Most attempts you've ever made on a single mission?

[Thomas Vercetti Esq]

I've just officially lost count of the number of times I've failed "The Job" (VC, on iPad). I was hoping to get through it so I could have done all the side missions (movie set, cherry popper, etc.) before completing the game, but I think I'm probably going to have to quit and just go to the last mission. This mission is simply too difficult and with too many things you can't fully control. You can do everything right and one of your crew will do something stupid like get run over, shot, etc.

 

Up to this point, none of the missions pushed me close to quitting, even the infamous ones (Demolition Man, The Driver, etc.). With those, I knew the tricks. I know the tricks for The Job too, but it's just too hard to put them into practice.

 

What are the missions which took you the most attempts to clear? And do you have an upper limit in terms of the number of times you'll try? In other words, if it's an optional mission and it takes more than (X) times to beat it, I'll just skip it.

 

[44Orca]

GTA III's missions took me a lot more attempts than the rest, and without a map on the original I kept getting lost but other than that on all of them I never really struggled from PC. The worst one was S.A.M. for me I think, that took me a week or so..

Now GTA San Andreas on PS2 like everyone had to be the flight school and zero's side missions, those were near impossible, took me months to complete them, but on PC they're very easy which I was surprised when first completing it there.

 

The Driver and The Job might be the most difficult in Vice City? Took me many attempts too first time, also Little Haiti missions were weirdly designed but not anything very difficult like III.

IV and V nothing difficult, sure some failed attempts (Three Leaf Clover) but they're the easiest ones. But if we speak about GTA Online's... I must have done a million failed attempts for the Doomsday Heists and others (CMC)

Edited September 27, 2024 by 44Orca

[universetwisters]

I think it took me at least 60+ tries to beat SUPPLY LINES in San Andreas. The next mission wasn’t really worth it tbh

[.Ryan.]

I don’t remember anything specific regarding the most almost of times I’ve had to do a mission, but anytime I start a new save of any GTA there’s always atleast ONE mission where my brain fails to engage and I get stuck on it for some reason even if I’ve breezed through in the past.

 

 

[PointlessRedemption]

School's Out from GTA Advance.

[jazzbone]

The most attempts for me was the Driver in VC on PS2 and Supply Lines PS2. I never was able to do either without using cheats. The original versions of those missions needed patched, particularly Supply Lines. Playing the definitive editions and I needed no cheats as the difficulty was better balanced.

 

To be honest I used cheats and exploits to complete some of the missions in all of the PS2 GTA games. With GTAIV + Stories and GTAV I could do everything without cheats. Maybe not the first try, but after 2 or 3 attempts. That is except for the last or near last missin in GTAIV. The mission where Niko needs to hop in a boat and chase after and shoot down a helicopter. Skill is not a factor, it is just try and try and try until I got lucky.

Edited October 8, 2024 by jazzbone

[Evil empire]

GTA 3 - SAM

GTA Vice City - Dildo dodo

GTA san Andreas - Supply lines & Freefall

[Lioshenka]

I never kept count, but pretty sure Stowaway was my worst nemesis. I first played it on 450 MHz PC, and it simply wouldn't allow me to catch up with the plane that was moving with a script in the desert storm setting. I really loved Toreno's calls though, very inspiring, but ended up using a cheat device to slow down the game's time to pass the mission. I must have tried to pass it around 100 times, day after day, week after week, possibly, month after month too.

 

The other notable missions would be:

- Circle the airstrip mission on PC. I was terrible with my controls then.

- Air Raid on PS2. It was a pure nightmare, I must have played it in excess of 50 times.

- Wrong Side of the Tracks, of course. Probably just under 50 tries on the PC, likely because it was also to do with the speed of my computer.

 

Other missions, like Bomb Da Base: Act 2 or SA races were difficult, but not enough to become engraved in my memory.

Edited October 6, 2024 by Lioshenka

[Thejeffster]

Probably the final mission in GTA 4 because of that damn helicopter glitch......

[Goldn-Bayse]

I was pretty young when I played GTA 4's story for the first time; My sister and I shared the same save file and slowly progressed through the story. I distinctly remember us being stuck on:

• Ruff Rider
• The Snow Storm
• No. 1

I was just really bad at the game back then lmao. Then one day a friend came over and helped beat the snow storm for me and it felt like a whole new world opened up when I saw new missions finally show up lol.

 

It's funny looking back because subsequent playthroughs of GTA 4 are really trivial now.

[Liver Buster]

Definitely Freefall from GTA San Andreas. I've given up numerous times to reach 100% because I couldn't figure out how to do that mission. It was due to...

  A) How the f*ck am I supposed to catch up to a jet airliner with a f*cking Dodo?!

  B) I didn't know I was supposed to fly into the corona from behind.

  C) I've had serious trouble timing a perfect barrel roll to get behind the plane.

After years, I managed to pass the mission with loose strategy and sheer luck... twice! But I still don't know how.

 

First time playing GTA III, I was stuck at Bomb De Base: Act II... naturally. To be able to progress through the story, I had eventually resorted to cheating, and rocketing the sh*t out of the cargo ship. However, it didn't give me any trouble later because...

  1. Once you're good and steady with the sniper rifle and know which Cartel guy to shoot next, all goes very smooth.

  2. You can also forget about sniping and go gunsblazing, board the cargo ship. Much advisable with Uzi or AK-47.

 

However, Espresso-2-Go was the one which really drove me up the wall. Not that because it's a technically a hard mission but because I thought it was a mandatory "race against time". Once I knew that timer kicks after you have destroyed a coffee stand, I went on locating the coffee stands first. After I had all of them marked on the radar, that was when I started wrecking each one. I've also completed the mission without using this charade with seven or eight seconds left: Have a good image of the map in your heard, get a fast car and be swift with destroying the coffee stands. Still good luck with the Mafia-induced shotgun hell in Portland though.

 

The Stories games were some of the first I have played on PlayStation2. As I was never used to play with a controller, they have provided a certain level of challenge. However, my overall performance was better than expected. In Liberty City Stories, only Love on the Rocks caused me great disturbance: I died more than necessary trying to fight my way to the van. I've also failed A Volatile Situation a few times either trying to fend off the Sindaccos or trying to drive the bomb-rigged truck away but I wouldn't say that this mission is of some difficult complexity.

 

For Vice City Stories, the obvious answer is Boomshine Blowout. It takes some time to adapt to commandeer the forklift properly, but once you do that and figure out your path inside Phil's warehouse... no problem. Even though it's pretty simple, I failed The Exchange a few times because how I handled the sniper was sh*t. 

 

I didn't have much problem with HD Era games, but as far as I remember I died to the NOOSE team swarming the old hospital building after recovering Elizabeta's cocaine during The Snow Storm in GTA IV. For TBOGT, it was Sexy Time: Piloting the Buzzard and trying to waste the guys running on water was such a frustrating task for me. 

[SM-W]

Yeah, it was that stupid f*cking mission in San Andreas where you have to go the LV airport, get in a prop plane, fly it out for like 5 minutes in order to crash it into a jet. If you miss it, the jet flies faster than the plane you're given, so you'll lose the mission by default. Then you have to go all the way back to the mission giver's location, activate the mission, drive back to the airport, get in the plane ...

That might be the lowest point of San Andreas, only barely beating out the bit where the game forces you to go out and level-up your swimming skill.

 

San Andreas really is kind of a strange game. They really just threw everything at the wall when it came to features, whether they were fun or not. I don't fault them for experimentation, Lord knows the AAA games industry needs much more of that than they have now, but in retrospect the game is like an awkward teenager who doesn't know what they want to do in life.

[EkaSwede]

Air Raid for Ps2 and Freefall for PC

 

Air Raid: I don't know why, but the sensitity for the manual aiming just didn't work for me. And god help you if you start this mission at the wrong time of day and it's night time. On PC you have mouse aimin which is 100x easier.

 

Freefall: I tried helping a friend out with this mission because it was easy as sh*t on Ps2, but for some reason it was damn near impossible to catch up with the Shamaal jet on PC. Can't for the love of me understand.

 

VCS

 

THE EXCHANGE

I swear the Flatbed you're driving has like 3 hit points or something because it gets shredded before you can react.

One tim eI was SO CLOSE to completing the mission but the NPS in the passenger seat insisted on hanging out the window trying to shoot at enemies he got headshot and instantly died, failing the misssion.

 

Was his purpose to be a living target?

Edited November 11, 2024 by EkaSwede

[44Orca]

With freefall many people get stuck on that one for PC, was there something different on the ps2 that made it easier?  I don't remember having issues when I played the game on PS2 or I just forgot. Could it be the frame limiter on PC?

PC to do it is go above 2 cloud areas and stop pressing forward, wait for the shamal to be infront of you and under then turn around fast and hit corona but that's a lot of tries until you do well every time.

Edited November 22, 2024 by 44Orca

[MrEWhite]

On 10/7/2024 at 12:19 PM, Liver Buster said:

First time playing GTA III, I was stuck at Bomb De Base: Act II... naturally. To be able to progress through the story, I had eventually resorted to cheating, and rocketing the sh*t out of the cargo ship. However, it didn't give me any trouble later because...

  1. Once you're good and steady with the sniper rifle and know which Cartel guy to shoot next, all goes very smooth.

  2. You can also forget about sniping and go gunsblazing, board the cargo ship. Much advisable with Uzi or AK-47.

 

I'm playing through GTA III for the first time currently, using the original PS2 1.40 NTSC release, and I genuinely don't get the issue people have with this mission. I went into it being kind of scared due to the issues I've read that people had with it, and while the inverted controls aren't the best, I breezed through it first try without any issue. 

 

The ambulance side-mission though, ugh. I straight up could not get past level eight in Portland, no matter how hard I tried. Currently I'm on Staunton Island, so I'm gonna try it there after I finish up the 20 vigilante missions as I heard it was a bit easier due to the island being more flat.

Edited November 12, 2024 by MrEWhite

[Guest]

In Liberty city stories, the Portland Chainsaw Massacre on PS2

In San Andreas, the forced flight school on PS2 as well and in Vice City stories, the Demestobot robot mission in Mendez mansion on PSP back then were a pain in the ass for me. 

[GhettoJesus]

Either the paramedic mission in GTA III, Freefall in GTA San Andreas or Catch the Wave in IV

Edited November 13, 2024 by GhettoJesus

[44Orca]

I must have forgotten, but Snail Trail is also another one... (the one you follow the train to Los Santos from San Fierro given by Tenpenny) only because I was too impatient not because the mission was any difficult. I failed it so many times, either losing the train, shooting the suspect before getting to the taxi, not noticing the spook-o-meter going too high, stuff like that, and I had to do it ALL over again.

[Corndawg93]

The first time playing Vice City, I was stuck on the mission Shakedown for ages, the stupid mission only gives you 5 minutes and it's takes half that goddamn time to drive from the Mansion to the friggin Mall, this bastard mission is one of the many reasons I hate Vice City

Edited December 2, 2024 by Corndawg93

[Xerukal]

I just finished wrapping up my 100% run of III DE the other day and it's gotta be all 12 of the Paramedic stages in one sitting. Took some serious patience before I learned to play every single run extremely, painfully, boringly safe. Even with the Leone gangs not being aggroed yet (did fortunately remember to do this pre-betrayal).

 

The Triads shooting the ambulance is annoying enough, but them instantly heatseeking & going for the door to pull me out and instantly reset my progress gave me conniptions. f*cking thing also flips so easily at higher framerates as well. Took me an entire afternoon and the better part of my evening to get through.

 

Did the VC stages yesterday and it was the chillest experience ever. Just the simple tweak in gang aggression was more than enough to make it much more bearable. Still wish they had radios in all the service vehicles though. 

Edited December 3, 2024 by Xerukal

[MrEWhite]

On 11/12/2024 at 3:22 PM, MrEWhite said:

I'm playing through GTA III for the first time currently, using the original PS2 1.40 NTSC release, and I genuinely don't get the issue people have with this mission. I went into it being kind of scared due to the issues I've read that people had with it, and while the inverted controls aren't the best, I breezed through it first try without any issue. 

 

The ambulance side-mission though, ugh. I straight up could not get past level eight in Portland, no matter how hard I tried. Currently I'm on Staunton Island, so I'm gonna try it there after I finish up the 20 vigilante missions as I heard it was a bit easier due to the island being more flat.

Switched from PS2 to PC. Finally finished the ambulance mission in Portland, and once again did Bomb Da Base: Act II first try 

Edited December 3, 2024 by MrEWhite