Games that ramped up difficulty and dang near destroyed the experience

[gorfias]

I'm playing Arkham City with a buddy (we take turns: one drinks, the other controls, etc.) and we like fairly casual games.

I think we're at the end of Arkham City and the thing is close to GOTY for me (Saints Row 3 wins though) excpet that, all of a sudden, it's damn near impossible. We're (Batman is) facing a bunch o snipers. I slowly took out a number of them, and then the thing aparantly had a time limit, saved the game automatically, and the next go round gave less and less time! You would think they'd realize, gamer failed, make it easier! This game, so close to the end, may go unfinished. We just gave up for now and started Force Unleashed 2, a game criticized as too easy (no such thing).

Ever run into a situation like this?

Any advice about Batman?

 

[ChupathingyX]

Well I was actually kind of enjoying Crash Bash up until relics start getting introduced.

Supposadly, what they do is replace some of the people with the mini games "champion". Of course all this means is that some characters get replaced and now all of the AI opponents will go for you, only for you and will not stop attacking you until you have lost.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Jagged Alliance 2 gets irritatingly difficult as the campaign wears on. The consequences for failure are simply enormous (single shots can kill), and one bad move tends to snowball into another, so you need either to play with almost prescient awareness, or you need to liberally abuse save/load.

Fantasy General starts out fun, becomes rigorously difficult, and then veers sharply into OMG WHY ME towards the end. Every few years or so I dust it off, thinking I'll apply my increased experience and finally master it. And I get a certain way in, and think "this isn't so bad, I finally have the upper hand", and then hit the same horrible wall, think "oh yes...I remember", and uninstall.

 

[MuzzleFlash]

Dropship: United Peace Force.

The last two/three missions were impossible.

 

[srm79]

Dropship: United Peace Force.

The last two/three missions were impossible.

FUUUUUUUU-

Damn you, Sir. My brain had suppressed all memories of the last couple of missions of that game.

It was a fucking awesome game in it's day, looked and played superb. Great fun and a lot of variety too, and then just...I....those....missions....AAAAARGH!!!!

 

[MetalDooley]

Warhammer:Battle March

Now I'll admit I'm no great shakes at RTS games but I managed to work my way through the Empire campaign on normal difficulty and was enjoying it until the final battle.Suddenly the game just ramped up the difficulty to ridiculous levels and I repeatedly got my ass handed to me.Annoyingly too there's no checkpoints which means you have to restart from the start every time and considering you can easily be 25+ mins into a battle before defeat it's a pain in the ass having to go back to the beginning.Hell I even tried dropping the difficulty to easy and still couldn't beat the damn thing.It remains on my shelf unbeaten to this day

 

[Esotera]

Halo 2 on Legendary...my God.

Also, in Mass Effect the fight with Lady Benezia was incredibly hard considering it was one of the first missions. I must have done that same fight scene about 50 times over.

 

[gorfias]

Dropship: United Peace Force.

The last two/three missions were impossible.

FUUUUUUUU-

Damn you, Sir. My brain had suppressed all memories of the last couple of missions of that game.

It was a fucking awesome game in it's day, looked and played superb. Great fun and a lot of variety too, and then just...I....those....missions....AAAAARGH!!!!

You guys got me so curious about this, I'll have to check it out just to punish myself!

 

[Riki Darnell]

Well Guitar Hero 3 I was playing on Hard but even Hard on GH3 is more like Medium....UNTIL you get to the metal songs! Dear God my friend and I tried for hours to beat Raining Blood and Before I Forget and still never got past it.

 

[krazykidd]

But isn't difficulty suppose to increase as a game goes on? Are you suppose to get better at the game the more you play? Theres no such thing as too easy? What?

OT: i want to say GH3 like the above poster , but metal songs are really hard to play IRL so i'll give that a pass . There are currently two games in my library that i have trouble with difficulty wise , now the problem is , i don't know if it's because it's difficult or because i'm stupid, but i'll tell you anyways . Agrest war: zero and resonance of fate . Now i like hard games , i'm a gaming masochist, i usually start game on the hardest difficulty if given the option, but those two games gave me trouble ( i didn't get very far) and they don't have difdiculty settings . You have NO IDEA , how bad i felt about that . I felt like a failure as a gamer , i will go back to them , i REFUSE to let a game beat me . But not now 'kay * goes and cries in a corner*

 

[Neverhoodian]

Halo 2 on Legendary...my God.

Ugh, don't remind me. I remember trying to play co-op on Legendary with one of my friends. Our experience went something like this:

"Okay, here we-" *Sniped*
"Let's try this agai-" *Sniped*
"Any ide-" *Sniped*
"Those goddamn Jackal sni-" *Sniped*

*70 checkpoint reloads later*

"Screw this, let's play something e-" *Sniped*

I have actually never finished Psychonauts because of the "Meat Circus" level. It's a shame too, because I was really enjoying it prior to that.

 

[Swyftstar]

As far as advice on Batman, just scope out the area and make sure you take out the snipers that are in no one else's field of vision. It took me two tries, I never noticed the time allottment decreasing. You may be rushing a bit because you see the end of the game looming and it is making you anxious.

 

[Dagnius]

Final Fantasy XII. But to me, it DID destroy the Experience. I loved the game up until I got to a point to where I was getting face-rolled by a boss. You might say "Oh, well duh you're going to get stuck on bosses eventually in RPGs and have to level up a bit!" Well, I Spent the majority of TWO days grinding up to where it was just taking too long to level in my area and the next. I decide to fight the boss again, utterly DESTROYED it, then move on. Next boss: I get smashed. Basically three 'screens' past the last boss and I'd have to spend almost the same amount of time grinding as I did before. I'll get back to it eventually but after like five tries I stopped. Haven't touched it since.

EDIT: I decided to plug in my PS2 this morning and give that boss another try after several months of not playing. The boss is called Elder Wyrm in the Golmore Jungle, right after Tiamat. I see now as to why I got fed up with the fight and stopped. The boss does an ability called "Sporefall" or something similar that puts almost (if not,) EVERY status Ailment on All characters.

I did manage to beat it in one try, however. No, wait it was two tries, the first one I just soft-reset the game when I only managed a three-hit Quckening via bad luck. Unfortunately my strategy to beat this boss was keeping everyone at least above half HP and use my ethers to allow for quickenings or a summon. I'll probably regret using all of those ethers later but I really enjoy the game and didn't want to be stuck on that boss forever lol.

 

[Discordius Erisianus]

Final Fantasy XII. But to me, it DID destroy the Experience. I loved the game up until I got to a point to where I was getting face-rolled by a boss. You might say "Oh, well duh you're going to get stuck on bosses eventually in RPGs and have to level up a bit!" Well, I Spent the majority of TWO days grinding up to where it was just taking too long to level in my area and the next. I decide to fight the boss again, utterly DESTROYED it, then move on. Next boss: I get smashed. Basically three 'screens' past the last boss and I'd have to spend almost the same amount of time grinding as I did before. I'll get back to it eventually but after like five tries I stopped. Haven't touched it since.

That really didn't happen to me. While the game is certainly made for you to grind, you can actually ignore this need. I only ever suffered of this problem because I had read a guide that basically told me I shouldn't update my equipment often.

This is certainly strange with storyline bosses. They generally do have some status vulnerability to exploit that makes them easier. At least SLOW works on many.

 

[RJ 17]

I'm playing Arkham City with a buddy (we take turns: one drinks, the other controls, etc.) and we like fairly casual games.

I think we're at the end of Arkham City and the thing is close to GOTY for me (Saints Row 3 wins though) excpet that, all of a sudden, it's damn near impossible. We're (Batman is) facing a bunch o snipers. I slowly took out a number of them, and then the thing aparantly had a time limit, saved the game automatically, and the next go round gave less and less time! You would think they'd realize, gamer failed, make it easier! This game, so close to the end, may go unfinished. We just gave up for now and started Force Unleashed 2, a game criticized as too easy (no such thing).

Ever run into a situation like this?

Any advice about Batman?

Ooooooo you are indeed at the very end! Nothing left but the final boss fight! Oh, and of course getting past the snipers.

But yeah, as one person said two posts above me: you might be rushing it a bit. Don't think I ever played it on hard, but I did beat it on normal and on new game + (which is much harder than normal) and I'm not certain there actually is a time limit. Joker's taunting you about killing his hostage, but he won't actually kill her, he'll just drag her in the building once you actually get close to where he is. Take your time, scope out your targets, watch those laser-sights, and you should be able to 100% Bat-Ninja the snipers one by one.

As for games that became retardedly difficult...anyone remember Battletoads? The frickin' Hover Bike level?! Good god! Even after I grew up and downloaded that game as a rom, I could STILL never get past that part, and it's like the 2nd frickin' lvl!

Oblivion's difficulty was really stupid if you didn't use game-breaking combinations of enchantments/skills/stealth/magic.

Seriously, on max difficulty Dread Zombies have like 10000000 hp, and you consistently run into BANDITS (as in people so poor they take to thievery for a living) who have legendary armor/weapons. Wtf?

Yeah, if you played Oblivion without the dupe-trick, you were in for a very...VERY rough ride. Especially once you start going through the Oblivion gates. Apparently Daedra aren't particularly fond of visitors...

Halo 2 on Legendary...my God.

Also, in Mass Effect the fight with Lady Benezia was incredibly hard considering it was one of the first missions. I must have done that same fight scene about 50 times over.

Can't say I had much problem killing Councilor Troy---errrr, Lady Benezia. But then again, I never left the ship unless I had 1 person with AI Hacking and another with Singularity or Lift.

 

[Esotera]

Halo 2 on Legendary...my God.

Also, in Mass Effect the fight with Lady Benezia was incredibly hard considering it was one of the first missions. I must have done that same fight scene about 50 times over.

Can't say I had much problem killing Councilor Troy---errrr, Lady Benezia. But then again, I never left the ship unless I had 1 person with AI Hacking and another with Singularity or Lift.

Well on my first playthrough I tried to do it like an FPS as I wasn't really that educated on how the game worked..it was also on the highest difficulty. So yeah, I died a lot! It's still the hardest part of the game even with biotic & tech powers, apart from maybe the final boss battle with Saren.

 

[kasperbbs]

Can't think of anything else except da, as soon as i opened the doors a couple of games wiped out my whole party with fire balls, first time you get hit you fall on your ass and then just wait for them to finish off your gang since you can't really do anything while lying on the ground admiring the ceiling.

 

[RJ 17]

Halo 2 on Legendary...my God.

Also, in Mass Effect the fight with Lady Benezia was incredibly hard considering it was one of the first missions. I must have done that same fight scene about 50 times over.

Can't say I had much problem killing Councilor Troy---errrr, Lady Benezia. But then again, I never left the ship unless I had 1 person with AI Hacking and another with Singularity or Lift.

Well on my first playthrough I tried to do it like an FPS as I wasn't really that educated on how the game worked..it was also on the highest difficulty. So yeah, I died a lot! It's still the hardest part of the game even with biotic & tech powers, apart from maybe the final boss battle with Saren.

Ahhhh. Yeah, in that case I can definitely see how it would have been very difficult for you. I always just ran around to the catwalk that's directly behind the platform she's standing on and shot the geth/asari as they came around the corners. It was tough, but over all never bothered me much. What I found to be difficult was infiltrating Saren's compound on Virmire (where you set off a nuke) on Insane difficulty. That and climbing the Citidel to make it to the final boss on Insane difficulty. Frickin' Krogan were TOUGH!