Games You Should Not Play On Hard Mode

You know those games you complete on Normal and think "Yeah, time to give the harder difficulties a go!" and then regret almost instantly. Those games where you look at Hard and think "Who in their right mind would play this?". The games you stare at and ask "Why?"
I'm sure everyone has at least one, so I want to know what they are.
Starting off, mine would Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Now, anyone that's even somewhat familiar with this series knows about the Thermal Energy mechanic. For those that aren't, Thermal Energy is this glowing goo that drops from enemies, boxes, wreckage, your next door neighbour's dog and the kitchen sink. You use it to heal off damage, power VSs and even use certain weapons. if you have none of it, you might as well be dead. In normal mode, you get supplied a good amount of the stuff, and it depletes quite slowly over time, making it so you are never in a situation where you afraid of a random basic enemy instakilling you. In Hard Mode, you get the same amount of T-Energy, except this time around...

It drains super fast.

This means that, every hit you take could likely be your last and you have to book it through enemies lest you get bogged down and effectively freeze to death. And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, is that using a VS is effectively suicide because the depletion rate doubles and you get like 2-3 minutes in the thing with a full T-Energy bar (which you will never have) and running out whilst in the VS causes you to bail out, leaving you vulnerable and extremely oneshotable.
Suffice to say, I am never going back to that difficulty.

And what about you guys? Any of you experienced that level of nightmarish difficulty?

 

Doom nightmare difficulty
Serious Sam on "Serious" difficulty
Deity on any Civilization game. These people don't know how to make a hard A.I so instead they make them CHEAT
All Madden mode on my old Madden 06. Cool story? Look below.

Spoiler

Okay so this was the very last Madden football game I ever bought. After what I witnessed in this game I vowed that the people of EA are evil. I usually played in Superstar (or was it All-Pro?) against the A.I. I won more games then not, Micheal Vick (when he was good) and the Falcons served me well in this game. I decided to ramp up to the max difficulty.

Weird things happened during my testing.

Passes were dropped for no good reason. Corners couldn't guard wide receivers AT ALL. I was pretty damn good so I started manual controlling as much as I could. I memorized every play this game had, I could tell what the A.I was going to run so I used the audibles like a boss.
Didn't matter, somehow my computer controlled teammates couldn't tackle ANYONE.

It was on offense however that things were insane. The A.I knew EXACTLY what play I was going to run at ALL TIMES. Running the foot ball was useless, the direction you were designed to run was always countered by the defense. I had to resort to cheesing it with Vick on the Shotgun formation. The guy was bloody fast and he could run the ball even in a passing formation. Thought it would give me the edge in tricking the psychic A.I.

Lol no!

This was when the game started to PREDETERMINE THE OUTCOME OF THE PLAYS!!!
Wait how?

Well if anyone remembers this was the game with the radio guy as the announcer. See he gave you useless information on the game so far. That is until he started to tell me what happened BEFORE IT HAPPENED!

Me on the kickoff
Announcer guy: On their last kickoff, the receiving team returned it for a touchdown
Me: Huh? What the hell is he talking about that never happened?
Me kick off
Other team returns the kick for a touchdown 0-o

Me on defense
Announcer guy: On their last drive they ran it in for a touch down
Me: Lol what? My defense hasn't even given up a score and it's 3rd and 12 on their 18
Enemy teams breaks 4 tackles and runs for a 82 yard touchdown
Me: O-o

Me on offense
On their last last drive they fumbled the football
Me: What the hell? I never fumbled any football this game!?
During the play my guy fumbles the football and the other team recovers
Me: O-o

Me on offense
"On their last drive they throw an interception"
Me: Oh hell no! Not this time! It's 3rd and goal at the ten yard line! I'M CALLING AN AUDIBLE FOR A RUN PLAY!

Play starts and the game freezes ​

Me: This game is fixed. I'm done.

I really needed to get that off my chest. You guys don't understand, my game is cursed and infused with some dark magic.

 

Wow. Just wow. I get that the super hard modes are supposed to be skewed out of your favour in one way or other, but I don't think I've ever heard of games actively cheating.

 

Sheesh.

Sounds as bad as the AI for CoD (which is why I am no fan to the series). On CoD Ghosts, I witnessed a multiple Com players perform headshots via sniper rifle.
"That does not sound like a problem."
The headshots were done through walls.
"The AI could track the player. Not too bad, since a person could do that."
The Com never saw the guy. Just spun around, pulled up the scope, and fired.
"..."

It was things like that that made me hate the series. AI whips around and blows me away.
Actually, the one game I really know of being mercilessly hard on any setting were the early Mortal Kombat games. I played them when I was 6, and it was ultra hard. Over a decade later I play the game again via emulator, because of the ability to save at anytime. Still as hard as hell. Easy mode? That was suicidal. Anything harder? I need not say, since easy was already bad enough. When I decided to do the quicksaves and quickloads to my advantage, I found that the opponent was always doing a variety of moves per quickload. I was constantly countered. Opponent would do a jump, and counter me while in midair when I tried to knock him out of the air.

 

A game that quickly comes to mind for me is Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox. Never has a game tormented me so much to the point I gave up and stopped playing it simply due to it's difficulty. Each boss fight was a living breathing nightmare, and it only got worse. The unrelenting assault left you feeling as if your soul is being sucked right out of your body. Then, of course, there’s the never-ending barrage of enemies that attack you all at once at every waking moment you switch on the console. The fact that the game asked you if you wanted to lower the difficulty once you’d died a bilzillion times means that the developers caught onto the fact they’d created a monster.

 

Chessmaster (any version)
Chessmaster difficulty

I lose in a couple minutes.

gg

 

I remember reading how merciless that game was. First time I heard it from a victim.

I have come across chess games like that. Ponder your move, make it, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check mate.


There should be a GTU (Game Trama Unit) for victims of hard games. I wouldn't mind difficulty levels being too high if it were incremental. That way you know just where you are in the game, rather than normal mode not being enough of a challenge, and hard being way too much.