10 Recent Video Game Levels That Made You Rage Quit
Recently broken your controller in frustration? Maybe it's because of these levels...
Broadly, modern video games fall into two categories. The first is a more narrative, story driven game, which is generally happy to guide the player by the hand, conversely giving you the freedom to approach the experience in any way they see fit.
The other type is a hark-back to 'old school gaming', when games were perhaps less commercial and focused more on the reward of completion itself. These games try to follow the philosophy of being 'tough but fair', but in reality they seem to constantly punish players, requiring lots of time and patience to get through.
There is rarely a happy medium; it's either embark on a profound, allegorical journey, or be mercilessly beaten by overpowered swarms of enemies a few hundred times over.
Whilst the general idea of brutally hard titles tends to be associated with the past, there are many modern titles that had levels so unashamedly difficult, we quietly turned off our consoles and spoke of all this to no one.
And yes, it would be too easy to populate this with FromSoftware games, so I've tried to steered clear of that as much as possible.
10. Days Gone - The Sawmill Horde
This mission tasks Deacon St. John, everyone's favourite cut price Joel, with wiping out a horde of freakers at a sawmill. The term 'horde' is no exaggeration, with over 500 freakers waiting to take a chunk out of Deacon.
Once they sense you are in the area, they will pursue you with a rage and persistence not often seen in a video game.
The sawmill is a surprisingly labyrinthine building, meaning it's quite easy to run yourself into a dead end. There are objects you can pull down and shoot to thin the zombie numbers, but being on the run, and occasionally wobbly camera work can make this extremely difficult.
Preparation before the battle is key, but you can still find yourself struggling just by the sheer numbers of enemies. If you get surrounded, you are likely to die very quickly, on any difficulty.
Although this is arguably the best level of the game, it comes near the end of a very long and frankly arduous campaign, meaning player's patience has probably worn thin.
The fighting is so intense, the struggle for survival so desperate, that failure can feel a hundred times worse.