History ThatOneLevel / SimulationGame

* ''[[{{VideoGame/IL2Sturmovik}} IL-2 Sturmovik]]: Birds of Prey'''s Hornet's Nest mission. Prior to this, the game ramps up nicely in difficulty. Hornet's Nest tosses you into a night battle seeking out transport planes and preventing them from landing at the airstrip while avoiding the wings of enemy fighters and the A-A guns on the ground. If a '''single''' transport lands, you fail.

** ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'' and DS Cute aren't as bad in the fact that dropping a level doesn't kill most of your stamina. It just gets annoying when you have to drop ONE LEVEL AT A TIME through digging up stairs, like you have to in ''Island of Happiness'' and ''Sunshine Islands''. They also just had to have animals trying to kill you, and hundreds upon hundreds of levels. It's especially bad if you want to marry Keria.

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat'' primarily has these in levels where the mission/parameters have nothing to do with the Difficulty setting; the "game stopper" was ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar''[='=]s "Four Horsemen," mission 12b. It's only one of the two paths, but [[GuideDangIt you're given no clue that your answer to a wingman's question in mission 10 will have any consequence]]. Things aren't so bad on the other path, or even in the other mission on this path, while this mission requires you to perform four consecutive timed destructions of radar sites, which means that you have to take into account your weapon's travel time ''and'' your own travel time -- go past the radar site and you fail, while if you get in position too early you'll have to break/slow down, which can cause a stall or wasted time (especially if you have to turn around to reposition yourself for another attack run), and you have less time between each radar site. Did I mention that your wingmen may mess up ''their'' approaches against their own targets which you don't see and cause everyone to have to abort their attack run and try again? Making things worse, if you want the Flanker line of aircraft or the FALKEN, you ''have'' to play this mission at least once.
** There are a few other standouts in ''The Unsung War'', particularly "Lit Fuse", which is problematic thanks to its gimmick. You're sent to support a marine force as they move in to take over various enemy bunkers, gradually rendezvousing with each other until they're fully grouped up to take on the final part of the mission. The problem is those bunkers cannot be destroyed by your weapons - they ''have'' to be knocked out temporarily by your weapons, then stormed and captured by the ground forces. What makes this a problem is that the game doesn't adequately explain ''exactly'' when you need to fire so that the ground forces have enough time to get in and capture it before it starts firing on them again and they're forced to retreat - sometimes you'll shoot the target the instant it pops up, but that won't be good enough. "Fortress" is a lesser offender simply because there are far too many targets for you to take out with just missiles with the amount of ammo the planes available to you at that point in time have; at the very least its gimmick is being a TimedMission where you tell the allied forces to stop or go at specific points, which is less prone to randomly failing through no fault of your own.
** All of the 21st-century console ''Ace Combat'' games have had a mission that [[AirstrikeImpossible involved flying through a tunnel]], but other than ''04'' and one of the operations in ''6'', there was another complication to make the mission harder to complete than it sounded:
*** ''VideoGame/{{Ace Combat Zero|TheBelkanWar}}'' had "Valley of Kings" which made you brave a gauntlet of Anti-Aircraft Artillery, Surface-to-Air Missiles and Pillboxes just to get ''to'' the tunnel. Flying above 2000 feet would lead to a missile warning: if you didn't get below that in time, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard you'd have a missile launched at you from out of nowhere and automatically hit you]]. Did I mention the bridges in the way? Finally, if you're not using the FAE Bomb or the MPBM [[note]]While taking them seems to be a no-brainer, remember that due to plot reasons you're stuck with the same plane and weapon for the last three missions. This means that, if you do take those bombs, you're stuck with just the regular missiles for the mission before Valley of Kings, which contains what might be the most difficult dogfight in the entire game.[[/note]] you'll need to make multiple tunnel runs since you have to destroy all of the joint locks for each V2 controller before the controller itself can be hit. ''''Consolation'''': at least if you enter the tunnel through the south, the named ace in the tunnel who appears after you destroy the first two controllers is flying away from you and thus makes possibly the game's easiest non-bomber kill.
*** ''5'' introduced the twisty-turvy tunnel later used in ''Zero'' but with multiple altitude changes along the way (not just at the entrance and exit of the tunnel), had enemy fighters in the tunnel in front of you headed in your direction, and whereas you can just slow down in all other tunnel missions and use autopilot to stabilize your flight path, here you have an enemy fighter hot on your tail the whole time! Fortunately, it's generally the widest of these tunnels, so crashing isn't the real issue.
*** These actually go back to ''VideoGame/AceCombat2'', which had a similar final mission to ''04''. ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere'' also had a similar mission, with altitude changes and closing doors which serves to make it a "twisty" tunnel, with the added "bonuses" that, like ''Zero'', you have to fly all of the last set of missions with whatever craft you picked for the first mission in that set, ''and'' that sequence comes right after you unlock an aircraft that looks useful (the XFA-36A) but turns out to be barely maneuverable in comparison to what you already have.
*** In "Chandelier" in ''6'' you had to travel a ''long'' way to the action with nothing going on before then having a ton of heavy anti-aircraft fire tossed into your face on top of some ships (including ''missile'' boats!) ''and'' the last of Strigon Team, ace pilots one and all; after you destroy all of the targets (which will take quite some time since some require multiple hits and from particular angles) your wingman goes down and even heavier AAA appears in the form of a double-stacked line of gun towers; only after you destroy those can you go after the remaining targets and the very end has you flying into the tunnel which itself can attack you by ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill firing a cruise missile into your face]]''. And this is assuming that you got this far, as unlike "Valley of Kings" which gave a definite time limit you have to complete the mission before too many cruise missiles are fired and can hit [[spoiler:Gracemeria]], so you'll have to guesstimate how much time/cruise missile launches you have left based on the dialogue. (Fortunately if you manage to survive the AAA on the way in, there's a conveyor belt underneath Chandelier that carries the cruise missiles to its rear; destroying the cruise missiles before they can be loaded will buy you some time depending on how you're balancing it with destroying the targets.)

*** The 'don't fly above (insert low altitude here)' missions are annoying, but on some games in the series the missiles don't spawn so close to you. This enables you to outrun them (or at least keep them from hitting you till they detonate) while flying the overpowered [=MiG=]-25/31. Unfortunately this creates an {{Unwinnable}} situation, since they respawn one after another. So after descending back to an altitude that will let you complete the mission, the speed that's required to outrun the one that inevitably spawns above you prevents you from maneuvering through the narrow confines of the level. That the dragster-like [=MiGs=] were built for intercepting versus dogfighting doesn't help.
** The first game (''VideoGame/AirCombat'' outside Japan) had possibly the worst canyon mission of any, and a lot of that was FakeDifficulty due to terrible graphics. It was an incredibly narrow canyon and it was very very difficult to tell the two walls apart so every turn was an opportunity to crash due to inability to judge distance.
** ''VideoGame/{{Ace Combat X|SkiesOfDeception}}'' brings us "A Diversion" where you have to escort six helicopters to a location... but there are infantry-wielded [=RPGs=] along the route that don't appear on radar until the helicopters get close enough, unlike what the briefing says about luring them out. Plus some of these wankers (yes, I went there) appear in locations that are inconvenient to target if you stick too close to the helicopters, and trying to stay behind them can backfire if you end up falling too far behind. Plus once you actually reach the location the helis need to get to, you find it's also defended by [=SAMs=] and triple-A, so you can't take a breather yet. And you can lose only one if you want to get a S-rank, with all of them being {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s. Did I mention that if you want to get the ace for this mission, you need to run ahead of the helis to take him down, and almost certainly will lose at least one trying to get back to them?
*** ''X'' also has "End of Deception II" with the Alect Squadron-piloted Fenrirs, a shitty boss fight if ever. Fortunately, it gets better after they go down.

* Collecting all the paintings in ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing''. Yeah, you heard me. Other rare sets can take literally a year or more to complete, but at least you can't forge a bug or fossil. Damn you, Crazy Redd!
** In New Leaf, you can actually look for the mistakes in the forgeries yourself making it a little more justifiable, but how many gamers (not to mention the percentage of little kids playing) are masters of art?
* ''[[VideoGame/TraumaCenter Trauma Center: Under The Knife]]'', as an Atlus game, is ''hard'' -- so much so that a previous version of this page listed ''every mission'' as ThatOneLevel. However, most fall into the "tough but fair" category, with several exceptions:
** Deftera. While most missions are ultimately tests of skill primarily, Deftera is nearly 90% luck. If two pairs of Deftera hit like colors at the beginning of the second stage, you might as well ragequit. Either the tumors will kill the patient outright, or you'll finish with the tumors just in time to fight MORE tumors when like colors meet AGAIN- never having the opportunity to attack Deftera itself. Deftera can be blocked off by antibiotic gel spread in its path like a wall. This is hinted at in one sentence in the manual that doesn't even directly reference Deftera -- only that the gel can repel parasites. ''Good luck making that connection when [[WebAnimation/AwesomeSeries Zombie Cancer]] is eating your patient.''
** Level 5-2. You know it's going to be a pain, since it's called "[[TitleDrop Under The Knife]]", which implies a certain epic climax. Your enemy is the parasite Kyriaki, who is annoying, but usually pretty striaghtforward. This time, however, you have to treat ''five'' patients in a single mission, with only ten minutes on the timer. Making matters worse is the fact that getting through a Kyriaki mission requires nothing so much as skill with suturing. The stylus motion for suturing is not only undetected by the game half the time, but it's the first thing you start screwing up when your hands start to get tired. The final insult? That ticking ten minute timer hanging over your head ''isn't an automatic GameOver'' like with all previous operations. The game does throw you a bone by letting you advance if you've finished at least 2 patients but ran out of time, with the only cost being the player's rank and score. Problem is that you'd be too focused on the bottom screen and the timer to notice when Angie tells you backup has arrived, and may just restart in a fit of rage when you notice you're short on time.

*** Most annoyingly are the missions 5-9 and 6-8, which are literally impossible to beat if the player uses the Healing Touch at any other time than at the VERY end of the level. Worse still is the fact that if you did use the Healing Touch when you shouldn't have, the game tells you nothing. You just hit that point in the level and if you don't know about this beforehand the game will just "hang" until you fail the mission.
** While technically [[BonusLevelOfHell Bonus Levels,]] the X Missions also deserve mention. Though they're not named for difficulty in ''Under The Knife'', they are in every succeeding sequel... under '''[[NintendoHard Extreme]]''' difficulty. While all of the X Missions are indeed beatable, they all borderline on FakeDifficulty given that you have to have memorized the pattern for defeating the offending disease down to freaking ''muscle memory''.
*** Especially Kyriaki in ''Under The Knife.'' ''(Shudder)''
** "Awakening" is almost evil in its difficulty, especially since it's still in the game's early chapters. Basically a patient has a whole bunch of aneurysms in his intestines, five of which all decided to try and burst at the same time. You're meant to burn a Healing Touch and try to fix him up, but if you're after rank, you have to take all five of them out without it. Unless you balance them just right, at least one ''will'' burst, taking the S with it. Basically, an "[[HarsherInHindsight Unfunny Aneurysm Moment]]" in the most literal sense.
*** This one was so notorious that ''Second Opinion'' for the Wii simplified it. On Normal difficulty, only four appear at the end. If the patient's vitals are near-max, he'll survive all of them exploding, leaving you to clean up and head out. Your rank will take a hit, but you'll pass.

*** The second part is Kyriaki, which is trivial by this point in the game, but third patient has Deftera. What makes this GUILT more annoying is that blood regularly pools over the field, forcing you to drain it otherwise you can't treat what's underneath. If Deftera is going berserk and blood pools over it, you'll waste a bit of time getting it out of the way - enough time for more tumors to appear and for vitals to plummet.
*** The final part is Paraskevi on the heart. ''[[OhCrap One entire Paraskevi]]''. You cannot afford to let a single one escape, or it's an immediate GameOver.

** ''New Blood'' chimes in with "Lost In The Flames", an operation to treat a burns victim. The mission isn't particularly hard in theory, and there's nothing that will lower the patient's vitals apart from gradual attrition and player mistakes, the greatest threat here is the time limit. What makes it tough is the player has to cover a burn with four piece of donor skin to treat each one, when a) the skin is time-consuming to produce, b) if the burn starts bleeding (at random) any skin already there will fall off, and c) it's painfully easy to put a piece of skin on the wrong burn, virtually guaranteeing the target burn will start to bleed before the player can get more ready. It's virtually impossible to let the patient die here, but even a perfect run will run down the clock horrifyingly fast.
*** ''Under the Knife 2'' one-ups this with "Hall of Shadows" in its final chapter. The burns treatment process is similar with all the accompanying problems. Only this time, you've got three patients... and ''five minutes'' to treat them all.
** In the main storyline of ''New Blood'', there is an arguably even harder mission, "Strike Force", that involves three patients. The first one is a Brachion infection, which is the PuzzleBoss of ''New Blood''. It's not particularly hard, but it eats up a large amount of time and can get nasty if the heads regenerate. The second operation is a simultaneous Cheir and Soma infection, which is nasty combination, but can be overcome with the right strategy and a little luck. The final operation is the worst thing ever. This patient is infected with both Soma and Onyx. Onyx is not mentioned until you either ready the magnifier and spot its shadow, or it first attacks while you're treating Soma. Treating Onyx invariably means taking your eye off Soma to find the hidden Onyx and you are almost guaranteed that a red tumor will harden while doing so. The kicker for these multiple patient operations is that when you lose, you have to start from the beginning, making it all the more annoying considering the Onyx/Soma combination is intricate enough to be its own mission.

* Any mine in any ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' game ever.
** That excludes the ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' mines, which are just little sites which are extremely easy.
** ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'' and DS Cute weren't as bad in the fact that dropping a level didn't kill most of your stamina. It just gets annoying when you have to drop ONE LEVEL AT A TIME through digging up stairs, like you have to in Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands. They also just had to have animals trying to kill you, and hundreds upon hundreds of levels. It's especially bad if you want to marry Keria.
** The ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonMagicalMelody Magical Melody]]'' mines weren't that bad.. If you exclude the random times when you go ''up'' instead of down (which happens a lot once you reach a certain point), and the rocks having nasty effects sometimes.

* ''VideoGame/MechWarrior4Mercenaries'' has Talon/Wernke - Night Op. You're meant to pilot a light, fast 'mech, trying to be as stealthy as possible, trying to sneak past several 'mechs that can stomp you in a heartbeat, and there's generally enough enemy 'mechs that it's suicide to take anything heavier. For contrast, there's a ludicrously easy stealth mission elsewhere in the game.
** This is only hard if you are attempting to get the bonus for not being detected. It's quite possible to just load up a badass assault mech and blast your way through the level.
* The first ''VideoGame/RollerCoasterTycoon'' and its expansions each had one of these:
** The original had Rainbow Valley, the penultimate scenario. It pales in comparison to many of the expansion scenarios, but at the time, being unable to remove trees or alter the landscape made it by far the most annoying original scenario, much harder than final level Thunder Rock.
** Corkscrew Follies raised the bar for scenario difficulty overall, but Fiasco Forest easily takes the cake. Though scenarios where you had to clean up the mess and turn a bad park into a good one was nothing new, the aptly named Fiasco Forest took it to ridiculous extremes, with a water slide that's about to crash the moment you load the scenario, unfinished path layouts, and for some reason, inexplicably charging for toilets. To top it off, the win condition is to have as much as 900 guests at the end of the first year, and you're not allowed to advertise. Fiasco Forest isn't even among the final scenarios of the expansion.
*** Even Fiasco Forest is easier than Harmonic Hills, which is pretty much Rainbow Valley [[UpToEleven turned up]] [[FromBadToWorse a few more notches]]. You still can't change the landscape at all, but now there is the added difficulty of not being able to build above the height of the trees. Oh, and just to make things ''extra'' [[SarcasmMode fun]], this park has the smallest number of starting rides in the game. How many do you get? '''Three'''. ''Three'' measly rides and ''two'' measly shops and stalls, ensuring that you'll have to do a sizable amount of research to get an even half-decent selection. ''[[ThisIsGonnaSuck Good freaking luck]]'' with this one. It doesn't even show up that late in the scenario list (being the 18th of 30), and it's far more difficult and frustrating than pretty well all of the ones following it.

** Consider the third game, and La La Land. It's not even ''intended'' to be that difficult, falling squarely in the middle of the Vanilla level set. However, due to the way the game handles how Peeps perceive area theming, among other things, it's downright hellish. Consider this-there are two [=VIPs=] you have to impress, both with a themed area they'd really like to see-sci-fi for Clint Bushton, and adventure for Joe Sluggerball. Now, you might ask "How are we supposed to do that?" Well, first, you have to get one or two themed rides (and only themed rides) close to each other, surround them with a fuckload of themed plants, and make sure those [=VIPs=] stay in that area without leaving (which, if you haven't figured out how to [[GuideDangIt make Peeps go to certain rides]], is a crapshoot). It's already aggravating to do it once, but doing it ''twice'' is torturous. All this is ''after'' you've dealt with the awful firework display-making system, which should take you forever to get working, and then another forever to get Clint Bushton to pay any fucking attention to the fireworks even if they're right in front of him. If you think all that strong language is unnecessary, then you clearly have never played this map before because it's unbelievably infuriating.
*** Also, this is the only map in all three mission sets (vanilla, Soaked!, and Wild!) that requires you to have themed areas or use fireworks displays.

* This may seem like a strange place for it, but in ''VideoGame/{{Catherine}}'', getting the true freedom ending is hell. Not only because keeping your karma meter in the direct center is difficult, but also because you have to answer the final three questions based not the actual answers, but based on the side of the rope required to pull. Not mention the damn hard puzzles.
* If you really want a challenge in ''[[{{Creator/Sierra}} Aces of the Pacific]]'', volunteer to fly in a US Navy TBD Devastator torpedo plane squadron during the Midway campaign. The TBD is easily the worst airplane in the game: it's very slow, almost totally unmaneuverable, and you have only a single small-caliber machine gun to defend yourself with. Your missions will involve flying into the teeth of the Japanese Navy, hitting one of their ships with a torpedo, and making it back to your carrier without getting shot down by anti-aircraft fire or the swarms of enemy fighters protecting the fleet. Good luck!
** Truth in Television

** Glaciers are a well-known example of a hard location to survive in. They tend to be an extremely think sheet of ice on top of bare rock, leaving you with the twin concerns of no soil for growing crops (and brewing booze), and no easy source of water. The latter also makes the former worse, as the normal method of making farmland without soil is muddying up rock with water. And finally, there's the obvious risk of freezing to death.
* [[{{VideoGame/IL2Sturmovik}} IL-2 Sturmovik]]: Birds of Prey's Hornet's Nest mission. Prior to this, the game ramps up nicely in difficulty. Hornet's nest tosses you into a night battle seeking out transport planes and preventing them from landing at the airstrip while avoiding wings of enemy fighters and the A-A guns on the ground. If a '''single''' transport lands, you fail.

* ''[[VideoGame/TraumaCenter Trauma Center: Under The Knife]]'', as an Atlus game, is ''hard''- so much so that a previous version of this page listed ''every mission'' as ThatOneLevel. However, most fall into the "tough but fair" catagory, with two exceptions:

** Level 5-2. You know it's going to be a pain, since it's called "[[TitleDrop Under The Knife]]", which implies a certain epic climax. Your enemy is the parasite Kyriaki, who is annoying, but usually pretty striaghtforward. This time, however, you have to treat ''five'' patients in a single mission, with only ten minutes on the timer. Making matters worse is the fact that getting through a Kyriaki mission requires nothing so much as skill with suturing. The stylus motion for suturing is not only undetected by the game half the time, but it's the first thing you start screwing up when your hands start to get tired. The final insult? That ticking ten minute timer hanging over your head ''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard is a god damned lie]]''. When it hits zero, you don't fail the operation- your assistant just announces that backup has arrived and you can finish this patient and take a rest. She notes this after you get the third patient stabilized, but you'll never see it, since you're so concentrated on just the time and the bottom screen.

** While technically [[BonusLevelOfHell Bonus Levels,]] the X Missions also deserve mention. Though they're not named for difficulty in ''Under The Knife'', they are in every succeeding sequel...under '''[[NintendoHard Extreme]]''' difficulty. While all of the X Missions are indeed beatable, they all borderline on FakeDifficulty given that you have to have memorized the pattern for defeating the offending disease down to freaking ''muscle memory''.

** ''New Blood'' chimes in with Lost In The Flames, an operation to treat a burns victim. The mission isn't particularly hard in theory, and there's nothing that will lower the patient's vitals apart from gradual attrition and player mistakes, the greatest threat here is the time limit. What makes it tough is the player has to cover a burn with four piece of donor skin to treat each one, when a) the skin is time-consuming to produce, b) if the burn starts bleeding (at random) any skin already there will fall off, and c) it's painfully easy to put a piece of skin on the wrong burn, virtually guaranteeing the target burn will start to bleed before the player can get more ready. It's virtually impossible to let the patient die here, but even a perfect run will run down the clock horrifyingly fast.

** Consider the third game, and La La Land. It's not even ''intended'' to be that difficult, falling squarely in the middle of the Vanilla level set. However, due to the way the game handles how Peeps perceive area theming, among other things, it's downright hellish. Consider this-there are two VIPs you have to impress, both with a themed area they'd really like to see-sci-fi for Clint Bushton, and adventure for Joe Sluggerball. Now, you might ask "How are we supposed to do that?" Well, first, you have to get one or two themed rides (and only themed rides) close to each other, surround them with a fuckload of themed plants, and make sure those VIPs stay in that area without leaving (which, if you haven't figured out how to [[GuideDangIt make Peeps go to certain rides]], is a crapshoot). It's already aggravating to do it once, but doing it ''twice'' is torturous. All this is ''after'' you've dealt with the awful firework display-making system, which should take you forever to get working, and then another forever to get Clint Bushton to pay any fucking attention to the fireworks even if they're right in front of him. If you think all that strong language is unnecessary, then you clearly have never played this map before because it's unbelievably infuriating.

* Any mine in any ''Franchise/HarvestMoon'' game ever.

* {{Mechwarrior}} IV: Mercenaries has Talon/Wernke - Night Op. You're meant to pilot a light, fast 'mech, trying to be as stealthy as possible, trying to sneak past several 'mechs that can stomp you in a heartbeat, and there's generally enough enemy 'mechs that it's suicide to take anything heavier. For contrast, there's a ludicrously easy stealth mission elsewhere in the game.

** Deftera. While most missions are ultimately tests of skill primarily, Deftera is nearly 90% luck. If two pairs of Deftera hit like colors at the beginning of the second stage, you might as well ragequit. Either the tumors will kill the patient outright, or you'll finish with the tumors just in time to fight MORE tumors when like colors meet AGAIN- never having the opportunity to attack Deftera itself. Deftera can be blocked off by antibiotic gel spread in its path like a wall. This is hinted at in one sentence in the manual that doesn't even directly reference Deftera -- only that the gel can repel parasites. ''Good luck making that connection when [[AwesomeSeries Zombie Cancer]] is eating your patient.''

** Area 06-D in ''Ace Combat 5''[='=]s arcade mode (Operation Katina). The mission is to destroy 24 air targets (most of them fighters, with one large transport plane that takes a ''lot'' of hits to destroy - thankfully this is optional). Sounds easy enough, right? But you are only given 20 regular missiles and 4 XMAAs (with longer range). It takes 2 missiles (or 1 XMAA) to destroy a fighter. Usually in arcade mode, there are special targets that you can destroy to replenish your missile supply. In this area, there are none of those targets, so you will eventually run out of missiles before you can destroy every target, which means that you will have to manually aim your machine gun (which has infinite ammo) to shoot down a target. ''All while several other fighters are on your tail, firing missiles at you''. All of which are also highly-skilled and highly maneuverable. On top of that, you start off with a 30-second time limit; however, every target you destroy adds 20 seconds to the limit (this is usual for arcade mode).

** In ''TraumaTeam'', Tomoe's final mission is [[spoiler:searching through a collapsed mall for people trapped in the rubble.]] The way the stage is set up, it's very hard to keep track of what you're looking for, and every time you find one, you get sent back to the start - at which point the level changes shape. It's essentially a 3D maze from hell.

* This may seem like a strange place for it, but in Catherine, getting the true freedom ending is hell. Not only because keeping your karma meter in the direct center is difficult, but also because you have to answer the final three questions based not the actual answers, but based on the side of the rope required to pull. Not mention the damn hard puzzles.

** "Awakening" is almost evil in its difficulty, especially since it's still in the game's early chapters. Basically a patient has a whole bunch of aneurysms in his intestines, five of which all decided to try and burst at the same time. You're meant to burn a Healing Touch and try to fix him up, but if you're after rank, you have to take all five of them out without it. Unless you balance them just right, at least one ''will'' burst, taking the S with it. Basically, an UnfunnyAneurysmMoment in the most literal sense.

* Even ''VideoGame/CookingMama'' has an example: In the Hot Dog and Taco recipes of ''Cooking Mama: Cook Off'', you must catch the ingredients in the bun/taco shell, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that you can only hold it on the sides of the screen. And the meat falls down in the middle, so you must time it so that it falls on the bun/taco shell ''in the middle of moving from one side to the other''. Hard enough to ''pass'', ''hell'' to get a Gold Medal on.
** The Popcorn recipe- that is, the actual cooking part. Imagine this: there's a bar with a meter that slowly moves right. Shaking the Wiimote moves it to the left some. Getting ''any'' bit outside of the bar fails the part. Sounds easy? Now here's the catch: the bar's acceptable area slowly shrinks, and as time winds down the shrink rate ''accelerates''. Passing normally is extremely difficult.

** In New Leaf, you can actually look for the mistakes in the forgeries yourself making it a little more justifiable, but how many gamers (Not to mention the percentage of little kids playing) are masters of art?

* Any mine in any ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' game ever.

** DS and DS Cute weren't as bad in the fact that dropping a level didn't kill most of your stamina. It just gets annoying when you have to drop ONE LEVEL AT A TIME through digging up stairs, like you have to in Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands.
** They also just had to have animals trying to kill you, and hundreds upon hundreds of levels. It's especially bad if you want to marry Keria.

* ''VideoGame/TheSims2 DS'' has a mission that requires you to get 5 mechanical skill points. They spawn only once in certain places. Good luck finding them all without a guide.
* Looking for fireflies in ''VideoGame/TheSims2 Castaways'' is this to many players. Fireflies are found at random and only appear at night.

* Looking for fireflies in ''VideoGame/TheSims Castaways'' is this to many players. Fireflies are found at random and only appear at night.

* ''VideoGame/SimCity'': Despite appearing first in the list of scenarios, Dullsville is the hardest, requiring you to learn concepts of rapid growth on an extremely limited budget.
* The Sims 2 DS has a mission that requires you to get 5 mechanical skill points. They spawn only once in certain places. Good luck finding them all without a guide.

* ''AceCombat'' primarily has these in levels where the mission/parameters have nothing to do with the Difficulty setting; the "game stopper" was ''[=AC5=]'''s "Four Horsemen," mission 12b. It's only one of the two paths, but [[GuideDangIt you're given no clue that your answer to a wingman's question in mission 10 will have any consequence]]. Things aren't so bad on the other path, or even in the other mission on this path, while this mission requires you to perform four consecutive timed destructions of radar sites, which means that you have to take into account your weapon's travel time ''and'' your own travel time -- go past the radar site and you fail, while if you get in position too early you'll have to break/slow down, which can cause a stall or wasted time (especially if you have to turn around to reposition yourself for another attack run), and you have less time between each radar site. Did I mention that your wingmen may mess up ''their'' approaches against their own targets which you don't see and cause everyone to have to abort their attack run and try again? Making things worse, if you want a Flanker aircraft or the FALKEN, you ''have'' to play this mission at least once.

*** ''Zero'' had "Valley of Kings" which made you brave a gauntlet of Anti-Aircraft Artillery, Surface-to-Air Missiles and Pillboxes just to get ''to'' the tunnel. Flying above 2000 feet would lead to a missile warning: if you didn't get below that in time, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard you'd have a missile launched at you from out of nowhere and automatically hit you]]. Did I mention the bridges in the way? Finally, if you're not using the FAE Bomb or the MPBM [[note]]While taking them seems to be a no-brainer, remember that due to plot reasons you're stuck with the same plane and weapon for the last three missions. This means that, if you do take those bombs, you're stuck with just the regular missiles for the mission before Valley of Kings, which contains what might be the most difficult dogfight in the entire game.[[/note]] you'll need to make multiple tunnel runs since you have to destroy all of the joint locks for each V2 controller before the controller itself can be hit. ''''Consolation'''': at least if you enter the tunnel through the south, the named ace in the tunnel who appears after you destroy the first two controllers is flying away from you and thus makes possibly the game's easiest non-bomber kill.

**** These actually go back to ''[=AC2=]'', which had a similar final mission to ''04''. ''[=AC3=]'' also had a similar mission, with altitude changes and closing doors which serves to make it a "twisty" tunnel.

** The first game (''Air Combat'' outside Japan) had possibly the worst canyon mission of any, and a lot of that was FakeDifficulty due to terrible graphics. It was an incredibly narrow canyon and it was very very difficult to tell the two walls apart so every turn was an opportunity to crash due to inability to judge distance.
** ''X'' brings us "A Diversion" where you have to escort six helicopters to a location... but there are infantry-wielded [=RPGs=] along the route that don't appear on radar until the helicopters get close enough, unlike what the briefing says about luring them out. Plus some of these wankers (yes, I went there) appear in locations that are inconvenient to target if you stick too close to the helicopters, and trying to stay behind them can backfire if you end up falling too far behind. Plus once you actually reach the location the helis need to get to, you find it's also defended by [=SAMs=] and triple-A, so you can't take a breather yet. And you can lose only one if you want to get a S-rank, with all of them being {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s. Did I mention that if you want to get the ace for this mission, you need to run ahead of the helis to take him down, and almost certainly will lose at least one trying to get back to them?

**** Actually... It isn't impossible to shoot them down while they have the cloak. If you're UNBELIVABLY good/lucky, you can shoot down ALL FOUR FENRIRS WHILE THE CLOAK IS UP.
** ''Assault Horizon'' seems to ''LOVE'' this trope. From the mission where you need to destroy an ICBM while it is launched, to the navy mission that requires the usage of attacker aircraft (which has been badly nerfed compared to previous iterations), to the final mission where you take on Akula, it's astounding that the game has actually been beaten on Elite.

** All of these levels ''blush'' when compared to Joint Assault's ''Grand Flight''. It's a canyon mission where you're flying an airliner, which means you are unarmed and have no means of fighting back against the metric ton of anti-air. If you somehow make it through the canyon, there's also an ambush on the way out. Remember, airliner = no weapons. Oh, and it has the steering of a brick and can't be tuned, either. Good luck.
** Area 06-D in Ace Combat 5's arcade mode (Operation Katina). The mission is to destroy 24 air targets (most of them fighters, with one large transport plane that takes a ''lot'' of hits to destroy - thankfully this is optional). Sounds easy enough, right? But you are only given 20 regular missiles and 4 XMAAs (with longer range). It takes 2 missiles (or 1 XMAA) to destroy a fighter. Usually in arcade mode, there are special targets that you can destroy to replenish your missile supply. In this area, there are none of those targets, so you will eventually run out of missiles before you can destroy every target, which means that you will have to manually aim your machine gun (which has infinite ammo) to shoot down a target. ''All while several other fighters are on your tail, firing missiles at you''. On top of that, you start off with a 30-second time limit; however, every target you destroy adds 20 seconds to the limit (this is usual for arcade mode).

** DS and DSCute weren't as bad in the fact that dropping a level didn't kill most of your stamina. It just gets annoying when you have to drop ONE LEVEL AT A TIME through digging up stairs, like you have to in Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands.

** The ''Magical Melody'' mines weren't that bad.. If you exclude the random times when you go ''up'' instead of down (which happens a lot once you reach a certain point), and the rocks having nasty effects sometimes.

* ''AceCombat'' primarily has these in levels where the mission/parameters have nothing to do with the Difficulty setting; the "game stopper" was ''[=AC5=]'''s "Four Horsemen," mission 12b. It's only one of the two paths, but [[GuideDangIt you're given no clue that your answer to a wingman's question in mission 10 will have any consequence]]. Things aren't so bad on the other path, or even in the other mission on this path, while this mission requires you to perform four consecutive timed destructions of radar sites, which means that you have to take into account your weapon's travel time ''and'' your own travel time -- go past the radar site and you fail, while if you get in position too early you'll have to break/slow down, which can cause a stall or wasted time (especially if you have to turn around to reposition yourself for another attack run), and you have less time between each radar site. Did I mention that your wingmen may mess up ''their'' approaches against their own targets which you don't see and cause everyone to have to abort their attack run and try again?

** I have to bring up Four Horsemen again for two reasons: you ''have to play it at least once'' to unlock the Flanker line of jets, and it also contains one of the hangars you have to destroy to unlock the [[GameBreaker ADF-01 FALKEN]]. [[strike:Have fun.]]
** The recent Assault Horizon seems to ''LOVE'' this trope. From the mission where you need to destroy an ICBM while it is launched, to the navy mission that requires the usage of attacker aircraft (which has been badly nerfed compared to previous iterations), to the final mission where you take on Akula, it's astounding that the game has actually been beaten on Elite.

* Yes it is an EndlessGame, but that doesn't mean DwarfFortress doesn't have a few. Namely the evil biomes where giant smogs can cover the land, giving horrible diseases to everything under them. A near constant cycle of undeads rising from corpses, which only get worse the more and more you kill. And that is not even getting into Husks...Also for a newbie, building a fort near an aquifer can be pretty dangerous since you can easily flood your fort if you are not careful. Oh yeah, and the less said about hell the better.

* {{Mechwarrior}} IV: Mercenaries has [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgWdxxZmvt4 Talon/Wernke - Night Op]]. You're meant to pilot a light, fast 'mech, trying to be as stealthy as possible, trying to sneak past several 'mechs that can stomp you in a heartbeat, and there's generally enough enemy 'mechs that it's suicide to take anything heavier. For contrast, there's a ludicrously easy stealth mission elsewhere in the game.

** Not to mention Harmonic Hills, which is pretty much Rainbow Valley [[UpToEleven turned up]] [[FromBadToWorse a few more notches]]. You still can't change the landscape at all, but now there is the added difficulty of not being able to build above the height of the trees. ''[[ThisIsGonnaSuck Good freaking luck]]''.

** Consider the third game, and La La Land. It's not even ''intended'' to be that difficult, falling squarely in the middle of the Vanilla level set. However, due to the way the game handles how Peeps perceive area theming, among other things, it's downright hellish. Consider this-there are two VIPs you have to impress, both with a themed area they'd really like to see-sci-fi for Clint Bushton, and adventure for Joe Sluggerball. Now, you might ask "How are we supposed to do that?" Well, first, you have to get one or two themed rides (and only themed rides) close to each other, surround them with a fuckload of themed plants, and make sure those VIPs stay in that area without leaving (which, if you haven't figured out [[HowDoIShotWeb make Peeps go to certain rides]], is a crapshoot. It's already aggravating to do it once, but doing it ''twice'' is torturous. All this is ''after'' you've dealt with the awful firework display-making system, which should take you forever to get working, and then another forever to get Clint Bushton to pay any fucking attention to the fireworks even if they're right in front of him. If you think all that strong language is unnecessary, then you clearly have never played this map before because it's unbelievably infuriating.

*** Not to mention Harmonic Hills, which is pretty much Rainbow Valley [[UpToEleven turned up]] [[FromBadToWorse a few more notches]]. You still can't change the landscape at all, but now there is the added difficulty of not being able to build above the height of the trees. ''[[ThisIsGonnaSuck Good freaking luck]]''.

* [[{{VideoGame/IL2Sturmovik}} IL-2 Sturmovik]]: Birds of Prey's Hornet's Nest mission. Prior to this, the game ramps up nicely in difficulty. Hornet's nest tosses you into a night battle seeking out transport planes and preventing them from landing at the airstrip while avoiding wings of enemy fighters and the A-A guns on the ground.