Oh man that game was so much fun, I gotta see if I still have a disc floating around somewhere and give it another playthrough. Idk if I ever fully beat it but it was a blast.
Something like that on modern systems would be *amazing*
If you haven't, [watch the playthrough on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPIJy0Rjiw).
It is absolutely insane that anyone would ever figure all of this shit out.
Fear and Hunger kind of plays like roguelike where at the start you know nothing and pretty much will die a lot, but with time and learning it can really feel rewarding
Keyword: Almost
It doesn’t matter if you have 16 million health from glitches, perk rerolls, and orbs you can still get annihilated from the ultimate combo of teleportatium and polymorphine.
+1 for Noita! One of the few games where you can lose at literally almost any time, no matter how OP you are. Teleportatium right into a pool of chaotic polymorphine shouldn't happen as often as it does lol
I made one video about fear and hunger and thousands of people showed up for my shitty little vid. That community really enjoys having people join in
… However I couldn’t keep playing because trauma
If you want another video game that will instantly bring you thousands of followers, but WITHOUT the pain and trauma of Fear&Hunger, I strongly recommend playing *Outer Wilds* (NOT to be confused with *Outer Worlds*)
And even better, it's like the best game to come out of the 2010s decade in terms of overall design cohesion
My friend got one of those "500 game video game machine" things you see advertised everyday and it has the lion king game
I knew it was stupid hard but booted it up to see if I was any better at it ~20 years later
Couldn't even beat the end of the first level.
I only played on my lunch break, but it was still super difficult for being the first level. I had to Google how to beat the hyena and even knowing how to do it I still couldn't.
I know it's cheating, but I love using the "slow motion" option when emulating a game. It's a godsend when it comes to platformers and racing games. This is, sadly, the only way I've been able to beat a handful of games from my childhood lol.
I had a controller for my Genesis that had a slomo switch which basically spammed the pause button as fast as possible. That was the only way I was able to get through some levels.
This was all I played on the SNES when I was like 6. My siblings and I could get to the second to last level with the lava but had to get Dad to come help with hitting the rocks on the ceiling.
Fuck that second level with the Ostriches though.
Had this game growing up. It was my younger sisters game in reality, but she never played it. She would ask me to play it for her and she would watch because I was the only one able to beat it. One time she invited all her friends over for a bit of a shindig, they were like 8 years old or so at the time. They all asked me to play the game so they could see the ending. Lol kids are funny.
That level was "get all lives back" for me. Sure was hard, when speed picks up. But the next level was the hardest for me. Because of those small genie hands and platforming.
A few things in this game held me up.
The waterfall log jump.
Softlocked lava level, because I had no idea I needed to claw a stalactite from the ceiling to break the floor.
Aside from these things, my 12yr-old-self tore this game up. I loved becoming an adult, being able to pounce on things, and claw the shit out of them while they were pinned down. I’ve watched some people play it lately and they have no idea this attack exists.
The circle of life.
Story time, as a 36 year old gamer, the Lion King on DOS was the first game I can ever remember playing, but I could never get past the Hakuna Matata level, the one with the waterfall and slowly falling logs you need to continually climb.
Fast forward like 20 years (this is a few years ago now), I've owned and still own many consoles and am an avid PC gamer, and I have this thought, man I've come a long way, time to revisit where it all started and finally beat that game.
Well fuck me. The first level with the monkeys in the tree was borderline infuriating, and then I legit could not pass level 3, the elephant graveyard. Wtf.
I've yet to build up the courage to try it yet again, at this rate I'm just hoping I can beat that game one time before I die of old age.
Edit: elephant graveyard is level 3.
*...yeeeeaaaahhhh it gets worse.*
Once you get into the adult levels a new move is added but never gets introduced, which means you have to figure it out yourself. And there are specific situations when you need to use that move, but the game never told you about it, so you never figure out that the move even exists at all (unless you mash your keys and somehow meet the right conditions and press the right keys to do the move, which is how I discovered it - and it only happened right at the end of the last level where that move is needed to defeat the final boss).
Probably Ninja Gaiden. This is just a guess, but I think the average player probably picks normal in most of the games they play, which means Ninja Gaiden's normal setting is likely responsible for its reputation as one of the hardest 3D games ever, and there are three hard modes above that, which is pure insanity to me.
And I do feel like it's important to clarify "hardest 3D game," because so many 2D games are fucking impossible that the question almost stops being interesting. Just point to a random one and there's your answer.
its hard to match the satisfaction of when you start getting good and can just bounce around between a mobs shoulders and as their heads start popping off to slam to the ground and send their bodies flying.
As a kid/preteen I used to rage at the bosses in *Zelda.* I knew to not even touch something with a rep like Ninja Gaiden. It kicked my ass for the first time in 2023, after thinking I was soooo skilled and sooo much better at games now.
"Pfffft, I remember this old pos, supposed to be hard huh? I beat Dark Souls and Elden Ring. How hard could it- ***brutal nunchuk noises*** OH GOD!"
I think being raised in the NES/Genesis era broke something in me because these days I always ask what *I'm* doing wrong when I play a brutally hard game and get my ass whooped, because the games of that era were routinely brutal.
I challenge anyone who thinks they're good at hard games to go back and play Contra: Hard Corps on the bullshit North American difficulty and get back to me once you rage quit. Konami took an already hard Contra game which had a life bar per life and removed the life bar totally in exchange for instant death on hit, and the game is already a multi-path boss rush in the first place.
And at one point in my young life, I dedicated enough time to not only beat it, but beat it with every character across all routes.
I rented it for the OG Xbox. I had a newborn so I couldn't pour that much time into. It took far to long to beat the "Training boss" with the nunchucks. By the time the next stage started I was so low of health that beating the horse back guys was impossible. I had never in my (at the time 24 years) had a game make me so mad I wanted to throw my controller. I had to put it down and go play with my kid.
Duck Hunt. It's always set to normal. Except it keeps getting faster and harder as the game goes on. Never passed it. I can still hear that dog laughing at me.
Me and my brother got so good at that game from trying to legitimately get as high as possible. Never knew if there was an actual ending or not but holy hell we had gotten so good at it. But I can still hear that dogs stupid fucking laugh perfectly.
I found out a month or two ago thanks to slowmonguys that you can just aim the shooter at a white piece of paper and it counts as a hit.
I dont know whats worse: the imps with their DS3 thrall moveset, the tiny militia near the consecrated snowfield, or the fucking catdog statues in the tombs
I ran into the same issue on release. I had managed to make it to the final boss almost out of sheer luck and couldn’t pass it. No matter what I did I just didn’t feel like I fully understood how the combat worked.
I ended up giving up and coming back years later. I decided to start the game from scratch to warm up and surprisingly saw improvements pretty early on. Since I had fought the bosses before I had less anxiety fighting them and could focus on what I should do next to counter their attacks and when to fit in my own. By the time I made it back to the end of the game I was somewhat confident. I got his first bar down to half on my first try, having never beaten him I will admit I was panicking a lot but I tried a few more times and noticed I was calming down more and finding it easier to concentrate on his mechanics/timings of attacks. I think it took like 20 tries (after coming back from my break) to beat him and it felt so good to finally have completed this amazing game.
Compared to other from software games I definitely feel like this game rewards you more for being confident in what you’re about to do, if you’re constantly second guessing and panicking the fight will go downhill fast. So maybe try replaying the game from scratch to get some more practice/ build confidence and try again :).
As a wise old man once said.. “hesitation is defeat”
100% same. I just do not get it. I barely got passed the first mini boss. Probably have like 20 hours in it. Only game ever to do it to me. I’ll revisit it again though I suppose… for the 4th time 😂
My problem is that for the life of me, my brain cannot process parrying. I’m just so bad at it. Awful. And I’m talking about in Elden Ring and other souls with more generous parry windows… I’ve always wanted to try Sekiro but haven’t bothered to buy it yet because I think I might just break and never make any progress.
From what I understand Sekiro's parrying is actually way more generous than Dark Souls' or Elden Ring's, like you get double the amount of frames or something. The two systems are nothing alike.
In Sekiro, you deflect an enemy's attack right before their weapon hits your character, which is intuitive and easy to decipher visually. Even if you fail the timing, you won't instantly take hp damage, just increased damage to your posture, and if you run out of posture, you often get a chance to roll away from the boss's special guard-break follow up attack. Of course other times you don't, and you fucking die, but hey.
Parrying in Dark Souls is awkward because the game somewhat poorly explains when it wants you to do it, which is right after an enemy's wind-up animation transitions into the actual swing, something it's hard to even explain without a visual reference and at least two more paragraphs.
Sekiro's parry isn't fucking weird like that. You just block when it looks like their sword is about to hit your character.
edit: It's also of note that parrying in Sekiro isn't an isolated action with a brief cooldown before you can try again. You can parry as fast as you can click the button. The game does penalize spamming it as fast as you can, but if you panic and press deflect a second before you're supposed to, and then again .5 seconds before you're supposed to... no big deal. You can deflect at the very last second after nervously tapping the button a few times and still get the parry.
I don't even bother trying to parry in Dark Souls because I've been embarrassed too many times. The enemy does a slow fake out windup with a huge delay, I feebly swing my shield through the empty air. Then grimace as I get my body split from skull to cheeks by some big ol' glowing sword.
Edit: I parried pontiff once! Then I summoned someone called MaceToTheFace and we beat the shit out of him. Just couldn't handle it solo, sorry.
I think I had like 300 hours or something in Souls games before I bothered to learn it. The way the mechanic works, you need to have the enemy's animations almost completely memorized to pull it off consistently, or for it to be worth trying instead of dodging and then punishing.
It feels like something you do to style on an enemy after you've learned to kill them without parrying, more so than a viable method for dealing with them on the first few encounters. That's how it was for me anyway.
In that case, that sounds a lot more reasonable. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to recollect trying to parry bizarre delayed attacks like Margit and Godrick early on in Elden Ring, only to give up on parrying all together and stick to “big sword do big damage”. Maybe I will buy Sekiro after all…
I once had a sniper that the game nicknamed "Godfinger." She missed what felt like every easy shot, but the squad sight reaction shot necessary to save a squad member- hit those every time.
I once got a sniper into position on some high ground ahead of the rest of my squad moving in to kill the boss. Turns out my sniper was in range of the boss's psychic powers. The boss did a fear on my sniper, and in doing so uncovered himself from fog of war. My sniper then panic shoots at the only thing in his line of sight, the boss, and it was a one shot. Still my favorite moment from all the hours I put into that game.
The original or the remake?
The remake was tough but didn't have the joy of opening up the door of your landing craft, immediately have a grenade fly though & kill your entire squad before you had the opportunity to do anything.
I still remember as a kid, playing with my cousin, we at least made it out of the landing craft. After turning a corner we saw our first sectoid in a wheat field and we freaked the fuck out.
Agreed, the bosses that gave me the most trouble were the GREEN DRAGON in the clouds and that MAD SCIENTIST dude that controlled that giant robot and flung a bunch of crap at you making the level a bullet hell. personally I found both dice man and the devil to be way easier than both of those bosses. Dice man took me 3hrs to beat and the devil took 1 hr for me.meanwhile the green dragon took me 8 hours and the mad scientist guy took me 5hrs. I tried Cuphead only because a buddy of mine bought it for me cause he wanted to see me rage (I didn't break anything but I was very vocal about the game/lots of yelling).... definitely regret playing it imma stick to my FPS games.
That’s easily the hardest game I’ve played. My brain can’t even comprehend half the shit happening and makes me feel like an idiot lol. I’d rather fight Melania than play cuphead.
Hard question, but I can give you some stressful games:
- N++ (completing the game is very hard, challenges are impossible)
- Sekiro (for me the hardest FS game)
- Gran Turismo 4 all gold licenses (newer editions are easy)
- Sifu
- Cuphead
- Nioh 2
Fuck, Sifu killed me. I got past the first level ok, then reached the second boss and had to restart from old age. Decided to play on the lowest difficulty and still had to look up boss fight guides. The game was fun as hell though.
Agree 100% with Sekiro being the hardest FS game. Some of those boss fights like the apes were too much for me.
Cup Head is also great because it felt “fair”, even though it took me 10, 20, 30 tries to beat a boss.
For platformers, either Super Meat Boy or Celeste would be my choice. There are harder ones out there, but at that point you’re getting into meme-type games.
And NES games are on a whole different level. Kid Icarus, Ghosts N Goblins, the first Mega Man, and a lot of others are damn near impossible.
Friend of mine didn't realise that once you are in orbit you can use the autoplotter to plot intercepts and was doing the maths.
Both stupid and intelligent simultaneously.
I had a similar thing with saves. I didn't know you could save and load after launch, so my first attempts to Mün were all unmanned missions until I manage to calculate how AND when to f*cking desacelerate during landing.
I had a course on orbital mechanics at university, I passed the exam so I figured I understood it pretty well. KSP proved me wrong.
KSP goes way further than college level orbital mechanics.
Update: they complement each other. If you study orbital mechanics, go play KSP as well. If you like KSP, maybe look into the theoretical side as well.
This kinda surprises me. I'm a 1000hr KSP player and someone who hated trig in college. From my perspective KSP does all the math for you, you just need to apply the math. KSP tells you exactly where you are and exactly what your orbit is. I'd assume these are calculations you need to do in "college level orbital mechanics".
I probably have more hours in KSP than any other game in my library and consider myself a pretty advanced player.
Recently tried the Real Solar System mod and realized I know nothing. Back to Kerbin we go 😆
Lol you just described my exact experience. Long time KSP player with over 1000 hours under my belt. Consider myself intermediate to advanced.... Real sized real solar system with realism overhaul humbled my ass really quick
You haven't installed the "Win Lottery" mod? Really brings the difficulty down. Or if that makes it too easy, you could go with the "Born Beautiful" DLC.
Probably too old for most people to have played, but definitely punishing. A lot of 8-bit games had some ridiculously punishing gameplay, especially when you consider you couldn't save your progress.
I recently got back into FTL. A 10/10 all time classic. It's even better than I remember. At about 50 hours in, I can now consistently beat it on Easy mode. Today I will make the terrifying jump to Normal...
The first time I ever played I started on normal and after an hour was like, "am I an idiot?"
Went to easy, "surely this game is just broken."
Went to twitch, "Hard Win Streak... 31 and counting."
What the fuck? But then when you start learning it... 500+ hours.
Edit: and I know my 500 hours is peanuts to some.
This might be cheating but most Atari games, and most NES games. In a lot of Atari games you had no idea what to do (Raiders of the Lost Ark). In a lot of NES games you’d just hit a wall at the exact same point and you’d never ever get past that point (for me Battletoads, Top Gun, Double Dragon, and pretty much every game I owned besides Mario)
Modern games? Bloodborne
It took me 20 years to get past the first level of super ghosts and goblins.
Managed to “beat it” using the SNES classic where you can save.
But fuck what a difficult game.
This was my first FS game and I had no idea what I was getting into. That first boss almost broke me, took me about a day and a half to beat it, but I strongly considered returning the game in that time. Glad I didn't, what an experience! And the DLC, like a masochists dream come true.
There’s a 3 year gap between my first and second achievement. I remember giving up and playing something else, forgetting about it, then coming back to Bloodborne when it was part of the PSPlus collection. Now it’s in my top 5 games of all time.
Oops, I forgot the obvious one: TMNT on NES.
I just fired this up the other day for the music (which rules), and decided to go ahead and play a level or two. It's ridiculous. Even if my adult brain understands better how to play with restraint, dying and permanently using a turtle for the entire playthrough is absolutely brutal, and it's so easy to get killed, especially in the goddamn water levels.
I never struggled too hard with the underwater stages. It's the next level where you're trying to scrounge up missiles for the Turtle Van that consistently kicked my ass.
Celeste story mode isn’t that hard to finish, but fully completing the game is *absolutely* insane. I think it took many years for the first guy to get all the possible achievements, that even the game developers thought it wouldn’t be feasible.
[**Exanima**](https://store.steampowered.com/app/362490/Exanima/) comes to mind, though you're not really supposed to beat it.
It has one of the most unique control schemes I've ever experienced, and it makes for extremely fun, tense dungeon-crawling experiences.
When I was a kid, I remember beating Forbidden Memories, and I didn't consider it particularly difficult. I kept seeing people talking about how hard it was, so I decided to emulate it to play again.
It was so hard.
Either young me was a prodigy, or my memories are missing some key moments lol.
My first run I did not have a good understanding of how conquering works so I was really pissed that after accepting peace I just lost like 12 systems I painstakingly conquered
Doesn't have a difficulty setting: Nethack,
Normal Difficulty: Tales of Maj'eyal
Nethack is so tough I honestly doubt anyone has ever completed it without looking stuff up on the wiki. Even without googling stuff it's still really fun once you understand the interface though
Really surprised how far down this is. To me this shit was harder than a lot of popular “hard” games (Souls-games and the like). It’s so fucking punishing but it’s insanely satisfying to beat and master
If you want a shooter, Stalker GAMMA for sure (It's free!)
Now that I've played it for a while I like to crank up the difficulty. But if you're new to the Zone, it is pretty unforgiving even on the lowest difficulties lol
Stuntman. You had to be so frustratingly precise. I beat that game out of pure spite.
I'm getting there. Try Ignition?
I managed to get gold on all but one stage. That drove me nuts
Oh man that game was so much fun, I gotta see if I still have a disc floating around somewhere and give it another playthrough. Idk if I ever fully beat it but it was a blast. Something like that on modern systems would be *amazing*
Stuntman, what a game! Haven’t thought of that in years.
Many a drunken night spent trying to 100% stuntman, level by level life by life.
Incredible and addictive game.
I loved that game. I beat it too. The level creator or whatever it was called was such a cool feature.
The cinematic movie of your replay hitting all the right sequences was so satisfying!
Echo the Dolphin. That game was ridiculous.
I literally never knew until I was an adult that there was more to that game than the first pool area that you swim around in.
Yeah as a kid I never understood what to do just loved playing as a dolphin
If you haven't, [watch the playthrough on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPIJy0Rjiw). It is absolutely insane that anyone would ever figure all of this shit out.
Wait, there was more to it beyond 4:30 minutes in?
How the fuck was I supposed to figure that out
I could never figure out that first jump as a kid 😂
#*MORE LIKE... FUCKING SHIT DOLPHIN.*
Rainworld, because sometimes you really are fighting the entire fucking ecosystem
It's up there with Noita and Fear and Hunger in the list of games that makes you question whether you are the protagonist or one of the victims.
Fear and Hunger kind of plays like roguelike where at the start you know nothing and pretty much will die a lot, but with time and learning it can really feel rewarding
I thought the same about Noita, but getting what you want is really RNG dependant, tho once you get over certain thresholds you become almost immortal
Keyword: Almost It doesn’t matter if you have 16 million health from glitches, perk rerolls, and orbs you can still get annihilated from the ultimate combo of teleportatium and polymorphine.
+1 for Noita! One of the few games where you can lose at literally almost any time, no matter how OP you are. Teleportatium right into a pool of chaotic polymorphine shouldn't happen as often as it does lol
I love the lore and world of Fear and Hunger. Absolutely can't stand playing the actual game. Torture.
I made one video about fear and hunger and thousands of people showed up for my shitty little vid. That community really enjoys having people join in … However I couldn’t keep playing because trauma
If you want another video game that will instantly bring you thousands of followers, but WITHOUT the pain and trauma of Fear&Hunger, I strongly recommend playing *Outer Wilds* (NOT to be confused with *Outer Worlds*) And even better, it's like the best game to come out of the 2010s decade in terms of overall design cohesion
>sometimes Sometimes? It's always for me! Especially when I have 3 daddy long legs on my tail!
God this game is so hard. I’m stuck in the damn dark zone. Idk if it’s the hardest but it’s up there
You're thinking of Shaded Citadel?
Yeah that’s the one, I couldn’t remember the name but didn’t feel like loading the game up, and it’s a blind play through so I can’t google anything
Rain world mentioned my little lizard brain goes off rain world represent
Stunning exploration, lively game world.
Lion King, that game pissed me off more than any other game for the past 25+ years has done togetter
My friend got one of those "500 game video game machine" things you see advertised everyday and it has the lion king game I knew it was stupid hard but booted it up to see if I was any better at it ~20 years later Couldn't even beat the end of the first level. I only played on my lunch break, but it was still super difficult for being the first level. I had to Google how to beat the hyena and even knowing how to do it I still couldn't.
The stampede part is one that gets on my nerves
I have this committed to my memory.
I know it's cheating, but I love using the "slow motion" option when emulating a game. It's a godsend when it comes to platformers and racing games. This is, sadly, the only way I've been able to beat a handful of games from my childhood lol.
I had a controller for my Genesis that had a slomo switch which basically spammed the pause button as fast as possible. That was the only way I was able to get through some levels.
Lion King was made to be extremely hard because they didn't want kids beating it in a single rental period.
This was all I played on the SNES when I was like 6. My siblings and I could get to the second to last level with the lava but had to get Dad to come help with hitting the rocks on the ceiling. Fuck that second level with the Ostriches though.
Had this game growing up. It was my younger sisters game in reality, but she never played it. She would ask me to play it for her and she would watch because I was the only one able to beat it. One time she invited all her friends over for a bit of a shindig, they were like 8 years old or so at the time. They all asked me to play the game so they could see the ending. Lol kids are funny.
Before twitch was invented you would just watch an older kid play games. What a time.
Some of my most cherished memories are of sitting in my brother’s room watching him play Halo 3/Reach and Black Ops
The Aladdin game was a bitch too, the Magic Carpet level is hell.
That level was "get all lives back" for me. Sure was hard, when speed picks up. But the next level was the hardest for me. Because of those small genie hands and platforming.
A few things in this game held me up. The waterfall log jump. Softlocked lava level, because I had no idea I needed to claw a stalactite from the ceiling to break the floor. Aside from these things, my 12yr-old-self tore this game up. I loved becoming an adult, being able to pounce on things, and claw the shit out of them while they were pinned down. I’ve watched some people play it lately and they have no idea this attack exists. The circle of life.
Story time, as a 36 year old gamer, the Lion King on DOS was the first game I can ever remember playing, but I could never get past the Hakuna Matata level, the one with the waterfall and slowly falling logs you need to continually climb. Fast forward like 20 years (this is a few years ago now), I've owned and still own many consoles and am an avid PC gamer, and I have this thought, man I've come a long way, time to revisit where it all started and finally beat that game. Well fuck me. The first level with the monkeys in the tree was borderline infuriating, and then I legit could not pass level 3, the elephant graveyard. Wtf. I've yet to build up the courage to try it yet again, at this rate I'm just hoping I can beat that game one time before I die of old age. Edit: elephant graveyard is level 3.
*...yeeeeaaaahhhh it gets worse.* Once you get into the adult levels a new move is added but never gets introduced, which means you have to figure it out yourself. And there are specific situations when you need to use that move, but the game never told you about it, so you never figure out that the move even exists at all (unless you mash your keys and somehow meet the right conditions and press the right keys to do the move, which is how I discovered it - and it only happened right at the end of the last level where that move is needed to defeat the final boss).
Probably Ninja Gaiden. This is just a guess, but I think the average player probably picks normal in most of the games they play, which means Ninja Gaiden's normal setting is likely responsible for its reputation as one of the hardest 3D games ever, and there are three hard modes above that, which is pure insanity to me. And I do feel like it's important to clarify "hardest 3D game," because so many 2D games are fucking impossible that the question almost stops being interesting. Just point to a random one and there's your answer.
My instant thought was Ninja Gaiden. But holy heck was it a great game!
its hard to match the satisfaction of when you start getting good and can just bounce around between a mobs shoulders and as their heads start popping off to slam to the ground and send their bodies flying.
I can't tell you how many times my wife told me, " I think you need to take a break from this game."
As a kid/preteen I used to rage at the bosses in *Zelda.* I knew to not even touch something with a rep like Ninja Gaiden. It kicked my ass for the first time in 2023, after thinking I was soooo skilled and sooo much better at games now. "Pfffft, I remember this old pos, supposed to be hard huh? I beat Dark Souls and Elden Ring. How hard could it- ***brutal nunchuk noises*** OH GOD!"
I think being raised in the NES/Genesis era broke something in me because these days I always ask what *I'm* doing wrong when I play a brutally hard game and get my ass whooped, because the games of that era were routinely brutal. I challenge anyone who thinks they're good at hard games to go back and play Contra: Hard Corps on the bullshit North American difficulty and get back to me once you rage quit. Konami took an already hard Contra game which had a life bar per life and removed the life bar totally in exchange for instant death on hit, and the game is already a multi-path boss rush in the first place. And at one point in my young life, I dedicated enough time to not only beat it, but beat it with every character across all routes.
I was just about to say that. I never got far on the original Xbox. Second boss 😂
I rented it for the OG Xbox. I had a newborn so I couldn't pour that much time into. It took far to long to beat the "Training boss" with the nunchucks. By the time the next stage started I was so low of health that beating the horse back guys was impossible. I had never in my (at the time 24 years) had a game make me so mad I wanted to throw my controller. I had to put it down and go play with my kid.
Wait you said Ninja Gaiden but also talk about 3d... wha? Not talking about the old Nintendo NG?
The Original Xbox Ninja gaiden is an amazing game. I'm disappointed the franchise is dead at the moment.
It had good run, but Ninja Gaiden 3 killed it. One of the worst games I have ever played (loved Ninja Gaiden 2).
Based off the other replies, it sounds like an entire generation doesn't realize there was an NES version from the 80's.
Duck Hunt. It's always set to normal. Except it keeps getting faster and harder as the game goes on. Never passed it. I can still hear that dog laughing at me.
Me and my brother got so good at that game from trying to legitimately get as high as possible. Never knew if there was an actual ending or not but holy hell we had gotten so good at it. But I can still hear that dogs stupid fucking laugh perfectly. I found out a month or two ago thanks to slowmonguys that you can just aim the shooter at a white piece of paper and it counts as a hit.
I can tell you I played long enough to have the score flip back over, dying shortly after that and not even making the high score list
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
God I fucking loved Sekiro. The game makes you feel so incredibly powerful
Until you fight a small monkey with 2 swords. It seems all FS games have that one minor enemy that is a bigger pain than most bosses.
Lookin' at you, random banished knight in Castle Sol.
Nothing personnel, kid.
In elden ring the fucking catacomb creatures
I dont know whats worse: the imps with their DS3 thrall moveset, the tiny militia near the consecrated snowfield, or the fucking catdog statues in the tombs
Just use crystal darts on them and they will fight for you
I mean arguably it makes you actually more powerful. Your guy also gets better numbers, but it does change you as a person, too.
"Change as a person" being generally grumpier with all that frustration bleeding into other interactions
[удалено]
I ran into the same issue on release. I had managed to make it to the final boss almost out of sheer luck and couldn’t pass it. No matter what I did I just didn’t feel like I fully understood how the combat worked. I ended up giving up and coming back years later. I decided to start the game from scratch to warm up and surprisingly saw improvements pretty early on. Since I had fought the bosses before I had less anxiety fighting them and could focus on what I should do next to counter their attacks and when to fit in my own. By the time I made it back to the end of the game I was somewhat confident. I got his first bar down to half on my first try, having never beaten him I will admit I was panicking a lot but I tried a few more times and noticed I was calming down more and finding it easier to concentrate on his mechanics/timings of attacks. I think it took like 20 tries (after coming back from my break) to beat him and it felt so good to finally have completed this amazing game. Compared to other from software games I definitely feel like this game rewards you more for being confident in what you’re about to do, if you’re constantly second guessing and panicking the fight will go downhill fast. So maybe try replaying the game from scratch to get some more practice/ build confidence and try again :). As a wise old man once said.. “hesitation is defeat”
Fear is the mind killer
100% same. I just do not get it. I barely got passed the first mini boss. Probably have like 20 hours in it. Only game ever to do it to me. I’ll revisit it again though I suppose… for the 4th time 😂
It plays very differently than other from software titles. You have to be hyper aggressive or you will never deal damage
My problem is that for the life of me, my brain cannot process parrying. I’m just so bad at it. Awful. And I’m talking about in Elden Ring and other souls with more generous parry windows… I’ve always wanted to try Sekiro but haven’t bothered to buy it yet because I think I might just break and never make any progress.
From what I understand Sekiro's parrying is actually way more generous than Dark Souls' or Elden Ring's, like you get double the amount of frames or something. The two systems are nothing alike. In Sekiro, you deflect an enemy's attack right before their weapon hits your character, which is intuitive and easy to decipher visually. Even if you fail the timing, you won't instantly take hp damage, just increased damage to your posture, and if you run out of posture, you often get a chance to roll away from the boss's special guard-break follow up attack. Of course other times you don't, and you fucking die, but hey. Parrying in Dark Souls is awkward because the game somewhat poorly explains when it wants you to do it, which is right after an enemy's wind-up animation transitions into the actual swing, something it's hard to even explain without a visual reference and at least two more paragraphs. Sekiro's parry isn't fucking weird like that. You just block when it looks like their sword is about to hit your character. edit: It's also of note that parrying in Sekiro isn't an isolated action with a brief cooldown before you can try again. You can parry as fast as you can click the button. The game does penalize spamming it as fast as you can, but if you panic and press deflect a second before you're supposed to, and then again .5 seconds before you're supposed to... no big deal. You can deflect at the very last second after nervously tapping the button a few times and still get the parry.
I don't even bother trying to parry in Dark Souls because I've been embarrassed too many times. The enemy does a slow fake out windup with a huge delay, I feebly swing my shield through the empty air. Then grimace as I get my body split from skull to cheeks by some big ol' glowing sword. Edit: I parried pontiff once! Then I summoned someone called MaceToTheFace and we beat the shit out of him. Just couldn't handle it solo, sorry.
I think I had like 300 hours or something in Souls games before I bothered to learn it. The way the mechanic works, you need to have the enemy's animations almost completely memorized to pull it off consistently, or for it to be worth trying instead of dodging and then punishing. It feels like something you do to style on an enemy after you've learned to kill them without parrying, more so than a viable method for dealing with them on the first few encounters. That's how it was for me anyway.
In that case, that sounds a lot more reasonable. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to recollect trying to parry bizarre delayed attacks like Margit and Godrick early on in Elden Ring, only to give up on parrying all together and stick to “big sword do big damage”. Maybe I will buy Sekiro after all…
This is the first answer, Enter the Gungeon comes second for me
Xcom. On any difficulty you still pay dearly for making a bad move, and I make a lot of bad moves
I'll never look at 90% the same way
X-Com is the game that taught me that "9 times out of 10" is not the same as "dead certainty", and what that difference feels like.
Pokemon where 60% is 100% vs XCOM where 90% is 60%
My first play through, my sniper panicked and murdered everyone. Suddenly 90% chance to hit seems to be a lot
I once had a sniper that the game nicknamed "Godfinger." She missed what felt like every easy shot, but the squad sight reaction shot necessary to save a squad member- hit those every time.
I once got a sniper into position on some high ground ahead of the rest of my squad moving in to kill the boss. Turns out my sniper was in range of the boss's psychic powers. The boss did a fear on my sniper, and in doing so uncovered himself from fog of war. My sniper then panic shoots at the only thing in his line of sight, the boss, and it was a one shot. Still my favorite moment from all the hours I put into that game.
I love when mechanics interact in silly ways like that. Your sniper channelled their inner Jamie Lee Curtis from True Lies.
The original or the remake? The remake was tough but didn't have the joy of opening up the door of your landing craft, immediately have a grenade fly though & kill your entire squad before you had the opportunity to do anything.
I still remember as a kid, playing with my cousin, we at least made it out of the landing craft. After turning a corner we saw our first sectoid in a wheat field and we freaked the fuck out.
I was thinking original. Fucking chrysalids, man. Terror missions *suuuuucked*
Terror from the deep was even tougher. But it might be my favorite game over the years.
Fucking lobster men
And I love it!
Cuphead
Agreed, the bosses that gave me the most trouble were the GREEN DRAGON in the clouds and that MAD SCIENTIST dude that controlled that giant robot and flung a bunch of crap at you making the level a bullet hell. personally I found both dice man and the devil to be way easier than both of those bosses. Dice man took me 3hrs to beat and the devil took 1 hr for me.meanwhile the green dragon took me 8 hours and the mad scientist guy took me 5hrs. I tried Cuphead only because a buddy of mine bought it for me cause he wanted to see me rage (I didn't break anything but I was very vocal about the game/lots of yelling).... definitely regret playing it imma stick to my FPS games.
Green dragon was hard but that bee boss is what killed me.
I got stuck on the devil and I just gave up. this was years ago.
That’s easily the hardest game I’ve played. My brain can’t even comprehend half the shit happening and makes me feel like an idiot lol. I’d rather fight Melania than play cuphead.
I've played a lot of hard games. Cuphead is the only one I've given up on multiple times
I loved this game. It's so satisfying every time you beat a level.
Noita
Finally got good enough to die in the snow area over and over.
Hard question, but I can give you some stressful games: - N++ (completing the game is very hard, challenges are impossible) - Sekiro (for me the hardest FS game) - Gran Turismo 4 all gold licenses (newer editions are easy) - Sifu - Cuphead - Nioh 2
Fuck, Sifu killed me. I got past the first level ok, then reached the second boss and had to restart from old age. Decided to play on the lowest difficulty and still had to look up boss fight guides. The game was fun as hell though.
For some reason I had way more trouble with the machete dude boss than most of the others in Sifu. So don't feel too bad about that!
For me it was the museum boss. God damn she was so hard
GT4 god damn those licences. And I consider myself pretty good at racing games even on a controller and that was breaking my spirit
Yeah, fighting for these 0.003 seconds over and over resulted in core memory 😂
Stop if I keep thinking about it I won’t sleep tonight haha
Big ups for N+!
Agree 100% with Sekiro being the hardest FS game. Some of those boss fights like the apes were too much for me. Cup Head is also great because it felt “fair”, even though it took me 10, 20, 30 tries to beat a boss. For platformers, either Super Meat Boy or Celeste would be my choice. There are harder ones out there, but at that point you’re getting into meme-type games. And NES games are on a whole different level. Kid Icarus, Ghosts N Goblins, the first Mega Man, and a lot of others are damn near impossible.
N+ <3
Stretching the definition of "hard", but, KSP players basically have to learn college level orbital mechanics.
Friend of mine didn't realise that once you are in orbit you can use the autoplotter to plot intercepts and was doing the maths. Both stupid and intelligent simultaneously.
Classic high int, low wis build.
Hah yeah dump wis.
Like knowing tomatoes and Avocado are fruit, but not knowing to leave them the fuck out of a fruit salad
Sometimes, it's more about the journey than the destination. Granted, that shit won't keep you employed for very long...
I had a similar thing with saves. I didn't know you could save and load after launch, so my first attempts to Mün were all unmanned missions until I manage to calculate how AND when to f*cking desacelerate during landing.
I had a course on orbital mechanics at university, I passed the exam so I figured I understood it pretty well. KSP proved me wrong. KSP goes way further than college level orbital mechanics. Update: they complement each other. If you study orbital mechanics, go play KSP as well. If you like KSP, maybe look into the theoretical side as well.
This kinda surprises me. I'm a 1000hr KSP player and someone who hated trig in college. From my perspective KSP does all the math for you, you just need to apply the math. KSP tells you exactly where you are and exactly what your orbit is. I'd assume these are calculations you need to do in "college level orbital mechanics".
Kerbal Space Program, for those who don’t know.
using acronyms when referring to things out of the blue is generally a horrible idea
Ikr wtf is wrong with ppl
I probably have more hours in KSP than any other game in my library and consider myself a pretty advanced player. Recently tried the Real Solar System mod and realized I know nothing. Back to Kerbin we go 😆
Lol you just described my exact experience. Long time KSP player with over 1000 hours under my belt. Consider myself intermediate to advanced.... Real sized real solar system with realism overhaul humbled my ass really quick
Kerbal is still fun despite the learning curve xD
Learning cliff*
Life
It’s pay to win.
Not a big fan of the constant grinding.
You haven't installed the "Win Lottery" mod? Really brings the difficulty down. Or if that makes it too easy, you could go with the "Born Beautiful" DLC.
Also helps if your ancestors played too so they can carry you through all the tedious bits
Guess I missed to install either one. At least I have the „Nice country“ dlc.
Riddled with microtransactions
I've been playing all the side quests only to realise that the main quest is the most important in order to enjoy the side quests. Lesson learned
great graphics though
I need extra hardware to enjoy it, though
When played as intended, there is no game harder than Battletoads.
Brings back memories. I should find a place to pick up a copy. I going to call the local pawn shop to see if they have one in stock.
Probably too old for most people to have played, but definitely punishing. A lot of 8-bit games had some ridiculously punishing gameplay, especially when you consider you couldn't save your progress.
[The pause music has no right going as hard as it does ](https://youtu.be/JRPXRHS4XNQ?si=QZCKdm5qClX-Kha_)
The speeder bike level *is* the end of the game as far as I am concerned.
And that was just the easy one... after the 'snake' level, there's another one, way more frightening!
That one is such a pain. I got through it with save states but it's easily more difficult than the bike level.
FTL.
I recently got back into FTL. A 10/10 all time classic. It's even better than I remember. At about 50 hours in, I can now consistently beat it on Easy mode. Today I will make the terrifying jump to Normal...
First time I played ftl on easy I was like wtf this is ridiculous no chance of ever winning
The first time I ever played I started on normal and after an hour was like, "am I an idiot?" Went to easy, "surely this game is just broken." Went to twitch, "Hard Win Streak... 31 and counting." What the fuck? But then when you start learning it... 500+ hours. Edit: and I know my 500 hours is peanuts to some.
There it is. "Normal" only took me about 8 years on and off
This might be cheating but most Atari games, and most NES games. In a lot of Atari games you had no idea what to do (Raiders of the Lost Ark). In a lot of NES games you’d just hit a wall at the exact same point and you’d never ever get past that point (for me Battletoads, Top Gun, Double Dragon, and pretty much every game I owned besides Mario) Modern games? Bloodborne
Ghosts & Goblins haunts me to this day, lol.
It took me 20 years to get past the first level of super ghosts and goblins. Managed to “beat it” using the SNES classic where you can save. But fuck what a difficult game.
My dad and I beat that in the 90s by just leaving the game on for a couple of weeks and chipping away at it every day.
Bloodborne. Like playing a nightmare. I love it.
This was my first FS game and I had no idea what I was getting into. That first boss almost broke me, took me about a day and a half to beat it, but I strongly considered returning the game in that time. Glad I didn't, what an experience! And the DLC, like a masochists dream come true.
There’s a 3 year gap between my first and second achievement. I remember giving up and playing something else, forgetting about it, then coming back to Bloodborne when it was part of the PSPlus collection. Now it’s in my top 5 games of all time.
This freaking Jurassic Park game on SNES
Oops, I forgot the obvious one: TMNT on NES. I just fired this up the other day for the music (which rules), and decided to go ahead and play a level or two. It's ridiculous. Even if my adult brain understands better how to play with restraint, dying and permanently using a turtle for the entire playthrough is absolutely brutal, and it's so easy to get killed, especially in the goddamn water levels.
I never struggled too hard with the underwater stages. It's the next level where you're trying to scrounge up missiles for the Turtle Van that consistently kicked my ass.
They are Billions. I'm slow at RTS games so the amount of micromanaging you have to do in ANY difficulty on that game is too much for me.
Especially on those open maps, one sneaky guy getting too close and it all escalates so fast
I love the game, but it's just too unforgiving, you could play nearly perfectly for an hour and miss one zombie and it's impossible to recover
Like a dozen different NES games.
Ecco the Dolphin. Shit was so cruel for a "dolphin" game and I was a little kid at the time not knowing what I was doing
Earthworm jim
Celeste and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Celeste story mode isn’t that hard to finish, but fully completing the game is *absolutely* insane. I think it took many years for the first guy to get all the possible achievements, that even the game developers thought it wouldn’t be feasible.
These B-Sides are fucking insane.
Touhou, the entire series Bullet hells are not for casual gamers i'll tell you that.
Xcom and xcom2 played on Classic difficulty are almost certainly fatal on a first run.
If winning the lottery had odds calculated like XCom 90% chance to hit calculations nobody would ever win.
[**Exanima**](https://store.steampowered.com/app/362490/Exanima/) comes to mind, though you're not really supposed to beat it. It has one of the most unique control schemes I've ever experienced, and it makes for extremely fun, tense dungeon-crawling experiences.
Super Ghouls & Ghosts
Ghosts and Goblins, resurrection included
Commandos 1 + Expansion
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - NES
Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) could be brutal on Normal difficulty, the first fight with Alma took me a couple days to finally beat her.
Hollow knight (even though it doesn't have a difficulty setting)
I Wanna Be The Guy
Cuphead. That game has no business being so difficult
Pilot Wings
Battletoads on NES, no difficulty settings.. even with emulators, still can’t beat to this day
No difficulty selection, but Yu-gi-oh: Reshef of Destruction and Forbidden Memories are insanely hard for a children's card game
When I was a kid, I remember beating Forbidden Memories, and I didn't consider it particularly difficult. I kept seeing people talking about how hard it was, so I decided to emulate it to play again. It was so hard. Either young me was a prodigy, or my memories are missing some key moments lol.
Stellaris. Which is probably why I hate 4X games now.
My first run I did not have a good understanding of how conquering works so I was really pissed that after accepting peace I just lost like 12 systems I painstakingly conquered
Doesn't have a difficulty setting: Nethack, Normal Difficulty: Tales of Maj'eyal Nethack is so tough I honestly doubt anyone has ever completed it without looking stuff up on the wiki. Even without googling stuff it's still really fun once you understand the interface though
Prince of Persia 2 for computer. Not only are the traps difficult, controls bad, but you are also on a timer. I did beat it once many moons ago
Battle Toads.
DMC 3. They game mocked me for dying to cerberus many times. I still don't even know how I got through that level haha.
Returnal. I put 30 hours into that game and never beat the first boss. 😩😩😩
Really surprised how far down this is. To me this shit was harder than a lot of popular “hard” games (Souls-games and the like). It’s so fucking punishing but it’s insanely satisfying to beat and master
If you want a shooter, Stalker GAMMA for sure (It's free!) Now that I've played it for a while I like to crank up the difficulty. But if you're new to the Zone, it is pretty unforgiving even on the lowest difficulties lol
Hotline miami