What are some games which you found ridiculously tough to beat, and why? :) Please don't say it's just because you're a bad player (hey, give yourself some credit :p ).

We already know about Dark Souls, Blade of Darkness, the Dungeons and Dragons games, Jagged Alliance 2, Gorky 17, Far Cry games, The Witcher games, and Gothic/Risen games. What are some others?

Also, what are some of your gripes with a game's combat implementation and enemy AI?

I have found very little games with actually intelligent enemy AI, so that's my biggest gripe with combat in games. I wish more games would allow enemies to counter player counters, or to utilize dynamic tactics in taking down the player.

I actually don't like enemy AI in Gothic games and DS because it seems to be deliberately slow in order to allow smart movement by the player. Kind of takes the fun out of it.

So, what are some seriously sadistic games (any genre)?

AI War with the difficulty settings cranked?

I agree about Blade of Darkness but wouldn't exactly call Gorky 17 sadistic :-)

To me one of the criteria to show that game developers are being sadistic towards gamers is by not implementing proper save game system that when something goes wrong force the player to replay the levels from the beginning or at least a bit chunk of the game over and over again. On top of my mind: Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, Spider-Man: The Movie (2002), Bloodrayne.

You're right, I wouldn't call TW2 or Gothic etc. sadistic either :p

And yeah, Castlevania's Haunted Castle sent you back to stage 1 too, haha. I actually don't mind that aspect in some types of games.

On the other hand, save-anywhere systems tend to eliminate tension. While it can be irritating to play through the same bit again and again, saving just before a bit you get stuck on tends to make you sloppy and reduces the sense of achievement when you manage it.

Tension is created by the risk of loss. If the loss that you suffer is to have to replay 5 seconds of gameplay, where's the tension?

Devs always have to be a little bit sadistic, because they need to instill this fear into the player.

I am one of those gamers who would like to have options on what is deemed as frustrating or not. So, in case like this, just provide a proper save game anytime anywhere system, and then give the option for players to either enable, disable, limit it according to what they want.

Besides, if developers are sadistic to me in their game, chances are I won't bother to buy their next ones :-)

I know what you mean, but there are people who would buy from them. Different folks, different strokes. Nope, Z is hard. I don't play a lot of milsims, but this one was an exception. Nice one, indeed.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

Maybe I'm just bad at platform games but I found that game sooo hard.
Yes, you have unlimited lives, yes, you have a good amount of check points but still: It's sooo difficult.
Whenever I managed another particularly difficult section I was jubilating and fist pumping! It is a wonderful game. Best platformer I have played for a long time.

Precisely. One thing I learn from this GOG forum is that you cannot please every gamer, so I'm in favor of giving options in the games for gamers to decide for themselves.

I've found that metal slug games are kinda hard.

Agreed! At that time I was a hardcore RTS player but this game... I can't remember how many times I reege-quited it ;)

Another hard RTS: Tzar: the Burden of the Crown. AI is constantly spamming towers all around his base. Campaign is even more difficult than a skirmish because there are some events there and usually they are not good for you ;) E.g. Huge invading army appears after ~1 hour of playing. However, you are warned about it from the very beginning so you can prepare yourself so it's not unfair.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii) on the hardest setting would probably qualify as sadistic to most people. There are hour-long maps that you have to get through without the normal difficulty's in-map save, and every character you use is subject to permadeath if you make a stupid mistake. Great game, especially since you can send annoying characters to their deaths to silence them forever. Good times.

The original Red Faction can be sadistic because of the rail driver. All of a sudden in the middle of the game everyone has the ability to shoot through walls for a one-hit kill, because science apparently created a gun specifically for douchebags.

Jet Force Gemini for the N64 is probably the most sadistic game ever made, though. You're armed with a ton of explosives that make things explode, and levels are littered with these adorable little bear-alien things who you're supposed to save. Shooting them with rockets makes them explode into red goo, though, and it's impossible to not do this. Repeatedly. Problem is, you have to save every single one in every single level to actually finish the game. Sure, they come back to life if you restart the level, but you'll just end up shooting them again, laughing maniacally all the while. I'm not even kidding. Anyone who claims to have beaten JFG is a dirty liar.

A few others that came to my mind:
- Ghosts 'n Goblins. Man! It is one of the hardest platformer.
- Cannon Fodder 1 and 2. I've recently finished the first one and I'm still amazed how did I do that. I'm playing the second and it's driving me crazy ;)
- HoMM 3 is pretty difficult too. Especially the campaign. You can only actually beat it when you realize that in many scenarios your goal is NOT to conquer everything. Sometimes you just have to kill a specific monster on the map. I remember than once I was charging at that monster followed by two enemy heroes with armies twice as big as mine. But I was faster, took down the monster and won the scenario. Phew.
- And last but not least (I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet) Temple of Elemental Evil. Enough said ;)

EDIT: I forgot about... lemmings. Later levels were extremely hard. Not only you had to figure out weird puzzles but then you had to execute your plan flawlessly. If you assigned the task to your lemming a bit to fast/slow you had to restart.

Can't think of any strategy game that is too hard, but what I find really sadistic are jumpnruns like Rick Dangerous.