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Great games with shocking difficulty spikes?

Magic-Man

Magic-Man

User requested ban
Member
Feb 5, 2019
11,454
Epic Universe
I'm currently playing through DOOM 2016 on my Xbox for the first time. Normal difficulty, having a blast.... until I get to the Argent Energy Tower level and it gets real hard, real fast. First, you gotta deal with the Revenant for the first time, then you gotta make you way across a bunch of platforming elements while dodging fireballs (EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING, the game wouldn't allow me to climb ledges half of the time, and the other half I was getting knocked out of midair by the enemies), then you meet up with Olivia. She runs away, you open a door and OH MY GOD THERE'S SO MANY ENEMIES. WHAT THE FUCK?! There was so many enemies that it was causing the game to lag, like holy shit. I finally manage to clear the area, get inside the facility and oops, there's a boss battle. Shoot a few rockets, easy peasy OH MY GOD WHY ARE THERE SO MANY ENEMIES ALL THE SUDDEN?! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Like, holy shit y'all. I was not prepared for this level.
 
Opposable

Opposable

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,368
personally I always found Sonic 1 to go from an excellent and fair green hill zone to then a huge rise in difficulty in the next zones. I'm probably playing it wrong and you need to be patient and play it like a normal platformer but still
 

Deleted member 5593

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,635
Devil May Cry 3 was kind of the opposite where the game starts off pretty damn hard & unforgiving before becoming significantly easier after getting Devil Trigger.
 
VariantX

VariantX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,916
Columbia, SC
The actual hard parts of DOOM 2016 aren't when there are tons of enemies, it's when the environment design itself is cleverly crafted to limit your visibility and mobility.
 
SigSig

SigSig

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,777
Dark Souls is rather easy as long as you take it slow, but then the Londo Bros just dunk on you.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,193
When valkyria chronicles is doing well easing the player in, slowly escalating the scenarios in a manageable way...and then drops that ridiculous desert tank batomys mission in.
Requiring a shit ton of lancer luck when they're still rather inaccurate, working around set pieces in a kinda awkward fashion.
And then the mission ends with an invincible anime super woman arriving to apply intense extra pressure for the last two turns with a beam lance.

Opposable said:
personally I always found Sonic 1 to go from an excellent and fair green hill zone to then a huge rise in difficulty in the next zones. I'm probably playing it wrong and you need to be patient and play it like a normal platformer but still
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You're on the right track, a ton of Dev time was spent making green hill zone an incredible first impression, to the point that the rest of the game was a lot more thrown together.
Marble Zone's cramped and angular caverns of crushers, block pushing and such are a complete 180 and require you to play differently in a more punishing environment.
The game seems to go back and forth like this with spring yard to labyrinth afterwards doing something similar.

Anyway, point is marble zone is the worst second section of a game, it is law.
 

Deleted member 864

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,544
The frog boss in Ori, the chase before the fight was tricky and then the fight itself wasn't no cakewalk either. The other bosses aren't as bad, but for me the frog boss was harder than even the final boss.
 
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defaltoption

defaltoption

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
11,499
Austin
That final battle in Star Wars Fallen Order was a real pain in the ass, took me like 10 tries after only dying the rest of the game like 10 times not counting when I kept fighting the first mini boss before any tutorial stuff or skills.

It's gotta I be near impossible on the hardest difficulty
 

Deleted member 29237

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 1, 2017
803
The last level of Super Mario Land 2 is absurdly difficult compared to the rest of the game, which is a breeze. I replayed it a few years back and was surprised how difficult it is even with a few decades more gaming experience!
 
Timewarp

Timewarp

Member
Oct 27, 2017
881
Recently Ori and the Blind Forest threw me for a loop at the Ginso Tree finale. Having had a chill time with the game beforehand, I was not prepared for that spike in urgency. It was fun, but damn.
 

MizziPizzi

Member
Feb 14, 2019
732
Sweden
Im glad I wasn't the only one having a difficult time with doom 2016! I'm not really good with first person shooters so I just play them on normal most of the time.
Doom was a different experience in that you can't really be tactical and stay behind cover but you have to keep running around the whole time which was something new to me so I ended up tuning down the difficulty because It was to much for me, and to be honest I was getting sick occasionally because of all the fast movements!
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,255
There are 1 or 2 worlds in the first Ratchet and Clank (original PS2) that are incredibly easy to die in.
You only have 4 health for 90% of the game (you can get up to 6 if you find a optional vending machine tone).

To make it worse I'm not sure of its the Vita R&C collection or the game was originally like this, but on Vita it has really bad input lag which makes the harder platforming challenges a total pain in the ass.

The final boss also takes a crazy amount of ammo to defeat so you either need an optional gadget that let's you buy ammo at 10x the price during the battle, or you need to grind for bolts for hours to buy the RYNO gun (super OP rapid fire rocket launcher).
 

Deleted member 61326

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 12, 2019
614
A Plague Tale: Innocence

The last battle. But then again, it was poorly designed and why even have a combat oriented final battle in a game that ultimately was a light stealth game. Horrible.
 
Guppeth

Guppeth

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,888
Sheffield, UK
In vanilla World of Warcraft I finished the starter zone, Tirisfal Glades, and moved to the next zone, Western Plaguelands. It was surprisingly tough and I was killed twenty times by the same bear, which came charging at me from miles away. I've never seen such a massive difficulty spike in a game. I quit the game at that point and never got to see the rest of the world, which I assume was even harder.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,193
HairyFist87 said:
I don't remember Doom 2016 being too difficult but if you're having trouble with that, Doom Eternal is going to make you cry!
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Doom eternal gets a difficulty spike within the first stage, I was shook, not overpowering as such but more that you go from "here's how you shoot gun" to late-mid game Doom 2016 in the span of about 15 minutes.

Then it happens again in the cultist base with a skill check to ensure you'll understand how to approach combat for the next 8 or so stages

finley83 said:
The last level of Super Mario Land 2 is absurdly difficult compared to the rest of the game, which is a breeze. I replayed it a few years back and was surprised how difficult it is even with a few decades more gaming experience!
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The original impossible lair, what a gauntlet, I had to bump the game down to easy back in the day for this one.
 
Tatsu91

Tatsu91

Banned
Apr 7, 2019
3,147
Rodney McKay said:
There are 1 or 2 worlds in the first Ratchet and Clank (original PS2) that are incredibly easy to die in.
You only have 4 health for 90% of the game (you can get up to 6 if you find a optional vending machine tone).

To make it worse I'm not sure of its the Vita R&C collection or the game was originally like this, but on Vita it has really bad input lag which makes the harder platforming challenges a total pain in the ass.

The final boss also takes a crazy amount of ammo to defeat so you either need an optional gadget that let's you buy ammo at 10x the price during the battle, or you need to grind for bolts for hours to buy the RYNO gun (super OP rapid fire rocket launcher).
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Drek is actually really easy without the Ryhno just got to be really patient
 
Patitoloco

Patitoloco

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
23,714
Control has a couple of (optional) boss fights that go way and beyond the rest of the difficulty of the game, and the checkpoints don't help.

Tommassi and the Anchor

It felts soooo goood beating them though
 

Deleted member 864

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,544
Rodney McKay said:
There are 1 or 2 worlds in the first Ratchet and Clank (original PS2) that are incredibly easy to die in.
You only have 4 health for 90% of the game (you can get up to 6 if you find a optional vending machine tone).

To make it worse I'm not sure of its the Vita R&C collection or the game was originally like this, but on Vita it has really bad input lag which makes the harder platforming challenges a total pain in the ass.

The final boss also takes a crazy amount of ammo to defeat so you either need an optional gadget that let's you buy ammo at 10x the price during the battle, or you need to grind for bolts for hours to buy the RYNO gun (super OP rapid fire rocket launcher).
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I replayed the first game last year and I don't think you need the RYNO for Drek. The gold Blaster and the Devastator were enough for me.
 
Nazo

Nazo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,832
Been playing through Half-Life 1 for the first time recently and it fits the bill. About the halfway point the game just starts throwing dozens of bullet spongey enemies with pinpoint accuracy. It's miserable and not gonna lie, it's making me not want to play the game anymore.
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,255
Nazo said:
Been playing through Half-Life 1 for the first time recently and it fits the bill. About the halfway point the game just starts throwing dozens of bullet spongey enemies with pinpoint accuracy. It's miserable and not gonna lie, it's making me not want to play the game anymore.
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That's a good one.

Once I got to the surface and the introduce the Marines I had to turn on invincibility and unlimited ammo to keep enjoying the original Half-life.
NKnight7 said:
I replayed the first game last year and I don't think you need the RYNO for Drek. The gold Blaster and the Devestator were enough for me.
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I honestly totally forgot about the gold weapons this playthrough, never found it on my own and I thought I did a pretty good job of exploring (found quite a few of the Golden Bolts, just forgot what they were for, haha).

I'm also planning on playing the whole series again and I was kinda rushing through this one (my least favorite). Didn't want to grind for Bolts at all so there was at least 2-3 weapons I hadn't even bought yet (none I'd ever use like the walloper or mine glove).
 
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dhlt25

dhlt25

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,823
tekken 6 for me. I'm not good at fighting game and can't beat the boss for the life of me lol, same thing with MK9, there was spike in the middle of the game and I just quit
 
DiK4

DiK4

Banned
Nov 4, 2017
1,085
White Lynels in Breath of the Wild.

I hadn't picked up the game in a while, put some hours in the past few days to get some of the shrines I missed as well as DLC content finished.

Came across this fucker in the Gerudo Highlands. What the FUCK.

I mean I remember them being challenging, but I've already beat the game, I've got good gear, tons of food items, all the Champions Skills and It doesn't matter. This fucker one shots me. Consistently kills me with one hit.

It took me 2 hours to kill this fuck. 2 HOURS.

I loved it, twas a great battle. But that was one hell of a spike. I shudder to think what he would be like in Master Mode.
 
remntSTAR

remntSTAR

Member
Oct 29, 2017
180
USA
Nazo said:
Been playing through Half-Life 1 for the first time recently and it fits the bill. About the halfway point the game just starts throwing dozens of bullet spongey enemies with pinpoint accuracy. It's miserable and not gonna lie, it's making me not want to play the game anymore.
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Was very thankful Black Mesa got rid of most of that, it made replaying Half-Life 1 a joy and not a pain even on Easy.
 
The Electric Wizard

The Electric Wizard

Avenger
Nov 6, 2017
389
God of War Ascension

The Trials of Archimedes (pre-patch). That's the worst difficulty spike I remember, it's fucking brutal, even on normal.
The so called rotating spikes of death of GoW1 are a piece of cake in comparison (wich they are, like come on, it's 2 minutes tops, if you are careful)
 
shotgunbob04

shotgunbob04

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,384
prodyg said:
Last level in Killzone 2 too was not fun.
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You know, I haven't played this game since 2011 but I just had flashbacks from your comment. Not extremely clear flashbacks, but if I remember right, there were hovercraft/drone-looking robots that would just spam you with rockets. I think it was towards the end of the level, and I died a dozen times until I was able to destroy all of them and move on. And I think it saved me at a checkpoint with extremely low health. So I agree, that level was way harder.
 
Duffking

Duffking

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,742
Battlefield 2 Modern Combat's SP Campaign is tough but doable for most of the game and then has a last level which I'm fairly sure was literally impossible unless you had some kind of arcane knowledge.
 
TheDanger

TheDanger

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
958
Resident Evil 3 Remake gets about a million times harder on the final boss fight if you're playing on Nightmare or Inferno. real talk: Doom 2016 on normal is an absolute breeze all the way through.
 
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