Oh and dont get me started on tetris.

Dwarf Fortress: I downloaded it and stared at it for a while. I'm still not sure what I'm even supposed to do with it.

X3: Reunion: I can barely handle the ship in flight, much less figure out how to make money or figure out where I'm going.

Any RTS: Dawn of War's 'squad' setups, I can handle - anything else, I get information overload and lose horribly.

X-Com: UFO Defense.

I really want to play it. I want to enjoy it. But I can't. Night combat is incredibly unfair and that's always when my missions take place. Everyone always says how easy it is, but I can't get past the first UFO crash without losing quite a few people.

The thing is, I've played Fallout, JA series, etc and never had the same problems.

Fixed that for you ;)

If you like that, why not try UFO: Afterlight? It isn't anywhere near that bad, but as I understand it has very similar gameplay.

Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis and Victoria D:

The only one I can really remember is Frontier: First Encounters (Yes, I still have the CD) the few times I actually made it work. It was mostly due to the fact that a DOS game wouldn't recognize my Windows 95 Joystick (a Microsoft Sidewinder 3-D Pro) (and that the keyboard controls were ridiculously complicated) and my extremely poor understanding of English at the time (although the manual was in French, read it countless times).

I'm not sure if the first Alone in the Dark would count. I understood how to play, but not only the puzzles were quite hard to understand and I panicked the minute a monster showed on the screen (hey, I was 7).

Which one? Days of Ruin is much, much harder than Dual Strike in my opinion, but they're both rather enjoyable.

Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis. Still harboring hope that I will figure out the mechanics of these two games.

I recently tried hearts of iron 3 and had no idea what i should be doing on the combat only scenario. I think the only thing i managed to do correctly was have my planes attack some bombers but i don't know if they won or not.

Struggling with AI War, a lot of tutorials, buttons, etc. I felt that I didn't know what I was doing... maybe I'll come back and try again.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X :
ugh had this one for a week, could not figure out how to even lift of the 737 plane and the game was around 15gb or something....

civilization 4 : i can pwn in civilization 3 and 5 but this one is way too complex for me, i have lost many games even without fighting with other civilizations :\

star wars series : im not a fan of space related stuff or the star wars series so this was complex and boring for me

age of empires 3 : way too complex still dont know how to finish the game legit without cheats

total war series: complex and slow

CSI game series : hate it worst ways of getting the evidence for the case

There's plenty of games I've tried, liked, but were too stupid to play properly, and too stupid to realise this and give up.
Love the jagged alliance series and X-com, never got anywhere in them...I'm still stuck in the tutorial campaign for Deadly games (the minesweeping mission of it) yet I still return.

Robinson's requiem. Never got anywhere in it, but have died in lots of interesting ways.

Space empires V....I heard it was like Master of Orion for those who wanted an impressive depth. I'd like to add oppressive depth too. I spent 2 hours reading through the tutorial and playing it. Started a single player game and felt utterly and completely lost. 20 turns later I quit.

And generally any RTS game out there. I lose track of everything going on too quickly. Good thing I'm not as interested in them as turn based squad games, but I still find them intrigueing, as such my collection contains games like Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Supreme commander, Rise of Nations, Age of empires/mythology, Settlers 5....and the only one I've made it past the 2nd campaign mission in is warcraft 2.

I think a lot of these "too stupid to play" moments happen precisely when we change genres. We're so used to the stuff we're comfortable with that the moment a new game changes all the rules, we're stumped. I'm playing Civ IV and liking it, but damn, it's kinda complex and I'm constantly thinking I'm just doing stuff to do stuff and researching technologies or producing buildings I don't really need. It's my first turn based strategy game experience (have played TB demos before though) and I'm so much more used to RTS...

Funny how Drakefox seems to be the opposite.

OMG, I had the same problem. Though it was the GBA one.

Also, I had some Inuyasha RPG, no idea what it was called, but I couldn't beat the first level. It said to go to the basement, but there were no stairs!!

Both of those were a while ago though. I could probably beat them now if I went back to them, but I have no desire lol.