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{{trope}}
[[File:harder-than-hard_5189.jpg|link=Persona 3
Many games have several difficulty levels for the player to choose from: there's "Easy," there's "Hard," and usually one in between the two, which is typically "Medium." However, "Hard" often turns out ''not'' to be the hardest level: [[Up to Eleven|there's an even higher difficulty level]] which puts "Hard" to shame. Sometimes this can only be selected if you've already beaten the game, or beaten it on "Hard".
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== [[Action Adventure]] ==
* ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Lament of Innocence]]'' and ''[[Curse of Darkness]]'' both have "Crazy" modes unlocked after completion. Former's version is still much easier than latter's and actually changes things other than the amount of damage the enemies can take and dish out, such as giving bosses additional attacks and changing a jumping puzzle, while the latter focuses more on enemies that take absurd amounts of abuse to kill and who kill you in 1 or 2 hits unless you spend the first 10 hours of gameplay grinding levels on skeletons. And to add more insult to injury, you can't even use the [[Bragging Rights Reward]] you get for beating the mode in a normal game in CoD like you can in LoI, making it practically useless.
** [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[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]].
* ''[[
* Beat ''[[
** And ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'': where Hard Mode means no cyber elves, ''no charge shot'', and you take double damage from everything.
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* The Xbox version of ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' has a Very Hard mode, while ''Black'' and ''Sigma'' added Master Ninja, which was even harder.
** ''Ninja Gaiden 2'' also features a Master Ninja mode which is, arguably, even harder than Master Ninja in ''Black'' and the leaderboard for Master Ninja in ''Black'' had less than 1000 people. It's worth noting that the only way to be on this leaderboard was to actually complete Master Ninja mode.
* ''[[God of War (
** ''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.
* The Super mode in the PS2 version of ''[[Shinobi]]'' is only available after completing the Hard setting.
* ''[[
* ''[[Bayonetta]]''. When you beat the game on Normal, you unlock Hard. When you beat the game on Hard, you unlock the [[Freud Was Right|Non-stop Infinity Climax]] difficulty. It's just like Hard, but you don't get [[Bullet Time|Witch Time]] through normal means. [[This Is Gonna Suck|Have fun with that.]]
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== [[Beat'Em Up]] ==
* ''[[Streets of Rage]] 2'' has Very Easy (locked), Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, and Mania (also locked). On Normal, bosses typically only have upwards of three life meters; ''mini''bosses on Mania tend to have ''four''. Also, enemies will move very fast and will use their lesser-used, more powerful attacks more often.
* Unleash the Fury difficulty in ''[[The Warriors (
* ''[[The Dishwasher]]'' on ''easy'' is already [[Nintendo Hard|incredibly hard]]. On Samurai difficulty, everything, even zombies, move faster and can almost one-shot you. The sequel, ''Vampire Smile'', has ''greatly'' more balanced difficulty. Samurai is still wrist-crackingly difficult, though.
* ''[[God Hand]]'' features a difficulty system that [[Dynamic Difficulty|scales]] based on your [[Awesomeness Meter|performance]].. on Easy and Normal modes. On Hard mode, the difficulty scale is set to the highest level and will not decrease by any means. It doesn't help that even on Easy mode, the game is [[Nintendo Hard|much harder]] than your typical title.
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* Casual players of the original ''San Francisco Rush 2049'' will usually only see the first three tracks, with the latter two being classified as "Advanced." The fifth track, which is unlockable along with the fourth, is classified as "Extreme," and is chock full of right-angle turns and other obstacles intended to keep your speed low.
** The Special Edition has two extra even harder tracks. The sixth has several hard-to-hit shortcuts that must be unlocked in sequence, and if you screw up anywhere, they can be [[Lost Forever]]. The seventh has a lot of high hills with sharp turns along the way.
* ''[[
* ''[[Need for Speed]] Shift''. Any of the Manufacturer duels. Just try it. The single opponent in these races is far more aggressive than in other types of races, and the grass or sand on the sides of the tracks may as well be black holes - once your car goes onto it, it's nearly impossible to even get back on the road, much less retake the lead.
* The original ''[[F-Zero]]'' for SNES had an unlockable Master level. In this mode the most noticeable difference is that the normally laughable "filler cars" become serious competitors and can actually get first place. Oh, and certain tracks become literally impossible with certain cars (seriously, not even tool assisted cheating will help).
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== [[Fighting Game]] ==
* 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
** Brawl's [[Boss Rush|Boss Challenge]] mode doesn't let you continue at all, so it's a nightmare on Intense.
* ''[[Dragonball Z]] Budokai 3'' has Z, ZZ, and ZZZ. These [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|three levels]] invoke [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]], especially if you're playing in [[That One Level|Dragon Arena]], which ''loves'' to [[Fake Difficulty|impose limitations on you during the most difficult of battles]]. Mercy be on your soul if you're playing as anyone who can't go beyond a 2nd level transformation and/or if you're up against [[That One Boss|Cell/Kid Buu/Broly/Omega Shenron/any of the Fusion characters]]. ''Especially'' the latter two. You'll pretty much need to resort to [[AI Breaker|underhanded tricks]] and pray to God... ''a lot''. God help you if you try to tackle this on ZZZ. On this difficulty, ''everyone has maxed-out stats''. '''EVERYONE'''. This feat is impossible for you to do because there are seven parameters (each maxing out at 20) and ''you can only make it to level 100''. Do the math. [[Bragging Rights Reward|Well, at least you get a trophy from Goku acknowledging how you're "the strongest in the universe"... or something.]]
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* [[Bungie]] has had little ditties referring to each level's difficulty for some time. ''[[Myth]]'' was particularly amusing as apparently beating the game on higher levels would give your character greater notoriety - from "The taste of success will turn to ashes in your mouth" to "In an age not yet dawned, your name will be spoken of as a God!"
** There, of course, are the "Heroic" and "Legendary" levels in the ''[[Halo]]'' series.
*** And in ''Halo: Reach'', it was described by Bungie as being "harder than any other Halo game." [[Exactly What It Says
*** This all however is put to the ground as "novice" stuff by the true hardcore of the hardcore of the community. The unnamed, unofficial, yet definitely intentionally programmed to be damned hard to do is the "Mythic" difficulty. It involves turning on all skulls in the game. Each skull basically turns up the difficulty by one level in terms of modifying gameplay needed to succeed and THERE ARE MORE THAN 12 SKULLS. Three of which are basically "fun" skulls, but they can still prove fatal if not accounted for, as they do still modify the game. There is an entire community basically made to conquer this hell. Usually less than 100 people in the entire world accomplish the feat, and that's with [http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/halo3_slaso_2.0/ the] [http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/odst_slaso/ community-built] [http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/reach_mythic/ guides]! To go at it alone is virtual suicide. Recently, Bungie have been basing the ''Reach'' weekly challenges around completing levels Solo, Legendary, All Skulls On.
**** Or the fuel rod shades, revenants, banshees, and ghosts of Pillar of Autumn. That's just on ''normal,'' too.
** Even from the start, the ''[[Marathon
* "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.
** There was once a fan-made difficulty mod that's even harder called "Pray to God." It's just like Nightmare, but you have ''no'' weapons other than your pistol!
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** Particularly annoying is Doom 1 EP 4, where whole levels can be different depending on what difficulty you're playing as because items are moved around depending on difficulty. Naturally, Nightmare makes these as hard to get as possible.
* ''[[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 (
** Then again, unlike ''Doom'' or many other examples here, ''Quake'''s Nightmare difficulty has few player handicaps and is in fact only slightly less manageable than Hard.
*** ''[[
* ''[[Descent]]'' has its Insane difficulty. The enemies have learned how to fire faster than you, dodge better than you, flank better than you, thus nearly all the enemies are [[Demonic Spiders]], especially the [[Goddamned Bats]] in the second game, and all the powerups that are so vital to your survival are now pathetically ineffective. As an added bonus, your weapons take much more energy to use than normal, so you can easily run out of ammunition. And on the second game's Insane, the matcens([[Mook Maker|mook makers]]) are inexhaustible.
** In the PSX games, the Ace and Insane difficulties are hidden and must be unlocked via code. Due to the [[Interface Screw|framerate drops]] when there are a lot of enemies on screen, and the even faster speed of projectiles such as missiles, Insane may be literally unbeatable here.
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** The other two Prime games are similar; making your way through the game on the hardest is tougher than normal but the difficulty really spikes on final bosses, especially Prime 3's final boss.
* ''[[Serious Sam]]'' has Tourist ("for non-FPS players"), Easy ("for non-experienced FPS players"), Normal ("for experienced FPS players"), Hard ("for experienced ''Serious Sam'' players"), and Serious ("Are you serious?"). Beating the game unlocks Mental difficulty ("You can't be serious!"), which is as advertised because all the enemies ''are friggin invisible''!!!
* ''[[
** Average is actually easier than ''[[
* The description for ''[[Call of Duty]]'''s "Veteran" difficulty is "You will not survive". They're not kidding. Even worse in the expansion ''United Offensive'', due to the sheer number of enemy soldiers at points.
** Not to mention ''[[Modern Warfare|Call Of Duty 4's]]'' Veteran, where enemies killed frequently hold out to draw their pistol and two-shot you. Staying out of cover for more than two seconds is entirely suicidal.
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**** In addition, Special Ops stays the same difficulty-wise regardless of if you play solo, or two-player coop. Trying to play Veteran Special Ops without a second player is akin to bungee jumping without a bungee cord. [[Too Dumb to Live|Your chance of survival is about the same.]]
** 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 (
* ''[[System Shock]] 2'' adds 'Impossible' with the final patch. Players start with a mere trickle of health and gain laughable amounts with Endurance increases, making the Tank bonus upgrade an absolute must. Skills and abilities cost an absolutely prohibitive amount of cyber modules past the first level, and as a result hacking skill is ridiculously expensive to purchase - this is a moot point however, as hacking difficulty starts at an insane higher than 100% chance of failure on average before bonuses, and several security consoles are removed altogether in key areas loaded with cameras and turrets. Enemies are faster to hit, and learn new attack techniques. Vending machines also charge more than ever, and stop selling the recycler item that could earn you more money on easier settings. This is one Impossible setting that complies with truth in advertising.
* ''[[Painkiller]]'''s difficulty levels are named Daydream, Insomnia (normal), Nightmare, and Trauma. You have to beat Insomnia and get all the Black Tarot cards in order to unlock Nightmare, and you have to do the same on Nightmare to get to Trauma. On Trauma, there are no quicksaves, and no souls. That's right, the souls enemies release that give you that vital + 1 health bonus when you pick them up and turn you into an invincible demon every time you get 66 of them are no longer in the game.
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** More specifically, realistic difficulty dramatically increases the damage enemies do to your health, causing you to die after only a couple shots if you're not wearing armor. Which is, of course, realistic. (Your armor itself can still take several hits before failing, so the game is still beatable as long as you can find armor). However, realistic difficulty ''also'' '''increases''' the damage that enemies can take, so that even the basic grunts wearing nothing but a t-shirt can soak several assault rifle bullets before dying. Which is, obviously, not so realistic.
* "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 (
** Of course, that last part is irrelevant if the player can speak Korean...
** Delta is referred to as [[
* ''[[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.
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* ''[[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
* ''[[Soldier of Fortune]]'' has the Unfair difficulty, where the noise meter is much more sensitive than on lower difficulty levels, making it much easier to spike it and get tons of [[Respawning Enemies]]. In fact enemies can randomly spawn as soon as the PADD meter reaches halfway or so. It's [[Nintendo Hard]], but not quite as unfair as Doom's Nightmare difficulty.
** 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 ''[[
** Said customisable difficulties can also be used in conjunction with the games' many unlockable cheat options, some of which make the game harder: the "Enemy Rockets" cheat, for example, arms every enemy in each game with a rocket launcher with infinite ammo.
** ''[[Perfect Dark]]'''s multiplayer mode allows players to set up deathmatches that involve bots of varying behaviour and difficulty level. "PerfectSims" and "DarkSims" have near-perfect accuracy and reaction times.
** ''[[Perfect Dark]] Zero'' features an unlockable fourth difficulty setting, "Dark Agent", which does away with the semi-[[Regenerating Health]] feature.
** While the remake ''[[
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' has Easy, Normal, Advanced, and Expert. They probably should have called them Easy, Normal, Hardcore, and Madness.
** If it helps, the internal identifier for Expert mode is Impossible. The common infected deal 20 damage per hit, Hunters and Smokers do at least 30 damage per hit, Tanks can incapacitate a Survivor in one hit and then kill in two hits, and the Witch will instantly kill you if provoked. Friendly fire damage is significantly increased where a stray shotgun blast or few bullets can incap a Survivor.
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*** The sequel now sports Realism mode, which is a ''mode of play'' instead of difficulty. Realism mode removes the colored auras around allies and items, making communication about who and what is where a must. Head shots to zombies are now more vital than ever since it will do more damage and more likely to kill in one shot than two shotgun blasts to the torso. To top it off, you can play Realism mode on any difficulty setting, including the already hard as hell Expert setting.
*** Thanks to [[Sequel Difficulty Spike]], ''[[Left 4 Dead 2]]'' should have the difficulties called Normal, Advanced, Hard, and Impossible.
* The [[
** It's only difficult up until the end of Neptune's Bounty. Once you get past that, you should have enough ammo and plasmids to survive most situations. As for the vita chambers, you still get a lot of checkpoints, so it's not too punishing.
* ''[[Killzone]] 2''. Let's see, Veteran makes the Helghast pain in the ass to kill (your normally powerful side-arm is now worthless, and they can take four shots to the head - if you don't wind up shooting them in the neck), and amps the damage (if you're out of cover for more than five seconds, '''YOU WILL DIE.''' ''Coupled with a crappy cover system, where it can take precious seconds to stick and unstick from a wall while Helghast happily round the corner and shoot you, AND a jerky aim that can't be fixed.'' Now, picture this in Elite, where, in one or two shots, you die. With a long regen time, and ''cover that can blow apart in certain levels'' also, did we mention no reticule?.
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== [[
* Ordinarily the hardest difficulty on ''[[Civilization]] II'' was named Deity and really stacked the odds against you. However, since the penalties for the player and bonuses for the CPUs were generated algorithmically, editing the text file to insert more selections for difficulty level actually worked. So now you can have cities where the first few citizens are doubly unhappy!
* ''[[Sid
* ''[[Civilization]] III'' has Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, Monarch, Emperor and Deity. One of the [[Walkthrough|Walkthroughs]] in [[Game FAQs]] 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.
** It should be noted that good players can consistently beat Sid level, especially on certain map types the AI has a hard time with (Archepelago in particular).
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** Some of the games, such as the ''[[Samurai Warriors]]'' games, have had Very Easy and (in the ''[[Warriors Orochi]]'' games) Chaos as the only one above Hard. The names in the Japanese versions? ''Heaven'' and ''Hell''.
** ''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:
* In addition to the highest difficulties, ''[[Diablo]]'' games also have Hardcore mode, which is like [[Roguelike|Roguelikes]] 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.
== [[Interactive Fiction]] ==
* The [[Infocom]] [[Interactive Fiction]] game ''Suspended'' had an "Impossible" difficulty level that [[Exactly What It Says
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== [[Platform Game]] ==
* 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
** Worse yet, playing on Medium will cause the game to [[Easy Mode Mockery|mock you]] by giving The Kid a cute pink bow and having all Medium-exclusive points have "WUSS" instead of "SAVE" written on them. The idea is to man up and pretend Hard is the default difficulty.
** "Impossible" is so hard that the creator of the game was publicly shocked to find out that someone had actually beaten the game on Impossible. The first official comment was "Holy crap, you're not serious, are you?"
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* ''[[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.''}}
* ''[[
** Remember Palm Tree Paradise, the stage with the relaxing background vocals and pretty much the easiest aside from entry stage? On Super Hard mode you trip the Frog Switch ''as soon as you enter the stage''.
* ''[[Dynamite Headdy]]'' had a secret difficulty mode, activated by holding START to start the game '''after''' the level select code has been entered. Essentially, one hit kills you.
* ''[[
* In ''[[Ristar]]'', a game for the Sega Genesis, there's Normal Mode, Hard Mode... and Super Mode, unlocked through a password. On Super Mode one hit means game over. However, you do get unlimited continues.
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* ''[[Pokémon]] [[Panel De 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]].
* ''[[Tetris the Grand Master]] ACE'''s 150-line time attack mode has Normal, with somewhat ''TGM''-esque speed curve. Hi-Speed 1 starts the game off at somewhat high speed, Hi-Speed 2 starts the game off at instant-drop speed. Then there's Another mode, in which the game starts off at instant-drop and timings shrink down with more line clears, similar to Death mode from TGM2. ''Then'' there's Another 2, which constantly remains at Another's maximum speed.
* The NES and Game Boy iterations of ''[[
* The puzzle game ''[[Kirby]] Star Stacker'' has "Easy" (represented by a happy Kirby face), "Normal" (hesitant), "Hard" (angry), and "Super" ([[Eye Pop]]) difficulty levels. If you clear all of the puzzles on those levels, you get the aptly-named "Ouch!" ([[Wingding Eyes]]) difficulty. On "Ouch!", the line clear time is reduced, the drop speed for blocks and bonus stars is always maximized, and clear objectives number in the low hundreds to start. The US version names the difficulty levels "Normal", "Hard", "Very Hard!", "Super Hard", and "Insane!".
* ''[[
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* "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 In 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 ''[[
** It gets better in the Forged Alliance expansion pack - to provide a challenge for the elite tournament-level players, even the 'normal' difficulty setting plays with maximum efficiency. Said tournament-level players will wipe the floor with its bad tactical decisions, but the other 99% of the player base will wonder how the hell to get rid of the strike-force sized tank squadron that comes knocking on your doorstep two minutes in. Needless to say, the cheating AI levels are just brutal.
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*** If you want to make all three games even harder you can calibrate your DS so that everything is reversed ('Mirror Mode'). Good luck...
* ''[[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
** [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Rock Band]]'' keeps the Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert difficulties. ''[[Rock Band]] 2'' also lists difficulties for all the instrument on each song from 0 to 5 dots ... or 5 demon heads for the truly brutal songs.
* ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' has Oni/Challenge mode, which is harder than even the dreaded Heavy/Another/Maniac/Hard mode (depending on which version) - because it puts you through anywhere from 4 to 13 songs on Heavy mode, with the smallest break between songs the system can handle. Oh, and did I mention that you are allowed only four mistakes for the entire time? The game also had, for some songs, a more traditional Expert/Challenge chart - with the subversion that the Expert charts were sometimes ''easier'' than the hard ones, explicitly being made for the Oni/Challenge mode.
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== [[Role Playing Game]] ==
* Recent ''[[Tales
** Unknown in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' is a little ridiculous: the very first battle against a common enemy in Unknown will take [[Scratch Damage|1 damage]] from all of your attacks!
* ''[[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]].
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* ''[[Legend of Mana]]'' only allows Normal difficulty the first time through, but on accessing [[New Game+]], 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]].
** Specifically, No Future mode results in ''every'' enemy being level 99, along with boosted offense and defense. Playing this mode without a level 99 character and some of the best armor in the game means you're dead in one hit. With those two things? ...two hits.
* ''[[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
** Insanity doesn't just [[Numerical Hard|make the enemies have more health and do more damage]] - [[Dynamic Difficulty|all enemies scale up as your level does]]. And all Bosses, Sub-bosses, non-Mook constantly use powers and have immunities to everything you can throw at them.
** ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' gives us the difficulty levels named the same (which are available from the start), but unlike the first game, [[Player Character|Shepard]] has no immediate access to immunities and such (besides a few bonus skills that temporarily increase shields for up to 100%), has to rely solely on his/her trusty health, shield and cover, and most importantly, has to do so with limited ammo. As the difficulty ramps up, enemies become smarter, faster, more accurate and ALL OF THEM gain damage resistances such as shields (making them perfectly on par with Shepard and the squaddies) and/or an armor layer. Add to this a bonus damage percentage of about 9000%, which means that if out of cover, 3 shots from an assault rifle will drop all of Shepard's shields, and about five shots will outright kill him/her. Given the number of enemies and the frequency with which they choose to pummel Shepard specifically, this makes Insanity quite the walk in the park. That is, if said park was situated on a [[Death World]] where all of the flora and fauna are sentient and sports big flipping guns and where even the air wants to kill you.
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*** But quite possibly the worst area is the Collector ship when the Collectors spring their ambush. Your on a single platform that has barely ANY room to move and because of this your squadmembers are going to drop dead a lot. You've got Harbinger constantly moving towards you, ''VERY'' few ammo drops (and if they're there, then they're next to the Collectors), Collectors firing at you from multiple angles, and the goddamn Scions who are going to F*&K you and your party up. It is hair-pullingly frustrating even for someone who has beaten the game on Insanity MANY times.
*** But both times you fight a [[That One Boss|Praetorian]] are the absolute worst. First of all, it ignores your squadmates and focuses fire on you with a beam that can knock down your shields in less than a second, it constantly floats towards you, and if it ever gets to melee range, it can stun you and then kill you instantly with its follow up attack. It has very high health, and a barrier that it can bring up repeatedly, and it's immune to all status effects. It's practically impossible to kill it without heavy weapons. And the second time you fight one, it has husks and collectors to back it up.
* Jupiter's ''[[
** Naturally, to get the ''real'' ending you have to go back and beat all the bosses on Hard or Ultimate, though it ends up being a [[Bragging Rights Reward]] due to the extreme briefness of the extra scene.
* ''[[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+]] feature is disabled for that cycle, forcing you to start ''all over again''. No summoning Lucifer at level 5 for you!
* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' has EX Hard Mode available as DLC content. Basically, you cannot take Edelweiss; your troops, even maxed out at level 20 with all upgrades, will fall over to a slight breeze; and everything headshots you, ''including enemy tanks''.
* ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]: Echoes of Time'' has Normal, Hard, and Very Hard selectable when you go to do a [[New Game+]] 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 ''[[
* ''[[Valkyrie Profile|Valkyrie Profile 2]]'' features an interesting form of [[New Game+]] 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+]]. Trying to complete the A path stages on your first playthrough is...unadvisable.
* ''[[Star Ocean|Star Ocean: Til the End of Time]]'' has 4D Mode, where it is most easily summed up by saying if you select this difficulty, Tri-Ace hates you and wants you to fail.
* ''[[Parasite Eve]] 2'' has a long list of regular difficulty-levels, including 'Extreme', which rendered the already-tough Armored Golems nearly indestructible, capable of taking several grenade-hits head on. And then there's 'Nightmare', which basically has you start out with less than half your normal health, and removes most of the weapons from the game. Yep, that's right - the arsenal that you'd normally accumulate, from stores and pickups, just isn't THERE anymore. Neither is most of those nice boxes of 'Infinite Common Ammo'. And you can't refill non-ammo weapons, such as the Taser, Laser and Flamethrower attachments until right before the final boss. There's a few places where you can fill up on the basic 9mm ammo, but other than that, every bullet counts. You'll end up fighting your way through the first half of the game (including a boss-fight against a three-story mutant giant with a face-mounted flame-thrower) armed with an LP-08 Luger - and the second half of the game will be fought mostly with a bayonet-equipped assault-rifle, since you have to save all your good ammo for the bosses. And did I mention that the enemies are nearly as tough as they are in Extreme?
* [[
** The 2.0 patch also adds Dark Mode. It's even harder than Insane but without permanent death and it adds some new item sets which have to be completed or you will take damage over time when they are equipped. It also slightly changes the lighting of the game to be darker.
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* 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]].
** And then there are of course people, who give the games CAVE-like Ultra Modes which sometimes only seems possible because the maximum number of bullets on the screen is limited by the game.
* ''[[
** {{spoiler|Type "ENGAGE" at the main menu and}} you get access to a hidden gameplay mode (which unlike the other hidden gameplay modes does allow you to save your game). The catch is that you end up on Lord of Game difficulty (though there is a trick you can use to lower the difficulty ... to Suicide), your ship's weapon is pretty wimpy, and you have to figure out the game's special moves to really have a chance of making any progress.
* The famously difficult ''[[Crystal Quest]]'' was designed for first and second generation [[Macintosh|Macs]], with the option to play at uninhibited speed on a Mac II. High scores obtained in this mode were marked with an asterisk.
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* ''[[Death Smiles]]'' normally allows you to select a difficulty level for each stage (Level 1, 2, or 3). Mega Black Label mode has an extra setting - Level 999 - where the bullets fly fast and furiously at you, and enemies leave behind large amounts of suicide bullets when they die.
* ''[[Alltynex Second]]'' have the ludacris Suicide Bullet difficulty only unlockable by beating the game on hard.
* ''[[
* "Cruel" in ''Robo Aleste''. (In the Japanese version, where difficulty levels are named after ninja ranks, the highest difficulty is "Nukenin," meaning Fugitive Ninja.)
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* "Realistic" in ''[[Silent Hunter]] 4''.
** Which many players will actually consider the standard difficulty, any (warfare) simulation game which comes with anything less than an allmost completely realistic mode tends to get scolded for it by the hardcore fans of the genre. Unrealistic modes are for people looking for a game instead of a simulation.
* 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''.
* "Extreme" in ''[[Trauma Center]]'', but only for the extra operations.
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== [[Stealth Based Game]] ==
* 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 15-20ft 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.
** Some consider this a mercy option however, as in most situations if you get found on such difficulty levels you ''will'' die, without question.
*** The 30 or so continues per area is a mere distraction to the real challenge of European Extreme mode: the bosses. A double-shot instant-kill Fortune; then a part where you have to defuse bombs before their timer even began; fighting all 25 of the mass-produced Metal Gear Rays, and finally, a [[Press X to Not Die]] sequence that at one point required medical attention to fix a locked thumb.
** ''[[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)
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* So you beat ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'' on Hard Mode? Congratulations. Now beat the ''ten'' Extreme mode settings.
** This game is notable for having two difficulty mode selections to make. "Action" set how hard the combat was, and "puzzle" set the difficulty of the puzzles. On the highest puzzle difficulty, the FIRST real puzzle in the game requires advanced knowledge of Shakespeare to complete. It is one of the easier puzzles.
* The GameCube version of ''[[Resident Evil (
** ''[[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.
*** The shortened resuscitation timer actually makes it easier to survive WITHOUT healing items, since any healing spray takes over a second for your character to pull out and use, whereas without any healing items you snap your partner out of it with a good, instantaneous thump on the chest.
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** Several enemies in the later game can see and kill you ''through solid walls''.
* 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 ''[[
* ''[[Alien Swarm]]'' has Easy, Medium, Hard, and the aptly-named Insane difficulty. Not only are the aliens significantly tougher and more numerous on Insane, the game will also spawn the most difficult-to-manage aliens straight away in the first campaign. To drive the point home, the game already starts out with [[Demonic Spiders|Parasites]] in the beginning of the Insane campaign - whereas in Hard they didn't appear until past the halfway mark.
** Recently Valve updated Alien Swarm with, among other things, an even harder difficulty, "Brutal". How hard is it? At the time of it's release, no one on the Alien Swarm development team had successfully completed a level on Brutal.
** The difficulty in Brutal lies in it's incorporation of the A.I. Director seen in [[Left 4 Dead]]. Imagine Insane's already tough enemies with all the damage resistance and attacks, and now imagine that they no longer appear from their usual set locations, but wherever the Director feels like and you've got a good gist of why Brutal is so nasty.
* ''[[Freedom Fighters (
* ''[[Winback]]'''s Sudden Death mode, which makes you a [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]], as well as the [[Mook|mooks]].
* ''[[Shadows of the Empire]]'' mildly subverts this: The fourth difficulty level, Jedi, makes all attacks much stronger. Both yours and enemies'.
* ''[[
* 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
== [[Turn
* "Maniac" in the Japanese version of ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem Tellius
** The US version of ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius
** The ''[[Fire Emblem]] 1'' remake, ''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon'' now has six difficulties, the easiest of which is 'normal'. The five different hard modes are, in order: Hard, Brutal, Savage, Fiendish, and Merciless. Merciless is so ruthless that almost every enemy in the game can 1-hit KO about half of the members of your party and 2-hit most of the others. Even the first three bosses are so strong that breaking their weapons (a grueling 30 turn activity involving much prayer to the RNG goddess) is the easiest way to defeat them.
** The ''Fire Emblem 3'' remake, ''Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem'', goes up to "Lunatic" mode, which is on par with ''Shadow Dragon'''s Merciless. Beat Lunatic? Welcome to "Lunatic-Reverse", in which enemies always attack before you do, ''even on your own turn''.
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