I saw the post about the upcoming release of the beta for Europa Universalis IV and how Matopicus, like me, has tried to play and like EU 3, but was unsuccessful.
It got me wondering what was the most frustrating/difficult game that you have ever played and yet had fun with. For me, it would be flight sims; the one that comes readily to mind was Falcon 4.0 as well as the original Deus Ex.
In addition, games that I know are hard to learn/play but I really want to try include the original X Com, Jagged Alliance 2, the Sonanalysts suite (Fleet Command, 688i, etc). I also want to try Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Silent Service 2, the old school Atari games (Balder'sGate 2, TOEE, Planetscape) and A-10 Warthog.
What games have challenged you while still being enjoyable, and what games would you like to try, even though you know they will be difficult?
Edit-Silent Storm Gold, not Silent Service. I cannot protect the President .
Edit (many days later)-Silent Service-> Submarines. Secret Service ->Protect the President. It pays not to post if you are distracted.
i think the hardest game i ever played and yet really enjoyed was Dark Souls. that game is quite brutal, but somehow i didn't mind the constant dying and re-trying. that game really manages to be hard and yet enjoyable. it's frustrating at times, but when you finally kill one of the boss creatures after 20 or more wipes, it's really rewarding. i highly recommend that game to everyone who hasn't played it yet. other hard games i liked were the old X-Com and it's sequel Terror from the Deep, and also the new X-Com (though only in Iron Man mode, otherwise it's too tempting to reload and ruin the whole drama of losing your best soldiers because you screwed up )
I forgot about DS. I picked it up on sale on Amazon for Steam...I do mean to play it one day, even though I have heard the PC port isn't the best.
In edit-I have all four of the oldschool X COM games. I've always heard that the first was the best and that the other three should be disregarded. Is that not true?
Dark souls is absolutely brutal if you start as the peasant. Just wow...
wow i haven't even thought about 688i in years, that was an awesome game. But Falcon 4.0 was one of the harder games i've played. I loved it and hated it at the same time... i tried toss bombing a billion times and think i hit my target once maybe twice and that was out of luck more so then any kind of skill. Even landing was a "cross your fingers, pray and just in case stick your head between your legs and kiss your a@@ goodbye" type of thing. So yeah that game made me frustrated every time i played it. but it didn't stop me from playing it. I did the instant dog fight thing more then anything... didn't have to worry about launching, landing or the sam sites.
Steam sells the Sonanalysts suite for a very reasonable price during their sales.
If you still have F4, try this mod. I haven't as of yet (lost my Saitek X-52 setup), but I will when I have time to buy a new HOTAS set up.
http://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/content.php
I so wanted to be in the military when I was a teen. I wanted to be a fighter pilot (joined the JROTC in high school, then planned to go to an ROTC college, fly F-16s and maybe become an astronaut) until I hit my teenage growth spurt and was told I wouldn't fit in the cockpit .
SpaceChem stretched my brain like no other game. You start a level wondering how you could possibly even attempt it. Then you get optimistic with some ideas. Then you visit the Valley of Ultimate Despair when nothing seems to be working. Then you have that moment of inspiration and solve the level. Then you feel really, really proud of yourself.
Probably Dominions 3. Single player is easy enough, but I never became good at multiplayer. I enjoyed playing, but I didn't put the effort into learning the game that the people I played against did and it's a deep game, so I routinely got my ass kicked.
The original Panzer General. I could never beat the whole game.
Also Hearts of Iron. I've played EU3. But, for the life of me, I couldn't seem to understand, much less get into Hearts of Iron. I think maybe I wanted it to be turn based or something...
I agree about Dominions 3 being up there. I have loved Solo play for years and do not expert to ever consider myself an expert player for multiplay. Incredibly deep. The game supports bigger maps, and more players at once, than I have ever seen any game of it actually play. It has a 300 page playing manual, another manual for Map making, and another manual for Modding. Definitely try the (new) demo at www.Illwinter.com
But IMHO the WINNER would be VGA Planets 4. I loved VGAP3. I have owned a pre-purchase serial for VGAP4 since Jan 2002. It was a fully working game then. But they keep adding more and more control codes, then they have to test them for balance. The game is now so complicated that no one can learn it. Only the beta testers that have been in it since the beginning have a clue how to play. No one could possibly write a manual for it. Especially since the dev wont slow down adding to the game.
Diablo II: The Lord of Destruction -8p on Nightmare (just FORGET about HELL difficulty on 8p mode ). Things just don't DIE!!!
TMNT - NES. Never made it to the last boss. ALWAYS died in the fucking technodrome!
Can't think of any other games now. Checked through my STEAM library as well but nothing there....
Haven't tried Dark Souls. I DO intend to. Is it as difficult as the NES games of old?
Dark Souls (buy a controller for your PC, yes I know its a bad port but still so evil) and The Pit on Insane (first time I tried it I got killed by walking 7 steps... damn crazed human and their grenades)
Learning to be good at PVP in Eve Online. That will take sometime. If you fight with a good corp then your golden and always step forward to be bait.
I can't think of other hard games right now, so I update this as I remember older games...
For what comes to mind is Crusader Kings II simply because of the depth of the game and the learning curve. Once I figured out how the game worked after watching about an hour and a half of youtube lets play videos I understood it. Then of course I had to learn more as I played the game. Not to mention having to figure out strategies if you start out as a duke instead of a king, or just a one province lord, etc. I haven't played in a year or so, but if I were to go back I know I'd have to relearn everything again. Very addicting game though once it gets rolling.
Wow, I didn't know they were even still developing it. Last time I played VGAP was in the early 90s! It blew my mind back then, I should check out what's happened since.
There are many opinions on that question.
For my 2c APOC was the best of them all.
For another 2c, I cannot imagine playing any of them anymore, too slow, too boring, too stale...
But, of course, to each their own.
Actraiser II for the SNES. It gave the illusion of being beatable, but the controls were too clunky during the side-scrolling platform part to actually do anything but bring pain and frustration.
I remember before there were any DLCs out, trying to play as one of the Ethiopian Christian nations, desperately trying to not be annihilated. They had no mercenaries available and the Muslims would just stomp you to dust with thousands of troops to your dozens. Easily one of the most difficult things I have done in a game.
Reminds me of playing EU3 as one of the tiny Irish countries after they added missions with the In Nomine expansion. One of England's early missions would inevitably be "annex Ireland." Prior to In Nomine, you could try to stay off the English radar, but with the missions... no chance.
The most difficult game ever is no doubt Dwarf Fortress in the fortress mode. Nothing else comes even remotely close.
I cannot play star craft, get my ass handed to me every time. The simple reason is inadequate difficulty level or broken difficulty level, because obviously i need proper easy difficulty level to learn the game and then improve. Never had a game slam the door in my face like that.... oh wait, there was a game like Quake 3, forget the name? That game also slammed the door in my face because the re spawn was broken, in other words you get shot, die, then you cannot re spawn until everyone starts a new game..... what an ingenious environment for newbs to learn (extreme sarcasm alert).
XCom - Terror from the Deep is one of the hardest games I ever played, I can't count the times I ragequit and said I'll never return to it. For what it's worth, I really dig Apoc though (still do, have about 25 hours with it on Steam so far). But there are many others - Syndicate for example wasn't a walk in the park either, but oh so addictive (damn them for ruining it's name with that abysmal shooter). There's a trend here though - games on the difficulty level of these are few and far between today. Dark Souls is perhaps an exception and I bought it on Steam, but for some reason (and it's not the constantly getting omg-wtf-pwned game design) I just can't get into it. Didn't even ragequit when I tried it out ^^...
When I read that I thought of America's Army. Pretty brutal game to learn, although I had guildmates that made it a blast.
Come to think of it, that shooting game with no re spawn utterly destroyed my interest in multilayer games! I have never played anything after Quake 3!
I was at my friends place with my computer sitting on the desk in front of me and after several long periods of waiting, completely wasting my time, i said "listen guys, if your going to keep playing this game I'm going home", packed up my computer, and that was that, finished.
id have to say tht every game tht u all posted i beat......none of those are difficult...IMO...the hardest game ive ever played and still cant get off first level is super mario bro's
StarCraft - Play the campaigns and a skirmish (Top vs Bottom if you want teams vs AI but know that Zerg AI is broken in this mode).
Quake 3 - You're thinking of Counterstrike
Broken difficulty level? Single player SC2 is easy. Multiplayer is where the door gets slammed. Even the best players in the world know how terrible they are.
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