[ggreen737]

Adventure or otherwise.....

Having just beat Alundra, and having to *glance at the walkthrough* a mere 194,892.6 times I started to think about other games that compare to it in mind-numbing, hair-pulling, throw-your-controller-through-a-window frustration.

Now I know every game has its' hard parts, or whole sections of hard goodness, but lets limit it to the top 3 most painful (yet perhaps rewarding?) gaming experiences. We're talking beginning to end kind of tough. Oh yeah, and say whether or not, in the end, it was actually worth it

Street Fighter 2 - Sega Genesis



I played this game at 13 years old on my Sega, I still have nightmares about M. Bison on Hard. In the end, fingers worn to knubs, it was worth it...


Devil May Cry - PS2



Damn you Dante!!! Devil mode left my hands in a perpetual, frozen, cup-like shape from the PS2 controller. The game you love to hate with all its' style and flair. Totally worth it...

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father - PC



Call me a blasphemer, but I didn't actually play this game until a few years ago, well into my ADV gaming "career". I was never stumped so many times as I was on this beautiful son-of-a-bi*ch. Again, worth every second...


Is the moral of the story that things in life that are worth doing, are hard? Probably....

[Fantasysci5]

If you want it to pertain to all types of games, I'll move it into the General forum.

For me, the top 3 hardest games would be;

Riven-Grrr. From that stupid waffle puzzle, to the much more enjoyable domes and numbers systems, Riven was the hardest game for me, and most people, to play. And it was totally worth it, since the graphics, characters, and plot were amazing.

I can't even think of any more, Riven taking up all of my mind. lol

[Fien]

Discworld 1. Played it with a printed walkthrough within reach and I was inordinately proud of myself whenever I solved some crazy puzzle on my own. Totally worth it.

The Feeble Files. Many puzzles were doable, others were way too hard for me. It's not good for my ego when I finally resort to a walkthrough and don't even understand the explanation of a solution! Happened more than once. Yes, it was worth it, I liked the game in spite of its flaws.

Black Dahlia. Good story, nice FMV, the inventory puzzles were fine but those stand-alone puzzles were made by the devil. Fortunately, you could skip them by typing a code.

[DustyShinigami]

Originally Posted by ggreen737

Having just beat Alundra, and having to *glance at the walkthrough* a mere 194,892.6 times I started to think about other games that compare to it in mind-numbing, hair-pulling, throw-your-controller-through-a-window frustration.

Alundra belongs on my list for sure. It was very difficult for me, but soooo worth it. I think I did solve a lot of the puzzles by trial and error (didn't have the internet*), but I remember getting my dad to help me with some of them.

Apart from Alundra, there are actually more than 3 games that belong on my list:

- Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Beat this all on my own (I'm so proud). Took me ages, but was seriously worth it.

- Simon the Sorcerer. Me and my brother helped each other. Worth it.

- There's Riven. A friend lent it to me years ago and it was just too bloody hard to get my head around. So I used a walkthrough all the way through. ** Didn't really feel worth it in the end.

- The 11th Hour, just like Riven, was just too hard to do. So a walkthrough again. ** Definitely didn't feel worth it.

- Discworld. Walkthrough again. ** The game was worth it, but have mixed feelings considering how stupid/unfair the puzzles are.

- Gabriel Knight. A ruddy walkthrough again. ** This is one game I wish I didn't use a walkthrough on. But I really couldn't be bothered to solve it. I'm ashamed to say it, but the graphics did put me off to begin with. But... by my second playthrough, it was certainly worth it.

- Grim Fandango. Can't you guess? That's right... a walkthrough. ** I've decided to go through it again, this time on my own, so I'll see how worth it it'll be in the end.

* or if I did I didn't know walkthroughs existed
** I wouldn't really say, that the games I used a walkthrough for, count and were games that I actually beat.

[J.H]

I don't find adventure games that hard but I remember playing CMI when I was like 8 and not even knowing what examine meant, was a hard time for me lol.

[GreyFuss]

Chemicus!

[QFG]

7th Guest - The "blob" puzzle in the library, I had to give up and let my dad beat it. Took him a couple weeks (!).

Wing Commander II - I remember to stay on the "winning" track, there was some insanely hard Protect the Convoy mission that took me endless repeats to successfully finish. I think it's where I first learned how to curse...

King's Quest III - I played it at a very young age, and considered it absolutely merciless. I would always be on the very cusp of returning to the castle and Mananan would appear and kill me. Or I'd fall off the path. Or I'd mess up the recipes. Etc. etc. etc.

[inm8#2]

Space Quest II - all the deaths!

Black Dahlia - some tough mechanical puzzles in there, I think I cheated a couple times

Riven - great, engaging puzzles that really made you think ... and break down and resort to a walkthrough

[MoriartyL]

Hm, the hardest games I've played... do I have to have finished them?

[ggreen737]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

Hm, the hardest games I've played... do I have to have finished them?

Oooh, good point. I say yes, because you don't know how hard a game TRULY is until you beat it at 3am with bloodshot eyes and a headache....and then go sleep like you just had angry make-up sex

[MoriartyL]

Well, that trims the list considerably.

I think F-Zero GX qualifies, because even though I never beat all the grands prix on the hardest level (It was called "Master" or something like that.) I did feel when I stopped that I'd gotten as far as I was physically capable of getting (all the grands prix on Expert, the story mode on both difficulty settings), and that's sort of an ending in itself. Man, that game gets hard.

I can't think of any other games I beat that even came close to its difficulty level. So I guess I'll just fill out the list with the two Bit.Trip games, even though they weren't that hard.

[geggis]

Originally Posted by ggreen737

Oooh, good point. I say yes, because you don't know how hard a game TRULY is until you beat it at 3am with bloodshot eyes and a headache....and then go sleep like you just had angry make-up sex

I say no even though it is your thread The hardest games will kick your butt so hard that you will simply admit defeat. No amount of staying up will let you finish them!

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

Well, that trims the list considerably.

I think F-Zero GX qualifies, because even though I never beat all the grands prix on the hardest level (It was called "Master" or something like that.) I did feel when I stopped that I'd gotten as far as I was physically capable of getting (all the grands prix on Expert, the story mode on both difficulty settings), and that's sort of an ending in itself. Man, that game gets hard.

I can't think of any other games I beat that even came close to its difficulty level. So I guess I'll just fill out the list with the two Bit.Trip games, even though they weren't that hard.

Yes Mory!

F-Zero GX indeed. I finished the first 3 cups on Master difficulty and the Story Mode on Very Hard (after Normal and Hard ) and that made my hands go weak. The hardest game I've ever played along with...

Ikaruga. *runs and hides in corner* I just stopped playing because it was simply too much for me to contend with.

Super Monkey Ball - sugar coated evil.

[Jelena]

Well the first two games are easy to pick: Riven and Schizm Mysterious Journey. Black Dahlia might be the third one. It sure had some insanely hard puzzles in there.

[Fantasysci5]

Originally Posted by Jelena

Riven

Did you hate the "waffle" puzzle as much as I did, where you had to pick the correct color marble, and put it in the EXACT correct spot?

[Hammerite]

Forbidden Siren ('Siren' in the US) is near-impossible - and the save system just adds to the difficulty.

Worth a go though, for sure.

[Jelena]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

Did you hate the "waffle" puzzle as much as I did, where you had to pick the correct color marble, and put it in the EXACT correct spot?

I've played Riven twice and both times I had to use uhs hints to solve that puzzle.
Does that answer your question?

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by geggis

Ikaruga. *runs and hides in corner* I just stopped playing because it was simply too much for me to contend with.

You know, I've been trying to get my hands on that game for years. There was one time a few years ago, on vacation in America, that I walked into a used game store and asked for Ikaruga, only to be told that the one copy they had had just been given to the person standing at the counter. I think that's the kind of challenge I'd enjoy.

I realized I do remember a hard game I beat, other than F-Zero GX: Fire Emblem for the GBA. That was really hard for me. I started going through at the higher difficulty level, got a few hundred hours in, and then the cartridge stopped working. (It had a crack.) I would have stuck with it until the bloody end, though. I was going through each level no less than fifty times each, and gave it my all each and every time. So I'm going to retract one of the Bit.Trip games I mentioned (which I just posted because I couldn't think of anything else) and replace it with Fire Emblem.

There are a bunch of other games I could mention, but I don't feel that I can say I beat them, or anything close to that. For instance, there are lots of adventure games that had me pulling my hair out (Riven is as good an example as any.), but if I beat them I beat them with walkthroughs. Also, right now I'm playing through Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, which I think is the most unforgiving game I've ever played (Every time you die, you have to start over from nothing.), but I've only played through ten times so far and I'm sure I haven't come at all close to the end. So that doesn't really qualify either. Ditto with a bunch of NES games that I never had the patience for. Also Odama, which may actually be easy once you get the hang of it but I couldn't get the hang of it so I don't know. And Metroid Prime 2 on hard mode got so hard that I felt I had no choice but to give up.

That still leaves me with a second Bit.Trip game I'd like to retract, because I must have beaten something harder. I'm not sure what, though...

I don't know. I guess I'll just have to say F-Zero GX and Fire Emblem, and leave it at that.

[geggis]

I actually swapped Ikaruga for Mariokart: Double Dash(!) I simply couldn't handle the difficulty. It was elegant and really a rather beautiful game but bloody hell, it was tougher than me.

[MoriartyL]

That sounds like a challenge.

[JemyM]

In general, the hardest games belong in the 80'ies. At the era in trial & error was the way to get through the game. Eventually you could train yourself up to a point in which you were almost unbeatable, and then you beated the game. There are titles that I never managed to finish because I got tired of trying, such as New Zeeland Story, 1942 etc.

New games are generally beatable without too much trial & error, which ofcourse make them less hard. There are however titles that have been extremely frustrating, often with some bits of the game that take a tremendous amount of retries to get through. Checkpoints unneccessary far between is often a cause for this frustration.

Tomb Raider Anniversary, in general that game was so frustrating that I couldn't bear myself to play more than one map per day... This short bit in the last level was notoriously hard.
TRA is one of few games I have cursed for being frustrating to the point in which it wasn't funny anymore.

There's a passage in Silent Hill 5 in which you must pass through several floors, fighting a large amount of difficult to kill 4-legged monsters with swords as legs, plus a couple of nurses who can insta-kill you. I hated that part.

I could probably also mention Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth that was extremely difficult at times.

A game with save-anywhere available that still was extremely hard on "medium" setting was System Shock. In that game you would die almost instantly if you walked out in front of a guard robot. I eventually made it a habit of walking forward just to know where the enemy was, then reload to kill them.