History ThatOneLevel / RealtimeStrategy

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'' has the second to the last Allied mission taking place inside a Soviet tech center. The objective is to send your engineers to place charges on the generators within a time limit. You're split into two teams having to shoot through hordes of enemies and you're likely lose units quickly. The former mission to actually ''get into'' the Tech Center is also pretty damn stupid, because you are at some (random!) point given a time limit before the Soviets nuke all of Europe (which you have to prevent) without warning, there's hardly any ressources near the starting point and the enemy base is among the best defended in all the missions.

* One particular late game Nod scenario in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'' tasks you with finding a UFO with Kane's Tacitus inside. You are given three light infantry, three engineers, two light buggies, and one attack cycle. There's a sizable GDI presence on the map, including a couple of Titans that will catch up to you if you pause for too long and will annihilate you if they do. After you sneak your way around the map to the UFO, you find that Vega snatched the Tacitus and have to stop the train before it leaves. You sneak back around the map to Vega's base, and have to dash past his defenses and ''pray'' you've got enough oomph left in your tiny force to destroy the train before Vega's men either catch up to you and finish you off. Oh, and if you're too slow to reach the train, an engineer repairs the broken bridge, and the train leaves. If you lose your attack cycle (and might I add, attack cycles are the epitome of FragileSpeedster), then chances are good you won't be able to stop the train.

*** The last mission in the "Sylvanas Windrunner" story arc "A New Power In Lordaeron" can hurt your brain compared to the previous base-building missions. What makes it painful is the the Undead in the main city at the center is protected by Burning Legion demons as well as Balnazzar himself (A Dreadlord hero on crack). The main army will repeatedly send powerful summons to Garitho's Alliance army to distract you from planning your attack. After demolishing the support camps on the edge of the map, you'll likely attempt to assault the capital with both of your armies, only to see that the Undead army and the Burning Legion support can easily turn your troops to bloody goop. After a few hours of failing, you may then realize that it is best to teleport your Alliance army over to your Undead one (or vice versa) for a steamroller attack, but even this does not make the assault easy.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' penultimate Soviet Mission. The enemy can attack rapidly, mind-control your units, and is highly resistant to artillery attacks (since your artillery units' projectiles get shot down). The enemy has the IronCurtain which makes it units invincible for a time. They will spawn Terror Drones which can't be easily removed from your vehicles without Allied units, forcing you to keep all your tanks next to multiple repair yards. There are very limited resources, and the enemy will gladly throw its full might against the few outlying oil derricks that you might capture. If you successfully turtle, you can nuke the objective building, and there's also a few passages that you might not notice because you're too busy trying to turtle. Sending your initial Kirovs to force-bomb the passages to your base also helps, but is far from perfect.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' penultimate Soviet Mission. The enemy can attack rapidly, mind-control your units, and is highly resistant to artillery attacks (since your artillery units' projectiles get shot down). If you successfully turtle, you can nuke the objective building, and there's also a few passages that you might not notice because you're too busy trying to turtle.

** In the 11th mission in ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper'', you have to defend your dungeon from wave after wave of heroes, coming in four directions. You do get some time to prepare, but plan wrong and everything will go awry. Fortunately after that, everything is much easier.
*** Although reportedly every level in ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper'' has a "Transfer Creature" item (allows you to take one of your creatures through to the next level), so with some experience of this you could bring through a level 10 creature to help.

** The expansion pack ''Forged Alliance'' is ''[[NintendoHard even worse]]''. Every single mission counts as ThatOneLevel (no matter what faction you play), as you're pretty much forced to make a base entirely from scratch and destroy gigantic enemy bases teeming with T3 and experimental units. However, Mission 4 takes the cake, especially the ending where you have to [[EscortMission defend Dostya]] against numerous waves of Seraphim experimentals that mob her the moment you complete the previous objective.

* ''{{Halo}} Wars'' level ten. Shield World. Lets recap. You have ten minutes to save three squadrons of men (who by the way, are absolute nobodies apart from three SPARTANS). Your base is in the least helpful location, you don't have time to build up the forces necessary to really take on the enemy, so your only option is to spam low level units which you can't make enough of because of the [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit mind-numbingly stupid headcount]]. The only way to increase your time is to EMP four pylons, each of which grants you five minutes [[FridgeLogic (which makes no sense, since they are the only thing imposing the time limit, so with all of them gone, why the time limit?)]] The enemy get [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard constant refills of forces]], and since your fighting the flood, anyone you lose becomes one of their number. And the barriers you have to destroy have magically respawning health, so you have to take them out in a single raid, while being pounded with artillery fire, air units, and ever increasing ground units. Not for nothing is this the level which made [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] rage quit.

* ''ParaWorld'' has Mission 15: New World Order. Quite literally, it's spears against machine guns. Unfortunately, you've got the spears. And limited resources. And enemies on either side. And a timed mission which involves capturing five pumping stations. The timed mission doesn't seem so hard until you capture the third station, whereupon masses of enemies spawn, and two cannons appear that do 500 area damage in one hit.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}: DawnOfWar: [[ExpansionPack Winter Assault]]'' has the fourth Disorder mission, which is a timed one. To top it off, one of the two losing conditions is sneaky: If you stop the imperial convoy from reaching the destination gate, but forget to stop the teleporting Eldar base, it will appear behind the gate before you know what hits you. There's also a [[GameBreakingBug particularly frustrating glitch]] that causes the game to keep tracking the convoy's movement ''even if you destroy it!'' Meaning that if you take to long, [[FridgeLogic an invisible, dead convoy will beat you to the end and you'll lose.]]

* ''ImpossibleCreatures'' has 'The Island of the Crazies'. Basically, Rex gets infected with a virus that'll make him crazy THEN dead and has to destroy the defences around the sole container of antidote on the island and move him onto it within 15 minutes. Also, you creatures have the virus, too, but it takes less time for them to go crazy (rendering them uncontrollable). Take into account that you need to go get some new DNA to help you out, and the length of time that building a base, making creatures, gathering resources, advancing research levels, etc., requires, and...well, not much time left.

* From ''CommandAndConquer: Tiberium Wars'':

* One particular late game Nod scenario in ''CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'' tasks you with finding a UFO with Kane's Tacitus inside. You are given three light infantry, three engineers, two light buggies, and one attack cycle. There's a sizable GDI presence on the map, including a couple of Titans that will catch up to you if you pause for too long and will annihilate you if they do. After you sneak your way around the map to the UFO, you find that Vega snatched the Tacitus and have to stop the train before it leaves. You sneak back around the map to Vega's base, and have to dash past his defenses and ''pray'' you've got enough oomph left in your tiny force to destroy the train before Vega's men either catch up to you and finish you off. Oh, and if you're too slow to reach the train, an engineer repairs the broken bridge, and the train leaves. If you lose your attack cycle (and might I add, attack cycles are the epitome of FragileSpeedster), then chances are good you won't be able to stop the train.
* The original ''CommandAndConquer'' had an [[http://www.cncworld.org/?page=games/tiberiandawn/walkthrough/gdi8eb mid-game GDI mission]] where you have to protect a village. The problem? The villagers wander randomly, and there's a tiberium tree which will poison them when near it. You can't evacuate them via APC, either. It appears that it's supposed to be a TimedMission, but the random wandering makes it more of a LuckBasedMission if all the idiots decide to go breathe in the delicious gases. Thankfully you can choose another mission instead of this one.
* Let's not forget the GDI mission 11 from the original ''CommandAndConquer'' that had your team hitting the beach in an effort to raze a Nod base in the area. No, not the first mission. The one later, where your infantry team has to clear beach turrets to make room for an MCV to land. Then you have to protect the MCV as you get to the spot where the tiberium is, all the while armed only with infantry. The best part is that you have about 3 minutes before an enemy flame tank--which eats infantry for breakfast and structures for lunch--comes rolling into your base, and unless you have your refinery in a pixel perfect place to maximize the rate of income, you probably don't have any vehicles by that point, causing your torched troopers and scorched structures to be the last thing you see before you reload your saved game, repeatedly.

* ''CommandAndConquer: RedAlert'' has the second to the last Allied mission taking place inside a Soviet tech center. The objective is to send your engineers to place charges on the generators within a time limit. You're split into two teams having to shoot through hordes of enemies and you're likely lose units quickly. The former mission to actually ''get into'' the Tech Center is also pretty damn stupid, because you are at some (random!) point given a time limit before the Soviets nuke all of Europe (which you have to prevent) without warning, there's hardly any ressources near the starting point and the enemy base is among the best defended in all the missions.
* ''CommandAndConquer: Red Alert 2'' penultimate Soviet Mission. The enemy can attack rapidly, mind-control your units, and is highly resistant to artillery attacks (since your artillery units' projectiles get shot down). If you successfully turtle, you can nuke the objective building, and there's also a few passages that you might not notice because you're too busy trying to turtle.
* ''CommandAndConquer: Red Alert 3'' has the last Allied mission. Your objective is to destroy seven strategically placed Iron Curtain machines, which make the Soviet Premier's palace invulnerable, and then take down the palace. Every one of the Iron Curtains is in the middle of a Soviet base except one, which is in the middle of an urban area whose all apartments are garrisoned full of Soviet infantry. This wouldn't be that much of a problem were it not a TimedMission: On easy you have an hour, on medium and hard it's thirty minutes. The island you and your co-commander are given as a base location is pretty easy to defend, but has only four ore mines and two oil derricks, a pretty small amount compared to most maps in the campaign (considering you probably are too busy taking down the Iron Curtains to clear yourself a way for a secondary base to increase your resource gathering speed). The enemy begins by sending huge tank rushes, which are easily countered. Then, when about fifteen minutes of your time has passed, they suddenly send an enormous infantry assault, just in case their lack of such attacks has made you forget to build anti-infantry defenses. About the same time, the Soviets start attacking with V4 launchers (which in this game can't be countered by shooting the missiles, so you are required to have units to take them down before they can reduce your base into shreds) and their superweapon activates. Five minutes later, the soviets start to bring Dreadnoughts against you via the river and attacking you with helicopters and zeppelins. At this point, even the hardiest Allied general is reduced to a crying pile on the floor.

* ''CommandAndConquer: Generals - Zero Hour'', General's Challenge Hard, Alexis Alexander. You start with the standard-issue command center and single construction dozer on a small island in the left bottom corner of the map. Alexander has a sprawling base covering most of the opposite corner and a ring of missile batteries in the archipelago between the two bases. If you make the slight mistake of building ''anything'' on the western side of your island at the start, Alexander destroys whatever you were building with a triple A-10 airstrike and sends a trio of Comanche choppers to whittle down your command center ''30 seconds into the mission.'' This is way before you even have a barracks built, much less base defenses or anything else that can answer to aerial units. Aside from that little curbstomping surprise, the entire mission is basically about exploiting the AI's tendency to act on invisible triggers. If you can't trick the AI to waste its Particle Cannons on one or two cheap structures in the same spots every time, you are going down.

** [[DragonLady General Leang]] has the best picks of all weapons available to all three sides to suit a refined tank assault style (She gets Paladin tanks, [[MightyGlacier Overlords]], [[DemonicSpiders Rocket Buggies]], all three special characters, all three superweapons (timed to fire simultaneously) and a sprawling base studded with gatling guns and patriot batteries fitted in places unaccessible to normal range tank guns. She can also use tech combinations that are impossible for the player, such as Chinese Overlord tanks with the U.S. Composite Armor upgrade. She WILL make you fight bitterly for every inch of ground. However, her superweapons are all on generously long timers, which can be reset by destroying one of several poorly-defended structures scattered around the map. She also doesn't have any offensive support powers. This means that whereas previous generals were constantly harassing you with artillery strikes, A-10's, anthrax bombs, and superweapons, the only thing you really have to deal with when fighting Leang are her units.

** The (usually) penultimate, General Townes' level contains stealthed observer drones that somehow ended up ''under'' the ramps to his stronghold entrances. These are impossible to kill, yet all your AA guns will immediately target it upon detection. This would not be a problem except for the fact that he constantly sends attack choppers to engage your assault groups. Because your AA guns are automatically targeting the drones, guess what they're ''not'' shooting at.

* ''CommandAndConquer: RedAlert'' has the second to the last Allied mission taking place inside a Soviet tech center. The objective is to send your engineers to place charges on the generators within a time limit. You're split into two teams having to shoot through hordes of enemies and you're likely lose units quickly.

** The expansion pack ''Forged Alliance'' is ''[[NintendoHard even worse]]''. Every single mission counts as ThatOneLevel (no matter what faction you play), but Mission 4 takes the cake, especially the ending where you have to [[EscortMission defend Dostya]] against numerous waves of Seraphim experimentals that mob her the moment you complete the previous objective.

* The final missions of all three ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'' faction campaigns are quite difficult, but the UEF one is the worst, especially if you don't know what is coming and don't prepare for it beforehand. You'll think your massive starting base is invincible until the map opens up and your expansions are nuked into glass - followed by five Monkeylords stomping in from off-map to obliterate your base. The best part? [[MarathonLevel These missions are easily over an hour long]]. At least you can save in the middle of missions.
** The expansion pack ''Forged Alliance'' is ''[[NintendoHard even worse]]''. Every singled mission counts as ThatOneLevel, but Mission 4 takes the cake, especially the ending where you have to [[EscortMission defend Dostya]] against numerous waves of Seraphim experimentals.

* In ''{{Warcraft}} 3''

** On normal difficulty, the missions will generally not be too much to handle for an average RTS player, but once Hard is enabled, some missions require more creativity and thoughtful expanding, to put it lightly. To avoid swarming the page with entries, some notable stand-out levels on hard mode are as follows:

** The Fourth Night Elf Scenario: with only a few troops, you must move your base along a twisted, very long path with tons of obstacles in your way (including feral Furbolgs, a whole human base and a wood which is totally filled with undead monsters that re-spawns until you kill their chief (a high-level wraith)and include mainly Banshees, who have the nasty habit of possessing your soldiers when their health is low. Oh, and you must also look out for casual Orcs and Undead skirmishers. Seriously, this part is far worse than the last level. The re-spawning [[MoneySpider]] enemies encountered later can ease the frustration of the limited resources by letting your heros slay them for extra gold, but you must fight you way to them before bankruptcy.

** Forget that, the true challenge is the Night Elves scenarios. Namely, the fourth one: with only a few troops, you must move your base along a twisted, very long path with tons of obsatcles in your way (including feral Furbolgs, a whole human base and a wood which is totally filled with undead monsters that respawns untill you kill their chief (a high-level wraith)and include mainly Banshees, who have the nasrty habit of possessing your soldiers when their health is low. Oh, and you must also look out for casual Orcs and Undead skirmishers. Seriously, this part is far worse than the last level.
*** The respawning monsters can actually be a bit of a blessing really, because [[MoneySpider you get gold every time you kill one of them]] and your two level five heroes can burn through a pair of respawning level three skeletons time after time after time at 44 gold a pop. Banshees do pathetic damage to heroes and can't posses them, so if you're willing to take your time you can refill your coffers by fighting those monsters over and over again with your heroes.

* In ''{{Warcraft}} 3'', Into The Realm Eternal. An early Undead mission, the prime reason for it's frustration is that you have ''three'' units available to you. Ghouls, necromancers, and the meat wagon siege weapon. The limited troop types means that a balanced force is impossible, and there is only on strategy available to you; the ZergRush. And even by ZergRush standards your troops ''suck''. Ghouls are fragile and don't deal all that much damage, meat wagons are slow and fragile, and so are necromancers. Their ability to AnimateDead is vital early on, but the computer ''knows'' that the troops they summon will fall apart after a while, and doesn't bother to attack them until all the things that matter are dead. And when the priests start to show up in large numbers their dispel magic spell can wipe out swathes of animated skeletons in seconds, as well as buffing their troops and healing them through ghouls' attacks.

** March of a Scourge: The enemy applies considerable pressure, attacking with a much stronger army and siege weapons to makes your towers unable to HoldTheLine on their own, and they send a lich hero to "death and decay" your towers and [[KillItWithIce nuke your army]] for good measure. Base expansion and multi-tasking skills are [[DifficultySpike suddenly required]] in a campaign that has not been too difficult up until this point.
** The expansion pack ''The Frozen Throne'' had a number of teeth grinding levels, however the one which stands out is in fact the very first Undead level "King Arthas". In it each of your three heroes is tasked with holding a different path off the map from escaping humans, whilst also advancing down each and knocking out their camps. These camps are protected by teleporting high level paladins, making each an involved fight- whilst escaping humans trickle down the other two paths and if allowed to the friendly AI is aggro'ed into allowing them through. You can't build any defense towers of your own, each of your heroes can only construct one or two types of unit for themselves, and needless to say if too many humans escape you automatically lose. Even the very last level seems less annoying in comparison.

* ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' 2 has the Submerged Castle. It has every elemental hazard a dungeon can have, except only [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman Blue Pikmin]] can enter. Right off the bat, the first floor has a Fiery Bulblax, which needs to be lured into the water so the Blue Pikmin don't catch fire. The Bulblax is hardly the biggest threat here, however. What makes this dungeon truly ThatOneLevel is the [[EldtrichAbombination Water]][[StalkedByTheBell wraith]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' 2 has the Submerged Castle. It has every elemental hazard a dungeon can have, except only [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman Blue Pikmin]] can enter. Right off the bat, the first floor has a Fiery Bulblax, which needs to be lured into the water so the Blue Pikmin don't catch fire. The Bulblax is hardly the biggest threat here, however. What makes this dungeon truly ThatOneLevel is the [[InstantDeathRadius Water]][[StalkedByTheBell wraith]].

** The seventh Zerg mission "Drawing of the Web" requires you to bring Duran to 5 beacons. Duran is frail, his cloaking is worthless near the beacons thanks to omnipresent detectors, and it's an automatic game over if he dies. Each beacon is on its own separate piece of elevated terrain, with one ramp in/out, and a small base surrounding it. The elevation gives the defenders a damage & armor bonus against anything approaching from below, and there's a large, untouchable Protoss base at the center of the map providing reinforcements. Overlords can't transport units in this mission and you don't have access to Mutalisks, making the terrain problem unavoidable. Attacks on your base start early, hit hard and never let up; Archons will show up in the ''early'' attacking waves.

** The final Zerg level, "Omega", has you pitted against two Terran forces and one Protoss force. They each have massive amounts of units that work especially well against the Zerg and require different strategies to handle each, with well fortified bases and organized, sometimes concurrent, attacks on yours. Each of the forces is so dangerous on its own that your base can be overrun ''even after you have wiped out 2 of 3 opposing armies''. Resources are finite; expanding your resource gathering operations beyond the starting base is practically required, but the attack on your new hatchery will be so fierce that you'll spend most of your new resources replacing units lost defending it. You could apply damn near half of the [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous CVGSY library]] to "Omega" and it would still be an understatement.