Hardest. Level. Ever.
 

Okay, you all know you've played one. A level (or entire game) that is so infuriating, so broken, so repetitive, so irritating, so SOMETHING that you swear off ever playing that level again. Let's hear everyone's gaming horror stories.

Mine is in Lego Star Wars 2, the Hoth level. I've already written this in chat, so I'll just repaste it here since I don't think I could outdo myself.

HAY GUYS LETS MAKE A HOTH LEVEL, IT'S NOT LIKE 50,000 GAMES HAVE DONE THIS ALREADY! NOT TO MENTION LET'S MAKE IT THE HARDEST LEVEL IN ANY GAME FUCKING EVER! Fuck, it's not enough that this level makes no goddamn sense compared to the movie, but the controls on the speeder are completely backwards, the bombs you have to drag to blow shit up are too easily destroyed, there are TOO MANY FUCKING ENEMIES so you die a shitfuckload, and the ending area where you have to kill a bunch of different groups of enemies is fucking IRRITATING because the camera sucks balls. :aargh: :aargh:

I'd probably have to go all the back to games like Ninja Gaiden 1 or Battletoads for the NES. Ninja Gaiden specifically during Stage 6, because dying during any of the three final bosses meant ALL the back to the beginning of the level from 6-3 to 6-1 again.

Battletoads was just brutal as hell once you got about halfway in no matter what. Unless you were ready to be dragged out kicking and screaming or you had a partner with you, that was pretty much off limits.

Oh shit, and I can't forget Athena. Oh Athena, how I loathe thee. A game in and of itself so fucking ridiculous that if you took ONE WRONG PATH in any stage, you could end up being sent all the way back to the BEGINNING OF THE GAME. Not to mention getting through the later stages was hard as hell. But from the ashes of that came my love of using Athena Asamiya in King of Fighters, so I can't argue too much. SNK FTW.

Deadly Towers.

Did anyone ever figure out what the fuck you're supposed to do in that game?

(PS, moo, you're a wuss for hating on the Hoth level.)

Eternal Engine from Sonic Adventure 2. Swore off the game for over a year because of the marriage of some of the worst level design and some of the cheapest hits I've ever dealt with. I can't tell you how much fun it is to lose your last life right before reaching the goal of a stupidly long stage because a homing missile from off-screen made you let go off the crane handle. The emerald levels were boring, yeah, but Eternal Engine is the closest I've ever come to making a frisbee out of a CD.

Special mention goes to Alundra, which I hated for making me feel stupid. One time I became angry enough that I bit my memory card in revenge. That's right. Such is the power of this game's effect on my blood pressure.

You think Mo0 would have some god damn skill at a game, complaining about LEGO STAR WARS.

Fuck you. You want hard? Ninja Gaiden is hard. NES TMNT was hard. The second half of Trauma Center for the DS is hard. I don't think anyone has ever beaten Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth.

LEGO STAR WARS. What the hell.

Okay, fine. When I think of something I've done that is harder (which I will be able to eventually), I'll edit it into my original post.

Guts Man's level in Megaman 1. Fuck. That may well have been the first time I swore, even as a small child. Of course, I swore at it again when I played it on the Anniversary Collection, and then again on Megaman Powered Up.

Goddamn dropping platforms.

Yo, right here.

And I hate every fucking minute of it. God that game was horrid.

LIES.

I call shenanigans. Unless you're an idiot, you would have given up on that game half way through. Either that or h4x.

I feel dumb with this one, but the one level that drove me the most nuts out of any game was the freakin' Labyrinth Zone on the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. I never could beat Robotnik on that level. LAME. *sigh*

I can't think of a single game I've played that was harder than either Ghosts 'n' Goblins or Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. Both are among the hardest games ever made, especially when you consider we were playing them back in the day where if you died, you didn't get to go back to a save point or use a password (and I played these pre-emulator). No, you started back from the freaking BEGINNING. And of course, the beginning even had those little red fucks who would just swoop down and kill you.

Nope. A friend of mine and myself set out to beat that piece of shit one summer, and we damn well did it. I did Hoshigami, and he sat through all of Final Fantasy VIII. I think I got the better end of the deal. Nowhere in Hoshigami are they all from the same fucking orphanage.

Hoshigami isn't that hard. The problem with the game really is that melee weapons are almost entirely useless. They pretty much force you to rely on that gay coin based magic system to do reliable damage and it's really sucky. I managed to plow through the game relatively easy once I caved in and did it 'the right way'. Was it worth it? No, probably not. It really was a terrible game.

Hardest level ever eh? For me it's a boss. Alma from Ninja Gaiden: Black. I would get my ass whooped from all of her throwing pillar pieces at me. I have a few other hard ones that pissed me off greatly but none of them compare to Alma.

Some others that have fallen short of the anger levels that Alma has made me reach is the Harrier on MGS 2 on Extreme, MGS1 Snake's Zako Survival on Substance, MGS1 Snake's Grenade levels (no grenade launcher), sneaking levels & hold up levels (I always would feel my face turning red when I would get pissed off) on Substance.

Also others that would qualify are Brock from Dead Rising (he can be tough if you don't know the technique to defeating him), Carlito confrontation #2 on Dead Rising (his sniper rifle has a nasty knockback in addition to a lot of damage from one bullet). Cyber Demon from Doom 3 on Veteran difficulty (my FPS skills suck ass anyway), Cassidy from Darkwatch on Deadeye difficulty (she's a lot harder that Tala in my view).

TMNT I is fairly difficult..especially the end of level 2 and those idiotic jumps in level 3.

Battletoads was hard once you hit the speedster level. THen that one with a saw behind you...madness.

And someone must have disliked the world when they made Beyond the Beyond. It starts out OK, then soon, you're fighting uber powerful mages who all have an attack that smashes the ENTIRE PARTY. Very annoying.

The only game I can think of off the top of my head was the speeder bike levels on Battletoads. The fact that just about every version of the game that ever came out had that damn level in it pissed me the hell off.

I was never able to beat that stage (well, I did like once or twice, but then the next stage on the SNES version where you had to hug snakes as they took you through a spike-filled level always got me if the bikes didn't), and never liked the Battletoads game because of it (and it sucks too because the first level was fun).

I swear though, it's probably just because of that damn speeder bike stage that Battletoads never became a successful game series. I'm guessing enough people got pissed off at that one stage that it never got to compete with the Ninja Turtles games, which I'm sure Battletoads was a rip-off of that series (luckily, other than the first one, the TMNT games were pretty good and more importantly, fun).

The hardest level, by far, is dodonpachi daioujou's 2-5 stage. The level is only playable after completing the entire game, and continuing into post-game, forfeiting your right to place your high score at the end of stage 5.

This is the hardest I can think of, even if there's something that could match it. I refuse to play it because it's pointless.

Edit: Oh, watching that video again, I totally forgot that the final form of the boss can't be damaged by bombs, which just makes it nearly impossible.

Holy shit. The operations are some of the most frustrating tasks I've ever faced in a video game. I got through the chapters alright, but the X challenges have made me wanna chuck my DS at the nearest living thing. Instead I just waste my next chance just stabbing the patient to death out of frustration, then trying again on the following retry. ;_;

The SnowFly Forest in Vagrant Story was a nightmare, I spent a week of on/off playing to get through there.

Also damaging to my confidence of being a good gamer is the 8th (plutonium boss) zone, from Blaster Master.

Stage 4 of Ikaruga... without continues and taking the most chains that you can, of course.

You know, that level always gave me problems too, but for a slightly different reason: it scared the hell out of me. I hated that "drowning timer" song back then, and I found it really difficult to get to each air bubble before my life ran out, so the level drove me nuts. Eventually I would just turn off the system when I got to the level. I never did beat it either, I just ended up using a level select code to continue on (which I didn't find out about until like a month after I had given up trying to get past Labyrinth Zone).

Appropriately, I also found a few levels from Ecco: Defender of the Future absolutely insane. Even when I used a walkthrough later, it was still a HUGE chore to get through. There were a number of them, but some such as the Egg Chamber near the end were just ugh. I never want to have to go through that part again, although I can't even tell why it's so frustrating...in theory it sounds easy, but I could just never pull off what you needed to do to get past it.

Some of the secret levels from Yoshi's Island were annoying, if only when trying to complete them with 100%, getting hit with no stars in backup from an inch before the finishing circle, jeez but I hated the sound of that baby crying.

Battletoads (Genesis) -
Level 11: Only reason I had problems with it was because my Genesis controller didn't like my up button sometimes. Unfortunately, you REALLY need it in that level. Plus the corners were a bitch.

Level 12: I fell to my death time after time after time again. Whether it'd be the bouncing platforms going to the bottom of the screen and I'd fall off when I didn't even push a damn button, or the cheap ass clouds with their one hit kills or when they blew me off the stage. Thankfully the boss was a cinch.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Sandopolis Act 2: I got stuck in a neverending loop of slides and loops on one part, and I didn't get to the lights quick enough so I was easy pickings for the ghosts.

Super Mario Bros. -

World 8 Level 2: Everyone has had problems with this at some point or another. The LONG jump where you have a short pipe, a little pit, a little ground platform, a little pit, a little ground platform, and then the LONG pit. Many lives were wasted on that level.

World 8 Level 3: You know the part where you have to go through that barrage of Hammer Bros.? Unless you had fireballs, you sure as hell had a tough time getting through them. Even timing their jumps right would prove useless because you'd have to dodge a hammer in the process.

Agreed on 8-2 and 8-3! That was some hard stuff! I think that the final stage in Castlevania III : Dracula's Curse ranks up there as well. Spiders, axe armors, bats, bats, bats, and those trickey clock gears. What a nightmare.

Last few levels for Trauma Center and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. I must try Battletoads sometime.