Difficulty spikes!

[Riddle78]

The Legend of Dragoon had one helluva difficulty spike,starting half way through the second disc. To the people who've played the game,I'll just say one word.
Lenus.
Or how about earlier? Disc one final boss,when the battle reaches stage II.
Emperor Doel.
The second example is only temporary;Doel's tough,but after fighting him,the game tones it down a bit. But with Lenus? Good luck!
When you fight her the first time (second time is a cakewalk) she has the possibility to take up to SEVEN CONSECUTIVE TURNS. And she has a fairly high PhysAtk stat. But what's worse? She's one of the few bosses in the game that have magic,and use it with devestating effect. Her MagAtk is her highest stat,and she WILL exploit it. She has a spell called "Black Rain" which can hit your entire party for darkness damage. The kicker? Most spells in The Legend of Dragoon can be CHARGED UP with button mashing. Bosses have a nasty habit of charging their magic to the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM of 350%,which delivers daage as such:
(MagAtk of Lenus)*3.5*(2 against Light elemental victim like Shana)/(2 against Dark elemental victim like Rose)/(MagDef of victim/100).
By this point in the game,you're probably level seventeen. There are very few affordable items that raise your magic defense by much,and even fewer can be found by that point in the game. Also,after fighting Lenus,the game puts you through the rest of the game against basic enemies and bosses that just LOVE to use magic against you. Good luck getting the insane amount of gold required for three Legend Casques,which jack up your MagDef,without becoming a horrendously overpowered freak who can take down the endboss in five turns.

 

[Distorted Stu]

The S.K.A.T.E zero battle at the end of skate 2. TAKING THE FUCKING PISS.

 

[-Seraph-]

Chaos; the final boss in Dissidia Final Fantasy. The story mode was sunshine and rainbows until this guy showed up. Stayed up all night trying to beat the cheap bastard and I failed miserably on every single attempt. UUGGHHH.

Muwahahahaha oh boy is he a tough one....well sorta. Were you fighting his lvl 40 incarnation from the normal story, his lvl 110 from the bonus dungeon Shade Impulse, or in duel Colosseum? His story mode version isn't that difficult, especially if you got a lvl 100 character ready.

Now his Shade Impulse form is a true taste of how frustrating and hard he can be. And then there is his lvl 130-150 form which you can only fight in the black jack course of duel Colosseum; and those are truly nightmarish battles, even if you decide to go the cheap route and use EX-Death.

And i totally blame his annoying ass Shinryuu summon for all that frustration, damn that easily exploitable summon to hell!

 

[Caligulove]

*I actually thought the section of Nova Prospekt where you had to defend yourself with turrets (for the second time) was ridiculously frustrating. Turrets constantly falling over and took a few times dying to get their patterns down, and even then it was pretty annoying.

Personally, I think that any time The Flood show up in a Halo game, the dynamic changes suddenly where you're not ready for it, and while it is a good challenge, sometimes (like Halo 3 Legendary) Levels like 'Cortana' and the constant waves of those 'pure' forms turn the level into a painstaking process of chipping away at the level, barely getting through it.

 

[voetballeeuw]

Definately Dragon Age: Origins. When you had to complete a Paragon of Her Kind, it took forever and I died so many times. It got easier after I had made a couple of characters but still.

 

[Ace of Spades]

The mission Freefall in GTA San Andreas on PC. I still haven't gotten past it.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

The mission Freefall in GTA San Andreas on PC. I still haven't gotten past it.

Any mission in that game involving planes was horrible.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[Chancie]

Resonance of Fate. That game kinda punched the player in the face at the beginning, but then you figured it all out and it was pretty easy. Until you reach Chapter 14. Freaking chapter 14, where the game suddenly stops being "nice" (you can never call that game's difficulty "nice") and just ***** slaps you.

20 hours of leveling and recustomizing my guns later, I finally made it through was and able to go on to beat the game.

And also, Final Fantasy XII. That whole game's difficulty is a roller coaster. I finally got stuck somewhere in the middle at some ice boss in a dungeon...or something. At that point, despite loving the game, I gave up and said it wasn't worth sacrificing my blood pressure.

 

[Top35]

Psychonauts has a well documented case of this. The first half is easy, but still brilliant, and then there's that sudden huge spike in difficulty. With controls as imprecise as that, it's quite frustrating.

Also, CoD 4. The Pripyat mission, with the end of level defence. It was going so well up to that point.

Damn the meat circus in psychonauts, everything was going fine until then and BAM!

 

[Top35]

Once you get past Horizon and the first Collector ship you'll be fine, those 2 are the hardest by far. Oh and Tali's recruitment is pretty tough at the end.

Thanks for the advice.

I was one of the few people to find COD:WAW on Veteran pretty simple and easy. I should be fine.

I'm just worried about Scions. They were a ***** on the first play.

Yeah those guys are the worst.... remember if you're behind high cover and out of thier line of sight they won't grounp pound you, low cover is useless against em.

Oh, and kite the husks!

Best advice for husks is to have someone with shockwave with you, that's probably one of the best crowd control moves for that situation.

 

[Salem_Wolf]

I'm probably going to get some hell for this but...

Iron Man, the video game. It wasn't a horrible abomination, and it wasn't overly difficult until you had to save Pepper Potts in that one terrifyingly almost impossible mission. Okay, so the game wasn't that great but it was fun for the cheap price I got it for, couldn't ask for too much more than that, and considering I knew it would suck and it didn't suck as much as I thought, my expectations were met or exceeded, you could say.

In the realm of non-crappy games, I would have to say Uncharted 1, everything was fine until the damn creatures in the boat came about, and then I was ready to break the damn disc. Sure I might've died but it was mostly idiotic mistakes -I- made, and then those...creatures. Augh! I would love to replay the game but I know I have to contend with those pricks!

Another game? Mirror's Edge, yes I loved the game, and then you're trapped in this one room with every cop under the friggin' city trying to shoot you, and I couldn't get the trophy for not firing shots because I couldn't PASS the friggin' mission without shooting all the cops dead. Man, everything was so easy up until then. Maybe I just suck. >_<

 

[Salem_Wolf]

Singularity. the first enemy you encounter jumps out of F***ing NOWHERE and starts to rip you're guts out. you only have a pistol when you encounter him, he takes about 1/8 of your health away with each strike (attacks roughly every 0.5 seconds), and you can't move because he's standing on you. oh, and it took about 1 1/2 clips of ammo to kill him because the pistol in singularity is totally weaksauce. took 2 tries to get past that bastard.

Seconded. The entire beginning until you get the TMD is a pain in the ass because of the weak weapons, lack of ammo and especially as you had to use liquid nitrogen to freeze those creatures as you got nearer to the TMD? I nearly quit the game before I even -ACQUIRED- the TMD because it was so damn difficult for me, and I was playing on NORMAL, I like to think I don't suck -THAT- bad.

 

[Something Amyss]

Dragon Age, I found most of the game pretty decent in difficulty but when they randomly throw in Blood Mages... that bit outside Fort Drakon was an absolute beast too.

similarly, but on a different note, I found the part where you enter the Fade alone to be so frustrating I just gave up. It went from a squad RPG with tactical elements to a solo RPG where you had to make the right steps in order. I beat it, but after that, the game kind of lost a lot of luster to me.

 

[scorptatious]

The final boss of Final Fantasy IX. I've recently beaten this game, but not before having to take out this guy. I was kind of pissed too, because if I lost to him, I had to face Trance Kuja again, who is piss easy compared to him. He's really fast, his attacks include one that drops one of your party member's HP to 1, and one where he casts this really flashy attack called "Grand Cross" which inflicts several random status ailments on your party. Some of them you cannot protect yourself from, mini, slow, zombie, and DEATH. By the time I was able to get my party back in fighting shape after that, he casts it AGAIN.

He took me several tries, and I finally got him by having Steiner, who entered Trance mode, wail away at him. When I finally defeated him, I was shouting and yelling obscenities at the television. Thankfully my parents weren't home. >_>

Another difficulty spike I experienced recently was the Cerberus/satyr fight in God of War 3 on Titan mode. God... fucking...damn. The dogs...the exploding dogs...

 

[Legendairy314]

Latest: Was replaying Halo on the second hardest difficulty. On the second to last level you reach a certain point and are then assaulted by 3 huge waves of flood. Afterwards you open a door and are introduced to a new elite type that kills you in 5 shots. Oh and there's 3 of them with some rocket launcher grunts giving them back up. You died? Well enjoy going through those 3 waves of enemies again as well as re-opening the door.

Most Memorable: Mirror's Edge. I walked into a room with 7 fully armed bad guys and no idea where to go. I try and think for a single second and am met with a 10 second reload. I returned the game shortly after.

 

[Korolev]

"Takedown" in MW2 - that level got my blood boiling. Oh and Call of Duty: World at War, any time the enemies decided to throw grenades at you was rather annoying.

And let's not forget Uncharted 2 and the blue-guys. Although that was towards the end of the game, so you might not consider it a spike.

Oh and then there's that Rainbow Six Vegas 2, where you had to quietly kill those guys before descending to defuse the bomb. It wasn't that hard if you knew there was a silenced sniper rifle, but otherwise, it was quite difficult and took me about 7 tries to get through it. Yeah, I'm not good at aiming with analogue sticks.

And as Yahtzee said once, some early parts in Halo 3 were far more difficult than any point of the last few levels. In particular, in the second level, there's a room full of tough enemies, one of which has a large hammer that can easily kill you. It took me a good long while to get past that part on Heroic. But the rest of the level is really easy.

I don't really have a problem with difficulty spikes, as long as they don't occur too often.

 

[TheColdHeart]

The meteor part of Dead Space had me raging a fair few times, it was probably the only part of the game where I really struggled to get through.

The end of the sniping mission in COD 4 in the Pripyat funfair...I died so many times playing that I started playing with sound muted as I was getting sick of the sound when you died.

Prototype, started out good and was fairly enjoyable then bam...difficulty spike. I gave up playing as instead of doing missions I spent all my time avoiding hunters and strike teams.

Need For Speed Pro Street had a fairly steep curve too, I went from 1st placing races and events to being left for dust especially in the drags.

 

[Korolev]

The final boss of Final Fantasy IX. I've recently beaten this game, but not before having to take out this guy. I was kind of pissed too, because if I lost to him, I had to face Trance Kuja again, who is piss easy compared to him. He's really fast, his attacks include one that drops one of your party member's HP to 1, and one where he casts this really flashy attack called "Grand Cross" which inflicts several random status ailments on your party. Some of them you cannot protect yourself from, mini, slow, zombie, and DEATH. By the time I was able to get my party back in fighting shape after that, he casts it AGAIN.

He took me several tries, and I finally got him by having Steiner, who entered Trance mode, wail away at him. When I finally defeated him, I was shouting and yelling obscenities at the television. Thankfully my parents weren't home. >_>

Another difficulty spike I experienced recently was the Cerberus/satyr fight in God of War 3 on Titan mode. God... fucking...damn. The dogs...the exploding dogs...

Oh god - Necron. That's brought back unpleasant memories.