History ThatOneLevel / FirstPersonShooter

*** Rhen Var Harbor for the Alliance or Separatists. The map is big enough that the Imperials and Republic get their heavy AT-AT and AT-TE walkers, but not wide enough that the Rebellion get T-47 airspeeders, their only efficient defense against the AT-AT; they, and the Separatists in general, only get light vehicles, which are destroyed in one hit by the walkers' main weapons. Worse is that they function as mobile spawn points as well, which can pop out anti-vehicle troops to hit anything the AT-AT and AT-TE can't, and which ''respawn'' after a minute or so even if the opposing side somehow manages to destroy it.

** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E3M5:_Unholy_Cathedral_(Doom) E3M5: Unholy Cathedral]] is relatively quick, but even the most optimal path through the level still requires you to go through almost every room in it, slowly slogging through waves of pinkies and cacodemons as you struggle to find out which teleporter in which corner of the center courtyard leads to where you actually need to go.

** The [=EnPro=] plant goes on for an eternity, is very dark and cramped, and is filled with Cherubs and Ticks that just love ambushing you from dark corners.

* ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'' has Ord Mantell. First off, you have to jump from train to train; if you miss a train, you lose a life. If you fall off, you lose a life. If you don't jump over or crouch under various bars across the tracks, you take so much damage that it's effectively another life lost. This is made worse by three facts: First, you've only played one first-person shooter level to this point, secondly, it wasn't the last one, and lastly ''hello, realistic jumping physics!!''

[[folder: Call of Duty]]

** The crown of the hardest missions in Far Cry 3 is "Doppelganger". The goal is sneaking past Privateers with only using rocks. Privateers can easily detect you making a mission a failure and there's too many of them so prepare to fail this mission way too many times even if you're playing in the easiest difficulty. If you don't have the "Jungle Run" skill which makes you move faster when crouching, it makes the mission [[FromBadToWorse a extreme nightmare as hell to complete]].

* ''VideoGame/SouthPark'': While the game as a whole is quite hated, the level widely considered the most tedious and annoying of all is "One Mother Of A Ship", where you have to kill a large amount of aliens in order to enter the mothership and beat the level. It's not particularly hard, it's incredibly borring and time consuming.

* ''VideoGame/Receiver2'': Liminal, the 4th rank out of 5, is almost universally considered the most difficult rank in the entire game. The rank is extremely stingy with tapes & ammunition pickups, which makes it much more costly to miss shots, fail to hit a Killdrone in a weak spot, break windows if you can't run through them, or simply check the wrong room in the first place. And that's just the beginning, this rank also introduces [[HeavilyArmoredMook Armored Turrets]] that are immune to almost all handgun calibers from the front. The only 2 handgun calibers that can punch through it, .45 Long Colt and .50 Action Express, belonging to the Colt Single Action Army and Desert Eagle respectively; neither of which you're likely to spawn with at this rank. On top of that, the Ceiling Turrets introduced in Sleepwalker become far more common in this rank, and ''they too'' can be armored. Also, Killdrone placement becomes horrifyingly erratic, as some areas have so many Turrets placed in nearly impossible to flank locations (doubly so for Ceiling Turrets, especially in low light conditions), with Armored Turrets frequently watching doors, Ceiling Turrets consistently covering blind spots, and Shock Drones gaining the ability to not just idle and turn, but to actually patrol just about every corner of an area. And to top it all off, this rank introduces Security Cameras, which alert every Killdrone in the area to your current position. Beating this rank often requires patience, ''very'' careful observation, {{improbable aiming skills}}, and a '''mountain of luck'''.

## The centerpiece of the level is a gargantuan [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous fuck you trap]], with the shuttle bay doors closing and forcing you to open them in order to complete the mission. Climbing the ladder up to them borders on impossible, and beating the mission can only be done by closing the doors yourself because the final script switches state without checking if they're open or closed. Yes, you can only win by exploiting a programming oversight.

* Taras Nabad in ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' features not one, but two [[DemonicSpiders Marauder]] fights, and introduces the infamous Archvile not once, but twice. And an encounter with not one, but two Cyber Mancubuses where the resources you need for the Blood Punch to break their armor ({{Mook}}s to Glory Kill) are in short supply, among other nefariously designed situations. Like crowds of demons in tight corridors.

** Its sequel, ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 4}}'', kept up the tradition with its own ThatOneLevel: Mission 12, Old Granite Hotel. [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment Spoony]] had to bring his Let's Play to a halt in order to explain in detail just why it's so ridiculous. In short, domestic terrorists (again) have seized the top floors of a hotel that is currently being renovated. This time, the bastards have only planted 3 bombs. Four, if you count one that you stumble across without effort. However, the other three bombs are in random places on the very top floor, and you have a MUCH tighter time limit (ten minutes) to find them. Once again, this might sound like a lot of time, but the mechanics of the game are working against you. There are a large amount of terrorists roaming the top floor, and they still have Improbable Aiming Skills. New to this game is locational damage, meaning that if you get shot once in a place that's not the torso, you've pretty much failed the mission. A leg shot means you can't move fast enough to disarm the bombs, an arm shot will make you wildly inaccurate, and head shots are of course instant death. You can send in your squadmates ahead of you, but not only do they take a great deal of time to breach a single door by themselves, they're likely to die without your support. But if you concentrate on helping them clear rooms, there's a good chance you won't find all the bombs in time! All this, plus there's an entire other floor to clear. On both floors, the terrorists are all hiding in ambush points with their guns pointed straight at your inevitable entryway, which brings us to the most noticeable issue with this level: The scoring system. While ''SWAT 3'' also had awarded you points for taking in suspects alive and took points away for using deadly force unlawfully, in ''SWAT 4'', you have to get a certain number of points to actually move past a level. This means that you can successfully disarm all the bombs, eliminate the enemy threat, and get sent back to the beginning of the mission because you shot someone with an assault rifle without giving away your position by shouting "Stop, police!" beforehand.

** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP10:_Refueling_Base_(Doom_II) MAP10: Refueling Base]] has a huge number of enemies - close to 300 on Ultra-Violence and Nightmare! difficulties - and a good chunk of them are former humans, which are easy to kill but have hitscan weapons, which means you'll find yourself taking lots of damage.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' has [[DisappointingLastLevel Xen]]. The whole crux of it. You just went through going through Black Mesa, fighting for your life against an alien invasion and a military clean up battalion. What are you treated with? Platformer hell. It's so widely disliked that the fan remake ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'' released without the Xen chapters, with the aim of making them more bearable before releasing them later on - it took them over five years to release their vision of Xen, which is roughly 70% brand-new content.

** ''The All Americans'' two-parter takes everything that was bad about ''Push Into Carentan'' and takes it UpToEleven. The STG-44 armed Panzergrenadiers are back, complete with the Panzer IV tanks. What could possibly make it worse, you might ask? 88mm guns, of course! And just like ''Push Into Carentan'', you have no tank support, meaning you alone have to take out all the tanks and gun positions with Panzerfausts you can find. Enjoy.

** ''After Montignac'': For the first time in this game, instead of orders, you're given free roam of the island. [[spoiler: [[BadNewsIrrelevantNews That's the good news.]] The bad news is that you're given free roam of the island because [[SoleSurvivor your whole squad got mowed down by a Hind at the end of the previous mission]]. You're stuck in the middle of the forest. Enemies are rapidly closing on to you, and if you don't move, they'll find your location in 15 seconds. Your radio is broken, so you can't call for help. There is an evacuation, but it's 2 kilometers away from your position, and [[TrappedBehindEnemyLines you'll have to cut through enemy territory to get there]]. There's a tank on the border of the forest you're in, waiting for you to pop out so it can blow you to pieces, and even if you deal with it, you'll still be dogged by the Hind that massacred the rest of your squad for the rest of the mission unless you manage to sneak away from it or you somehow deal with it too. And, if that wasn't bad enough, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking there's also a fog rolling in]]. But wait, [[FromBadToWorse it gets even worse!]] When you're some ways through the mission, [[MissionControl Papa Bear]] will announce that the evac zone got overrun, and they've got a secondary evac site, so you'll have to change directions and head for the secondary evac instead. [[UpToEleven And when you FINALLY get there, you find everyone dead, AND you're taken prisoner by enemies!]] This mission isn't hard if you know what you're doing and what route to take, but by introducing this relatively early in the campaign, this mission will likely kick a new player's ass over and over, [[EstablishingSeriesMoment showing just what kind of game this is]].]]

** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E1M3:_Toxin_Refinery_(Doom) E1M3: Toxin Refinery]] doesn't get too difficult, as one would expect from the third map of the game, until you bump the difficulty up to Nightmare, at which point its difficulty spikes. When you're not being pelted to death by a bunch of shotgun zombies, you're being penned in in tight corridors and walkways by double-speed pinkies and spectres, while your weapons are restricted to the shotgun and chaingun unless you find the secret with a rocket launcher (itself little help when the pinkies are always in your face). Even the opening area is terrifying on this difficulty, where you're ambushed by a ton of zombies and you have no cover that isn't purely visual - and the level requires backtracking through this area again regardless of whether you're going for the normal or secret exit, so you'll have to deal with them all ''again''.
** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E2M6:_Halls_of_the_Damned_(Doom) E2M6: Halls of the Damned]] is just ''long'', as it requires you to grab all three keys to open the exit, with two of the three buried deep within, one in particular in a maze that is the major threat of the level given the low lighting level and its almost-Lovecraftian layout, and there's a pretty nasty KaizoTrap near where you grab the yellow key which looks like the exit but just lowers you into a big ambush - and, if you're going for 100% secrets, you need to go through with it.

** Episode four of ''The Ultimate Doom'' - entitled ''Thy Flesh Consumed'' - was produced a year after the original release of the game, and was much harder. In fact, it begins with the two hardest levels in the original stock ''Doom'', more difficult even than the episode-ending boss battles. [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E4M2:_Perfect_Hatred_(Doom) E4M2: Perfect Hatred]] traps the player in a small underground cavern packed with monsters, with most of the accessible area suspended above a damaging lava floor. There is hardly any room to maneuver, and there are many tough enemies all coming for you. On Ultra-Violence, it's nearly unwinnable if you don't come with more than just the starting pistol and 50 rounds. The previous level, [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E4M1:_Hell_Beneath_(Doom) E4M1: Hell Beneath]], is no slouch either, with only token quantities of health and ammo while being packed full of imps, shotgunners, and even a couple Barons of Hell. On higher difficulties, there is not enough ammo to kill many of the enemies, so you have to conserve your ammo or else you'll be completely out of luck. The player would frequently have to begin [=E4M2=] half-dead and out of bullets, before quickly become full-dead courtesy of the ''Doom'' equivalent of a ZergRush.
** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E4M6:_Against_Thee_Wickedly_(Doom) E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly]] contends with the first two levels of the episode for the most difficult level in the game. Its main feature is a singular teleport in the central area, where all four individual sides of the teleporter take the player to different areas. The level itself is large and complex as well, while the teleporter isn't immediately intuitive (it's easy enough once you figure it out - enter it from the side facing where you want to go - except no other teleporter in classic ''Doom'' changes destination based on which side you entered it from) and a lot of the level involves running over damaging floors, effectively putting the player on a time limit before the hazard suits and then healing items run out, which would be bad enough even if they weren't extremely limited while the opposition is as strong as ever, including yet another Cyberdemon fight. The good news, by this point you can finally get your hands on a secret BFG and invulnerability sphere to make it trivial; the bad news, if you end up wasting that invulnerability - such as from playing on Nightmare, where you can and will be slowed down by respawning cacodemons - it becomes one of the most harrowing fights in the game, since your options at that point are getting in close anyway, fighting him in an extremely cramped area where he can and will paste you, or trying to snipe him from long range, where it just becomes a question of whether your ammo (from trying and failing to hit him) or your armor and health (from being harassed by all the other enemies) runs out first.

** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP10:_Refueling_Base_(Doom_II) MAP10: Refueling Base]] has a huge number of enemies - close to 300 on Ultra-Violence and Nightmare difficulties - and a good chunk of them are former humans, which are easy to kill but have hitscan weapons, which means you'll find yourself taking lots of damage.
** [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP24:_The_Chasm_(Doom_II) MAP24: The Chasm]]'s problem is more that navigation is a pain in the ass: much of the level is set high over a large pit of hazardous waste, with your only recourse to get out being the hope that you can get to a teleporter before you melt, and as you get closer to the exit the walkable area gets thinner and thinner. The final section of the level is the worst by far, as the railing noticeably thins out as you walk along it, with no teleports to get out if you fall in, and it's filled with Lost Souls who can and will knock you into the waste if you don't fall in through slipping off the stick-thin railing. Also, while it's not nearly as bad as Refueling Base in enemy placement, it does have much less ammo than one would expect for how many enemies there are, meaning unless you go out of your way to skip several of them you're at a serious risk of running out of ammo.
* The ''TNT: Evilution'' half of ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'' has [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP22:_Habitat_(TNT:_Evilution) Habitat]], everyone's favourite level to skip past. Why is this? Because despite its name, the majority of the map is a maze of tunnels which have to be negotiated in a certain manner to open 50% of the levels secrets. There are also triple-layer doors to open that close in front of your face if you don't trip them correctly. For a true hair-pulling experience, though, speedrunning it on UV respawn and [=NM100S=] takes the cake. Because of the moving platform limit that results from the respawning zombies in the tunnels, this caused the level to crash on the original DOS executable.
** Then, five maps later you get [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP27:_Mount_Pain_(TNT:_Evilution) Mount Pain]], which not only has the second highest monster count in the WAD but it's also large. This wouldn't normally be a problem if not for the fact that your healing options are largely in the form of stimpacks (which give you 10% health), and your armor is limited to three pickups ''total'', two green vests and only one of the stronger blue vests.

* The ''TNT: Evilution'' half of ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'' has [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MAP22:_Habitat_(TNT:_Evilution) Habitat]], everyone's favourite level to skip past. Why is this? Because despite its name, the majority of the map is a maze of tunnels which have to be negotiated in a certain manner to open 50% of the levels secrets. There are also triple-layer doors to open that close in front of your face if you don't trip them correctly. They are so frustrating that even Lightning Bolt Forever, the most mild-mannered [[LetsPlay LPer]] you could ever meet, launched a PrecisionFStrike at them during his playthrough. For a true hair-pulling experience, though, speedrunning it on UV respawn and [=NM100S=] takes the cake. Because of the moving platform limit that results from the respawning zombies in the tunnels, this caused the level to crash on the original DOS executable.

* ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'', The Plutonia Experiment: the [[SecretLevel secret]] [[BonusDungeon MAP32]] "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCGeNNvG0Z4 Go 2 It]]." For those who can't tell from the rather frantic pace of the video (finding a non-speedrun of the level is nigh impossible), it's packed to the gills with '''13''' Cyberdemons, which if you recall are end-mission bosses by themselves that haven't lost any power since then. If that wasn't enough, you also have '''17''' [[DemonicSpiders Arch-Viles]], all ''individually'' capable of both heaping on the damage on their own and ''resurrecting'' everything in the level that isn't another Arch-Vile, Cyberdemon, or Spider Mastermind. And, like many [=WADs=] did in the Doom days, their numbers ''double'' if you're playing co-op. If you're intending to clear a path through the monsters in order to survive, as opposed to having Jedi-like reflexes, expect to clear the level ([[NintendoHard if you can]]) with a kill rate of somewhere around 1000%. Yes, ''one thousand''. Meaning you would have killed each individual enemy ten times over.

* ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'':

* ''Videogame/{{Halo 4}}'':

* ''Videogame/Halo5Guardians'':

** Siren Alley in ''VideoGame/{{BioShock 2}}''. A sudden spike in difficulty (especially if you're playing on Hard) combined with being totally fucking creepy makes for one [[SarcasmMode fun]] level. Why is it creepy? Dead strippers, a peekaboo wall revealing a woman being dragged away to be raped, some nasty atmospheric music and a church service with dead people in the pews to start...
** The final level in ''Videogame/BioshockInfinite'' is universally despised by fans, since it essentially boils down to a TowerDefense mission by trying to prevent enemies from destroying your airship's engine. Unfortunately, unlike other scripted battle sequences, there are no vending machines or major supply caches to help you prepare for the fight. You'll be stuck with whatever weapons you have on hand, can find lying around the map, or whatever the enemies drop.

* The Kamchatka levels in ''SoldierOfFortune II: Double Helix'' certainly qualify. The enemies have armor-piercing bullets, the grenades they lob come out of nowhere, and many times in the outdoor areas you can't ''see'' the bad guys until its too late.

* ''VideoGame/{{Postal}} 2: Apocalypse Weekend'', the Military Base. Your ''entire inventory'' - guns, ammo, and items - is taken away at the start. This happens a few times throughout ''Postal 2'', the only mandatory time being at the Brewery on Wednesday, but in those cases, you can recover your whole inventory on your way out. Here, all that you can find are a few StandardFPSGuns. None of the interesting ''Postal'' weapons, save the weak throwing scissors, and a sledgehammer near the very end, which would be nice as it's normally a [[ChunkySalsaRule one-hit kill]]. However, the vast majority of the enemies are heavily armed and armored soldiers, and [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard their helmets make them immune to the sledgehammer]]. Add to that the fact that there's very few health pickups and even less armor, on top of this having been [[GameBreakingBug one of the most crash-tastic levels in an expansion that already had about a 45% chance of crashing just from trying to quicksave]] (thankfully, patches - almost a decade after the fact, though - have fixed this part). It's essentially an exercise in [[SaveScumming saving and reloading until you get lucky enough to survive.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}''

** The sniping level can also be a nightmare. You have to hold off waves of [=ICP=]s as they try to ZergRush a docked [=Ma3a=]. The sniper rifle takes up huge amounts of a ''very'' limited ammo pool with very little opportunity to refuel. enemies come in from multiple entrances, and if just ''one'' {{Mook}} reaches her, it's game over. You might actually be better off ''not'' using the sniper rifle at all, switching to [[MoreDakka Sequencer Disc]] and just going [[{{Film/TronLegacy}} Rinzler]] on their asses.

* There's one level as Billy in ''VideoGame/{{Call of Juarez}}'' where you have to climb up a rock formation several hundred feet in height to collect a feather for an elderly native American, for no real reason other than the fact that he tells you to. The endless climbing and jumping from a first person perspective is not a lot of fun, and the whole level ends up feeling like something that the game developers threw in to pad things out a bit.

** Its sequel, ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 4}}'', kept up the tradition with its own ThatOneLevel: Mission 12, Old Granite Hotel. [[WebVideo/{{TheSpoonyExperiment}} Spoony]] had to bring his Let's Play to a halt in order to explain in detail just why it's so ridiculous. In short, domestic terrorists (again) have seized the top floors of a hotel that is currently being renovated. This time, the bastards have only planted 3 bombs. Four, if you count one that you stumble across without effort. However, the other three bombs are in random places on the very top floor, and you have a MUCH tighter time limit (ten minutes) to find them. Once again, this might sound like a lot of time, but the mechanics of the game are working against you. There are a large amount of terrorists roaming the top floor, and they still have Improbable Aiming Skills. New to this game is locational damage, meaning that if you get shot once in a place that's not the torso, you've pretty much failed the mission. A leg shot means you can't move fast enough to disarm the bombs, an arm shot will make you wildly inaccurate, and head shots are of course instant death. You can send in your squadmates ahead of you, but not only do they take a great deal of time to breach a single door by themselves, they're likely to die without your support. But if you concentrate on helping them clear rooms, there's a good chance you won't find all the bombs in time! All this, plus there's an entire other floor to clear. On both floors, the terrorists are all hiding in ambush points with their guns pointed straight at your inevitable entryway, which brings us to the most noticeable issue with this level: The scoring system. While ''SWAT 3'' also had awarded you points for taking in suspects alive and took points away for using deadly force unlawfully, in ''SWAT 4'', you have to get a certain number of points to actually move past a level. This means that you can successfully disarm all the bombs, eliminate the enemy threat, and get sent back to the beginning of the mission because you shot someone with an assault rifle without giving away your position by shouting "Stop, police!" beforehand.
* ''Videogame/PlanetSide''

* ''Videogame/OperationFlashpoint'':

* ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic:''

* The mission "Repairing the Wire" in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty2'' has a segment near the end which pits you against three German tanks, with no rocket launchers, meaning you have to ''literally touch them'' and plant an explosive charge. And the tanks [[[GangUpOnTheHuman ignore all of your allies and only shoot at you]]. And they are always looking at you. ''Always.'' You can't sneak up on them ''because they can see through walls''. Even worse is that, unlike everything else you have to use explosive charges on in the entire series, they're not stuck in one place and can in fact move faster than you can. They can and will ''drive away'' before you can plant the explosives, and then they can and will '''[[CarFu run you over]]''' when you're trying to hide from all the other Germans constantly ventilating you.

* The mission "Repairing the Wire" in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty2'' has a segment near the end which pits you against three German tanks, with no rocket launchers, meaning you have to ''literally touch them'' and plant an explosive charge. And the tanks ignore all of your allies and only shoot at you. And they are always looking at you. ''Always.'' You can't sneak up on them ''because they can see through walls''. Even worse is that, unlike everything else you have to use explosive charges on in the entire series, they're not stuck in one place and can in fact move faster than you can. They can and will ''run away'' before you can plant the explosives, and then they can and will '''[[CarFu run you over]]''' when you're trying to hide from all the other Germans constantly ventilating you.
** There's also the last part of "Holding The Line", the second British mission. Once again, rather than just finding anti-tank weapons and destroying the tanks normally, you have to call in artillery fire on them from a roof. This is where the problems start. Your compass just points you towards what building you need to direct the artillery from - your only indication of exact location the tanks are vague directions from your allies. Again, they can run away between you calling in the strike and the shells landing. And this isn't even mentioning the [[ZergRush constant stream of German soldiers pouring into the town]], meaning you also have to watch the ladder to the roof, because if any enemies make it up there they will kill you [[ArtificialStupidity and God knows your allies won't put any effort into saving you]].

* ''VideoGame/JediKnightDarkForcesII'' has one right after defeating Maw and the subsequent Light/Dark Side alignment lock. The cargo ship has been hit with Jerec's Force Destruction and is going down, forcing Kyle to navigate through the ship and extend the retractable bridge to the landing bay. Everything is at a disorienting angle, navigating the level is difficult, and enemies can still try to kill you. The worst part, though? This is a TimedMission. If you can find them, this can be mitigated slightly with the ship's thrusters. Hard difficulty makes this even worse. On Easy, you get ten minutes. On Hard, you get ''one''.

** "The Enemy of My Enemy" is really bad, especially coming right off the heels of "Loose Ends", primarily for the fact that the game's suggested tactic of hanging back and letting Shadow Company and Makarov's goons kill each other simply doesn't work, because the AI isn't designed to be very good at fighting itself - either you're left waiting for twenty-plus minutes for them to [[ArtificialStupidi stop being brain-dead]] long enough to actually hit one another, or you make your presence known and [[GangUpOnTheHuman both sides that are supposed to be focusing on one another immediately drop everything to focus on the unaffiliated Brit in the ghillie suit]].

*** And to get FromBadToWorse, [[spoiler:on Mythic, the cruiser's health is increased thanks to the Iron skull, so now it take '''TWO''' shots from the mass driver to defeat it.]] [[http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/reach_mythic/poa.html?p=2 The MOST GRIZZLED of veteran Mythic gamers have said this challenge is all luck-based!]]

** "Tip of the Spear", HOLY CHRIST. Especially when you go to destroy that second Anti Air Turret; A pair of Hunters guard the door, and by this time it's INCREDIBLY likely that you're running low on ammo, and the only things the nearby grunts have are Needlers and Plasma Pistols. That's right, you're very likely to have to kill Hunters using small arms weapons. God help you if you wasted the plasma launcher from earlier.

[[folder:ID Software]]

* Episode four of ''The Ultimate VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' - entitled ''Thy Flesh Consumed'' - was produced a year after the original release of the game, and was much harder. In fact it began with the two hardest levels in the original stock Doom, more difficult even than the episode-ending boss battles. [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E4M2:_Perfect_Hatred_(Doom) E4M2: Perfect Hatred]] trapped the player in a small underground cavern packed with monsters, with most of the accessible area suspended above a damaging lava floor. There is hardly any room to maneuver, and there are many tough enemies all coming for you. On Ultra-Violence, it's nearly unwinnable if you don't come with more than just the starting pistol and 50 rounds. The previous level, [[https://doomwiki.org/wiki/E4M1:_Hell_Beneath_(Doom) E4M1: Hell Beneath]], was no slouch either, with only token quantities of health and ammo while being packed full of imps, shotgunners, and even a couple Barons of Hell. On higher difficulties, there is not enough ammo to kill many of the enemies, so you have to conserve your ammo or else you'll be completely out of luck. The player would frequently have to begin [=E4M2=] half-dead and out of bullets, before quickly become full-dead courtesy of the Doom equivalent of a ZergRush.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenEyeWii'' has its moments. The Bunker and Cradle levels are probably the worst offenders, difficult to complete even on Operative level. The Bunker is the lesser of two evils compared to Cradle, where [[FinalBoss the big boss]] JUST. WON'T. DIE.

* There is a Russian mission in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty2'' which pits you against three German tanks, with no rocket launchers, meaning you have to ''literally touch them'' and plant an explosive charge. And the tanks ignore all of your allies and only shoot at you. And they are always looking at you. ''Always.'' You can't sneak up on them ''because they can see through walls''. Even worse is that, unlike everything else you have to use explosive charges on in the entire series, they're not stuck in one place and can in fact move faster than you can. They can and will ''run away'' before you can plant the explosives, and then they can and will '''[[CarFu run you over]]''' when you're trying to hide from all the other Germans constantly ventilating you.
** There's also the last part of "Holding The Line", the second British mission. Once again, rather than just finding anti-tank weapons and destroying the tanks normally, you have to call in artillery fire on them from a roof. This is where the problems start. Your compass just points you towards what building you need to direct the artillery from - your only indication of exact location the tanks are vague directions from your allies. Again, they can run away between you calling in the strike and the shells hitting. And this isn't even mentioning the [[ZergRush constant stream of German soldiers pouring into the town]], meaning you also have to watch the ladder to the roof, because if any enemies make it up there they will kill you [[ArtificialStupidity and God knows your allies won't put any effort into saving you]].

** "Two Betrayals", because it has the same enemy type that The Library does. Two words: [[DemonicSpiders Rocket]] [[InstakillMook Flood]]. And it's made worse due to its primary gimmick: going through "Assault on the Control Room" [[LevelsInReverse backwards]], flying up to hidden alcoves to find three phase pulse generators and disabling them - by walking into them to overload them with your shield, which leaves you immediately vulnerable to the horde of Flood that [[TeleportingKeycardSquad naturally comes crawling out of the walls]] the instant you've disabled a generator.

** While nowhere near the most difficult, the infamous level in all of Halo is "The Library". Lots of tough enemies, you are by yourself (except for 343 Guilty Spark, the occasional Sentinel group, and maybe a co-op buddy), not much ammunition, and the level [[MarathonLevel just keeps on going and going and going and going and going and going]]. And even with 343 Guilty Spark leading the way and arrows on the floor, it's also very easy to just get plain lost. It also introduces Flood combat forms wielding Rocket Launchers, which can be a ''very'' nasty surprise.
** "Two Betrayals", because it has the same enemy type that The Library does. Two words: [[DemonicSpiders Rocket]] [[InstakillMook Flood]].

** There seems to be a rule that levels involving Libraries on Halo installations must always be That One Level. "Sacred Icon" is the tenth campaign level and it sees the Arbiter travel through a claustrophobic set of hallways and tubes, all while being harassed by the Flood, who are using shotguns and SMGs galore. And it's pitch black too, which would be too bad if the Arbiter ''didn't have a flashlight''.