10 More Brutally Difficult First-Person Shooter Levels In Video Game History

The Hazardous Environment Combat Unit. If you’re a Half-Life veteran you’re grinding your teeth right now. If you’ve yet to play the game, or its remake Black Mesa, don’t worry, you’ll learn. The soldiers of the HECU are Half-Life’s most infamous enemies: tanky, smart and lethal, no list of deadliest video game grunts would be complete without them.

Now imagine a level absolutely chock full of them. Then add a helicopter gunship that hounds your steps while raining down murderous cannon fire; tough alien soldiers which can shoot around corners; snipers cynically placed to shoot you in the back; hidden mines that need to be winkled out using grenades; infantry fighting vehicles that must be fought head-on; a trip-mine laced munitions storage facility that must be navigated with millimetric precision and a towering alien monster the size of a house. Throw all of that into an hour-long, relentless assault on your skills, and you have Surface Tension.

But for all its exhausting, often unfair, challenge Surface Tension rewards the player by also being the best level in the game: a spectacular, cinematic masterpiece that, unlike most of the entries on this list, will have you itching to try it again.