Forgot what made me think about this topic but I’ve been considering this for a week or two… Curious what you all think.
When I mean “hardest” “video game”, I mean whatever game that you find objectively more difficult than all other ones on the market, as long as it’s a video game. I guess exposure to different genres/types of games can influence the answer to this question a lot so… Hence I was curious about your rationale.
I have a pretty solid answer & rationale but I guess I shouldn’t share that in the main post to bias results…
This is a roguelike for people who find Nethack too easy. Then you have the option of layering in challenges like blind, pacifist, and vegan. Go ahead, try playing through as a blind, vegan, pacifist Tourist. I dare ya.
Army Moves, Navy Moves, or any other old Dynamic Software game. You’d have to be very skilled to get out of the first stage.
The Donkey Kong tilt minigame in Nintendo Land is brutal.
The hardest one I can say I’m honestly proud I figured out are the old “Impossible Mission” games from Epyx.
They have set rules, and once you figure out all the rules, they are solvable, but the platforming elements require precision and the puzzle elements are challenging.
8-bit Souls-Like?
Longplay - 1:
Longplay 2:
I used to play the first one on the Macintosh’s on display at the store. Not sure I ever finished a level in the few minutes I always had to play when my parents were shopping. Very difficult, but fun!
The original Prince of Persia
Those damn spike traps!
Iwbtg and all its successors and fan projects
Probably “Trap Adventure 2”.
Imagine an old Mario game where Bowser has the most rediculous traps set up. You need to memorize all of the trap locations as well as have the coordination to tip-toe around them to survive.old Mario game where Bowser has the most rediculous traps set up
Related classic: https://youtu.be/in6RZzdGki8
EU4…
I like most other Paradox games and I’m at least decent in them I’d say but EU4 just eludes me.
For the people unaware why EU4 is hard:
Take risk (the board game)
Now split the provinces till you have more than 3000 provinces. Then add variables to each region for culture, claims, trade good, trade power, buildings, development (in 3 aspects), the region they are part of, the trade node they are part of, religion, autonomy, unrest, devestation, temporary effects, and many many more.
Do the same for armies.
Add complicated politics, with royal marriages that allow countries to inherit other countries, war goals, casus belli requirements, etc.
Add colonization mechanics.
Add government mechanics (with many different variants for different governments ofcourse).
Add a compex Holy Roman Empire system and a complex system for the Chinese empire.
Add mechnics for different religions, including a pope and a religous war that can bring all of europe into a giant war.
Add a pool of diplomats, merchants, generals, and missionaries.
Now realise that I haven’t played the game for ages, and this was just mechanics from the top of my head, and without what they added in the last few years.
EU4 is not hard due to required reflexes, muscle memory learning, or rythm feeling. It is just a lot of things to learn and to keep track of, woven into a super complicated simulation.
It’s just so much stuff and I never knew what’s actually important and what not
EU4 is pretty much exactly as difficult as being a real king in history just without any of the long term consequences. Paradox worked pretty hard to make this the case.
Hardest in a different way than you probably mean for me would be This War Of Mine. One of the first missions you basically have to stab an old man and his wife after you broke into their house. It’s rough.
I always put the original Blaster Master on the NES up there.
It had no save capability at all, nor any codes to stop & restart later. When you sit down, you better be ready to do the whole 4+ hours in one playthrough (or just leave the NES on & walk away).
But the kicker was that once you got hit just a few times, you might as well restart. The gun (in person mode) would power down with each hit, and after a few hits, well, you just didn’t have enough ‘oomph’ to kill the bosses. But the power-ups to get the gun were fairly sparse in the first place, so once you got hit, it wasn’t like you could just retrace your steps & power up again.
Mildly interesting, at least to me, I understand it’s been remastered for the Switch. It now has save points AND being hit doesn’t reduce your gun’s power. That would make it a completely different game. I’m be curious to check it out someday. If nothing else, I’m curious to see how much of it I remember. I suspect I can autopilot the first 2 hours, despite it being 40(?) years later.
Okay that quickly went from “I think I can do this with some practice” to “what the actual fuck” to me… congrats on clearing the game
I haven’t touched classical bullet hell games since high school so… guess I should give them a try!
I’ve really only played Touhou in middle/high school… Imperishable Night was actually a really formative game for me, loved the OST and played quite a bit out of it. Fairly sure I’ve cleared this particular one on Easy, might have made to Stage 5/6 on Normal… Definitely didn’t clear Scarlet Devil on Normal because my motor were terrible back then
I should be able to clear Normal/Hard now that I’m older and more skilled. If I have the patience/time that is…
Edit: apparently I forgot how to do math and got the game release numbers wrong
That’s awesome! Loved Imperishable Night too, I played it so much along with Perfect Cherry Blossom and Subterranean Animism. As for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil it’s generally considered one of the harder games of the series
Out of the games I’ve played, OSU. I am pretty average at rhythm games where it’s like Project Sekai or the Miku Diva style games where all you have to do it wait and click a button or tap somewhere specific at a fixed location on screen, but I absolutely suck at the whole move the mouse and click thing. Just as bad with mouse as when I tried with my beginners tablet.
Most other games I play anymore are games I know I’m at least decent at, so I don’t have many games I’d consider the hardest or even to compare those too. Though, while writing this and thinking about it, I’d say I might compare OSU to Vib-Ribbon in general, default songs or not, and possibly even give it a close second for difficulty. And that’s despite it being more of a wait and click type rhythm game in my eyes.
I’ve actually been waiting for anyone to mention any rhythm games at all. I think rhythm games in general tend to have low skill floor, but insanely high skill ceilings (Freedom Dive, some Hatsune Miku songs, …), which make them an interesting case on the difficulty scale… Some rhythm games have unintuitive control too (OSU being a prime example with the mouse control, also Taiko series) which makes them even more difficult
Side note: I find it hilarious that the original game which OSU was based on was actually just a “tap a tablet” game though (Ouendan series, use stylus to click bottom screen of NDS)… also some JP arcades stock Reflec Beat and crossbeats Rev, Round1 has an exclusive game Tetote Connect, which are all “tap a button on the screen” games but you touch the screen with your hands instead
I agree, even the hardest non-rhythm games I seem to be able to get accustomed to in 50~100 hours, but not some of these monstrosities
Probably some of the old Nintendo games. Silver surfer is an extremely difficult bullet hell. Battletoads required insane memorization and timing, pretty sure you had to act before the game even told you in some places.
Battletoads
QWOP, by a wide margin
