10 TERRIBLE Video Game Levels That Took Away Your Powers

What are video games above all else? Power fantasies, of course, where from the comfort of our own homes we can be transported to far-flung worlds and toy with the powers of gods.

But at the same time, what is a game without some sort of challenge? We as players expect push-back from an increasingly difficult gallery of enemies, but sometimes developers decide to get a little more creative in how they make us run the gauntlet.

For games where the player is cast in the role of an especially powerful or well-armed individual, there are few tropes more common than stripping the player of their god-like abilities or huge arsenal of weaponry.

For a level or two, you're then forced to forge ahead with only bare bones gear - or perhaps even nothing at all.

Though these levels certainly can be fun when they make the player get resourceful in a creative or clever way, often they're simply an excuse to throw up obnoxious brick walls in the player's face and pad out the game's play-time.

That's certainly true of these 10 video game levels, because no matter how visually impressive or intriguing they initially seemed to be, getting through them was ultimately a tedious, infuriating slog...

Half-Life's ninth chapter, "Apprehension," ends with Gordon Freeman being knocked unconscious, stripped of all his weapons bar his trusty crowbar, and then dumped into an active trash compactor.

After the player gingerly escapes certain doom at the very end of the level, they're left to complete the bulk of the next chapter, "Residue Processing," without their precious array of weaponry.

Mercifully the player isn't forced into any awkward stealth-based encounters against enemies, but the level's focus on irritating platforming and traversal through a maze of conveyor-belts makes it a section which most fans dread playing through.

Thankfully Residue Processing is only around 10 minutes long, but it sure as hell feels a good while longer as you're playing it.