That One Level/Video Games/First-Person Shooter: Difference between revisions

** Tip of the Spear, HOLY CHRIST. Especially when you go to destroy that second Anti Air Turret; A pair of Hunters guard the door, and by this time it's INCREDIBLY likely that you're running low on ammo, and the only things the nearby grunts have are Needlers and Plasma Pistols. That's right, you're very likely to have to kill Hunters using small arms weapons. God help you if you wasted the plasma launcher from earlier.

** Good God, "Exodus". There are Brutes and Jackals with Needle and Concussion Rifles, as well as at least one Fuel Rod Gun, sitting behind cover in a labyrinthine building. And then there are several ghosts just running around, waiting to kill you. Even if you take the rocket launcher, good luck hitting them.

** G4 Sunbathing is one of the few vacuum levels in the series, where your oxygen is constantly draining and only two of your guns work. This level was long considered the only "un-viddable" level, i.e., unbeaten when starting with just the pistol.

** By far the most widely loathed level is Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap!, infamous for a "puzzle" in which several platforms must be raised and lowered by switches into an approximately stairway-like configurations. The problem is that each switch is in a different room far away from each other, and the platforms are a ways away from each other, making it difficult to judge whether they're at the correct height. Oh, and ''Marathon'' has no jump key, so you either get the platforms ''exactly right'' or you grenade jump.

== Rare/Free Radical ==

* Level Eleven: Teamwork in ''[[Second Sight]]'', thanks to being an [[Escort Mission]] with numerous escortees and a big, confusing map. Apparently "Teamwork" means "Vattic, run around healing everyone while they obliviously stand in front of these enemies and get shot constantly."

** Aztec, the first bonus level and penultimate one of the entire game. Tellingly, it's actually ''harder'' than the final level of the game, whose only real difficulty is [[Trial and Error Gameplay|figuring out the safe path]] in the Golden Gun room. Even the official ''[[Guide Dang It|Player's Guide]]'' says this is a [[Luck-Based Mission]]. Aztec is hard even on the easiest difficulty, but set the difficulty to [[Nintendo Hard|00 Agent]], and let's count the ways:

*** The very start is a deathtrap with three guards with grenades and assault rifles against you with a pistol. If one throws a grenade, it's a question of whether you decide to hit restart or just die. Your survival is entirely based on what they decide to do.

* The final level of ''[[Far Cry]]'', most notably the penultimate fight in the volcano's rim. Locked into a wide open area with hordes of rocket-spamming mutants, ninja snipers that can shoot you from ''beyond the draw distance'', and a lone healthkit, on the far, ''far'' side of the arena. How do you win? By cheating and piling crap on the airlock door, so it won't lock behind you. Even then, you get sniped to death 9 times out of 10. And after that? If the designers didn't prove they hate you yet, as you round a corner, you get insta-killed by hidden guards with rocket launchers.

** The second level, on the derelict carrier, can be a nasty wake up call level. At the end, you have to fight a helicopter and several mooks on the flight deck of the carrier. For a new player, it can be problematic.

** The tank mission is nothing compared to the first alien ship mission with instakill aliens who are hard to aim at, and no gravity, and no map makes getting lost easy.

*** THAT ''level'' was really [[Ruined FOREVER|a pain in the ass]].

** That level is nothing compared to the labyrinthine hell that is E6M7. Then again, the entirety of Episode 2 could also count because of those [[Precision F-Strike|fucking]] [[Demonic Spiders|mutants]].

** Levels 16 and 18 of Spear of Destiny put anything in the original game to shame. The [[Game Mod]] Spear Resurrection ups the ante even further with its level 13, The Great Escape, which would have already been an extremely long and difficult level but gives you the additional problem of [[No-Gear Level|not having weapons]] in the early part of the map.

** There is also Apocalypse Void. It's a space level made up of a bunch of floating platforms that move up and down. It's extremely easy for a railgunner to knock you into the void while you're in airborne (as when using jump pads), plus there is nowhere to hide.

 

 

* Breaking into Nova Prospekt on harder levels. Not one, but two gunships will fire upon you, along with a squad of guards. Health is rare, and the only steady supply of rockets (the only weapon actually useful against gunships) is out in the open, forcing you to take a few hits in order to resupply. While you can distract the gunships with your antlions, they have a tendency to come back to you, bringing the gunships' fire with them.

* Nova Prospekt's defence level. Oh ''lord''. Playing fairly is damn hard. As such, most players use "alternate" strategies involving bringing more turrets or just plain hiding.

* Defending White Forest from the striders in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 should be party central. You get a new, unique weapon that blows this once-formidable enemy into fun-sized candy bars, plentiful supplies, and even radar to tell you where you're needed. The hunters, however, make this level tougher than getting your ass beat in front of the girl you like. Each strider comes with 1-3 hunters (which fire on you constantly), and if even one of them is within firing range when you take out your fun new bomb it dissolves into spare parts. You can kill them in one hit by running them over, but they can sidestep it somewhat easily. As such, White Forest has the distinction of being [[Best Level Ever]] for half the people who play it and [[That One Level]] for the [[Love It or Hate It|other half]].

* Ravenholm can suffer from being [[That One Level]] - not so much from difficulty, however, as the fact that you need to take a break every ten minutes so recover from the constant waves of headcrabs that leave you a gibbering wreck.

** This is largely caused by the fact that 2fort is essentially a string of ports, with little design changes in its port to ''Team Fortress 2'' (unlike, say, Well).

** Nobody seems to like Hydro, partially because of the confusing dynamic map layout, partially because you're either stalemated or getting steamrolled.

 

== Unreal ==

** The worst part of it being that Xan likes to hide, making it a violent hide-and-go-seek. And a very fatal one if you fail to constantly look behind you. Made easier by Xan's constant spewing of taunts, though.

** Another offender, from the Deathmatch ladder, is [[Cool Boat|DM-KGalleon]]. Intricate as hell, narrow passages, a lower floor where dodging is almost difficult, and with all kinds of obstacles. Combine it with the ladder rule of weapons not staying (this is, someone picks up a weapon, and everyone has to wait until it respawns) and your enemies being more focused on killing you than among themselves, and you have a hell of a level.

** Aside of it, there's DM-1on1-Desolation ''from the Qualification ladder''. That's right: the ''fourth'' level of the SP. It has almost all of the same issues as KGalleon, except that you compete against 5 bots and the weapons stay in their place when someone touches them.

** ''Nothing'' in UT2K4 touches the final Assault map. Yes, ''not even the [[Final Boss|One-on-One with Malcom at the end]]''. You and your team have to infiltrate a Skarrj mothership, including [[Unexpected Gameplay Change|taking out its outer defenses and getting into its tiny entrance bay via spaceship]], where you can and will be [[Cycle of Hurting|aggressively shot down from every possible direction before you can retaliate]]. If you do manage to get inside, you'd think things would get easier once you're on your feet in familiar gameplay territory, right? [[It Gets Worse|Wrong.]] Expect to spend ages respawning over and over again trying to evade the AI's [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Instant Insta-Kill Rocket Launcher Attacks of Insta-Death]] long enough to wear down each fanatically guarded node before the timer runs out (and, in the case of the last ones in the control room, ''even reach them at all''). Destroying the reactor core and completing the offense portion is a miracle in and of itself; when the enemy attacks they will be sure to bring their [[Artificial Brilliance|AI of Doom]] with them, [[It Gets Worse|rendering your defenses helpless as they slowly tear through the very defenses they made nigh-impenetrable before]]. '''[[Nintendo Hard|And this is on the]]''' '''''[[Nintendo Hard|easier]]''''' '''[[Nintendo Hard|difficulties.]]'''

 

 

** "No Fighting in the War Room" on Veteran. Namely the part where you have to go through a silo on either the left or right side; as you walk past you near-instantly get shot-up from both sides, the worse part is how blatantly the AI in the side areas is boosted; you can kill everything down the middle without too much trouble at all with a little care, yet the enemies in the side areas instantly mow you down with about 90% accuracy at any range. Pretty much the only half-way reliable way to survive is spamming assault rifle grenades down the corridors; hope you didn't waste too many earlier!

* In the followup game, ''Call of Duty: World at War'', the level "Heart of the Reich" is now infamous among players on Veteran mode for it's insanely overdone difficulty, unfair gameplay and sheer luck required to complete it. Grenade spamming, endlessly respawning enemies, enemies that can shoot you through large amounts of rubble, all you need for your controller breaking rage.

** "Blood and Iron". Unlike every other [[Tank Goodness|tank mission]] in the series, which were incredibly awesome, this one just manages to be endlessly infuriating. Infinitely-respawning enemy soldiers launching Panzerfausts nonstop. And unlike the usual for this series, they're ''really'' infinitely-respawning - even when you destroy the radio tower they're trying to defend '''they still keep coming''', constantly shooting you with Panzerfausts, preventing you from focusing on anything else, preventing you from actually regenerating your health, preventing you from '''completing the goddamn mission.'''

* For ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2'' there's "Takedown," with enemy gunmen coming at you from every angle imaginable, from behind, windows, rooftops, everywhere. The complete lack of anything providing half-way decent cover makes this an absolute hellhole.

** Another pain-in-the-ass spec-ops level is "Homeland Security." Beating it is quite an accomplishment even on Recruit, basically you have to defend a small town from FIVE waves of enemies. It's not so bad at first as you have plenty of claymores and auto-firing turrets to help you out, but those will get used up pretty quickly on every wave after the first, you have to deal with a MOTHERFUCKING PREDATOR DRONE that will constantly be bombing the crap out of you every single time you set foot outside a building, and if that wasn't bad enough, later waves also have BTRs and helicopters you have to deal with. You can't just camp out at one location as you'll have to get more RPGs from other buildings to take out the choppers and BTRs, it becomes REAL easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies and the drone since it's random which building the enemies will spawn from, which makes it nigh impossible to consistently defend one location. So you'll more then end up running between buildings while dodging gunfire from enemy soldiers, choppers, BTR's and those damn Predator missiles. It's a LONG exercise in pain and frustration, especially if you run out of RPGs on on the last wave and have NO way to take down that last helicopter or BTR. Don't even THINK about trying to beat it on Veteran unless you're a real masochist.

** "Time Trial". Literally the only thing that can make you fail is running out of time, which you can get more of by passing in between flags. ''Your snowmobile will not allow you to pass in between flags'' - you literally have to slow nearly to a stop just to get it to turn in the direction you want without crashing into something and turning the other way or just plain missing your target.

** The mission Excutive Order is this. The 1st part of the level goes by ok, but then you get to a part where you have to go into some tunnels. Tunnels with bad guys that spawn forever, [[Check Point Starvation|almost no checkpoints]], and you die in about a second. Have fun.

*** And what's worse is that your two invincible buddies with unlimited ammo barely do anything to help. There are times where you may purposely die because you just spent all your ammo and ''still'' can't move up.

** In ''Allied Assault'', Sniper's Last Stand, aka Snipertown. A town full of extremely well-hidden [[Hit Scan|insta-hit]] snipers that take off massive amounts of health per hit. If you thought that was bad, [[It Got Worse|it gets worse]] in the second part, where [[Escort Mission|you have to escort]] [[Artificial Stupidity|a squad of suicidal chipmunks]] through the whole mess.

** The Command Post has [[Clairvoyant Security Force|unavoidable alarms]] that continually [[Teleporting Keycard Squad|"teleport in" enemies behind you]], and [[Respawning Enemies|respawning]] [[Demonic Spiders|guard dogs]] during your escape. This is where the game hits a brick wall on hard difficulty.

** An [[Escort Mission]] that was unique in the depth of guilt trip it laid on the player. You could fail this repeatedly without gameplay consequence, but watching a little girl die while a mournful motherly voice underscored the tragedy of it seemed far worse than restarting it from the beginning.

** Everything post-Central Command could really count. The slums and the Little Sister facility are both compelling and scary, but the big emotional climax of the game is gone, and the levels just drag on and on...

*** The last level is a combination between this and [[Best Level Ever]]. On one hand, you get to use the APC's turret to mow down the Replica, who have been making your life miserable since almost the beginning. On the other hand, the final fight is [[Mind Screw|trippy]] to [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Eva]] levels. Oh, and it features an enemy who can multiply exponentially the longer you take to win.

* The Kamchatka levels in ''[[Soldier of Fortune]] II: Double Helix'' certainly qualify. The enemies have armor-piercing bullets, the grenades they lob come out of nowhere, and many times in the outdoor areas you can't ''see'' the bad guys until its too late.

* The final level of ''[[Condemned]] 2: Bloodshot'' is just all-around annoying, what with [[Mook|Mooks]] everywhere, limited health pickups, a frigging helicopter you have to fight and enemies with special powers who cause your screen to go blurry as Ethan (your main character) holds his head in agony as a shrill, irritating noise rings in your ears.

** In addition, Black Lake Lodge post the bear sequence seems to fit this trope for a lot of gamers, as it abandons the normal horror gameplay for a little while in favor of disarming bombs and busting caps in SWAT guys Tom Clancy-style.

* The final level of ''[[Serious Sam]]: The Second Encounter'', the Grand Cathedral. Despite the undeniable [[Crowning Music of Awesome]], the level takes the game's [[The War Sequence|War Sequences]] so far that it becomes positively [[Nintendo Hard]]. The Great Pyramid, final level of preceding game in the series ''The First Encounter'', is slightly less bad on this account. Of course, being subjective and all, some others consider them Crowning Levels Of Awesome.

** Serious difficulty, especially with extra enemies, can make Metropolis, Alley of the Sphinxes and Karnak to be [[That One Level]] in the First Encounter and Great Pyramid is relatively easy compared to them with that difficulty. Metropolis because the first part, there are numerous ambushes at every step you take forward and towards the end you get huge waves of enemies. Alley of the Sphinxes because at the beginning of the level, most of your ammo has taken away and until the final arena, extra ammo is scarce. Karnak gets the biggest difficulty increase because in serious difficulty, very tricky enemy placement occurs with many places being full of arachnoids using their hitscan weapon. A lot of the dangerous fights also take place in a small confined arenas.

** The first game's Level 6, where the deadly Class 1 Drillers are introduced with a vengeance. You're guaranteed to lose at least two lives on the higher difficulties. Not to mention the [[Teleporting Keycard Squad]] of ''six'' Drillers that attacks you at the red key.

** The end of Level 16. A large chasm with two Matcens([[Mook Maker|Mook Makers]]) generating Drillers and Hulks, half a dozen Red Hulks, followed by narrow passage to the reactor room that is guarded by two Missile Platforms and two [[Invisibility Cloak|invisibility cloaked]] hulks. Nigh-impossible on Ace and Insane, unless you go for the invincibility powerup behind the Driller-generating Matcen.

** What makes it even ''worse'' is that even if PAC ''do'' manage to break out and capture some flags, the exceedingly linear design of the map means that both teams spend the rest of the battle running up and down capturing and losing the same few flags, which is hardly the definition of fun.

** The Silo is by far the hardest level. Six or so buildings that you have to capture, infinite snipers in the windows of said buildings, lack of cover, and you have to [[Hold the Line]] against mortar crews from the top of the silo.

* The Snowy Bridge from ''[[Painkiller]]''. Enormously long, full of enemies, and the snow level on top of that. The nadir is probably the section on the top of the aforementioned bridge, where the ground beneath you is very slippery, and the enemies seem to never stop coming.

* The second Be More Objective challenge in ''[[Brink]]'', almost every objective is right next to the enemy spawn. So even when you clear the area, you're going to get bumrushed in a couple seconds anyway.

** Not to mention security day six. Only two real routes to the first objective, both of which can be closed off by rebel engineers, the first objective being tedious, and annoyingly long to repair, and the worst part is when you get to the end, and you are the only one trying to stop the missile from firing.

* From [[No One Lives Forever|NOLF 2: A Spy In HARM's Way,]] the level "The House Where Melvin Used to Live" features infinitely spawning ninjas, and a very finite amount of ammo and healing on the ground. Normally, you'd be able loot supplies from dead enemies, but on this level, they vanish immediately after you kill them.

* In the game ''[[XIII]]'', there is a level where you need to defend a cabin from a seemingly never-ending wave of enemies for a certain period of time. Sounds fun, right? Wrong. When you are in the cabin, you cannot leave it under any circumstances unless you want to get ripped to shreds by the helicopters and snipers. Even worse, the enemies can ''break down the cabin'', leaving you with no cover at all from the snipers. You can find the strongest gun in the game in the same cabin beforehand, but you can only supply ammo for it (and all your weapons) ''two times''. As if that weren't bad enough, ''there's only one health pack in the mission''. And if you die at all, you need to start the whole level over again.

* While deep in the [[Forgotten Superweapon|D6 Missile Silo]] toward the end of ''[[Metro 2033]]'', you and [[Badass Grandpa|Miller]] must cross a room full of [[Action Bomb|Amoebas]] and the pores that spawn them. Miller will shoot the Amoebas, but not the pores. Good luck.

* Operation: Temple Gate in ''[[Rainbow Six]]: Rogue Spear''. Goal: rescue hostages from an opera house swarming with terrorists. Several snipers guard from the theatre balconies, other tangos patrol back and forth, and if any in the theatre see you, they will shoot the hostages dead.

** It gets worse with Stone Cannon in ''Raven Shield''. Although there are no hostages, it consists of a maze-like series of warehouses, with, in addition to the large number of patrolling tangos, an abundance of alcoves, sniper ledges and windows for them to pick you off from.

 

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