What Was The Worst Softlock You've Experienced?

[Gonzokillass]

Title's pretty self explanatory

[GravityQueeen]

Ok? I guess that's why I had to Google that. My fault. 

 

According to Wiktionary:

 

Noun

 

softlock (plural softlocks)

 

(video games) A situation where a game remains apparently playable, but further progress is impossible, typically due to a design flaw or glitch.

I defeated the boss, but got hit at the exact same time; now I'm stuck in a softlock and can't exit the level.

 

Here's a site exemplifying softlock and hardlock.

 

https://www.makeuseof.com/softlock-hardlock-in-video-games-explained/

 

 

Recently it happened to me twice while playing two different seasons of The Walking Dead: the Definitive Telltale Series. The interaction icon of a door disappeared and I couldn't progress, something similar happened with the other season. Loading the most recent checkpoint fixed both situations. Indeed it was very soft. Lock.

 

[Axterix233]

I was going for R&C platinum for all the games last year. On R&C3 Up your Arsenal, I was into NG+ close to finishing the plat, and I discovered a cheat code that would give me every weapon or item on max level. After using it, at some point the game wouldn't load the next segment when done with every enemy, even after a reload. I had to reload a previous save before the cheat code and it worked after that.

[Lava_Yuki]

33 minutes ago, GravityQueeen said:

Noun

 

softlock (plural softlocks)

 

(video games) A situation where a game remains apparently playable, but further progress is impossible, typically due to a design flaw or glitch.

I defeated the boss, but got hit at the exact same time; now I'm stuck in a softlock and can't exit the level.

 

Here's a site exemplifying softlock and hardlock.

 

https://www.makeuseof.com/softlock-hardlock-in-video-games-explained/

 

I did not know what this word meant, so thanks for explaining it. 

 

To answer the question, I don't think I have experienced this in years. The last time was probably the old Pokemon games, where there were quite a in the older gens. 

[Tiagozak]

One late high-level quest in Cyberpunk 2077 bugged out into an invalid state (the enemies didn't spawn at all), which prevented me from getting the platinum. The quest must have been bugged out since the early hours of the game, as it's broken on all my savefiles, but I only noticed it after putting 100+ hours into doing every single thing in the game.

 

I was so dissapointed I quit trophy hunting for a year. Only relatively recently did I decide to go back to the game, starting on a completely new playthrough, and hoping that somehow I can do a level-up exploit to be able to go and do that quest (and everything else in that district) to finally get that one trophy.

 

And all of this on the PS4 version of the game running on the base console. Yea.

[sepheroithisgod]

My original Legend of Dragoon disc would freeze every time after defeating the Dragon on Disc 2. I later found out it was due to the PS2 not emulating the game properly, so I think if I had used my PSOne it would have worked. Had to wait til they released it on the PS3 to ever play it again.

Edited February 1 by sepheroithisgod

[Mina]

I think the only notable soft lock I had was in Darksiders 2. Got to a point where I couldn’t progress and it became quickly obvious to me that something wasn’t right. Checked a few videos and nobody was having that same exact issue. I was a new trophy hunter at the time so I remember feeling really bummed out because I had put a lot of time into the game. I stopped playing and did some research, finding a number of posts online about glitches in the game and that a simple restart will likely fix the problem. I did just that and the barrier that was one there magically disappeared and I was able to continue. 

 

I’ve had a few similar glitches happen in different games but ever since learning that restarting fixes most things, I don’t worry too much. Though it’d be interesting to find out what causes soft locks and why a game would act differently.

[MDTaylorXIII]

Had a few of note over the years. 

 

Far Cry 2: Made it to the second map when all of a sudden the world just burst into flame. If I so much as looked at it, anything and everything that was flammable would erupt without provocation. Vehicles exploding. Gas canisters zipping about. Utter pandemonium. Because of the fire spreading mechanic, Africa quickly became a flaming hellscape. It'd keep expanding until the game inevitably crashed. Every time I reloaded, same thing. Game over.

 

STALKER: Door to the merchant / main quest giver in one of the settlements locked itself for no reason. Could hear him on the other side taunting me. "Welcome back, Stalker. Come in, come in." Real comedian that guy was.

 

ES4 Oblivion: Contracted vampirism without realising it. Polymorphic hema- what? Entered a house in the middle of nowhere and triggered an autosave just as the sun rose and the disease became full-blown vampirism. The home owner was understandably pissed and attacked me on sight. Some usually sweet old lady would come at me all fists and elbows. Couldn't kill her because she was an important NPC. Couldn't sleep because I was trespassing. Couldn't fast travel either. To far away from any dungeon to run to before the sun got me. Not enough healing items to keep me going. Spent ages duking it out with this old lady. I'd win. But she'd just take a knee and be back at me before long. Learnt a thing or two about keeping multiple saves after this experience.

[ChilledBrandon]

My first playthrough of Resdient Evil Zero. I got to the 'Bat' boss and simply didn't have enough healing items. I just kept dying over and over again.

 

I ended up restarting and being way more cautious with my ammo and healing items used, it was a lot smoother the 2nd time.

[Manilu-08]

I was playing God of War Ascension streaming on PC with the PS3 controller. After the frantic experience on PS4 with God of War 1 during which I moved the sticks too much and feared damaging them, I did not continue the saga. But after a couple of years I bought new PC and so I was able to continue the saga.

I used the already damaged controller with loose levers, unusable in a shooting or something precise. In GoW it was pretty good except that while going through a tunnel the stick moved by itself causing the character to roll back and so I was stuck without being able to do anything.

I had a few subscription days left and was panicking but fortunately reloading a previous chapter did not invalidate the difficulty trophy.