The Hardest Games You'll Ever Play (And Never Beat)

Pink Gregory

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Sigmund Av Volsung said:
I don't think its even that. I think the game has a reputation for being demanding(after all, the PC version is called "Prepare to Die", and the preceeding game, Demon's Souls was stupidly difficult at times), and its more of an outsider's perspective into the game.

The game can even become easy, once you have the right equipment and/or you have farmed souls for a decent amount of time.
It's annoying when people don't seem to want to talk about the design, the mechanics, the lore; nope, just the difficulty. Doing it a massive disservice, really.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

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Pink Gregory said:
Sigmund Av Volsung said:
I don't think its even that. I think the game has a reputation for being demanding(after all, the PC version is called "Prepare to Die", and the preceeding game, Demon's Souls was stupidly difficult at times), and its more of an outsider's perspective into the game.

The game can even become easy, once you have the right equipment and/or you have farmed souls for a decent amount of time.
It's annoying when people don't seem to want to talk about the design, the mechanics, the lore; nope, just the difficulty. Doing it a massive disservice, really.
Well, it has garnered FromSoftware a rather dedicated audience who will reliably buy all of their ventures, but I agree that the difficulty overshadows where the game truly shines.
 

Encaen

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phoenixlink said:
The original TMNT game on the nes with that damn electrcic seaweed. many rage qq tears
I may have simply blocked blocked that memory in its entirety, hence the exclusion here.

Issurru said:
A sense a disturbing lack of Battletoads, I'm slightly disappointed now :(

I also don't believe Dark Souls or any of the Souls games are really THAT hard. ANoyying, kinda but hard? eh not so much
There was actually some discussion of Battletoads around Escapist HQ, but for whatever reason, I didn't find it to be as difficult as my other inclusions here. Dark Souls was up for discussion as well, but we decided that a learning curve that steep counted, even if it did eventually level off in difficulty as you figured things out.
 

iniudan

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Tiamat666 said:
iniudan said:
Me I prefer Apocalypse, as it is the first one I played, the strategic map gameplay of the first two might be better, but tactical map and interface is so much better in Apocalypse, that I always had a hard time with the first two, even if I can see they are overall better game, due to better pacing mostly.
I tried Apocalypse once, but that mix between real time and turn based combat was confusing me, so I went back to TFTD. :D
I admit I didn't try very hard though. Maybe I will check it out sometime, and try to be more patient about it.
It not really mixed, you choose one or the other at the start of a tactical mission. Me I prefer real time, mostly due that I like going in with a big team, which make control less tedious, so I set up most teams in a defensive position to cover exit, then I use an assault team to sweep the building.


Real time also got the advantage of making you less susceptible to head crab and allow for better for defensive position (both due to real time reactive fire), but it make you weaker to enemy with actual firepower (as you will get shot a lot more), harder to capture alien (as they don't stop attacking and moving unlike turn based mode) and is more wasteful on ammo (which you can only purchase a limited amount each week, which can be a problem in a first few week, if not careful, especially since it much easier in turn based mode to switch magazine before they are fully spend, thus get a free refill back at base, instead of it been destroy).

Personally I also find real time make grenade much harder to use for take down, so they are better used as to flush out resistance, as much harder to time them correctly without giving enemies time to react.
 

GonzoGamer

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lol. All I saw was the title of this and the first thing I thought of was Ninja Gaiden 1.
Yea, TMNT was brutal too.
 

Slenn

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Nov 19, 2009
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For me, I always take the old adage from Ms. Frizzle: "Never say 'Never'!"

I say that because while I've never beaten the two hardest games I've ever played, Touhou 6 and 7, I don't think I can say I'll never beat them. I mean for instance, when I first started playing them I started out as "Ah, crap! How do I get around Cirno's ice vice-grip thing?" And then a month later of playing it, I got to the point where I got Remelia down to the last few pixels on her life bar with no continues before dying... on my last life. I was ridiculously close to beating that game and getting the good ending. Nowadays I don't tend to play the games as often as I used to. Part of it comes from the fact that my interests change, part of it is because the left key on my keyboard is missing, part of it is because it IS a hard genre, and part of it is because I like to enjoy the Touhou material outside of the games as well. But even after all of that, I can't say that I'll never beat the game.

As further evidence to this claim, I can say that a few months ago I tackled Touhou 6 a few times during my stay in New York. And this was the first time I had gone into the game in at least two years. Yet, after all that time (and a few practice rounds), I had an instance in which I got 2nd place on my high score on normal, and another instance where I got Remelia down to her last life bar.

So 1cc-ing Touhou 6 and 7 on normal with Reimu A are on my bucket list.
 

Sniper Team 4

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phoenixlink said:
The original TMNT game on the nes with that damn electrcic seaweed. many rage qq tears
Burn! Burn burn burn! Burn it all down. The console, the game, the freaking house! Purge that evil stuff from the face of the world!!!
Sorry, reliving childhood traumas. Surprisingly I did get past that stuff eventually, but then the game got even harder and I gave up completely.

Ah yes, the original Ninja Gaiden. I remember loving that game when I was kid. I loved the grapple throw that you could do (the guillotine throw as it's called) and smashing enemies through phone booths or boxes with it. Never did get very far though, because yeah that game was hard. Then I unlocked it on Ninja Gaiden Black, and with infinite lives, I went through and beat it finally.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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CaptainMarvelous said:
Silentpony said:
If you got six hours in and none of your equipment changed then at the very least you had to have more skill since the enemies just get stronger. Saying you didn't feel like you were making progress either means you kept wandering around the same area without advancing or you ignored ringing the bells and reaching new and horrible areas (Scenery wise, the shifts from Undead Burg to Blight town to the Forest are pretty vast)

o_O it's a very weird claim to seem so proud of is all
Well of course my equipment changed. But for all intents and purposes it might as well not have. Everything took dozens of hits to kill and everything one-hit killed me. Instead of me wearing leather armor and a skeleton killing me, six hours later I'm wearing chain armor and a larger skeleton is killing me. Things are different for a technical stand point, but not it an practical sense. The new equipment wasn't making the progress any easier. Like the larger skeletons still one-hit kill me irregardless of my armor, so why bother upgrading?!
 

Kinitawowi

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>Hardest Games From 90s To Now
>Ninja Gaiden (1988)

narf

I'll say the same thing I always say in these threads: SMASH TV. The arcade original on solo, not the bastardised 2-player SNES thing. That game is designed to be impossible.

The reason I constantly cite it as the hardest game ever is that it doesn't matter how much time you spend practising and playing, it never gets any easier. Ninja Gaiden is defined and mostly predictable; once you've run a level a few times you can learn it and pick where the enemies are going to come from, and then it's just a case of memorising the patterns. (Ditto most games cited as "incredibly hard" these days.) Jet Set Willy on the ol' Spectrum is damn hard, because even once you've memorised the pattern it's still a ***** to execute it (some of the jumps around The Yacht are literally pixel perfect; the infamous Banyan Tree can be pixelled through without too much difficulty as well). Those famous Mushi shooters are also about precision execution of a pattern; but the key word is pattern. You can learn it, and memorise it.

Smash TV does none of that. While many of the waves are structured, either sequentially or on timers, the challenge in that game comes from sheer volume of enemies; however you do it, you'll never find a safe spot to park up and turret from. Hiding in the corners will get you overwhelmed; you can never tell which doorways are safe to boot it past at any point. You can't learn the game; you have to adapt to every new challenge it throws at you, and it throws a lot. Of varying degrees of cheapness. Yes, it's meant to eat coins. Doesn't stop it being the hardest game I've ever played.

(The home system version of TMHT I've seen mentioned a few times? Never found it that difficult; I completed it fairly readily on my Amstrad. Again, just memorise the maps.)
 

Guffe

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I've never been able to get to the credits scene of Tetris :,(
That game is hard as hell!
 

major_chaos

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Silentpony said:
Well of course my equipment changed. But for all intents and purposes it might as well not have. Everything took dozens of hits to kill and everything one-hit killed me.
You are either lying, or playing the game profoundly wrong. Not even the strongest bosses should ever one shot you, and I don't remember anything besides bosses and minibosses taking more than a few hits to kill.

OT: yea, no. I love Dark Souls but it doesn't belong on this list. DKS isn't really even a hard game, its a game that demands a lot and tells you very little. Once you overcome the vertical learning curve its only moderately challenging outside of a few bullshit areas (fuuuuuuck Anor Londo, fuck TOTG and fuck Lost Izalith).
 

Poetic Nova

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Charcharo said:
This list is missing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky.

Sorry. It aint complete. That thing, was harder then Demons Souls.
... and I am a pretty damn good PC FPS player and not a huge console RPG fan :p ...


Or STALKER MISERY on Dark Road Difficulty...

Damn...damn... damn...
I never finished CS due to it's buggyness. From unique items loosing their unique property's at level changes to badly implemented graphical features.

I guess Ikaruga counts, I own it but couldn't gett far into it. It might be easier than I remember though so I oculd be wrong.
 

Fat Hippo

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Silentpony said:
CaptainMarvelous said:
Silentpony said:
If you got six hours in and none of your equipment changed then at the very least you had to have more skill since the enemies just get stronger. Saying you didn't feel like you were making progress either means you kept wandering around the same area without advancing or you ignored ringing the bells and reaching new and horrible areas (Scenery wise, the shifts from Undead Burg to Blight town to the Forest are pretty vast)

o_O it's a very weird claim to seem so proud of is all
Well of course my equipment changed. But for all intents and purposes it might as well not have. Everything took dozens of hits to kill and everything one-hit killed me. Instead of me wearing leather armor and a skeleton killing me, six hours later I'm wearing chain armor and a larger skeleton is killing me. Things are different for a technical stand point, but not it an practical sense. The new equipment wasn't making the progress any easier. Like the larger skeletons still one-hit kill me irregardless of my armor, so why bother upgrading?!
Oh boy, sounds like you made THE classic Dark Souls mistake and went to the Catacombs instead of the Undead Burg first. At least, that's my only explanation, unless you were simply trying to kill everything with a broken sword hilt, hardly ANY enemy in the game should ever need dozens of hits aside from bosses.
 

Poetic Nova

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Charcharo said:
0takuMetalhead said:
Charcharo said:
This list is missing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky.

Sorry. It aint complete. That thing, was harder then Demons Souls.
... and I am a pretty damn good PC FPS player and not a huge console RPG fan :p ...


Or STALKER MISERY on Dark Road Difficulty...

Damn...damn... damn...
I never finished CS due to it's buggyness. From unique items loosing their unique property's at level changes to badly implemented graphical features.

I guess Ikaruga counts, I own it but couldn't gett far into it. It might be easier than I remember though so I oculd be wrong.
Tis a fact its buggy as all hell.
But have you tried it patched? It works well that way. If only it was released that way ...
Still, it counts. Its quite a bit harder then Demons Souls.
Did that, fixed most issues but those damn godrays, couldn't disable them either without changing the settings in the config file.
Talking about difficulty in Stalker, I find it silly that SoC is easier on higher settings. Played it 2 times on medium, half the time getting my ass kicked and now have a run going on the highest difficulty without failing much at all. Friendly A.I. took a lesson in derp though it seems.
 

Poetic Nova

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Charcharo said:
0takuMetalhead said:
Charcharo said:
0takuMetalhead said:
Charcharo said:
This list is missing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky.

Sorry. It aint complete. That thing, was harder then Demons Souls.
... and I am a pretty damn good PC FPS player and not a huge console RPG fan :p ...


Or STALKER MISERY on Dark Road Difficulty...

Damn...damn... damn...
I never finished CS due to it's buggyness. From unique items loosing their unique property's at level changes to badly implemented graphical features.

I guess Ikaruga counts, I own it but couldn't gett far into it. It might be easier than I remember though so I oculd be wrong.
Tis a fact its buggy as all hell.
But have you tried it patched? It works well that way. If only it was released that way ...
Still, it counts. Its quite a bit harder then Demons Souls.
Did that, fixed most issues but those damn godrays, couldn't disable them either without changing the settings in the config file.
Talking about difficulty in Stalker, I find it silly that SoC is easier on higher settings. Played it 2 times on medium, half the time getting my ass kicked and now have a run going on the highest difficulty without failing much at all. Friendly A.I. took a lesson in derp though it seems.
Well, apart from 1.5.10 I can only recommend you try Sky Reclamation Project. If you are interested, I may give you the currently best version.
I am currently testing the new one.
SRP is basically an unoficial patch. A DAMN good one :).

As for the difficulty, well its the same in Metro too. Higher difficulty = more dangerous weapons.
Friendly AI is exactly the same as enemy AI. So are their statistics.
Don't have CS installed now, have to many games I'm currently playing. But I'll keep it in mind.
I run SoC with the Zone Reclamation Project, love all the tweaks it does to the game plus the fact that you can turn on and off various settings to make it more to your liking. I thought SoC had it's difficulty balancing screwed up or something, ohwell.

I never found Metro hard, well except for that one part later on in the game. Beated it multiple times on ranger hardcore, same goes for Last Light.
 

Ryallen

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Divinity II. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Divinity II. It's a decent game all in all, but it is cheap as shit. Around 3 hours into the game, when you have to go see a Dragon King, or something, I ended up just running through the larger groups of enemies because they were not balanced at all in accordance to my level. I completed every quest that I could, and I still ended up using all of my potions and still dying within 10 seconds. That probably had something to do with the armor that I had, but that's just another complaint that I could level at it: it was near impossible to get good equipment. At level 8, I was using an ax that I found at level 2. The armor I was using I had had since the beginning of the game. I had to leave the area, go to the nearby town, buy good equipment, and come back, and things were slightly easier.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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major_chaos said:
Silentpony said:
You are either lying, or playing the game profoundly wrong. Not even the strongest bosses should ever one shot you, and I don't remember anything besides bosses and minibosses taking more than a few hits to kill.

OT: yea, no. I love Dark Souls but it doesn't belong on this list. DKS isn't really even a hard game, its a game that demands a lot and tells you very little. Once you overcome the vertical learning curve its only moderately challenging outside of a few bullshit areas (fuuuuuuck Anor Londo, fuck TOTG and fuck Lost Izalith).
Not entirely sure what you want from me. The skeleton archers one-shot kill me from across the castle. The skeletons hiding behind corners one-shot kill me when I see them. The giant knight with the sword one-shot kills me. The fire-breathing dragon one-shot kills me. The zombies - to be fair - don't one-shot kill, they just don't die. Ever. Oh! And don't even get me started on those regenerating skeletons.
So can't help you, mate. We apparently played two different games. But the game you played sounds fun! Can't wait to find out what it was. Maybe Dark Souls 2? I hear its easier, though I couldn't care less...
 

gonzo20

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Silentpony said:
major_chaos said:
Silentpony said:
You are either lying, or playing the game profoundly wrong. Not even the strongest bosses should ever one shot you, and I don't remember anything besides bosses and minibosses taking more than a few hits to kill.

OT: yea, no. I love Dark Souls but it doesn't belong on this list. DKS isn't really even a hard game, its a game that demands a lot and tells you very little. Once you overcome the vertical learning curve its only moderately challenging outside of a few bullshit areas (fuuuuuuck Anor Londo, fuck TOTG and fuck Lost Izalith).
Not entirely sure what you want from me. The skeleton archers one-shot kill me from across the castle. The skeletons hiding behind corners one-shot kill me when I see them. The giant knight with the sword one-shot kills me. The fire-breathing dragon one-shot kills me. The zombies - to be fair - don't one-shot kill, they just don't die. Ever. Oh! And don't even get me started on those regenerating skeletons.
So can't help you, mate. We apparently played two different games. But the game you played sounds fun! Can't wait to find out what it was. Maybe Dark Souls 2? I hear its easier, though I couldn't care less...
what class did you choose? i really cant remember getting one shotted apart from falling and it really shouldnt take you that many hits to kill a guy, you can easily sidestep or block most damage with a good sheild, just go for backstabs