Some games like to punish you with difficulty right from the start. Here are favorite examples of challenging first levels. Subscribe for more: ru-vid.com?su...
It got all the way down to number one and I thought to myself, “huh, was expecting Driver on the PS1 to be on the list... guess not” then Falcon pulls the ol’ bonus entry and yup Driver
@@Y0PPS I know for my experience at least, my siblings and cousins were pretty young at the time and didn't know what the slalom meant. I also remember the 360 being really tricky to pull off because of the short space to build up speed for it from wall to wall, especially with the columns in the way.
I never beat the driver 1 tutorial level as a kid so I just drove around in the open world mode or whatever. It wasn't until I was a grown adult, bought the game again at a game store, and watched a RU-vid tutorial, that I actually beat it, only to find out that my particular ps2 didn't accept ps1 memory cards. So I had to do it again on my ps3. What an oddly frustrating yet rewarding experience that was.
Yeah - I remember my boss invited me over to his place for some PS1-gaming (turned out he was hoping I'd beat the Driver 1 tutorial for him) - and it took us all night, lots of beer and a few chunks of gunja to get through the mandatory tutorial at the beginning. Naturally I was expecting Driver 1 to appear on this list.
Imagine not speaking English and having to figure out how to do all the tasks by messing around in the parking lot THEN do them all in the short amount of time. Sometimes I don't even know how I finished some games back then.
Same here Ninja Gaiden deserved some love. NG Black really slapped my face with the 1st level boss. But it made me go through the game many times, and to my surprise, each level of difficulty present new enemies, not just buff their damage or HP.
i popped into this video to say this haha that tutorial was brutal as a little kid. I had my older brother beat that part for me so I could play the missions.
I went to therapy for many years and kept talking about this crazy grocery list of difficult tasks I had to do within a certain amount of time, it was so traumatic I blocked out what it was from as it happened to me at a young age, finally after 5 years of battling this fear and feeling like I finally conquered it I found it, a box in my moms basement of my old video games, I was so excited and nostalgic, I opened up the box like a kid on Christmas morning ready to fire that old system up and replay my childhood, but there it was, staring back at me....driver
The funniest thing about that driver tutorial was that is was probably the most difficult section of the game. Even the final mission took me less tries lmao
Super underrated comment. I was litterally thinking the same thing. Like i remember getting a game from a pawn shop thinking it looked like twisted metal and it was nothing like it. It was litteral bullshit. I never got past the turtorial.
Literally the hardest fucking tutorial I ever tried to play. Never even got close to beating it. I was born in 99 w a 19 year old dad who had beaten all the resident Evil games that had came out at that point (he was a legit gamer) and even he couldn’t help me beat it. We never even got to play the campaign before we got rid of the PS1 and Driver lololol
@@sugarwallstubble7089 Your father playing point and click didn't make him legit at anything. These are two completely different genres and it makes no sense you mentioned that game series/genre other then the fact that that's all he's played. His skills/reflexes/timing (etc) were just as useless as you at the time. Probably now too if either of you can't beat that easy beginning to a classic. You and he have never been a legit gamers. You are legit trash though. All of you...
Eric Chahi's masterpiece "Another World", wow ! I was 8 years old when it came out and this game still holds my best memories of a video game. You guys are astonishing !
I do love when Driver gets mentioned. It truly is puzzling why they made the tutorial of all things, so impossibly hard. I certainly never got passed it.
I eventually beat it as a kid, but it was technically really tough and even moreso, when i was a kid I didn't really know what a "reverse 180" was, and iirc the game didn't even try to explain it so it took a long time of trying the wrong thing
Anyone who says that Driver's "tutorial" is hard never actually played it. If they did they rammed into the wall within seconds, threw the controller, and gave up.
The driver opening test was real fun. Struggled getting through it, bun man did I feel good when I passed it. Would be cool to see more of those in racing games. Even if they were just bonus sections
It was interesting for sure, don't know what context you could do it in, normally. Maybe a GTA like game could start off with a normal driver test like that, but break into a high-speed chase, just as an idea. That said, I really didn't find the opening driving test in Driver to be difficult. The challenge was finding out how to actually trigger the checkmarks, the reverse 180 being the most annoying, to the point where you almost think that you're doing it wrong when you aren't. Well, regardless, it was kinda fun, but it just took a couple minutes to do so I can't say that it was a "struggle". The rest of the game kinda blows, though. I just love unintelligible roads, lack of AI on the traffic, super cool and fair police barricades with a strict time limit. There's fun to be had, but I didn't like the game. I at least finished it, but it's not like I understood anything that happened in the plot.
I thought the game was only super hard in NA regions because the difficulty levels were messed up. Didn't know it was because the complaints lmao that's funny
Sometimes... you just gotta keep your mouth shut. But even though it was a rough ride, I loved DMC3, and pre-title screen cutscene always got me hyped enough to improve. That first boss can go **** himself, though.
@@iveyyewitt1621 Yeah, Cerberus can be pretty difficult, especially considering you don’t have many moves unlocked at the beginning of the game and if you don’t have style switcher, you can’t really combo his heads when they’re up
The From Software series are a given for any game difficulty video... I was glad I saw Gaiden Black here though. That game is so tricky. You'd think you got a hang of the first level after finishing the game on normal, only to begin again on hard and it's another game entirely. New enemies, new mini bosses, even new areas. And it doesn't stop there. Each time you bump the level up you have to get better at playing... Gaiden Black is a classic for me. Sad it's not on PC
FromSoft games really aren't that bad once you break down the science of it, and you always have the option of screwing around until you're absolutely OP and crush everything. Can't say we had the same opportunities with NGB, that game was just a butt-ripper from the start. AMAZING game though, even holding up today nearly 20 years later
@@treybowers154 Gaiden was brutal. I finished it up to Very Hard. Never bested Master Ninja back then. Would gladly play a PC port today. What's happened to Team Ninja though?
I thought Dark Souls was absolutely brutal when I first played it. That is until I realised that going to the graveyard first was a ‘wrong turn’. Because I’d heard the game was hard, I just assumed this was it and just kept dying and retrying. Eventually spotted the route up the hill, and realised my error. It’s honestly not that bad a difficult game/series though for the ‘most part’, if you take your time and use the summons etc. Only boss I never beat in the whole series was dark souls 2 dlc, Lud and Zallen, and that’s because I couldn’t bloody reach them to begin with, and gave up on that treacherous hell hole of a blizzard. Glad it was an extra and not required.
I remember renting Driver from Blockbuster. It took so long for my friend and I to get through the tutorial switching off tries each time that barely after beating it I had to go home and we didn't even get to enjoy the thing. Brutal opening section.
First level in resident evil 5. Surviving the hordes of zombies with limited ammo is brutal, I died so many times. The good thing is it lets you keep whatever ammo you have left when you die so you can load on ammo and have a better chance of surviving the next run at it.
Hahahaha! Driver. I remember that Tutorial, it took me a few total attempts to figure out how to do each maneuver, but then I mapped out how to get through by combining one task leading directly into another and got it in two, at most.
Thought that was gonna be on this list just because it was such a big deal at the time... Guess they lowered the bar cuz now most game journalist don't even play the game anymore.
I believe, although not mentioned in the video, the original Witcher 2 had the castle siege as the first mission, however the enhanced edition added an arena as the tutorial, to teach you all the combat mechanics. So perhaps they decided to call them "other games".
Well in the enhanced version, they add the tutorial making the seize no longer the first/opening level. Also the seize wasn't that hard, you can easily get through it just hack and slashing. But if you learn to parry omg its so easy
Honorable Mention to Sonic 2 on the Sega Game Gear. I seriously thought I had a bad copy of the game as the Underground Zone was not only very difficult on its own for an opening level, but its boss was super hard! That and the fact that Green Hill Zone doesn't pop up until halfway through the game, seriously had me confused as a kid...
I actually doubt that. I mean we have this feeling that "everybody" played something but gaming have only become way more common than it used to be so it's not like super Mario bros sold alot more and even though it existed for way longer to allow more playthroughs it's not like people realisticly spend alot more time in super Mario bros than these modern games before you've had your fill.
I dropped Nier Automata after dying in the tutorial lvl and seeing I had to restart. Only gave it another chance a year later in 2020 when I was bored asf. It is now the greatest game, I have ever played this generation.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who struggled with Witcher 2 intro. I died like 15 times and thought I was just never going to be good at the game, it was so frustrating 🤣
DS1’s first level/prologue is iconic. So many people couldn’t get past the boss and is in my opinion one of the largest factors that jumpstarted its reputation.
Absolutely agree. The "you died" achievement or trophy set the scene. They were daring you to persevere, learn boss patterns and beat them. Now a lot of games try to recreate that to be SoulsLike, but the balance that fromsoft achieved was brilliant and almost inimical
@@Gothic7876 relative to the rest, it is. But for many people it was their first "DS is hard" experience they've had and it's not like there's much else to do in that area. Not to mention that it's a prologue/introductory area... so a lot of people quit right there.
That nier automata is no joke. I recently started playing it and that 1st level made me question my skills as a gamer. Luckily you can change difficulty on the fly and just switch it back to normal after the tutorial stage
i managed to beat it on the second try without changing the difficulty BUT.... i definitely had a long moment where i questioned my skills as a gamer 😂🤷♂️
I played it on PC and thought it was impossible to continue playing with M&K so I uninstalled it. Now that I got a PS5 I kinda want to get back to playing it before its sequel comes.
@@luqmannurhakim822 Sure thing. You can't even make decent kb binds because the game just don't allow it. I've suffered the hell out of it until decided to play with controller. Amazing game but such a lame port for PC.
Beating the first level of nier took me 2 hours and 1 minute beat finally which seemed perfectly designed to run out the maximum get a game returned on steam time limit for being a terrible unfun game. Just thinking about that crappy game makes me angry still. Unstalled it wont go back screw'em.
After I died for the second time on Nier Automata and realizing “I didn’t just miss the save point. None exist up till this point.” I took about a month long break from the game. Glad I got back on though. It was definitely worth playing and beating.
Same, I started it on Hard. After about 40 minutes without a save and 10 attempts, loading wasnt fast either. I put it down. I know I love souls games so I can powerthrough difficult spots but not knowing if I'd even enjoy Nier I passed on it.
So glad that you mentioned driver lol, it took me YEARS to get passed the first level Granted I was pretty young the first few times I tried, so eventually I figured it out; but it's a close race against the clock even for the most experienced players
didn't enjoy it because it stopped playing like the first level and just became a character jrpg. really liked the hectic switching between schmup, twinstick bullethell to rpg and back
@@tomalphonso Man, y’all are making me want to reinstall that bad boy. I still have yet to do all the joke endings and stuff to get the trophy. I forgot that the music was cool. I just have so many great games in my backlog to get to though, and if I pause playing Sekiro right now, I’ll totally forget how to play upon coming back lol.
@@mkv2718 dude right?! those little oni are all over. The actual boss in the ship IS WAY HARDER I actually just finally beat him last weekend after months of trying.. lmao I hate souls like games but Nioh I just want to beat so bad
driver intro was insane. i remember having to go into the manual for controls and it took at least 30min of attempts to get buy it and for some reason i remember having to do it multiple times to the point i actually had it down pat. dont ever remember not having a mem card which is why its seems odd looking back. must have like torturing myself
Had to watch part 1, b4 I go to part 2 of this series. I dunno how I beat the tutorial on Driver 1, but damn I can not play hard games like back then! 😅
Beating Ninja Gaiden Black on master ninja difficulty is both the most frustrating and the most rewarding thing I ever did in any videogame 😬 And yes, once you realize that you die from literally a couple of hits in the starting level, you know you are in for a good ride 😅
I'm glad Ninja Gaiden made the list. I bought the game as a naïve 12 year old, thinking Ninjas are cool, and ended up extremely frustrated. Had to sweet talk my mom for a solid month before I convinced her to take me to the store and get it, only to get my ass handed to me for two straight hours and never played it again after that.
Oh yes Driver! I remember finding this game while going through my dad's stuff when I was like 8 or 9... Spent the entire christmas holiday screaming at the tutorial before giving up and just doing the free drive stuff. Good times, the intro cinematic was kickass.
totally waited for the Driver tutorial and wasn't disappointed, even if it's only a "honorable mention" here. completely caught me of guard back then. little 12 year old me wasn't gamer enough back than to expect a level as hard as that tutorial. it took days to beat it aswell as training/help from friends and my dad. it was so satisfying though.
The first game to totally troll you into thinking you're done with the game when you beat the last boss as it pulls a toad-like message into your face telling you to basically do the WHOLE game a second time during which dying make you restart the FIRST playthrough.
When you got to number one I couldnt believe you didnt mention Driver. Then you gave me a big laugh. Your hate for Driver is like your thing at this point :)
OMG YES I was going to mention in the comments the game you mentioned at the end. been a billion years since I played it but that opening tutorial that you MUST complete to move on is STILL burnt into my brain as traumatic torture! XD
Bloodborne has the hardest first level in gaming for one reason alone. You gotta get through the whole of yarnham and ALL of those mobs who can one shot you just to reach the boss. and you NEED to reach the boss in order to gain the ability to actually start using souls to level
When I saw the video title, I thought to myself, 'I bet this guy hasn't played "Out of this world'" I stand corrected. Great inclusion on this list. I rented that game as a kid and was so frustrated. But really awesome and unique art. I recommend it now.
Driver was amongst a few games that my friend who owned a playstation (I was team n64) needed help with. I had to go over to his house and help him beat this tutorial. Thanks for the nostalgia. The other one I remember was the boss of syphonfilter. They were playing it all week and couldn't beat the boss. I went over there, never played the game, beat it on the first try. They hated me but needed me haha.
Nioh had me whispering "Be Gentle Sempai" at every corner in isle of demons. And the Boss had me shouting in rage at the Bullshit, tiny ass space i had to fight him in. The mansion was far easier to deal with as you can lure him outside through one of three doors into the courtyard space. Dealing with the humans there was harder than the yokai, as it is the biggest group of enemies you fight especially if you don't get a bow first to snipe one or two before the rest aggro.
Idk I never had an issue with that boss. As a matter of fact I didnt even know it was a boss, beat him my first time through, died a couple of times to the boss on the ship but even then after like 3-4 tries and some water talismans I got it.
Y'know, I simply bounced of Nioh badly only a few attempts into the first post-tutorial stage, and I could never quite put my finger on exactly why, although I think not liking the far-too-expansive skill trees and variety of equipment that I had no idea how to judge properly factored into it- I simply had no idea what I should be doing to develop my character properly, which turned me off. But the fact that it was just bloody _hard_ might have played into it as well, so it's reassuring to know that it's not just me. I mean, I knew what I was getting into, beaten Dark Souls 1 & 2, and it's not even like I threw in the towel after one too many deaths (in fact, I'd just unlocked the first major shortcut back to the start, making further progression much easier), but I just returned to the checkpoint, put the game down, never picked it up again, and eventually just uninstalled it to get that 70GB of HD space back for use on other games. Also, I wasn't aware that DMC3 _only_ swapped the Japanese normal difficulty for the hard difficulty in the _American_ version of the game. I assumed that applied to _all_ Western releases of the game, and felt that that explained why I never got past Agni and Rudra, but apparently not. So I guess I can feel a bit less smug about at least making it that far on "hard", since it wasn't- but they're still a bitch of a boss pair anyway, even on normal.
thats's what i did also in nioh when i tried it a couple of years back but then i tried nioh 2 that came free with ps plus last month and when i learned the mechanics and the complex combat i had an absolute blast . I couldn't stop playin and i might say that I enjoyed it more than the souls games which im a hardcore fun. I platinumed nioh 2 the other day and now im off to nioh. Such a fun gameplay. You should give it a try in my opinion P.S High stance spear with spear flourish and spearfall makes this game way easy
I've clocked like 40 hours in Nioh so far as my first Souls-like game and guess how far I've reached... Yup. Still stuck in the first area trying to defeat the Goddamn final boss. He waaayyyy too tough for 1st area.
He wasn’t lying about if you come to blood borne from other souls games playing it like them your gonna get smashed I came after beating 1-3 and the dlcs of them and just got fuckeddd on the first level for a good 1-2 hours
You're definitely not alone, I played bloodborne without realizing how hard it really is until I met the cleric beast, probably spent a good week trying to get past that, but then met the father fella and just ended up deleting the game, just to come back to it years later
BB was my first "from" game and I couldn't get through the town and beat the boss for a week. Good people at Gamestop gave me tips and encouraged me to keep at it and it became my first favorite video game ever. I now compare all games to From Software games. 😆
Yeah now ppl complain if a game is hard they want a Handout, im a sort of guy that plays mostly on the hardest difficulty available. I like that. My first Dishonored 1 playthrough Was almost all Gamerscore/Trophys in one run with no Upgrades etc. Man my childhood was fun :D
True, but is that an opening "level", or just an opening "scene"? 🤔 I was wondering the same thing about RE4. Cuz the game starts, u dispatch about 5 enemies quickly, thinking you're hot stuff. Then head into the village, and it's a "YOU DIED" screen appearing with the quickness. lol And now that I think about it, RE5 mite be worse, cuz u face ONE enemy before things go right to hell.
Lol Driver. I forgot that game even had a story because I never got past the tutorial as a kid. I was just like "what's this impossible mini game thing in my fun driving simulator?"
I actually completed drivers garage when I was seven. GOD KNOWS HOW. I remember asking my stepdad for help understanding the moves, but even once you knew how to do them all, ya still had to do them ALL in 60 seconds.
I’ve never been able to get past the 1st level of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. And after trying for 2-3 hours and giving up, you have to start over from the very beginning if you want to give it another shot :(
Never forget Driver. That was one of the most infuriating tutorials at the time. You didn't even need to use ever again some of the tricks required to pass the test. Still, it was a heck of a game... if you manage to do the tutorial :P
That driver game is nostalgic af. I was like 5 at the time playing it on my dinosaur pc and I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that tutorial was impossible
That was me playing the first 3 devil may cry games recently Forgot that old games were trying to make you feel the suffering of your character development Edit: oh shit just saw dmc 3 was here lol
It's funny having played Driver 1 recently and realizing how wrong everyone seems to be on the "tutorial" level. I hate to call it a tutorial, because I don't really know what it teaches you other than how bad the controls feel. Regardless, it's not that hard. And no, I don't mean to "git gud", I mean spend more than one singular attempt on it. Don't drive right into the wall and go "this may very well be the hardest video game level in all of gaming". It is funny how people who say that the tutorial is that hard probably have never played it, and if they have they played for 2 seconds, wiped their brow and went, "WHEW THAT'S ENOUGH HARDCORE GAMING FOR TODAY". I mean, actually figuring out how to mark off the moves on the list might be the real challenge. Because you'll attempt what you think a "reverse 180" is, but nothing happens. You are doing it right, trust me, it's just annoyingly precise for whatever reason. And sure, the next level, or few, are pretty easy, but play a couple more and tell me that it compares to the tutorial. I think that the game kinda sucks, to be honest, but not because of the tutorial. How about this, if you fail once on something don't just throw the controller down and give up. I've died in a Kirby level before (I know, right?), but I wouldn't put that on a list like this. Spend like, a single minute on it all you'll get it. I'm sure there are kids who never got passed the tutorial (couldn't be because they were kids, surely), but to be fair, they would not have gotten far at all.
It's not the first but, the Master Sword Trials in Breath of The Wild are BRUTAL. However after finishing them I have yet to ever experience the level of accomplishment that I got from completing them.
I think what makes Bloodborne’s first level so challenging is that both bosses(despite one being optional) are 100% different from one another. One is the “git gud at parrying lol” type who strikes fast and hard, and the other is the “lol can’t parry me” type, which makes the player learn two different styles of gameplay in the first level of the game.
My friend recommended Bloodborne when I was sick with the ‘rona. I had no idea what a Souls game was like, nor did I really play play video games. I spent hours getting my ass kicked around Yharnam.
I really appreciate a difficult tutorial because by the end I do feel more prepared for the rest of the game because I was forced to learn. Not just taught.
There is a From Software game on PS1, Kings Field 2 (3 in Japan), that actually does give you pretty easy enemies to deal with at the start. Their attacks are slow, they can be stunned, easy to figure out the combat, so it starts out pretty easy. However, if you wander into ANY other area, that changes. Namely the skeletons that will suddenly one-shot you, can't be stunned, and have awkward attack patterns. Another game with a brutal opening is Die by the Sword.
That damn checklist at the beginning of Driver, one of the most frustrating things ever. Literally spent hours with like 4 or 5 of us trying to do it. To this day, I dont think any of my friends ever did it.
That's how it goes when you're a kid. I remember having a ton of trouble beating Wizpig in Diddy Kong Racing, but when I grew up I realized that it was because I was using Pipsy... Whoops. Anyways, the Driver 1 checklist, once you know how to spin in a circle, is not that difficult. Then again, if you hammer the gas and ram into the wall I guess it would make the game harder.
same. i tried the demo for a dark souls game years ago and couldn't even beat a grunt enemy. i have motor apraxia too and trouble with timing so despite what some people think not all of us are equipped to handle that stuff
Please continue. If it's dark souls 3,learn how to parry or something, but I have 2 useful tips: -getting around the enemy is important, especially for the final boss. You lock the enemy and then walk around them attacking when they finish theyr attacks, but gundyr had a back kick? I don't remember anymore -if you roll into the enemy's attack you will dodge. That's it. You can go to watch a tutorial for the boss, but from software does amazing games, and there are harder bosses. Btw if your class is a mage or something similar change it to knight, it's better
@@Kingkodiakbear i feel like this is another situation where certain players don't understand the limits of other players, and that's what i observe happens quite a lot with games like Dark Souls and Sekiro and those types of games, where some people think because they can do it, anyone can, when i'm not sure that's the case
Why would you do that? You'll play like two levels and give up because the tutorial is one of the easiest levels in the game and I'm not joking. Then again, the tutorial isn't that difficult anyways, but a lot of the game actually is frustrating.
