Favorite Difficulty Spikes

[Ivan]

Love them or hate them, difficulty spikes have the chance to become memorable for polar opposite reasons. I'll share some that range the gamut from satisfying, to hair pulling. Share some of yours.

Rayman Origins - If I recall correctly, this is a post campaign world that required a tremendous amount of precision to pull off


Yakuza 7 - This is probably my favorite difficulty spike just in terms of fan service and knowing full well that Majima and Saejima are two formidable foes that OUGHT not be easily overcome (plus features, IMO, the most adrenaline pumping track the Yakuza series has featured to date)


Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Senator Armstrong on Hard (Very?) was an incredibly tight affair where I had to get his pattern down perfectly to squeeze by. Another excellent boss encounter with a fantastic track.


Sekiro - My personal favorite boss of the game, particularly because of the characterization work done before this encounter. Loved getting his behavior down and putting this dude to rest.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

The Beast at the end of act one in The Witcher caught a lot of people by surprise. Took me a few attempts the first time. Game is a breeze up to that point, and for the rest of the game after it.

 

[ferratilis]

That race in Mafia took me many, many tries to complete back in the day. Finally doing it was like winning the lottery.

Also, in the release version of Dragon Age, the Ogre was a pain in the ass to beat. Afaik, it was later patched to be easier. But it was a good challenge, though. Difficulty can make a game more memorable, and rewarding.

 

[Nutria]

The one time in Alpha Protocol near the end when suddenly your build actually matters and you realize you wasted 20 hours of your life because you didn't pick the right weapon in the beginning.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I cannot remember any difficulty spikes except for Dark Souls' archers in Anor Londo. I'm sure I've played other games with sudden difficulty spikes, but those freaking Anor Londo archers have scarred me so deeply that they're the only thing I can think of.

 

[Endemic]

Chryssalids \ Ethereals in X-COM.

 

[Sjukob]

Pretty much every boss battle in DMC1, except Griffon 2, to this day I have no idea how that thing even made it into release version of the game. By the way, this guys makes it look way easier than it is, some bosses on DMD will absolutely push your shit in, especially Nelo Angelo 3 and Mundus.


The path II from Hell Revealed 2 wad is one of the most ridiculous (in a good way) maps I've ever seen in Doom.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Chryssalids \ Ethereals in X-COM.

Those frikkin tall insect things that put eggs in the things they kill? The first time I met them was in a level where they were killing all the people in a library or something. I ran in, and not knowing any better, stood next to a dead body. Then the next turn, the corpse stands up and smacks my nearest soldier, killing him in one hit.

 

[whydoibother]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - That one boss that requires you to parry, even though nothing in the game so far required you to parry, and it was faster and easier to get to this point of the game ignoring the parry mechanic.

Spoiler

And by "favorite" I mean "drop the game for 2 weeks and come back to it later, having to go backwards a bit to practice parrying on regular enemies for an hour"

 

[Baron Dupek]

Marauder - Man of Prey
Apeiron's games are never easy but even there you can find tougher moments.
Zergrush outside the military base - being overwhelmed in the game where every 0,01 second is precious. You do have grenade launcher but it will cause ingame physics (collisions) to shit itself along with the whole game.
Kwan soldiers - high number (because it's near endgame) makes good welcoming comitee for the endgame. Oh and there are no AP rounds in the game, only perk that you get ASAP or make endgame near impossible.
Which makes you wonder if Silent Storm dev went that way and gave us better endgame in results...
And every defence mission. Have fun pausing every second and setting everything perfectly or get fugged.

Path of Exile
Sirus
Fight is doable but god help you if you die once, especially in the 3rd (and last) phase because you might as well abandon the fight. Offscreen attacks and suprise teleportations (both you and the boss) leads to more confusion. Oh and sometimes entrance is blocked by the massive vortex of fuck you despite developers fixing that.

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[0wca]

That race in Mafia took me many, many tries to complete back in the day. Finally doing it was like winning the lottery.

Holy shit ^^

Also I consider every new playthrough of NEO Scavenger a difficulty spike.

 

[HansDampf]

From the games I played in the last 12 months.

UnderRail - Depot A

Spoiler

Taught me to always enter combat mode manually before going through a door or around a corner.

And Doom Eternal TAG1 - The Holt Slayer Gate on Nightmare (before it was nerfed).

 

[Endemic]

That race in Mafia took me many, many tries to complete back in the day. Finally doing it was like winning the lottery.

Well, you are driving an old school race car without wings, and very skinny tyres. Got to be judicious with the throttle. I think a lot of players got impatient, and the complaining led to it being patched later.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I didn’t find it enjoyable, but I recently replayed Metroid: Zero Mission and there is an insane difficulty spike when you reach Tourian. The game goes from being a total cakewalk to being balls-to-the-wall difficult. It had me seriously questioning if the designers had play-tested the game.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

+1 for Mafia race and Underrail Depot A

Also for Underrail - Deep Caverns (my stealthy crossbow build just could not make it at all)

Demon's Souls - red-eyed knight and then red-eyed skeleton

Portal: Prelude - after finishing Portal this felt pretty difficult

Operation Flashpoint (Arma 3) - mission After Montignac when you are alone in the forest and have to escape the island is fucking tense and you have to think about your surroundings etc.

Witcher 2 - first Leto fight

System Shock 2 - Engineering level - everything explodes, everything wants to murder you

System Shock - can't remember which floor but where you have to get over radiation area and there are flying motherfuckers

Thief - Return to Cathedral, killing haunts was tense

Driver 3 - Istanbul missions

Driver 2 - 3rd mission (I guess)

Driver 1 - main menu was fine but the first mission a.k.a. "tutorial" took me more than couple of tries

Gran Turismo 2 - first license tests were fine but being gold on later ones was a nightmare

Noita - Hiisi base biome and the one biome with spiders that looks like jungle

and as a bonus huge fucking amount of handheld games (especially GBA and PSP) are brutal in their later stages - WipeOut Pure, Ridge Racer (MAX Tour in PSP version where AI just rubberbands as crazy and in Vita version the Devil is always at least five seconds faster than me no matter how clean I drive), Metal Gear Solid (Ghost Babel), Killzone Liberation,...

 

[Carrion]

The stealth missions in Rogue Spear. The whole game is punishing, but these fucking missions... You need to complete the levels on one go and be a perfect ghost, slipping in an out without getting spotted or attacking anyone on the way. You won't hear the guards mumbling "maybe it was a rat" or anything like that — you take a peek around the corner at the wrong time, and it's an immediate game over.

 

[Shadowfang]

The stealth missions in Rogue Spear. The whole game is punishing, but these fucking missions... You need to complete the levels on one go and be a perfect ghost, slipping in an out without getting spotted or attacking anyone on the way. You won't hear the guards mumbling "maybe it was a rat" or anything like that — you take a peek around the corner at the wrong time, and it's an immediate game over.

I loved those missions. Antonio Maldini going solo and opening doors by spraying a whole clip of a mp5sd was pure joy.
The stealth part was easy if you switched to 3rd person view on the hard parts. I had that key bidden to space because of how often we used it on MP.

 

[Carrion]

The stealth part was easy if you switched to 3rd person view on the hard parts. I had that key bidden to space because of how often we used it on MP.

I only used that in the latter mission with those long fucking corridors that make your heartbeat sensor useless. I guess it was cheating, but I feel no remorse.

 

[Faarbaute]

One of my favorite git gud moments was when I was playing Gothic 2 as a kid. I had just gotten to the Paladins who were besieged in the valley of mines if I remember correctly? and promptly got my ass handed to me by an orc.

Up until this point I had just been getting by but I realised there was no way arround this, the game was never getting easier again, I had to git gud.

Then, upon reloading and facing the orcs again, everything suddenly clicked into place. My mastery of the combat and the progression of my character culminated in this moment and I proceeded to destroy the orcs and it was beautiful.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

If you know then you know.

 

[Silverfish]

The one time in Alpha Protocol near the end when suddenly your build actually matters and you realize you wasted 20 hours of your life because you didn't pick the right weapon in the beginning.

What part was this? I've only ever played AP as a melee build and never had any major problems.

 

[DraQ]

• Ginso Tree, Mount Horu, Willow's End- Ori series.
• Vesta Overkill, Jovian Lunar Tour - Children of a Dead Earth.

The Beast at the end of act one in The Witcher caught a lot of people by surprise. Took me a few attempts the first time. Game is a breeze up to that point, and for the rest of the game after it.

Koschey and Azar Javed (near the end when wielding those two hilarious maces) can be rough-ish too, to be fair.

 

[Nutria]

The one time in Alpha Protocol near the end when suddenly your build actually matters and you realize you wasted 20 hours of your life because you didn't pick the right weapon in the beginning.

What part was this? I've only ever played AP as a melee build and never had any major problems.

IIRC the worst part is the sniper in the tower. I went with assault rifles the first time and pistols the second, and that was the first real challenge I ran into. It wasn't impossible to beat but it was a hell of a shock to go from trivially easy to suddenly having to repeat the same fight 10 times until I get lucky.

 

[DemonKing]

That first fight on top of the central tower in Sekiro was a great skill check fight. If you couldn't get past that you weren't going to see the rest of the game...