There are some people who play games for fun or to have a great time with friends, and then there are some who just want their soul crushed to the end and try again till either it’s done or the monitor is summited.
The games which I am talking about are the hardest games of all time, Either intentionally or unintentionally, by bugs or features, if it makes you smash your hand on the desk or monitor, it’s a contestant.
The Battle Royale or Multiplayer games are not counted as they are driven by the forces of the player competing against you.
We are talking about the real deal here, the mechanics, story or the sheer amount of mind power it takes to finish a level or a boss.
We won’t be including games from the arcade era or start of the console era as they deserve their own list.
The rank will be decided by the gameplay or mechanics and sometimes the boss fights which take up a whole afternoon and still might not be finished.
World’s Hardest Games Ever to Play in 2020
#1 The Souls Series – Hardest Action Game Series
This franchise is from ‘FromSoftware’. It is one of the most famous game series of the studio because of the sole reason, the mad and rage quitting action and long intense fights. When it comes to bugs in mechanics, they are just some features that make it more challenging and strenuous.
With bosses having far more health than you, it’s quite frustrating and will make you sit a whole afternoon just to take care of one monster and you will easily get engrossed in the scenery because it’s actually very beautiful.
And god forbid if you want to pause because there is no option here pal, this game doesn’t have pause because real life doesn’t give you one and neither are you given regenerating health or even a minimap.
So with the combination of all this, this flawed masterpiece made the first to the list of Hardest games.
If we talk about the story a bit, it revolves around the player trying to reverse or stop a curse called ‘Darksign’. The player will fight demons in order to collect souls which is a currency for in-game purchase and the harder the enemy to kill the bigger the reward. The online mode is interesting as you can see other player’s last moves by checking the bloodstains and you can also leave messages for other players, now that can be good or bad as you can leave false instruction or advice which may kill them. If you die, you lose all your souls and spawn at the last checkpoint. Later you have to fight the bosses in order to light fires which leads you to the Final end.
Which we won’t discuss because it is a major spoiler.
#2 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – Brutal Game with a Great Story
This is also a game from the same studio that made the soul games but with the increased aggressiveness and stealth attacks, this masterpiece will make you slam your desk and kick your wall and still make you come for more because of the sweet adrenaline rush after the victory.
With gameplay similar to souls franchise, no regenerating health bar and the villains with two health bars, this game will make you learn the mechanics and the game moves because if you don’t then every enemy will hit you with only one blow which is enough to take 90% OF YOUR HEALTH.
Every monster has far more health than you have, and they attack slowly but still hit you because of the mechanics of the game. All these features made Sekiro deserving to be in the last of the hardest games.
If we talk about the storyline, it is based on the late 16th century of Japan which was the Sengoku period.
The plot revolves around the shinobi named Wolf trying to protect the world from the villain who goes by the name Owl. The villain wants to raise an immortal army to conquer the earth. For that, he needs a boy with a dragon heritage because the army can be controlled by a divine heir only. Wolf will fight to protect the boy and help return the divine child to his birthplace in the west.
#3 Cuphead – Beautiful ’30s Styled Cartoon Game
Released in 2017 this run and gun game by studio MDHR is beautiful.
Do not get fooled by those old looking graphics. This game has great problems to solve and with the mechanics in mind, you have to make every jump right and between all those things you still have to keep thinking about the next move.
To see the full power of this game, you have to turn the difficulty to the max and just watch the rage you go thorough after only 20 minutes into it. With weird controls and difficult bosses and enemies, this is a true test of pure skill and timing with perfect reflex and planning.
This is set in a fictional land of Inkwell where two brothers Cuphead and Mugman live. One day they go to a casino and go on a winning streak until they come across the devil himself. They make a deal with the devil that if they win, all the money in the casino will be theirs and if they lost then the souls of two brothers will be in devil’s possession.
But they lost the game. The devil claimed their souls, but the brothers begged for their lives and later, the devil agreed to give them a chance.
They had to get the contracts they signed from the forest where they are hidden. The forest had monsters and they were only given a limited time so it looked like an impossible task.
Now they go to the elder kettle, who gives them the power to shoot fire from their fingers to help them in their quest because the monsters of the devil guarding the contracts will be very powerful. They fight their way through villains to get the contracts, each level is filled with patterns to be recognized in the attacks and the higher the level, the greater the difficulty.
#4 Getting Over IT – Most Frustrating Game
Recently, this game got a lot of fans because it has a long lost flavor of no save point, hard controls, and hair-pulling situations, for example when you are climbing and with just one hard stroke of the Yosemite hammer, you go falling down the pit to the start point.
While playing you start thinking about the maker of the game and the idea behind it.
Well, that’s interesting too as the creator Bennet Foddy went to his childhood roots and remembered the games he used to play, and saw a wonderful thing that made today’s games much easier, ‘SAVEPOINTS’.
With the return of games like Dark Souls and people taking a bug from the ‘hell blade’ game which deletes their entire progress when they die as a ‘challenge’, confirmed the audience for these hard games.
He aimed towards a certain kind of individual through this game, who loves to just sit back and feel the pain and anger.
The creator also gave voice commentary when the player fails miserably and made a mechanism showing quotes about the disappointments and anger control when a lot is lost in the game.
The gameplay consists of a hammer swung by a mouse which helps the player move the guy who is stuck in a pot. The power of the swing and the angle of the hammer can make you jump, walk, climb, and grab the ledges.
#5 Alien: Isolation – Horror Game with a Twist
When you play horror games, the scares are mostly triggered by the script and music.
But when you play the game long enough you will start predicting the patterns and will be ready for the next scare and the whole rush of adrenaline is lost.
Or in some cases, you will find a way to exploit some enemy’s way of fighting or scaring.
Forget all that when you play Alien Isolation as this will make you ‘jump out of your chair’ level of scared. The truly unbelievable AI-based monster of the game called “Xenomorph” is so good, that there is a very great chance that you will play the game a lot of times but each time it will be a bit difficult because of your choices train the monster to hunt you better. It learns from the mistakes and is truly unpredictable as the Xenomorph hears the sounds to find you.
Play as Ripley, the girl stuck in a space station with a limited set of tools and help her escape before the station is blown to pieces because the bloodthirsty alien should not escape from there alive. She eventually will find a way to get rid of the alien, but the spaceship will have a problem, soon she discovers something horrible and from here the spoilers begin.
This 2014 game published by SEGA and developed by Creative Assembly is truly a great horror game that will make you play it again because of the scares and amazing alien Xenomorph’s AI.
#6 Trials HD – 2.5D Puzzle Racing Game
Definitely not expected a side-scrolling bike racing game to be on this list of ‘Hardest Games’ but after playing it you will agree with me.
The game starts with normal difficulty but as the game progresses the game gets rockets attached to its difficulty bar and lets you die in ways you never thought were possible. Combining that with amazing physics and hard tracks, this becomes a great adventure.
The game brings you in sync with your bike, as you will control every movement of it and learn the effect of body movement on the rotation and speed of the bike.
#7 Bloodborne – The Souls of Action RPG Games
With the third game on the list, ‘FromSoftware’ certainly has a rep for building Hardest games and making people love them for going to the roots of gaming.
This works on almost the same formula as the souls, but with a twist as the story is RPG(role-playing game).
We get to choose everything from the face to back story and the game works according to that.
This game truly makes the player play offensively rather than defensively looking for every opportunity to attack. If you turn up the difficulty to the max, then one smash is enough to kill you.
You have to constantly attack the enemy and work with the weak points to strike the combo. There is a catch though, this is a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
Here you play as the traveler who seeks the blood that heals people and upon arrival, you learn that the city has become a valley of the beasts as the people are turning into monsters.
Later in the final stages, he learns the secrets and defeats the monsters. There are three distinct final endings, which will be affected depending upon your choices.
#8 XCOM 2 (2016) – Best Tactical Game
Not much acknowledged but certainly deserving, ‘XCOM’. A game made in 2016 and later expanded by a pack in 2017 is something that was meant to be a fairly easy game. But, in the final stages of the development, the developers decided to make it tougher and the graph of difficulty touched the sky as the lowest level was already hard.
Normally in these games, you don’t have to worry about the money management and base upgrades much as you can randomly upgrade, and still make it to the end but where most saw a problem, the devs of the ‘XCOM’ saw opportunity to make decisions harder as you have to manage the things to pass the next rounds, and that’s with low difficulty.
At the max, you are basically one hit target.
So you have to consider every situation critical and work along with the strategy to make sure that you have the gear for the next level.
As for the gameplay you will be playing as the resistance who wants control over the earth back from aliens. With a base in one of the alien ships, you and the team will fight your way to take control.
In the interview with the rock paper shotgun, the dev talked about how the game was too easy at the end of the production cycle and decided to make it hard.
In it, he even talks about the cinematics mode or story explore mode where the difficulty is low enough to let casuals have their fun.
Let us know in the comments if any games are left out and feel free to tag us in socials and point us at a game you think should be on the list.