That One Boss/Rhythm Game: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

* ''[[Guitar Hero]]'', the original, had a very Impossible Hammer-on and Pull-off method that pretty much required players to strum every note, even when the rhythm is finger-breakingly fast. This made some songs such as "Texas Flood," "Cowboys From Hell," and "Bark at the Moon" ridiculously hard. ''Cowboys'' is particularly dramatic, as its main riff is very hard to do without strumming every note, let alone strumming all of them!

** Some of the tracks from the first game were re-released as DLC for later games with improved hammer-on and pull-off mechanics. With the more reliable detection are much, much easier, so it was more an issue with game mechanics then the song themselves.

*** And the render of hair and garments. This troper finally beat it after six months of practice - there's never been another song in the series that's caused quite this much pain, horror and outrage.

*** Bad news: It's coming back for Smash Hits. As if War Ensemble wasn't enough.

** The final boss. Extremely hard to do, even on the second-hardest difficulty level, without using an exploit that still relies on random chance.

*** This is probably the number one reason to unlock all the songs in [[GH 3]] on Normal, even if you can get through most of [[GH 2]] on expert.

** If we're talking about portable Guitar Hero games, then "Misirlou" on Guitar Hero Mobile deserves mention. The song starts out fast, but possible. Then the guitar break hits, and the notes come at probably the same speed as the console version. It is impossible to press a cellphone's buttons that fast.

* And, notably, insanely technical prog-metal band Dream Theater have been confirmed for the next Guitar Hero. I can hear the complaints of insane difficulty rolling in already...

*** Your forgetting that "One" is back and hard as ever. Contrary to earlier info, it has been modified, partly to take advantage of the new sustain feature, partly to rework some of the parts that don't make sense, and partly to rework it into guitar+bass format. Yet it's still a TOP TIER SONG and still has the dreaded FAST SOLO A! {{spoiler|Not to mention, it is full of slider notes that must be hit precisely on.}}

*** And as far as vocals go, you've got plenty of kickers. Albatross (bad singing makes for pitches that are tough to discern), Tuesday's Gone (long song with weird stuff near the end that's tough to memorize), Fight Fire with Fire (pretty easy except for the "Fight fire with fire" phrases at the end, which there are eight in a row and all must be executed in one breath), and of course, Queen's Stone Cold Crazy (rapid note changes, and two phrases which are insanely fast and difficult to hit most of the time).

** Quite a few other songs got the same treatment in ''Smash Hits'', including the already-insane "Psychobilly Freakout".

*** So did ''Play With Me'', and many other songs on Smash Hits. You may blame Beenox (whom Neversoft outsorced the game to while working on other ''Guitar Hero'' titles) for these messes.

*** The aforementioned Black Widow of La Porte by John 5 Featuring Jim Root

*** If You Want Peace...Prepare for War by [[Children of Bodom]]

* It seems that if there's a David Bowie song in Guitar Hero 5, it's going to be almost impossible to sing. I bow down to anyone who can get a great score on 'Fame' or 'Under Pressure'!

** [[Bonus Boss]], because you can't fail it in Story Mode. Of course, you ''will'' fail it in Quickplay.

** Dragonforce's own lead guitarist has attempted this song. And failed.

*** That's justified, as playing Guitar Hero is nothing like playing real guitar.

 

* Similar to "Free Bird" in ''Guitar Hero II'' is "Green Grass and High Tides" from ''[[Rock Band]]''. It isn't so much that it's boringly easy for any period of time. No, it's the fact that the song itself is long and mostly moderate in difficulty, then after nearly eight minutes, it throws [[That One Attack|15 seconds of extremely fast zig-zag]] (an eternity for all but the most skilled), shortly follows it up with [[It Got Worse|ANOTHER 12 seconds of zig-zag]] (not Overdrive bluffing your way through that one), and ends the song with 20 seconds of extremely fast three fret rolls. It's one thing to lose because you lack the skill required; it's another to lose after eight minutes because they throw in the music game equivalent of a cheap shot.

** That's not the problem, in fact, mainly because hammer-ons and, more importantly, pull-offs still apply to solos. The REAL difficulty is that the strummy part (in the second solo) is SO FAST it fits just under the strum limit of notes per second (the NPS is about 0.20 below the limit there, get over the limit and you'll accrue a crapton of misses). It has reached the point that it's less about FC'ing the song, and more about doing a perfect run BESIDES that part.

*** Additionally, not only has that part of the solo been independently FC'ed, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhgbhzAh3-8 the entire song has been FC'd as well.] the exact number of notes? 3058.

*** Which number the game [[Oh Crap|considerately tells you in one of the possible intro screens]] when you start a solo run on Expert guitar.

*** Ironically, even the original drummer may not have been able to pull this off. The song is ''considerably'' easier on a real drum set, since the bounciness of the drum head helps you do the snare double-hits without killing your arm.

** This Troper was doing great on the drums until he hit "Run For The Hills." That song is evil.

*** It can be stopped, however, by a burst of Maxed Overdrive... It'll last about the entire solo, and as long as you spam, everything will be all right.

** Over half of the bonus songs (which you have to play to complete the "Endless Setlist", so they don't really count as "bonus" per se) are insanely difficult on vocals, but the worst by a long shot is ''I Get By''. Especially the middle bit, with its insanely fast tonal shifts and rapid-fire vocals, most of which still require you to actually be in tune (which is not the case for most other songs this fast).

** [[The Who|Young Man Blues]] on drums. It was released as DLC ''over two years ago'' and has not been FC'ed on Expert to this day.

** Another final tier song: Next To You. A very short, but very painful experience in flailing (and failing), because of the quick tempo, the insane combination of hits and the what seems to be never ending bass pedal hits. If you still, somehow, get past that, you still have Flirtin' With Distaster, Tom Sawyer, Won't Get Fooled Again, and, of course, Run to the Hills (all on the same tier). HAVE FUN!

* Good Mourning/Black Friday plays the same treachery as Battery, making you complacent in the first minute or so, then kicking the crap out of you...on ''ANY'' instrument.

* Painkiller, the last song in Endless Setlist II, is the hardest song on disc (As of Rock Band 2's release), but it's currently the second-hardest full-band song (Including all Pre-Rock Band 3 DLC to date) just behind Satch Boogie. Take everything that's hard about it from GHWT and add a smaller timing window. You have a decent chance of failure at the surf solo on Guitar Hero. You have an almost guaranteed chance of failure at the same section on Rock Band if the Guitarist is on expert.

*** But realy Painkiller is the hardest song on disc.

** Full band, maybe, but Panic Attack's bass track makes Painkiller look like a warm-up in comparison. The song opens with the bass playing essentially the exact same riff as the guitar, only without the benefit of any sort of lead-in or percussion to help you keep track of the 5/4 timing, and just keeps getting worse from there.

* Soundgarden's Jesus Christ Pose. For the vocalist, good luck figuring out the pitches on your first or fifth attempt on Expert, especially if you don't sing falsetto. For the drummer... well, good luck and hope you can handle the same rhythm for about half the song. For the Guitarist... well, you get off relatively easy. for the Bassist, hope you have good stamina.

* Guns of Summer by Coheed and Cambria. May God have mercy on your guitarist and drummer's soul.

* Green Day: Rock Band isn't very hard, but one MAY qualify for this trope. We Are The Waiting/St. Jimmy. It starts of with We Are The Waiting, an easy song with a [[Ear Worm|damn catchy chorus]]. The only hard part in this song is after the first chorus, where it throws 3 button chords at you inbetween an easy riff. Then it stops and St. Jimmy begins. It is basically an alt. strumming discord with an incredibly fast beat. This troper can get 97 percent on it easily, but all of the discord causes him to break the combo and only get 4 stars. This troper also has not played it on any other instrument other than guitar, so anybody else can elaborate on drums and such.

** While we're on the subject of Green Day and in turn Green Day Rock Band, the DLC song East Jesus Nowhere deserves special mention. Why you ask? Well the song for the most part is quite easy on guitar, but then comes the bridge...oh dear lord. The bridge is comprised of rapid alt-strumming to the extreme up and down the fretboard that barely scrapes through the notes per second limit and is the only reason why very few people have fc'ed it. Have fun.

* While around 40% of the Rock Band Network tracks qualify, anything by Chaotrope will definitely push the limits of anyone who tries it. Oh, you full-combo'd Guns of Summer on Drums? You've Gold-Starred the entire Rock Band 3 on-disc setlist without ever touching the shredboard? Expect to fail out repeatedly. Especially on Baptized By Fire.

* Just out for DLC, the two Dragonforce songs are possibly the most difficult songs available outside of the Rock Band Network. "Operation Ground and Pound" is difficult, but not overly so...that is, until solo 4A, in which case anyone failing is most likely laughing in disbelief at what they just got a glimpse of, and "Through the Fire and Flames" has, like the [[GH 3]] version, the insane intro... and then makes the rest of the chart ''harder''. As for keyboards...good luck getting through the synth solo of TTFAF on anything higher than hard, assuming you don't fall victim to the onslaught of chords, followed by an insane flurry of notes in the first chorus.

 

 

** That was an [[Self-Imposed Challenge|optional mode]] that did that. Even in the arcade, you had to do something special to get that penalty inflicted on you. It does significantly increase the difficulty, though.

* The song ''Hero'', from ''2nd Mix'', featured mini-gallops after the chorus. It was a tricky pattern at the time.

* When ''DDR Supernova'' came out, ''Fascination MaxX'' was the new hardest canon DDR song. Some consider it to still be the hardest. That is just on Expert. Challenge has [[Hard Mode Filler]] in use, with the worst bits right at the beginning and end.

* ''DDR Supernova 2'' brings two of the currently three ''Pluto'' boss songs. Pluto does not use as many stops as Chaos, but it does not have a consistent BPM. It also does not make it easy for the player to tell when the song stops during the fast part. ''Pluto Relinquish'', originally found in the console versions, has been critically acclaimed as one of the hardest songs to date. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMzMzYEuGUU Observe.]

* ''Hottest Party'' for the Wii is mostly not bad, but ''Super Samurai'' often becomes a stumbling block, especially to unlock the song. No speed mods in the game means one is forced to use 1x. The song does not flash its receptors to the beat at all times: this makes the quarter notes blue during the early and later stages of the song. This song can make one want to use a controller to unlock the song.

* Any song that contains the word '''Evolved''' in it. Not only are the songs hard to figure out, but one [[Luck-Based Mission|gets a different chart every playthrough]].

* ''Trigger'' from ''DDR X''. A lot of the speed changes in it are pretty unnecessary, and it features 8ths at 400 BPM. That might not be as bad as the shit 888 throws at you, but it's still not far behind.

** ''888'''s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XxZtZ-_tgQ Challenge] chart from ''Universe 3'' and ''DDR X2''. It has just over ''750'' steps (a normal boss song has about 500), of which most are 16th notes at 222 BPM.

* ''Pluto the First'', a console boss that's now in the DDR X2 arcade. Perhaps the only DDR song that is universally [[That One Boss|That one boss to be]], sometimes for its erratic music, sometimes for its chaotic steps, and often for both. Its impact is worsened by the fact that, as of this writing, its only appearance is in a course, directly preceding another course-exclusive (Mei) that many DDR players have been eager to play for a very long time.

** And the Challenge chart! It makes Horatio's original Challenge chart look like fucking [[Easier Than Easy|Have You Never Been Mellow]].

**** Good luck trying to defeat Zowie (The [[Big Bad]] in this game) in master mode, you'll most likely fail before you get to the first charge phase.

** Although it was a long time ago, I got stuck against the first stage Ben K on STANDARD MODE for MONTHS. After finally passing it, I drifted through the rest of the game with ease up until the already mentioned Mojo King Bee Master Mode.

*** The Blink182 song's rightmost drum track was mostly not all that hard, except for the occasional drum fills. Hitting the same shoulder button three or four times in a row in time to 16th notes at 180-odd BPM? Yeah, good luck with that... Even Spaztik, the [[Bonus Boss]], wasn't quite that sadistic.

** This troper has beaten both Ouendan and EBA on insane with 100% and is now missing much of his hair.

** On the highest difficulty, Jumpin' Jack Flash has a health bar that drains very fast, so not only are there a lot of notes to hit, but you have to hit them with good timing. It's possible to lose without breaking your combo, and conversely hard to pass without getting an A.

** This troper can hit most beats flawlessly, and has a proud collection of A and S-ranks across all three games, yet will never ever beat the final song of any game on Sweating/Hard. Why? Because that's exactly the point where the requirements of the spin markers pass his human limits, and the bar drains too fast to survive more than one failed spinner in a row.

** The VERY LAST PART of Countdown on Insane difficulty. Can you say "YOU WA SHOCK!!!"?

** [[Fake Difficulty|The game's painfully small timing window]] certainly doesn't make this any easier. Of course, on subsequent replays this can become a lot easier if you get a Cool rank right at the start and improvise your way through the whole level.

** Taste of Teriyaki from Um Jammer Lammy. Complicated offbeat rhythms combined with the small timing window? Forget it.

** Its hard to pin a single song down as "That One Boss" in DBB/DBBDX, since most of it is user created content, but some songs like Necrofantasia, Battle on the Big Bridge and FF7's Boss theme are commonly referred to as "Totally freaking impossible".

* Taiko no Tatsujin for DS. [[Go Go]] Kitchen (written in Katakana) WILL make you punch a hole in your DS.

** Forget Remix 8. It's the two Locksteps that get this troper every single time. He cannot, no way, no how, get the offbeat correct.

*** Lockstep is a very interesting case. It consists of you constantly switching between the beat and the off-beat. It is absolutely impossible to beat by trying to muscle your way through, but once it clicks, you'll get perfect every time afterwards. It's really just about getting that one skill instead of practicing/grinding.

** Himiko, Nageki no Ki, D, Mendes, Waltz Of The Big Dogs [A]...the list goes on and on.

** 5.1.1. [Another], particularly before the new Hyper chart was released. Okay, 5.1.1. [Normal] and [Hyper] (again, pre-redesigned Hyper), great beginner's charts. So the Another shouldn't be too bad, right? '''[[Surprise Difficulty|Wrong.]]''' Constant scratching combined with difficult scales turn 5.1.1. from a a simple newcomer-level song into [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQdGeOaS8JM complete hell].

*** Mendes [Kuro] and Flowers [Kuro]. That is all.

** The Safari [Hyper] has stopped many a run of various IIDX [[Kyu and Dan Ranks|7-dan]] courses.

* ''DJMAX Technika'''s Popular Mode has some paricularly challenging songs on its 3rd stage. Sweet Shining Shooting Star is a somewhat easy song up until the chorus section, [[Difficulty Spike|at which point you're presented with a charlie foxtrot of notes]], while Blythe, Sin, and Son Of Sun get their difficulty from having double-speed wipes combined with lots of eighth notes, some of which are of the "chain" variety to make things worse.

** The Heartbeat Set's normal last stage, Colours of Sorrow TP. If you're only good enough to play the easiest songs in the set (typically Divine Service TP, Remember TP, and either Play the Future TP or Stop TP), CoS TP's difficulty will likely come off as a [[Difficulty Spike|shock]] to you. It doesn't help that the sections with repeat notes will be a source of many misses unless you hit the touchscreen in a rather specific way.

** ''Technika 2'' has [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_QVFGjiWvg&feature=related D2 (Hard)]. It would actually be ''easier'' than its [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEHKCvP9ag&feature=related Normal] chart, but there's one particularly harsh condition that makes it otherwise. The timeline in the Normal chart is scrolling at double speed, which for some makes the chart fast enough. On Hard? It scrolls at ''quadruple'' speed--it takes the timeline about a second to completely scroll to one direction and back. To make matters more difficult, the timing windows are much stricter than on any other chart. Many players find that even if they watch videos of the chart many times and think they can do the chart, it's when they try the chart for real that they realize that it is MUCH harder than it looks.

** And now that Crew Race, a mode where ''player-created'' crews can make their own courses with target scores to beat, you can BECOME That One Boss! Most of the crews like to put high-end songs with high scores and annoying modifiers. Failing that, there's crew courses consisting of easier songs...but many of ''those'' will require you to nail a [[Flawless Victory|Perfect Play]] of the entire course to win.

** ''Technika 3'' features Black Swan, the first song in the series to be in a non-4/4 signature, AND to [[Uncommon Time|have multiple time signatures]]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y21QO8Px5cs Here's] a look at its Hard chart, and it isn't pretty.

* Any song with an "Insane" level in the [[Mungyodance]] series. The Destination series, Reasons To Live, Origin, and Chaos Theory come to mind.

* [[DJ Hero|Bounce (FSG Remix)]]. A low amount of checkpoints, one of the faster songs in the game, and good luck clearing it in Empire mode, because the AI almost never misses a beat. You have to be ''completely'' precise in your hits; so much as one screw-up could through the whole mix away for you.

* Any chart released with the 1.30 patch for [[Pump It Up]] Fiesta. For example; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBZ0YpKNrYg Cleaner], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoeWw0Tzkuo Gargoyle], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BIQyQoxuds What Happened], and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99ogXIPG75s Superman].

** Determinator Expert. 16th-note triplets at ~170BPM for a solid 5 seconds. The song is rated a 12, but if That One Run was extended to the entire song, it would be more like a 15. (For reference, official ITG songs only go up to 13.)