Games you never dared to play on hardest difficulty?

[jupiter_ex]

Are there any games that you won't play on the hardest difficulty? Maybe because they're too difficult, maybe because annoying mechanics would make it too bothersome on higher difficulties, or maybe just because the game's too broken already.
 

In my case, I only very recently dared to go with Daikanata all the way up the difficulty levels. I'm also a big immersive sim fan, but games like the System Shocks or the Deus Exes I almost always play on easy or normal (never even dared with the "realistic mode" of DX1). Maybe because those games are pretty punishing already, maybe because a difficult gunfight is not really the reason I play them for.

Other games (the Dooms, the Quakes, FEARs, Painkiller, Serious Sams and more) I enjoy playing through and through, but some others as I mentioned, I don't.
Any games you never go with the hardest mode or above normal/easy? Am I the only one?

[vanilla_d00m]

Doom on Nightmare setting, I tried it once in e1m1.  As soon as they respawned, I never tried it again.  HMP to me is like the medium setting.  I play only on that.

 

They also move faster on Nightmare.

Edited April 30 by vanilla_d00m

[ALilGrayBoi]

Cuphead. I’m never gonna touch expert difficulty. EVER. 

[Graf Zahl]

Considering that lots of games, especially older ones, feature an "extra hard" setting as their highest choice, there's lots of games I never played on it.

Another thing that keeps me from it is that I do the first playthrough on the recommended skill and there's many games I never replayed after finishing once (or sometimes giving up before that)

 

[Captain red pants]

Most games honestly. Got enough in my life that makes me frustrated.

[Major Arlene]

all of them :)

[DankMetal]

Transformers Fall of Cybertron.

The decepticon episodes were already hard for me on the lowest difficulty, i couldn't imagine me beating even the first episode on the hardest diffuclty...

But that was years ago, i think i should give it a try now that i'm older.

[The Doommer]

Ultra-Nightmare for 2016/Eternal would be a forever no-no for me. I wouldn't have the patience or time to die and restart the whole game again and again.

I've given Classic Doom Nightmare a chance but never went far because I tend to backtrack. (DOOM 2 on Nightmare is insane even on MAP01 because of that imp room)

 

As for others, in most games I play I try the hardest difficulty these days (unless it's legit BS)

Edited May 2 by The Doommer

[DynamiteKaitorn]

The Outer Worlds on supernova. Take a game where your health rapidly drains and fills as you sniff an inhaler over and over. Now force the player to eat and drink, can only save or sleep inside the main ship, remove fast travel and restrict autosaves. No thanks. I've completed this with all endings and both DLC's. >_>

[magicsofa]

Descent 1

 

Well, I did dare to play on ACE difficulty, but I think after just barely making it through the first level I had enough.

Also Blood. (Not that I ever finished the game anyway)

 

It is hard to think of any games that I would play on hardest difficulty. Wolf3D comes to mind, mainly because Death Incarnate isn't nearly as scary as it sounds, just more enemies and higher damage. I did beat Doom 1 on Nightmare (just E1-E3) at some point when I really wanted to play the IWADs but didn't want to just cruise through.

[IHave10Shells]

2 hours ago, DankMetal said:

Transformers Fall of Cybertron.

The decepticon episodes were already hard for me on the lowest difficulty, i couldn't imagine me beating even the first episode on the hardest diffuclty...

But that was years ago, i think i should give it a try now that i'm older.

Oh man, that game was fantastic... shame that it got shut down. But really, for me personally most of it was actually pretty easy, except for that one first insecticon boss fight with grimlock, that was ROUGH. The final boss fight with megatron might also be hard to start with, but really you have to make liberal use of the shield and always keep attacking him up front rather than far away. I only died most of the time through lag and crappy rifle damage. I was playing on PC though, so I think I had it easier.

Edited May 2 by IHave10Shells

[Zerofuchs]

Never tried a full run of any commercial WAD on Nightmare, have finished maps on it here and there but not my preferred difficulty.

 

Unreal Tournament, showing my limits as an FPS player, I tend to stick to "Adept" or "Masterful" bots, "Godlike" just needs too much effort to keep up with for a relatively casual arena fan.

 

ToME I make too many silly mistakes to lose characters every time, so I stick to "Adventurer" mode. DoomRL I struggle with the harder difficulties. Most other classic Roguelikes I'll try to stick to tradition though.

 

Most games really I'll stick to the "Hard" or "Very Hard", but rarely the "Ludicrous" difficulty. These days I'll go for mid difficulties more frequently as well, considering my backlog of games and frustration threshold these days I prefer something I don't need to reload or respawn in too often.

 

Exceptions would be Deus Ex and other immersive sims where I tend to figure out the cheese stealth builds fairly quickly. I rarely go full ghost but I will be able to avoid 90% of non-boss fights if they're too much of a pain...

Edited May 2 by Zerofuchs
Clarity

[LegendaryEevee]

Skyrim on Veteran is literally a waste of time.  Enemies have something like 400% health while you die one to two hits from anything.  Add the fact that most late game enemies scale levels with you.  I used to have a video on my channel of me at like level 100 full dragonscale armor and dragon bow taking on a Legendary Dragon on Veteran and no kidding took nearly 25 minutes to kill with Daedric Arrows.  No Thanks.

 

Also Going Down on Ultra Violence I literally hit a brick wall once we got to the underground levels.  Go to for once get through it on Hurt Me Plenty and work back to UV.

Edited May 2 by LegendaryEevee

[sptz33]

I would say the games I have never dared on max difficulty would be Half Life 1, the early Call of Duty games up to og Modern Warfare 2, Quake 1, and lastly Arma Cold War Assault. In Half Life's case, It was so brutal trying to fight those marines, at least one soldier will drain your health to like 20 or some shit, and you would have to dump like 2 mags into his face to put him down. I might be wrong though, as my memory is vivid, but god the game doesn't fuck around. Call of Duty just turns grenades into basically mortar strikes, they get thrown around the area all over the map by like 10 different enemies, and doesn't help when a small alley is filled with like 20 dudes with AK's and they all turn you into Swiss cheese in a millisecond.

 

Quake 1 - oooffff the final episode of the game on high difficulty made me want to burn and purge. Never finished the game to the end and had to drop it, as it wasn't getting any better and it was more frustration than fun.

Arma Cold War Assault (On Veteran) - Oh hell nah, the Soviets can take Everon and Malden for all I care. The controls and handling of the soldier is already a challenge in itself, let alone surviving any firefights. After 300 (mostly messing with mission editor) hrs on the game, still never got used to it, and once it forced me to become a squad leader, that's when my interest in the campaign died off. If the game is trying to sort of replicated the reality of modern warfare, I don't think in real life you need to remember the telephone number combination on your keyboard to give your troops one small specific order like "All, watch 10 o'clock", it wastes too much time while you have like 2 enemy squads and 2 tanks advancing in your direction. Lastly, your allies are useless, they just crawl on the ground like infants and when there is an enemy right up their nose, it takes them like half an hour to respond and finally start shooting back. On the other hand though, I still actually love Arma Cold War Assault and don't enjoy the other Arma games as much as this one. It would be absolutely GOLD if the game got a remaster with some reworked mechanics, controls, etc. But that's not happening.

Edited May 2 by sptz33

[GreenAnime]

Fire emblems 11 and 12 on the highest difficulty are incredibly difficult and unbalanced. The early levels are the most threatening part of the game. Every low tier enemy can leave your tankiest unit below 10 hp in one strike and landing a critical hit is dead for good. Just overall stat bloat bs which is a lazy and terrible design.

Edited May 2 by GreenAnime

[maxmanium]

System Shock. Too confusing for a time limit.

[DSC]

5 hours ago, GreenAnime said:

Fire emblems 11 and 12 on the highest difficulty are incredibly difficult and unbalanced. The early levels are the most threatening part of the game. Every low tier enemy can leave your tankiest unit below 10 hp in one strike and landing a critical hit is dead for good. Just overall stat bloat bs which is a lazy and terrible design.

You forgot to mention the worst aspect of FE12's hardest mode: every single enemy attacks you first, even if you are the one who initiates combat. Very fun.

[Ozcar]

Half life, the increased health on each enemy makes them become a more bullet sponge, which makes the gameplay less enjoyable in my humble opinion.

Edited May 2 by Ozcar

[Captain red pants]

4 hours ago, Ozcar said:

Half life, the increased health on each enemy makes them become a more bullet sponge, which makes the gameplay less enjoyable in my humble opinion.

I always wondered if the reason people kept posting Half-Life in the various "popular games you hate" threads we've had over the years is because they only ever played it on hard.

[Mr. Freeze]

Life

[DNSKILL5]

Duke Nukem 3D on Damn I’m Good. Nope. Never tried it. 
 

Really though it would be Mega Man 2. I know the “difficult” difficulty is actually the original Japanese version difficulty, but I have never sat down and played through the game on that setting. I thought the game was already tough enough the first time around but I’ve since beaten it many times so perhaps it’s time to try the so called difficult mode. 

[Doom64guy]

By default, I'm looking for the easiest difficulty in any games, except when harder difficulties unlock more stuffs.

[Kyle07]

On 5/3/2024 at 6:13 AM, DNSKILL5 said:

Duke Nukem 3D on Damn I’m Good. Nope. Never tried it. 
 

Really though it would be Mega Man 2. I know the “difficult” difficulty is actually the original Japanese version difficulty, but I have never sat down and played through the game on that setting. I thought the game was already tough enough the first time around but I’ve since beaten it many times so perhaps it’s time to try the so called difficult mode. 

Come Get Some is already hard for me in Duke3D. At least when I tried the Winter expansion.

 

Mega Man 2 is possible, when you are into it. At least that's what I remember.

[JackDBS]

Halo 2.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

I guess D&D/Pathfinder games but that's more because less and less things become viable instead of the game getting more interesting.

 

If FPS only I guess maybe Halo 2, it seemed really annoying and not worth trying. (I mean I did Nightmare but Nightmare is more fun than that nonsense).

[Aaron Blain]

Not the OP's question, but after beating Shinobi 3 many dozens of times growing up, I just tried it for the first time a few years ago on hard mode (smaller healthbar) and starting with 0 shurikens, and it makes it a much different and more complex game.

 

I also rarely went for a full set of chaos emeralds in the Sonic games, which, again, makes them much more complex and rewarding.

 

I've never gotten good enough at beatemups to play them on the hard setting (which is often just an option for fewer credits). Clearing any of the Golden Ax or Streets of Rage games on Normal has always been a feat for me. I can't decide whether it's a matter of gitting gud at knowing every attack animation down to the frame and pixel, or just being more remorseless about spamming low-risk attacks (like the jump kick in Captain America and The Avengers).

 

But all the classic FPS games from Wolf3d to Quake, all the RTS/RTT games like Myth and AoE -- I maxxed all of those out.

 

Oh which does remind me of one thing I absolutely never could fuck with -- the scenarios in Cossacks and American Conquest. I've always been able to pummel a Very Hard AI on a random map, but I almost always tend to absolutely bounce off the scenarios, even on Normal. I actually find them so difficult that I've played them very little over the years, despite having replayed the campaigns in War2, Broodwar, AoE etc many times over.

 

I also have never gotten around to finishing Curse of Monkey Island on Mega Monkey, which is an undertaking I've been thinking about launching recently.

[Lila Feuer]

On 5/2/2024 at 11:13 PM, DNSKILL5 said:

Duke Nukem 3D on Damn I’m Good. Nope. Never tried it.

It's actually a joke, any weapon that gibs, shrinks or freezes will permanently remove an enemy from the level, which is to say about 60% of the arsenal. But if you don't have those weapons or the ammo for them then it's just annoying.

I won't do Psychobilly on Redneck Rampage, not only is it the same enemy layout as Killbilly but you can't save the game! Ever!

[DNSKILL5]

13 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

It's actually a joke, any weapon that gibs, shrinks or freezes will permanently remove an enemy from the level, which is to say about 60% of the arsenal. But if you don't have those weapons or the ammo for them then it's just annoying.

I was being sarcastic when I said that lol.

[Lila Feuer]

@DNSKILL5 Very nice!

I enjoy Shadow Warrior on No Pain No Gain but Blood on Extra Crispy is kinda awful lol.

[8088mph]

Haunted Castle for the Arcade.

That experience is fresh in my mind :(

Edited May 10 by 8088mph
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