9 Times You Accidentally Made Video Games Harder

Nowadays, a lot more games offer a vast selection of difficulty settings. With accessibility options on the rise, it's increasingly common for games to offer less of a challenge for a more story-focused experience, whilst retaining the higher stake options for the hardcore.

But what about those times we unwillingly shoot ourselves in the foot, those hidden difficulty modes or choices that only make our journeys harder? Sure, you might think something called the Demon Bell is a cute name, but it really isn't for the fainthearted.

Or it's something seemingly innocent, like a binary choice over which starting character to pick. You might think a flame-tailed Pokémon is a great choice, or that the stockiest looking member of S.T.A.R.S is a guaranteed walk in the, um, mansion, but appearances can be deceiving.

Worse yet is when the game tricks you, like reversing its difficulty options because of a programming error. How about when the promise of a free upgrade is too good to be true and makes life much harder for you? Not cool, game. Not cool.

It's not always doom and gloom though, as some of these modes can be overcome with a bit of perseverance. Just remember to check beforehand what you're about to get stuck into.

Chances are, before The Line, you may not have heard of the Spec Ops games. Honestly, no one would blame you, as it was hardly a massive franchise to begin with.

Small enough, in fact, that I doubt you'll have noticed when Stealth Patrol came out in 2000. That's not a pun on the title, either. It's just that it's not a very good game.

But it's on this list for an unknown programming error that caught many people out. Your Easy, Normal and Hard are instead Private, Corporal and Sergeant, respectively.

However, Private and Sergeant have had their options switched, so you might have picked the former and wondered why you're having such a tough time with the game.

Nowadays, this would be an easy thing to patch out, but that wasn't available on the PlayStation. Nor was the internet so readily to hand for many, so you couldn't do a quick search to see if anyone else was having the same issue.

I bet those that went straight for Sergeant difficulty felt like absolute bosses though...