Top 5 List: Top 5 Difficult and Awesome Games
While this same kind of list has been making the rounds this week, I SWEAR I've had the idea in my mind for a while. Honest!
Everyone has played those games that just rock your world. It rocks your socks clean off but they're so FREAKING HARD. This is the official Weekly Geek Top 5 Difficult and Awesome Games list. Because there are some games that are just so completely mindblowingly difficult, but we still play them. Because we hate ourselves. Hit the jump for our list, and post a comment with your own list!
The Geek:
5. Final Fight - This game isn't really hard from outward appearances, but it was orignally designed to be a quarter-sucking arcade demon, so there's no chance you'll ever, ever get through it on one credit. Ever. It's difficult just because of the overwhelming number of street punks you have to beat up will always be able to overtake you at some point. It's just a matter of how long you can hold out getting hit, fending off half a dozen junkies, thugs, and hookers.
4. Final Fantasy - You think RPGs are hard now with mega bosses and huge dungeons? Think again, skippy. The original FF was crazy hard. CRAZY HARD. Only being able to buy crucial healing items one at a time, no save points anywhere outside a town, no Life potions until at least halfway through, no stats on weapons until you actually bought and equipped them, and an amount of level grinding that would make any MMO feel like a Wario Ware Microgame. Yet this great-grandpappy of the modern video game RPG was fun as hell.
3. God of War - This is one of those games that a perfect example of being the best kind of difficult. It walks right up to, but not over the line that makes it really hard, but not so much that it's frustrating. Everything about the game just makes you want to play it more, and the difficulty level is a major factor in that. It just feels so good to finally get past that one area that's been giving you trouble for the last hour.
2. Ikaruga - I know this is gonna be on Frodo's list as well, but I had to put it on mine because of the hours and hours we played this together. A great twist on the traditional shmup, the daring air ballet of switching between black and white is quite a site to behold, especially when the game is mercilessly punishing you with more shots on screen than any normal human could ever possibly avoid. But oh man, is it pretty and so much fun. Just sitting back in awe at the ridiculous difficulty of the game. Even if you can only beat the game once you've earned unlimited continues, it still feels like a monumental accomplishment.
1. Guitar Hero 1 and 2 - Like Ikaruga, this game gets to a point where all the maddness on the screen makes you just sit back and go "buh?" for a while. The great thing about GH is that you can switch up the difficulty level so everyone from beginners to experts can enjoy the game and still have a nice challenge. When you're really getting into some stuff that's really hard for you, sometimes you'll find your fingers are doing things all on their own, purely on instinct, and you're amazed that you hit that series of notes. The difficulty level just makes a huge leap from one setting to the next, really forcing you to work at it. But this game tops my "hard as hell, but fun as hell" list because of the amazing feeling of success and accomplishment you get when you nail a hard song because you're rocking the hell out. It just feels sooooooo good to nail that big ass crazy solo in Bark at the Moon or whatever song that you've worked so hard to do.
Frodo:
5. Zelda II - Not only was this game a radical departure from the first game of the series, taking it from top-down action to side scrolling RPG-ish fare, it was freaking tough. Once you get past the first cave where you NEED the candle or else those little tick things kill you, it just gets insane. The labyrinthine dungeons end with incredibly hard bosses, there are no save points, and the final levels have unrelenting amounts of invisible enemies that will propel you into pits if they hit you. Awful and yet so satisfying.
4. Ikaruga - The Geek mentioned this in his list already (bastard!) but we spent so much time dodging the minuscule little bullets I can't help but chime in. This game hates you. It hates you so hard. The only reason it isn't number one on my list is because if you do eventually finish the end boss you get infinite lives and can just rip through it. Which is still really hard to do! Just try to get past the first boss without dying. Can't wait to punish myself more when it hits the Live Arcade.
3. Geometry Wars - Sadly, this was the game that sold the Xbox 360 for me. It's a classic arcade shooter in the style of asteroids that is so simple, yet so beautiful. It's also brutally difficult, requiring massive amounts of concentration to just be able to pay attention to what is going on around you. You are constantly being distracted by shiny lights and colors and then BAM one of those damned pink squares splits into two and hits you from behind. I play just about every day, trying to perfect my score.
2. Mega Man - One of the first games I can remember being really frustrated with, but still wanting to play. The Gutsman level is probably the single most difficult level of my childhood of NES obsession. It demands perfection from you. One single misstep and you plummet to a very anticlimactic end. Put that with the crazy platforming of the levels with the disappearing blocks and you have a game that terrorized small children in the 80s. I love it.
1. Contra - Every morning before school I would wake up an hour early to play Contra. I'd sit down in the dark with my cereal and try to perfect that first level, avoiding the Konami Code, trying to get as far as possible with the standard amount of lives given to you (as God intended). I was never able to complete the game without the code, and to this DAY I still haven't. The Geek and I still whip out Contra about once a year to try and complete it, and it's as difficult now as it was then. Cheers, Konami. You won this time...
What say you?!