gaming How many games do you feel actually challenge gamers in this day and age?

[Agent505 661]

So, in todays age of games that seem to tender more towards squeezing money from the consumer rather than providing them with a quality experience, what games have you played that still provide you with a challenge when you play? 

 

You may guess what inspired me to create this, I recently purchased Bioshock Infinite, and before I play that I figured I would celebrate by going through the first 2 on Hard difficulty. It wasn't until I had to fight my first Big Daddy that I realised exactly how hard it was, and it's safe to say it's enough of a game to give me a challenge.

 

Another would be the original Halo trilogy, Halo CE on Legendary was incredibly challenging, but doable with some perseverance, but that's an old game, much like Halo 2 - back when games at least had an illusion of wanting to be a great experience. 

 

So, any similar experiences with challenging games that break the monotony of today's 5 year old fan base? 

[Nohbdy 4,108]

STALKER is great. It has realism, but not so much that it becomes a simulation. Instead, it serves to make the game highly challenging. Enemy AI is smart, gunplay is intense, and you could die in a few hits. The quick save button is any Stalker's best friend, as you can expect to die pretty frequently. Playing on Master difficulty is a must. All of this gets even better with mods. It's a shame, though, that STALKER 2 was canceled. 

 

I also loved Halo CE on legendary. It didn't resort to cheap tricks like Halo 2 did with its instakill snipers, ridiculous reaction times, and impenetrable shields. It just flooded you with more numerous, smarter, and stronger enemies. They weren't bullet sponges, and you could still feel like a badass and destroy entire squads in seconds, if you were good enough. Dodging enemy fire while returning your own, flushing enemies out of cover with a grenade, breaking the enemy's back by carefully maneuvering around him--awesome. Halo CE felt like a genuine challenge, not hard for the sake of being hard. It was fun.

 

Tribes Ascend is also pretty challenging. Imagine trying to hit a target moving at 200km/s, while moving at 200km/s. Shazbot, indeed. 

[~StatesTheOblivious~ 1,795]

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. It's all about trial and error. You have no map, no towns, no nothing. I purchased them to have a challenge, but then I figured out that this is way too hard for me...

The problem is that many games don't feel like higher difficulties actually 'fit'. I played the new legendary mode in Skyrim recently and it was simply unplayable. Challenge means to me, that even with average skill and some fails, the expierience is satisfacting in a way that the in-game reward matches the difficulty. And since I like story and background based games, playing a game that is difficult just to beat it, is not for me.

Edited May 30, 2013 by StatesTheOblivious

[Lisa 5,553]

I would say Hitman: Absolution. 

That game...Jesus christ, it is so hard, yet addictive trying to get the highest score possible!

[DeiStar 248]

Fire Emblem: Awakening on Lunatic and Classic.

 

And I thought FE6 and FE7 were hard enough without grinding and no overworld.

[Red Diamond 549]

Oh boy, I have a somewhat "long" list of games.

 

Battletanx for the N64. That game is fun, but it still kind of gives me trouble nowadays.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii for Wii. I cannot get every star coin to complete World 9. Still, I have a LOT of trouble with it.

KH2FM for PS2. Man, the Cavern of Remembrance is over the top hard. It's just like completing Terminator 1 for the NES without dying.

[Vermillion 613]

Devil may cry 3...

anyone who has played the original dmc 3 will know it is so hard it is almost unplayable

this game was so f***ing hard they had to release an entire new version of the game but easier...so you could actually f***ing play it :L 

[Koori 156]

I can't speak for the... expert gamers. I myself usually play with Easy difficulty, sometimes Normal.

 

From what I've seen, Trials Evolution is one of the games that can be challenging, though I've never played it. Dark Souls is apparently annoyingly hard.

 

But what I do remember is having played SNES games. Holy smokes, most of those games are so hard it takes so much precision and skill to beat most of those games like Aladdin, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, Robocop 3, Super Star Wars trilogy. Terminator 2 - Judgement Day and Alien 3. I'm sure I left out some of the more harder games that are much more... memorable, but if you noticed it, there's something in common with the games I mentioned and that's the fact that they're all platformers.

 

So yeah, nearly every SNES games are the ones I remember been hard and challenging.

[Rainbow Dash Loyalty 1,275]

Halo on Legendary was definitely one of the hardest things I played. Took me a couple days to finally get the hang of it >.< But i did have such a fun time playing it (Even though the Flood scared the hell out of me).

 

[Trixies Apprentice L 493]

Hitman absolution on purist. I really have no idea how someone can beat it XD I finished the game on hard though and it was quite challenging  to do everything.

 

Dark souls is hard until you get the hang of it when you do get how to play and manage to be patient it isnt all that hard still a good challenge to master.

 

Bioshock infinite on hard I dropped it and changed to normal XD

 

Borderlands 2 True vault hunter and after the game gives you  a fair enough challenge.

 

To be honest all games in the hardest difficulty provide a challenge the biggest difference nowdays is that Easy is way too easy normal is the old easy hard is normal and beyond hard stuff get serious. At least that how I view it .

 

Props to the guy that talked about DMC3 I played the original on son of sparda and damn wasn't it hard XD

[Agent505 661]

To be honest all games in the hardest difficulty provide a challenge the biggest difference nowdays is that Easy is way too easy normal is the old easy hard is normal and beyond hard stuff get serious. At least that how I view it .

 

I have to disagree with you there, I very often play games on the hardest difficulty when I get bored (who doesn't?) and finding a challenge is a rare thing. That's what made me make this topic

 

Take Halo for example, again. The older ones where a challenge on the legendary difficulty (Halo 2 being a total bullshitfest) but Halo Reach, Halo 4? Even ODST on Legendary are cakewalks for me. Dying easy doesn't necessarily mean the game is hard. Look at Gears of War for example, you can play on Insane and die in like 4 shots, but it's not hard.

 

I'm actually surprised no-one has mentioned Ninja Gaiden 2 or Dishwasher Vampire Smile yet...

I'm not great at that kind of game, but I have completed them both a few times on most difficulties, I think the second hardest one is the only one I can't get through (on both, oddly enough)

Edited May 30, 2013 by Creeping Dusk

[Trixies Apprentice L 493]

I have to disagree with you there, I very often play games on the hardest difficulty when I get bored (who doesn't?) and finding a challenge is a rare thing. That's what made me make this topic

 

Take Halo for example, again. The older ones where a challenge on the legendary difficulty (Halo 2 being a total bullshitfest) but Halo Reach, Halo 4? Even ODST on Legendary are cakewalks for me. Dying easy doesn't necessarily mean the game is hard. Look at Gears of War for example, you can play on Insane and die in like 4 shots, but it's not hard.

 

I'm actually surprised no-one has mentioned Ninja Gaiden 2 or Dishwasher Vampire Smile yet...

I'm not great at that kind of game, but I have completed them both a few times on most difficulties, I think the second hardest one is the only one I can't get through (on both, oddly enough)

I never played any Halo or gears so I really have no idea about that XD Well fair enough you have a point there on the difficutly being unfair difficulty some times. 

 

God yes How did  Iforgot Ninja gaiden I mostly play  RPG games nowdays  so my point of view is kinda narrow I guess 

[PlunderSteed 1,252]

No discussion about gaming difficulty is complete without the following visual reference:

 

 

I've played Eve for 5 years, and I still learn new things every time I log in.  On top of that, most of the game space is unfettered pvp.  As Syncaine astutely observed some years ago...

 

"EVE is harsh on day one, and stays that way. WoW holds your hand from 1-80, and makes sure you get a cookie regardless if you win or lose. EVE not only takes your cookie, but laughs at you for bringing one in the first place."

Edited May 30, 2013 by NLR Information Minister

[Megas 27,787]

F-Zero GX - The most brutal racing game I have ever played

Megaman and Megaman X series(sans X5) - 'nuff said

God Hand - Hell the game makes fun of you for picking easy mode

most NES and SNES games

DMC3

Ninja Gaiden Series

Dark/Demon Souls - Never played them personally, but from what I've heard, they're unpleasant(as far as difficulty is concerned)

 

 

Personally, I wish there was more hard games, too many games these days are a joke

Edited May 30, 2013 by REGIS MK V

[Apocalyptic_Unicorn 240]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on anything above normal difficulty is insane. I started the first mission on the highest difficulty, died about 50 times, and gave up.
Bioshock Infinite on 1999 was pretty hard too, but still doable.
Some of the dungeons in the Zelda series are pretty hard. 

I find retro games much more difficult than games nowadays. I remember when games didn't hold your hand the entire way through, and really, I preferred that.
I have a huge library of games from all generations and all consoles, but only a handful of them prove to be a challenge for me.

[Crispy 5,563]

Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be The Guy, Ikaruga, Imperishable Night, Battletoads, etc.

 

Shooters and platformers, I can handle, regardless of how hard they are, because those are the kinds of games I'm good at.

 

However, I'm having a really, really hard time playing Starcraft 2.  Managing all those things at the same time is super hard for me, especially since I didn't grow up a PC gamer.

[Mutemutt 773]

I don't think it's absolutely necessary for a game to be challenging for it to have a quality experience, but I guess that is a topic for another day...

 

Catherine had some pretty challenging puzzles to solve if you didn't give to looking up the answers. I got bronze on pretty much everything during my first playthrough on normal and, near the end, I got stumped for hours on some of the puzzles. Ah, the memories...( EDGE EDGE EDGE EDGE....)

[The Man 11]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R on novice, toughest shit ever. It's playable at Master, a damn good game really.

Also, Human Revolution on Give me Deus Ex is easy. Easy, man.

 

The original on Realistic was hell. GMDE equals to Medium or Easy in the original

[marlyly 186]

Technically I think most of the game can become challenging if you give yourself some rules (like no excessive lv up for RPG, using every combo and not only spamming in fighting and adventure game).

 

But here's a list of games I consider as real chalenge:

 

Super meat boy:

 

The game in itself isn't easy, require a perfect control of your character, good reflex, and every new world force you to adapt to new mechanism. And the dark stages (which represent like 40%of the game) are freakin nightmares.

 

Dark Souls:

 

Before going further I need to say: I never played Demon Soul, and a lot of peoples pretend it's a harder game.

When peoples are developing a game, I'm sure there's always one to say "okay guys, I think we put enough obstacles here, one more and it's gonna be a nightmare". For this game this dude was replaced by one saying "yeah yeah good, but I think those enemies must be able to kill the player in one hit, and those tricky platform they should be invisible, and for this boss just put 3 copies of it to fight simultaneously and you're good".

 

This game is meant to be hard. Death is even a whole part of the gameplay with resurrection, the fact to find your body and recover our money, infinite lives. But even with that death will often be frustrating. Everything is a potential threat and event if you start as a tank the first little ennemie will be able to kill you in 4 hit maximum.

 

The game is huge and each place you'll visited has his own way of killing you which will force you to adapt and go step by step. And even then there's a PVP mode and some player dedicate they character to kill the others.

 

They are some way to make the game easy (extreme level up, some over powered weapon) but those things are exception, and unless you spend 120h farming some bosses will never be easy and will require adaptation, analysis, and hours of practice.

 

The witcher 2

 

Another RPG. And if you pick a setting above "hard" you're gonna cry, if you just take hard you'll die 10 times, during the tutorial. Your character is strong, swift, has a lot of potential to unlock, but he is still (kinda) human. And a human can't survive a sword in the chest. Every fight must be carefully prepared, by picking the good weapon, making and drinking drugs (take care of the side effect), take the good spell, and use the terrain at your advantage.

 

You're one against many and as such the smallest mistake will often leads you to the grave.

In hard setting a high level and good equipment (the enemies are limited and so is the level, and the best weapons needs quests and crafting) you'll start to feel "powerful" around the 2/3 of the game, with a higher setting you won't even survive without this power.

 

Plus the fact that if you pick the harder difficulty setting you have literally one life: you have only one save data which is automatically corrupted if you die.

 

X com enemy unknown:

 

You're playing since 5 hours and you hasn't invested enough in research: might as well restart.

You're playing since 5 hours and hasn't put enough satellite: might as well restart.

You're playing since 5 hours and doesn't have enough well trained soldier: might as well restart.

You're playing since 10 hours, our 6 expert soldiers are on a mission, they are well trained have the best equipment thanks to research and founding from the satellite cover, and 2 enemies managed to take you from behind: you lost your whole team, the mission is a failure, and you must organize a desperate defense against the alien's counter strike.

That's the spirit of X com, a hard strategy game that makes you fight an always evolving opponent. If you do something wrong or not fast enough the consequence will always be terrible, if they didn't just ended up with a "game over". And to get to the point where you have nothing else to fear from your enemies, it will take several time, and a huge amount of knowledge and skills.

There's also a "iron man" mode with only one fully automatic save data, but I already play like that with every games.

 

Monster hunter serie:

 

I played all those that came out on the european psp and I can tell this game is all about difficulty.

Once you've passed the little quest the only way to survive is to upgrade and adapt your equipment permanently, and knowing every movement of your enemies by heart. And even with that, some movements are so swifts that you need goodlike reflex to dodge them. And even if you're a ninja they'll always be a smaller enemies to hit you from behind, so that the big one can eat you just after.

The camera is hard to maneuver, the big enemies doesn't allowed any mistake, it's a hard series of game.

 

Hitman series:

 

The 1 and 2 in perticular, even if the last one is still great and challenging with high difficulties setting.

Once again it's a game about preparation, but also improvising with the unpredictable, it's waiting 15 mn for your target to go at his window, only so a bodyguard can come between you and him, are you going to try to wait, kill both, find another way ?

Good fact about the old ones: one headshop and you're dead.

[Twiliscael 3,960]

Super Meat Boy. It was designed to be near impossible, but that's what it's appeal is.

 

Halo CE and 2 on Legendary. As stated before, they dropped diverse, smart, and challenging enemies each with their own weaknesses and strengths in droves. I admit 2 reverted to using insta-kills, massive shielding, and twitch-finger tactics to make it hard just to be hard.

 

Bioshock. Fairly easy except for one aspect. Big Daddies...

 

Dark Souls. I can't even describe...

 

Lost Odyssey. Makes it actually impossible to beat the final boss without doing every side quest and grinding like mad. 

 

That's the first few I could think of off the top of my head.

[uuunph 288]

I'll also vouch for Super Meat Boy. Seriously, unlocking the Kid.

 

 

And I shit you not, it's still harder than it looks, given the ultra-high sensitivity.

 

Other than that, I don't game much. Most of what I see in some of the games I play is fake difficulty from terrible AI allies and escort missions and the like.

[TBMF1001 37]

I'd say Silver Surfer for the NES and Uncharted Drake's Fortune for the PS3.

 

Silver Surfer because of the one hit deaths, i suggest watching the AVGN video, he goes more in depth with the game.

 

Uncharted Drake's Fortune because of how low Drake's health is and the confusing melee system. On Crushing, Drake's health is so low, that it takes around 3-5 pistol bullets to kill him. Throw in the melee system and you're treading on thin ice.

[Radiance64 7,053]

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a very difficult platformer, but it was just the right amount of challenge so I had fun with it.

Monster Hunter can have a very steep learning curve but isn't so bad once you get used to it, but overall it's certainly one of the more difficult action RPGs since anything and everything is a boss fight.

Fire Emblem: Awakening on Lunatic and Classic. And I thought FE6 and FE7 were hard enough without grinding and no overworld.

I agree, I can't even get past the first mission on Lunatic lol

F-Zero GX - The most brutal racing game I have ever playedMegaman and Megaman X series(sans X5) - 'nuff saidGod Hand - Hell the game makes fun of you for picking easy modemost NES and SNES gamesDMC3Ninja Gaiden SeriesDark/Demon Souls - Never played them personally, but from what I've heard, they're unpleasant(as far as difficulty is concerned)  Personally, I wish there was more hard games, too many games these days are a joke

F-Zero GX is probably the hardest game ever period, imo.

[Scootalove 10,689]

I think games like, role-playing games and long games that take hours to complete serve up as a huge challenge. Probably something like Assassins Creed or any other game that can serve as a challenge.

[heG allaphsE 28]

Antichamber is really really hard.Say you went down a straight hall look where you came from there would be a corner so you cant go back where you came from and you need a certain coulour to open the doors to move on and sometimes there a things that teleport you when you are about to get the colour to open the door .I think Antichamber was made to make people heads explode from frustration.

O and the map says where you are not and the go here moves around so the map is useless.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Dj Yexus