So I am cruising along, handing every enemy their ass and enjoying the great plot that is slowly unfolding when I came across Matriarch Benezia. This encounter was so hard, and so frustrating that I almost turned off the game, put it back in the box, and traded it back to GameStop. Not only did she keep handing me my ass, my teammate’s asses’ were being handed to them as well. The most frustrating thing to me? Having to watch to her cinematic scene time after time when I died. It took me over a minute each time I died to reload the game, get through the cinematic to get back to playing.

David Jaffe writes about a similar encounter he had while playing Ratchet & Clank and ends up telling a story about how they didn’t play test God Of War’s hell scene enough and it ended up frustrating a lot of people, myself included.

This has happened to me a number of times, where I just don’t to deal with the frustration anymore. I never beat Metroid Prime because I was stuck on the second to last boss. I never got past the second set list in Guitar Hero 2 because Wolfmother’s song was all of a sudden the hardest thing ever. There was no easing up to it.

I am glad I stuck with Mass Effect though, I switched it to easy, beat Benezia a short time after, and went on to have one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. It is so good that I am playing it through again, this time as a woman who won’t take no for an answer.