Forgot what made me think about this topic but I’ve been considering this for a week or two… Curious what you all think.
When I mean “hardest” “video game”, I mean whatever game that you find objectively more difficult than all other ones on the market, as long as it’s a video game. I guess exposure to different genres/types of games can influence the answer to this question a lot so… Hence I was curious about your rationale.
I have a pretty solid answer & rationale but I guess I shouldn’t share that in the main post to bias results…
There is one game, one level, that was so hard to beat that I just gave up and walked away, never to return. The stampede on Lion King from the SNES.
A lot of games from that era were epically hard; few games had a difficulty setting, a lot of tie-ins meant games looked and played polished but no effort was given to make a solid game, computing power meant there was usually only one way to complete a mission or level. However this was a game made for kids and that fucking game, that fucking level was simply bullshit.
The Stampede?
I hardly ever beat Level 2…aka. the platformer version of “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”.
And Level 3 has some annoyingly tough jumps too. I think The Stampede is level 4?
The only way most of us ever played the second half of the game is level select…
I got all the way to the last level once… but never beat it. The lava level man.
There are so many kinds of difficulty that this is hard to answer.
There’s fake difficulty, where the game is just being cheap. Some games are hard because their mechanics or controls are just janky.
Some games are easy to lock yourself out of the ending and not know it. Try the game from the start again!
There’s genuinely difficult games, but any time a game is difficult in a “fair” sense, there are people on the internet who’ll beat it with a guitar controller, or blindfolded, or without any power ups.
If you want a game that not many people could beat…I don’t think many people could beat Bokosuka Wars today…
I’m glad you mentioned this! I completely agree… Which is kinda why I was asking about this in the first place. I was curious what others consider as objectively “difficult” for them, and I got my answer: my sense of “difficult” is very different from that of most Lemmy users…
fake difficulty
IMO I felt a lot of the answers pointed to games that are extremely high on the “cheap” scale… I mean yes cheap games are difficult, but yeah it does feel a bit artificial on the difficulty scale.
Which is also precisely why I didn’t think of most platformers as among the hardest games. Like for example the original IWBTG; is it difficult? Sure it is, but a large part of it comes from the game being cheap AF… Someone with good platforming skills can clear every section with a few tries. And the higher difficulties just reduce the number of checkpoints, not actually making the game fundamentally more difficult… I mean there are genuinely difficult platformers but there are objectively more difficult games out there
so many kinds of difficulty
I’m actually surprised almost no one mentioned any type of PvP games or games that are primarily reliant on competing against other humans… they go insanely hard, but like how much of Street Fighter’s difficulty is you being better than the other person vs just “know how the game works”?
If you want a game that not many people could beat
My favourite genre of games almost universally feature levels that probably fewer than 100 people across the world could beat (not counting customs), so… yeah.
Precisely. There are games where random factors like a particular loot drop, or doing well in an early battle thanks to random critical hits, or a good randomly generated starting point all determine if the game is reasonably beatable, or if you end up softlocked.
There are other games with certain, let’s says pranks, played on players with one hit kills that can only be avoided with foreknowledge. In modern games, at least these pranks are made shortly alter save points or there is a Dark Souls like way to regain equipment/progress. In a lot of older games, the player is forced to restart a big chunk of the game. At that point it becomes a test of patience rather than skill to replay the same level over and over.
Then there’s games like the original “pirates!”. It has an anti cheat that would present itself as a simple question like “do you recognize whose pirate flag that is”. The answer is in the booklet, and if you answer wrong nothing visible happens but the difficulty is cranked so high that the game becomes effectively unbeatable.
Okay that quickly went from “I think I can do this with some practice” to “what the actual fuck” to me… congrats on clearing the game
I haven’t touched classical bullet hell games since high school so… guess I should give them a try!
I’ve really only played Touhou in middle/high school… Imperishable Night was actually a really formative game for me, loved the OST and played quite a bit out of it. Fairly sure I’ve cleared this particular one on Easy, might have made to Stage 5/6 on Normal… Definitely didn’t clear Scarlet Devil on Normal because my motor skills were terrible back then
I should be able to clear Normal/Hard now that I’m older and more skilled. If I have the patience/time that is…
Edit: apparently I forgot how to do math and got the game release numbers wrong
That’s awesome! Loved Imperishable Night too, I played it so much along with Perfect Cherry Blossom and Subterranean Animism. As for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil it’s generally considered one of the harder games of the series
Ketsui or DOJ are up there too but futari is rediculous.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon with all 9 challenges active. I know there are a few people who have won the game with all 9, but my god is it hard.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon with nothing active is impossible for my dumb ass
I got good enough at it that I could win with no challenges about 2/3 of the time. Hit me up if you ever get stuck.
Thank you! I’m aways stuck. My longest run is level… five? I haven’t played for a few days since I realized I can use the clock button to wait a turn, letting foes come to me and not being the first attacked.
I have so much to learn.
If you want some basic tips, here is what has worked well for me:
- Surprise enemies as often as you can so you get auto hits (use doors)
- Focus on one character at a time until you win, then move on to the next - each one requires a different strategy
- Save up your enchantment scrolls until you get good weapons, armor, rings, etc. Don’t dump your enchantment scrolls into a dagger or leather armor. Hold out for a great sword, great axe, etc. and plate armor.
- Save up scrolls of mapping and potions of mind vision for the demon halls (last levels of the game). They are full of traps and fairly tough enemies so having maps and knowing where enemies are is huge.
Just try to play Dwarf Fortress, and you’ll drop any other opinion on this subject. Especially the ASCII version of the game, not the fancy graphical one.
Fear and Hunger is a contender. If you aren’t aware, imagine a JRPG where you kill god at the end, but you don’t ever level up. Also the first enemy you fight is very likely to kill you, and has just as much of a chance of doing so on your 100th playthrough. Oh, and you start from the beginning every time you die.
Fear and Hunger seemed like an interesting game, until I found out the true horrors of what some of the enemies do to you, and that put me off. If you think getting your head pecked off by the Crow Mauler is bad, what if I told you that rape is a highly recurring theme in that game?
I haven’t played it myself, but I understand there are mods to remove nudity at least, and I would expect the sexual violence as well. That would be a requirement for me to try it.
Such a mod does exist, and I’d be shocked if it didn’t also remove any scenes of sexual violence.
An example of what I mean is the Harvestman, which the video doesn’t fully explain and for good reason. He not only begins the fight creepily caressing members of the party, but from the third turn onwards his attack becomes a coin flip.
Fail it, and it’s an instant game over, where you’re treated to a cutscene where the Harvestman breaks your limbs then fists you to death.
Faster Than Light.
Seriously you could play ten games a day for a year and not even come close to winning, even if you’re quite good at it.
Try DCSS.
Battletoads
Gosh damn fuckin bike level
don’t starve adventure mode
this cute little game took me years to beat. souls games don’t even come close to it (and I love them very much)
it will throw a wrench into your plans at every step. the designers seem to have worked closely with psychiatrists to make you think you have figured it out only to destroy again and again and again
What makes it so hard is, that most of the problems you’re gonna face (starvation, sanaty, freezing, missing wappons/armor for battles) can be avoided/overcome easily only if you are prepared. Once the problems are here you often have no chance to deal with them when unprepared.
So after a while it becomes a constant danger evaluation in your head: There is an enemy… Fight or avoid? If i fight i might get hurt. Do i have time do find stuff to heal after the fight? And so on…
And adventure mode adds even more problems to the mix.
After writing this i realised that this sounds really stressful. But at the same time this is why i like this game so much :]
Probably some of the old Nintendo games. Silver surfer is an extremely difficult bullet hell. Battletoads required insane memorization and timing, pretty sure you had to act before the game even told you in some places.
Toss up between RC Pro-Am and Ninja Gaiden on the NES. I beat them both and they were both a real bitch. So, so many times I got to the final race or stage and couldn’t do it… so you start all over from the beginning.
Games like that don’t exist anymore.
Counter Strike, Starcraft, Dota, Tetris (yes, really), each at the highest competitive level - going by skill ceiling.
Edit: Modern Tetris at the highest level looks absolutely inhuman. I have seen Triple T-Spins at absurd speeds.
Edit 2: You are pretty much physically unable to compete in these games by age 30 at the highest level.
Starcraft esport scène is showing that you can compete past 30
I’m gonna say Jet Force Gemini. It’s not hard in that enemies or bosses are difficult, though some were. It was those damn Tribals. You had to save every single one of them if you wanted to beat the game, and some were a pain to save without them getting killed.
Hardest to be the best at? Rocket League for sure
The hardest one I can say I’m honestly proud I figured out are the old “Impossible Mission” games from Epyx.
They have set rules, and once you figure out all the rules, they are solvable, but the platforming elements require precision and the puzzle elements are challenging.
8-bit Souls-Like?
Longplay - 1:
Longplay 2:
I used to play the first one on the Macintosh’s on display at the store. Not sure I ever finished a level in the few minutes I always had to play when my parents were shopping. Very difficult, but fun!
