History Main / SchizophrenicDifficulty

->'''[[ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]]''', on ''{{Halo}} 3''.'''

[[AC:MMORPGs]]

[[caption-width-right:271:Charted for your convenience...]]

* EarthboundZero has a bad case of this, mostly due to the high random encounter rate. At least, until Mt. Itoi, where it spikes to an insane level and stays there.

** FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance has an abnormally difficult early game, due to a combination of mediocre starting units and a lack of chances for LevelGrinding. Once the RandomEncounters start showing up on the map, though, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from scooping up every last GameBreaker available, until the final boss's ridiculously powerful magic is the only thing that can actually stop you.

->''"The difficulty is also rather inconsistent, which probably comes from the design team being large enough to found a small island nation..."

* The ''{{Touhou}}'' [[AmateurPhotographer photography]] [[GaidenGame games]], [=''Shoot The Bullet''=] and ''Double Spoiler''. The games are broken into level, which are themselves broken into scenes. You unlock levels by either clearing a certain number of scenes from the preceding level or a certain number of scenes total. Anyway, the difficulty of both the scenes within a level and between the levels themselves can be staggering. For instance, the first level of ''Shoot The Bullet'' is mostly trivial, except for the very last scene, which is probably worse than anything in level 2. And ''Double Spoiler'' has level 11, which is markedly easier than the last three levels.

* The ''{{Touhou}}'' [[AmateurPhotographer photography]] [[GaidenGame games]], ''ShootTheBullet'' and ''Double Spoiler''. The games are broken into level, which are themselves broken into scenes. You unlock levels by either clearing a certain number of scenes from the preceding level or a certain number of scenes total. Anyway, the difficulty of both the scenes within a level and between the levels themselves can be staggering. For instance, the first level of ''Shoot The Bullet'' is mostly trivial, except for the very last scene, which is probably worse than anything in level 2. And ''Double Spoiler'' has level 11, which is markedly easier than the last three levels.

-- '''Yahtzee on ''{{Halo}} 3''.'''

->''"The difficulty is also rather inconsistent, which probably comes from the design team being large enough to found a small island nation... There were sequences really near the beginning that kicked my arse until I was wearing my buttocks like a hat, while [[AnticlimaxBoss the closest thing to a final boss fight is you versus a wheelchair-bound crosseyed hobbit]] and you're armed with the {{BFG}} 9000."''\\

* Most of the ''AdvanceWars'' games suffer from this with the difficulty peaking anywhere but the final boss fight and lots of late levels being total cakewalks.
** Your mileage may vary; the flexibility in terms of of what overall strategy the player will fall into means that the mission progression may be fairly sensible, or completely insane, depending on how well that strategy lines up with the game design.

* ''The Wonderful End of the World'' (basically a PC indie version of KatamariDamacy) suffers from this. In some levels you'll collect enough stuff to get an A+ rank with a third of the timer remaining, while in others you'll scramble up to the last second and still only earn a B rank. The very first level is an example of the former, but '''one of the two levels it unlocks''' falls into the latter.

* In ''[[MortalKombat Mortal Kombat 2]]'', Jade was a secret boss, with the [[SNKBoss cheap AI]] that you might expect from a boss. In ''[=MK3=]'', Jade was a selectable character, but the programmers never fixed her AI. Considering that it was almost entirely random when, or even if, you fought Jade in single player mode, she was a single-handed example of this trope.

* The online Tower Defense game ''Easter Island TD'' goes beyond this to chaotic difficulty. The same layout on the same level in different games can give wildly varying results. So much for keeping notes.

** The first Mystery Dungeon games may also apply. They begin quite easy, then you face the three legendary birds when you aren't even Lv. 20, and Articuno is ThatOneBoss. Afterwards, it becomes absurdly easy until you finish the story. Then you meet a DifficultySpike in the next three dungeons (first one with much tougher enemies, the second goes heavy on traps and the thirs have pokémon that seem random, but have all kinds of GameBreaker properties). Then the difficulty plummets down for a while until you get to the ultimate dungeons.

* In ''DeadRising'', the combination of the mall layout and the time constraints can make one mission incredibly hard and the next incredibly easy. Rescue from the hardware store? [[ChainsawGood Piece of Cake]]! Rescuing people from the toy store? [[JokeWeapon Not so much]].
* ''{{Descent}} 2'' had Schizophrenic Difficulty, with many spikes and troughs along the gently rising slope. In some sections the robots could be picked off with ease, yet just around the corner one false move would see a phalanx of murderous mechs erupt from the floors and walls, firing blinding flares and flooding your lines of retreat with bouncing shots... It didn't seem to make for a bad game, though, since it was enjoyably unpredictable, but only rarely NintendoHard.
* ''PuzzleQuestGalactrix''. Oh, boy, Puzzle Quest Galactrix. Specifically, the whole "fixing jumpgates" thing, which is not just schizophrenic, but positively hebephrenic (really obscure psychology joke).

* The single-player campaign of ''Dawn of War: Soulstorm''. The difficulty levels of each of the nine stronghold levels vary wildly with no way of knowing which ones are the hardest until you've already played through the game. The Ork and Dark Eldar strongholds are cakewalks (assuming you have enough Honor Guard to get past the initial zerg-rush/maze), the Space Marine, Eldar, and Necron strongholds are about average difficulty, the Sisters, Tau, and Chaos strongholds are hard, but doable, and the Imperial Guard stronghold is nigh-impossible for anyone who lacks a lightning-quick clicking finger.
** This has a lot to do with the gimmicks the game employs at the strongholds and the schizophrenic rock paper scissors relationship that the different factions have to one another.
* The online Tower Defense game ''Easter Island TD'' goes beyond this to chaotic difficulty. The same layout on the same level in different games can give wildly varying results. So much for keeping notes.
* Several reviews that describe ''TheLastRemnant'' as painfully erratic in its difficulty, which leads to a lot of [[AnticlimaxBoss disappointing boss fights]] as well as CheapDeath. There's nothing quite like walking into an area and starting a normal fight with really high morale (suggesting you're a lot stronger than them and should have visited 'properly' when you were weaker) and then getting whipped by the boss.
* ''[=~Pokémon~=]'' can often suffer from this, depending on which starter you choose. Three-quarters of the first gyms are rock-type, which are 2x weak to water and grass, but resistant to fire. The fact that the only other 'mons available early on in the game are normal, flying and bug types, [[strike:all]] the latter two of which are also weak against rock, doesn't help, and neither does the prevelance of caves filled with rock-types early on in the game. Yet your fire-type starter can breeze through many of the gyms and locations later on.
** This is really more of a LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards scenario, kinda (the difference being that it isn't the abilities of your own character that causes the effect, but the way that they play against the game's world setup). It isn't so much that the game doesn't know how difficult it's supposed to be as that it rewards you later for taking the hard road early on. Many guides advise Bulbasaur for beginners and Charmander for advanced players, although the game itself doesn't give you that hint - and of course, many unwary beginners choose the cooler-sounding fire-breathing lizard over the other two, leading to a bit of a GuideDangIt.
** And actually, if you know where to look, every single game hands out at least two wild mons that are supereffective against the first gym, aside from Red & Blue. Yellow lets you get either Nidoran, which will learn Double Kick (Unlike in the original games) and one or two HKO Brock's team. Mankey would be even better, and it's also easy to do with Butterfree's psychic moves (Which you can get in any version). Johto gives you access to Geodude, who's rock type is supereffective against birds, and the 4th gen remake is even easier and hands you Mareep, which in the original version was only accessible AFTER defeating the first gym. Hoenn is almost pathetically easy. In that game there's immediate access to two pure grass types, a water type, a grass/water type, a water/bug type, and a psychic type, all right on the path to the first gym. Roxanne is practically BEGGING you to beat her. Sinnoh isn't QUITE as silly and only gives you one grass and one fighting (Budew & Machop, though that could change in Platinum.) If you play the way the game was intended to be played, by catching a variety of pokemon and then actually knowing something about type match ups, the gym battles shouldn't be that difficult.
** The first Mystery Dungeon games may also apply. They begin quite easy, then you face the three legendary birds when you aren't even Lv. 20, and Articuno is ThatOneBoss. Afterwards, it becomes absurdly easy until you finish the story. Then you meet a DifficultySpike in the next three dungeons (first one with much tougher enemies, the second goes heavy on traps and the thirs have pokémon that seem random, but have all kinds of GameBreaker properties). Then the difficulty plummets down for a while until you get to the ultimate dungeons.

* Most of the ''AdvanceWars'' games suffer from this with the difficulty peaking anywhere but the final boss fight and lots of late levels being total cakewalks.
** Your mileage may vary; the flexibility in terms of of what overall strategy the player will fall into means that the mission progression may be fairly sensible, or completely insane, depending on how well that strategy lines up with the game design.
* Most of the levels of ''AlteredBeast: Guardian of the Realms'' are a breeze ([[BossDissonance in contrast to the bosses]]) except for a few scattered levels that are intensely and inexplicably difficult (the hardest probably being the fifth). Difficult levels don't seem to get any more (or less) frequent as you near the end, either.
* ''The Wonderful End of the World'' (basically a PC indie version of KatamariDamacy) suffers from this. In some levels you'll collect enough stuff to get an A+ rank with a third of the timer remaining, while in others you'll scramble up to the last second and still only earn a B rank. The very first level is an example of the former, but '''one of the two levels it unlocks''' falls into the latter.
* ''GuitarHero World Tour''. The setlists are made so that, instead of a linear progression like in previous games, you have a handful of setlists you can choose at any time. Fair enough, but that's not where the crazy difficulty comes in. The setlists themselves seem to have been spastically arranged. A fairly easy setlist with Spiderwebs and Eye of the Tiger ends with a fairly crazy Zakk Wylde Battle, and another setlist has Sweet Home Alabama, which has a ridiculously hard solo, sandwiched between the far easier Are You Gonna Go My Way and Assassin. Pretty sure TheyJustDidntCare.
** Also, most band games are unavoidably like this when playing in a group. Even if the songs are ordered properly by band difficulty, one is probably going to be harder on guitar and another harder on drums, etc.
* ''{{Might and Magic}} IX'' had this, mainly because it was only [[{{ObviousBeta}} half-finished]] as shipped and the resulting gameplay had some rather noticeable flaws. The first part of the game seemed more neglected than anything else, resulting in a "tutorial" stage that was punishingly difficult due mostly to a lack of any sort of preparation. Trying to follow the "main path" of the game past that point led through a somewhat stable difficulty curve, but any sort of deviation from where the game automatically expected you to go quickly led to the discovery of numerous side quests which could be completed without placing your team in any form of danger whatsoever, making the rest of the first half of the game ludicrously easy. The difficulty eventually spikes back up out of nowhere before bottoming out again, and varies depending largely on which promotion quests you decide to do.
* All the levels in ''{{Battletoads}}'' are hard, but not sequentially so. Level 3 has the racers, which are virtually impossible, while level 5 has the surfboards, which, while difficult, aren't as bad. In some levels, every obstacle is instant death, while in some other, later levels, all obstacles take one or two units of health.
* From Jahara to Giruvegan storywise, ''FinalFantasyXII'' is all over the place.

** SonicRush also does this. Especially as Blaze, as her level order is different to Sonic's.

* ''SeriousSam - The First Encounter'', most notably in harder difficulties. Last room in the third level raises the difficulty, then it goes down again. While Dunes is harder level, the following Suburbs and Sewers are [[BreatherLevel Breather Levels.]] Metropolis, on the other hand raises the difficulty again a lot which won't let down until the end of Karnak and afterwards the difficulty starts to jump up and down very frequently.
* ''RedFaction: Guerrilla''. Some main missions are laughably easy, some are hair-tearing hard. And normally the game is damn hard too, but not always.
* The levels in the original ''Populous'' were generated with an algorithim. A side effect was that there were some hard levels quite early in the game, a bunch of easy levels near the end, and the hardest level in the game was around the middle
* While otherwise a very good game, ''FinalFantasyTactics'' suffered from this. The first few battles are easy (though the second battle can be hard if you opt for the more difficult win condition), the 4th battle is extremely hard, the 5th battle is easy, the 6th and 7th battles are somewhat challenging, the 8th battle is easy, the end chapter battle is hard if you don't figure out a specific strategy, then the first half of chapter 2 is easy, mixed with a few randomly hard battles. Chapter 3 throws out battles of varying difficulties though easier than the hardest battles in chapter 2, then suddenly has a sequence of 4 battles, 2 easy, 2 of some of the most obnoxious {{Scrappy Level}}s in any videogame ever (a 1 on 1 fight against ThatOneBoss and an Escort Misson, with the weakest, stupidest, most suicidal escort EVER). Chapter 4 starts likes Chapter 3 but a bit easier, then gives you a GameBreaker character who kills the remaining difficulty of the game.
** Of course, if you grind for high level jobs, say, the Ninja, the Dancer, or if you really wanna take the fun out the game, the Calculator, this game difficult curve becomes flat as a pancake. Granted, the escort missions are still going to be a pain in the butt, but that's nothing a crack team of Blade Grasping, Move+3 ninjas can't solve.
* ''{{Persona 4}}'' starts with 2 extremely easy dungeons, then a [[WakeUpCallBoss Wake Up Call Dungeon]] followed by one of the hardest bosses in the game. The next dungeon is a good step harder than that and has possibly the HARDEST story boss (almost the only other boss you will actually need to grind against), then the next dungeon is easier, with a challenging but not hair pulling boss, the next dungeon is a little harder, with a boss nearly as hard as the 2 very hard early game bosses, then the next dungeon is easier, and the next dungeon... but the boss difficulty finally spikes. Then there's a dungeon mixed with enemies that are either really annoying, or really weak, and bosses of varying challenges, then you get the end bosses, who are mostly pretty easy. Being a ShinMegamiTensei the game is never truly easy and will always punish you for being careless or not having a proper strategy or not adapting, until the final dungeon, where the game becomes very easy, the bosses' attacks are mediocre, and your healing is too good (and you can grind for a broken 8 hit skill)
** This troper found the game easy. The first boss is taken care of easily by using Valkyrie, the second is made much easier by using Rakshasa, the third and fourth become total cakewalks by using a Rakshasa to fuse an Ose, the boss after that is easily taken care of with a bit of luck and Black Frost, and the game after that is fairly easy save for a few cheap shots by enemy mobs.
* ''DevilSurvivor'' has this a little bit as well. Day 1 has a tutorial, followed by a nasty WakeUpCallBoss ten levels higher than you right after the tutorial, and [[EarlyBirdBoss you can't fuse demons]] until you beat him... and once you do beat him, your fusion makes short work of the demons for the rest of the day. Day 2 is only a little harder, till the end mission, which is an EscortMission, and therefore automatically a big pain. Day 3 is pretty easy, except for the boss at the end who is ThatOneBoss. Day 4 is a little harder, Day 5 is a mix of {{Scrappy Level}}s and {{Breather Level}}s, Day 6 is mostly pretty easy, and unless you choose Yuzu's route, Day7 is an excercise in forced grinding.
* In ''[[MortalKombat Mortal Kombat 2]]'', Jade was a secret boss, with the [[SNKBoss cheap AI]] that you might expect from a boss. In ''[=MK3=]'', Jade was a selectable character, but the programmers never fixed her AI. Considering that it was almost entirely random when, or even if, you fought Jade in single player mode, she was a single-handed example of this trope.
* ''Ufo Aftershock'' borders on this trope and multiple [[DifficultySpike difficulty spikes]]. First mutant mission is a cakewalk, but as soon as on third mission you can encounter very tough shotgun-wielding humanoid mutants (by that time you have only Alien laser weapons, which have pathetic range and damage) and fast sniper-ranged star like mutants, both of them can kill any of your unskilled soldiers with [[OneHitKill single critical hit]]. After you acquire shotguns for yourself it gets a bit easier. Another spike comes when Cultists come into play. On first mission against them you have to catch "real" cultists off guard on close range with your whole squad to bring them down without losses, mid range engagement is just a suicicde. Second cultist mission is back to just difficult, because of captured equipement (especialy weapon mods). When you get sniper rifles, scopes and trained Snipers, game goes from whatever difficulty it was to easy. Later, Starghost enemies raise difficulty a bit because they are either highly resistant (more resistant armour then anything before) nonhumaniod (preventing called shots) robots or actual ghosts (called Psionic projections) imune to your standard issue [[ImprobableAimingSkills fully modded]] AP loaded [[AwesomeYetPractical XM8]], [[GameBreaker MSG90]] and [[GunsAkimbo dual]] [[MoreDakka MP5]] forcing at least one of your (now [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower Super]])Soldiers to waste backpack space to carry [[SniperRifle Ultra]][[StunGuns SonicGun]].
* This as a common criticism of ''TheBeatles: RockBand'', whose Story Mode tracklist is organized by release date instead of difficulty, meaning the difficulty varies wildly between songs: For example, some of the game's easiest guitar songs (''Hello Goodbye'' and ''Getting Better'') are just one or two tiers away from some of the hardest (''Revolution'', ''Birthday'' and ''Back In The USSR''), while ''I Saw Her Standing There'', quite possibly the hardest bass song in the game, is in the very first tier.
* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' also falls prey to this trope - especially on PvP servers. Certain zones can be unplayable due to ganking and quest difficulty can frequently fluctuate depending on how enemies differ between areas.
** Low-level players first encountering Gnomeregan may notice a surprising leap in difficulty compared to earlier dungeons.
** Zones made before any of the expansions (Levels 1-60) are somewhat more difficult than higher-level zones introduced in the expansions (Levels 60-80). Quests are also usually more time consuming as well requiring TwentyBearAsses rather then eight.
* ''BattleCity'' and somewhat its sequel ''Tank Force'' has this syndrome too.
* Durring the open beta, ''StarTrekOnline'' suffered from this, with the episodes and missions immediately following the tutorial being unreasonably (to the point of unplayable) difficult at times. By the time you got to level 11 where the difficulty was supposed to pick up, it actually dropped off some.
* ''{{Mushihime-sama}} Futari Black Label'' brings us God mode, which replaces version 1.5's [[HarderThanHard Ultra]]. Stage 1 starts off already difficult, but Stage 2 somehow manages to be easier, thanks to the immense slowdown and the many, MANY opportunities to cancel bullets and rack up hundreds of millions of points. Then the game goes back to being very NintendoHard with the Stage 2 boss.
* ''RedDeadRevolver'' had some levels that were too easy, some that were just right and incredibly fun and some that caused many a player to throw the controller across the room in frustration.

* This seems to happen a lot in both traditional RPGS and MMORPGs, in general. Earlier levels can actually be harder because your characters don't yet have many items or skills. Then, middle content can become a breeze once you've got your hands on some decent equipment and spells, only to find yourself butting heads with a [[ThatOneBoss enemy]] [[WakeUpCallBoss that forces you to get serious again]]. Finally, end game content can either be disappointingly easy, again as a result of having now acquired the best weapons and spells in the game, or mind-numbingly impossible, when all the awesome loot and cool powers in the game world mean nothing to your even more [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard powerful enemies]].
* Mickey Mania has 6 levels. The first, Steamboat Willy, is very easy. #2, The Mad Doctor, is likely the second most difficult level in the game (the difficulty jump between the first two levels is ridiculous). #3, Moose Hunters, is medium-hard, but quite short. #4, Lonesome Ghosts, is pretty hard. #5, Mickey & The Beanstalk, is about medium. And the final stage, The Prince & The Pauper, is quite merciless. It has five incredibly difficult segments to it (though the first isn't too bad), plus the final boss (who takes forever to kill and can mess you up if not careful).
* Anything ''GrandTheftAuto'' - some missions are so easy they could be accomplished by a five-year-old ([[RatedMForMoney not that they ''should'', mind you]]), while others are so frustratingly hard that you'll probably want to either break your TV, your controller, or both.
* Real life example: Sudoku puzzles generated by a computer. While technically solvable, the difficult is all over the place.
** It doesn't help that there are many random Sudoku puzzles that can have multiple valid solutions. Very seldom are the computer games that generate these puzzles willing to actually check if the solution the player comes up with is as legitimate as the "correct" solution the computer creates, instead requiring the player to somehow psychically deduce exactly which numbers need to be swapped around to achieve the one "correct" solution.
* The ''{{Touhou}}'' [[AmateurPhotographer photography]] [[GaidenGame games]], ''ShootTheBullet'' and ''Double Spoiler''. The games are broken into level, which are themselves broken into scenes. You unlock levels by either clearing a certain number of scenes from the preceding level or a certain number of scenes total. Anyway, the difficulty of both the scenes within a level and between the levels themselves can be staggering. For instance, the first level of ''Shoot The Bullet'' is mostly trivial, except for the very last scene, which is probably worse than anything in level 2. And ''Double Spoiler'' has level 11, which is markedly easier than the last three levels.
* Arguably several missions in the "Rise of the Empire" campaign of [[StarWarsBattlefront Star Wars Battlefront II]]. In general, the campaign isn't very difficult, but some missions (A Line in the Sand, Knightfall, Tying Up Loose Ends, etc.) are unusually difficult, others are fairly easy, and in short, no two levels have the same diffiulty.

* ''FinalFantasyIV'' for the DS had this in its dungeons. You expect, as you go through the levels of a dungeon, that as you progress the monsters will get harder the farther you get from the entrance. In many FFIV dungeons, though, this is reversed. The nastiest monster in the Tower of Zot, the Frostbeast, likes to hang around the entrance--and its PaletteSwap upgrade, the Flamehound, is only found in the lowest levels of the Tower of Babil despite being a right nightmare. In the Sealed Cave, while the [[spoiler:doors]] are everywhere, the Chimera Brain with its awful Blaze attack is most often found in the first half of the dungeon. TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon appears to have a more standard difficulty curve, with DemonicSpiders of increasing levels of meanness populating the first several floors, then floors with ''only'' BossInMookClothing (or DegradedBoss, depending on your perspective) encounters, and then, right before the FinalBoss...ridiculously weak enemies. What the hell, FFIV?
* ProfessorLayton had an amazingly twisted difficulty curve, which of course varies from person to person, seeing as it's a puzzle game (and people might have done some before). But [[ThatOneLevel some]] [[ScrappyLevel levels]] *coughchocolatecodecough* are consistently frustrating.

* SuperMarioSunshine has 10 [[ThatOneLevel difficult sub-levels]] peppered across the game where Mario loses FLUDD. After playing one or two of them, players will know that the cutscene of Mario losing FLUDD means a tough star ahead. A tough ''mandatory'' star in all 10 cases.
* StarTrekEliteForce II. The difficulty yo-yos up and down the whole game, with a plague of DemonicSpiders near the ''beginning'' followed by a single, supposedly more fearsome specimen -- built up as a major BossFight -- who goes down almost instantly. Or compare the warp core level, where you have to shoot dozens of targets (without hitting the DestroyableItems!) within a merciless time limit, with the endgame, where there's a single monster you need to kill, a gun that can do so in a handful of shots, ''no'' time limit, and ''infinite health and ammo rechargers.''
----

*** And actually, if you know where to look, every single game hands out at least two wild mons that are supereffective against the first gym. In the first gen all you need is any kind of Nidoran, which will learn double kick and one or two HKO Brock's team. Mankey would be even better, and it's also easy to do with Butterfree's psychic moves. Johto gives you access to Geodude, who's rock type is supereffective against birds, and the 4th gen remake is even easier and hands you Mareep, which in the original version was only accessible AFTER defeating the first gym. Hoenn is almost pathetically easy. In that game there's immediate access to two pure grass types, a water type, a grass/water type, a water/bug type, and a psychic type, all right on the path to the first gym. Roxanne is practically BEGGING you to beat her. Sinnoh isn't QUITE as silly and only gives you one grass and one fighting (Budew & Machop, though that could change in Platinum, which is the one version this troper has never played.) The problems caused by picking your starter are, in this Troper's opinion, fake difficulty because. If you play the way the game was intended to be played, by catching a variety of pokemon and then actually knowing something about type match ups, the gym battles shouldn't be that difficult.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ar121826784646303.png
-->''"The difficulty is also rather inconsistent, which probably comes from the design team being large enough to found a small island nation... There were sequences really near the beginning that kicked my arse until I was wearing my buttocks like a hat, while [[AnticlimaxBoss the closest thing to a final boss fight is you versus a wheelchair-bound crosseyed hobbit]] and you're armed with the {{BFG}} 9000."''
-->''Yahtzee on Halo 3.''

[[caption-width:271:Charted for your convenience...]]This happens when a game has a difficulty curve that makes no sense. The game isn't always hard. It isn't always easy. It just can't seem to make up its mind. There are even portions that seem to be the perfect difficulty, but you never know when one will turn up. Maybe there's an element of the game design that does not work particularly well. Maybe the developers just had no clue what they were doing. Whatever the case, you've run into SchizophrenicDifficulty.

* In ''{{The Beatles Rock Band}}'' the Career Mode has you play the songs in the order that they were released, which isn't necessarily the order of their difficulty.

-->''"The difficulty is also rather inconsistent, which probably comes from the design team being large enough to found a small island nation... There were sequences really near the beginning that kicked my arse until I was wearing my buttocks like a hat, while the closest thing to a final boss fight is you versus a wheelchair-bound crosseyed hobbit and you're armed with the {{BFG}} 9000."''