Action games can be an adrenaline-pumping experience, but that’s not necessarily the case for these games. Broken controllers, angry screams, and frustrating groans are a familiar scene for these titles, leaving us wondering what the developers were even trying to achieve.
At the end of the day, playing games should relieve stress, so what’s the point if it does nothing but give players a constant headache? From challenging final bosses to gameplay loops that demand mastery right out the gate, here are some of the hardest action games ever made.
10 Takeshi’s Challenge
Takeshi no Chōsenjō, translated as The Takeshi Challenge (not to be confused with the infamous Takeshi’s Castle TV show) is a 1986 game for Nintendo 8-bit systems. It received a nomination for the 2007 Retro Game Award at the Tokyo Game Show.
Although superficially similar to Super Mario Bros., Takeshi’s Challenge is a brutally hard platformer where seemingly everything is designed to antagonize the player. Coupled with poor aiming controls & obtuse level design, and Takeshi’s Challenge is one of the hardest (& earliest) action games ever made.
9 God Hand
Since its release, God Hand has become a cult-classic among PlayStation 2 fans. It’s a fun beat-’em-up, but it’s also unbelievably hard according to the leading developer. As reported by Wired, Atsushi Iba of Clover Studio said that the game was marketed towards ‘hardcore gamers.’ God Hand has been praised for taking combat to a whole new level by introducing the ‘God Roulette’ mode where players can choose skills to defeat their enemies.
8 Days Gone
Dealing with hordes of zombies and infected creatures is a stressful job, but imagine doing so in an open-world game that requires you to always travel from one place to the other while your motorbike is perpetually short of fuel.
That’s Day’s Gone in a nutshell. You’re either out of fuel or shot by an unseen sniper before reaching your destination, and before you know it, a horde of zombies are waiting to attack you.
7 Outlast 2
Outlast 2 is not the typical action-horror game where players can shoot their way through herds of monstrous creatures. In Outlast 2, you’re only a small-time video journalist with a camcorder trying to connect the dots of a mysterious, delirious cult– the Testament of the New Ezekiel.
In the world of Outlast, you can not fight or shoot. You can only hide, run, or die. With a shortage of supplies and unforgiving enemies, even the easiest difficulty setting can bring a lot of stress.
6 Dark Souls
The 2011 multimillion-selling video game Dark Souls is not the game to play if you’re just a casual fan who just ‘wants some action.’ In fact, it’s highly frustrating to beat and takes a reasonable amount of time, dedication, and patience to master.
Dark Souls is a complex action RPG which unforgiving enemy design, elaborate levels, and daunting bosses. The game itself is marketed as brutal & perplexing to finish, but not to the point of unfairness.
5 Max Payne
Max Payne is the underdog of Rockstar Games, but fans will remember it for its monstrously hard difficulty curve. Contrary to current games that mostly appeal to newcomers who aren’t up for the too much challenge, Max Payne‘s ‘easy’ mode is far from easy. The physics accompanied by the dark, grimy storytelling, & atmosphere can be rewarding to some extent but it’s frustrating more often than not. Some levels are so hard that they take more than four to five attempts to finish.
4 Silent Hill 3
Puzzles and riddles are any Silent Hill fan’s worst nightmare. Just look at how Silent Hill 3 required players to know Shakespearean plays & sonnets to complete the hardest difficulty.
On top of that, Silent Hill 3‘s gameplay is cumbersome on a whole. Beyond the fixed camera, Heather’s not exactly designed to fight back and enemy encounters will quickly overwhelm the player if they don’t know how to escape or where to go.
3 Bloodborne
The term ‘rage quit’ exists for a reason. Bloodborne is so challenging that even Dark Souls‘ signature summoning system doesn’t make getting through the title’s onslaught of bosses any easier– especially the Chalice Dungeons and New Game PLus.
If you’re an arachnophobic, be prepared to get disgusted by one of the game’s most infuriating final boss, Rom, the Vacuous Spider. It takes players several trial-and-error attempts before understanding its pattern.
2 Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening
Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening was a return to form for the franchise. Fans of the series hail this title as Devil May Cry‘s most challenging to date, which isn’t entirely baseless. As the difficulty increases, the enemies and final bosses get more stringent, and the players get weaker. On top of that, good luck trying to win the game on ‘Heaven or Hell’ mode. Yes, you might be able to finish an enemy off with one hit, but they can do the same to Dante.
1 Sekiro
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the pinnacle of them all. It’s brutally unforgiving, even for hard-time gamers who spend more than 5 hours a day in front of their consoles. There’s only one difficulty setting for the game.
At the end of the day, Sekiro should never be your game of choice if you’re a casual action gamer who plays for the fun of it. It’s enraging, perplexing, bewildering, and designed only for a player with over-the-top skills.
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