What are some of the hardest games you have played?

Sims, hands down emotionally hard. Having a house and job? And be married with kids and have regular parties and a lots of friends? Doom is way more realistic.

But jokes aside, for me actually everything is difficult. I like to enjoy story on easy mostly. So I did try out Dark Souls - got past first enemy and thought - wow that was a difficult boss. And right after that one there were 3 more of those guys :D Never got past that part. Basically 5 minutes in the game.

Oh, and Vampyr. I really loved the game, but the combat was atrocious IMO. Very unbalanced and felt incomplete. Some enemies way below your level could insta kill you, same as you could insta kill an enemy from way above your level. Combat lock-on made me want to kill myself and once you get more than 2 enemies it was a clusterfuck of events. And I got stuck at a part in game, where I couldn't get back the way I came due to some level bullshit and in front of me I had two enemies which insta killed me. I couldn't even try anything out. So I don't know if it counts as a hard game when the design of it is pulled out of an ass, but it was definitely hard for me. And I truly wanted to finish the game - the atmosphere was great, story was great, gameplay (apart from combat was fun).

I absolutely hate most games that involve QTEs. As far as I can recall maybe I could count on one hands fingers how many games did QTEs right. most of the cases that is the most annoying and difficult part in the game. Especially when you have a 20 minute battle where one QTE insta kills you and you have to start over again. Ryse: Son of Rome was one of them. Another game which was beautiful with great story but with an absolutely disastrous combat system which revolved around 64 QTEs per minute. Never finished it as well.

Maybe I'm biased because I've recently been playing it, but for me Spelunky and Super Hexagon would be on the list

I'm generally kinda bad at games to be frank (I never beat the original Super Mario Bros as a kid), so I'm not quite sure if I should count or not the games where I just gave up after a while... but I'll try to come up with a list.

• Super Hexagon: as far as I'm concerned this game is basically imposible past the second level.
• Dark Souls 1: do I need to explain myself? This game is THE meme when it comes to hard games.
• TrackMania (any): it's all fun and pretty fair, until you reach the higher difficulty cups and then it turns into the most brutally strict racing game known to man.
• SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE: I swear the first game wasn't so intense.
• NO THING: to this day I'm not quite sure of how I managed to finish this one, guess I was really invested in the story.
• VVVVVV: just the final stretch of the game, one of those cases when the difficulty spikes.
• Aaero: I remember having to mess around with the controls' configuration and ending up with a somewhat unorthodox approach just to keep up in later levels.
• Eryi's Action: does being super cryptic with its level design/puzzles count as hard?
• LOVE 2: kuso: it really felt like they cranked up the difficulty when compared to the first one.
• MANOS: The Hands of Fate: the game is janky on purpose, and that makes it brutal, it still manages to be a funny joke regardless.

In the end I just went through my played games on Steam and tried to remember which ones triggered the strongest memories of frustration, not quite happy with the final result but can't be asked to redo it after wasting more than twenty minutes doing this.

(I'll refrain from mentioning multiplayer games like in the old topic, because that's probably not what you're looking for... ^_^' )

Again, it's super subjective and most games have different difficulty settings which change things a lot...
Like, for example, I've played a handful of Bullet Hell games which are perfectly manageable on the easiest difficulty but borderline impossible on the highest difficulties (basically requiring you to know exactly what you need to do in any given moment or else you get overwhelmed instantly). One kinda stands outs in my memory though- Hitogata Happa (regrettably no longer buy-able on Steam because that Publisher sucks). It's the third game in the Gundemonium trilogy and plays very different from the other two (the others have a side-scrolling view while this one goes for the more traditional top-down view). You actually get a shit-ton of lives in this one (up to 112) and you pretty much need all of them because of the game's main gimmick- the "characters" you're controlling are actually remote controlled suicide bomber doll-things (controlled by the actual main character). After they've been active for a while to charge up their bomb meter, you can die to an enemy by touching (and only by touching it, dying to bullets/lasers/whatever doesn't cause a detonation) to cause a massive explosion which deals a lot of damage. While some of the dolls actually have decent firepower via their regular attacks, most of the bosses basically require you to explode on them to be able to deal enough damage before the timer runs out. Yes, that's right, you need to dodge all the bullet hell and touch the thing spewing out bullets everywhere. Oh, and there are no bombs or stuff for prolonged invisibility to make that easier (some dolls have abilities that help with that, but nothing absolute). Also if the timer runs out the boss starts endlessly using a super attack which causes an instant game over no matter how many lives you have if it manages to kill your current active doll. To make all of that worse, the game is pretty merciless with the amount of stuff on screen even on the lowest difficulty.
It was really hard even on Easy Difficulty. It's the only Bullet Hell game I haven't been able to beat on it's equivalent of "Normal" Difficulty. (Not to mention the other two higher difficulties. Here's the game on the highest diffiuclty. This is probably pretty tame by Bullet Hell standards, btw. XD )

Hmmm.. Hitogata Happa kinda consumed the whole comment there. Checks Library to see if I'll remember any other games that brutalized me into giving up. Hmmm, nope... nah... it's hard but I beat it eventually... nope... Ah, there's one- SpaceChem. I gave up on what I presume is the last chapter. The "boss" before that took me about 5-6 hours and I think I was just too exhausted to continue when that chapter suddenly threw completely new stuff at me. I really should get back to it some day. ^_^'

And... that's it... oh, I guess I could give a dishonorable mention to Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, aka "Save Scumming Simulator", aka the Worst Destined Game I've Ever Played. It's a perfect mix of RNG reliance, complete lack of balance (even on lower difficulties) and somehow running at glorious 8 fps despite... well, just look at it... to create the most demoralizing experience which makes you not wanna continue. So, yeah, it's a very hard game on account of being fucking terrible. (And from what I've read and seen, the other Sunrider games are exactly the same. :D )

The lion king for the snes

Playing olympic games on the snes with 7 other people in the house no thumbs left unscathed!

I can't beat Hellfire.

La-Mulana.

Fast thinking - Super Meat Boy

Ninja Gaiden on NES was pretty brutal. When I finally beat it I never wanted to play it again in my whole life.