Hardest game EVAH!!!!!!

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Bangai-O is real contender for toughest game ever.

Actually a great conversation. What is the most difficult game ever created (one that people have actually heard of )

pixelburp

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Actually a great conversation. What is the most difficult game ever created (one that people have actually heard of )

Well my first thought is something like the infamous Desert Bus section of that old Penn and Teller game, but is that difficult or just needlessly, intentionally tedious?

Zero-Cool

pixelburp wrote: »

Well my first thought is something like the infamous Desert Bus section of that old Penn and Teller game, but is that difficult or just needlessly, intentionally tedious?

If, like me, you though "what the **** is Desert Bus?", I looked up a video and found a 24 hour playthrough (sped up x3 to an 8 hour vid). Oh my God, how & why would anyone do that to themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LtiHla1dNg

Retr0gamer

I've a few contenders. All are tough but fair, bull**** game design doesn't count.

Bangai-O Missile Fury would definitely be up there. Fantastic game though but the level of execution required for the post game levels is insane. It's such a shame it's stuck on the XBox 360 Live Arcade and not on another system or backward compatibile.

Contra Hard Corp is up there as well. The US version in particular as they made it one hit kill as opposed to 3 hits to lose a life in the japanese one. The european version would be up there but runs slower at 50 Hz. Managed to beat the european version back in the day but it's tough going.

Contra Shattered Soldier is up there with Hard Corp. It has a requirement that you have to get a high rank to unlock the final few levels. And your rank goes down by skipping boss attack phases and losing lives.

Ninja Gaiden on the NES is insanely tough but I'd almost kick it off this list because of the complete nonsense where you have one life at the final boss or it will kick you back 4 stages.

Super Meat Boy. It's insanely tough but also tightly designed. I'll never, ever play this game again as it killed me going through those dark worlds.... and then there is the I Wanna Be the Guy (another good shout by the by) levels that near destroyed me. It's so well designed though.

Shoot'em ups are all usually tough, bullet hells in particular. Two non bullet hells stick out in my mind:

Gradius 3 (arcade). Home conversions aren't so bad but the arcade version is considered by enthusiasts as the hardest non bullet hell shooter ever. Doesn't help that continues are disabled so you only have 3 lives to beat it.

Radiant Silvergun. Not insanely hard but more so because it's so long and there's so much variety that it takes forever to learn and get good at.

As for RPGs my vote goes for Final Fantasy Tactics. It's equally one of the hardest and easiest. If you don't know how to break the game some of the missions are ball bustingly tough and it hits you early with insanely difficult stages. It always starts you on low ground and you have to work your way up a hill while being pelted with projectiles and spells. The end game is a cake walk but getting to that point on your first go before you know how to make broken character classes is nuts.

Retr0gamer

Zero-Cool wrote: »

If, like me, you though "what the **** is Desert Bus?", I looked up a video and found a 24 hour playthrough (sped up x3 to an 8 hour vid). Oh my God, how & why would anyone do that to themselves.

Charity. There's a charity event every year where people play the game and it makes a lot of money.

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Bangai-O is real contender for toughest game ever.

There is so much going on in this :eek: Lasers all over the shop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZllCtGuuRaM

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Charity. There's a charity event every year where people play the game and it makes a lot of money.

Well then I'm actually glad this game has a purpose! Imagine sitting down as a kid thinking "Ah few free hours on a Saturday afternoon, think I'll throw on Desert Bus".

pixelburp

Zero-Cool wrote: »

If, like me, you though "what the **** is Desert Bus?", I looked up a video and found a 24 hour playthrough (sped up x3 to an 8 hour vid). Oh my God, how & why would anyone do that to themselves.

And just in case that video doesn't make it clear, the bus was coded such that it slowly veers to the side of the road, so you HAVE to keep steering or else it's game over. And as Retr0 says it has become a charity mainstay.

As to the genuine answer, I don't want games to kick my ass, so the hardest I've played recently might be something like Hollow Knight, to the point where I'm hoping Silksong has an easy mode.

Retr0gamer

Zero-Cool wrote: »

There is so much going on in this :eek: Lasers all over the shop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZllCtGuuRaM

Oh that's just Bangai-O on the Dreamcast. That game is a cake walk in comparison to Missile Fury on the 360.

And missile fury on the 360 can have 4000+ missiles/lasers on the screen, so much so it can drop the framerate to less around 1 FPS. It's glorious.

Zero-Cool wrote: »

Well then I'm actually glad this game has a purpose! Imagine sitting down as a kid thinking "Ah few free hours on a Saturday afternoon, think I'll throw on Desert Bus".

The game never came out. It was meant to be a spoof game trolling gamers and was near complete but the publisher dropped it due to the mega CD market not being great. It was found and rescued and now has a cult following.

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The game never came out. It was meant to be a spoof game trolling gamers and was near complete but the publisher dropped it due to the mega CD market not being great. It was found and rescued and now has a cult following.

HA class!

Retr0gamer

There were other parts to the game as well with Desert Bus just being a minigame that somehow managed to grab people's attention.

The only other game I can think of that purposefully sets out to piss the player off is Takeshi's Challenge.

Skylinehead

We all know QWOP is the hardest game in the world.

CastorTroy

Pretty much any of those bullet hell games. Or how has no one mentioned Ghouls 'n Ghosts games?

Retr0gamer

CastorTroy wrote: »

Pretty much any of those bullet hell games. Or how has no one mentioned Ghouls 'n Ghosts games?

It's tough but fair. I've beaten the Arcade and Megadrive versions of GnG with one credit and have beaten Super Ghouls n'Ghosts. Definitely not the hardest games ever made. I think Ghost n'Goblins is tougher and there's way tougher games out there.

Also to dispel the myth about Contra, the NES and Arcade games are actually very easy for games of their vintage. I beat Contra on the NES in a weekend when I decided to give it a go and see it through to the end.

johnny_ultimate

I’ve played a good few bullet hell games (went through a serious Cave phase a few years ago), but honestly some of the more traditional shmups are much harder in many respects. Sure, there are mental later stages / hard modes to some Cave games where the screen fills with pink bullets. Lots have mad, weird high score / screen clearing mechanics too that demand really specific timing - playing them *well* is very difficult. But I’d definitely say the likes of Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are more immediately demanding to get to grips with for most players.

pixelburp

Thing about those schmups is that the difficulty just feels like memorisation rather than me learning and developing a skill. Recently finished guacamelee 2 from my backlog and while occasionally difficult, my failure was because given a set of tools (fighting moves) I hadn't combined things to match the challenge. Those schmups don't feel like there's any of that challenge and learning curve. Just "remember this pattern"

dreamers75

Mischief Makers on N64, **** that train, seriously **** that guy.

Mark Hamill

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Again don't let the difficulty put you off. It's tough but fair and you have instant retries. If a boss annoys you, you can always try another. I'd say most people will have the game polished off in 8 hours.

I beat the first few bosses, but once I got to the second Island I had to quit it. It would take me an hour of retries to build up enough muscle memory to take down a level or boss and seeing as I only have maybe 90 minutes of game time (and only every 3rd or fourth day), that is not an enjoyable use of my rather limited game time.

What's worse is that there aren't even any mods to make it a little easier. The only thing I could find was one which put a health meter on the screen for bosses, but it had no effect on the amount of health so it was more psychological than anything.

pixelburp wrote: »

As to the genuine answer, I don't want games to kick my ass, so the hardest I've played recently might be something like Hollow Knight, to the point where I'm hoping Silksong has an easy mode.

Hollow Knight is my limit, in terms of difficulty. I beat all of the regular bosses, including the dream warriors, right up to the end boss (

I got the second stage of The Radiance and just quit because each death meant having to go through all the time to fight the Hallow Knight again. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten it if I could have just restarted at the first stage

.)

Azza

Super Street Fighter II Turbo was a tough one. On request of arcade operators outside of Japan, Capcom made the game extremely difficulty to get people off the machines quicker so the next person could pay to play.

To beat the game you had to go through 12 fights, the first fight was okay, but from the second and third fight on-ward's its extremely tough as the A.I has the ability to perfectly react to your button inputs. Doesn't matter if your Daigo Umehara if you tried to play the game normally at all you would get wrecked.

Only way to beat it is to play a very defensive play style and know how to punish the A.I when it does unsafe moves and a learn a few A.I patterns that could be exploited.

The game has 8 difficulty mode and the default difficulty is the 2nd lowest. For years people though the difficulty modes where broken as it seemed to make no difference to the difficulty, but the higher difficulty modes were working as intended making the the A.I attacks more damaging. People just couldn't tell because the lowest difficulty was so challenging already.

The Japanese arcade release didn't have this issue.

Retr0gamer

It's not about learning the pattern more so execution. Also they will make you think on your feet.

Actually wouldn't say Ikaruga is that hard. It looks insane but once you get used to it it's no where near as bad as the toughest bullet hells. In fact it barely resembles one once you get used to the black and white mechanic. It's more a puzzle game. I've finished it with 5 credits before when I was good at it. The shmup enthusiasts say it's manageable.

Retr0gamer

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I beat the first few bosses, but once I got to the second Island I had to quit it. It would take me an hour of retries to build up enough muscle memory to take down a level or boss and seeing as I only have maybe 90 minutes of game time (and only every 3rd or fourth day), that is not an enjoyable use of my rather limited game time.

It might not be for everyone but it's one of the best made games in that genre and felt it captured that old school harsh but fair gameplay of old perfectly.

SharpCoder

didn't dark souls make it so the more you died, the harder the game got by design, the world system and then the light and dark system.

pixelburp

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I beat the first few bosses, but once I got to the second Island I had to quit it. It would take me an hour of retries to build up enough muscle memory to take down a level or boss and seeing as I only have maybe 90 minutes of game time (and only every 3rd or fourth day), that is not an enjoyable use of my rather limited game time.

What's worse is that there aren't even any mods to make it a little easier. The only thing I could find was one which put a health meter on the screen for bosses, but it had no effect on the amount of health so it was more psychological than anything.


Hollow Knight is my limit, in terms of difficulty. I beat all of the regular bosses, including the dream warriors, right up to the end boss (

I got the second stage of The Radiance and just quit because each death meant having to go through all the time to fight the Hallow Knight again. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten it if I could have just restarted at the first stage

.)

Same re. Hollow Knight, it's about as hard as I want games to be - but still wouldn't mind a "story mode" as some will call the easiest difficulty level. It was only happenstance I realised where I ended wasn't the actual end. Which is also another somewhat annoying trend with these challenge oriented games ... the "true ending". I loved HK and it's a world I'm keen to return to, but the manner in which it hid narrative behind almost prohibitively difficult gates could be frustrating.

gizmo

Younger me would probably say TMNT on the NES and Battletoads on the Gameboy as they were two games I was never able to finish back in the day. Be curious to return to them now and see could I manage it. Later, the Star Wars series of games on the SNES gave me a run for my money but at least I was still able to finish those.

In terms of modern games, I'd lean towards Ninja Gaiden Black on this one. While the Souls games can eventually be bested with patience, levelling and upgraded equipment, that game and its ilk require you to get better at the core mechanics of the game and improve your reaction time in order to proceed, or succeed if you're also interested in karma.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Super Meat Boy. It's insanely tough but also tightly designed. I'll never, ever play this game again as it killed me going through those dark worlds.... and then there is the I Wanna Be the Guy (another good shout by the by) levels that near destroyed me. It's so well designed though.

I'm afraid to even load up my X360 save game in case I lose my >100% completion due to a patch. Still though, one of my favourite games ever and yet I'm quite sure had the controls not been so incredibly tight and reload system not been so fast, I would never have finished it to that degree.

McFly85

Young me definitely would have said Rainbow Islands, I remember once getting to Toy island before quickly running out of lives, and I had no idea there were 3 extra islands to get the real ending!

More recently maybe the newer Ninja gaiden games, they could feel almost unfair at times.

Retr0gamer

SharpCoder wrote: »

didn't dark souls make it so the more you died, the harder the game got by design, the world system and then the light and dark system.

Nope.

Demons souls had world tendency and while it seemed to get harder you actually did more damage in that state so ended up actually being easier.

CastorTroy

It's always a bit crazy looking up playthroughs for the games we found hard as kids and seeing people get through the whole game in about 30 mins.
Games back then were designed to be hard for longevity and to make more money in arcades.

Zero-Cool

CastorTroy wrote: »

It's always a bit crazy looking up playthroughs for the games we found hard as kids and seeing people get through the whole game in about 30 mins.
Games back then were designed to be hard for longevity and to make more money in arcades.

Yupp, i remember when it was normal to buy a game, be hard as balls and a completely normal thing to never clear it.

CastorTroy

I remember watching Go 8-Bit and they had Ghosts 'n' Goblins on. The guy got to the second level and Dara was saying things like "No one has ever seen this before" and "The developers are coding this as he plays"

Zero-Cool

I absolutely loved G&G but i never cleared it and i was perfectly fine with that. I just accepted i wasn't good enough but i enjoyed my time trying to beat it. All these whippersnappers with their fortnite's and Minecrafts wouldn't last 2 minutes on a nes

Mr.Saturn

Metal Slug 3 is a funny one. A lot of folk cite it as the best of the series, pre and post bankruptcy, but everyone gets a bit quiet when the subject of actually finishing it comes up. The final level that rolls on longer than the entire rest of the game combined. It's understandable that coin-munchers are hard by their very nature and Metal Slug is no stranger to gnawing on your balls but it actually feels at times that Metal Slug 3 was SNK's crack getting credit-fed out of bankruptcy.



That said, nooooooooooooooooothing in history will come close to grinding out unlocks for The Lost in OG Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Jesus. My hand still shakes slightly out of the sheer terror of having to run through all of that game's evils without ever taking a damn hit. The character became very cheesable in Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ and that's not always the worst thing.

Canis Lupus

Ghosts and Goblins for me on the C64..... The Last Ninja series as well although again just cos young me couldn't figure it out.

I dunno if there are any modern games I'd class as super hard. I guess Dark Souls 3 as I find it just unrelenting.

Dave0301

Downwell (hard mode), certainly not the hardest ever, but one that made me have to concentrate a lot more than most games of recent years.

Super Punch Out

Retr0gamer

I don't really find Metal Slug 3 fun at all really as well. It's just too hard.

Retr0gamer

Going to say La-Mulana 1 and 2.

Both are pretty tough games when you just take into account the base platforming and combat. However it's the puzzle elements that really make these games tough. They feel more like point and click adventure games at times with the puzzles. Clues can be scattered across the entire map (which is huge) and you need a notebook to jot stuff down to figure areas out. Admittedly La Mulana 1 veers into bull**** territory with the puzzles at times. La Mulana 2 is a lot better designed but I still needed a walkthrough at some points.

For some old school hard core PC gaming, X-Wing and the Tie Fighter games are extremely tough. X-Wing missions aren't that well explained to the player and can last forever with a single mistake leading to a retry. Tie Fighter on the other hand is just insane, especially the expansions.

Azza

Both Far Cry and Sin Episodes Emergence were very tough.

Far Cry A.I could see you from a mile off and were rather accurate a patch introduced a bug they never officially fixed that allowed the A.I to see you through walls. The last few levels were bonkers. Hugh numbers of very tough enemies.

Sin Episodes: Emergence was I think the first game with a dynamic difficulty that scaled depending on much health and ammo you had and how quickly you reached various hidden checkpoints. The problem was the check point system was bugged. So for example if you crossed a check point in say the average time it took to cross the check point it was fine but if you happened to back track over the checkpoint it would flag it as completed again but it would measure the time since you first crossed over it and then went back over it, which could be just a second or so between them. The result is the game would jack up the difficulty to its maximum difficulty.

I beat the game before the issue was patched out, but I remember doing it by strafing out of cover killing one enemy going back into cover and quick saving pretty much between every kill

I'd also suggest Command & Conquers Remastered hard difficulty in Tiberian Dawn was also close to broken. It was never in the original game and the developers just shoe horned it in from Red Alert. Thankfully they patched it to make it more balanced.

Also fairly recently, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was a fairly challenging FPS but in particular the court room battle took me probably two dozen or more attempts to clear.

Zero-Cool

I remember thinking Black Dhalia, the FMV game with Dennis Hopper, was quite tough, some head scratching puzzles but that was back in 98/99. What a treat of a game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5UJ5lcnzt0

pixelburp

What about games we gave up on? Stuff I mentioned I still persisted cos the core game or world tickled my fancy. I have a huge weakness for Metroidvanias (except for Metroid itself, weirdly) but The Messenger got chucked in the bin after a few hours. The platforming was the wrong side of challenging; the precision and timing required not even remotely forgiving.

johnny_ultimate

Didn’t find The Messenger too bad at all tbh, and I don’t mean that in the ‘git good’ sense :pac: If there’s a problem with that game it’s that the Metroidvania structure is a bit frustrating because it effectively has to allow for two very different halves of the game, so some of the backtracking is annoying. But otherwise would’ve said it’s a pretty fair game.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom was IMO a far more demanding Metroidvania. Great game and eminently beatable in the end, but definitely a few extended plat forming / combat gauntlets that were on the quietly swearing side of challenging.

Dave_The_Sheep

Azza wrote: »

Far Cry A.I could see you from a mile off and were rather accurate a patch introduced a bug they never officially fixed that allowed the A.I to see you through walls. The last few levels were bonkers. Hugh numbers of very tough enemies.

Reminds me of the original Operation Flashpoint early on. You'd be taking 'cover' behind some trees and bushes, crawling so the enemy couldn't see you, trying to sneak by some tanks, and some random npc with an AK would nail you from miles away despite there being no way they could see you. Turns out that the AI (before a few patches) didn't see foliage so you were just crawling around in the open for them.

Zero-Cool

Speaking of Far Cry like, Boiling Point was really ****ing hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6shyiFUWQ

Retr0gamer

I remember the later levels of Solider of Fortune 2 were horrendous. Enemies were throwing grenades that seemed to be laser guided to your feet. Pretty awful poor game in retrospect.

Always wanted to give Boiling Point a go. Always been fascinated by it. The Bug fix list was always hilarious and was intrigued by how it was a true sandbox game game unlike the ubisoft crap we get now and was supposedly excellent despite the (horrendous) bugs. The Eurogamer review was great where they gave it one of their worst review scores and one of their best review scores.

Zero-Cool

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I remember the later levels of Solider of Fortune 2 were horrendous. Enemies were throwing grenades that seemed to be laser guided to your feet. Pretty awful poor game in retrospect.

Always wanted to give Boiling Point a go. Always been fascinated by it. The Bug fix list was always hilarious and was intrigued by how it was a true sandbox game game unlike the ubisoft crap we get now and was supposedly excellent despite the (horrendous) bugs. The Eurogamer review was great where they gave it one of their worst review scores and one of their best review scores.

Boiling Point was fascinating. Felt (at the time anyway) like I was in a real world situation, a foreign hostile country where death was around every corner and everything had a weight to it. I remember loving it but not getting very far.

Penn

The driving test in Driver on PS1 has a reputation for being difficult, as one or two maneuvers require a lot of precision. But there was one level, possibly even the last one, that I never got past. Always ended up pinned against a wall with about 20 cars around me and not able to move. It was relentless. I don't think I ever finished it.

johnny_ultimate

Speaking of Reflections, Stuntman was absolutely one of the games that destroyed me psychologically. The sheer precision required to pull off what were often fairly lengthy obstacle courses just grew more and more preposterous as the game progressed.

Think I managed to finish the final level once with a low rating. Just couldn’t repeat the feat. But will always remember the train jump level, which not only demands you get past the first stretch under a tight time limit, but then basically has you racing a speeding (well, slow enough :pac:) train for the remainder of the level too.

Mr.Saturn

I feel the revived DKC series deserves a nod here. The original DKC were never known to be super easy but Returns and Tropical Freeze can really catch you off-guard if you go in expecting a difficulty curve on par with anything Nintendo's published post-SNES. Fantastic pair of games.

_Godot_

I always have trouble with Super Hexagon.

No mention of SM3?

I replayed it on the NES Classic a few years back

Some of the later levels are borderline ridiculous

Retr0gamer

Just beat the toughest stage in bangai-o missile fury. I feel like crying. Still a few more levels to finish off but nothing as bad as that ball buster.

Penn

Okay Cuphead is one of the most infuriating pieces of **** games I've ever played. Regardless of how much it harkens back to the days of MegaContraVaniaMan X, there's no excuse for some of the absolute bullsh*t design in this game. The randomisation of elements it throws at you can actively trap you and in some cases it pretty much forces you into using particular weapons and then punishes you for it.

I've never come so close to throwing a controller in rage as I have with this game. Some parts are extremely difficult and you'll die a lot, but you learn the best ways to dodge the attacks or move in the environment. That's fine. Some parts though are just utter horsesh*t and a game is not good just because it's hard.