Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- #10 The Thunderhead Islands [Tears of the Kingdom]
- #9 WAR [Pizza Tower]
- #8 Project Cynosure [Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty]
- #7 Auntie Ethel’s House [Baldur’s Gate 3]
- #6 Final-Final Marathon [Super Mario Bros. Wonder]
- #5 Phon’qi Caverns [Star Wars Jedi: Survivor]
- #4 Danger X9 [Advance Wars 1+2]
- #3 Unidentified Structure [Trepang2]
- #2 The Cabin Sequence [Resident Evil 4]
- #1 Intercept The Redguns [Armored Core 6 ]
Nobody wants to die in video games, but the best games keep killing us and we keep coming back for more. Some of our favorite games of 2023 were brutally difficult – and instead of listing the games we thought were the hardest, we’re going to get a lot more specific. In 2023, there were some pretty awesome levels. And these are the 10 tough levels that killed us more than anything else. Death in a video game can be its own blessing. It just means we get to play even more video games.
And this list will only include games we’ve played extensively – if your favorite tough level isn’t on the list, we probably just haven’t played it yet! But make sure to drop us a comment and let us know your favorite tough levels, too. We’re always looking for new tough levels to comaplin about. And while games have become more open than ever before, levels still rule supreme. Locations, areas, dungeons or missions all count as levels in my book.
#10 The Thunderhead Islands [Tears of the Kingdom]
We’re cheating with our first entry – because only someone completely insane would attempt to play Tears of the Kingdom like us. Instead of following quests like a normal person, we decided to venture into the Thunderhead Islands with no preparation whatsoever. Let’s back up. The Thunderhead Islands are floating islands that are completely covered in dark clouds and a never-ending thunderstorm. If you wear anything with metal, you’ll get zapped in a matter of seconds. The storm makes it practically impossible to see – a pretty big problem when you’re trying to glide from one island to the next. But what is practically impossible isn’t totally impossible. We managed to make it through the Thunderhead Islands during the full storm and reach the important island at the end with only a whole bunch of flying contraptions and a lot of careful navigation.
Here’s the thing. There’s no reason to do any of this. By completing a quest on the surface, you can dispel the infinite storm in the sky. Once the storm is gone, the Thunderhead Islands are downright peaceful. There’s really no challenge to crossing them – just use some launchers and gliders and other flying machines to reach the end. For true thrill seekers, you’ll want to try crossing the Thunderhead Islands in the middle of the storm of the century. Flying blind, using only custom waypoints to guide you – clinging to wet walls while desperately trying to outrun your dwindling stamina meter – all while having no clue where to go. This is one of the tough levels that left of wondering what we did wrong. And it’s all because we wanted to skip a side-quest.
#9 WAR [Pizza Tower]
If we’re giving out awards based on games with the most varied tough levels, we might have to go with Pizza Tower. This quirky indie platformer is all about fast movement and precise jumping – and each level has its own weird gimmick. Level 19 – WAR – is the level that consistently kicked our butts. In this level, our hero Chef Peppino has a bomb strapped to his chest. You’ll need to extend the bomb timer while sprinting through a nightmarish battlefield covered in pizza-themed soldiers, tanks, bombers and clones. The clones really appear in the later half of the level, where you’ll explore a lab filled with evil Peppino clones. Look, this is a weird game. And this weird level was one of the toughest.
The only other level that compares is the previous level. Actually, let’s throw that level in too for a quick bonus. Level 18 – Don’t Make A Sound – is a Five Nights At Freddy’s parody complete with chasing monsters that jump scare you if you’re caught. Just had to mention this level, because it’s a perfect segway into our next tough levels.
#8 Project Cynosure [Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty]
Pizza Tower isn’t the only game to get spooky in 2023. One of two major ending missions in Phantom Liberty, the extremely good expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, takes players into a creepy facility while chasing down a rogue operative. Instead of shooting your way through waves of armed goons, this mission takes all your power away and pits you against a rampaging giant robot that can’t be stopped with any of your regular weapons. Bullets won’t stop it, so you’ll be forced to hide and hack to distract it while sneaking around the high-tech bunker. If we had to compare this sequence to any game, it would be Alien: Isolation – there’s an unstoppable predator that emerges from ceiling grates and slowly hunts you down while you hide under tables and crawl through vents.
What’s so surprising about this sequence is how completely different it is from anything else in the game. There are no other horror-themed levels in Cyberpunk 2077 – so this creepy sequence comes out of nowhere. The giant robot can track you down if you’re not careful and kill you instantly. The gameplay style is so wildly different, I wouldn’t be surprised if some players gave up immediately. Luckily, I’m an experienced horror guy with plenty of sneak-and-sprinting experience. Still, this mission killed us more times than the rest of the 20-hour playthrough combined.
#7 Auntie Ethel’s House [Baldur’s Gate 3]
2023 is just a spooky year for games, because we’re tackling another creepy location in Baldur’s Gate 3. The biggest RPG of the year – and one of the biggest RPGs of all time – is absurdly packed with difficult optional encounters. There are absolutely sections of Baldur’s Gate 3 that are harder than this entry, but this is so early in the game, and you won’t yet have access to dozens of overpowered magic spells or abilities. Act 1, for me, was the hardest part of the game – and one of the hardest parts of the hardest part of the game was Auntie Ethel’s House.
Located in a bog to the south of the Emerald Grove, exploring players will encounter a kindly old lady in a fairytale house with a big oven. Okay, we’ve all seen this scenario before – we all know this is a witch that eats children. After confronting the hag, she transforms the previously picturesque bog into a vile swamp filled with scampering imps that can wipe out your party easily if you’re not prepared. And things only get worse from there. Inside her lair, you’ll have to navigate trial after trial of difficult content – starting with all her torture victims with ironic punishments, then leading to a battle against possessed servants. These servants are essentially another Dungeons & Dragons party of player characters, trapped by the Hag’s magic. Then there are poisonous plumes of smoke. If you don’t figure out how to stop the smoke from pouring out, this jumping challenge is a huge pain. Hell, even if you figure it out, it’s a huge pain.
And it all ends with an annoying battle against the Hag herself. Luckily, this battle only looks impossible at first glance as the Hag copies herself and creates a small army of little Hags to harass you with barrages of magic attacks. What makes this difficult yet again is that the young lady you’re here to save is slowly being lowered into a pit. You only have a handful of turns to save her, which is kind of difficult when an insane hag is cackling at you menacingly. For my money, the funhouse madness of the Hag’s Lair might be the most difficult dungeon of Baldur’s Gate 3.
#6 Final-Final Marathon [Super Mario Bros. Wonder]
There’s nothing spooky about Mario Wonder, the most colorful and infectiously fun game of the year – but you can’t have too much fun. There’s one level that’s making everyone in the Mario community rip their Mario-themed mustaches off. Like Super Mario World, Mario Wonder has an extra-difficult Special World that’s packed with tougher challengers for experienced players. One of those challenges is the universally hated Jump To The Beat level – a stage where the player has to rapidly jump and wall-jump up a series of blocks that appear with the beat of the music. The beat speeds up as you climb, becoming impossibly fast by the end. So fast that some players simply can’t reach the top before the platforms disappear and you’re dumped in the toxic purple slime.
It’s difficult to describe how cruel this level is without experiencing it yourself. There’s a series of single block wall-jumps Mario has to accomplish near the end that would be difficult even if you weren’t on a tight time limit – and just following a seemingly normal pace is far, far too slow for this level. You have to cut every millisecond off those wall-jumps to give yourself enough time to reach the end – or you can cheat by using Yoshi. Yoshi has more forgiving wall-jump timing, making this level infinitely easier if you use Yoshi. Still, this level is going to be impossible for some players, making it a worthy addition to this list.
But, if we’re going to talk about the hardest levels of the year, we’ve also got to talk about the Final-Final Marathon, the last secret level that only unlocks after earning four of the six medals. This is truly the hardest level. The worst part of the Final-Final Marathon is the very end, where an invisible Mario has to navigate a bouncing balloon section that would be difficult even if you could see Mario. When he’s invisible? This is like a cruel joke.
#5 Phon’qi Caverns [Star Wars Jedi: Survivor]
The hardest part of Jedi Survivor isn’t an army of Stormtroopers or even a battle against Darth Vader – no, it’s a joke dungeon. Accessible through a hidden path after completing a specific side-quest later in the game, the underground road to the Phon’qi Caverns is especially treacherous and packed with a gauntlet of the hardest enemies in the game. Force-wielding raiders will ambush you around every corner – and at a certain point in the game, these guys are essentially mini-bosses on their own. The caves are one of the most complicated dungeons in the game, with multiple paths and difficult encounters – there’s even a Rancor down here. That isn’t even the last boss of the dungeon. At the end you’ll have to fight three mini-bosses at the same time. Seriously, why is this place so tough?
At least the reward is good. You’ll find a map upgrade that shows all the locations for treasure chests on your map. It’s also totally optional, so you don’t have to visit this location until much later – if you want to visit at all. Definitely worth seeking out if you want to see everything Jedi Survivor has to offer. Just don’t try to finish it as soon as you get there.
#4 Danger X9 [Advance Wars 1+2]
The remaster of Advance Wars 1+2 finally released in 2023 after a massive delay, and this game absolutely reminded us – I had a lot more free time as a kid to beat totally nonsense tough levels. One of those obnoxious levels is an optional mission called Danger X9 where you have nine turns to reach the enemy base and capture it. To complete the mission, you have to use all nine of those turns to reach the end. There is no wiggle room – and there’s an army of difficult enemies blocking the way. To reach your goal, you have to play absolutely perfectly – choosing the right units to build, moving to the right spots, destroying the right enemies, and doing it all so you can cut a path to the enemy base.
And the level is covered in fog, so you have no idea where enemies are moving or where they’re hiding. The fog is just the final agony in this torture chamber of a level. Even if you follow a guide step-by-step, the AI may react slightly differently to your moves – the dice might deal slightly different damage. Even that small fraction of a difference is enough to make this level totally impossible to win. Winning gets you access to a new powerful unit, but who cares? When you’ve got to complete a stage, this absolutely maddening, maybe we’re all better off skipping it. Or trying it a thousand times, because we can’t let this level beat us.
#3 Unidentified Structure [Trepang2]
You’ve got to delve deep to find the hardest (and weirdest) levels of 2023, and Trepang2 has both in spades. This FEAR-alike first-person shooter sends you into abandoned science labs and secret facilities all over the world, fighting swarms of enemies with slow-mo powers and a handful of awesome weapons. And because this is a horror-themed shooter, we’ve got yet another creepy level that’s also surprisingly difficult. Maybe scary stuff just isn’t scary without the very real threat of a Game Over. And that’s why this belongs on our tough levels list.
In the Unidentified Structure side-quest, you’ll land at a seemingly abandoned building. A little exploration reveals a bunker entrance that leads to a strange data center – and that’s when things get weird. Encountering the being down below turns the world red, forcing you to sprint through a maze of derelict servers that changes shape while unstoppable red auras chase you down. This is one of the more difficult challenges – just trying to survive while an unknowable monster chases you down is stressful enough. But shutting the creature down isn’t the end. After leaving the bunker, squads of high-tech soldiers surround the building. While troops raid the entire area, snipers watch the windows from every angle, turning your horror mission into a pure turkey shoot. And you’re the turkey.
#2 The Cabin Sequence [Resident Evil 4]
One of the most infamous tough levels of Resident Evil 4 isn’t that bad in the 2023 remake – the Water Room, a huge castle interior filled with enemies – is much easier in the remake. I don’t think I died once! The difficulty fluctuates plenty, with certain areas becoming harder, others becoming easier, but there’s one that really took us by surprise. The cabin defense section where you join Luis and fight off armies of villagers? That got way, way harder.
The cabin defense sequence doesn’t seem all that different if you’re just watching – but the new pace of gameplay in the remake totally turns this into a hellish experience. Leon is both slower than ever and faster than ever, able to use his knife to deflect attacks with perfect parries. And those perfect parries are required when you’re surrounded by monsters on all sides and there are even more ways for enemies to ambush you. The cabin actually features more windows on the second floor, turning the upper level into a total death trap. There’s also a mechanic that’s unique to this sequence, where you can collect boards and block windows.
And if the swarms of villagers weren’t enough, you also have to fight a totally new miniboss enemy. The Brute is a unique, powerful villager that takes a lot of ammo to bring down. The Cabin Sequence is especially cruel on Professional or Hardcore difficulty. The only way to win is to save up as many grenades as you can and spam them. If you don’t prepare ahead of time, you’ll have to rely on pure luck. In the original game, this section really isn’t that bad. Luis can take care of plenty of monsters himself. Not at all the same in the remake.
#1 Intercept The Redguns [Armored Core 6 ]
One of the biggest tough levels of 2023 has to be in one of the hardest games of the year too. From Software surprised everyone by making their follow-up Eldin Ring a sci-fi action sequel to the Armored Core series. This game keeps all the hardcore action we crave, packed with ridiculous boss fights and tough missions you’ll have to overcome. Some of these missions feel like particularly tough Dark Souls sections – and one optional mission that only unlocks if you make specific choices through the story forces you to fight an entire square of tough bad guys. If you’re really feeling brave, you can attempt the ‘Intercept The Redguns’ mission.
This mission pits you against an entire army of robots. To win, you must defeat the commander of the mercenary forces – and that isn’t easy. You’ll have to fight three waves of enemies as a starting course before the leader of the Redguns appears. There are so many enemies in the first waves, you can easily run out of ammo just fighting them all. And when the leader of the army appears, he’ll also show up with 50+ helpers to take you on. There are so many enemy robots, it honestly feels like they’re infinite. They aren’t. The bad guys will eventually run out of mechs to fight with – you will eventually destroy them all. It just doesn’t feel that way.
And even worse, the enemies don’t stop spawning after the leader appears. Another wave of enemies, a fifth wave, will eventually spawn while fighting the main boss. And another enormous mech will appear to harass you with this fifth group. As if there weren’t enough bad guys to deal with.
There are so many players recommend using flamethrowers just to quickly deal with the swarms and swarms of low-level soldiers. This battle is so tough, most of us are going to cheese the fight by luring the leader to perfect combat arenas or hiding until the boss spawns at all then taking him on with all your full ammo intact. If only the boss didn’t also act like a player, complete with two healing charges.
Any level that makes you fight an entire army by yourself is worth putting on the list. And even with these picks, there are so many levels we’re missing! Let us know all your favorite tough levels from games in 2023. What moments and tough levels made you want to throw the controller and smash your keyboard? We’re dying to know!
