These Video Game Difficulty Spikes SUCK!

When it comes to video games, there's very little more infuriating than encountering a horrendous difficulty spike. Your journey to take on the Big Evil of the land was going so well up until this point, you'd slain the hog beast of the danken-mire, trounced the troublesome Red-Eyed Ogre of Hayfever Mountain, and even come out on top against the horrendous Haddock-Men from Fry Pan cove, but now you're being made to look a right tit thanks to a jumped-up regular enemy which is now, for some ungodly reason, giving you the business.

It's rather deflating is the point I'm trying to make, and it's actually a huge point of contention amongst players when such spikes are sharp enough to bloody well impale yourself on, as it speaks to a wider issue of game design and implementation of challenge. In theory, a video game should present a challenge to the player that slowly ramps up as their skills increase creating a nice smooth curve culminating in a tough bastard of a final boss battle, yet the games we're going to look at today offered a ramp so steep that even Eddie the f*cking Eagle gave it a pass.

So buckle up as we're about to get salty.

You know how sometimes you look at your younger siblings and think, "aww I really don't look forward to the day that they become as jaded and bitter as me", well if you want to preserve a semblance of purity in their lives, never under any circumstances let them play the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES.

I know it's a rather random scenario but trust me it's worth a warning.

You see while the game looks like butter wouldn't melt in it's mouth, the game is actually a raging skip fire when it comes to one level in particular, which is so sharp of a difficulty spike that it will be able to pierce even the tough turtle shells of our heroes in short order.

In the damn section, you've got to defuse a set number of bombs in a rather tight time limit. No worries you might think to yourself, surely the pizza-loving brothers will be able to see this derring-do through? Well, I got news for you friend, as thanks to the placement of stinging seaweed that will sap your life essence like you're in a dead-end relationship, and electrified gates that bar progress causing you to lose precious time, the only pizza you'll be experiencing is this pizza-s**t level again and again.

If ever there was a level that turned hero to zero this was it, as unless you're a pixel-perfect swimmer or have enough lives stocked up, The Dam surely lived up to its name as you cursed its existence forevermore. It's a right shame as well because the rest of the game by comparison is an utter cakewalk!