Unexpectedly hard games

[Snatch1414]

Super meat boy. I spent half an hour trying to do the second hurdle on one stage the other night, got cold sweats and rage quit. I am destined never to get beyond 68% dark world.

I considered posting this exact thing. I had heard this game was difficult, but to me it's pretty much game ruining difficult. The difficulty in Super Meat Boy is like it's sole defining mechanic, and not in a good way.

In another thread there was some discussion of Cave Story as being an indie game that everyone fawned over but in reality was not all that great. For me that game is Super Meat Boy. In addition to some undeserved hype, I also object to way it uses the term "Old School Difficulty" as a shorthand way of saying "we couldn't be bothered to address balancing our level design, so please enjoy this festering heap of frustration that looks like it released in 1992."

(Also ... did I mention I suck at Super Meat Boy?)

I don't know if it's well-known or not but I downloaded a game called 1001 Spikes and it's a similar deal. Some good level design but half the difficulty is not being able to tell disappearing blocks from regular blocks, etc.

[joehero]

Super meat boy. I spent half an hour trying to do the second hurdle on one stage the other night, got cold sweats and rage quit. I am destined never to get beyond 68% dark world.

Im not sure if this is unexpectedly hard. I thought it was common knowledge that this game is extremely difficult, that's sort of the basis of this game.
But I will agree, hard and unfair! Congrats on your progress though.

[Nemoide]

Does one really hard boss count?

The first boss of the 8-bit Sonic 2 is nuts. IMO the hardest boss of any Sonic game! Totally not what you would expect from a first boss! (The rest of the game is fairly easy though.)

BloodRayne is a game I found to have a really weird difficulty curve. It starts off pretty difficult, then becomes super-easy, then becomes IMPOSSIBLY HARD. I had to use cheats against the last boss and it STILL took me multiple tries.

[alienjesus]

Does one really hard boss count?

The first boss of the 8-bit Sonic 2 is nuts. IMO the hardest boss of any Sonic game! Totally not what you would expect from a first boss! (The rest of the game is fairly easy though.)

BloodRayne is a game I found to have a really weird difficulty curve. It starts off pretty difficult, then becomes super-easy, then becomes IMPOSSIBLY HARD. I had to use cheats against the last boss and it STILL took me multiple tries.

The first boss of Sonic 2 is hard on Game Gear, but it's pretty easy on Master System.

[Fragems]

Drakengard 3

I still want to beat the living shit out of whoever decided to make the final level into a god awful rhythm game. Seriously the rest of the game is a decent hack n slash with rpg elements and then you get to the hell that is the final level of the final branch story. Its an unforgiving 7 minute long rhythm game that requires perfect timing but has delayed audio ques, no check points and missing a single note or going a 1/10th of a second early results in a game over, a camera which goes all over the place purposely obscuring the visual ques, and a handful of ques at the end that have no ques whatsoever so if your playing legit you have to die 2-3 times at the end just to figure out where the final notes are .

[Sarge]

You know, back in the day, I wonder if kids knew what they were in for with the first Ninja Turtles game on NES. I didn't know anyone back then who actually beat it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

You know, back in the day, I wonder if kids knew what they were in for with the first Ninja Turtles game on NES. I didn't know anyone back then who actually beat it.

I had no idea how hard it was going to be when I purchased it as a child. It was way too hard for me, and even with Nintendo Power as my guide, I could not make it past the third level. (Strangely, the disarming the bombs in level 2 never gave me much of a problem.)

[MrPopo]

That game was mean enough that as a kid I had more fun swinging my sword on the overworld in time with the music.

[Sarge]

I had no idea how hard it was going to be when I purchased it as a child. It was way too hard for me, and even with Nintendo Power as my guide, I could not make it past the third level. (Strangely, the disarming the bombs in level 2 never gave me much of a problem.)

I can't disagree, level 2 wasn't that hard. You just had to switch turtles a lot. Now, I can see having huge problems if you're doing a one-turtle run. Ouch, ouch, ouch. (No, I am not doing that!)

[MrEco]

I agree. Admittedly I'm probably not that great at video games but I can enjoy a ballbuster if I know what it is going in and can enjoy slowly progressing bit by bit, but this game was a little ridiculous to me. Just hard for the sake of being hard

This is a phrase I've never understood. Since when did a game being "hard for the sake of being hard" become a bad thing? I can understand having problems with a game using cheap tactics to be hard, but "hard" and "cheap tactics" are not the same thing.

High difficulty can be it's own reward. That's why there are higher difficulty options in so many games, because there's always going to be someone who wants to make a game more challenging for themselves so they feel a better sense of accomplishment. There are also people who go out of their way to play games that are intentionally made to be very hard for the same reasons.


It's like... how ridiculous would it sound if I said "Super Mario Bros. is fun for the sake of being fun" or "Shadow of the Colossus has an amazing atmosphere and matching music just for the sake of having an amazing atmosphere and matching music?"