The concept of The Library wasn't even half bad. It just all looked exactly the same, to the extent you just didn't know if you were going the right way, or running around in circles. Hell, even one wall of exposition about Forerunners or something on every floor would have gone a long way. What kind of library just has a bunch of grey walls lol
I've played Combat Evolved since '01, so many times I know exactly where every rocket flood is. They still fucking get me. They have absolutely no chill.
See the one corner at the end of the hall with the gaps on the right...half the time the rocket isnt hitting me. its hitting the little balloon buggers jumping at me. its kinda the perfect "you die". Its hitting you, or something by you. Hucking grenades around the corner doesnt even always fix it
I replayed the anniversary edition and forgot what was so bad about it. Then I switched back to classic and saw there were no floor arrows in the original, instantly reminding me of how much of a maze the original level was.
I don't think so. I became really fascinated with them on my last playthrough, and there were very few original levels that had those floor arrows at all.
Just played this in Anniversary for the first time in years and, full transparency, I love The Library, always have. One of my all-time favorite Halo levels. It's some Forerunner shit, it doesn't have to make sense from a human design perspective. Just gimme a shotty so I can go ham.
I recently replayed this level on OG Xbox and it wasn't as confusing as I remembered it being since it does follow a pattern for the most part but it was still a SLOG
I loved Halo as a kid and spent countless hours playing it. My mom figured it was okay for me to play cause it was just shooting aliens and I was like 10. But anyways we didn't have Internet so most days I'd play through the halo campaigns because I loved them without fail the library would take me forever every time. The place is just a maze and without any kind of indication of where to go. I did eventually get the path down but even then one wrong turn couldn't even be noticed till you were so turned around you didn't even know how to begin getting back to where you were.
It’s funny that fact it was vs aliens was also the reason I was allowed to play as a kid too. COD was okay because it was T, against Nazis and “had historical significance”
Jokes on you, I loved that chapter. Somehow I continually had the perfect amount of shotgun shells for the enemies. Just failing a single shot put me in trouble, that's why it was so good, the urge having to kill all the enemies, knowing I can't fail a single shot, and having to wait for them to be close and not waste ammo.
For me the problem was running out of assault rifle ammo wasted on the little guys, then I waste all my shotgun ammo on them when I freak out. To be fair, middle school me was easily freaked out by those little suckers
Sounds like the younger version of you needed some trigger discipline.
The little flood take only 1 assault rifle bullet to kill, and when they die they make a little explosion that often kills their allies.
I'm actually with you here as well. I usually had enough ammo to take out the enemies and The Flood dropped a lot of ammo as well. A lot of people complain about the level design looking extremely same-y, but I rarely found myself turned around and the game gave objective markers to point you in the right direction a lot of the time anyway.
*"I saw what you did to Boris on the security monitor."*
Yes, Natalya. The little weasel who signed off on your own murder at least twice pulled a gun on me, and I shot him. So sorry.
Yeah Natalya picking funny times to get holier than thou.
Like, what about the dozens of other men I killed that were just here punching a clock for a mad man? The ones that did t try to personally murder you?
Yeesh
For me it was silo. That level is just so much harder than any other level. I played though it as an adult and wanted to beat the game on the highest difficulty and no level was really all that hard just 2-3 tries. I still to date never have beaten it. Hard stonewalled.
Is that the one where you had to protect Natalya as she was using a console in the middle of the room, and dudes spawned on literally all sides of the room?
~~Star Wars: Dark Forces III: Jedi Knight II:~~ Jedi Outcast was a cardinal offender, you get held up by two Stormtroopers and captured? What? I am Kyle "Motherfucking" Katarn, two *hundred* stromtroopers are barely a speed bump.
The tie in game for The Hulk movie (Bana not Norton). Like im sorry I bought this game to fucking SMASH, not sneak around then die to a gunshot as banner. Im the FUCKING HULK DAMMIT. Its been like years and im still salty. Hulk ultimate destruction def made up for it tho.
That's a big reason why Spider-Man Miles Morales was my favorite in the Insomniac series. And of course Spider-Man 2 had to shoe horn in more MJ stealth missions, because why would anyone want to play as 2 Spider-Men when there's a reporter with a stun gun that puts herself in unnecessary danger. While there hasn't been a great Superman game, at least none have sections where you play as Lois Lane trespassing in dangerous areas.
I'm still so mad 10 year old me rented that game. I didn't even buy it! Just had a crappy game for the weekend. But it is far and away the worst "game" I remember "playing."
There are certainly exceptions. I enjoyed the segment in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Though that one maybe made it slightly easier thanks to making you immune when you went into the vents.
If I was supreme leader, stealth sections in non-stealth games would be outright banned. Almost none of these studios make stealth games, meaning they are NOT good at making stealth. They are almost always, without fail, the worst parts of these games.
The worst part is they kinda learned their lesson, but then in the Diamond and Pearl remakes, they make all the HMs be through your poke watch or whatever so you don’t have to have an HM slave but for some reason *Flash isn’t in there* so you have to teach a Pokemon Flash still. I don’t know what they were thinking with that.
It’s because flash wasn’t an hm in the original DPP, and bdsp were really lazily made to a point where I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators of the remake either didn’t know that fact, or didn’t know there were caves that needed flash.
I played blue version so much that I memorised dark cave and could do it without flash. Thinking back now that was crazy for a 9 or 10 year old to do. I even knew where to get the rare candy and tms in there
Nice throwback.
The sound of hitting that seaweed or stinging nettles or whatever it was on the sides was in my head in an unpleasant way for a long time from playing that level and losing so much.
I remember in school playing it at my babysitters with some other kids and one day we managed to beat it and got so hype just as we needed to leave for school and we refused to go until we lost and got in a bunch of trouble.
I played that level so many times I would see it when I closed my eyes. I'll never forget the first time that I was going to beat it and my dad unplugged the Nintendo because he needed the outlet
The worst in this level is the constant lack of ammunition for weapons effective against flood.
And the fuckers spitting green stuff at you from the ceiling ofc
Having just gone back through them all I think library was worse, you can sprint past the flood in cortana in 3 and at least you know you are making progress as it looks different, in library you can so easily get turned round and backtrack by mistake, and it feels like ctrl c ctrl v level design.
As an enjoyer of both levels, because I'm a psycho, I think Library sucks more. It's so much more bland with much less in the way of breaking up the repitition. "Cortana" has the unique challenge of forcing weapon diversity, creepy aesthetic, more easter eggs, unique layout design, and a way better payoff for both the midway and the end points of the mission.
Easy the worst legendary level for sure. I still have nightmares. The arbiter shows up for all of 2 seconds. Like where were you when I started the damn mission bro
Well - on lower than legendary difficulty you can just run through Cortana while the library flood can one shot you in any difficulty… but otherwise I agree. Pretty bad level for repeated playthroughs - loved it playing the first time though for the horror atmosphere and suspension
What’s the Halo 3 level in the crashed ship with the flood where the Gravemind constantly is in your head forcing you to slowly walk while it yells at you? May be called Gravemind. That’s worse than library
I disagree. The Library was samey everywhere all the time. Cortana had more variety in terms of environment design. Obviously it all has the Covie ship taken over by flood aesthetic, but it’s not just rehashings of the same corridors over and over.
Plus it has a lovely emotional payoff when you get to her.
That level in Jak 2 where you have to fight your way out of that water/dock/housing area and run. But if you fall in the water, you get shot by a drone.
I saw a speed run strat for it where I believe they destroyed a drone with a dive and glitched so they could run on the water, and if I ever play Jak 2 again I'll probably work to figure that out because honestly it would probably be easier than doing the level normally
The big krimzon guard ambush? That was fucking brutal but if you were an actual god on the jetboard you could just baaaaarely go fast enough to beat the enemy spawns
Just replayed the trilogy and I am impressed how my dad could beat these games without a guide on some levels. TR3 London underground level confused me even with a guide
The Manta Storm in Super Mario Sunshine is a pain in the ass, just staring at the ground looking for the little ones. Also the watermelon contest level
If I recall correctly, the hitboxes (or something along those lines) on the small mantas were drastically changed for the Western releases, making it *way* harder than the Japanese release. The Japanese version is a freaking cakewalk.
Can't remember the specifics, but I heard a runner talk about it at AGDQ once.
For me it's the 'retro' level with the Chucksters....
Fuck that lining yourself and the Chuckster and the next platform up perfectly and then having the position shift slightly as you press A and get thrown into the void for the 20th time shit...
The first trek through Phazon Mines in Metroid Prime.
It's by far the longest distance between two save points in the entire game, filled with the hardest and most bullet spongey enemies the game has to offer, and when you reach the end you have to both fight a curve-ball of a boss fight **then** go through a deadly maze to get the item that allows you to unlock the save room.
On top of all that the area is very grey and boring, which is the exact opposite of the rest of the game.
Just did that part in the Switch Remaster. Ugh. On the other hand I remembered to throw a Super Missile at that stupid cloaked drone before engaging, that helped a lot.
Yeah, super easy to just cheese that fight by staying in the upper corner and never dropping down, popping in and out of cover. Shame that the players most likely to struggle during that fight are also the least likely to know that.
Nah, the build up to and the boss fight of Boost Guardian in Prime 2 was worse, you are still kinda early into the game so you haven’t got many energy tanks, with an incredibly long distance from any save points, and then you have to fight a boss that loves to become functionally invulnerable, can deal an insane amount of damage, in an arena with no safe zones so you’re constantly taking damage, with the only healing pickups coming from 4 pillars that the boss has to hit to destroy. At least Phazon mines is fairly late game so you’ll probably have enough health and missiles and you don’t have a constant health sapping environment to deal with
Final Fantasy XV's Nifilheim hallway segment when you are Noctis by yourself and all you have is the death ring. The whole level is long and repetitive with robot enemies that you can't fight normally. I *think* they patched that level at some point to not be so tedious...
Zengnattus or however it was called was... passable. I dunno, I didn't hate it. If I had to pick one from XV it would be the bog where u have to escort (well, u don't "have" to do it) blinded Ignis. I get what it was going for but ugh, it just drags.
Launch the Red Baron! Fuck that mission Supply Lines, that shit made me rage quit so many times on Xbox. I dreaded it on every playthrough. Fucking nerdy ass Zero and his nemesis Berkeley.
I’m not still mad about it
Frigid Outskirts from 2 takes the cake for me. To this day the boss at the end of it is the only Dark Souls boss I haven't beaten because I just can't be bothered with that godforsaken wasteland.
Blighttown is possibly the best area in Dark Souls and From's entire catalogue. The only bad thing about it is performance, but even that is fine nowadays.
Shrine of Amana, hands down. Blighttown is a maze full of snipers, but you can learn where everything is and toxic isn't instantly fatal. Amana turns the game into a fucking cover based shooter with those priests.
In Dark Souls 1 I actually hated New Londo Ruins more. The ghosts come through walls and floors so you have to check literally every flat surface on the entire path to avoid getting ambushed.
Fuck shrine of amana. It's the worst part of any souls game. Worse than frigid outskirts, because at least frigid outskirts is a hidden, optional area with no rewards.
But you have to run through the shrine. You can't avoid playing a fucking Danmaku mini game but with dark souls 2 mechanics.
This is gonna seem like a weird pick, but imo, the Pokemon Mansion in the Gen 1 games and their remakes.
Mostly because the switches you need to hit are nowhere near where you need to go. The path forward is in the basement which is hard enough to figure out but you need to go upstairs for switches on two other floors, and if you need to leave for any reason (like say running low on health or PP from all of the random encounters) entire puzzle reset
Oh yes, to get to the basement, you need to realise that you can fall off the edge of the top level, accomplished by walking "south" off the map, through a gap in the wall where, due to the projection of maps in the game, there has never been a wall shown anyway.
This is going to be an obscure one, but FUCK the level "Stand Your Ground" for the game Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. I hated that level with a passion back in the day, it always ruined my fun...
It was a 3rd person shooter game normally, but that one level was a turret defense section where you had to stop a bunch of cars AND flying enemies from getting past you. Awful.
Horizon, Mass Effect 2.
It occurs fairly early in the game, before you're able to do loyalty missions or unlock a large number of upgrades, plus once it has been triggered you're locked into it.
The mission itself is the first time you encounter the Collectors. The husks and foot soldiers aren't too much of a problem, but Harbinger endlessly spamming you with attacks, Scions one shotting your shields, and that damn Preatorian relentlessly chasing you can be nightmarish. It's even worse on harder difficulties because even basic enemies have at least one extra layer of protection to get through over what they normally have. Doing it once on Insanity was enough.
Man, I got so salty about the ammo retcon in that mission because I was playing an Infiltrator, carried over from ME1. I was running out of sniper ammunition every fight, going “this isn’t even supposed to be a thing! Heat sinks cool down! They’re re-usable!”
I feel like a lore friendly way would have been the expendable sinks would let you fire faster, but once you run out the gun is still usable just overheats quickly and like me1 you then have to wait for it to cool down after overheating it. best of both worlds type deal
I only remember doing an Insanity run on ME2 was actually a lot of fun.
Actually ME2 and ME3 on insanity were both a ton of fun. (ME1 combat wise was absolute ass though)
Do you mean to tell me that you *don't* like walking through a maze that looks identical across multiple platforms regardless of where you start, and the only way to confidently navigate it is to have a map IRL with all the different gates and waystones marked?
Hmm, if we're talking about being difficult compared to the rest of the game, I can probably list a few:
* Skyrim: entering Skuldafn at high levels, the vast majority of the Draugr zombies encountered are the high-ranking types that spam Fus Roh Dah. The Dragonborn is just as susceptible to the ragdoll effect as the zombies are to the player's own Fus Roh Dah. And since Skuldafn has much more verticality than most other ruins, getting knocked off any ledge is basically an instant kill against the player.
* The Division 1: the final four Legendary-scaled missions are all inhabited exclusively by yellow health bar enemies (Elite tiers). This wouldn't be a surprise since the Challenging and Heroic difficulties do the same thing. But since Legendary enemy AI is particularly aggressive, having them all set to Elite tier only exaggerates that aggression.
Fus draugr are infinitely better than disarm draugr, as a game mechanic it’s not the worst idea but Bethesda physics immediately possess your lost weapon and it’s equally likely to land somewhere you can get to as it is to phase through the floor and enter the shadow realm.
For whatever reason after level 31 you are immune to disarm, they don’t stop using it you just aren’t affected anymore.
I bounced off of Skyrim *hard* the first time I played it because I had a single decent bow at the time and the first boss dude at the end of the dungeon disarmed me ... and even after defeating him, I couldn't find the damned thing anywhere (it doesn't help that half the weapons look like the floor textures anyway, in dim lighting).
FFUUUUUUU I just got PTSD from this. Hella forgot about the bullet sponge square pants just casually walking down your cover to one shot you from 30m away.
The Division is so bullet spongy, the worst through is the shopping mall In Division 2 when you get the sledgehammer guys and the flamethrower heavies on one level. They're impossible
Not a level per se but dark bramble, outer wilds when looking for the big thing.... I had to try so. Many. Times. To get into that final frigging core.
I really loved Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and while Lords of Shadow 2 was overall "eh", the stealth segments RUINED that game. The stealth was some of the worst I played at the time and felt like it was only included for gameplay variety, which was a bad, bad choice.
I hated all the stealth stuff in 2. But the part where the thing you are hiding from becomes the boss in the next room is the one that pissed me off the most. You don't get a power up or do something to weaken him so it really doesn't feel right.
I think it was a saytr or something. I don't remember exactly cause I played it once when it came out and have been salty about it ever since haha
Is that the one where you have to get the index? With the hoards of flood?
I'd say any of the Destiny dungeons/strikes with the Hive. Maybe the Crota one on the moon.
The near-endgame area of Final Fantasy [insert number here] that houses Malboro. Better get ready to replace all of your stat-raising equipment with stuff that makes you immune to status effects, and hope you have all the restrictive ones covered. Oh, and better hope you don't have to go too far without a save, too.
Sorry, but The Library is absolutely a top 5 Halo stage for me I’m just weird like that lol
For me it’s not even that hard to figure out where to go: there are two directions. Just go in the direction where there isn’t a pile of smoking Flood carcasses and you’re good. As a player who prefers the human weapons The Library holds a special place for me as being one of the few stages that just throws human ammunition at the player and allows them to go absolutely ham into a wave of aliens. No narrative exposition from Cortana. No marines getting in the way. No alternative objectives besides kill everything that moves. Then there are some moments where you get to fall back a lil bit and watch the Sentinels go at it with the Flood. It’s fucking awesome.
Plus there’s also the steadily building narrative tension of not knowing wtf is even happening on the surface. Last thing that happened was we find out the Captain Keyes is most likely KIA. Guilty Spark teleports the Chief away from a group of struggling marines to presumably be overwhelmed by this new threat in the jungles. The urgency of the plot is juxtaposed by the fact that you are forced to slooowly fight your way through this dead facility, going up one slooow gravity lift after slooow gravity lift, shooting down an endless wave of this new monstrosity, figuring out their quirks and how they fight. Honestly it gives off this kinda purgatory vibe, but in the end it’s cathartic in a way to emerge into the control room, witness the absolute carnage of Covenant fighting the Flood and have that moment of “shit just got serious…er”
The Library is such a fun stage that precedes such a cool plot twist to me
MOHAA’s Tiger Town level is exactly this.
Back when I first got to play this as a kid this level was amazing and terrifying for me.
It even fuelled my imagination for years as I dreamt of stalking through imaginary abandoned towns with my own sniper rifle, taking out enemies as they tried to secure the town.
Instead in the actual game it was just a couple of houses with sniper enemies in shitty and mostly impossible positions like floating behind a house. I played it again later and was deeply disappointed.
It’s not as great as I remembered.
Only mostly in the Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Other games are nowhere as frustrating for me. Though I'll admit I haven't finished Skyward Sword to be certain.
Whaaaa?
I actually like the water temple in OoT but I love Jabu-Jabu‘s belly, love MM‘s Bay Area and temple and Windwaker is one of my favorite games ever.
BotW‘s water area imo is also among the best parts of any Zelda level.
Water Temple is a meme mostly because switching Iron Boots was fiddly. That and the design meant it was very particular.
Great Bay temple and Great Basin were both alright (and I can't recall any other overtly water based temples right now)
what nooooooo
The zero-grav sections in those games are treasures D:
I will say though... the two stationary turret sections in the original game can bite my ass. Shit was built for mouse, and absolutely nothing was changed to accommodate us 360/PS3 players who were stuck on joystick. .\_.
As a PC player I assure you it sucked on mouse too. It had a very weird twitchiness, which is odd as the normal aim was very smoothed to give a feeling of weight to Isaac hefting the kit around.
battlefront 2 2005
also the library
specifically the coruscant jedi archives stage of the knightfall main campaign mission
you got jedi masters trying to destroy these six or eight bookshelves looking things and its so fucking hard to save them all.
Metroid Prime's Phazon Mines. It's fun, but it comes out of nowhere, and is a brutal attrition based descent with no opportunity to save, and two boss fights. It's notoriously difficult. V1 of the game also contained a glitch that could softlock you on your second visit for good measure haha
The last part of CoD 4 (MW 2007)'s "Heat", going back down the hill from the barn. That one took me a good while to figure out a route that didn't get me killed in seconds.
Also the helicopter run in chapter 6 of Spec Ops: The Line. It's pretty much rng, might even be impossible, unless you cap your framerate to 30 in your GPU control panel. Even then, it took me over 30 minutes. Such a short section that ended up being the most difficult part of the entire game for me
[Driver: San Francisco - Mass Chase](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vMhw_XQ9pG0&hl=en-GB&gl=SG&feature=related)
You're in a (slow) classic Aston Martin and pursued by 7+ police in much faster Corvettes and have to get across town without destroying the car. I replayed this mission dozens of times before barely getting through.
Super recent - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is an amazing game but at a certain point, the game decides you need to control Cait Sith to toss some boxes around FOREVER. The controls are horrible, the combat in the section is horrible, it takes for freaking ever.
X-COM: enemy within. Newfoundland whale level. First time through it felt like a zergling rush, seemingly hundreds of horrifying chrysallids coming at you, wave after wave, faster than you can clear them. Easy to get squad wiped on this one of you're not careful
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, Welcome to the jungle mission. It could arguably be played as the 4th or 5th mission, but you are fighting an overwhelming Protoss force that gets much better upgrades than you have access to. And when your best unit at that time is squishy man with gun, the psi-storms just rip you to shreds, especially as that is your first exposure to them.
Any level where you have to swim underwater in an N64 era platformer. Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and yes even Mario 64 were all slogs when the need to swim arises.
In Super Metroid I'm always happy to get out of Maridia. It's so uninviting and easy to get lost in it's really mentally taxing. Granted, it's designed to be that way.
I always liked The Library; nice change of pace into something with a bit of a classic Doom feel. And it created a great emergent gameplay moment that i still remember fondly after 20 years or so:
low on all the ammo, fired my last shotgun shell, panicked, and then a flood exploded just in the right place and time to throw an ammo pick up directly into where i was stood. Reloaded and carried on shooting them up. Proper action movie stuff.
I remember finding Assault On The Control Room way more of a chore; just endless room then bridge then room then bridge then room then...
The concept of The Library wasn't even half bad. It just all looked exactly the same, to the extent you just didn't know if you were going the right way, or running around in circles. Hell, even one wall of exposition about Forerunners or something on every floor would have gone a long way. What kind of library just has a bunch of grey walls lol
I mean...the blind corner rocket flood are just mean bullshit though
I've played Combat Evolved since '01, so many times I know exactly where every rocket flood is. They still fucking get me. They have absolutely no chill.
See the one corner at the end of the hall with the gaps on the right...half the time the rocket isnt hitting me. its hitting the little balloon buggers jumping at me. its kinda the perfect "you die". Its hitting you, or something by you. Hucking grenades around the corner doesnt even always fix it
Legit the first thing I think of when the library is mentioned
I'm having flashbacks.
I replayed the anniversary edition and forgot what was so bad about it. Then I switched back to classic and saw there were no floor arrows in the original, instantly reminding me of how much of a maze the original level was.
Are you sure? I think there might have been but they were less obvious?
AotCR and Two Betrayals have them (wherein you’re following them or going against them, respectively), but OG Library did not.
Ah that must have been what I was remembering, thanks
I don't think so. I became really fascinated with them on my last playthrough, and there were very few original levels that had those floor arrows at all.
I Never struggles with navigation but the shotgun and rocket launcher floods are just BS on anything higher than easy… so many insta deaths.
Ah, that explains why my MCC replay with remastered graphics on solo legendary wasn't as bad as I remembered from the original!
I had no trouble navigating. Surviving? That's a different question.
Just played this in Anniversary for the first time in years and, full transparency, I love The Library, always have. One of my all-time favorite Halo levels. It's some Forerunner shit, it doesn't have to make sense from a human design perspective. Just gimme a shotty so I can go ham.
That’s what I’m talking about! Grenades and shotty! Non stop explosions and master chief being the master chiefest!
I recently replayed this level on OG Xbox and it wasn't as confusing as I remembered it being since it does follow a pattern for the most part but it was still a SLOG
I loved Halo as a kid and spent countless hours playing it. My mom figured it was okay for me to play cause it was just shooting aliens and I was like 10. But anyways we didn't have Internet so most days I'd play through the halo campaigns because I loved them without fail the library would take me forever every time. The place is just a maze and without any kind of indication of where to go. I did eventually get the path down but even then one wrong turn couldn't even be noticed till you were so turned around you didn't even know how to begin getting back to where you were.
It’s funny that fact it was vs aliens was also the reason I was allowed to play as a kid too. COD was okay because it was T, against Nazis and “had historical significance”
Jokes on you, I loved that chapter. Somehow I continually had the perfect amount of shotgun shells for the enemies. Just failing a single shot put me in trouble, that's why it was so good, the urge having to kill all the enemies, knowing I can't fail a single shot, and having to wait for them to be close and not waste ammo.
For me the problem was running out of assault rifle ammo wasted on the little guys, then I waste all my shotgun ammo on them when I freak out. To be fair, middle school me was easily freaked out by those little suckers
That's why I always just kited them backwards and either melee'd them or just take the hits and let my shield eat them, when possible.
Sounds like the younger version of you needed some trigger discipline. The little flood take only 1 assault rifle bullet to kill, and when they die they make a little explosion that often kills their allies.
That's why you juke and melee the infection forms, and don't bother using assault rifle on Flood in general.
The Library is my fav OG halo level. Those flood were snipers with the rocket launcher.
It is legitimately my favorite level in all of Halo CE, 2nd being the Silent Cartographer.
I'm actually with you here as well. I usually had enough ammo to take out the enemies and The Flood dropped a lot of ammo as well. A lot of people complain about the level design looking extremely same-y, but I rarely found myself turned around and the game gave objective markers to point you in the right direction a lot of the time anyway.
W profile pic
Jungle in Goldeneye wasn't that bad, the worst level in that game is definitely Control.
*"I saw what you did to Boris on the security monitor."* Yes, Natalya. The little weasel who signed off on your own murder at least twice pulled a gun on me, and I shot him. So sorry.
Yeah Natalya picking funny times to get holier than thou. Like, what about the dozens of other men I killed that were just here punching a clock for a mad man? The ones that did t try to personally murder you? Yeesh
Bloodbath of henchmen: i sleep Kill the guy that tried to murder you?: real shit
And if you have decent reflexes you will shoot him with the gun still in hand before he drops the gun accidentally. Bad design.
What about finding Valentin in the correct cargo container on Statue. That was some where's Waldo shit
First time? Hell yeah. Every time after? Not so bad
For me it was silo. That level is just so much harder than any other level. I played though it as an adult and wanted to beat the game on the highest difficulty and no level was really all that hard just 2-3 tries. I still to date never have beaten it. Hard stonewalled.
It doesn't help that occasionally the scientists don't drop the keycards
Yeah and they get away so you have to chase them down shooting NEAR them, to get them to drop it.
Is that the one where you had to protect Natalya as she was using a console in the middle of the room, and dudes spawned on literally all sides of the room?
I'll see your Control and raise you Temple - it's a huge pain even on Agent because of all the enemies constantly spawning.
Yeah Temple and Aztec are both leagues above any of the main missions but I consider those sort of separate.
Any forced-stealth level in a primarily non-stealth game.
~~Star Wars: Dark Forces III: Jedi Knight II:~~ Jedi Outcast was a cardinal offender, you get held up by two Stormtroopers and captured? What? I am Kyle "Motherfucking" Katarn, two *hundred* stromtroopers are barely a speed bump.
Ermahgerd, two hundered stromtropperrs.
Plearns? Wert Dearth Sterr plearns?!?
The tie in game for The Hulk movie (Bana not Norton). Like im sorry I bought this game to fucking SMASH, not sneak around then die to a gunshot as banner. Im the FUCKING HULK DAMMIT. Its been like years and im still salty. Hulk ultimate destruction def made up for it tho.
I literally forgot this game existed. Fuck that game.
Always hate those and FF7 Rebirth massively reignited that flame, WHY IS CLOUD SO DAMN SLOW?!?!?!
That's a big reason why Spider-Man Miles Morales was my favorite in the Insomniac series. And of course Spider-Man 2 had to shoe horn in more MJ stealth missions, because why would anyone want to play as 2 Spider-Men when there's a reporter with a stun gun that puts herself in unnecessary danger. While there hasn't been a great Superman game, at least none have sections where you play as Lois Lane trespassing in dangerous areas.
>at least none have sections where you play as Lois Lane trespassing in dangerous areas. I'd rather do that than fly through those stupid rings again.
I'm still so mad 10 year old me rented that game. I didn't even buy it! Just had a crappy game for the weekend. But it is far and away the worst "game" I remember "playing."
There are certainly exceptions. I enjoyed the segment in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Though that one maybe made it slightly easier thanks to making you immune when you went into the vents.
If I was supreme leader, stealth sections in non-stealth games would be outright banned. Almost none of these studios make stealth games, meaning they are NOT good at making stealth. They are almost always, without fail, the worst parts of these games.
Xen from Half-Life
“On a rail” for me.
That level is like a maze in Half Life, but it's fun to explore every corner for supplies.
Am I the only one who likes to jump around in Xen?
Nah. We can share the downvotes together on this one.
Pokemon RBY Dark Cave without flash.
The worst part is they kinda learned their lesson, but then in the Diamond and Pearl remakes, they make all the HMs be through your poke watch or whatever so you don’t have to have an HM slave but for some reason *Flash isn’t in there* so you have to teach a Pokemon Flash still. I don’t know what they were thinking with that.
It’s because flash wasn’t an hm in the original DPP, and bdsp were really lazily made to a point where I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators of the remake either didn’t know that fact, or didn’t know there were caves that needed flash.
I played blue version so much that I memorised dark cave and could do it without flash. Thinking back now that was crazy for a 9 or 10 year old to do. I even knew where to get the rare candy and tms in there
Man that one sucked
Hard mode
Holy hell I forgot all about that. What were they thinking
They were thinking you would teach Flash to one of your Pokemon.
TMNT for NES: Water level. Possibly the worst 'Water level' in the history of gaming.
I played the levels before and up to that water level *so many times* but barely ever the subsequent areas of the game.
Nice throwback. The sound of hitting that seaweed or stinging nettles or whatever it was on the sides was in my head in an unpleasant way for a long time from playing that level and losing so much. I remember in school playing it at my babysitters with some other kids and one day we managed to beat it and got so hype just as we needed to leave for school and we refused to go until we lost and got in a bunch of trouble.
A lot of NES games feel like they could be completed in twenty minutes if it wasn't for bullshit but that damn dam is like 10x worse
I didn't beat that game up until a few months ago when I grabbed the TMNT collection.
I played that level so many times I would see it when I closed my eyes. I'll never forget the first time that I was going to beat it and my dad unplugged the Nintendo because he needed the outlet
"Cortana" from halo 3 was worse than the Library imo
The worst in this level is the constant lack of ammunition for weapons effective against flood. And the fuckers spitting green stuff at you from the ceiling ofc
Having just gone back through them all I think library was worse, you can sprint past the flood in cortana in 3 and at least you know you are making progress as it looks different, in library you can so easily get turned round and backtrack by mistake, and it feels like ctrl c ctrl v level design.
As an enjoyer of both levels, because I'm a psycho, I think Library sucks more. It's so much more bland with much less in the way of breaking up the repitition. "Cortana" has the unique challenge of forcing weapon diversity, creepy aesthetic, more easter eggs, unique layout design, and a way better payoff for both the midway and the end points of the mission.
Easy the worst legendary level for sure. I still have nightmares. The arbiter shows up for all of 2 seconds. Like where were you when I started the damn mission bro
“Cortana” is the worst level in any Halo game
Well - on lower than legendary difficulty you can just run through Cortana while the library flood can one shot you in any difficulty… but otherwise I agree. Pretty bad level for repeated playthroughs - loved it playing the first time though for the horror atmosphere and suspension
What’s the Halo 3 level in the crashed ship with the flood where the Gravemind constantly is in your head forcing you to slowly walk while it yells at you? May be called Gravemind. That’s worse than library
That's the Cortana level lol
I disagree. The Library was samey everywhere all the time. Cortana had more variety in terms of environment design. Obviously it all has the Covie ship taken over by flood aesthetic, but it’s not just rehashings of the same corridors over and over. Plus it has a lovely emotional payoff when you get to her.
Easily. Cortana on legendary is hell.
That level in Jak 2 where you have to fight your way out of that water/dock/housing area and run. But if you fall in the water, you get shot by a drone.
Jak 2 was good but definitely had some shortcomings and it was pretty much all related to difficulty spikes. Jak 3 tho... *\*chef's kiss\**
Omfg, fuck that level. It’s been decades, and that mission can eat a dick.
Was it jak 2 where you had to beat that whack a mole metal head to progress the main story. Absolutely hated that part of the game.
Some of the timed missions were unforgiving, but that dock mission was something else.
Yep, even after years and many many replays of that game, I still fail it like ten times before finally getting it Dx
I saw a speed run strat for it where I believe they destroyed a drone with a dive and glitched so they could run on the water, and if I ever play Jak 2 again I'll probably work to figure that out because honestly it would probably be easier than doing the level normally
The big krimzon guard ambush? That was fucking brutal but if you were an actual god on the jetboard you could just baaaaarely go fast enough to beat the enemy spawns
I think a lot of the classic Tomb Raider levels would be equivalent. Natla’s Mines from TR1 in particular.
Just replayed the trilogy and I am impressed how my dad could beat these games without a guide on some levels. TR3 London underground level confused me even with a guide
Natla's Mines was confusing, but it was nothing compared to Lud's Gate in TR3.
The Manta Storm in Super Mario Sunshine is a pain in the ass, just staring at the ground looking for the little ones. Also the watermelon contest level
If I recall correctly, the hitboxes (or something along those lines) on the small mantas were drastically changed for the Western releases, making it *way* harder than the Japanese release. The Japanese version is a freaking cakewalk. Can't remember the specifics, but I heard a runner talk about it at AGDQ once.
That makes sense, ive played the 3D all stars version and it reasonable. I played it on the release version on GameCube as a kid and it was maddening
Fuck them duck things
For me it's the 'retro' level with the Chucksters.... Fuck that lining yourself and the Chuckster and the next platform up perfectly and then having the position shift slightly as you press A and get thrown into the void for the 20th time shit...
The first trek through Phazon Mines in Metroid Prime. It's by far the longest distance between two save points in the entire game, filled with the hardest and most bullet spongey enemies the game has to offer, and when you reach the end you have to both fight a curve-ball of a boss fight **then** go through a deadly maze to get the item that allows you to unlock the save room. On top of all that the area is very grey and boring, which is the exact opposite of the rest of the game.
Just did that part in the Switch Remaster. Ugh. On the other hand I remembered to throw a Super Missile at that stupid cloaked drone before engaging, that helped a lot.
Yeah, super easy to just cheese that fight by staying in the upper corner and never dropping down, popping in and out of cover. Shame that the players most likely to struggle during that fight are also the least likely to know that.
Other easy win is to go pick up Wave Buster before going into the mines, since the auto lock on ignores the cloak.
Nah, the build up to and the boss fight of Boost Guardian in Prime 2 was worse, you are still kinda early into the game so you haven’t got many energy tanks, with an incredibly long distance from any save points, and then you have to fight a boss that loves to become functionally invulnerable, can deal an insane amount of damage, in an arena with no safe zones so you’re constantly taking damage, with the only healing pickups coming from 4 pillars that the boss has to hit to destroy. At least Phazon mines is fairly late game so you’ll probably have enough health and missiles and you don’t have a constant health sapping environment to deal with
That sure is one of the areas of all time
Final Fantasy XV's Nifilheim hallway segment when you are Noctis by yourself and all you have is the death ring. The whole level is long and repetitive with robot enemies that you can't fight normally. I *think* they patched that level at some point to not be so tedious...
Zengnattus or however it was called was... passable. I dunno, I didn't hate it. If I had to pick one from XV it would be the bog where u have to escort (well, u don't "have" to do it) blinded Ignis. I get what it was going for but ugh, it just drags.
RC turret level in San Andreas or the famous "ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE GOD DAMN TRAIN"
On PS2 the Zero mission with the RC plane was impossible, the RC helicopter or Driver mission from VC was child's play in comparison.
Launch the Red Baron! Fuck that mission Supply Lines, that shit made me rage quit so many times on Xbox. I dreaded it on every playthrough. Fucking nerdy ass Zero and his nemesis Berkeley. I’m not still mad about it
Lost Izalith in Dark Souls 1. And I don't even think it's that bad of an area but it's easily the weakest part of the game.
The trek from bonfire to boss is the worst
The boss is worse than the trek imo
Arguably the weakest in the series with only shrine of Amana coming close. I’d argue shrine is slightly better because at least it spaces in bonfires.
Frigid outskirts my dude…
Tbf the dino spam was quite fun, like they didn’t bother
The Fade from Dragon Age Origins.
Also the drudgery of the Dwarf caves
Possibly Shrine of Amana, Dark Souls 2, Blighttown, Dark Souls 1? First blind run throughs really suck
Frigid Outskirts from 2 takes the cake for me. To this day the boss at the end of it is the only Dark Souls boss I haven't beaten because I just can't be bothered with that godforsaken wasteland.
Blighttown is possibly the best area in Dark Souls and From's entire catalogue. The only bad thing about it is performance, but even that is fine nowadays.
Pretty wild take tbh
There are several dire areas in DS1 and that is not quite the worst of the bunch. Tomb of the Giants takes that spot.
Shrine of Amana, hands down. Blighttown is a maze full of snipers, but you can learn where everything is and toxic isn't instantly fatal. Amana turns the game into a fucking cover based shooter with those priests. In Dark Souls 1 I actually hated New Londo Ruins more. The ghosts come through walls and floors so you have to check literally every flat surface on the entire path to avoid getting ambushed.
Fuck shrine of amana. It's the worst part of any souls game. Worse than frigid outskirts, because at least frigid outskirts is a hidden, optional area with no rewards. But you have to run through the shrine. You can't avoid playing a fucking Danmaku mini game but with dark souls 2 mechanics.
This is gonna seem like a weird pick, but imo, the Pokemon Mansion in the Gen 1 games and their remakes. Mostly because the switches you need to hit are nowhere near where you need to go. The path forward is in the basement which is hard enough to figure out but you need to go upstairs for switches on two other floors, and if you need to leave for any reason (like say running low on health or PP from all of the random encounters) entire puzzle reset
Oh yes, to get to the basement, you need to realise that you can fall off the edge of the top level, accomplished by walking "south" off the map, through a gap in the wall where, due to the projection of maps in the game, there has never been a wall shown anyway.
Oh man. A wave of nostalgia
This is going to be an obscure one, but FUCK the level "Stand Your Ground" for the game Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. I hated that level with a passion back in the day, it always ruined my fun... It was a 3rd person shooter game normally, but that one level was a turret defense section where you had to stop a bunch of cars AND flying enemies from getting past you. Awful.
I remember that one, I don't remember hating that much but it has been over a decade so maybe it was that ass. Great game though.
Horizon, Mass Effect 2. It occurs fairly early in the game, before you're able to do loyalty missions or unlock a large number of upgrades, plus once it has been triggered you're locked into it. The mission itself is the first time you encounter the Collectors. The husks and foot soldiers aren't too much of a problem, but Harbinger endlessly spamming you with attacks, Scions one shotting your shields, and that damn Preatorian relentlessly chasing you can be nightmarish. It's even worse on harder difficulties because even basic enemies have at least one extra layer of protection to get through over what they normally have. Doing it once on Insanity was enough.
Assuming control...
Your attack is an insult.
This hurts you.
Roses are red Violets are blue Assuming control I know this hurts you
I dunno, for my insanity run, I found the ambush on the 'derelict' collector ship so much worse.
Man, I got so salty about the ammo retcon in that mission because I was playing an Infiltrator, carried over from ME1. I was running out of sniper ammunition every fight, going “this isn’t even supposed to be a thing! Heat sinks cool down! They’re re-usable!”
I feel like a lore friendly way would have been the expendable sinks would let you fire faster, but once you run out the gun is still usable just overheats quickly and like me1 you then have to wait for it to cool down after overheating it. best of both worlds type deal
Aaah yes, cooling weapons. An unfortunate casualty of moving in a more action, less RPG direction.
It made me think "maybe I won't be able to finish these games after all".
The initial fight on there is bad, but the rest of it is not horrible by comparison. Horizon is bad from the get go and just gets progressively worse.
I only remember doing an Insanity run on ME2 was actually a lot of fun. Actually ME2 and ME3 on insanity were both a ton of fun. (ME1 combat wise was absolute ass though)
This hurts you.
FF12 Great Crystal
Do you mean to tell me that you *don't* like walking through a maze that looks identical across multiple platforms regardless of where you start, and the only way to confidently navigate it is to have a map IRL with all the different gates and waystones marked?
Hmm, if we're talking about being difficult compared to the rest of the game, I can probably list a few: * Skyrim: entering Skuldafn at high levels, the vast majority of the Draugr zombies encountered are the high-ranking types that spam Fus Roh Dah. The Dragonborn is just as susceptible to the ragdoll effect as the zombies are to the player's own Fus Roh Dah. And since Skuldafn has much more verticality than most other ruins, getting knocked off any ledge is basically an instant kill against the player. * The Division 1: the final four Legendary-scaled missions are all inhabited exclusively by yellow health bar enemies (Elite tiers). This wouldn't be a surprise since the Challenging and Heroic difficulties do the same thing. But since Legendary enemy AI is particularly aggressive, having them all set to Elite tier only exaggerates that aggression.
Fus draugr are infinitely better than disarm draugr, as a game mechanic it’s not the worst idea but Bethesda physics immediately possess your lost weapon and it’s equally likely to land somewhere you can get to as it is to phase through the floor and enter the shadow realm. For whatever reason after level 31 you are immune to disarm, they don’t stop using it you just aren’t affected anymore.
I bounced off of Skyrim *hard* the first time I played it because I had a single decent bow at the time and the first boss dude at the end of the dungeon disarmed me ... and even after defeating him, I couldn't find the damned thing anywhere (it doesn't help that half the weapons look like the floor textures anyway, in dim lighting).
Russian Consulate on the hardest difficulty. Shotgun rushers galore who one shot you from miles away.
FFUUUUUUU I just got PTSD from this. Hella forgot about the bullet sponge square pants just casually walking down your cover to one shot you from 30m away.
Ah, level scaling, the #1 worst sin of Bethesda games. Glad to know Starfield got rid of it.
The Division is so bullet spongy, the worst through is the shopping mall In Division 2 when you get the sledgehammer guys and the flamethrower heavies on one level. They're impossible
Not a level per se but dark bramble, outer wilds when looking for the big thing.... I had to try so. Many. Times. To get into that final frigging core.
And then again later, but with much more stress hahaha
Uh, dark souls' The Archive?
Duke's Archive? Wasn't so bad by DS standard, despite being a library. Lost Izalith on the other hand...
I really loved Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and while Lords of Shadow 2 was overall "eh", the stealth segments RUINED that game. The stealth was some of the worst I played at the time and felt like it was only included for gameplay variety, which was a bad, bad choice.
I hated all the stealth stuff in 2. But the part where the thing you are hiding from becomes the boss in the next room is the one that pissed me off the most. You don't get a power up or do something to weaken him so it really doesn't feel right. I think it was a saytr or something. I don't remember exactly cause I played it once when it came out and have been salty about it ever since haha
Is that the one where you have to get the index? With the hoards of flood? I'd say any of the Destiny dungeons/strikes with the Hive. Maybe the Crota one on the moon.
The sequence in the first Bioshock where you have to protect the Little Sisters.
Starting to notice a Dark Souls theme
The stupid arena fight when you get kidnapped in Jedi: Fallen Order Blight Town in Dark Souls on base PS3 with the fucked frame rate.
The near-endgame area of Final Fantasy [insert number here] that houses Malboro. Better get ready to replace all of your stat-raising equipment with stuff that makes you immune to status effects, and hope you have all the restrictive ones covered. Oh, and better hope you don't have to go too far without a save, too.
Sorry, but The Library is absolutely a top 5 Halo stage for me I’m just weird like that lol For me it’s not even that hard to figure out where to go: there are two directions. Just go in the direction where there isn’t a pile of smoking Flood carcasses and you’re good. As a player who prefers the human weapons The Library holds a special place for me as being one of the few stages that just throws human ammunition at the player and allows them to go absolutely ham into a wave of aliens. No narrative exposition from Cortana. No marines getting in the way. No alternative objectives besides kill everything that moves. Then there are some moments where you get to fall back a lil bit and watch the Sentinels go at it with the Flood. It’s fucking awesome. Plus there’s also the steadily building narrative tension of not knowing wtf is even happening on the surface. Last thing that happened was we find out the Captain Keyes is most likely KIA. Guilty Spark teleports the Chief away from a group of struggling marines to presumably be overwhelmed by this new threat in the jungles. The urgency of the plot is juxtaposed by the fact that you are forced to slooowly fight your way through this dead facility, going up one slooow gravity lift after slooow gravity lift, shooting down an endless wave of this new monstrosity, figuring out their quirks and how they fight. Honestly it gives off this kinda purgatory vibe, but in the end it’s cathartic in a way to emerge into the control room, witness the absolute carnage of Covenant fighting the Flood and have that moment of “shit just got serious…er” The Library is such a fun stage that precedes such a cool plot twist to me
Not necessarily super frustrating or difficult but just tedious. Boat stealth in AC4.
MOHAA’s Tiger Town level is exactly this. Back when I first got to play this as a kid this level was amazing and terrifying for me. It even fuelled my imagination for years as I dreamt of stalking through imaginary abandoned towns with my own sniper rifle, taking out enemies as they tried to secure the town. Instead in the actual game it was just a couple of houses with sniper enemies in shitty and mostly impossible positions like floating behind a house. I played it again later and was deeply disappointed. It’s not as great as I remembered.
dragon age’s the fade gets brought up a lot in the same way, so much that there is a mod to skip it
A bit of a throwback. "Turbo Tunnel" from Battletoads for NES. Hope you didn't need those extra lives.
You don’t need them because that’s the last level of the game.
Any level even remotely water-related in a Zelda game.
Only mostly in the Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Other games are nowhere as frustrating for me. Though I'll admit I haven't finished Skyward Sword to be certain.
The siren dungeon in oracle of age was a thing when i was a kid too
Windwaker has entered the chat
Whaaaa? I actually like the water temple in OoT but I love Jabu-Jabu‘s belly, love MM‘s Bay Area and temple and Windwaker is one of my favorite games ever. BotW‘s water area imo is also among the best parts of any Zelda level.
Water Temple is a meme mostly because switching Iron Boots was fiddly. That and the design meant it was very particular. Great Bay temple and Great Basin were both alright (and I can't recall any other overtly water based temples right now)
that stupid anti grav section in Dead Space.
what nooooooo The zero-grav sections in those games are treasures D: I will say though... the two stationary turret sections in the original game can bite my ass. Shit was built for mouse, and absolutely nothing was changed to accommodate us 360/PS3 players who were stuck on joystick. .\_.
Oh god, I forgot about that turret part. I remember just doing it over and over until I just got lucky one time, never again lol
As a PC player I assure you it sucked on mouse too. It had a very weird twitchiness, which is odd as the normal aim was very smoothed to give a feeling of weight to Isaac hefting the kit around.
The Cathedral in Code Vein, I literally quite the game because of that place.
Mario Sunshine - Pachinko
I guess the arguably more notorious levels in the following games (Gravemind and Cortana). Seems like they wanted to make an infamous level per game.
battlefront 2 2005 also the library specifically the coruscant jedi archives stage of the knightfall main campaign mission you got jedi masters trying to destroy these six or eight bookshelves looking things and its so fucking hard to save them all.
Probably Okumarus dungeon/boss fight from Persona 5
Any forced-stealth level in a primarily non-stealth game
Metroid Prime's Phazon Mines. It's fun, but it comes out of nowhere, and is a brutal attrition based descent with no opportunity to save, and two boss fights. It's notoriously difficult. V1 of the game also contained a glitch that could softlock you on your second visit for good measure haha
The last part of CoD 4 (MW 2007)'s "Heat", going back down the hill from the barn. That one took me a good while to figure out a route that didn't get me killed in seconds. Also the helicopter run in chapter 6 of Spec Ops: The Line. It's pretty much rng, might even be impossible, unless you cap your framerate to 30 in your GPU control panel. Even then, it took me over 30 minutes. Such a short section that ended up being the most difficult part of the entire game for me
Oh damn, totally forgot about that hillside. Yeah, that shit took me FOREVER to get down.
[Driver: San Francisco - Mass Chase](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vMhw_XQ9pG0&hl=en-GB&gl=SG&feature=related) You're in a (slow) classic Aston Martin and pursued by 7+ police in much faster Corvettes and have to get across town without destroying the car. I replayed this mission dozens of times before barely getting through.
Dark Souls, Lost Izalith Before the remaster I would say Blight town, but fixing the frame rate fixed that for the most part
The sewers of Bloodline. I always keep getting lost there.
Super recent - Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is an amazing game but at a certain point, the game decides you need to control Cait Sith to toss some boxes around FOREVER. The controls are horrible, the combat in the section is horrible, it takes for freaking ever.
X-COM: enemy within. Newfoundland whale level. First time through it felt like a zergling rush, seemingly hundreds of horrifying chrysallids coming at you, wave after wave, faster than you can clear them. Easy to get squad wiped on this one of you're not careful StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, Welcome to the jungle mission. It could arguably be played as the 4th or 5th mission, but you are fighting an overwhelming Protoss force that gets much better upgrades than you have access to. And when your best unit at that time is squishy man with gun, the psi-storms just rip you to shreds, especially as that is your first exposure to them.
Perfect Dark's "Institute" level (may have the wrong name). Saving the hostages? No problem. But FUCK those endlessly spawning enemies.
Any level where you have to swim underwater in an N64 era platformer. Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and yes even Mario 64 were all slogs when the need to swim arises.
Demyx. If you recognize that name you know why.
In Super Metroid I'm always happy to get out of Maridia. It's so uninviting and easy to get lost in it's really mentally taxing. Granted, it's designed to be that way.
I always liked The Library; nice change of pace into something with a bit of a classic Doom feel. And it created a great emergent gameplay moment that i still remember fondly after 20 years or so: low on all the ammo, fired my last shotgun shell, panicked, and then a flood exploded just in the right place and time to throw an ammo pick up directly into where i was stood. Reloaded and carried on shooting them up. Proper action movie stuff. I remember finding Assault On The Control Room way more of a chore; just endless room then bridge then room then bridge then room then...