MGA ...Battlecry revisited

So I'm playing Metal Gear Ac!d last night and I had a severe flashback to my troubles with Robotech Battlecry. Does anybody remember that time I recounted my story about how I got stuck on a fairly routine level because the "puzzle" was so inoccuous that I didn't think to interact with the game a certain way?

Flashback:
I'm told that I must "rescue the stranded pilots" but that first I must "put out the fires." Well I flew around the field in "Guardian" mode (or GERWALK for the Macross purists) knowing that in previous missions, the game allows me to pick up things with the "arms" in this mode... But how to "put out the fires?" I dropped the game after a couple of hours randomly zooming around and shooting up the place. It was months later when on a lark, I showed my brother the game and he accidentally shoots out a sewer pipe I had previously dismissed as background artwork. This in turn gave me a flashback...

Flashback of a Flashback:
I had practically abandonned Final Fantasy 7 for one thing (which further reminds me, I never did finish that game). This was back when beautifully pre-rendered backdrops housed characters who were 3D-rendered interactive objects. But by the very nature of the pre-rendered precluded interactivity... save for pre-determined paths where your character would walk - paths that were supposed to match up with the artwork in the backgrounds (representing bridges or roads). There was one scene in a junkyard and I spent HOURS trying to get from one end to the next. By chance my keystrokes were not registering at the particular moment my character was lined up with a "plank" drawn into the background - thus not allowing him to walk "onto" the plank.

Flash Forward... Snake is told "there's a hidden sewer you must find at the north west end of the compound." I'm rather proud of my performance, actually. I was spotted only once and I managed to eliminate enemy troops all before an alarm was sounded. But I spent so much time wander around the north end and by sheer bad luck, Snake's character never happened to stop moving on the exact "tile" required to trigger the game event that would end the mission. I walked around it, over it, even stopped on "tiles" right next to it at one point. ARGH!

Thankfully, in the Internet age, I have access to freebies like Game FAQs fellow players have published on-line otherwise I would've been stuck there for who knows how many months wandering around that compound.

And ultimately, doesn't this sort of game design just ruin a playing experience?