10 Confusing Video Game Levels We Never Want To Play Again
We don't talk about God of War's Path of Hades level for a REASON. #godofwar #gaming
Transcript
00:00 Video games can be beautiful, exciting and mind-expanding at the best of times.
00:04 They can also be so hard, so infuriating and so broken that they make us want to cry.
00:09 As you probably gathered, this is not a list about the awe-inspiring moments that made us glad to be gamers,
00:15 it's about those other times.
00:17 Specifically, the levels in video games both great and not so great that made us want to tear our hair out
00:22 for being either mechanically confounding, unreasonably difficult or a combination of the two.
00:28 I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 10 confusing video game levels we never want to play again.
00:34 Number 10 - Nightmare Blood Trail - Max Payne
00:38 While checking out a gameplay video of this one on YouTube, I found this top comment which read,
00:43 and let me check, "Easily the worst part of any game I've ever had the displeasure of having to complete."
00:48 And that's just too good of a sentence not to share with you or to include on this list.
00:53 Quite apart from being difficult to complete, these levels are horribly unsettling.
00:57 If we're talking confusing levels, then the maze of long, dark corridors and painful blood tightrope
01:02 that you'll need to navigate in Max's nightmare certainly qualifies.
01:06 If you haven't played this one, basically Max has a nightmare about the night his wife and daughter died,
01:11 and you get to play it! Yay!
01:14 To get through the trickiest part of the level, you'll need to explore a pitch black room,
01:18 attempting to firstly not fall off and subsequently jump between blood trails on the floor
01:23 while listening to thumping music and a baby crying the entire time.
01:28 It doesn't help that this isn't a precision platformer and Max isn't exactly a gymnast.
01:33 Fall off the blood trail and you're booted back to the beginning.
01:36 What's more, this is actually an excellent game. It's just a purely horrible level.
01:40 Whether it was the controls that broke your brain on this one, the terror,
01:44 or your complete inability to figure out where you were supposed to be going,
01:47 I think it's safe to say the vast majority of us never want to play this one again.
01:51 Number 9 - The Water Temple - The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
01:56 I know, we had to do it. I'd argue this is the perfect list for The Water Temple to live on
02:00 because on reflection, it wasn't that hard.
02:04 It was just that most of us played it as kids and probably sucked at games a lot more than we do now.
02:09 What it was, however, is extraordinarily confusing.
02:12 A labyrinth of corridors, hidden channels, rooms, numerous puzzles, and hidden switches,
02:17 this was just too much for a lot of kids to figure out and remains an exercise in frustration for most adults.
02:23 Of course, it doesn't help that I can count on one hand the number of games where travelling through water doesn't suck
02:29 and Ocarina of Time does not make the cut.
02:31 If the navigation wasn't complicated enough, there's also threatening spiky enemies to contend with,
02:36 things that want to kill you in the water where you can only attack with your hookshot,
02:40 and specific locations to find so you can change the water level to achieve your goal,
02:45 which requires an incredible level of outside-the-box thinking.
02:48 I guess we're ultimately better gamers after having gotten through this one,
02:52 but boy does it make me hesitant to start another playthrough.
02:55 Number 8. Rug Ride - Disney's Aladdin
02:58 Since we've covered painful water levels, we may as well give Fire a look in too.
03:02 And if your childhood wasn't marred by the pain of experiencing The Water Temple,
03:06 I bet this one's gonna ring a bell.
03:08 Disney's Aladdin was released in 1993 on the Sega Genesis and SNES,
03:13 to the collective joy of Aladdin and video game fans everywhere.
03:16 Interestingly though, we're only talking about the Genesis version here,
03:20 because the SNES version was a lot easier.
03:23 This one must have seemed like an obvious buy for parents around Christmas time since it came out in November,
03:28 and it's just the collision of a video game and one of Disney's best films.
03:32 Makes sense, right?
03:33 Except for the fact that they decided to make the game really freaking hard.
03:37 One particular level, Rug Ride, had plenty of young players in tears as Aladdin on the magic carpet
03:43 trying to fly away from a very fast, very threatening lava surge in an inhumanely fast auto-scrolling level.
03:50 This one hurt largely because the game is programmed with such a small window of success
03:55 that you had to pull everything off pretty much perfectly, lest Aladdin be toasted to a crisp.
04:00 Genie would give you blink-and-you'll-miss-it instructions of where to go next to avoid bumping into platforms as you go.
04:06 And if you think you've made it, the jerk throws you a question mark at the end,
04:10 so it's just luck as to whether you'll stumble at the last hurdle.
04:13 As a result, a lot of players learned about cheat codes because of this game.
04:17 Given anybody who played this one has probably already poured hours and hours of their life into trying to get through this level,
04:24 I think it's safe to say we don't want to play it again.
04:26 Number 7. The Library. Halo Combat Evolved.
04:30 If there's one thing we can say in favor of the side-scrolling hellscape that is Aladdin's Rug Ride level,
04:35 at least it's straightforward.
04:37 Literally, you're just going straight.
04:39 Sometimes up and down, usually into a rock to your death.
04:42 Not so of Halo's The Library level, where the fan-favorite FPS apparently decided to lose a few fans by featuring
04:49 what is pretty universally acknowledged to be the worst level in the entire franchise.
04:53 The Library is the seventh campaign level in Halo Combat Evolved.
04:57 It requires you to fight your way through four gruelingly long and repetitive flood-riddled levels
05:02 to ultimately reach the Index Chamber.
05:04 Essentially, between how much you'll be getting lost and inevitably dying to the many waves of enemies,
05:09 this is the part of Halo where a lot of players straight-up stopped having fun.
05:13 The environments are boring, convoluted, and way too big,
05:17 the enemies you're pointing your gun at are uninteresting,
05:20 and if you try to run through it, you'll probably die and the whole thing will take you even longer.
05:24 I really hope you like walking down hallways and riding elevators because that's your life now.
05:29 Even the developers themselves admitted that this level runs about half an hour longer than it should.
05:34 Number six, The Path of Hades - God of War.
05:37 It's been said this particular level requires patience and skill.
05:41 If you don't have the latter, I hope you have the former in spades,
05:45 because otherwise, this is gonna get ugly.
05:47 Perhaps the most hated level in the whole God of War series is the Path of Hades.
05:52 If I just unlocked a painful memory here, hit me up in the comments, we'll have some group therapy.
05:56 Pun fully intended, this level can go to hell.
05:59 Kratos is a tough dude, but even he has a real tough time climbing back out of Hades,
06:04 as the path is riddled with infuriating platforming sections
06:08 that you have to pull off with a fixed camera, loads of enemies to defeat,
06:12 traps to evade, and a rotating wheel wall which has claimed many a gamer many a time.
06:17 If the spinning cylindrical walkways don't get you, the blades sticking out of them will,
06:22 and if you're able to get past that, you might get knocked off a floating platform by an enemy anyway.
06:27 Just watching this level play out is anxiety-inducing.
06:31 The level actually starts out chaotic and tricky, and then just keeps upping the ante until it's over.
06:36 The difficulty of the puzzles and the foes you have to contend with on narrow platforms
06:40 is so unbalanced, it deters fans from wanting to replay the full game itself,
06:45 let alone how much they don't want to touch this one infuriating level.
06:49 Number 5, The Black Pit's Battle, Divinity Original Sin 2.
06:53 Divinity Original Sin 2 may be the best RPG of this century, at least in its humble host's opinion,
06:59 but it is a turn-based combat game, meaning that if you screw up in combat,
07:04 you might not realise until you're 40 minutes in, and that's a lot of backtracking.
07:08 To be fair, I think you'll have a worse time here if you're playing with unreliable co-op companions
07:13 instead of controlling the action yourself, but no matter what,
07:16 The Black Pit's encounter is going to give you a hard time.
07:19 It might not be a level in the traditional sense, but it's certainly a section we can firmly identify in the game,
07:25 and then preferably cast out into the fires of hell, so I'm going to allow it.
07:29 Divinity Original Sin 2 is a classic old-school party-based RPG
07:33 that requires careful tuning of your party makeup, equipment, abilities, and tactics.
07:39 Every move needs to be executed to perfection unless you're playing on a low difficulty,
07:43 especially in this particular level, which will almost definitely result in everything being on fire.
07:49 If you didn't spec into Hydrosophist with Losa, you're about to regret that very quickly,
07:54 because there's not much you can do about all the propagating flames.
07:57 To make things even more difficult, you need to keep an NPC alive and defeat a swarm of oil voidlings,
08:04 which spawn out of the pits, and fire voidlings, which heal as they move through the fire,
08:08 which, as we discussed, is almost definitely covering the oil-laden battlefield.
08:13 Also, the NPC does that painful NPC thing where he tries to help out,
08:17 but his attacks are lightning-based, so, you guessed it, everything ends up on fire.
08:22 Number 4 - Dreadnaught's Garbage Dump - Super Mario Galaxy
08:26 Super Mario Galaxy is yet another fantastic game,
08:30 but this particular level will have you putting it down longing to never return.
08:34 Basically, everybody's favorite plumber is asked to distribute bombs around an area
08:38 to take out a couple of dozen piles of garbage,
08:41 which would definitely be doable if you weren't given 30 seconds to do it.
08:45 On top of which, the bombs take about 10 full seconds to explode.
08:49 Yeah, a third of the time you have to complete the entire challenge.
08:53 So if you don't place them perfectly the first time, then you'll have to try again.
08:57 And if you place them perfectly, but not within the last 10 seconds before the timer is up,
09:01 they won't blow up in time for the cranky robot to tell you you're good to go.
09:05 Even though he could just wait a couple more seconds, then the bombs would explode,
09:08 then everything would be clean, we could take our style, go on our merry way...
09:11 Stupid robot.
09:13 If you do manage to get through this one and think you handled it okay,
09:16 you'll have to do it again later as Luigi, and it's even harder. So that's fun.
09:20 Number 3, the prison level, Amnesia The Dark Descent.
09:24 A little unconventional here, but I think enough people stopped playing Amnesia at the prison level
09:29 that it deserves a spot on this list.
09:31 The entire game you've been terrorized by horrible-looking creatures,
09:34 gradually losing and recovering sanity, and managing to make a little progress along the way.
09:39 Comparatively, the prison is so dark, so complicated, and so unsettling,
09:44 that it's become one of the great "I do not want to be playing this level now,
09:47 nor do I ever want to play it again" areas in gaming.
09:51 This isn't because the game is bad, mind you,
09:53 it's just this particular section is relentlessly terrifying,
09:57 while still calling on you to solve its environmental puzzles, and navigate your way through.
10:02 Sure, you could pull out your lantern or light up a torch,
10:04 but at that point you may as well don a sign saying "What's up, gatherers? Lunch is served."
10:09 A part of you will certainly feel like you've come this far and better keep going,
10:12 but the combo of your own fear, monsters roaming around,
10:15 and the difficulty in figuring out where to go next, is easily too much for a lot of players.
10:20 I'm confused, I'm scared, and I don't want to play anymore.
10:23 Number 2 - Pulling down a Star Destroyer - The Force Unleashed
10:27 Pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky with your Force powers
10:30 doesn't seem like something you'd be able to do,
10:33 and given the finicky controls of The Force Unleashed,
10:36 it almost is something a ton of players weren't able to do.
10:39 For those who pulled it off, I'm sure there's very few who are keen to dive back in for another go,
10:44 of balancing their attempt to drag the enormous ship closer,
10:47 while attempting to not be blown up by the most TIE Fighters you've ever seen.
10:51 Being told repeatedly to pull it out of the sky, when you are indeed already trying to pull it out of the sky,
10:56 but also not die in the process, is even more of a pain.
11:00 Lay on top of that confusing UI instructions that seem to suggest you move the thumbsticks
11:05 in a direction that won't actually achieve a Force pull,
11:08 and you've got an A+ recipe for a level we never, ever want to play again.
11:12 Number 1 - The Dam - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
11:16 This one's an oldie but a goodie, and by goodie I mean baddie,
11:19 as in this is one of the universally accepted toughest levels ever made for a video game.
11:24 You've probably heard this one from us before, but there's a good reason as to why.
11:28 Because TMNT is a cut above when it comes to creating levels that are brutally painful disasters,
11:34 which somehow made it through the QA process.
11:37 Particularly awful is the level The Dam, where players are forced to contend with an underwater maze
11:42 complete with vast diminishing air supply, swarms of electric seaweed, and confounding level design.
11:49 Add to that the fact that you're tasked with defusing eight bombs in just 2 minutes and 20 seconds,
11:54 plus there's next to no room for error, and this level has no redeeming qualities.
11:59 After managing the brutal difficulty and maddening mechanics,
12:02 if you did get to the end of this one and managed to see that "OK" pop up saying that you won it,
12:07 there's no way you're looking back.
12:09 That's it for our list, but do let me know down in that comment section
12:12 if you can think of any other confusing video game levels that you never, ever want to play again.
12:17 As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me.
12:22 If you like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm @JessMcDonald,
12:26 but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.