10 Levels Everybody HATED From Recent Video Games
Stealth in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is always a major drag.
We all hate it when we're having a great time playing a game and then, bam - all that fun grinds to a halt in one level we just can't stand.
Game design is hard, and maintaining an entertaining time for hours and hours is extremely challenging, so it shouldn't be surprising that even the finest devs drop the ball occasionally.
And from poring over the last year-or-so of video games, these are the ones that offered up a single infuriating level that left players absolutely spare.
Perhaps they presented a ridiculous difficulty spike which caught everyone off-guard, changed-up the gameplay in an unexpected and ultimately underwhelming way, or simply took place in a dull setting and killed the game's pacing dead.
These are the levels that give players pause when they consider revisiting these games, because whether brief or brutally long, they're all levels that were far more of a chore than a good time.
After all, gaming shouldn't feel like a job you dread getting through, and so there's a case to be made that some of these maddening levels should've just been cut entirely...
10. The Sewers - Stray
There's absolutely no denying that Stray is one of the biggest fan favourite games of the year - an incredibly accessible adventure in which players control an adorable stray cat in a walled, dystopian cybercity.
But the game's eighth level, "The Sewers", is a bit of a damp squib in an otherwise riveting journey.
Though moody and atmospheric to a point, it's hampered by the irritation of having to repeatedly deal with massive swarms of Zurks - a fleet of grotesque, mutated bug-like creatures which can make short work of you if you let them.
You're required to use your ultra-violet light weapon to explode the Zurks, or otherwise make a mad dash away from them.
If hardly brutally difficult, it's nevertheless the least-chill area of the game, and the part which surely gave casual players the most trouble.
In tandem with the relatively repetitive environments, this made the sewers a staid 20-minute lull in an otherwise splendid experience.