Games that can never be made again because of difficulty

Cajunheat said:
Super Ghouls and Ghost- you battle your way all the way through this with NO saves then on the final boss, you find out you have to battle your way all the way through the game again with no saves! I can't think of to many people now a days that has this kind of time to devote to 1 playing of a game.
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I can't describe to you the feeling of "beating" that game only to get to the end and have it pull that crap. Think you beat it and then it laughs at you and makes you have to start over with more, and seemingly faster, monsters.

I've only ever beaten that game, completely, once. I don't think I could ever do it again, at least not without savestates or something.
 
I don't have time to read through the whole thread here but I'm gonna suggest Moria. A rogue-like game for the Amiga (and probably other platforms, i only played it on the Amiga). Whenever the balrog showed up, i was dead.
 
Master_of_Sparks said:
Call of Duty 4. Was much harder than the later installments.
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Holy crap....

Anyway, if we're including console games, Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden.... holy fuckballs those were hard..

PC only, I'd have to say, the original Syndicate.... that final mission, WTF, never have I seen something more difficult in my entire life...
 
+1 battletoads, never finished, i could try again on a emulator with savestate galore but.. nah, fuck it.
 
i don't know if this really stacks up with the other games mentioned so far, but Morrowind without a strategy guide..and im talking about finding every last miscellaneous quest like that!
 
There are plenty of past and current Korean MMOs out there that make you lose XP on deaths.

Some of them even have the ability to PK anyone, anywhere (except inside big towns). Usually it gives you a "murder status" where you can be killed in turn by anyone, but it still happens.

Korean MMOs take a look at Western gaming and laugh at how easy everything is.
 
Wasn't Aion a Korean MMO, lol. I am guessing you mean versions they keep over in Korea?
 
MavericK96 said:
Any kind of old-school NES platformer. Some of those were insanely hard and I think kids today would rage so hard they would go on a shooting spree.
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Not so. There's super meat boy and others that are carrying on the tradition of hard-as-shit platformer games. There's still a market for those games, but it's strictly indie now.
 
I loved Ninja Gaiden on the NES, and actually beat it once without dying. My two greatest video game accomplishments were beating Ninja Gaiden and and the original Castlevania without dying. Those games were tough, but not crazy-hard like Ghosts 'n Goblins, Battletoads, or TMNT.

brucedeluxe169 said:
Holy crap....

Anyway, if we're including console games, Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden.... holy fuckballs those were hard..

PC only, I'd have to say, the original Syndicate.... that final mission, WTF, never have I seen something more difficult in my entire life...
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TMNT was hard, but not even close to BToads or Ghosts n Goblins. Maybe I just practiced more at TMNT, but beat it several times.
 
I remember

Miracle Warriors - never beat it and got stuck, and it was one of those unforgiving ones where if you killed the wrong people you wrecked your karma and people wouldn't deal with you...fun when you're like 9.

Wonder Boy in monster land(but god it was fun) was fairly hard once you got further in, never did beat it...heck a bunch of the alex the kidd games were hard too.

UO: I loved UO pvp, that was so awesome..and stealing from houses etc, ambushing home owners yada yada

EQ; I never played until later, wasn't that fun due to the grind. I loved the difficulty though and the fact you COULD give some high end items to lower levels etc. One of the things I thought was great; Consistent mobs would drop the same items at some point, you got to plan out a camp path and your gear etc. None of this random crap, and if someone got a raid drop sword it was "OOOOOOOOOO". I would personally love to have a game somewhat like this but without the terrible grind and more teamwork oriented(eg 100+player raids which GW2 does require for some world events!)

Guild Wars 2 looks to be somewhat on track for this, the level 10 quest destroyed me repeatedly and had me pissed off a few times. And huge pvp where everyone is equal for HPs, so winning rewards does help +5% life bonus...that's a battle changer etc.

I really do miss the UO/EQ rare weapons were something to be amazed by, and UO people would attack you in town to try and get you to drop them when you were showing them off. That element of danger was awesome, and if you lost your stuff it really wasn't THAT big of a deal, unless it was a house key. I really miss being on high alert no matter where, and full loot drop + hoarding stuff in a keep.
 
I'd say along with EverQuest, I would throw up Star Wars Galaxies Pre-CU for sure.

One of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming experience that I've had so far. No hand-holding, in a pure player-driven economy. PvP content was dependent on the creativity of individuals and guilds to build massive bases to capture planets. Player driven assaults to conquer towns. Player housing/cities/shop/vendors. Pure random resource & unique craft system allowed you to have exclusive top-tier armors/weapons/buffs made by "renown" weaponsmiths/armorsmiths/doctors.

My favorite part about the game is the high dependency you have on the rest of society. You couldn't be "top" or really successful without needing to be mentored for skills, or reliant on other professions for their crafted goods.

Plus, all the scrimmages in famous Star Wars areas were a blast, like Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, Krayt Graveyards, Naboo, etc.

Pity another game as complex like this couldn't be made today.
 
has somebody already mentioned

Echo the Dolphin - FUCK this game is hard hahahha; granted I was only about 8 years old when I was playing it on my sega genesis like a BALLA. I only found an orca like once man and he didn't do shit for me but swim away
 
Well some games are hard in a good way and others are hard in a bad way.

For instance Target Earth on the Genesis I swear is unbeatable without cheating thus it sucks and its difficulty shouldn't be remade.

But games like Hell Fire, Blaster Master, ninja gaiden, and Excite Bike are all really hard but are beatable and passable.......and even if you don't ever end up beating them you at least feel like someday you could.

Side note when you Pass Hell Fire (which I have) It just restarts the game on a higher difficulty which is a complete roundhouse kick in square in the ear.
 
Nightrainsrt4 said:
I can't describe to you the feeling of "beating" that game only to get to the end and have it pull that crap. Think you beat it and then it laughs at you and makes you have to start over with more, and seemingly faster, monsters.

I've only ever beaten that game, completely, once. I don't think I could ever do it again, at least not without savestates or something.
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Dude, I may have beaten Battletoads, but this game..........Wow. I wont go near.
I dont know if you are a cyborg or insane, or both, but SGG is eternally on my do-not-ever-attempt-again list. Tears of pain. Tears....
Not even a 2nd loop of Gradius 3 can match the pain and suffering that is Super Ghouls and Ghosts. Masochistic, beyond imagination.

Honestly, if my girl got kidnapped and I had to go through all that to save her....... Yeah, shes gonna die.
Guinevere can suck it. Who told her to piss off some demons, I swear....
 
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Gaiden133 said:
I'd say along with EverQuest, I would throw up Star Wars Galaxies Pre-CU for sure.

One of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming experience that I've had so far. No hand-holding, in a pure player-driven economy. PvP content was dependent on the creativity of individuals and guilds to build massive bases to capture planets. Player driven assaults to conquer towns. Player housing/cities/shop/vendors. Pure random resource & unique craft system allowed you to have exclusive top-tier armors/weapons/buffs made by "renown" weaponsmiths/armorsmiths/doctors.

My favorite part about the game is the high dependency you have on the rest of society. You couldn't be "top" or really successful without needing to be mentored for skills, or reliant on other professions for their crafted goods.

Plus, all the scrimmages in famous Star Wars areas were a blast, like Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, Krayt Graveyards, Naboo, etc.

Pity another game as complex like this couldn't be made today.
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I loved bounty hunting and bunker busting. SWG was like no other game and I doubt anybody will make a game similar to it again...
 
There's a lot of good mentions here. I remember there was a space shooter on the NES (Gradius I think?) that was really hard, it had an arcade version too IIRC. It was super hard, and I was so proud of myself the one day I finally beat it YEARS later without cheating...and then it merely said 'game over' and started from the very beginning again. :mad:

dr.stevil said:
I don't know. I know it's not an official game (Mod), but the DayZ mod proves that people are still into that kind of unforgiving torture lol
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Have you read the forums though? It's filled with people complaining about how everyone now just disconnects at the first sign of danger, and then those threads are also filled with the people who defend that tactic and are vehemently against any kind of logout timer, because 'what if' something comes up where you need to d/c now?
 
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Oh, and I remember EQ. I finally tried out out after a couple friends talked me into getting it. I think I literally gave up after a week, and mostly because it was the first MMO like that which I had played (yeah I played MUDs before, but this was different.) I kept trying to find low level people to group up with for 'quests' (you had to TYPE to talk to NPCs for Quests back then lol) and bosses and whatnot, but it must have been clear I was a newbie and nobody was helpful at all.
 
You still have to type to talk to NPC's, at least last I played in 2009-2010. There were actually a few raid events where you had to recite certain texts or poems to win, too.

Never ran into the issue of unhelpful people, but every server was different.
 
ikarinokami said:
after reading the changes coming to diablo 3 in patch 1.03. I got to thinking about games that would be just too hard to be made again.

1. EQ. I can't imagine that there could ever be another mmo like this again. 100% unforgiving to the player. you lost xp, levels upon death. it was extremely hard to level, the concept of the hell level was creating in eq. if you were a mage you had to med, which met your screen went black, and it being eq, your chances of death was quite high. you had to run everywhere, you had to have food and drink. depending on your race/god some guards would KOS you. there were the 4-8 hour corpse run on vox. the instant death trains of Mistmoore, unrest and karnors castle. high level, high agrro mobs in low level zone.
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I wholeheartedly agree. EQ1 was just amazing in it's day. Playing on a PvP server (Tallon and Sullon Zek) was a hard life, and I loved it. I haven't seen a game since that had such repercussions and difficulty. Ah, those were the days. Everything these days is instant-gratification candy-land where I could'nt give a crap what happens to my character. In EQ1 I had such an identity with my character after all the hard work put into him it's just crazy. Plus EQ1 had a small population of hardcore gamers, it was paradise. Will never happen again. :mad:

I mean, what game today would you see entire guilds coming up with plans to suicide themselves into zones (Plane of Fear), having their corpses dragged around the zone to set up, all while people train NPC's around and a rival guild is entering the zone to kill you all while the Dracolich is insta-killing people? Stuff like that would blow the minds of noob players today.

They can't even make music today as they did back then. I'll just leave this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKj36GJj_i8


I remember training one of these skeletons to the spawn point in Nektulos Forrest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWisI2lSc_A&feature=related

I had made a body of dead people like 30 deep.


Best video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_b9n76F5KQ&feature=related

(I guess it may be weird that I could draw the exact locations of every screenshot in that video on a map from 10+ years ago yet I can't remember if I took a vitamin today) :D
 
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I never got to play EQ or some of the earlier titles you older folk have mentioned, but I miss games like Tie Fighter (and XWing) that had some incredibly impossible levels if you wanted to do every single objective and secret objective.
Thankfully some of my old time favorites eventually received spiritual successors, like Pax Imperia: Imminent Domain. Sometimes I feel like the only person who played that game lol.
:edit: I do miss MUD games, I remember going on a quest with a friend from another game (Earth 2025/all the other previous names it had). I still vividly remember chasing down a castle that had legs and was quickly wandering through a forest. We chased the castle down, climbed up the rope, and discovered that pirates had commandeered the castle. So we fought them of course! We then entered the control room and discovered you could move the castle, but had no idea where you were going. So my friend went back outside, and helped me navigate the forest and return it to the rightful owners. Absolutely brilliant fun, and it was all text.
 
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DOOMHAMMA said:
I never got to play EQ or some of the earlier titles you older folk have mentioned, but I miss games like Tie Fighter (and XWing) that had some incredibly impossible levels if you wanted to do every single objective and secret objective.
Thankfully some of my old time favorites eventually received spiritual successors, like Pax Imperia: Imminent Domain. Sometimes I feel like the only person who played that game lol.
:edit: I do miss MUD games, I remember going on a quest with a friend from another game (Earth 2025/all the other previous names it had). I still vividly remember chasing down a castle that had legs and was quickly wandering through a forest. We chased the castle down, climbed up the rope, and discovered that pirates had commandeered the castle. So we fought them of course! We then entered the control room and discovered you could move the castle, but had no idea where you were going. So my friend went back outside, and helped me navigate the forest and return it to the rightful owners. Absolutely brilliant fun, and it was all text.
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EQ1 was one of those games that you just had to be in the right place in your life to play well. It took massive amounts of time but it was also extremely rewarding. I never had a game that came anywhere near the feeling of accomplishment that EQ1 provided for hard work.

X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter was pretty cool! I remember my friend introducing me to that, it was pretty hard in some spots.
 
All this talk about games that can't be made again, got me thinking. We've seen hollywood produce remake after remake after "reinvisioning" of movies. At what point do games follow suit? When do games start recreating themselves? Doom 1, Wolfenstein, Mario, Half Life? I'd like to think of Call of Duty as the test bed for this since they've been doing it for the past 5 years and it is working extremely well for them.

I personally wouldn't mind it so much, as long as they're done right. One of my favorites, Rainbow Six, in an UE4/etc engine with true-to-the-original gameplay would be awesome (it'd have to disconnected from Ubi for that to happen).
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
Holy crap....

Anyway, if we're including console games, Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden.... holy fuckballs those were hard..

PC only, I'd have to say, the original Syndicate.... that final mission, WTF, never have I seen something more difficult in my entire life...
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don't forget the piece of trash that was Double Dragon 3


To this day, I still havent gotten past the 3rd level on that game without cheating with a gamegenie. Rediculous is an understatement
 
I will agree on EQ but with some added points. EQ could be as hard as you made it. There were other games with XP loss on death and long runs but no game that I have played since has the same raid mechanics and strategies at the high end with no clues or ideas how to figure them out other then trial and error. Raiding guilds HAD to not only have the correct class makeup but learn to work as a team to be even half decent. To be elite it was a lifestyle choice. It consumed people including myself. Hours and hours spent wiping to the same boss just trying to figure out if we had the right classes there. Getting kicked out of guild raids because X class wasnt needed but X class was. No current MMO has ever seen the kind of guild feuding that went on in EQ and no game has also had the same community feel. Feuds on guild message boards that poured into Server message boards, but as soon as some other server came in flaming all other problems were forgotten. It was crazy how much this game sucked you in and did something no previous MMO or MUD could do. WoW people wouldnt have a clue how to handle the large scale mayhem of some raids and the frustration that went with them. People would cringe at owning a second set of gear for CR or resists or flagging and back flagging or kicking guild apps from raids because you were over the 85 percent rule. The one thing that I do actually miss in MMOs is the grind. It sucked but what you actually met people when grinding. Levels took weeks sometimes and you would sit for hours and actually get to know the people in your group and decide to do it the next day and then the next and before long you actually had people to do stuff with not random people from random other servers.

Like most I look back on EQ in bittersweet rose tinted glasses but I couldn't do it again. The time involved for people who now have careers and families would be too much for most to handle.
 
Method said:
I will agree on EQ but with some added points. EQ could be as hard as you made it. There were other games with XP loss on death and long runs but no game that I have played since has the same raid mechanics and strategies at the high end with no clues or ideas how to figure them out other then trial and error. Raiding guilds HAD to not only have the correct class makeup but learn to work as a team to be even half decent. To be elite it was a lifestyle choice. It consumed people including myself. Hours and hours spent wiping to the same boss just trying to figure out if we had the right classes there. Getting kicked out of guild raids because X class wasnt needed but X class was. No current MMO has ever seen the kind of guild feuding that went on in EQ and no game has also had the same community feel. Feuds on guild message boards that poured into Server message boards, but as soon as some other server came in flaming all other problems were forgotten. It was crazy how much this game sucked you in and did something no previous MMO or MUD could do. WoW people wouldnt have a clue how to handle the large scale mayhem of some raids and the frustration that went with them. People would cringe at owning a second set of gear for CR or resists or flagging and back flagging or kicking guild apps from raids because you were over the 85 percent rule. The one thing that I do actually miss in MMOs is the grind. It sucked but what you actually met people when grinding. Levels took weeks sometimes and you would sit for hours and actually get to know the people in your group and decide to do it the next day and then the next and before long you actually had people to do stuff with not random people from random other servers.

Like most I look back on EQ in bittersweet rose tinted glasses but I couldn't do it again. The time involved for people who now have careers and families would be too much for most to handle.
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EQ did require a lot of time investment, I do agree with you thoough. Even though you mgiht have had to wait hours for a camp and sometimes you might not have got it, but the best feelings i have ever had, was having a day or weekend off shcool, getting to sebilis early, getting a good camp, like the chef and and just grinding that XP and shooting the breeze.

that is the one problem with all these MMO going the you can suceed solo route is that the sense of community never quite happens, because you only need other people for raiding.

I
 
NES - Dont forget Top Gun. Landing that stupid plane never made sense. You looked like you were lined up and you followed the directions but sometimes it still just crashed you.
 
ikarinokami said:
EQ did require a lot of time investment, I do agree with you thoough. Even though you mgiht have had to wait hours for a camp and sometimes you might not have got it, but the best feelings i have ever had, was having a day or weekend off shcool, getting to sebilis early, getting a good camp, like the chef and and just grinding that XP and shooting the breeze.

that is the one problem with all these MMO going the you can suceed solo route is that the sense of community never quite happens, because you only need other people for raiding.

I
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I have to agree with the sense of community, it's important in a big game like an MMO, but having people die in real life and neglect friends/family is an entirely different ordeal. It's pathetic, and it's sad.

Anyone who thinks those were "good times" when you were starving yourself and taking shits into gatorade bottles has a seriously skewed outlook on life.
 
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BiH115 said:
I have to agree with the sense of community, it's important in a big game like an MMO, but having people die in real life and neglect friends/family is an entirely different ordeal. It's pathetic, and it's sad.

Anyone who thinks those were "good times" when you were starving yourself and take shits into gatorade bottles has a seriously skewed outlook on life.
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:eek:

I've had to "hold it" through some intense raid scripts, but some people certainly took it to the extreme.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
:eek:

I've had to "hold it" through some intense raid scripts, but some people certainly took it to the extreme.
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Well I mean that's alright, holding in a piss to get an attempt in on a boss, but not crapping for hours and hours, or not eating, or not getting up to stretch. Extremes people are willing to take are ridiculous.
 
BiH115 said:
Well I mean that's alright, holding in a piss to get an attempt in on a boss, but not crapping for hours and hours, or not eating, or not getting up to stretch. Extremes people are willing to take are ridiculous.
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Yes there were those extreme people. While more common then todays MMO people they were still few and far between. They were also complete idiots. Everyone knew that the boat ride through OOT was made so you could take a crap
 
Maybe they should have had messages flash on your screen telling when you stand up to take a break, or take a dump, or eat.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Holy shit, I played so much of this game growing up, I basically have it completely memorized. Got it for xmas in 91, the hardest part was figuring out the item system (91' no internet, remember video game magazines?), but after that I thought it was a fairly easy game. Do you remember how far you got? After the first 3 stages you open up the map, viking ship, south pole, egypt, yada, yada....

AH, now that I remember, the Maharajah stage was fucking annoying as shit, the puzzle with all the doors, where you could literally get stuck in a loop for hours. The tiger at the end of that stage isn't too friendly either. Oh I hated that, I did get stuck for more than an hour once. Kids have amazing endurance I tell you (I was 8 or 9 at the time).

EDIT:
Oh, BTW....

FUCK BATTLETOADS. (The difficulty is an illusion. The game is fucking broken)
that is all.
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Battletoads.. yeah, it is crazy hard.. but I did play it all the way through.. a few times. Took me forever to be able to get all the way through it.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned the Earthworm Jim games yet. Those were also crazy hard to beat.

And a lot of the TG-16 games, shooters, platformers, RPG's, puzzle, etc.... soooo many good games. One system I am probably never going to get rid of.

Difficulty on new games is usually almost non-existant.

I actually played a bit of Diablo III and made it all the way through to the first main boss and didn't come close to dying even once. Still a cool game and the harder difficulty levels should be better.
 
Hardest game ever is Lose/Lose. Though seriously, I think I Wanna Be The Guy comes first, Super Kazio World second, and The World's Hardest Game third.
 
The last difficulty mode on Ninja Gaiden Black will never be done again, merely because team ninja has turned out nothing but shit since then.

Also, Kid Chameleon for Sega Genesis, that game cannot be beaten legitimately, it's impossible. It's too bad no one ever made a successor to it, some of the most unique powers I've ever seen in a platformer, also the level design was rather fantastic.
 
Method said:
NES - Dont forget Top Gun. Landing that stupid plane never made sense. You looked like you were lined up and you followed the directions but sometimes it still just crashed you.
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Oh my god please don't even mention it.
 
Target Earth for the sega genesis, man that game was hard, but I would say more unfair hard. although i have seen a video of a guys beating the game, without the exra lives code. props to that guy.

I
 
cyclone3d said:
Battletoads.. yeah, it is crazy hard.. but I did play it all the way through.. a few times. Took me forever to be able to get all the way through it.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned the Earthworm Jim games yet. Those were also crazy hard to beat.

And a lot of the TG-16 games, shooters, platformers, RPG's, puzzle, etc.... soooo many good games. One system I am probably never going to get rid of.

Difficulty on new games is usually almost non-existant.

I actually played a bit of Diablo III and made it all the way through to the first main boss and didn't come close to dying even once. Still a cool game and the harder difficulty levels should be better.
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battletoads was hard as shit.

but fucking earthworm jim on sega i think? crazy hard especially the submarine levels... the tiniest rock just destroys your sub l:(


People want to play to have fun and not repeat level one over and over again

generally I play a game once through for the story and the enjoyment.. any thing else is probably online competative play and theres no difficulty settings for that :p
 
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