I think it was the crab boss on the original S/NES blaster master. 3rd or 4th boss. They’ve since made the game a little more forgiving.
I was playing Mafia, and it’s a pretty cool game, then suddenly they drop in an F1 racing level where you need to grab first place against a bunch of AIs that never make a mistake.
The worst bit is, in the previous mission you did a lot of work to sabotage the rival’s car ahead of the race. So you shouldn’t even need to drive all that well to win against him, but it just forgets that.
I just never beat the race, so the game came to a halt for me.
That’s like game design 101 – if you’re introducing a new gameplay paradigm that isn’t part of the core experience, make it really really easy.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I recall the Warthog escape sequence at the end of Halo getting this right. It felt epic, but was actually very doable based on the limited driving skills required by rest of the game.
That’s why many of us are so fond of the warthog. Many games at the time introduced a vehicle and suddenly the game is ludicrously hard (… That fucking BattleToad battle bike…). But the Warthog is introduced as a helpful aid, and then it actually does it’s job with minimal fuss.
shouldn’t even need to drive all that well to win against him, but it just forgets that.
His car breaks down right at the start, which ironically makes the mission harder as you have to dodge the car as everyone passes it.
That said, the hard part was not tipping over, you could get quite a few places by just not giving a shit and flying over the chicane after the first turn.
Wolfenstein’s fucking helicopter level on impossible.
There’s a level in one of the Battlefield: Bad Company games where you’re ambushed by two attack helicopters in the desert and the only cover is a small building. Did I mention Bad Company has fully destructible environments and you’ve already fought in said building so it’s full of holes before the helicopters start blowing it apart? Or that a third helicopter shows up mid-battle?
It’s not too bad if you know what’s coming and preserve some cover, but if the building is in bad shape when they show up then you’re not going to have a fun time.
Body Harvest airplane mission.
For years this was MAP16 (“suburbs”) of Doom 2, but over the years I’ve grown to appreciate the more chaotic/abstract levels.
See also TEETH.WAD (“express elevator to hell”) from the master levels. Punishing and IMO tedious.
“that fucking helicopter level”, for me, refers to the rc heli missions in gta vice city
Same! I even played it on multiple platforms, no good
Man, fuck those levels. I literally could not progress in the game because I was stuck on one of those. That experience lowered my opinion of the entire game, and I’ve never gone back because of it.
those barrel mini games in Donkey Kong 64
Misty in Pokémon Blue
It’d be easily fixed with a new save, a more balanced approach, and four hours… but fuck that, I’ve spent two summers grinding to beat her but nope
Just go catch a Pikachu. Won’t take 4 hours. A pickachu from viridian leveled against Mt Moon zubats for 10-30 minutes would wipe the floor with the whole gym.
This is why I roll bulbasaur.
Wipe both Brock and misty out.
Magic. I’ll give that a punt this summer! Thank you!
That’s not a bad plan, but it will require a new save. Once you enter Cerulean City, all the ways back to Viridian are blocked until after you beat Misty.
If you want to beat Misty without starting a new save, your best bet is probably to go north of Nugget Bridge and catch a Bellsprout. That should be about as effective as a Pikachu against Misty. If anything it might even be slightly better. Grass and Electric attacks are both 2x against Water types, but Water attacks are ½x against Grass types and 1x against Electric types.
I forgot Bellsprout had vine whip early and you couldn’t go back. Oddish on red with absorb by comparison is a monumental pain in the ass. Absorb sucks. At least Pikachu is fast with thunderwave and can help you catch an Abra for your I win button.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is the most notable example of this. The monastery mission is absolutely brutal both by how difficult it’s intended to be, and by how broke it is, on a technical level.
It’s definitely interesting, but it’s so difficult.
we don’t go to ravenholm.
nah but the level is sick tho.
Excellent horror level, with great resource starvation that forces you to use the gravity gun. Also introduces the poison headcrabs I think? Either way, uses them really really well. Like that part at the end where they’re all creeping around an abandoned mine? 👨🍳
The sister bullshit fight in fallen order.
Or, all the fights actually
I wanted a hybrid easy mode for that game so bad. One hit Stormtrooper kills but smarter enemies than vanilla easy mode.
I HATE sequel lightsabers being just glowing baseball bats.
Deathstroke fight on Batman: Arkham Origins
It was certainly much better than the Deathstroke fight in Arkham Knight…
Maybe that was the one I was thinking of? It’s been a while. The button repetition with insta-kill just stopped the game dead.
Depends if you were thinking of hand to hand combat with the world’s greatest martial artist, or the one where they put him in a tank, because they couldn’t think of anything other than tanks by that point.
It did give us an awesome trailer though.
That was the final level.
The objective of the game was to return your frogs to the deep river, it really was just a reimagining of frogger.
Jackal snipers…
