Game Rage: The Moments That Destroy Your Controllers

Although video games are meant to be fun and relaxing, many times they can induce profanity-laden fits of rage in people. Sometimes you just want to whip your controller against the wall to let off some steam! Gamer rage isn't a new phenomenon but has definitely become more mainstream with the increased prevalence of online multiplayer. Here are some of the most rage inducing moments in gaming.

Lag Gets You Killed Online

Perhaps the most obvious rage inducer in gaming is when lag gets you killed online. This has been a problem for years and years but Call of Duty has brought it to a whole new level. The CoD lag compensation seems to rob you in pretty much every single gun-on-gun confrontation. When the game is lagging, it lags hard. It seems like every kill cam you see is totally bogus. It shows you shooting off to the side of your foe or worse, not shooting at all when on your screen you were lighting him up prior to dying. What is the point of a kill cam if it doesn't even show you what really happened? And why does it always seem like you can riddle enemies with dozens of bullets and they don't go down and yet when you get shot one time you die immediately? There is nothing more maddening than putting an entire magazine into a guy just to get killed yourself.

In some shooters, lag can cause the game to act extremely strange such as in Halo. Someone even submitted an entry for 'Halo rage' on Urban Dictionary back in 2005 due to how angry playing this franchise online could make people. Halo 3 had to be one of the worst games of all time in terms of weird occurrences where you could literally just drop dead without any warning or anybody shooting at you. There are even videos on YouTube of Halo 3 'bulltages' where you can see sniper rounds going through walls, tank shells exploding on people without any effect, and sticky grenades mysteriously changing directions in mid-air like the so-called 'magic bullet' that killed JFK.

After a few of these ridiculous deaths in a row, the rage within you starts to build. You didn't deserve to die! Your opponent didn't earn that kill! Why is the game ripping you off like this?! Then finally, wham! Your controller or headset hits the wall or floor and shatters into pieces or at the very least, you rage quit.

Campers

First person shooters probably lead to more game rage than any other genre of video game and one of the biggest reasons for this (other than lag) is campers. Just watch any of El Presador's numerous Call of Duty videos to see how lobbies full of campers can make even a full grown man become uncontrollably enraged. These are the guys that wait in a room with their gun trained on the door or a narrow hallway just waiting for some unfortunate soul to wander into their unwavering sights. They will always have a claymore mine or sensor or something watching their back as well.

When a camper kills you, it's only natural to want to do everything in your power to get him back and make him pay for it. This typically results in more and more deaths as an experienced camper is ready for retaliation and will slightly change his position after each kill (such as moving from one corner of the room to a different one). As a camper wracks up kill after undeserved kill and starts calling in his killstreaks, he is sure to wear on your nerves.

Corrupted Save Files

Trying to access your saved game only to find that it has somehow been corrupted is one of the worst feelings in the world for a gamer. Imagine that you have logged over one hundred hours on an epic RPG, like Skyrim for example, and then one day your save is corrupted and all your hard work is lost in the blink of an eye. That would make even the coolest of heads seethe with anger.

Corrupted save files have been a plague to gaming for decades and still are a problem even today. Sometimes you can mitigate the damage by keeping multiple save files up to date for the same game so if one gets corrupted at least you still have a backup. Other times, even this won't help you. For example, there was a problem with Red Dead Redemption that sometimes led to people's online data getting wiped. Your level and unlocks all got reset and could never be recovered. Imagine you had spent hours leveling up and unlocking everything only to have it all erased because of some glitch. That would piss anybody off.

Back in the day this could happen to entire memory cards not only wiping your save files from one game, but everything you had saved on the card. Oh the memory card is corrupted is it? Maybe this ball-peen hammer will uncorrupt it…

Seemingly Impossible Difficulty

Playing single player doesn't necessarily mean you won't get mad and rage at a game. There are plenty of examples of video games being so punishingly difficult, you just have to swear at your TV to make yourself feel better for failing. Sometimes there's just that one level or that one boss you can't beat no matter how hard you try. No matter what you do, the computer beats you. If anything, these moments are even more likely to induce rage that results in violence against electronics because you feel like you're actually getting back at the game itself when you smash your monitor, keyboard, or controller.

Video games in the past used to be a lot harder than they are today and retro games are replete with examples of severe difficulty. The electric seaweed part of the 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on NES is notorious for being one of the most frustrating moments in all of gaming. Not only did it require precision control where one wrong move resulted in death, but it was timed too!

A more recent example is trying to beat the Epilogue of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Veteran difficulty. How many people cussed out their TV and smashed things over that one? Ninja Gaiden is another franchise that is legendary for its extreme difficulty and Dark Souls is such a hard game that people got mad enough to take to online gaming forums and complain about the developers making it 'too hard' for casual gamers.

Getting Rushed On an RTS

One of the most popular strategies of StarCraft online was to rush your opponents. For those unfamiliar with RTS lingo, a rush is when you attack your opponent as soon as humanly possible in an attempt to catch them off guard and end the game before it really begins. Zerg players could sometimes have six Zerglings in your base before you were even able to make one soldier of your own. Unless you are able to somehow fend them off with workers, you're dead.

This somewhat dirty tactic understandably makes people mad because it's simply not fun to lose a game in less than five minutes. You didn't even get to do anything! Here you are, planning out your strategy and working on your base's build order and then all of a sudden you're dead. While technically you can't break a controller because StarCraft is a PC game, dying to a rush is probably the most likely reason for someone going off on their opponents with an angry tirade in the game chat.

Unskippable Cutscenes

This might not enrage someone to the point of breaking their controller but it is incredibly frustrating when a game has cutscenes that can't be skipped. It gets on your nerves even more if you have already beaten the game and you are playing it for the second time and you still can't skip them. It is surprising that even top rated games suffer from this problem such as God of War III and Assassin's Creed II just to name a couple. There's no excuse for that. Are developers really that full of themselves at the great job they did that they need to force you to repeatedly watch the cutscenes?

While on the subject of cutscenes, it sucks when you can't pause them either. What if your girlfriend or parents just got home and are trying to talk to you over a cutscene? It would be nice to be able to pause it so you can fully enjoy it when they are done. Or maybe you just really need to pee and can't hold it a moment longer. If you're in the middle of a cutscene, you're going to miss it now!