Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[sageoftruth]

I beat God Hand yesterday, so I switched to Hard difficulty. I'm still trying to beat the first two enemies you encounter.

 

[Artaneius]

First time playing Quake II online. Seriously it was just so disheartening getting wrecked over and over. The funny thing was the majority of the other players felt the same, while the "tryhards" would just wreck everyone in their righteous might. It's funny looking back before matchmaking systems came in and say to yourself out loud it was a very bad time to be a casual gamer. You were forced to become a competitive/hardcore gamer or lose every single time.

 

[Zen Bard]

How about Seth, the final boss in "Street Fighter IV"? He has unblockable moves which he spams immediately after (or possibly while) you input your attack.

Actually, I'm not sure this counts as a "difficulty spike" as much as just an outright "cheap shot"!

 

[-Dragmire-]

Starbound's first boss, the alien spaceship(pre-patch).

Not sure if it counts though since it's not a completed game yet.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I have been playing Dragonball Z Budokai 3 again recently, and I noticed a lot of the DragonUniverse characters face random brick walls on their journey. This isn't so bad on your 2nd or 3rd run when you have more stats and skills, but a good chunk of fights are just controller-shatteringly frustrating.
This is not helped by among the most annoying features in a fighting game, the Dragon Rush. A 3 stage event where you have to guess which of the 4 face buttons the attacker will push, guess wrong and you take unavoidable damage via a drawn out cutscene while a lucky guess ends the ordeal. Many AI characters ABUSE THE FUCK out of it, which is done by going into a Hyper Mode (Which means you can only be stunned by attacks that have knockback, you can tank all normal hits without a hiccup) and doing a knockback attack. When the enemy goes Hyper, all you can do is try to run away and dodge which shatters flow. This relies ENTIRELY upon how generous the AI is, as it can decide if it picks what you did or not (much like the Ultimate Moves relying on a energy bar thing that the AI can decide if it wants to narrowly screw you or greatly screw you).

And while on the SNES thing, there's that level in The Lion King where Simba goes into exile. I never figured how to get past the rolling boulders.

Err.. you just run away from the big ones. If a porcupine is in your way, roll and carry on running. It is really THAT simple.

 

[elilupe]

This may be because I first played it as a kid, but the Riku II fight from the first Kingdom Hearts, where you lose the help of Donald and Goofy and have to fight possessed Riku in that little arena, was a crazy difficulty spike for me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I have been playing Dragonball Z Budokai 3 again recently, and I noticed a lot of the DragonUniverse characters face random brick walls on their journey. This isn't so bad on your 2nd or 3rd run when you have more stats and skills, but a good chunk of fights are just controller-shatteringly frustrating.
This is not helped by among the most annoying features in a fighting game, the Dragon Rush. A 3 stage event where you have to guess which of the 4 face buttons the attacker will push, guess wrong and you take unavoidable damage via a drawn out cutscene while a lucky guess ends the ordeal. Many AI characters ABUSE THE FUCK out of it, which is done by going into a Hyper Mode (Which means you can only be stunned by attacks that have knockback, you can tank all normal hits without a hiccup) and doing a knockback attack. When the enemy goes Hyper, all you can do is try to run away and dodge which shatters flow. This relies ENTIRELY upon how generous the AI is, as it can decide if it picks what you did or not (much like the Ultimate Moves relying on a energy bar thing that the AI can decide if it wants to narrowly screw you or greatly screw you).

And while on the SNES thing, there's that level in The Lion King where Simba goes into exile. I never figured how to get past the rolling boulders.

Err.. you just run away from the big ones. If a porcupine is in your way, roll and carry on running. It is really THAT simple.

I know but I could never figure out the rolling. Or just when I thought I did, I didn't, and Game Over. Timing was finicky.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I know but I could never figure out the rolling. Or just when I thought I did, I didn't, and Game Over. Timing was finicky.

You could practice it on the ones that appear in level one. The timing is actually quite simple, at least for me (I have played the HOLY FUCK out of the original Sonic games).

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

This may be because I first played it as a kid, but the Riku II fight from the first Kingdom Hearts, where you lose the help of Donald and Goofy and have to fight possessed Riku in that little arena, was a crazy difficulty spike for me.

what is especially frustrating about that part is, if you "die", you have to watch that damn cutscene all over again, bloody annoying as hell and breaks your combat momentum.

 

[FeralDynasty]

In Neverwinter, the dungeons start off fairly simple and around level 40 the final bosses for each dungeon just got to nightmare difficulty, especially with randoms leaving and joining constantly after every wipe. This is actually what broke the game for me, I really enjoyed it up until that point but there was a near nonexistant difficulty curve in the solo content and the group content was just unplayable.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

BATTLETOADS Turbo Tunnel. Seriously, screw that game with a rusty iron pole. Also, Guitar Hero 3's final tier. You'd be cruising along through that game on your chosen difficulty, and then suddenly fail pretty much any of the final tier's songs on your first attempts. Sheesh.

 

[DjinnFor]

Afro Samurai. Specifically, the Kuma boss fight.

Every boss had a trick or two you needed to learn to beat it. Kuma had a couple. First, he blocked/dodged all attacks most of the time unless he was in the middle of an animation. He had a pretty strong moveset that his AI would often abuse for cheap hits; you could avoid the cheapest using a focus backflip, a maneuver you literally never ever had any need for anywhere else. But the worst part was that you couldn't use the same move combo more than once, or he'd start blocking/dodging the latter hits or autocountering you in the middle of your attacks. Use the same set of moves even twice in a row, and not only would he take no damage but he'd probably autocounter you for massive damage. Fortunately there were hundreds of combos to choose from and you could reuse the same one a few times... but there wasn't a lot of difference between any of the combos, so there was no real reason to not spam the same attacks over and over in any other fight.

It took me literally three days to recognize that this was why he was so hard to beat. It's not immediately obvious, because he goes through multiple "forms" over the course of the fight and he takes a long time to kill. I thought he just really liked blocking attacks near the end of the fight.

Also, another fight I had trouble with was the first Metal Gear Rising boss, since it expects you to know how to parry (the only method of blocking in the game). I wasn't used to the Japanese convention of special attacks and maneuvers being performed through a combination of thumbstick input and button presses (you see this in fighting games like the classic QCF input for Ryu's fireball), and MGR never made how to parry clear. In MGR, you had to be standing still, and then press forward and attack simultaneously during an enemies attack animation to execute a parry. You couldn't parry if an enemy wasn't attacking you, and couldn't parry if the thumbstick wasn't in a neutral position to start (e.g. you were moving). With expert timing you'd do a more powerful version that stuns the enemy and automatically counterattacked, and this became a potent skill throughout the game. But since there's no other method of blocking attacks, and the boss has attacks that effectively long on to you, you needed to at least know how to parry quite well by the first boss.

Last one: The first Dark Souls boss

I challenged my cousin to beat it and it took her 7 hours over two days. Nuff said.

 

[Do4600]

Something that I doubt I'll ever forget, and it's a little silly, but goddamn Abyss on Ord Ibanna was such a cruel curve. It's one of the fastest races in the game and on the turns the track is half the normal width and if you fall off, you are immediately in 12th place and can't win.

I beat God Hand yesterday, so I switched to Hard difficulty. I'm still trying to beat the first two enemies you encounter.

lol. Yeah that game is ridiculous;y hard, but I don't see it as a curve, it's more of a wall that is just barely tilted.

 

[bemusement]

Driver 3, The Chase. Insanely hard, I haven't finished it to this day. I advise you all not to not play this game.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

Illusion of Gaia (Illusion of Time for EU) on the SNES.

You're happily going along and then Mu happens. Suddenly everything wants you dead.

Also on the SNES: Secret of Mana.
The tiger boss from the witch is the last boss before you get magic, and it can completely wreck you if you didn't grind some extra levels out.

Either that fucking wizard in DQVI who's in the most fucking annoying dungeon ever that still manages to be too short to have any sense of accomplishment form beating it.

Or any of the bosses in DE:HR. I was playing non-violence and stealth. I had no real weapons or combat abilities. Fuck those guys.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those bosses. They were really frustrating - For the first one I used all the bombs that I got from the special edition, the second one I think I glitched the boss and the third one I abused the slits in the walls to shoot at him when his AI was searching a new route to me. So un-deus ex. Rest of the game was stellar though.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I'm playing and loving Tomb Raider on PC. Very enjoyable, playable on easy. Exactly the sort of game I want. Then, all of a sudden, I have so many bad guys trying to kill me that, rather than having fun, I'm stressed out!

One of the most beautiful games with terrific art direction, that I have ever played, is Alice Madness Returns. It is gorgeous, but even with cheats, many reviewers have noted: this game, on easy, is still fricken hard!!! That difficulty is ruining the experience that would otherwise be great!

While playing, a buddy smashed his keyboard and chucked the disc into a wall. If your doing things like that, he noted, you aren't having a good time. I agree.

You want hard? Play on hard. But when a game programmer offers and easy choice, it should be fricken easy! If I get through it fast, let me decide if it wasn't worth the money.

Lol...it was hard on easy? I thought i was bashing my head against a brick wall on some sections because i hadn't played on easy to get all the upgrades before attempting the hard run. The game has gone up some more in my estimation

 

[elilupe]

This may be because I first played it as a kid, but the Riku II fight from the first Kingdom Hearts, where you lose the help of Donald and Goofy and have to fight possessed Riku in that little arena, was a crazy difficulty spike for me.

what is especially frustrating about that part is, if you "die", you have to watch that damn cutscene all over again, bloody annoying as hell and breaks your combat momentum.

Exactly! By the time I beat him I had that cutscene pretty well memorized.

 

[gorfias]

Lol...it [Alice: Madness Returns] was hard on easy? I thought i was bashing my head against a brick wall on some sections because i hadn't played on easy to get all the upgrades before attempting the hard run. The game has gone up some more in my estimation

So, did you beat it? Did you use Keyboard and Mouse or Controller?

As noted in other posts: some games are just hard. This is more about a spike in difficulty.

I'm pretty lousy at this stuff, much as I love it. Another one that spiked for me: Crysis 3. I'm walking around taking out bad guys, picking up big weapons and blowing up stuff. Now I'm in some jungle, surrounded by snipers who, if I somehow kill them all, I still have to contend with turrets that pop out of the ground and appear indestructible. Man I need cheats!

 

[ayylamao]

Off the top of my head I can think of Olympus Heights in Bioshock 1, I recall everything just going bullet-spongey from there, and I ran into some literally impossible hacks (as in, the end is blocked by 2 overloads).

 

[barbzilla]

Psychonauts's Meat Circus is a good one.

Hope you got a hang of that platforming, cause the safety net's on fire, the water is rising, and you can't swim.

Alice Madness Returns. It is gorgeous, but even with cheats, many reviewers have noted: this game, on easy, is still fricken hard!!! That difficulty is ruining the experience that would otherwise be great!

I don't think the style of combat was necessarily too difficult, but enemy health bars really become a time sink after a while. I had it on easy mode within half an hour of the bigger monsters being introduced.

Same here, with the infinite teleport dodge thing, the combat was easy enough, but dear god did it drag on sometimes. I suppose if you were more offensively minded, there may be some difficulty issues. The game was still beautiful and brilliant though, and it came with the complete first game (which was an amazing gem of a game if you aren't too worried about graphics).

As for my personal difficulty spike issue... Super Contra! The last two levels sucked so much that I ended up wrecking my controller (only time that has ever happened, and it wasn't from being tossed, I was just so pissed that I torked the plastic with my hands).