No matter how hard a video game is, what's important is that it's fair -- it lays out the rules, you agree to them, and away you go. But every now and then some malcontent designer adds a feature that pulls the rug out from under you and laughs when your ass hits the floor. Until the PlayStation 5 comes with an extendable middle finger, this is the closest designers have come to telling gamers to go fuck themselves:

6 Shadow of the Beast Is Nonstop Dicking at Every Turn

Psygnosis

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

When Shadow of the Beast was released in 1989, it was praised for its ground-breaking visuals and haunting atmosphere by the three people who managed to finish it. The game is ostensibly an open-ended platformer, but it has to be completed in a very, very specific order in what we hope was just an incredibly misguided way of padding the length of the game and not the product of developers who held stock in monitor manufacturers and anger-management clinics.

Psygnosis

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

"... to Hell."

You start in the middle of a field with no instructions, so like any conditioned gamer you head right. You soon find a well you can sloooowly climb down, but the bottom is locked. All you can do is climb back up and keep moving.

Psygnosis

Everyone's least favorite part of gym class, now in 16-bit form.

You come to a castle where you can go left or right. If you go right you'll fight your way through hordes of enemies and your reward is a one-way drop to a boss you can't kill.

Psygnosis

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Look on the bright side: at least it isn't the sequel.

Did we mention that there are no save points? So you die and start all over, and this time when you enter the castle you go left and find another fork in the road. One path leads you to a gun that can kill the boss ... in a room that traps you with an electric field.