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Toughest intro level you’ve ever beaten?

Lightning Count

Lightning Count

Member
Jan 27, 2019
16,083
Fuck off
Time for some ragequit inducing opening missions.

I'll get us started with the greatest of them, one of of the toughest and most memorable, the Driver carpark tutorial mission, you have to do a specific set of driving skills in short order to prove yourself, all in a super tight car park against the clock and if you crash too many times you fail. It took me many many tries to beat this mission back in the day and when I did I was so damn proud.

Here is the list of things you had to do, it sounds easy but it is brutally ragequit inducing difficult.

Burnout
Handbrake
Slalom
180
360
Reverse 180
Speed
Brake test
Lap

Of course no mention of this iconic level would be complete without listening to the iconic soundtrack from the scene.

 
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TheMoon

TheMoon

|OT|
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,781
Video Games
Lightning Count said:
Time for some ragequit inducing opening missions.

I'll get us started with the greatest of them, one of of the toughest and most memorable, the Driver carpark tutorial mission, you have to do a specific set og driving skills in short order to prove yourself, all in a super tight car park against the clock and if you crash too many times you fail. It took me many many tries to beat this mission back in the day and when I did I was so damn proud.

Here is the list of things you had to do, it sounds easily but it is brutally ragequit inducing difficult.

Burnout
Handbrake
Slalom
180
360
Reverse 180
Speed
Brake test
Lap

Of course no mention of this iconic level would be complete without listening to Ivan if soundtrack from the scene.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

don't think I ever got past this ...

was there cheats? probably, but I fo sure never beat the driving test.
 
headfallsoff

headfallsoff

Member
Mar 16, 2018
684
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djplaeskool

djplaeskool

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,824
Going into Hard Corp Uprising not knowing how intense it would be out of the gate (especially the first boss sequence) was...something else.
 
MegaSackman

MegaSackman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,808
Argentina
That Driver tutorial lol, what a great game.

Couldn't beat Nier Automata on hard, had to drop difficulty because I wasn't a fan of redoing the entire level everytime I died.

Chakan, couldn't beat a single level (didn't try hard enough tho)
 
Lukar

Lukar

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,513
It took me several tries to get through the first level of Super Star Wars.
 
McNum

McNum

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,234
Denmark
Again, I must point to Metal Gear Rising...

The intro an tutorial of MGR has two purposes, you see. On Easy, Normal, and Hard, it exists to let you feel awesome and to teach you how to play. On Very Hard it changes the enemy layout to feature lategame enemies, but it's okay. You can still take a couple of hits, so no need to be perfect.

On Revengenance, the hardest difficulty, the tutorial serves a much different purpose. It's there to teach you humility.

One hit from anything and you're dead. You have none of your upgrades. And the first encounter is three normal grunts and a Rocket Gecko. If you fight the grunts, you get hit by a rocket and die. If you fight the Gecko, you have none of the moves that make Gecko fights easy. The only way I found that worked, is to lure all four enemies together, so the Gecko can be hit with a counter meant for one of the grunts, which will one-shot it.

Then you dash past a whole lot of NOPE level enemies and finally fight good old RULES OF NATURE Metal Gear Ray. If you get hit by anything except the guns, you die. You are nearly guarenteed to get the No Damage bonus against it, because avoiding the guns is easy, and you lose and start over if you fail to dodge or parry anything else. Also fun, you now how you can chop up parts of it to do a chunk of damage? ...yeah, there aren't enough QTEs to kill it here. (The trick is triggering the QTE and NOT cutting up what you're hovering at, it will still take damage and the QTE will be available again.)

In Metal Gear Rising, the hardest part of the game, bar none, is the tutorial on Revengeance. Runner up is the boss of chapter 2 on the same difficulty.
 
Dark Knight

Dark Knight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,393
Dark Souls 3. If you're new to DS or even just rusty then Iudex Gundyr will wreck you.
 
Cerulean_skylark

Cerulean_skylark

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account.
Banned
Oct 31, 2017
6,408
The first level in Doom 2016 on nightmare is super hard compared to the rest of the game since you have almost no health/ammo or weapons and Imps are way good at 1 shotting you from range.
 
Wealthydave3

Wealthydave3

Banned
Aug 1, 2019
138
Catherine Full Body. I had not played a puzzle-esque game in a minute and the 1st level being so difficult did not help either. It almost made me reconsider my skills.
Catherine-Full-Body-2.jpg
 
QuixoticNeutral

QuixoticNeutral

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,644
Well, technically... the Impossible Lair in Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair.

(Not that I've done it in the form that it appears at the start, with no buffer to absorb any hits, as opposed to the 48-hit shield you build up as you play the game. Not yet, at least.)

Viewtiful Joe's opening remains the most memorable for me in any game, difficulty-wise. It's probably not that hard in isolation or in retrospect. But when you first learn the game, boy, does it ever force you to earn that first checkpoint. It's a tremendous feeling when the helicopter miniboss that destroys you repeatedly that early, before you even get a chance to save, appears in greater numbers later in the game and goes down easily now that you've figured out the patterns and understood your own moves. This isn't even the full first chapter we're talking about—just the first segment.
 
Snagret

Snagret

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,837
Dark Knight said:
Dark Souls 3. If you're new to DS or even just rusty then Iudex Gundyr will wreck you.
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I was gonna say this. It took just as many tries for me to take this dude down as some of the later game bosses. Couldn't believe when I first died to him and it wasn't some sort of "you need to die to the first boss to keep going" sorta deal.

To this day I still think it's the most bizarre difficulty spike in the souls games. I'm not really sure what the point is in making the player defeat such a tough boss in what is probably the first 15 minutes of the game for them, especially when the game eases off the gas and continues at a fairly normal difficulty-escalation pace and doesn't challenge you nearly as much as that first boss for a good couple hours. Really odd choice imo.
 
OP
OP
Lightning Count

Lightning Count

Member
Jan 27, 2019
16,083
Fuck off
Snagret said:
I was gonna say this. It took just as many tries for me to take this dude down as some of the later game bosses. Couldn't believe when I first died to him and it wasn't some sort of "you need to die to the first boss to keep going" sorta deal.

To this day I still think it's the most bizarre difficulty spike in the souls games. I'm not really sure what the point is in making the player defeat such a tough boss in what is probably the first 15 minutes of the game for them, especially when the game eases off the gas and continues at a fairly normal difficulty-escalation pace and doesn't challenge you nearly as much as that first boss for a good couple hours. Really odd choice imo.
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To be fair every Souls game has that throw you in the deep end level of difficulty.
 
Snagret

Snagret

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,837
Lightning Count said:
To be fair every Souls game has that throw you in the deep end level of difficulty.
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Usually not that early on though. Bloodborne has one of the hardest first bosses in the series but you have several hours of getting comfortable with the combat and getting new equipment/items before you face him. DS3 has you facing off against slow janky dudes in robes that mostly just stand there and then a few minutes later you're fighting a boss that hits like a truck, has a huge attack range that's almost double yours, and most of his moves have very little windup.
 

ISOM

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
2,684
Snagret said:
Usually not that early on though. Bloodborne has one of the hardest first bosses in the series but you have several hours of getting comfortable with the combat and getting new equipment/items before you face him. DS3 has you facing off against slow janky dudes in robes that mostly just stand there and then a few minutes later you're fighting a boss that hits like a truck, has a huge attack range that's almost double yours, and most of his moves have very little windup.
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The first DS3 boss is ludex gundyr who is really hard.
 
Corleth the Fey

Corleth the Fey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,815
Southend on Sea, UK
Ha. I saw the thread title and came straight in to post Driver. OP and many others had me covered.

I must have done it back in the day as I played the rest of the game. Well up to the final level. You thought the tutorial was hard.

I fired this up on a emulator not so long ago. I was looking forward to playing it, but yep that bloody tutorial drove me away again pretty sharpish.
 
Shambles

Shambles

Member
Oct 25, 2017
139
I guess it's really the third level, but they're still introducing you to the game's concepts, but Cerberus in DMC3 beat me down hard.
 
KDR_11k

KDR_11k

Banned
Nov 10, 2017
5,235
P.N.03's first level is the longest level in the game and the only one with a long dead-end path. After you beat it you can grind for upgrades and extra lives and such but not before then. Gotta get your head around the game's idiosyncratic design in the longest level with nothing to fall back on.

headfallsoff said:
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I assume Sigma makes that guy easier or something because I managed to get through him despite being button-mash-tier terrible at melee games. I think I gave up somewhere in level 2 though. Was it when three horsemen attack you or did I only see that bit in a video? Either way it felt like bullshit and like the camera worked against you. Not quite DMC3 levels of against you but I was unable to judge distances in the fight.
 
hannuraina

hannuraina

Prophet of Truth
Member
Jan 7, 2018
460
nier automata. i know you can drop difficulty but rolling into that not knowing sucks ass after 45-50 minutes of gameplay.
 
Z-Beat

Z-Beat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
31,920
Making it to the Hunter's Dream the first time in Bloodborne without dying to get there

Nier Automata when I didn't understand exactly HOW hard Hard Mode was
 
eso76

eso76

Prophet of Truth
Member
Dec 8, 2017
8,163
Immediately thought of Driver's 'driving license".
Ninja Gaiden's first boss that was mentioned in one of the first few posts also qualifies.
 
softtack

softtack

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,650
Getting passed the first few corridors in The Dark Spire. Fuck, that game was brutal on a different scale.
 
Ryo

Ryo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,523
Stuntman on PS2, Toothless in Wapping was borderline impossible to me as a kid.
 
Poimandres

Poimandres

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,919
Ryo said:
Stuntman on PS2, Toothless in Wapping was borderline impossible to me as a kid.
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Same developers as Driver. Guess they had a hard on for stiff challenges!

Like others have noted, the last level of Driver was much harder than the tutorial. Never managed to finish it. Totally ridiculous challenge.
 
Quint75

Quint75

Member
Mar 6, 2019
1,049
Demon's Souls. My goodness. It was the first Souls game obviously and I had never seen anything like it. I played that first area countless times just trying to get to the first boss. Still my favorite Souls game.

Another has to be Bloodborne. Hell, whenever I go back and start over it still gives me a rough time. Just so many enemies and a couple of big baddies, plus it takes forever to get the the first boss.
 
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