7 Video Games That Are BEST On The Hardest Difficulty

Ask any true and blue pig iron hip wearing Mojave Wanderer what difficulty mode wakes them up like a Sunset Sasparilla enema and they will say without a shred of hesitation that "Hardcore Mode is the way to go partner".

Also, you can keep that Star Cap I suddenly don't want it.

What makes Hardcore Mode such a brilliant (and still punishing experience) is that it takes everything that Fallout is known best for and doubles down on it. By this, I mean that it focuses on player immersion, and instead of injecting all of the Beef Gates enemies with a mass of bullet spongey steroids, instead turns it's attention to the player themselves.

By making bullets contribute to your weight limit, by only allowing HP to be restored through healing items and not just through sleeping off a concussion, and by having hunger and thirst levels become part of the experience you start to view the Mojave in a totally different light.

Whereas before you were traipsing through a wild but ultimately desolate world, here you were moving frantically between locations in order to scavenge food, and each footstep into the desert was to invite death not only from the more aggressive wildlife but also from the environment itself.

Oh and your companions can die permanently. So yeah let's add some emotional acid to our non-auto-healing wounds.

I love playing New Vegas on this mode, and arguably it makes the best Fallout game somehow even better.