10 TERRIBLE Levels That Stopped You Replaying Great Video Games
6. Blighttown - Dark Souls
Dark Souls occupies a place on this list for reasons very different to the usual fare of incongruous difficulty, poor design or out-of-place mechanics. After all, the Souls series is known on the basis of being so difficult that many players won't make it very far at all. The games require a great deal of patience to get on board with, but are generally seen as being tough but ultimately fair.
The subterranean, disease ridden slum of Blighttown flouts this "tough but fair" notion. The location itself is not especially difficult by design (it's tricky but not unfair), but its issue lies in its shockingly poor optimisation. With its large draw distance rife with clutter and overabundance of complex particles, the framerate when traversing the putrid city frequently drops to around 15fps. For a game whose mechanics are heavily focused on frame-perfect combat, this kind of lag makes it virtually unplayable.
Combat becomes so frustratingly difficult that it seemingly makes more sense to avoid enemies altogether, thus leaving the player under-levelled for the challenges that lie ahead. It might not have mattered so much if the area was pretty, but it's basically a shanty town made of poo, and therefore visually repugnant.