Difficulty spikes!

[x434343]

I'm a fan of tracing difficulty spikes in games.

In Modern Warfare 2, their method of increasing the difficulty, temporarily, was eliminating electronic equipment. Works well with the story.

In BioShock 2, the difficulty... tanks. With the Big Sister Plasmid, you'll be begging to fire your weapons, rather than beggin for ammo.

Meanwhile, many difficulty spikes tend to suck as they're basically "Introduce new enemy" or "bump up old enemy's health".

 

[SturmDolch]

I love it when games ratchet up the difficulty just for the last level/mission/boss. It makes the game feel so worth it and it really doesn't sour the experience at all. I mean, I love having to quit some games since I can't beat the last level at all. It's so great! And I'm totally not being sarcastic at all.

Why do some developers insist on this? All it is is frustrating. If I set the difficulty to medium, I think it should be medium through the whole game, not uber-insane-werewolf on the last mission.

I'm playing the last mission on Mafia II. Without going into spoilers, you have to face a literal army of bads without any health items on the way. The autosaves, and there are only autosaves, are spaced out once every three firefights. That means that if you die on the last guy at the end of the third firefight, you have to subject yourself to the same agonizing torture to get to the last one again. And it's hardly possible to "play it smart" when the enemy rushes you with three guys carrying shotguns and Thompsons.

It was like this in the original Mafia, too. The last boss had a ridiculous amount of health and was surrounded by a billion mobsters as well.

I don't get it. The rest of the game had a medium difficulty, just like the word "medium" implied when I selected it on the start. Now it's stupid hard. I'll be able to beat it eventually, through sheer will, luck, and determination, but I picked medium for a reason and that is to play the game on medium. I'm just repeating myself now.

Of course, there are other extremes like in Bioshock where the last boss was easier than facing down three Big Daddies at once.

 

[MetalDooley]

Most recent one I encountered was in Alpha Protocol.Everything was going well until I came up against the Russian mob boss Brakov(not sure about the spelling).Guy soaks up ridiculous amounts of bullets and grenades despite just being a regular unarmoured human being.Seriously shooting the guy point blank in the head has almost no effect on his health.If he hits you with his knife attack it takes about 1 third of your health no matter what kind of body armour you're wearing.He handed me my ass multiple times before I beat him

 

[BoogieManFL]

Of all the many, many... many.. Games I've played, Dragon Age: Origins stands out as one that has bad difficulty spikes. From boringly easy to stupidly hard.

Running into those Revenants at a low level sucked. That and I hate potion chugging mechanics in games.

World of WarCraft kinda does it too.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

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!

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I'm a fan of tracing difficulty spikes in games.

In Modern Warfare 2, their method of increasing the difficulty, temporarily, was eliminating electronic equipment. Works well with the story.

That was clever, but thier other difficulty spiking method... the dreaded timer... was not fun at all.

 

[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.