Difficulty levels were certainly a thing before the PS3 generation, but it seemed like this was the era of accessibility. For example, one of the best games on the system isFallout: New Vegaswhich is a post-apocalyptic shooter RPG. Players can go into it with several difficulty levels or they can even go an extreme route and turn on survival instincts.
This will turn the experience into an aggressive one wherein players have to be careful about resources. There are certainly more examples like that but then there are games that were just hard on their own even with difficulty adjustments. The number one answer won’t be surprising but the games along the way might be.
Heavy Raintechnically isn’t that hard if players just go with the flow. It was amodernized adventure gamethat gave players multiple characters to play through. Whatever decisions they made during conversations or puzzle sections would affect the outcome of future events. Every character could also die, only at certain times though, but this still made it a difficult game to play for those that wanted the perfect true ending. It would be a miracle for players to get it on their first go unless they had a guide or something.
Bleach: Soul Resurrecciónwas a collaborative effort between Sony and other companies to make their own Musou game likeDynasty Warriors. It was a hack and slash RPG based on the anime’s Hueco Mundo arc. Players could inhabit mainstays like Ichigo to battle through hundreds of Hollows in open levels. What made the game hard was the onslaught of enemies and the grind of leveling up to get through levels with ease. It also didn’t help that unlike most Musou games,Bleach: Soul Resurrecciónwas a single-player affair.
Resistance: Fall of Manwas a launch game for the PS3 and a new franchise from Insomniac. Their previous big Sony exclusive franchise wasRatchet and Clankwhich was accessible to many platformer fans. Even fans of shooters would have trouble getting throughResistance: Fall of Manthough.
The aliens that ravaged Earth duringWorld War 2weren’t messing around with their invasion. It was easy to die after a few hits and even co-op didn’t exactly make this shooter easier.
LittleBigPlanetlooks like a cute and accessible platformerexclusive for the PS3. While it is cute, it’s anything but accessible. Throughout levels, players could get to checkpoints. If a player got hit, they would go back to this checkpoint lickity split which was convenient. However, players could only die so many times at these checkpoints and once all saves were thrown, they had to restart from the beginning. It also didn’t help that the jumping controls were a little floaty, making it challenging to judge distances which resulted in a lot of deaths.
Dust 514was a spinoff ofEve Onlinewho assuredly not a lot of people have played. It’s still a huge MMO but it’s more of a technical MMO for fans of simulation games likeCivilizationexcept way more extreme. This spinoff was similar in that it was realistic with its shooting mechanics and death penalties. Players could easily spend tens of minutes trying to get into a match, dropping into a level, dying immediately, and then having to repeat the process all over again with little to no reward to show for it. It felt a little too ambitious and ahead of its time to succeed on PS3.
Helldiverswas a top-down,twin-stick shooter thatlooked like it was inspired byStarship Troopers. It had propaganda to join the cause against invading alien bugs and everything. It was a late PS3 game, but it went to other consoles as well. Alone or with teammates, players would drop onto planets and complete objectives while fighting off these alien bugs.
The horde-like nature of the bug attacks wasn’t easy but neither were the limitations on players. No fluid dodge made it hard to get away, reloading and ammo consumption was a pain to keep track of, and the list goes on. Hopefully, some of these archaic mechanics will be smoothed over in the upcoming sequel.
Tokyo Jungleis a simulation game at its heart but there arealso roguelike elements. The premise is that an apocalyptic event happened, causing all of humanity to die. All that was left were animals that players could inhabit from dogs to apes to try and repopulate their species. Players would go around ruins, searching for food, and fighting other animals for dominance which was not exactly a walk in the park especially with herbivores. Once dead, that was it. Progressing with one species would unlock costume items and other animals but there was no true end to the game.
There is no contest for what the hardest game on PS3 is because itisDemon’s Soulsby a wide margin. It helped birth the Soulslike genre which has overtaken the industry. In this early entry, players could create a character, choose and class, and then jump right into this action RPG with little to no instructions. Defeating enemies would gain players the equivalent of EXP which they could then use to upgrade stats at checkpoints. The tricky part was that these points would be left behind upon death and lost forever if players couldn’t retrieve them. Besides that ordeal, there were sneaky enemies, traps, and soul-crushing enemies abound to make this action RPG one hellish nightmare.
