Be it a game that’s difficult in its entirety, or a particular challenge in a game that you just couldn’t complete.
For me, there are three that come to mind:
- Super Hostile: Waking Up (Minecraft Custom Map, Hard difficulty). That damn water section…
- Terraria Zenith Mode. Coming from someone to whom Master Mode is fairly easy, this was rough.
- Calamity Death Mode (Terraria). I beat DoG (this was back when a headshot was an automatic death), but I just could not click with the Yharim fight. I also think burnout was at play here because that was a LONG playthrough.
I usually never complete the “extreme” challenges present in some games, like path of pain and the pantheons in Hollow Knight, or the B-sides in Celeste. I try them, but when I realize that completion will require lot of time and effort, I really don’t feel bothered enough. But I’m ok with that because this kind of stuff is optional, and it’s actually cool seeing more talented gamers deal with them
Like every arcade game as a kid: Defender, Xevious, Galaga, Berzerk, Battle Zone, Asteroids, the Dark Knight pinball machine. My 10 year old self had no idea these games were supposed to be infinite/unbeatable. Or rather, I always assumed they were. I had no clue they could crash if you were super expert at them. I think Xevious actually had an end tho.
As for arcade games a casual could finish but I gave up on? A decade later, Virtua Fighter.
I’m about to just toss Remnant 2 out. I thought maybe it would be better than the first one, but it’s even more bullshit. Like, it’s a shooter and the first boss hurts you while you look at it. The intended method to defeat it feels way more like cheesing an exploit. I’ve gotten through the first quest in the Labyrinth and I’m hating the bosses even more than the first game with how just annoyingly unfair they are if you’re not playing with a group. They’re simply not fun.
Returnal is very similar in gameplay, and is even a roguelike with super brutal gameplay; even that game isn’t as frustrating as Remnant 2. The bosses are hard, but not unfairly so.
I couldn’t get past the second area(I think?)of Cuphead, there was a dragon boss that was just a wall for me.
That boss was indeed tough but also one of my favorites from that game. I even have a shirt of it (that is suffering from some wear and tear at this point). I probably spent several hours each trying to beat both that dragon and the game’s robot boss as well.
It’s a really hard game but I have to say learning to speedrun it was super fulfilling. Time consuming though haha
Dark Soul serie. After dying for the nth time i gave up. I don’t have enough time to red again and again the same path.
Getting over it, well it do save your progression, especially your mistake.
Subnautica and amesia. I fear void place and it’s too scary.
The farewell Chapter in Celeste. I really don’t know how to do that room with the three dash activated blocks surrounded by spikes.
It’s funny I know exactly the room you’re talking about lol
I managed to do farewell in 29:30, flying through the chapter is so liberating after being stuck in every room
I had a lot of games on PS4 where the difficulty isn’t “why” I stopped, but the lengthy loads when I died was.
I’m perfectly happy dying a bunch of times in a row, provided the deaths are fair and consistent. I have a big issue with waiting 5-10 minutes to replay a section that doesn’t last meaningfully longer than that.
Getting a PS5 let me go back to a lot of those games and properly enjoy the brutal difficulty without the headaches.
I have this weird thing where I love a game to be challenging because it’s not engaging if it’s easy, it makes the game boring to me, but at the same time I despise grinding and generally rote gameplay with the only purpose of amassing more points to be able to challenge the next boss. But very few RPGs I like are like that. Baldurs Gate 1/2 are excellent games that I love but I get extremely frustrated by some encounters which just feels like absolute bullshit and require extreme grinding or going off to do a myriad of side quests to bump up your level. Same holds true for Pillars of Eternity which I also love.
Though I tend to be a stubborn person so I generally come back a week or month later if I get stuck but I tend to put the game down once I’ve dealt with the immediate challenge and realize that I need to do all that boring stuff again for the next boss and then I just don’t start.
I definitely had that experience with Baldur’s Gate 2, but I’m about 20 hours into Pillars of Eternity so far and very much not having that experience. Pillars seems to give me all the information I need to know to get through an encounter while BG2 will just say “weapon had no effect” without telling you that this monster can only be defeated by a +3 weapon.
Well the “early” fight with the noble / king / count can’t remember in PoE had me tearing my hair on the difficulty I played on, took intense space bar action and every trick I could muster in terms of abusing targeting and kiting, etc to win it. I don’t know how many times I reloaded and how many days I tried, must’ve been in the hundreds by the end when I finally got it due to a few lucky crits and rolls.
I haven’t found a noble, king, or count 20 hours in yet, but there was a quest that said I had to go fight Lord Raedric, and then I’m warned by both an NPC and a quest description that this is something I should do later because it’s going to be very difficult. Is it possible that you missed the warning and went to do something late game earlier than you should have?
It’s a long game, I think I just overestimated how far in you’d be at 20 hours. Since I really jammed with the game (and it was before I had 3 kids 😂) I had done all the side quests I had found but I hadn’t explored further away than the zones the side quests took you to. I will say though that plot wise it would make absolutely no sense to save it to the “late game” if that’s even possible. But that is the fight I was talking about, 100%.
I play most games on hard difficulty. But i gave up finish Nier Replicant on hard, not because i got stuck, but the hp of the monster was way to high to have fun.
Minecraft, I tried summoning and defeating the Wither and was woefully unprepared. The entire world near the fight was filled with craters from the explosions. I was getting ready to throw the entire world away. Then I decided to just cheat and turn Creative Mode on for 1 second, the Wither disappeared and I was able to continue playing, now with PTSD.
It didn’t help that I was playing on Bedrock (switch), which apparently has a much more difficult fight than in the Java edition.
Try fighting it underground, it gets stuch on all the blocks and you can easily backpedal as far as you want down a little tunnel. Enchanted golden apples are also very good.
If I picked Wolfenstein: The New Order back up today, I’d probably have a better time with it, since it’s been a decade since I touched it last and my gaming abilities have improved since then, but for whatever reason this game was ridiculously difficult for me, even on the easiest setting. It finally came to a point where I just couldn’t finish it, and I’m not sure if I ever will.
I remember it being probably the most difficult shooter I had ever played up until that point. The campaign was genuinely so hard. I (barely) managed to beat it and the boss fight at the end took me real life months.
Crypt of the Necrodancer
The characters are difficulty levels, some with additional rules.
It’s a rythm rpg, lore character #1 can miss beats, collect stuff, etc.
Lore character #3 can’t miss a beat or miss and can’t upgrade health, so you always die in one hit.
When I beat the 4 chapters with that character I was done :D
I ragequit half way through the final boss after having died for the thirtieth time. The game is absolutely beautiful, but fuck me some of it is tough.
Ended up watching the last bit on YouTube. No regrets.
Thanks for the unintentional recommendation.
Oh, it’s a stunning game, and I absolutely adored it. But that final boss is an utter prick.
I doubt that I’ll ever get that far. I used to play games on “hard” difficulty and explore/find everything. Today I’m just glad if I find the time to play, have fun and enjoy the games, even if I need to play on “easy” difficulty. All the completionist aspirations are gone.
Gave up on gaming in general. Moved to Linux back in October. Had issues getting my games to play because of various issues between Nvidia 535/545 and Wayland, Xorg, or the steam/proton/lutris/aagl/hgl things I tried. Then work got too busy and I’ve put gaming on the back burner 'til I have more time to troubleshoot it (hopefully with new Nvidia/Wayland packages).
This.
This is unfortunately why I have not switched to Linux as a daily driver
I switched to Linux as my daily driver back last summer and have been able to play every game I’ve tried with literally no issues. Admittedly, I had issues at first but then I switched to Pop!_OS, which has built-in support for Nvidia hybrid graphics. That solved the few gaming issues I had.
With how easy it was and how many games work with no issues, I’m genuinely surprised to hear people say they are having issues with it. I’m not even close to a linux expert. I’m not a programmer. I don’t want my OS to be a hobby, I want it to just work. And so far it has.
You might give it a try – it may just work for you. Not everybody has the same issues, and I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out later when I have time to troubleshoot it. This is just a busy time of year for me, so as long as my work stuff works, I’m good, and gaming has to sit on the backburner for a bit.
Fire Emblem: Awakening on Lunatic mode. It just wasn’t fun and I already didn’t like enemies popping up and getting to attack in the same turn.
