Favourite games too hard for their own good

[jdc]

The reason I'm posting right now is because I had to walk away from the Xbox game that I'm currently playing. The game is a racer called Apex. I can 200-point Gran Turismo, can finish Ridge Racer games to 100%.....but THIS freakin' game is brutal. I tend to play videogames on each difficulty, starting with easy and completing the game and moving to the next difficulty. Playing on EASY is excruciatingly difficult and there's also normal and hard mode. Cross the line on easy, and the pack of AI cars crosses the line mere seconds after you. Harsh blocking tactics are used against you along with bumper car gang-ups and there is such severe oversteer while rounding a corner, that the beta testers should each be hunted down and receive a swift kick in the balls for not calling the developer on it. I expect this kind of AI on normal or even hard, not on easy.

[BydoEmpire]

I thought Metroid Prime was too frustrating for its own good. I really liked the game overall, and it deserves its AAA status, but I had to Gamefaq my way through it, which sucked. I fought Ridley literally 20+ times. Then once, without discovering any new strategy or doing anything really different, I randomly beat her. That's not challenge, that's frustration.

I don't mind dying a if every time I get a little bit better, or discover something new to help me the next go-around; but if you die over and over and don't know what to do that sucks.

[Drixxel]

The discussion here has been very interesting and lively. But I knew this subject seemed very familiar; I did some searching and found:

(sprawl of links)

I'm just sayin'.

In my defense, this topic was intended not to discuss games for their sheer challenge, but games that are favourites in spite of or because of of their challenge, not just a simple list of "games that are really hard."

Man, Legacy of the Wizard.. there's one that fits this condition in an odd way. I've always liked that game for whatever reason, but Sudo's description of difficulty is exact in that it's a question of finding where the hell you're supposed to go that's the crippler. Making any progress in the game without a guide was an exercise in random exploration and dumb luck, at least that describes my experience with Legacy of the Wizard. Challenging, but more because I was ignorant of what I was doing rather than being cut down time and time again by enemy pummelings.