Hardest dificulties that are ACTUALLY BLOODY HARD!

[tgbennett30]

Another vote for Ninja Gaiden (XBox), Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2, etc.

Many games up the difficulty by making enemies have 10x or 100x the hitpoints, or making you correspondingly more fragile, or making the enemies do goofy things like snipe you in the left eye with a rusty pistol from 900 yards away, etc.

NG and its brothers simply outclassed you. Yeah, they did a bit more damage and you did a bit less, but holy bajeezus they were aggressive and SMART - very few games actually change the enemy AI based on the difficulty level, but these do. Lower your guard for a split second in a vulnerable area of a room on Normal - you'll probably get away with it. On Master Ninja - get ready to get juggled. Watch how they circle you, watch what attacks they use, watch how one will force you towards another - all that changes based on the level of difficulty. They aren't 5x faster or have 10x the hitpoints, but they still kill you with the speed of thought.

I don't see much skill in someone beating Ultimate Final Omega Boss #934583 in the latest Final Fantasy game (difficult because it has 10,000,000 hitpoints and regenerates, which IMHO makes it a test of endurance instead of skill), but I see a lot of skill in someone entering a room in NG 2 and taking on a half dozen Black Spider Clan ninjas and, in a FURIOUS burst of activity (almost too fast to follow) that lasts no more than 10 seconds, leaves all their opponents dead.

 

[CroutonsOfDeath]

Quake 1. It's hard on "Hard," but if you want insanity - head down to the hidden "Nightmare" portal. I've beaten Quake about 40 times in my life and have played a gazillion mods, but I almost ALWAYS die when the first shambler pops up on Nightmare. Oh, and on Nightmare - they appear by level 3. Eep.

 

[triggrhappy94]

COD2 Veteran. Back before bullet penatration, you had to shoot each enemy individually which is actually pretty hard when twenty people just rushed through the door at you. This is also before enemies had a limit on the number of grenades they could throw. Its still do-able though

 

[Sozac]

Nightmare difficulty on Dragon Age: Origins, particularly The Golems of Ammgarak DLC. I've done it once, got the achievement, and will never do it on nightmare again. The Reaper takes a lot of killing, not to mention that room with the 4 boss level and 4 lieutenant level golems.

I wasn't able to do the actual game on nightmare(could barely do normal), but i did agmarak so i could beat the reaper. Even with my beast character I spent at least of the time i was in the radial menu. Vatteral was easier though.

 

[lilmizzazle]

i couldn't do "Dantes Inferno" on hard (that beeing one more unlockable difficulty afterwards) turned it down to medium, a walk in the park. that is the only thing i disliked with that game.

 

[Karma168]

The Cod series on Veteran. It's not even tough due to the enemy fighting better, they just spam grenades and xray-vision you. It's not tough just fucking annoying when you die every 3 seconds.

 

[Sozac]

Hardcore and Very Hard in Fallout: New Vegas. Very hard was a breeze in Fallout 3, but now you need to consider your enemies' damage threshold, adjust to the proper ammo accordingly etc etc.

And by 'have to' I mean, do it or die.

That's funny, I never do that ever. I'm doing a no armor playthrough and I snipe mostly, but it might be different if you're closer.

 

[Gxas]

Dishwasher dead samurai on samurai difficulty. Tough shit. Play it alone.

Still trying to do that... Tough as balls and ruthless with any mistake you make.
And now I picked up the sequel. Sigh... I'm just asking for pain, aren't I?

 

[DesiPrinceX09]

The people who say games are getting too easy obviously haven't played the God of war games on their hardest difficulty. Good God they are hard!! I can barely beat the 2nd hardest difficulty let alone the hardest. I've only beaten the 3rd one on the 2nd hardest difficulty (Titan) because I was determined to get the platinum trophy; so I managed to get through it somehow and beat it so now I have platinum for all 3 God of war games.

 

[tgbennett30]

Heck, I just got rid of the Conan game on the 360 - I was playing on Hard and got 80% through it, to a boss that (A) had an unbreakable guard, (B) every one of his attacks was a guard breaker, (C) every one of his attacks was an instant KILL no matter what my health was, (D) had no weaknesses whatsoever to any particular move, (E) was immune to my magic (inappropriate in a Conan game, I know, but bear with me), and (F) required s/t along the lines of *200* of my sword attacks to wear him down enough to kill him. I spent hours at it, and eventually strung together 15 good minutes of combat and wore him down to nothing - at which point a cutscene played and then his bar re-filled 100%

That's not hard. That's STUPID. I can only surmise play testers never got to it, because I cannot imagine anybody would play that and say it was fun.

FWIW I cut the disc into pieces with a wirecutter so it could not contaminate the rest of the world further with its idiocy, bad enough I got suckered into buying it The last time I did that was some baseball game for the NES 20 years ago that would automatically hit homers off of you on ANY pitch for several runners in a row if you got more than 8 runs on the CPU....

 

[DeadEy3]

L4D2 expert realism mode...

 

[shadow741]

Call of Duty 2 on Veteran, winning polish roulette is easier.

 

[Alrocsmash]

Dead Space 2 on "survival" mode. You will die. You will die a lot. You're already dead.

Its beyond not fun.

 

[chrin]

Kingdom hearts birth by sleep on critical mode. Its tough (especially I you choose to play with 0 exp) but possible because of dodge moves and long-range attacks. Secret bosses though [shivers].

 

[Stalydan]

I am going to go with Devil May Cry 3 (the original English version). I never got passed normal. I can't imagine Dante Must Die mode.

Actually Dante Must Die mode was the same in all versions of DMC3... but still pretty damn soul crushingly difficult... my inner child cries as he feels controller vibrate a third time, telling him he just died.

 

[Timi Pungracic]

Call of Duty 2 on Veteran. Mainly just The Second Battle of El Alamein. If you've beaten it you deserve more than an achievement.

ermmm... it was a long time ago, when i didn't even have internet yet, i got a copy of CoD2, and played it over and over again. After some time, i played through it on veteran several times a day.

 

[Gladiateher]

Maniac Mode on Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Make it past chapter six. I dare you.

Lol I literally came to this thread to say this exact thing. I always referred to it as Japanese mode as only a Japanese gamer with his divine skills could manage it.

 

[Tupolev]

CoD 4 Veteran is pretty hard, but even it takes second to Halo: Reach on SLASO.

For anyone who doesn't know, this is Solo Legendary All Skulls On.

These skulls include, but are not limited to, the following: Health doesn't recharge without a melee. No HUD. Dying makes you restart the level. Shit like that.

If we're on the topic of SLASO, sure, Reach is tough, but nothing in the series compares to Halo 2 SLASO. It's extremely difficult but seems like it's probably theoretically doable; some levels haven't been done before, and some have only bee done segmented, like Gravemind [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCHqiiRYj0M].

Its skulls can be more problematic. Sure, you get to have active camo instead of a flashlight even as the Chief thanks to the Envy skull. But the Covenant are ridiculously strong. Basically, for the particularly crazy stuff:
-Assassins ensures that most enemies are perma-cammo'd.
-The Armory skull makes it nigh-impossible to avoid detection by the enemy, and it makes the Covenant never sleep.
-Thunderstorm's rank-up causes all flood combat forms to have shields in addition to all the regular rank-ups.
-Angry causes the Covenant to shoot even more aggressively than normal.
-Ghost makes it impossible to cause enemies to flinch.
And that's on top of Halo 2's already ridiculous legendary.