[b]5. Halo 2 Legendary[/b] [spoiler][b]Worst Part:[/b] Jackal Snipers [b]Best Part:[/b] Accidently finding a skull [b]Feeling:[/b] Crap, I accidently found Iron [b]Thing I Ignore:[/b] I didn't manage to get all of the skulls in one run [url]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100330024106/halo/es/images/b/b4/Jackal_Sniper.jpg[/url] I've played more halo than I would like to admit. I was a clan player. Every time a new halo comes out me and my friend go to one of our houses and spend the entire night just beating it on legendary in one sitting. I have to say, I'm upset at how they have handled legendary since Halo 2. Legendary with most skulls turned on is my default difficulty for all Halos, and I'm still not likely to die more than four or five times in a level. But Halo 2. This games legendary. Only recently did I beat it, because it took regimented playing and raging through it. This is the difficulty where single shield jackals will casually kill you if you try to attack them from too far away. But the best example of the sadism of this game is jack snipers. When a sniper hits you, and if ever you are in a position to be shot, they will hit you with their first shot, they headshot you. And Halo 2 pulls no punches, headshots on you are one hit kills. Quiet, efficient, and you should hope they take a second at your dead corpse, or you will have no idea where the sniper is. This punctuates the experience. Walking into areas where there are 5+ jackal snipers, all who will kill you within a second of spotting you, you come to understand, this game does not want you to win. There are other things. Elites that can take two plasma grenade sticks before their shields deplete. Elites that dual-wield plasma rifles and don't stagger, meaning they'll tear you up in a matter of seconds. Many more flood with rocket launchers. Drones are no longer an encounter you narrowly survive, but an encounter you always lose. The point is, Halo 2 takes Halo, a series about having a reasonable amount of health that recharges and fighting enemies with similar health systems, and cuts your health down to that of the hardest difficulty in Battlefield or COD (god, a terrible series), and then doubles the health of the enemies around you. Even with Halo's generous checkpoint system, this is a slog, a hard slog.[/spoiler] [b]6. Beating Cave Story's Hell[/b] [spoiler][b]Worst Part:[/b] Falling blocks [b]Best Part:[/b] Curly [b]Feeling:[/b] This would be adorable, if it wasn't so hard [b]Thing I Ignore:[/b] There is a hard mode [url]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110811101324/deadliestfiction/images/f/f1/Quoted.jpg[/url] Cave story is a cute game about an adorable robot protagonist and a race of rabbit people. It's also an example of some of the finest platforming ever to be in an indie game. Boss fights are a blast, and have a surprising amount of depth and difficulty for a platformer. It really puts your balls to the wall on the last few normal bosses, which introduce perhaps the four toughest fights in the game, and decide to award you no health or save point in between them. This then pales to Hell. An area you unlock by doing various arbitrary tasks. To explain how the Hell works. Cave story, being a platformer, has spikes. Spikes of various kinds. Small spikes, big spikes, even insta-death spikes. Anyways, I dropped into hell, and say I was falling towards some spikes, so I use my jet pack to pass over them, until I got to the next place I could drop down, having used all my jetpacks charge. I expected to fall to an area with land where I could charge up my jetpack. Instead I fell to more spikes. The point was, I was going to hit spikes, but I had to maneuver myself to hit the spikes would would take away as little health as possible as I continued on, and to avoid the insta-death spikes, which were everywhere. This is the attitude of Cave Story Hell. It doesn't help that there are no checkpoints at all in it, and a four stage boss at the end. Hope you saved a life pot.[/spoiler] [b]7. My first time doing a 4x4 Rubix Cube[b] [spoiler][b]Worst Part:[/b] What is this? [b]Best Part:[/b] What is this? [b]Feeling:[/b] What is this? [b]Thing I Ignore:[/b] Still haven't discerned the algorithm that fixes the alternator (don't worry about it) [url]http://www.llstudents.org/2012/rubiks/images/rubik4x4%28301x301%29.jpg[/url] Ok, ok. . . it's not video games. But it is still in the same theme of gaming nonetheless. It is still a mental challenge, that we wouldn't think twice about if it had been introduced on steam this year instead of decades ago in physical form. Now, I can do the 7x7, with my first blind trial of the 7x7 being around 1 hour and 23 minutes. But the 4x4 has a special place in my heart. Sadly, I did 3x3 with help from a friend, who taught me algorithms, and for awhile I was content with that, and still in total awe of those who could teach themselves to do rubix cubes. When I got my 4x4 I told myself I would learn it myself. After about four hours of twisting it that way and this way, it was a mess. Slowly I learned to look at how every turn affected the cube, and to consider it purely analytically. I didn't just blindly hope to solve it, I kept a strategy in mind of where I wanted to get to, and what order of solving was realistic. I solved it in about five to six hours. Looking back, that's a terrible time for a 4x4, and I could probably solve a similar puzzle blind in about twenty to thirty minutes now. But that was the first time I could condescendingly tell people that I actually could solve a rubix cube, and didn't just look it up online. Oh, and note to those who just think, "eh, rubix cubes aren't that hard, it is just memorizing specific algorithms." Maybe it is, if it is so easy, I challenge you to pick up a 4x4, and without any help solve it. After that, try a 7x7.[/spoiler] [b]8. Beating Dark Souls, Soul Level 1[/b] [spoiler][b]Worst Part:[/b] Four Kings [b]Best Part:[/b] Invincibility Frames [b]Feeling:[/b] Depression. It's Dark Souls. [b]Thing I Ignore:[/b] I could still do NG-infinity naked only melee [url]http://thecontrolleronline.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/dark-souls-logo.jpg[/url] So, we all know this. Dark Souls is hard. That's the hook of the game, it's meant to be hard. The game tries to kill you all the time, death means you lose all of your currency for leveling up or buying weapons, and other players are encouraged to invade your world and kill you for their own selfish gain. It's a hard game. If you don't believe me, there are plenty of videos of people rage-quitting it. But it's not impossible, and you genuinely get better at it and become more skilled. The first time I beat it took two playthroughs, and about 100 hours. Now I run through the game without a shield, around level 30 in about two to three hours. It's a complex combat system which is about your skill, not your level. With that in mind, you can beat the game at level 1. Most of the bosses will kill you in one hit, and the damage you do can be described as minimal, but it is possible. You just have to get good at dodging everything. After countless hours of rage, me, and my reinforced club (which is the best weapon you can get for level 1, a club), smashed down the final boss. I could now do the same playthrough in about four hours, but it was the time I understood how much better I had gotten at the game, and that I really had developed a strategy and skill for it. It's a good feeling. I highly recommend it.[/spoiler] [b]9. A 1,000,000 point trick in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3[/b] [spoiler][b]Worst Part:[/b] Cruise ship nets [b]Best Part:[/b] Special Tricks [b]Feeling:[/b] Saturated with 90s hip-hop [b]Thing I Ignore:[/b] The other bastard games in the series [url]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Tony_Hawk%27s_Pro_Skater_3_Coverart.jpg[/url] This game had it all, ridiculous tricks, huge levels, even Darth Maul. The first time you play it, it was pretty hard. The best of the Tony Hawk games though. You had to finish the objectives and get to the next levels, which was never really difficult to do, being that there were so many objectives. You might not be able to get the sick score, but you could collect s-k-a-t-e, or find the secret tape. The real road blocks were the competitions, where you were judged from 1-100 on your run, against other pros with arbitrary scores. You needed at least third place to pass, which at times seemed nearly impossible, especially in Tokyo where the judging was ratcheted up to 11. So, I played this when I was pretty young, I went back to it about two years ago. I remembered the only way to win was to string together ludicrous combos with manuals and grinds. So I did. And was impressed to see my ranking in the competitions to effortlessly become 99.9. The best way to describe me playing this game, is in television, whenever they portray people playing video games, they are nonsensically pressing all the buttons on the controller and making this load clacking noise, and once in awhile jump up in joy or frustration. I literally look like that. It's fun, especially when you perform a single trick for an entire 2 minute run and get over 1,000,000 points on just that. Twice the cumulative sick score of the final level. That was when I knew I had beat the game.[/spoiler]