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Dark Souls. Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Contra. Flappy Bird. These are but a few games that inspire broken controllers, fear, and loathing in gamers everywhere. Let's discuss our favorite games that are known the world over for being monstrously hard. A couple of things before I kick this off: A game doesn't actually have to be that difficult to fit into this discussion, it only must be perceived as very hard. Maybe you think that Battletoads isn't that tough and the gaming public are just a bunch of whiners? Go ahead and post about it, and tell us why it's easy for you. Don't just post the title of a game and nothing else. Seriously, poo poo is going to get boring real quick the 3rd or 4th time someone posts the words Double Dragon without anything else. Tell us about the game. Has the game earned its reputation? What's the toughest section/enemy/etc? What are your strategies for beating it, or where did you get stuck? --------------- My favorite game that is thought of as very difficult is Contra for the NES. When I was a kid, even the 30 lives code wouldn't get me close to offing the vile Red Falcon, but now I can occasionally beat it without losing a single life. All it took was some practice; during one semester of high school, I'd pop in Contra for 30 or 40 minutes as soon as I got home and see what I could do. After just a few weeks, I didn't need the code or any continues. It's really just a matter of memorizing enemy placements, as most enemies are fixed. Nab the spread gun early on and you're good to go. I'll play it off and on for a couple of weeks once every 2 or 3 years, and it's like riding a bike. It's also one of the purest run-and-gun games out there; each level is near perfect in length (except maybe Level 4, which is a bit long for what it is), and I think the soundtrack is extremely underappreciated. In fact, were it not for the works of one Koji Kondo, I'd call it the best soundtrack on the NES. The real make-or-break part of the game is Level 5, the snow field. I can usually breeze through the first four levels, but five poses a significant challenge and marks a step up in difficulty. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the robot enemies that randomly appear take on a new level of aggression in Level 5 and start shooting their guns at you more often. There's a little platforming section early on in the level that can put you in situations where an enemy has fired after you've already jumped, and there's pretty much no way to avoid losing a life. I've probably died more on that level than any other. Your Sledgehammer has a new favorite as of 05:00 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 04:54
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Minesweeper. Wtf do those numbers even mean?
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Jul 22, 2014 04:56
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F-Zero GX. Story mode races needed to unlock the other cars got hard as gently caress really quickly, seemingly everyone is faster than you and you're supposed to compensate by exploiting the physics system by airbrake-turning on open stretches to increase speed to ludicrous levels which game never tells you and which I never got to work properly. I had everything unlocked at every difficulty level in F-Zero X, which was understandably hard as hell towards the end, so I have no idea what possessed the designers to ramp everything into stratospheric difficulty and alienate casual gamers.
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Jul 22, 2014 05:50
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F-Zero GX, drat computer cheats. Edit: ^^^ This guy knows whats up. ArtIsResistance posted:Minesweeper. Wtf do those numbers even mean? How many mines are adjacent to that square. It's pretty simple really, sorry you're bad at games.
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Jul 22, 2014 05:54
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Ninja Gaiden for the XBox. After I broke my second controller on that game, I realized I probably shouldn't be playing it.
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Jul 22, 2014 05:57
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Out of This World for the SNES and more recently Xbox Family. poo poo was like a point and click flash game mixed with quick time events and no prompting. Sure, you will figure out how to get past this section of the s creen, but only after dying in every other way imaginable. gently caress that game. Why do I keep playing it?
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Jul 22, 2014 06:00
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Battletoads  Specifically, level 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye-kPP3D27o&t=49s I could never pass this level as a kid, and looking at playthroughs now I can see I always died juuust before the end of the level. Probably a good thing, the later levels look even harder 
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Jul 22, 2014 06:45
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Wii Sports. I'm a gamer not a meathead jock.
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Jul 22, 2014 07:20
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Not notorious, but Tower of Heaven is pretty hard the first time you play it. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/544332 When I first did a no-death run I literally shat myself. It was gross. Also, Dark Souls and God Hand are good and hard.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:24
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Yeah, this one isn't known the world over or whatever, but Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade was the bane of my childhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPhxAIKsim4 This game was a mixture of platforming and puzzle-adventure sections, as you can see if you watch the video for a bit. The controls in the platforming section were ridiculously hard to use. As soon as you pressed the jump button all control was lost. Didn't like your trajectory? Too bad, you cant stop or change your slow arc toward a pit or enemy, either of which means instant death. The enemies were always placed in such a way to surprise you mid-jump as well, so the only way to really get through was to memorize the level. As for the adventure sections, maybe it's just me because those type of games are always confusing and hard for me, but it sure seemed like there was very little direction or reason behind much of the plot or choices you could make, and it was a real struggle to get anything done.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:46
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bigredbutton posted:Battletoads I found I learned that pretty fast. Then they threw another one at you later on.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:01
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CombatBonta-kun posted:Ninja Gaiden for the XBox. After I broke my second controller on that game, I realized I probably shouldn't be playing it. I think I'm still on Chapter 11 or something. I should revisit it next time I hook up my Xbox, seeing as I've survived Dark Souls and Binding of Isaac now. Dark Souls is tough but fair. If you die in PvE, 99% of the time it was your own fault.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:41
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The Battle for Wesnoth. I've been playing this game for ten years now, and it can still be very challenging. It is a Turn Based Strategy that takes a lot of skill and luck, and a large part of the skill is managing the luck. Much of the challenge comes from understanding probability and our own misperceptions of probability: if a unit with a 10% chance to die dies, it is an easy reaction to feel like you've been "cheated", because 10% seems much smaller than it actually is. I guess it is hard to explain without explaining the nuts and bolts of the game.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:51
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The first one that comes to mind is Maverick Bird. Probably because the OP mentioned Flappy Bird. Either way, the game's basically Flappy Bird meets Super Hexagon (which makes sense, since the developer of this game MADE Super Hexagon). On a related note, Super Hexagon is a great game that's also very difficult at later levels.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:56
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TrampolineTales posted:The first one that comes to mind is Maverick Bird. Probably because the OP mentioned Flappy Bird. Either way, the game's basically Flappy Bird meets Super Hexagon (which makes sense, since the developer of this game MADE Super Hexagon). On a related note, Super Hexagon is a great game that's also very difficult at later levels. I was going to mention Super Hexagon myself. People get playtime anywhere from like 3hrs to 20hrs+ to beat it, which distills down to 6 minutes of successful gameplay.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:03
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I had heard so much great stuff about Dark/Demons Souls from others and my husband, as well as the Metal Gear Solid series, I had played none. So I set a goal to play MGS 1-4 and both Dark Souls and Demons Souls before the respective sequels came out. I didn't even really enjoy Metal Gear until the third game; the controls didn't age very well and it was difficult for the sake of being outdated because of it, I did however love Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots. The amount of ways you can manipulate and work with the environments is just spectacular. I gave it a cursory 'normal' playthrough but my husband is the 'Boss Extreme' mode type of guy and man is that difficult, let's just say he can't stand the song "Snake Eater" any more. Also, SE introduced me to one of my now favourite video game characters ever: The Boss. She is so drat cool. Dark Souls and Demons Souls were a huge accomplishment for me because I'm a big chicken and was scared of everything. I've always loved Elder Scrolls games but have never been one use a shield or be defensive, so playing both games really shook that up because that's not really an option, especially if you're new to the games. They lacked in some departments but I definitely had to take time to think about how I was approaching areas of the game.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:40
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Captain Lavender posted:I was going to mention Super Hexagon myself. People get playtime anywhere from like 3hrs to 20hrs+ to beat it, which distills down to 6 minutes of successful gameplay. 6 min??? You are truly a God of memorization and twitch reflexes!  I can get maybe a couple of minutes max.  /my go to game for plane rides.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:43
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Astyanax on the NES. I kept going back to it because the first level music was crazy awesome back then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9D-LXjKVe8. It's bullshit NES difficult, rather than really challenging, though.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:51
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Uzi Suicide posted:6 min??? Nah, sorry. I mean there are 6 main levels and each makes you go a straight minute. So that all the hours you put in represent 6 minutes of success.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:12
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Fester's Quest on the NES. It was the only NES game in my collection as a child that I never beat. The AVGN's review sums it up pretty well. - lovely weapons that get easily blocked by terrain and also get easily downgraded by accident - enemies and bosses take way too many hits to kill - bullshit infinitely respawning enemies that overwhelm you and your lovely weapon - one life - two hits = you're dead, game over - "continue" still sends you back to the beginning of the game There weren't even any known Game Genie codes for it back then, either. This game was the bane of my childhood existence. gently caress this game.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:22
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I tried for months to get through Streets of Rage 3 with my roommate, but there was some part full of ninjas or something where I'd always die. I hoped it was near the end of the game, but I guess I'll never know
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Jul 22, 2014 23:34
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The final boss on Donkey Kong 64 I think I still never cleared it. For a while every two years or so I would hook up the N64 again and give it a go and then give up after a couple of hours. Basically you had to beat the boss with each character (of which there were four) three times. Each round gave you less and less margin for error and involved you needing to stand in exactly the right spot before attacking/hover in place and hit 4 tiny targets in a couple of seconds/perform a dodge-the-pushers minigame/whatever argh it's making me angry just thinking about it. If you hosed it up you had to do the whole thing from the very beginning. Can't remember another game section that made me that pissed off. It was especially jarring because all the other bosses were pussies apart from that jack in the box one and at least he died through the tried and trusted 'knock me down then hit me x3' method.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:01
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Nethack, the first roguelike I ever played. It took me five years of play to to beat it, and that was with heavy wiki reference. Combine super high difficulty(at least early game) with random generation and a huge amount of complex gameplay mechanics and you get this shitshow: - You ate the wrong corpse to avoid starvation? Oops, you got poisoned and died. - You experimented with alchemy and mixed acid and water? Oops, it exploded and you died. - You tried zapping an unidentified wand to see what it does? Oops, it was a wand of lightning, and its blast bounced off the wall and killed you. - You picked up a basilisk corpse? Enjoy being a statue(yes, you're dead). - You safely picked up a basilisk corpse while wearing gloves? Well you better hope you don't try to walk down any stairs while encumbered, or you'll fall over and stone yourself. - You read a random scroll to identify it? Enjoy your permanent ball and chain to slow you down. There are better roguelikes, but nothing will take the place in my heart that Nethack has.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:16
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Dark Souls II is a huge game, larger than its forebear and it offers perhaps the greatest sense of discovery, victory and, at times, frustration of any video game yet made. There is something mystical in its secrecy, in the obscured rules and storyline that compel you to explore deeper and deeper; there is something primal in the David vs. Goliath stand-offs with hulking beasts and the satisfaction of licking your wounds by a bonfire thereafter; there is something human in the delight at defining your character according to your own individual whims and tastes, choosing their weapons and armour and particular aptitudes; there is something playful in the risk/reward dynamic of venturing back into the world to collect what was dropped at the point at which you were last felled. Dark Souls II is an extraordinary game. If it stops short of fulfilling something precious within the soul, it certainly has the heart, mind and fingers covered.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:22
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Yeah but as soon as you get 2 or more rings of soul protection, the risk is pretty much gone. Disclaimer: I still loved it and it was still hard.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:26
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Fear Effect on the Playstation. gently caress that game. I havent played it in over a decade so my memory is hazy but IIRC the final boss fight (which I never got past) is on a different disc from the final save point. So agravating.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:32
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Original Ninja Gaiden on the NES (I guess the notoriously difficult part is mainly the final level). It's got that difficulty that seems unfair and impossible at first but with practice you get real good. The Souls games are the only ones I've played since then that really nailed this.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:50
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Super Meat Boy I really love the mechanic that shows all your deaths at the end. It's a tidal wave of meat!
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Jul 23, 2014 07:11
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p.crestmont posted:Original Ninja Gaiden on the NES (I guess the notoriously difficult part is mainly the final level). It's got that difficulty that seems unfair and impossible at first but with practice you get real good. I can always get right up to 6-2, and that is when the game lets you know that all bets are off and your rear end is dead. I love Ninja Gaiden for that, really, since it always felt to me like the game ramps up pretty quickly and then just doesn't let up at all. When you finally do get into it and get practice in, the game feels natural. It's one of my favorite games on the NES.
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Jul 23, 2014 08:00
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Steel Battalion the risks you take and the weight of losing the financial cost of a mech every death(assuming you safely ejected) make for a game that i can't get past the 4th mission of
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Jul 23, 2014 08:11
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Ninja Gaiden 1 isn't just hard, it's malevolent. BIIIIRDS
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Jul 23, 2014 14:37
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Vanquish, because although people consider it a lot harder than other third-person shooters like Gears of War and Uncharted, it is so much more fair, well designed, and responsive that I can get through hard difficulty with only three deaths, and all of them were because I was being sloppy. gently caress God Hard difficulty, though. Normally you don't need cover at all, since you can move so quickly that there's no reason to sit behind a wall and take potshots, but in God Hard being exposed for just a few seconds will get you killed. It's fun to watch someone phenomenally good play it, at least.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:53
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Dashticle posted:The final boss on Donkey Kong 64 I think I still never cleared it. For a while every two years or so I would hook up the N64 again and give it a go and then give up after a couple of hours. I thought the hardest thing about this game was getting a good enough score in the donkey kong jr arcade game. I don't remember if you had to do it to progress or just to get something special but I remember it was hard as poo poo. Super Ghouls and Ghosts was hard. I tried playing it again recently with some friends. It was nearly impossible for us to beat the first level. I remember getting to that one tower stage when I was a kid, with the big spiral staircase, and I think that's as far as I ever got. It was so annoying when you'd get the weapon you liked upgraded all the way and you gently caress up and grab a crappier item to replace it. Another hard game was pinball quest. I've only ever beaten it with save states. It was so frustrating to get really far and get knocked back a level when the ball fell. And then back another level...and another...
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Jul 23, 2014 14:58
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Your Sledgehammer posted:My favorite game that is thought of as very difficult is Contra for the NES. When I was a kid, even the 30 lives code wouldn't get me close to offing the vile Red Falcon, but now I can occasionally beat it without losing a single life. All it took was some practice; during one semester of high school, I'd pop in Contra for 30 or 40 minutes as soon as I got home and see what I could do. After just a few weeks, I didn't need the code or any continues. It's really just a matter of memorizing enemy placements, as most enemies are fixed. Nab the spread gun early on and you're good to go. I'll play it off and on for a couple of weeks once every 2 or 3 years, and it's like riding a bike. It's also one of the purest run-and-gun games out there; each level is near perfect in length (except maybe Level 4, which is a bit long for what it is), and I think the soundtrack is extremely underappreciated. In fact, were it not for the works of one Koji Kondo, I'd call it the best soundtrack on the NES. Contra is a hoot. I beat it as a kid using the codes, and I think was I was 9 years old before I beat it without using the code  It really is about watching patterns though, and losing a life (and your upgrades!) at the wrong time can torpedo your entire game. Speaking of watching patterns.... Ikaruga is great. It's a vertical scrolling spaceship shooter with a neat mechanic. Each enemy shoots either blue or red bullets, and you can switch the polarity of your ship's shields to absorb one or the other. Also, your bullets do double damage to enemies of the opposite polarity. It's really fun. Here's some who is way better at it than me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LES0bAg0dBk
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Jul 23, 2014 16:47
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Control Volume posted:Dark Souls II is a huge game, larger than its forebear and it offers perhaps the greatest sense of discovery, victory and, at times, frustration of any video game yet made. There is something mystical in its secrecy, in the obscured rules and storyline that compel you to explore deeper and deeper; there is something primal in the David vs. Goliath stand-offs with hulking beasts and the satisfaction of licking your wounds by a bonfire thereafter; there is something human in the delight at defining your character according to your own individual whims and tastes, choosing their weapons and armour and particular aptitudes; there is something playful in the risk/reward dynamic of venturing back into the world to collect what was dropped at the point at which you were last felled. What is wrong with you
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Jul 23, 2014 17:08
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Lord Lambeth posted:Super Meat Boy The fact that you instantly respawned made this game a blast. It is very difficult, but the instant respawn didn't give you time to rage or relax, just play again, with the muscle memory of the level you were on still at the front of your thoughts. Very hard, but very fun game.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:23
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Der Luftwaffle posted:F-Zero GX. Story mode races needed to unlock the other cars got hard as gently caress really quickly, seemingly everyone is faster than you and you're supposed to compensate by exploiting the physics system by airbrake-turning on open stretches to increase speed to ludicrous levels which game never tells you and which I never got to work properly. I had everything unlocked at every difficulty level in F-Zero X, which was understandably hard as hell towards the end, so I have no idea what possessed the designers to ramp everything into stratospheric difficulty and alienate casual gamers. This game will forever be cited in conversations about hard games, and it can't really be overstated: The final race on story mode is a race on a frictionless, twisting, wall-less track against one other racer, who is also a ghost, so you can't gently caress up his car or slow him down. He flys around the whole thing at boost speed (so, like 5x times your own speed) like a goddamn slot car, meanwhile you have to carefully, carefully adjust your speed for each and every turn because if you fall off once you die and the race is over. If you're too careful though you'll also lose because you really need to be boosting constantly to win, except you can't because you only get ~5 per lap, and only starting on the second lap, and only supposing that you hit the (one) energy bar at the end of the lap. Oh, and this is on Normal mode. There's Hard and Very Hard after that. I had to look up a Youtube to see it being won on Very Hard because I earnestly thought it was impossible. This guy is obviously very good and he kills it, but just to give you an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePCB7Rv0bPI
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Jul 23, 2014 17:35
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F-Zero GX looks terrible. My brother and I used to play Abadox for the NES. It's not THAT hard but it was definitely the difficult game we played as kids that took us forever to beat. To this day I don't know anyone else who played it so we may have just been bad at games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6lFtVlruzA e: Skipping through that video, this game really holds up for me. It looks as good as I remember and I'd like to play it again. EdwardSwifferhands has a new favorite as of 18:21 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 18:16
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Control Volume posted:Dark Souls II is a huge game, larger than its forebear and it offers perhaps the greatest sense of discovery, victory and, at times, frustration of any video game yet made. There is something mystical in its secrecy, in the obscured rules and storyline that compel you to explore deeper and deeper; there is something primal in the David vs. Goliath stand-offs with hulking beasts and the satisfaction of licking your wounds by a bonfire thereafter; there is something human in the delight at defining your character according to your own individual whims and tastes, choosing their weapons and armour and particular aptitudes; there is something playful in the risk/reward dynamic of venturing back into the world to collect what was dropped at the point at which you were last felled. The best part about DaS Dos is that is keeps track of the number of times you died. I think on my first playthrough I died something like 289 times. Now if only they'd break it down into Falls, Bosses, and Misc.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:39
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Amgard posted:Ninja Gaiden 1 isn't just hard, it's malevolent. You know, it was really only one bird that caused broken controllers. That one at the end of the snow level (3-2? Not looking it up) at the big jump right before the boss. That guy cost me so many game overs. Though Ninja Gaiden is unquestionably hard (I can't beat it fairly) going back as an adult I've found a large percentage of nes games' difficulty comes from me having been both a poorly coordinated little kid, and being a total chickenshit then. For instance, there's no way lil Choco would parse that the safest place when dealing with Hammer Bros is right in front of them.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:42
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