Marble Garden Zone too, since I think I somehow accessed some of Sonic's portion of the level, and I couldn't jump high enough to reach the arrow-spitting stone faces. I spent forever on that one! Talk about a hoot!

Yeah.

I uh, got past that part too. I can't rember how, but it involved climbing a wall, jumping, climbing again, then attacking the eye.

But if you do it without Debug, the game glitches up once you hit the boss and Knuckles isn't saved by Tails, he just dies. XD

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I wasn't even aware this room was a problem until I joined Sonic fans on the internet. When a game presents me with an obstacle, I think "what do they want me to do", because something as horrible as a dead end room with no exit wouldn't be in the game. My good friend Ecco the Dolphin taught me this, because his whole game was an exercise in patience and dying. After searching the room for hidden exits, I understood it was a gimmick that I just had to figure out how to use. I just played through Wind Waker this week, and I don't think the barrel can be called a puzzle.

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That's like saying Doom's Cyberdemon is cheap and overpowered when you're completely neglecting the Strafe ability.

I'm guessing it tells you how to strafe in the manual though, am I correct?

This may just make you disagree with me more, but this is my main super secret grounding for it being bad game design: Valve say so.

Valve are the makers of the Half-Life games, and more recently Left4Dead, Team Fortress 2 and most infamously, Portal. In all their games over the past few years they've included commentary - you can play through the entire game and click on bubbles dotted around the levels to hear what the developer's say about each section. And SO many times they talk about how establishing gameplay elements is the most important thing with regards to teaching the player and creating challenge without being frustrating. For example, how in one area (this game doesn't have commentary but it's still quite clear), the only way to beat enemies due to a lack of ammo in the level, is to pick up scattered objects with the gravity gun and launch them at enemies. The game never tells you this, but it forces you to learn, by giving you an area to practice with the gravity gun before this level (once again, clever story elements keeping this from feeling like a boring tutorial), and to actually ENTER the level, you must pull a deadly buzzsaw blocking a door out of a doorway (and incidentally, an enemy's corpse pinned against the doorway) with the gravity gun to enter. Upon entering the next room, you are ambushed by enemies, with a buzzsaw ready to be launched as your current choice of weapon. The game teaches you what to do on the level without ever outright telling it. Truly excellent game design should make you feel like you worked something out with each challenge. Your 10 years argument implies that if you don't somehow work it out straight away, the only solution is to fiddle around randomly until you notice that up/down moves it. That is not an intuitively designed puzzle.

In later games Valve never ever stop talking about their playtesters reactions too, for example in Left 4 Dead, there is a gas station that will explode if shot. Originally you had to proceed through this to complete the level, but commentary says they removed it because players were too afraid to go through it after the warning that shooting it would cause it to explode, and instead seeked out an alternative route constantly before finally cautiously making their way through. So they changed the route through the level and just made the gas station a bonus feature, where, should it be filled with zombies, you can blow it up for fun-ness. Emphasis on fun. When it comes to playtesters, I can only imagine the reason why this got past them in Sonic 3 is because either they were TOLD you could push up/down to get past that bit, or the playtesters were also the developers. It probably seemed obvious to them.

I apologise for the length of this post, I hope the Valve examples weren't so long they triggered the automatic "How the hell is that even relevant" response I usually get from people when I've compared a problem in Sonic to something totally out there. =\

So semi-basically:

-Valve make awesome games (this is barely debateable, they may strictly make FPS games but it's because they stick at what they're good at that they suceed so much, both reviewers and gamers have critically accalimed pretty much every single one of their games - I honestly can't think of a single flop. Only people I've heard who hate on Valve games are Halo fanboys who have never even played them - seriously.)

-Valve's awesome games tend to talk about a multitude of problematic gameplay elements that they removed due to player frustration. They go into great depth on what caused the problem without them realising, and their usually ingenius solutions (so many times during commentary they say "X was a problem, so we changed it to Y because this made players feel Z and was much more enjoyable", and you think "Holy crap, I really DID think Z and enjoy it!")

-This barrel, and the leadup to it in Sonic 3 is the exact kind of problem they talk about and could have easily been averted with some slightly better game design. My suggestion would have been to make the very first obstacle in the level be one of these barrels, with an up/down arrow on the wall next to it. This would strongly imply that you manipulate these barrels by pushing up/down. Make it so you can't progress through the level without getting to a certain height on this barrel. This way it garuntees that the players already know the skill they need to get through the rest of the stage. Then infamous room's puzzle would not be "What the fuck do I do here?", but "Wait... there's no way out at the top... how do I do this? ...Ahaaaa I have to go down, that's cool."

It does dissapoint me because the rest of the game was impeccable in intuitiveness. For example, as I mentioned earlier, the rotating wheels in Marble Garden are genius design. They look like Sonic when he spin-dashes. Can't get much more of a clue than that without being obvious, and yet it still feels satisfying to work out.

I apologise for the wall of text. If it's of any consolation, this is my last straw if you will. It may be the reason that's motivated me to say everything so far, but it's also what I feel was the least likely thing to convince you. Either way, if you still don't think that this barrel that frustrated millions of kids and requires messing around to get past isn't bad game design, then, suit yourself, I've said everything I can now.

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There is one thing I consider a puzzle in a Sonic game though, and it's those tubes in the 8-bit Sonic 2 from the Scrambled Egg Zone. First you have to use timing and reflexes to ride a platform while alternating tubes, and then you're put into a room with tubes that all lead back to the same place, until you find the proper exit. If the game wasn't already notoriously difficult, I think these things would be talked about. Infernal death machines, they are. Someone please help me express my frustration.

Edited by Badnikz
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There is one thing I consider a puzzle in a Sonic game though, and it's those tubes in the 8-bit Sonic 2 from the Scrambled Egg Zone. First you have to use timing and reflexes to ride a platform while alternating tubes, and then you're put into a room with tubes that all lead back to the same place, until you find the proper exit. If the game wasn't already notoriously difficult, I think these things would be talked about. Infernal death machines, they are. Someone please help me express my frustration.

*jumps in at the sight of 8-bit Sonic 2 discussion* These were pretty hard but I don't think totally unfair. All but one leads to an escapable spike trap. As long as you are able to grab your rings again during flickering time, you can get out of these hazards to try again.

It was very trial and error which I agree is not fun. I didn't care when I was a kid, I just kept trying and learnt the route (now I know it all off by heart), but it would be very frustrating for less patient gamers.

The only part that stumped me for a while as a kid was the very final one at the end of Act 2. You're required to enter AND leave an optional loop in the zoom tubes manually, in order to kill time while the moving platform you were on moves into place below the exit of this zoom tube. I used to actually "cheat" this one as a kid, since as long as you hold right upon leaving the zoom tube (without going through the optional loop), you'll JUST scrape a landing on the platform. Nowadays I use the correct method, but I admit, this was a taxing puzzle. You can only see two thirds of the entire set-up on screen at a time on Master System, so it must have been hell for first time players on the inferior Game Gear version.

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That's the one I'm talking about, the wait tube! I remember being surprised that they expected people to try that, and I went through several playthroughs only to perish at the dreaded wait tube. I see how it makes more sense with a wider screen. I love that level to death though, now that I know what the tube patterns are.

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The Barrel of doom, oh how I accidentally passed you =P

I was playing and I got stuck on the last barrel part, My brother and I couldn't figure it out (This was like when i was 7 and he was 9) we kept thinking but nothing work. We jumped and jumped, but nothing.... Untill I went on a barrel a week later, and looked at my bro, he was saying something and then he said "MIKE LOOK!" I looked and noticed that the barrel moved even though I didn't jump. We both got our remotes and moves in every direction untill one we figured out that up and down was the key.

Boy was that fun xP

Off topic: Has anyone encountered a glitch in Sandopolis act 2, in which the light switches stopped working? It happened to my bro and I once, and those ghosts would not stop coming >_>, also we were always low on rings for the check points, so we were in a slight jam.

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The Marble Garden as Tails... that took me a while to work out. Not ages or anything but... it did take a while and was frustrating. I guess it is good that they added in a bit of a challenge, it really sucks when a game uses the same formula over and over again it becomes rather dull.

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But really, who spends 10+ years on a puzzle and dosen't think of EVERYTHING?
Have you ever played with a Rubik's cube? Edited by A Ham Sandwich
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The Marble Garden as Tails... that took me a while to work out. Not ages or anything but... it did take a while and was frustrating. I guess it is good that they added in a bit of a challenge, it really sucks when a game uses the same formula over and over again it becomes rather dull.

What was so difficult about Marble Garden as Tails?

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What was so difficult about Marble Garden as Tails?

My guess would be the boss? I remember getting rather flustered with that due to being unsure if I could just... hit him without being in a spin attack. It totally requires trial and error unfortunately.

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My guess would be the boss? I remember getting rather flustered with that due to being unsure if I could just... hit him without being in a spin attack. It totally requires trial and error unfortunately.

Oh I see, but trial and error? I don't think so. You just have to aim right. The only difficulty when playing as Tails is that you can only attack it effectively while it's moving in certain directions, but there's no way this boss requires trial and error, in fact it's fairly easy for Tails, IMO.

Edited by VirgoTheCougar
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I found it to be trial and error mainly because Tails takes damage from certain directions and not others, and it was the first time in the game I had to work it out so it was up to me to just dive in and hope for the best. I remember getting annoyed though when I did play so it can't have been too easy. D=

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I found it to be trial and error mainly because Tails takes damage from certain directions and not others, and it was the first time in the game I had to work it out so it was up to me to just dive in and hope for the best. I remember getting annoyed though when I did play so it can't have been too easy. D=

Well the best way I've found to do it was to aim Tails'...um tails as much as possible into the boss and try to aim straight up into it.

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