Games

Control had me wandering around.

Abiotic Factor, survival in a facility like Half-Life with crafting, survival and exploration. Really great game and it's pretty hard understanding where to go

This is an extremely specific situation in a game, but...

In World of Warcraft, back in the day, there was a dungeon in Outland, I believe it was Helfire Citadel. It wasn't particularly hard, but if you died, you were screwed. The way dungeon deaths worked was your spirit would spawn in a graveyard out in the regular world, and you would have to run your spirit ass back to the dungeon entrance to respawn. But finding the entrance to Helfire Citadel was so difficult I told the group if they don't rez me, they'd have to just kick me, because I'd never make it back in. It was awful.

Metroid and Legend of Zelda I and II for NES.

I would say many games with procedural generated worlds, like Minecraft, No Man's Sky, etc. Where the main task is deciding where do I go next, where do I settle down, maybe there is some better place over the next hill, next planet, etc.

There are other games, where it is also sometimes not quite clear what to do next. Like games have a lot of progression and rebuilding of stuff that was done before because of it. Like Satisfactory, Factorio, etc.

And on a more literal sense, where you actually redo the game over and over to progress, like The Stanley Parable or Outer Wilds.

Some games have a very labyrinthine level design, where it also isn't really clear what to do next, like Dark Souls, Subnautica, etc.

Or environment puzzles, where you have to figure out how to progress, like the Myst series, Riven, etc.

SNES Jurassic Park. NES Fester's Quest

Oh man. For me, Tetris. Every time.

I get past the first dungeon no problems, and find the heart container, but as soon as I meet that old guy with his kite in the tree I'm lost. I think I need to craft a slingshot or something but I've no idea where to get the rubber for an elastic band.

Space Quest

I remember the newes jedi game feeling like this a lot, but it was also effectively immersive that you don't instantly know exactly where to go.

For me it's always been Zelda games.

The Outer Worlds is a perfect example of this in the best way possible.

The old text adventures where being able to solve a puzzle required hitting the right words. "Oh, twist, not pull."

Any FF if you set it down for a month or two.

La-Mulana

I was playing Star Wars: Bounty Hunter on Switch today because of the current free trial. At first, running around as Jango Fett in the Gamecube era was fun, but then shortly after getting my jet pack, I get completely turned around while chasing the bounty guy and spend over a half hour being lost. Called it quits after that.

Probably half life. It's kinda intentionally tricky and meant to be some kind of puzzle

It feels like such a silly example now that I know the game, but tales of symphonia made me give up for about three years before coming back and beating it. There's a section where you're supposed to go to a specific city to progress, but there's a semi-secret long way around that lets you experience a different character's story early. Well, I somehow sucked at following directions and went the semi-secret way, and then couldn't figure out how to get ANYWHERE that let you do anything. I wandered around the same continent for several months (playing a few hours a week) before moving on.

Devil May Cry 4, but I was able to finish it. I couldn't even complete Devil May Cry 3.

This one's pretty controversial, but if you've never played it before,

Half Life 1

It's really confusing and enemies will pop out of nowhere and kill you instantly. Not really fun imo, but then again I AM playing it for the first time 27 years after it came out 😂

I'm sure Black Mesa is more intuitive though.

Atari's ET. Game was bugged. Every 80's kid that bought this was disappointed. It is the worst video game in history and all unsold copies were buried in a landfill only to be rediscovered decades later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)

The High Score is a great documentary that actually has the guy that developed it. I think he was high when he developed it which explains a lot.

Pocahontas on Sega Genesis. I don't even remember the plot, but I got stuck and had to return it to Blockbuster.

Subnautica and Hollow Knight spring to mind