10 of The Hardest Video Games to Beat

Dark Souls from 2011 is the spiritual sequel to Demon Souls and is the second game in the Souls franchise. This third-person RPG game is popular for its kind of difficulty where even the basic enemies can be of great nuisance to players, killing them again and again. Not only that, the enemies can even rip players off of their equipment, making it one of the hardest video games to beat.

As far as hyper casual mobile games go, Flappy Bird is probably the hardest. This brought the game immense popularity in 2014, but such fame also tied the title to multiple issues including copyright infringement and its being addicting to players. Technically, it’s just a simple game where you tap your phone to keep the bird afloat while avoiding pipes. But that simplicity does not equate with the difficulty of playing it, or it won’t be the famous game that it is now.

In this bloody 2008 video game, you play the Dragon Ninja Ryu who must protect the Demon Statue from the Black Spider Ninjas. Besides being remembered for its full-on gore and graphic violence, the game is also known for its insane difficulty. Enemies pour down draining and relentless attacks to your character, leaving you with small room for offense; and in later levels, your enemies even gain canons for arms firing with such accuracy that they seem impossible to dodge.

Super Meat Boy is the kind of game where you’re mostly stuck in a loop of trying and dying over and over… but you’ll end up playing it all the same. In this addicting and super-challenging game, you play Meat Boy who must overcome 300 levels of crazy-hard levels filled with foes and obstacles in order to rescue his girlfriend Bandage Girl from Dr. Fetus.

The 1994 game that started the XCOM series, UFO: Enemy Unknown is a turn-based strategy game where you lead an elite unit tasked to terminate alien invaders. But of course, it isn’t that easy. The AI can be too smart to beat and the fog is a tricky ally to the aliens, giving them the advantage of surprising you, while they invade and wreak havoc on your soldiers.

I Wanna Be The Guy may not boast much in terms of graphics, but it is exhaustively hard for a video game. Like other platformers, the levels are designed to kill you off with foes as well as obstacles that even move randomly at times. If you really wanna be the guy or gal to beat this game, you better bring a lot of patience and luck with you.

You probably know what will happen if you face Mike Tyson in a boxing match, and while this video game might be the closest thing you can get to fighting him without actually breaking your nose, this game is far from being a pleasant experience either. In this game, you face numerous enemies that keep getting stronger and stronger until you reach the unforgiving boss, Mike Tyson.

This game was the original Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan, but a different version was released for the western market due to the high difficulty of the game. When the original game was finally released, it took the title Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Besides the familiar foes from the game franchise, there are also Poison Mushrooms, backward Warp Zones, and the occasional wind gust that make the gameplay far more challenging.

Released the same year as the Oscar Award-winning movie, playing this video game is not a walk in the park. Your goal is to simply survive the eponymous dinosaur-infested theme park, shooting dinosaurs and evading the Tyrannosaurus Rex while completing quests. Even more challenging is the fact that the game lacks a save feature, so you better finish it in one sitting.

Even when faced with danger, the TMNT gang never fails to save the day after their war cry “Cowabunga!” But playing the role of these agile turtles isn’t that easy, especially if you’re playing the NES game based on the franchise. Some levels are just way too hard even for experienced gamers to crack.