15 Most Brutally Hard Video Game Moments Of The Decade (So Far)

14. The Kid's Warp Zone - Super Meat Boy

From top to bottom, front to back, Super Meat Boy was designed to be a throwback to late 80s platforming and game design of that era in general. In other words: Pixel-perfect platforming, instant restarts... and b*stard hard difficulty.

To be fair, once you get SMB's sense of momentum down across the first world, the following levels aren't too bad to execute - it's more the length of the runs you're being asked to memorise that'll get in the way.

However... although The Kid is a beloved guest character from 2007's I Wanna Be The Guy, his war zones are brutal.

You can see the first above - just an awfully intimidating mesh of physics-abusing acrobatics, requiring you to use Kid's double jump to redirect yourself while in freefall - essentially not being able to rest from your first jump until the very end. Levels 2 and 3 within this zone take things further with more moving parts and tighter spaces to fit between - but that's only if you got past this in the first place.