Harder Than Hard: Difference between revisions

Please note: If it's '''a difficulty level that's higher than an already existing hard mode''', it's an example. If it's simply a very difficult Hard mode (or for that matter, [[Nintendo Hard|a very difficult game]]), it is NOT''not'' an example.

** [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|Hard Mode Level 1 Cap without starting a]] [[New Game Plus+|New Game + ]]. ''[[Order of Ecclesia]]'', an already really hard game, becomes a nightmare until a certain point if you're playing as Shanoa. As Albus, it's a breeze until you reach the Skeleton Cave, in which you'll probably have a much harder time than Shanoa due to lack of items and the Zombie familiar, which can block fireballs for you. Let's not even get started on what would happen if you ever decided to play with the Old Axe Armor while stuck at level one in ''[[Portrait of Ruin]]''... Luckily, all the HP, MP, and, if they're separate from the MP, Heart upgrades can be found to make life easier and, if you're playing with a character that can change their attacks and armor and use items, things become significantly easier as the game goes on.

* ''[[An Untitled Story]]'' has "Simple", "Regular", and "Difficult". As an extra difficulty, it also has "Masterful" which is Nintendo Hard to the extreme. "Insanity" manages to top that by making your character a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]].

* ''[[Three D3D Dot Game Heroes (Video Game)|Three D Dot Game Heroes]]'' has standard mode, [[From Software]] Mode and [[Spelunker]] Mode. From Mode is basically Hard Mode, but Spelunker Mode ramps it up so you [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|die in one hit]] and enemies are harder to kill.

* Beat ''[[MegamanMega Man Legends]] 2'' once and you unlock Hard Mode. Beat ''that'', and you unlock ''Very'' Hard Mode. Capcom, you [[Magnificent Bastard|Magnificent Bastards]]s...

* "Dante Must Die" in the ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' games. "Heaven Or Hell" from the third game, where both the main character and all enemies [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|die in one hit]], is somewhere between a gimmick mode and [[Harder Than Hard]]. "Hell or Hell," in the fourth game, has ''only'' [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|the main character dying in one hit]] and is very much [[Harder Than Hard]]. Of course, if you perfected your style play on Sons on Sparda with no health lost, you, sir, are set...mostly.

* ''[[God of War (Video Gameseries)|God of War]]'' has a God mode and (in the sequel) a Titan mode. One section in the latter (the second titan minotaur), which is already hard in normal, becomes a purely luck-based affair. The enemies took more hits and hit harder, you received less orbs, and magic used substantially more magic - the game was not pulling any punches. Its a wonder they didn't try to replace the blades with [[Joke Weapon|cotton swabs]].

** ''God of War III'' once again trumps God and Titan with the Chaos Difficulty. It sure says something that the first game's [[Harder Than Hard]] difficulty is by now considered the Normal Difficulty.

* ''[[DantesDante's Inferno (Videovideo Gamegame)|Dantes Inferno]]'' has the Infernal difficulty setting, which comes with the considerably stern but sincere warning, "You are damned." On this difficulty, enemies and hazards dole out horrific damage, including regular enemies being able to one-shot you from maximum health, and Mana and health fountains giving back pathetic refills. It almost seems as though this mode was intended to be played on [[New Game Plus+|Resurrection Mode]], as both it and the Infernal setting are unlocked after beating the game on any of the normal difficulties.

== [[Beat 'Em Up]] ==

* Unleash the Fury difficulty in ''[[The Warriors (Videovideo Gamegame)|The Warriors]]''. All enemies do extreme damage, most enemies are immune to instant kills from special rage attacks, and all of your Warriors have the Baseball Furies outfits while the real Furies use the Warrior models.

* ''[[Initial D Arcade Stage (Video Game)|Initial D Arcade Stage]]'' had Bunta Challenge. Objective: Beat a grossly overpowered vehicle. Then beat an even more grossly overpowered vehicle. Then beat a vehicle that will leave you in the dust the instant you make the tiniest error. And if he wins, you ''lose points''. No wonder Sega discontinued this after 3.

* The ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' series, in two out of three games, has the following difficulties in the 1 player mode: Very easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. ''Super Smash Bros Brawl'' has Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Intense. Intense is likely a reference to ''[[Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards (Video Game)|Kirby 64]]'', which had an intense difficulty for the minigames if you could beat the computer on very hard.

* ''[[Magical Battle Arena]]'' has the suitably named Nightmare difficulty. Besides making your enemies hardier, they're now all extra aggressive in their attacks, and in the five on one [[Mirror Match]], will constantly attempt to surround you using [[Flash Step|Flash Steps]]s making it nigh impossible for you to even attack. Oh, and those [[Goddamned Bats|annoying]] [[Joke Character|but relatively harmless]] [[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha|Gadget Drones]]? They've remembered that they have [[Wave Motion Gun|Wave Motion Guns]]s and [[Combat Tentacles|tentacle grabs]], so now, they can also kill you. Needless to say, your computer-controlled ally is practically useless here and will be dead before you know it.

== [[First -Person Shooter]] ==

*** And in ''Halo: Reach'', it was described by Bungie as being "harder than any other Halo game." [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|They weren't kidding.]]

** Even from the start, the ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series had the oath of the vidmaster, essentially a commitment to play the game as hard as possible. Not only do you only play the hardest difficulty, appropriately named as Total Carnage, but you are also tasked with ''punching'' every switch <ref>Switches would also trigger when shot with certain guns, and some switches cannot be reached, so must be shot.</ref> (which can often lead to problems), firing grenades whenever they were available, running by holding a key other than Caps Lock (turning on Always Run in the later Open-Source releases probably counts as the same thing), and killing all [[NPC|NPCs]]s (who would attack you after a few already died). Needless to say, Bungie likes making hard games harder.

* "Nightmare!" in ''[[Doom]]''. Cheat codes are disabled, monsters attack much more often, enemy projectiles fly faster, a certain enemy type is twice as fast, and [[Respawning Enemies|monsters respawn after death]]. The only plus is that you get double ammo from [[Power -Up|Power Ups]]. The fact that the game asks you whether you ''really'' want to play on it or not when you select it is telling.

* ''[[Duke Nukem]] 3D'', being a [[Doom]]-clone, had a [[Harder Than Hard]] mode where in addition to being stronger, any enemy who left a corpse (basically, who wasn't killed by an explosion, the shrink or freeze ray, or crushing) would respawn, including the clones of the first episode's boss who, in addition to being the strongest enemy in the game, would always leave a corpse even if you did blow him up, forcing you to waste another grenade or rocket to get rid of it.

* ''[[Quake (Video Gameseries)|Quake]]'''s [[Harder Than Hard]] mode took advantage of the game's in-game difficulty selection (in other words, a [[Hub Level]]), with the "Nightmare" difficulty only accessible through a secret hidden inside a magical pond.

*** ''[[Quake II (Video Game)|Quake II]]'''s Hard+ mode was even more well hidden, accessible only through the console. Unlike the first Quake, this one is significantly tougher than the "normal" Hard difficulty. Enemies are faster and [[Artificial Brilliance|surprisingly intelligent]], and their weapons deal much more damage.

* ''[[Unreal Tournament (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament]]'' has Average as the second difficulty level - out of eight. It starts Novice, Average, Experienced, and eventually ends up at Godlike.

** Average is actually easier than ''[[Quake III Arena (Video Game)|Quake III Arena]]'''s easy mode and would only be a serious challenge to a beginner. The real medium difficulty is "Experienced" or "Skilled".

** To sum up how the difficulty feels during gameplay, here are the basics. On Recruit, the game is more or less a gritty action film. [[Mooks]] miss a lot, and their rounds aren't all that damaging. Timed objectives give out substantially more time. The number of enemies is dramatically reduced. Basically, it's very easy to do a no-death run. On Regular, the game offers a standard level of challenge and you will likely die a few times, but most situations can be won in a few tries with enough firepower and cover. So long as you don't make a habit of disregarding cover, then the game isn't all that hard. On Hardened, the game becomes a real challenge. There are more enemies, they hit more frequently, and can kill you in a few hits. You may need to get creative in how you deal with situations. The game is fair, so except for very few occasions, the game is not a [[Luck -Based Mission]], and the computer will not cheat. Veteran is close to impossible. Enemies come in much higher numbers, have noticeably more health, have much better aim, and to top it all off, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]] and only lets you win on rare occasions. This is at least 2x harder than Hardened. Here, enemies love to survive what ought to be lethal wounds, go into last stand mode, and most infuriatingly, suddenly kill you with three rapid shots in such close succession that you can't do anything. Even more annoying is that the odds of being suddenly and unfairly killed increase inversely proportionally to the number of enemies remaining, so you can down four mooks at the start of a fight with no trouble, but the last enemy kills you the moment you stick your head out of cover!

* ''[[Turok (Video Gameseries)|Turok]]'' (2008) has Normal, Hard, and Inhuman difficulties. Inhuman takes away your ability to instant-knife-kill dinosaurs, and also allows enemy soldiers to kill you with about half a second of sustained gunfire. So basically, just like how it'd be in real life.

* ''[[Far Cry]]'''s has the "Realistic" difficulty. If you don't know how to take cover properly, or know where the armor is, you're fucked. Hiding isn't an option, since a mercenary ''will'' gather up his buddies and try to flank you.

* "Infamous" on '"'[[Far Cry]] 2'' is roughly as close to reality as the game will get: running checkpoints or trying to take them out by rolling into them blazing away on the gun of your truck/boat is a good way to get ventilated within seconds, forcing players to sneak up on them and perform massive one-man ambushes with explosives and fire. Enemies are experts at seeking you out when you hide in buildings, turning stealth from a neat way to play into a necessity.

* ''[[Crysis (Video Gameseries)|Crysis]]'' has Delta difficulty, which is ''supposed'' to be [[Harder Than Hard]], as your health regenerates ''much'' more slowly. Additionally, there are a bunch of little handicaps such as the fact you have no crosshair (unless aiming down iron sights or a scope, or using an attached laser pointer), you can't drive a vehicle and operate the rooftop machinegun turret at the same time, and enemies all speak Korean, making it harder for the player to gauge their moves.

** Delta is referred to as [[Twenty Four24|Bauer]] mode in the game files.

* ''[[STALKER]]: Shadow of Chernobyl'' and ''STALKER: Clear Sky'' have the harder-than-hard "Master" difficulty. Notably, the game is ''already'' [[Nintendo Hard]] on the ''easy'' difficulty setting. Try to imagine what the [[Harder Than Hard]] difficulty is like.

** Master is well-named. It's perfect for people who have mastered the game on lower difficulty levels and know how to gain advantages over enemies who can take and inflict damage on par with the player but are much more numerous. People who don't know how to pull this off might as well map quickload and quicksave to a mouse button. Actually, scratch that: even people who DO know to pull this off will have to spend a lot of time reloading, because it takes only a ''moment'' of inattention to have your brains blown out.

* ''[[Doom]] 3'''s Nightmare mode has enemies doing about 3.5 times as much damage as normal, allowing them to kill you in less than a dozen hits or so. Additionally, you also constantly lose health every couple of seconds. To balance this out, your start out with the Soul Cube, which allows you to steal health from enemies.

** ''Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil'''s Nightmare difficult goes beyond [[Harder Than Hard]] and into the realm of truly insane. Just like in regular ''Doom 3'', you constantly lose health throughout the game. Unlike ''Doom 3'', you don't have the Soul Cube around to steal health from enemies. As a result, you pretty much spend the entire game as a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]], with death being instant if you ever take a single hit from any enemy.

* ''[[Quake IV (Video Game)4|Quake IV]]'' had the General difficulty. Enemies did 3.5 times as much damage as normal, and thus could kill you in just a few hits if you didn't have armor (and you didn't even GET armor until after 2 or 3 levels). Even with armor, you could still die after just several hits. Enemies also had [[Damage Sponge|significantly more health]], to the point that even mid-level enemies like the Berserkers and Gunners required more than a full mag of assault rifle fire to kill. Finally, the [[Gameplay Ally Immortality]] of your Rhino Squad squadmates was disabled, turning previously fun firefights into tedious [[Escort Mission|escort missions]], since you got an automatic game over if any of them ever died.

** Even worse: ''SOF2'''s Soldier Of Fortune difficulty, which is [[First -Person Shooter]] Hell, although there aren't many [[Respawning Enemies]]. The normal difficulties are already [[Nintendo Hard]], this goes [[Up to Eleven]].

* In addition to their three standard difficulty settings, both ''[[GoldenGoldenEye Eye007 (1997 (Videovideo Gamegame)|GoldenEye]]'' and its [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' feature unlockable difficulty settings (called "007" and "Perfect Dark" respectively) that allow the player to alter the challenge by fine-tuning certain enemy properties: their health, accuracy, damage and reaction times. This allows players to set up a [[Self -Imposed Challenge]] that is far harder than the standard difficulty settings. Level runs done with minimum enemy health and all other settings on maximum (meaning both player and perfectly-accurate guards will die in a single hit) are known as "Licence to Kill" (LTK) settings. Runs with ''everything'' set to maximum, so that guards have ''ten times more health than normal'', are known as "Dark LTK" runs. In ''[[GoldenGoldenEye Eye007 (1997 (Videovideo Gamegame)|Golden Eye 1997]]'' this is stupidly hard since a dead foe doesn't drop enough ammo to kill the next one (though it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy85PlckrW0 is possible to complete certain levels]; in Perfect Dark it's ''marginally'' more manageable thanks to the game's [[Chunky Salsa Rule|"quirk"]] that headshots on unshielded NPCs are always instant kills.

** While the remake ''[[GoldenGoldenEye Eye Wii007 (Video2010 video Gamegame)|Golden Eye Wii]]'' has more modern trappings of FPSes like regenerating health, there's "007 Classic" mode, complete with health bar and armor pickups. True to this trope, it's also the hardest difficulty level of the game.

* The [[PSPlay Station 3]] port of ''[[BioBioShock Shock(series)]]'', in addition to the Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties, has Survivor mode, which is described on the difficulty selection screen as "Every bullet counts." The very first enemy will kill you. And one of the trophies asks you to beat the game on Survivor without using Vita-chambers. This trophy is fittingly called "I Chose the Impossible."

** The sequel, ''Project Origin'', original just had Easy, Normal, and Hard. However, the 1.02 patch for the game transformed Hard mode into [[Harder Than Hard]] by significantly increasing the damage done by enemy attacks, to the point that you died after just 8-10 bullet hits or 2 shotgun blasts or sniper rifle shots. Again, it's still manageable if you use Slo-Mo, but certain fights (most noticeably the final shootout) are super annoying.

* The 2010 ''[[Aliens vs. Predator]]'' game has Nightmare difficulty. It's just like Hard (enemies do increased damage, have higher health, command prompts no longer appear on screen to tell you when to block or counter, aliens can no longer be knocked down in melee, and marines are much more aware of their surroundings) with the added handicap that there ''are no checkpoints'', so if you die at any point in a level you have to start over from the very beginning.

* When you beat ''[[Killer 7Killer7]]'', you get access to "Killer 8". In it you get an additional character with both a clip size and rate of fire drastically larger than any of the normal caricatures. However, the down side is that the enemies are faster and more deadly; just shooting at them normally does almost nothing, the weak points that you use to kill them instantly are now completely invisible, and the enemies give you less "blood" to level up and heal with.

== [[Four X4X]] ==

* ''[[Sid MeiersMeier's Alpha Centauri]]'' has "Citizen", "Specialist", "Talent", "Librarian", "Thinker" and "Transcend", the last one alluding to the [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence]] victory.

* ''[[Civilization]] III'' has Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, Monarch, Emperor and Deity. One of the [[Walkthrough|Walkthroughs]]s in [[Game FAQsGameFAQs]] says the possibility of winning a game in the last setting is ''theoretical.'' The ''Conquests'' [[Expansion Pack]] takes this even further with a Demigod level, which actually replaces Deity - thus resulting in an even harder Deity difficulty - and an even harder [[Shout -Out|Sid]] difficulty level.

* ''[[Master of Magic]]'' has an "Impossible" level. With all patches applied, this description wasn't far off the mark, given that [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]. However, the Impossible level was fairly trivial to beat with the release version, thanks to various [[Game Breaker|game-breaking]] [[Good Bad Bug|Good Bad Bugs]]s.

** ''Chaos'' difficulty, in ''Warriors Orochi'' at least, is no different from Hard, for the most part. Enemies have the same HP (more or less), AI is the same, they deal the same amount of damage... the only difference is that their attacks completely ignore defence. A regular mook can now kill you in four hits. And did we mention you will often be surrounded by a few ''hundred'' mooks, with a few officers in the middle to spice things up? Enjoy.

* ''[[Muramasa: theThe Demon Blade]]'' has three difficulty levels: Muso, Shura, and Shigurui. Muso is standard 'easy' mode (well, 'easy' for ''[[Odin Sphere]]'' veterans), Shura ups the HP and damage of all enemies and significantly ups their aggressiveness, and Shigurui (only unlockable after beating the game on Shura) is like Muso... Except your character is now a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]]. None of your enemies are. Enjoy.

* In addition to the highest difficulties, ''[[Diablo]]'' games also have Hardcore mode, which is like [[Roguelike|Roguelikes]]s in its difficulty in that you only get one life to play through the game with, and once you die, that's it for your character.

* The [[Infocom]] [[Interactive Fiction]] game ''Suspended'' had an "Impossible" difficulty level that [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|really was]] - a few turns into the game the sun goes nova, destroying your entire planet.

* In the freeware [[Platform Hell]] game ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'', the difficulty levels are "Medium" (the ''[[Nintendo Hard|easiest]]'' setting), "Hard", "Harder" and "Impossible." The [[Numerical Hard|only difference]] being the number of save points decreases, and "Impossible" is [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|quite accurate]] as it has ''none'', and with its [[Trial and Error Gameplay|particular]] [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|kind]] [[Nintendo Hard|of]] [[Platform Hell|gameplay]] just simply says '''you are not going to win'''. Most people just [[Endless Game|try to see how far they can go]].

** The PS2 port also has Sweet mode, which is [[Easier Than Easy]].

* ''[[Penn and Teller|Penn & Teller]]'s Smoke and Mirrors'' poked fun at this one with an impossible difficulty that was literally impossible. During the game you would get laser'd, prompting the following quote:

{{quote| '''Lou Reed:''' ''This is the impossible level, boys. Impossible doesn't mean very difficult; very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize. Impossible is eating the sun.''}}

* ''[[Wario Land (Video Game)|Wario Land]] 4'' has a secret Super Hard difficulty level which pretty much puts health starting a one, adds about twenty times more enemies to the levels and massively cuts down on allowed time for level escapes and boss fights.

* ''[[Iji (Video Game)|Iji]]'' has Normal, Hard, Extreme, and Ultimortal. The first three are pretty similar, you just recover less HP from red nanofields and can't level up as much, as well as enemies becoming smarter. Ultimortal (which you must beat Extreme to unlock) only lets you level up health (which means shotgun only and no skipping [[That One Boss|the penultimate boss]]) and imposes a [[Timed Mission|level timer]], as well as ''removing'' all non-blue nanofields, meaning you can't heal. At all. {{spoiler|And when you beat ''that'', you can unlock the "[[Memetic Badass|reallyjoel's dad]]" difficulty.}}

* ''[[Pokémon]] [[Panel Dede Pon|Puzzle League]]'''s true ending can only be accessed on Very Hard. There's a Super Hard, but you don't get anything for your trouble except [[Bragging Rights Reward|a code to use a special character in Vs mode]].

* The NES and Game Boy iterations of ''[[Tetris (Video Game)|Tetris]]'' typically only allow you to start as high as level 9. However, a simple code allows you to set the starting level as high as 19.

* ''[[Dr. Mario (Video Game)|Dr. Mario]] 64'' allows you to press two specific buttons to play on Super Hard difficulty, which doesn't pull punches, as you'd expect. In the Multiplayer, you can also press two combinations of buttons to ramp up the computer opponents to Hard and Super Hard as well. Good luck trying to beat [[Final Boss|Rudy]], [[Bonus Boss|Metal Mario, and Vampire Wario]] like this.

* "Brutal" in ''[[Command and& Conquer]]: Generals''.

** ''C&C 3: Tiberium Wars'' adds AI personality modes, including a special mode called "Steamroller". Beating a Brutal Steamroller AI in a duel is a serious challenge even for highly experienced C&C players (but mostly because [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]). The Xbox 360 version takes the AI difficulties from the PC version and adds [[Took a Level Inin Badass|forty levels of ass-kicking.]] The ''medium'' difficulty setting will have an AI spamming you with Mammoth Tanks inside of ''five minutes.''

* When adding AI Bots to a skirmish game in ''[[Supreme Commander (Video Game)|Supreme Commander]]'', the difficulty modes for each AI run from Easy to Hard to [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Cheater]].

* ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'' for the DS has "Breezin'" and "Cruisin'" which are available when the game starts. Beating "Cruisin'" unlocks "Sweatin'". Beating "Sweatin'" (a feat in itself) unlocks "Hard Rock". Each difficulty has its own main character with the same two sidekicks for the first three difficulties. "Hard Rock" replaces the Agents with the Divas (basically their [[Distaff Counterpart]]). Interestingly, Hard Rock is just Sweatin' with smaller buttons, a quicker pace, and of course, [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|everything is backwards]]. Have fun.

** The Japanese game ''[[Osu Tatakae Ouendan|Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan]]'' has the exact same difficulty structure (though named "Light-heartedly", "Boldly", "Fervently", and "Gracefully" Cheer, from easiest), as ''EBA'' was a localized port of ''Ouendan''. ''Ouendan'' is more difficult overall though, as you cannot review a level when you fail to see how to improve, and you can't skip the cutscenes - groan. Oh, and you know how much the spinners are a pain in ''EBA''? They were specifically made ''easier'' than they were in ''Ouendan''. On top of that, while all of EBA's Hard ROCK! charts are the same as Sweatin's, only turned 180 degrees, some of ''Ouendan'''s Very Hard charts not only do that, but also make alterations to some of the charts; notes that are normally stacked will now be spread out, and the fourth part of "Shanghai Honey" now has notes at eighth-note intervals instead of quarter-note intervals, all while being spread out like quarter notes.

** ''Ouendan 2'' actually adds the occasional extra beat for songs in the Very Hard mode, presumably to trip up players who [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|assume it'll be identical to the Hard mode based on what they know from the previous games]]. The fact that these extra notes are so few and far between actually makes them more insidious. However, it does now let you skip cutscenes, something that's appreciated after the twentieth consecutive restart on a Very Hard mode song.

* ''[[Guitar Hero]]'' has Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. In ''[[Guitar Hero]] III'', [[Sequel Difficulty Spike|Hard feels like Expert used to]], Expert feels like an abomination, and ''[[That One Boss|Through the Fire and Flames]]'' is on a level all its own. There are also cheat codes that [[Self -Imposed Challenge|raise the difficulty]] to utterly terrifying levels. (Like turning off the fretboard entirely, leaving you to play the song from memory. Good luck with that.)

** ''Guitar Hero: Metallica'' and ''[[Guitar Hero]]: Smash Hits'' added Expert+, a new difficulty exclusive for drums that adds a second bass pedal for songs whose part requires it. Thought YYZ and Beast and the Harlot were tough on Expert? Try to keep up with [[Rush|Neil Peart]] and [[Avenged Sevenfold (Music)|The Rev]] at full speed.

** And then there was sued-out-of-existence DDR clone ''[[In theThe Groove]]'', which gave you the mercy of a standard life meter - but made it far worse, not only with positively ludicrous Expert charts, but with liberal use of the [[Interface Screw]], often in highly creative combinations far beyond what any sane player would devise.

** Similarly, ''[[Pump It Up]]'' has Normal mode and Hard mode. And then there's Crazy mode, which has charts that will make even the hardest of DDR charts look like walks in the park with relentless streams of notes as well as notes that make you hit ''three'' or even ''FOUR'' arrows at once (which require you to use your hands to hit unless you have Xbox-huge feet). What, not good enough for you? For those who like to use two pads at once, there's the Freestyle mode, which is the easier doubles difficulty, and the aptly-named Nightmare mode.

== [[Role -Playing Game]] ==

* Recent ''[[Tales Series(series)|Tales of...]]'' games feature an unlockable difficulty for a [[New Game Plus+]] file usually called Mania or Unknown. This difficulty level is unrelentingly brutal. Some monsters with multi-hit attacks can drop you from 100% HP to 0% in the blink of an eye. Some bosses, especially the ones that use [[Limit Break|Mystic Artes]] become absolute nightmares. ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' bosses such as {{spoiler|Duke's true final form, Schwann, Alexei, and Kratos}} possess the potential to instantly kill your entire party with their Mystic Arte.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] II: Final Mix + '' has four modes of difficulties, one called "Critical" which is even harder than the hard mode of ''Kingdom Hearts II'' Normal Version, and ''halves'' Sora's maximum HP. Furthermore, an optional skill in "Critical" makes Sora being [[Low -Level Run|stuck at Level 1]], though this is between a "legitimate" difficulty mode and a [[Self -Imposed Challenge]].

* ''[[Legend of Mana]]'' only allows Normal difficulty the first time through, but on accessing [[New Game Plus+]], lets players also pick Nightmare and No Future modes. At the last option, even with a level-capped character and some of the ultimate reward weapons, players might be overwhelmed by a single [[Killer Rabbit|rabite]].

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has the unlockable "Hardcore" (after finishing the game once) and "Insanity" (after finishing a playthrough on Hardcore) difficulties, the latter of which proves to be, well, ''[[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|insane]]''. It's not impossible to beat but you'll have to get up to level 50 just to reach a point where every battle ''isn't'' a brutal, intense life-or-death struggle.

* Jupiter's ''[[The World Ends With You (Video Game)|The World Ends With You]]'' starts off on Normal, gives you Easy, then gives you Hard, then lets you unlock Ultimate yourself.

* ''[[Persona 3]]'' originally featured two difficulty levels, Easy and Normal. The expansion ''Person 3 FES'' added Hard mode, which took the already difficult Normal Mode and cranked it [[Up to Eleven|up to 11]]. (In addition, the bonus chapter has all the difficulty of Hard Mode, with the added bonuses of denying Social Link and Persona Compendium use.) ''Persona 3 Portable'' takes it even further by adding '''Maniac''' mode, in which enemies hit twice as hard as normal (as opposed to 1.5 times as hard in Hard mode), certain Weapon Fusions are unavailable, and the game's [[New Game Plus+]] feature is disabled for that cycle, forcing you to start ''all over again''. No summoning Lucifer at level 5 for you!

* ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]: Echoes of Time'' has Normal, Hard, and Very Hard selectable when you go to do a [[New Game Plus+]] after beating the previous difficulty level. What they don't tell you is that each subsequent play-through of Very Hard is actually harder than the last, all the way up to the 10th time you do so. At Very Hard 10, a level 99 character who was leveled with stat growth items so as to max all their stats at 999 will still take hundreds of damage from attacks in the ''first area'' of the game.

* Maniacs difficulty in the newer ''[[Shin Megami Tensei (Franchise)|Shin Megami Tensei]]'' games.

* ''[[Valkyrie Profile|Valkyrie Profile 2]]'' features an interesting form of [[New Game Plus+]] mechanics. When you complete the game and the bonus dungeon, your next playthrough is somewhat more difficult. If you beat the game enough times to max out the difficulty spike, every enemy in the game has been ramped up by ''250%''.

** ''Covenant Of the Plume'' fully expects you to not go for [[Earn Your Happy Ending|path A]] until a [[New Game Plus+]]. Trying to complete the A path stages on your first playthrough is...unadvisable.

* [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings?from=Main.TheWitcher2 [The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings]] has the Insane difficulty. You take even more damage and it makes death permanent. You die, the saves of that playthrough are deleted and you have to start the game from the beginning.

* Each ''[[Touhou]]'' game has Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. But don't let the names fool you. Easy is Hard, Normal is [[Nintendo Hard]], Hard and Lunatic are [[Harder Than Hard]].

* ''[[Tyrian (Video Game)|Tyrian]]'' has three difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard) and ''three more'' hidden difficulty levels, called Impossible, Suicide and Lord of Game. Impossible doesn't live up to its name, only being a little tougher than Hard. Suicide comes close to living up to its name, given how fast the enemy shots fly. Lord of Game is so hard you won't be accusing any difficulty below Suicide of being too hard. Pray to Zinglon if you end up having to play a level with lots of automated turrets on it on this difficulty.

* ''Mushihime-sama'' has three difficulty settings: an "Original" mode with fast, though minimal bullets; a "Maniac" mode with denser, [[Bullet Hell]]-style bullets and a more complex scoring system; then there's "Ultra" mode, which is Maniac mode on horse steroids; in fact, if you try to select Ultra, you get a warning screen that asks if you really want to try it--itit—it's THAT bad. Good luck on beating it without getting a seizure.

* The freeware [[Bullet Hell]] [[Shoot Em Ups|Shoot 'Em Up]] ''[http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/noiz2sa_e.html Noiz2sa]'' offers an endless mode with four levels of difficulty: Normal, Hard, Extreme, and Insane. The first three difficulty levels share the same music, but [[This Is Gonna Suck|Insane has its own music]].

* ''[[Phalanx (Video Game)|Phalanx]]'' on the SNES has "Funny" as the hardest difficulty.

* The ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series (as of ''[[Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies]]'', at least) features difficulty modes Expert and Ace, wherein the 'missile warning' sound (which usually means 'oh crap, evade!') is on so often that it basically becomes white noise. However, Ace mode has it's upside too. It's much easier to get an S ranking on all missions on Ace than any other difficulty. Mind you, it's because you ''have'' to fly well to even survive.

** Also, in ''[[Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War]]'', the Ace difficulty tripled the speed with which your plane's kill gauge filled up, allowing for ''much'' faster upgrading.

** ''[[Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation]]'' has an Extreme and Aces difficulty mode. Extreme is hard enough, where just one missile can kill you. In Aces mode, you can be killed with just 3-4 machine gun rounds and any damage you take cannot be repaired by resupply. Oh yeah, and in everything after hard, the hundreds of missiles being fired at you will basically ''hunt you down''.

* In the Wii ''[[Punch -Out!!]]'', surviving long enough in the (hard by itself) Mac's Last Stand mode gives you Champion mode. Every opponent can floor Little Mac with a single punch.

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'', the US and Japanese versions had "Easy," "Normal," "Hard" and "Extreme" difficulties. The European version also had the added "European Extreme" version, which was even harder (achieving this by changing a guard's field of vision so that they can spot you from ''any distance away'', not just if you're 15-20ft15–20&nbsp;ft in front of them). There's also an option called [[Self -Imposed Challenge|"Game Over if Discovered"]] that ends the game if an enemy guard discovers your presence.

** ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' upped the ante with five difficulty levels: Liquid Easy, Naked Normal, Solid Normal (mostly differed in the competency of enemies), Big Boss Hard, and The Boss Extreme. (And if you're feeling ''really'' masochistic, go for the Big Boss emblem; this requires the player to complete the game on the hardest difficulty, as well as alert no one, ''kill'' no one, use no rations/recovery items, without stealth or bandanna, and without dying in under 5 hours)

* The GameCube version of ''[[Resident Evil (Videovideo Gamegame)|Resident Evil]]'' starts you off with Hiking and Mountain Climb difficulties, which are renamed Easy and Normal after completion and Hard is added. Beat it again for Real Survivor, where the storage boxes no longer allow the player to deposit items in one location and withdraw them at another. Make it through that and the player will get to enjoy Invisible Enemy, which does exactly what you'd expect.

** ''[[Resident Evil 5]]'' also has a [[Harder Than Hard]] mode where enemies do 10x damage (meaning anything that actually does damage instead of being damage over time is probably going to put you into Dying state) ''and'' drops the resuscitation timer to three seconds, from about 15.

== [[Third -Person Shooter]] ==

*** New York Minute is far from impossible, and some levels start you out with much more than one minute of time (both [[Nightmare Sequence|Nightmare Sequences]]s, for example). The key is to go as fast as possible and kill everything in your way, and don't bother with side-areas that are too far off the main path. You will die many, ''many'' times due to some enemies [[Luck -Based Mission|shooting you with 100% accuracy even over long distances]], so quicksaving and loading often is absolutely '''essential''' to reset the [[Random Number God]] and proceed. Poorly-timed quicksaves can cause an [[Unwinnable]] situation though, especially if you are too low on time or save just as a grenade is about to go off.

* Originally, the highest difficulty in ''[[Postal]] 2'' was Hestonworld, in which enemies did twice as much damage and every character in the game world was armed with a weapon. However, since they remained non-hostile towards you until you provoked them, if you used a [[Stealth Based Game|semi-stealthy playstyle]] it could actually make the game easier, as the now-armed civilians would end up killing many of your enemies for you. The patch to the game added the They Hate Me difficulty, which was truly [[Harder Than Hard]] as it caused every character with a gun (including cops, neutrals, and allies) to automatically try to kill you on sight.

* Completing ''[[PN P.N.03]]'' on a [[New Game Plus+]] with a Professional ranking on all 50 Trials and the overall game unlocks the [[Stripperific]] Papillon Suit, which makes Vanessa a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]]. Combined with Hard Mode, this makes the game an exercise in masochism.

* ''[[Freedom Fighters (Videovideo Gamegame)|Freedom Fighters]]'' has the Revolutionary difficulty, in which you have the exact same amount of health as the Soviet soldier enemy Mooks you're fighting (i.e. it only takes 10 assault rifle hits to kill you). The difference is there's only one of you, and hundreds of them. Attempting to Rambo your way through the game is outright suicide, and unless you know how to use cover effectively and make good use of your allied squad, you're not going to get very far at all.

* ''[[Winback]]'''s Sudden Death mode, which makes you a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]], as well as the [[Mook|mooksmook]]s.

* ''[[Dead Space 2 (Video Game)|Dead Space 2]]'' features the unlockable Hardcore difficulty, in which resources are even more scarce than zealot mode, enemies are stronger, and when you die you must restart from your last save point instead of checkpoints and you can only save 3 times.

* The ''[[Uncharted]]'' series has its "[[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|Crushing]]" difficulty, in which enemies can take more hits (four or five, usually, but some can take even more), and Drake can take one or two.

* ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]'' has ''9'' difficulty settings, the top three of which fit this trope. [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|Intensity 9]] is even called [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|Nothing Harder!]]

== [[Turn -Based Strategy]] ==

* "Maniac" in the Japanese version of ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem Tellius (Video Game)|Path of Radiance]]''. The really interesting part is that unlocking Maniac ''removes'' easy mode from the menu, leaving "Medium" as the ''easiest'' difficulty setting! It was also removed from the western releases in favor of an even easier option, though people who have actually played it nearly all concluded Maniac was just badly designed more than anything.

** The US version of ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius (Video Game)|Radiant Dawn]]'' [[Difficulty Byby Region|had the names of its difficulties jacked around with]], so Japan's "Maniac" is US "Hard." In addition to being, well, cruel, this lead to a game-freezing glitch when you use the [[Old Save Bonus]] in early release copies.

* ''[[X-COM]]'' has Superhuman for its [[Harder Than Hard]] setting... unfortunately, the first game had a bug that locked difficulty to Beginner. This resulted to complaints that Superhuman was too easy, so the people making the [[Mission Pack Sequel]] (who didn't know about the bug) jacked up the difficulty of the game to what Superhuman was supposed to be. End result? The [[Nintendo Hard]] game known as ''Terror from the Deep''.

* ''[[Way of the Samurai]]'' has Instant Kill difficulty, where ''everything'' is a [[One -Hit -Point Wonder]]. Fun when you can kill the final boss in one hit, not so fun when one miscued attack or failed block means you're dead. This actually makes some ways of completing the game almost impossible - have fun attempting any of the [[Escort Mission|Escort Missions]]s or fights alongside allies.