10 Most Brutally Difficult Opening Levels In Video Games
3. Mission 1 - Mega Man Zero 2
The Mega Man games were always on the tough side, but even fans of the series found the difficulty of the Game Boy Advance 'Zero' offshoots bordering on the absurd. Enemies are quick to attack, boss patterns are hard to learn without dying multiple times, and you can be attacked from off-screen.
The first mission of Mega Man Zero 2 doesn't hold back, and is a smorgasbord of precise platforming challenges - from bits of land crumbling beneath your feet, to catapult-firing enemies, to both of those things happening at once.
The gritty stage has a nasty halfway boss who bombards you with lasers, and at the end you face off against a menacing scorpion-bot-thing that attacks you with an alarmingly precise and devastating stinger. Someone needs to remind Capcom that this is supposed to be the opening level of a game, not a 2D platformer equivlanet to an assault course.