10 Gruelling Video Game Levels That Were Just The Beginning

I suspect the mindset behind the creation of the 2004 Xbox reboot of the Ninja Gaiden series went a little something like "hey you know how we kicked players' teeth in with the original NES games? Yeah how about this time we don't stop kicking until their skulls are putty beneath our boots?"

The first level of Ninja Gaiden 2004 establishes pretty much immediately that however hard the NES originals might have been, these new games are even harder thanks to a combination of enemies hitting so hard they make you wonder what the point even is of having a health bar, and janky as hell early 2000s 3D gameplay.

What puts this level and the ones after it in the final stretch is not just the insane challenge, but how early and how hard it hits you, making you not only frustrated with the game kicking your ass, but dreading the fact that it only gets harder from here.

And Ninja Gaiden as a series practically wrote the book on that little bit of psychological warfare, so naturally it would end up on this list.