The Hardest Moments in Gaming
There are many lists that detail “the most difficult/hardest moments in gaming” that revolve around the need to “get good,” make difficult decisions, or even experience something emotionally tolling. But that’s all rather subjective, isn’t it? As you can see in any Dark Souls strategy guide video, what one person considers to be difficult might not be for someone else.
That being said, I won’t rehash what the internet has picked apart a million times over. For this entry, I’ll be detailing a list of my personally challenging moments in gaming with the hopes you might share yours with me as well. Whether it be a cut scene that got the tears flowing, a decision you didn’t want to make but had to, or a mistake that you couldn’t take back, let’s talk about the hardest moments in our gaming history.
This is your only warning: Turn back… There be spoilers in these waters.
Losing Your Daughter — The Last Of Us
This. Game. Is. Rough. This game is rough all around. There are many tough moments in The Last of Us, but this one is the absolute cherry on top of a bad time sundae. This game is clearly beautiful, immersive, and damn near flawless, but it will tear you apart emotionally quite literally from beginning to end.
Your daughter, Sarah, dies at the very beginning of this game before you even understand what’s going on. The player and Joel are truly as one, there together in the moment of desperation, doing whatever is necessary to save your daughter while a gun is aimed at you from the darkness. Then everything that happens thereafter… Well, they certainly didn’t make it quick for us.
Playing A Moment Of Dark Souls
Soulsborne games are not bad games, but they are synonymous with the word “difficult.” I tried my luck on Dark Souls 3 and beat the first boss with little difficulty. I felt accomplished for doing something that I know was enough to turn away a LOT of players from the franchise entirely, but it wasn’t enough to make me stay.
These games are so grueling and challenging to me that they just aren’t fun. It’s a shame because they are clearly SO much fun to a lot of gamers, but to each their own, and it ain’t it for me, chief. After the first boss, I ran around like an absolute mad lad and there were just too many tough baddies who could kill me in two swipes and just…so very much fire. It’s hard to exist in these worlds for even a few moments. My hat is truly off to those who thrive in this franchise.
Making John Marston Leave That Barn — Red Dead Redemption
“Ain’t no trouble, Abigail, ain’t no trouble.”
I physically hurt every time I think about this. After everything he went through to get back to his wife and child… The pain radiated right through that screen and into our chests. Honestly, how dare Rockstar make a game so good that we grow so attached to a character only to hurt us as badly as they did.
The worst part is that we all knew what was going to happen, and we still had to gather up our courage through our tears and walk him out of the barn… perhaps after just standing in it for way too long just so we wouldn’t have to say goodbye for a little while longer.
Meeting The Alien — Alien: Isolation
The first time that acid-dripping, mouth-within-a-mouth, scary mother f*ucker came out of the air vents, I hid under the bed and resigned myself to the life of a bedbug. After talking some sense (and courage) into myself, I waited until it walked down the hall and I ran to the nearest locker to hide in. It was here that I decided I would settle down and live the rest of my life as a locker-person: It’s just spacious enough to bend an elbow, offers more cover than hiding under a bed, and hopefully the lack of airflow would let me die of asphyxiation before the Alien found me. All good things.
This game is particularly challenging because this enemy does not run off of your standard AI. It monitors where you are, it can hear your every step, and it can hide/kill you from virtually anywhere. It’s the perfect killing machine and no one stands a chance.
Leaving Clem Alone — The Walking Dead (Season One)
I’m just going to cut out the middle man here and rip my heart from my chest and personally mail it to Telltale Games. That’s clearly what they want, after all. These games are about survival, and from the very first moment of seeing Clementine up in that treehouse, I knew I would do whatever I had to protect that little girl. I just never imagined what it would cost me in real life.
This was the most painful experience of my gaming life. Clem crying over you, worried and afraid, begging you to be okay, when you know nothing is going to be okay anymore. I didn’t have the heart to ask her to bear the heavy burden of killing me, so she handcuffed me and had to leave me to die, which may have been harder in retrospect. Then she had to coat herself in blood and walk, alone, dealing with such loss and being so terrified, through a crowd of zombies. I lost a part of my heart that day that I can never get back.
When You Lose Aunt May — Marvel’s Spider-Man
Although the player is not technically the one making the hard decision, we all knew what we had to do. May has been infected, along with most of the city, and Peter Parker comes in at the literal last moment with the antidote. Unfortunately, it’s the final moment for Aunt May. The entire vial of the antidote is needed to create a cure for everyone, but it will take hours to make and Aunt May won’t last that long. If Peter uses it on his Aunt (who raised him like a son), there won’t be enough for everyone else.
May reveals she’s known Peter was Spider-Man all along and he removes his mask to reveal tears streaming down his face. His voice breaks as he says he doesn’t know what to do. “Yes you do,” is all she replies. In the end, at least we can be grateful that they didn’t force the player to be the one to actually make the decision and left us to the mercy of a cut scene instead.
Ciri Is Alive — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece — it brings together the most incredible visuals with dynamic gameplay and a storyline that sticks with you eternally. Even if you haven’t played any other Witcher games, you quickly get a feel for Geralt’s deep emotional trench, despite his bland and cold exterior. You feel warm when you’re reunited with Yen, but your sole focus, your reason for breathing, is to find Ciri.
When he finally makes it to her, he’s told she’s dead. He stands at the door, completely lost. He gathers the very last of his courage and opens the door to see her lying there, facing away from him. He sits beside her and with a shaky hand, turns her body over — lifeless. Geralt loses it, and all at once, the badass Witcher is gone. Before us sits a broken man who has lost a daughter, sobbing into his hands. He pulls her body up to embrace her as the player’s every breath hitches. Then, she lifts her arm and embraces him back. And this is where the internal floodgates break entirely.
Randomly Shooting Asteroids — Dead Space
“Why is this here?!” screamed everyone at their screens when the asteroid shooting mission came up. We demand answers. This particular mission stuck out like a sore thumb and was not in keeping with the entire rest of the game. Dead Space was challenging enough on its own, but the game as a whole was honestly not as challenging as this one god-forsaken mission was.
I probably had to redo this mission nearly a hundred times. I looked for cheats, I turned down the difficulty, I tried to switch to the mouse, I even took to Reddit boards for anything that might have helped. This is ludicrous for something that shouldn’t have even been in the game to begin with. If I had been on the Ishimura in real life, I probably would have given up and just let those asteroids just come on in with their bad selves, because I’m not doing it.
Cole Phelps Cheating On His Wife — LA Noire
Cole Phelps has been accused of being too bland as a character but my issue with him is quite the opposite. At the beginning of the game, I immediately respected Phelps’ whole deal: He’s a family man, he has morals, and he wants to uphold the law. If you’ve played this game, you are aware this perception deteriorates quickly. For me, the moment was when he decided to get a little too friendly with (who I refer to as) the-woman-who-is-not-his-wife. I was shouting at the screen, “No! Don’t you dare do this to your wife, Cole Phelps!” But it was out of my hands and my respect was shattered.
After that I didn’t care much what happened to him, which affected my playthrough. But by the end, he had a full (and tragic) story arc that transformed him from a coward to a hero. The feelings all shook out to a neutral in the end, but my faith in humanity was shaken from that point on.
Final Boss In Fatal Frame II
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is one of the very few horror suspense games I have played and successfully beaten. I loved it so much I had a playthrough with each level of difficulty, which I have not done with any other game since. Each difficulty has a different ending, ranging from you murdering your sister (the bad ending) to both of you surviving and ending the “endless night” (the good ending).
Finally, in the boss fight of the highest difficulty, I entered the arena with the Kusabi… and got absolutely slaughtered. I tried again and again, but even my most powerful film wasn’t enough for me to defeat it. So my save file is forever frozen at the very last fight of the game, waiting for my skill level to grow enough to beat it one day so I can set the twins and the cursed town free.
These are my most difficult moments in no particular order (let’s not make it even more difficult by ranking them). Gamers live a million lives with a million heartbreaks, struggles, and, most importantly, victories. There is growth in our real lives from lessons learned in our virtual ones — and that has value.
Tell me about your most difficult times; we can cry together or rage together over them in the comments. Whatever your struggle is (gaming or not), I promise you are not alone.
Now go get!
