7 Hardest First Levels that Nearly Stopped You Seeing the Rest of the Game

the concept of the difficulty curve dictates that a game's difficulty should increase gradually ending up challenging but starting out easy maybe with a tutorial that tells you how to jump jump over the obstacle same button as every single other game in existence got it thanks some games however choose not to go for the difficulty curve approach instead opting for the difficulty brick wall into which unwary players will plow headfirst despite barely having gotten the plastic wrapping off the game box in that vein here are seven of the hardest first levels in video game history that nearly stops us seeing the rest of the game enjoy [Applause] [Music] in the original driver for the playstation you play as tanner a cop who is the best at driving you discover this in the game's intro a ruthlessly efficient 52 seconds in which tanner wordlessly sits there while he's told he's going undercover as a getaway driver in miami any questions yes actually which button is accelerate and break also can i get out of the car oh wait it's starting [Music] driver is absolutely not messing around immediately and with no warning launching you into your first task as an undercover cop passing an advanced driving course in a multi-story car park [Applause] without even being told how to operate your car you have exactly one minute to pull off all the tricks listed on a piece of paper displayed on screen some of which i'll be honest are a total goddamn mystery i mean handbrake and speed i can probably figure out but what the hell is a slalom isn't that something to do with skiing also i'm pretty sure a burnout is when you smash another car into a wall and you get a cool cinematic crash animation don't see how i'm gonna be able to do that down here anyway just about the time when you figured out how to start and stop the car your minute will be up and you'll have unceremoniously failed your job interview for crime maybe i'll give you a call when i need a ride to the grocery store actually that sounds like more my speed can we play that game instead [Music] [Applause] captain blue fights with every ounce of his being he fights against the dark forces of evil for what is right this is all that blue has ever wanted to do the right thing come on blue you have to save the world i can't do without you your first day in a new job can be rough but you don't know how rough until you've been yoinked through a cinema screen to take up the mantle of a burned-out superhero wait a minute am i am i inside the movie correct my young friend i am captain blue i am no longer able to fight because i have been defeated you must take my place as the new action hero so begins your on-the-job training to save the world and rescue your kidnapped girlfriend in the punishing first level of beautiful joe [Music] for the opening minutes of this gamecube beat him up you are barely more equipped to battle the forces of evil than any other early naughties bro in cargo shorts and a backwards baseball cap ah your heroes has awakened henchmen don't go baby [Music] even after being granted your super heroic persona and losing the cargo shorts you have a pitifully tiny pool of hit points and one single super ability to your name so good luck to you and your basic self because your first opportunity to upgrade isn't until after the bastard heart attack helicopter spoiler alert there's a bastard heart attack helicopter in this end of level boss fight you must use all one of your superpowers to dodge helicopter attacks fend off baddies and not die which is tough there's a reason so few jobs require that you punch an apache helicopter on your first day tougher still is how in the grand old tradition of arcade gaming joe has a finite number of lives so if you die enough times you'll burn through all your lives and then go back to the very start of the game losing all your progress also in the grand old tradition of arcade gaming when your parents say kids have it too easy these days this is what they're talking about probably [Music] most of the history you learned from the back to the future films should be taken with a grain of salt for example marty mcfly didn't invent rock and roll and the hoverboards we actually got in 2015 just made you look like an idiot and then burst into flames what we can also be fairly certain of is that in the old west people riding horses around weren't constantly being assaulted by unexpected logs dive-bombing birds and mysterious jumping rocks like back to the future 3 on the sega mega drive would have you believe [Music] and yet that's what the game chose to lead with the very first level is a punishingly unfair twitch reflex sequence in which doc has to chase after a runaway wagon heading for a cliff edge while the universe throws everything it has at him to try and stop him saving the wagon and his occupant his schoolteacher sweetheart clara [Music] doc i think this is a sign man god just really wants clara dead but not as much as this game wants you dead with its non-stop ravines murderous cowboys and thoughtlessly placed boxes you're going to find yourself constantly flat on your back in the desert sun waiting for a replacement horse to come along and scoop you up there we go really the only way you're getting past this nightmare reflex test of an opening level is by learning the position of all the obstacles off by heart a staggering amount of effort that absolutely isn't worth it because back to the future part 3 only has four levels two of which feature marty mcfly killing people with pytins and your reward for finishing the game is getting to look at this picture of a delorean [Music] you can start on that good future by not playing back to the future part 3 ever again looking at cuphead you'd think the biggest problem this little drinking receptacle is going to have is a big cat stealing his steamboat or possibly the inevitable lucrative theme park empire based on his adventures having to close due to a global pandemic [Music] not so because cuphead is actually one of the most difficult games in recent memory that doesn't have the word souls in the title you'll realize this about three seconds into the game's first level where between the paratrooper flower men the mortar plants the helicopter acorns and the aggressive mushroom people literally everything in the entire forest is trying to kill you all at the same time at this point you're probably dimly aware that you can parry things that are pink but try remembering what you're supposed to do when the pink thing is a spiked ball and also 600 flowers are trying to get you pushing up daisies [Music] by the time you get further into cuphead yes the levels are harder but you're also better you've played a bunch of cuphead understand how the game works and are better equipped to tackle everything the game throws at you which believe me is a lot here though in the first level you're just getting your head around the controls and cuphead is determined not to give you any kind of respite or breathing room to do it still persevere and you'll make it through two a hard as nails boss fight against a giant potato [Music] okay this guy's definitely not making it onto the meet and greet roster for the theme park someone make a note the original resident evil really eases you into the survival horror letting you explore the mansion a bit before it confronts you with a single zombie that you can have barry kill for you if you don't feel like getting your gun dirty let me take care of it resident evil 4 by way of contrast begins by dropping you into a village full of frenzied yokels armed with farming equipment who really want to separate your head from the rest of your body why are these people yeah good luck cutting all of them back to barry don't get us wrong this is an incredibly effective opening for the game and one of the reasons that resident evil 4 is so very memorable but compared with the gentle running around and poking boxes with a knife that constituted the previous 10 minutes of the game this isn't so much a difficulty spike as yes thank you leon what makes this sequence so tough apart from the fact that that guy has a chainsaw is how there are just so many enemies that it's impossible to keep track of them all at any one time if you're staying in the house they're going to be coming in through the upstairs and downstairs windows if you head outside you better keep moving because they're going to surround you if you stay still for too long and if you try to team up with the cows good luck because those things are having none of it it's a frantic stressful rock hard introduction to the game world that would probably have stopped us playing if it wasn't so weirdly compelling to be mobbed by furious farmers capcom clearly enjoys making you suffer repeating the same trick of an introductory difficulty spike in their next game resident evil 5 in which chris and shiva have to deal with endlessly respawning magini including this big old boy with a hammer which is tough and scary but for us nothing was as shocking as that original sequence in resident evil 4 where our preconceptions about the languid pace of the survival horror genre were upended by oh my god chainsaw [Music] do [Music] cool man the year was 1991 nearly a third of american households owned nintendo's wildly successful nes console and a fresh new cartoon series called the simpsons was lighting up the airwaves which meant the time was right for the show's first ever spin-off video game bart vs the space mutants this game simpson's sion bart must thwart an alien invasion by rendering all of simpson's purple items not purple so that the titular space mutants can't steal said purple items to power their alien death machine in a plot at least as good as an episode from season 30. but spare a thought for those early 90s gamers who dropped 105 in modern money on a nes game that they would only ever see the first level of because it was a simpsons themed nightmare [Music] the game is a side-scrolling platform job with light puzzle elements which translates in the first level of the game to running a gauntlet of unkillable untouchable alien squids if you accidentally touch them two times you're dead and with the ropey movement controls you'll be accidentally touching them many many times [Music] and if you thought this clunky dodging gameplay could be improved by turning it into a high-speed skateboarding segment then you would be one of the developers of this game [Music] in between the accidental touching of squids and skateboard deaths you disguise the town's purple items with spray paint and also collect coins because 90s platformer [Music] occasionally you nip into a local shop to purchase an item whose proper use could only be deduced with the kind of wild moon logic you would only tolerate in an actual much better point-and-click adventure take the whistle from the toy shop for instance blow it in the right spot and grandpa simpson would appear and toss coins at you of course deploy it anywhere else and a dog would come and savage you eat my shorts if you die three times it's game over for you and planet earth before you've even seen the end of the first level and you're back to square one just as well bart's iconic final words will never get annoying [Music] as true today as when it was written in super ghouls and ghosts you play as arthur a tiny knight who sets out to rescue a princess who's been kidnapped by this thing which looks a lot like what you'd get if sesame street decided to introduce satan as a new character if there's one thing super ghouls and ghost is known for however it's being as hard as a diamond coated sas unit i would describe it as the dark souls of 2d platformers but even dark souls doesn't expect you to complete the game in a single sitting and yet that's the case in ghouls and ghosts arthur has three lives and can take two hits the first one strips him down to his boxes the second one kills him outright that's already fairly ungenerous even before you factor in the fact that arthur has all the swiftness and agility of a busted refrigerator sinking into a tarpit [Music] in short it's hard difficult to control there's no saving and the checkpointing is extremely stingy all this becomes very apparent to you in the game's first level the haunted graveyard in which you're immediately just swamped by zombies werewolves and flaming skulls you'll have to battle through all of this while the ground underneath you warps and shifts under your feet giving you a smaller margin for error than nasa re-entry coordinates [Music] while reflexes and skill are going to be a big help in trying to beat this i remind you first level of the game your biggest ally is going to be muscle memory as believe me you're going to be doing it over and over and over again [Music] it says here in the manual that there are eight levels including the rotting sea and the castle of the emperor boy they sure sound cool i wouldn't know obviously i'm still here getting my ass handed to me in the haunted graveyard there you have it friends those were seven of the hardest first levels that nearly stopped us from seeing the rest of the game we hope you enjoyed that if you did why not like and subscribe and maybe hit the bell button and set your notifications on so that every time outside xbox publishes a video like this you'll get a notification it's as easy as that and it's free can you believe it

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 767,404

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, difficulty, hardest, hard, tough, difficult, hardest first levels, level one, cuphead, super ghouls n ghosts, back to the future, part 3, the simpsons, bart vs the space mutants, driver, resident evil 4, resident evil village, viewtiful joe, 7 things, driver first level, hardest levels, hardest games, most difficult levels, most difficult games, driver san francisco, the simpsons game, funny, funny moments

Id: QcKpB5s5uLI

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020