10 Tough-As-Nails Strategy Game Missions That Made You Wave The White Flag

Speaking of vindictive, BattleTech is a game that can be every bit as punishing and Smithon is its most savage example.

Your mission is simple: capture a munitions depot by destroying two lances of eight mechs in addition to the emplaced long-range missile and laser turrets. This being BattleTech you have only four mechs of your own, but being outnumbered is not the problem – your real headache is the terrain.

You start close to the depot in a cramped natural amphitheater. Between you and the base is a ridge line that when crested will see your now fatally exposed mechs shredded by a wall of lethal firepower. Thus you are forced to fight in a constricted pocket, desperately trying to thin out the swarm of enemy mechs pouring over the ridge before you are overwhelmed, and you are having to do this while under a relentless barrage of long-range missiles that are mercilessly stripping the armour from your mechs.

At this stage, players would be familiar with difficult missions – the preceding one is hellish enough – but the spike in difficulty that is Liberate Smithon is so severe that many a player powered down and quit the game for good.