10 Confusing Video Game Levels We Never Want To Play Again
We don't talk about God of War's Path of Hades level for a REASON. #godofwar #gaming
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00:00 video games can be beautiful, exciting,
00:02 and mind-expanding at the best of times.
00:04 They can also be so hard, so infuriating,
00:07 and so broken that they make us wanna cry.
00:09 As you probably gathered,
00:11 this is not a list about the awe-inspiring moments
00:13 that made us glad to be gamers.
00:15 It's about those other times,
00:17 specifically the levels in video games,
00:18 both great and not so great,
00:20 that made us wanna tear our hair out
00:22 for being either mechanically confounding,
00:24 unreasonably difficult, or a combination of the two.
00:28 I'm Jess from WhatCulture, and here are
00:30 10 confusing video game levels we never want to play again.
00:34 Number 10, Nightmare Blood Trail, Max Payne.
00:38 While checking out a gameplay video of this one on YouTube,
00:40 I found this top comment, which read, and let me check,
00:43 "Easily the worst part of any game
00:45 "I've ever had the displeasure of having to complete."
00:48 And that's just too good of a sentence
00:50 not to share with you or to include on this list.
00:52 Quite apart from being difficult to complete,
00:54 these levels are horribly unsettling.
00:57 If we're talking confusing levels,
00:59 then the maze of long, dark corridors
01:01 and painful blood tightrope that you'll need to navigate
01:03 in Max's Nightmare certainly qualifies.
01:06 If you haven't played this one,
01:07 basically Max has a nightmare
01:09 about the night his wife and daughter died,
01:11 and you get to play it, yay!
01:14 To get through the trickiest part of the level,
01:15 you'll need to explore a pitch black room,
01:18 attempting to firstly not fall off
01:20 and subsequently jump between blood trails on the floor
01:23 while listening to thumping music and a baby crying
01:26 the entire time.
01:28 It doesn't help that this isn't a precision platformer
01:30 and Max isn't exactly a gymnast.
01:33 Fall off the blood trail
01:34 and you're booted back to the beginning.
01:36 What's more, this is actually an excellent game.
01:38 It's just a purely horrible level.
01:40 Whether it was the controls
01:41 that broke your brain on this one,
01:43 the terror, or your complete inability
01:45 to figure out where you were supposed to be going,
01:47 I think it's safe to say the vast majority of us
01:49 never wanna play this one again.
01:51 Number nine, The Water Temple,
01:53 the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
01:56 I know, we had to do it.
01:57 I'd argue this is the perfect list
01:59 for The Water Temple to live on
02:00 because on reflection, it wasn't that hard.
02:03 It was just that most of us played it as kids
02:05 and probably sucked at games a lot more than we do now.
02:08 What it was, however, is extraordinarily confusing.
02:12 A labyrinth of corridors, hidden channels,
02:14 rooms, numerous puzzles, and hidden switches.
02:17 This was just too much for a lot of kids to figure out
02:20 and remains an exercise in frustration for most adults.
02:23 Of course, it doesn't help that I can count on one hand
02:25 the number of games where traveling through water
02:28 doesn't suck and Ocarina of Time does not make the cut.
02:31 If the navigation wasn't complicated enough,
02:33 there's also threatening spiky enemies to contend with,
02:36 things that wanna kill you in the water,
02:38 where you can only attack with your hookshot,
02:40 and specific locations to find
02:42 so you can change the water level to achieve your goal,
02:45 which requires an incredible level
02:46 of outside-the-box thinking.
02:48 I guess we're ultimately better gamers
02:50 after having gotten through this one,
02:51 but boy, does it make me hesitant
02:53 to start another playthrough.
02:55 Number eight, Rug Ride, Disney's Aladdin.
02:58 Since we've covered painful water levels,
03:00 we may as well give fire a look in too,
03:02 and if your childhood wasn't marred
03:04 by the pain of experiencing the water temple,
03:06 I bet this one's gonna ring a bell.
03:08 Disney's Aladdin was released in 1993
03:10 on the Sega Genesis and SNES,
03:13 to the collective joy of Aladdin
03:14 and video game fans everywhere.
03:16 Interestingly though, we're only talking
03:18 about the Genesis version here
03:20 because the SNES version was a lot easier.
03:23 This one must have seemed like an obvious buy
03:25 for parents around Christmas time
03:26 since it came out in November,
03:28 and it's just the collision of a video game
03:30 and one of Disney's best films.
03:32 Makes sense, right?
03:33 Except for the fact that they decided
03:35 to make the game really freaking hard.
03:37 One particular level, Rug Ride,
03:39 had plenty of young players in tears
03:41 as Aladdin on the magic carpet,
03:43 trying to fly away from a very fast,
03:45 very threatening lava surge
03:47 in an inhumanely fast auto-scrolling level.
03:50 This one hurt largely because the game is programmed
03:53 with such a small window of success
03:55 that you had to pull everything off pretty much perfectly
03:58 lest Aladdin be toasted to a crisp.
04:00 Genie would give you blink and you'll miss it instructions
04:03 of where to go next to avoid bumping
04:05 into platforms as you go.
04:06 And if you think you've made it,
04:08 the jerk throws you a question mark at the end,
04:10 so it's just luck as to whether you'll stumble
04:12 at the last hurdle.
04:13 As a result, a lot of players learned about cheat codes
04:16 because of this game.
04:17 Given anybody who played this one
04:19 has probably already poured hours and hours of their life
04:22 into trying to get through this level,
04:24 I think it's safe to say we don't wanna play it again.
04:26 Number seven, The Library, Halo Combat Evolved.
04:30 If there's one thing we can say in favor
04:31 of the side-scrolling hellscape
04:33 that is Aladdin's Rug Ride level,
04:35 at least it's straightforward.
04:37 Literally, you're just going straight,
04:39 sometimes up and down, usually into a rock to your death.
04:42 Not so of Halo's The Library level,
04:44 where the fan-favorite FPS apparently decided
04:47 to lose a few fans by featuring
04:49 what is pretty universally acknowledged
04:50 to be the worst level in the entire franchise.
04:53 The Library is the seventh campaign level
04:55 in Halo Combat Evolved.
04:57 It requires you to fight your way through
04:59 four gruelingly long and repetitive flood-riddled levels
05:02 to ultimately reach the Index Chamber.
05:04 Essentially, between how much you'll be getting lost
05:06 and inevitably dying to the many waves of enemies,
05:09 this is the part of Halo where a lot of players
05:11 straight up stopped having fun.
05:13 The environments are boring, convoluted, and way too big,
05:17 the enemies you're pointing your gun at are uninteresting,
05:19 and if you try to run through it, you'll probably die
05:22 and the whole thing will take you even longer.
05:24 I really hope you like walking down hallways
05:26 and riding elevators because that's your life now.
05:29 Even the developers themselves admitted
05:31 that this level runs about half an hour longer than it should.
05:34 Number six, The Path of Hades, God of War.
05:38 It's been said this particular level
05:39 requires patience and skill.
05:41 If you don't have the latter,
05:42 I hope you have the former in spades,
05:45 because otherwise, this is gonna get ugly.
05:47 Perhaps the most hated level
05:48 in the whole God of War series is The Path of Hades.
05:52 If I just unlocked a painful memory here,
05:54 hit me up in the comments, we'll have some group therapy.
05:56 Pun fully intended, this level can go to hell.
05:59 Kratos is a tough dude, but even he has a real tough time
06:03 climbing back out of Hades, as the path is riddled
06:06 with infuriating platforming sections
06:08 that you have to pull off with a fixed camera,
06:10 loads of enemies to defeat, traps to evade,
06:13 and a rotating wheel wall,
06:14 which has claimed many a gamer many a time.
06:17 If the spinning cylindrical walkways don't get you,
06:20 the blades sticking out of them will.
06:22 And if you're able to get past that,
06:24 you might get knocked off a floating platform
06:26 by an enemy anyway.
06:27 Just watching this level play out is anxiety-inducing.
06:31 The level actually starts out chaotic and tricky,
06:33 and then just keeps upping the ante until it's over.
06:36 The difficulty of the puzzles and the foes
06:38 you have to contend with on narrow platforms
06:40 is so unbalanced, it deters fans from wanting
06:43 to replay the full game itself,
06:45 let alone how much they don't wanna touch
06:47 this one infuriating level.
06:49 Number five, The Black Pit's Battle,
06:51 Divinity Original Sin 2.
06:53 Divinity Original Sin 2 may be the best RPG of this century,
06:57 at least in this humble host's opinion,
06:59 but it is a turn-based combat game,
07:02 meaning that if you screw up in combat,
07:03 you might not realize until you're 40 minutes in,
07:06 and that's a lot of backtracking.
07:08 To be fair, I think you'll have a worse time here
07:10 if you're playing with unreliable co-op companions
07:13 instead of controlling the action yourself.
07:15 But no matter what, The Black Pit's encounter
07:17 is going to give you a hard time.
07:19 It might not be a level in the traditional sense,
07:22 but it's certainly a section we can firmly identify
07:24 in the game, and then preferably cast out
07:26 into the fires of hell, so I'm gonna allow it.
07:29 Divinity Original Sin 2 is a classic
07:31 old-school party-based RPG that requires careful tuning
07:35 of your party makeup, equipment, abilities, and tactics.
07:39 Every move needs to be executed to perfection
07:41 unless you're playing on a low difficulty,
07:43 especially in this particular level,
07:45 which will almost definitely result
07:47 in everything being on fire.
07:49 If you didn't spec into Hydrosophist with Losa,
07:52 you're about to regret that very quickly
07:54 because there's not much you can do
07:55 about all the propagating flames.
07:58 To make things even more difficult,
07:59 you need to keep an NPC alive
08:01 and defeat a swarm of oil voidlings,
08:04 which spawn out of the pits,
08:05 and fire voidlings, which heal as they move
08:07 through the fire, which, as we discussed,
08:10 is almost definitely covering the oil-laden battlefield.
08:14 Also, the NPC does that painful NPC thing
08:16 where he tries to help out,
08:17 but his attacks are lightning-based,
08:19 so, you guessed it, everything ends up on fire.
08:22 Number four, Dreadnaught's Garbage Dump,
08:25 Super Mario Galaxy.
08:26 Super Mario Galaxy is yet another fantastic game,
08:30 but this particular level will have you putting it down
08:32 longing to never return.
08:34 Basically, everybody's favorite plumber
08:35 is asked to distribute bombs around an area
08:38 to take out a couple of dozen piles of garbage,
08:41 which would definitely be doable
08:42 if you weren't given 30 seconds to do it,
08:45 on top of which the bombs take
08:46 about 10 full seconds to explode.
08:49 Yeah, a third of the time you have
08:51 to complete the entire challenge,
08:52 so if you don't place them perfectly the first time,
08:55 then you'll have to try again,
08:57 and if you place them perfectly,
08:58 but not within the last 10 seconds
09:00 before the timer is up,
09:01 they won't blow up in time for the cranky robot
09:03 to tell you you're good to go.
09:05 Even though he could just wait a couple more seconds,
09:07 then the bombs would explode,
09:08 then everything would be clean,
09:09 we could take our style, go on our merry way.
09:11 Stupid robot.
09:13 If you do manage to get through this one
09:14 and think you handled it okay,
09:16 you'll have to do it again later as Luigi,
09:18 and it's even harder, so that's fun.
09:20 Number three, The Prison Level, Amnesia The Dark Descent.
09:24 A little unconventional here,
09:25 but I think enough people stopped playing Amnesia
09:28 at the prison level that it deserves a spot on this list.
09:31 The entire game, you've been terrorized
09:32 by horrible-looking creatures,
09:34 gradually losing and recovering sanity,
09:36 and managing to make a little progress along the way.
09:39 Comparatively, The Prison is so dark,
09:41 so complicated, and so unsettling,
09:44 that it's become one of the great,
09:45 "I do not want to be playing this level now,
09:47 nor do I ever want to play it again," areas in gaming.
09:51 This isn't because the game is bad, mind you,
09:53 it's just this particular section
09:55 is relentlessly terrifying,
09:56 while still calling on you
09:58 to solve its environmental puzzles
10:00 and navigate your way through.
10:01 Sure, you could pull out your lantern or light up a torch,
10:04 but at that point, you may as well don a sign saying,
10:06 "What's up, gatherers?
10:07 Lunch is served."
10:09 A part of you will certainly feel like
10:10 you've come this far and better keep going,
10:12 but the combo of your own fear,
10:14 monsters roaming around,
10:15 and the difficulty in figuring out where to go next
10:18 is easily too much for a lot of players.
10:20 I'm confused, I'm scared, and I don't want to play anymore.
10:23 Number two, Pulling Down a Star Destroyer,
10:26 The Force Unleashed.
10:27 Pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky
10:29 with your Force powers doesn't seem
10:31 like something you'd be able to do,
10:33 and given the finicky controls of The Force Unleashed,
10:36 it almost is something a ton of players weren't able to do.
10:39 For those who pulled it off,
10:40 I'm sure there's very few who are keen
10:42 to dive back in for another go,
10:44 of balancing their attempt to drag the enormous ship closer
10:47 while attempting to not be blown up
10:49 by the most TIE fighters you've ever seen.
10:51 Being told repeatedly to pull it out of the sky
10:53 when you are indeed already trying
10:55 to pull it out of the sky,
10:56 but also not dying in the process,
10:58 is even more of a pain.
11:00 Lay on top of that confusing UI instructions
11:03 that seem to suggest you move the thumbsticks
11:05 in a direction that won't actually achieve a Force pull,
11:08 and you've got an A+ recipe for a level
11:10 we never, ever want to play again.
11:12 Number one, The Dam, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
11:16 This one's an oldie but a goodie,
11:18 and by goodie I mean baddie,
11:19 as in this is one of the universally accepted
11:22 toughest levels ever made for a video game.
11:24 You've probably heard this one from us before,
11:26 but there's a good reason as to why,
11:28 because TMNT is a cut above
11:30 when it comes to creating levels
11:32 that are brutally painful disasters,
11:34 which somehow made it through the QA process.
11:37 Particularly awful is the level, The Dam,
11:39 where players are forced to contend
11:41 with an underwater maze
11:42 complete with vast diminishing air supply,
11:45 swarms of electric seaweed, and confounding level design.
11:49 Add to that the fact that you're tasked
11:50 with defusing eight bombs in just two minutes and 20 seconds,
11:54 plus there's next to no room for error,
11:56 and this level has no redeeming qualities.
11:59 After managing the brutal difficulty
12:01 and maddening mechanics,
12:02 if you did get to the end of this one
12:04 and managed to see that okay pop up
12:06 saying that you won it,
12:07 there's no way you're looking back.
12:09 That's it for our list,
12:10 but do let me know down in that comment section
12:12 if you can think of any other confusing video game levels
12:15 that you never, ever want to play again.
12:17 As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
12:19 Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
12:21 If you like, you can come say hi to me
12:23 on my Twitter account, where I'm @JessMcDonald,
12:25 But make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.