Games that you have mastered

[deadmeme]

What are the games that you play on harder or hardest difficulties or are just hard and you have managed to beat?
All types of games and platforms.

Strategies:
CIV4, HoMM3, HoMM2, Myth: The Fallen Lords, Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2, Faces of War, Commandos 2: Men of Courage, Company of Heroes, Sudden Strike, Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon, Empire Earth 1/2, Age of Empires 1/2/3, Rise of Nations, The Protectors, Battle for Wesnoth, Starcraft 1/2, Galactic Civilizations II, Master of Orion II, Offworld Trading Company, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Soulstorm/Dark Crusade, Rome: Total War, Medieval 2: Total War, Battle for Middle Earth 2

Shooters:
Conflict: Desert Storm, Doom, Quake 1/3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, Heretic 1, Medal of Honor 1/2, MOHAA, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, C-12: Final Resistance, Killzone, Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm,
COD 1-4, Brothers In Arms 1/2/3, Rainbow Six, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, F.E.A.R. 1, Vietcong 1/2, Mobile Forces

Action/Fighting:
Severance: Blade of Darkness, Way of The Samurai 1/3, Tekken 3/5, Soulcalibur 3

RPG
Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Wizardry 6/7/8, The Witcher 1, Mount & Blade: Warband, The Age of Decadance

 

[Konjad]

ur mom

 

[deama]

Generally when I get good enough at a game, I start to self-impose rules to make it harder on subsequent replays, ontop of the highest difficulty.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

mechwarrior 4.
according to stats tracker, i've been the best player in the world. i've been actually third, but the points system rewarded quantity of games, not quality, and i had less than half the played games of the first two.

freespace 2.
finished a 4 players impossible gauntlet all by myself.

the king of dragons.
i can consistently finish the game with a single life.

 

[whydoibother]

Before my wrist bankruptcy, a lot of RTS games. The drama of getting good at RTS is solving the game, and realizing that out of all the possible strategies, units, builds, permutations of variables, only a very narrow corridor is actually optimal and competitively viable. The better you get, the less fun you have. I remember my last days with Cossacks back in the day being using cheats to spawn huge enemy armies, to play survival as I fight inside my base and send workers to build another one in the back, etc. Just goofing with the engine, basically. And with Warcraft III, I ended up playing clunky custom games more than the actual main game, once I could tell how a match is going to end by the first or second engagement.

After my wrist went kaput, I migrated to slower games, a lot of turn based stuff. RPGs, of course, but also turn based strategies, and out of those the Civilization games are the ones where I am "too good to have fun". Just 50 turns in I can sort of guess at how the game will go. I barely ever finish games, I tend to quit after 1-2 successful wars and knowing that I absolutely will win this, its just a matter of time. Or, because of how deity AI is, and how random the map is, that I am going to lose to that science based civ on the other end of the map that has the three biggest cities in the game, and I'd have to conquer everyone else to even attempt to fight them.

I don't mind that above scenario too much, though. I much more prefer games where even if you get really good, the randomness can fuck you over and force you to adapt. Darkest Dungeon, Slay the Spire, etc. Games where even if you solved them, and know what is best, there's no guarantee you can implement what is best and you need to work with what you got. Honestly all of the whining about RNG seems stupid to me, the games I play most of the time these days are RNG games.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Arx Fatalis, there is nothing else to do. Playing anything else beside magic or mage warrior is challenging enough without mods that add content for other classes.

Stalker games in general, all I can do now is play these armed hobo adventure games like Stalke Anomaly, which is all about "FEDEX and kill".

Inquisitor
Marauder - Man of Prey
Planet Alcatraz
Fallout 1/2/Tactics (have to mod the latest)

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Pokemon Red / Blue

 

[JarlFrank]

Total War games
Quake
Thief

All of them games for which I've played dozens of mods/fan maps and got over a decade of practice in.

 

[Curratum]

Dark Souls 1 and 2, Contra and Super C on the NES, CoD Modern Warfare 1/2, Doom.

I want to say Wolfenstein 3D but that shit is unplayable on the last difficulty unless you play it like a moron and just bore yourself to death. I also want to say Quake but I never really played Nightmare in that.

 

[Hag]

In the ol'days i was a top Battlefied 1942:Desert Combat player.
Otherwise I play Stalker games on Master without problem, but I think these games are made to be played this way.

I also finished Rain World and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, what I believe means I have at least a basic mastery of them.

 

[snoek]

bad company 2 (sensei level on the xbawks 360)
cossacks (beat everyone I knew, never played online tho)
men of war:assault squad 2 (played online a lot, won a ton of games, also lost quite a few tho)

I was reasonably good in the wargame RTSs but not top tier. Mainly played team games and 10v10s for fun/to unwind anyway.

 

[Butter]

none

 

[Tweed]

Left 4 Dead 2. Got to the point where I was carrying entire teams on expert and pissing off newbs by running off alone and surviving. Also, abusing voice bind macros to keep myself entertained.
System Shock 2 on impossible just makes the game more entertaining.
Pre UO:R I was one of the few crazies who did PvP with pure melee before the dex patch, I could only imagine the look on all those tank mages's faces when they realized paralyze wasn't going to stop me from putting my two handed axe in their skull.

 

[Malamert]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl & Call of Pripyat. Know of every nook and cranny in the Zone. AMK and SGM best mods for them, fight me.
Inquisitor. Priest master race.
EYE Divine Cybermancy. Projectile based weapons are of no use to me anymore. PSI powers and the Arrancadora is all I need.
Space Rangers 2: Dominators/Reboot/HD/whatever version.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Mastered Punisher (1993 Arcade) to finish it on one coin.

Franko (1996) - perfect run, done it daily countless times.

Prince of Persia, Another World - I learnt to finished both of them as fast as possible, like 20 minutes for PoP.

I don't really think I've ever beat a game to is so hard that completing it is enough to be something to proud of. Z is the closest, maybe Dark Colony: Council Wars expansion pack and Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines / Beyond the Call of Duty.

Oh, I beat Wizardry 4 but it was PSX remake that gives you automat and quicksaves.

I don't count though games that I finished using savestates (Super Mario: Lost Levels, Big Nose: The Caveman, Castlevania 1, Final Fantasy 4 etc.).

 

[Catacombs]

The only game I ever mastered was CoD: Modern Warfare, when I got every single achievement. The chase sucked all the fun, and the game stressed me out. This was more than a decade ago, and I've since stopped caring about achievements.

 

[adddeed]

Was pretty damn good in Trackmania United back in 2006.
Max Payne 1 as ive replayed it a dozen times.
Carmageddon TDR
Hidden and Dangerous 2

 

[Shackleton]

I still fondly remember my WoW Undead Rogue in Warsong Gulch capture the flag. I could solo the flag 9 out of 10 times by judicious use of vanish, sprint and sap. Got called a cheater so many times I lost count after I popped out of stealth, grabbed the flag and was off. Those tears were like nectar.

Man, that must have been 15 years ago. Great days.

 

[mikaelis]

Sensible Soccer International Edition.

I was basically Messi/Ronaldo in this. We used to organize tournaments with my brother and friends and I always beat them to pulp. I knew every trick and every tactic to beat the opposition. I was especially good at scoring with head after the passes from wings (both left and right). Could also counter opponent with the proper defence (3-5-2, or 5-3-2 tactics depending if they prefered to score from long distance or closer to the goal worked most of the time). Good and unfortunately forever lost times of my youth

I sucked at Sensible World of Soccer though (never devoted too much time to it though).

 

[King Crispy]

Unreal Tournament

 

[samuraigaiden]

I beat Prey 2017 on nightmare difficulty in my first playthrough. It’s a very easy game, so I don’t think this is an amazing achievement.

 

[markec]

It would be too long of list to count every game I played on highest difficulty, so I will just list some games that I take more proud of.

I finished Laser Squad countless times and I had to self impose penalties in terms of gear in order to give myself a challenge.

Could finish Turrican blindfolded.

Beat both Dishonored games on highest difficulty with no powers or gadgets, pure ghost. Also finished Prey on highest difficulty with no powers. Personally I dont find this game difficult at all, but once I mentioned that it breezed trough both Hotline Miami games that I also thought were very easy but some people were shocked.

Company of Heroes, I was very good with all factions but I was a monster Wehrmacht player in ranked online play. If the rampart cheating didnt put me off the game I believe I would have been lvl 20 (20 was highest ranked level).

Tribes Ascend, I mastered Fusion Mortar, I was always the top 3 player in my team. I was so good with it I got often kicked from servers because people thought I was cheating.

Blacklight: Retribution, pay to win game where even with basic free items I often dominated my opponents.

 

[DalekFlay]

Not a big fan of harder modes that are just damage number adjustments, so usually I only use them when they focus more on things like added restrictions or tougher enemy AI. For example:

• I've beaten the modern Deus Ex and Dishonored games on the highest difficulty without ever being seen and shit like that.
• I beat Bioshock 1 and 2 with vita chambers turned off on the hardest mode.
• I recently beat Crysis on delta.
• I did Splinter Cell Chaos Theory with 100% in all levels which requires ghosting.
• I beat Thief and Thief 2 on the hardest mode, which requires a lot of stuff like no kills. Can't remember if I did this with Thief 3 or not.

I don't think it's a coincidence these are almost all first-person games with a lot of stealth. That mixed with RPG elements is my favorite genre. I have played CRPGs like Pathfinder on harder modes, but never the hardest as far as I can recall. Pure FPS games usually just make enemies bullet sponges on the hardest mode, or spam you with more of them to the point of annoyance (sorry Doom Ultra Nightmare fans). I played some Lucarts adventures on the harder mode like Curse of Monkey Island, but I don't think I'd say that qualifies. I don't really play other genres much.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Eh, too long to list, but HoMM3 is definitely one.
I'm also unbeatable at each and every Soul (Edge)Calibur game.

 

[Dyspaire]

I could complete both Contra and Rygar on the NES in their entirety with my eyes closed.

HoMM3 - Undead

AC - Morgan

Moo2 - Human

WoW - Mage

Many rpgs.

 

[El Presidente]

- Thief 1/2
- Oddworld 1/2 (Oddysee and Exoddus) - fairly sure I could speedrun both games
- Little Big Adventure 1/2 (Twinsen games)
- Old Tomb Raider games (1 - Chronicles)
- Megaman X
- Sunset Riders
- Sekiro (I seriously got gud)