The most difficult game task in video games

14.01.2023 0 By admin

Many missions in video games are straightforward and normal.

We’re not talking about those today.

It’s Falcon, and today on Gameranx,10 missions that messed with your brain.

Starting off with number 10,the Leyndell Catacombs in Elden Ring.

It’s a game that normally plays it pretty straight with you.

Sure, it can be obscure and mysterious sometimes, but it almost never does anything to really mess with your head.

The only major exception though
is the Leyndell Catacombs.

The only way to even reach this place

is first go through a
large portion of sewers.

Already a massive and confusing location.

So when you get there,
it’s already disorienting.

You’re already confused.

You’re already somewhat lost,

probably a little
frustrated at this point.

Nothing about the dungeon

seems out of the ordinary at first,

but as you go through it,

eventually you get to a point where

you just end up back at the
beginning where you started.

Only, this time, you’re seemingly trapped.

The exit door that was previously
there is now walled off,

so you’re forced to go
through the dungeon again,

only now it’s different.

Enemies are in different locations,

there’s a monster here and there

that’s actually mourning a monster

you killed in a previous loop,

along with a few other changes.

In total, it’s not that crazy,

but if you’ve been playing
this game for hours on end,

through the already
paranoia-inducing sewers,

you might notice that you’ve stumbled into

a P.T.-style dungeon out of nowhere,

and it might freak you out a bit.

A big reason it’s so effective

is there’s nothing else
like it in the whole game.

At first, you think
you’re imagining things

and then you’re like, “Wait,
was that wall always there?”

‘Cause no, it’s the game
messing with your head.

And number nine is Break On
Through from Black Ops Cold War.

The black ops games
tend to be pretty trippy

by the end of their respective campaigns,

but none of ’em get quite as brain-bending

as the 13th campaign mission.

Just trying to explain what’s
supposed to be happening

is making my brain hurt.

But the gist of it

is that the CIA is implanting
memories into your brain

to try to get you to reveal the location

of a Soviet agent named Perseus.

How this works is that your handler,

a guy named Adler, recounts a time

when your character was in Vietnam.

As the story goes along,

you’re free to either choose
to follow the stuff he’s saying

or go your own way.

– The path split near a ruin.

So you took the right fork,
not the trail to the left.

(creepy music)

– Regardless of what you choose,

the scenario repeats multiple times,

each time getting just a little stranger.

In one sequence you
fight an army of Adlers.

In another, you get swamped by zombies

right out of Treyarch’s zombies mode.

It’s basically Call of Duty’s
answer to the Stanley parable.

And while it’s not the craziest
thing to occur on this list,

the fact that it’s a major level in

what is usually straightforward

Call of Duty military
stuff, it’s surprising.

And number eight is
the scarecrow sequences

from Batman Arkham Asylum.

It’s one that’s pretty
well-known at this point,

so it’s probably not gonna
shock anybody at this juncture.

But back when the game first came out,

I remember one of these
scarecrow sequences

really getting me.

There’s three in total,

but two are really mind-bending,

the first and the third.

The first one occurs in the morgue,

where Batman gets a dose of the fear toxin

and hallucinates Jim Gordon’s death.

At this point of the series,
everything was possible,

so it wasn’t far fetched to
imagine them killing him here.

It gets creepier though.

The section where the only way to progress

is to exit through the
door you came in from

was pretty trippy.

But the part that really
messes with people’s heads

is that final scarecrow encounter.

This one doesn’t just try to scare Batman.

It tries to scare the player.

First by triggering a fake freeze,

followed by the game resetting.

This time, Batman’s been replaced

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with the Joker during the prologue.

And at the end of the section,

Joker shoots Batman with a game
over screen and everything.

– I’ve waited a long time for this, Bats.

Let’s start the party with a bang.

(gun fires)
(Joker laughs)

– Back in the day,

this game definitely
fooled me for a section.

Probably fooled a lot of you guys too.

It’s only for a second, of course.

The game makes it obvious
that this is an illusion,

but it doesn’t take a lot

to mess with your brain at this point.

And number seven is
Vault 106 in Fallout 3.

Like Elden Ring, for the most part,

Fallout 3 just plays it straight.

So when it gets weird,
wow, does it stand out.

This is one of the creepiest vaults

in the entire series.

Vault 106, the one with
all the psychoactive drugs

in the air.

When you enter, the place is
filled with insane survivors

who attack you on sight.

Something that’s not
completely unexpected.

But what’s surprising is, when
you go deeper into the vault

and you find out the gas

that was used to make
everybody in the vault go nuts,

it’s still there.

So you start to experience
visions of people

like your father, Amata and
the overseer from Vault 101.

Some of these visions even try
to attack you near the end,

where the Tunnel Snakes
appear to fight you.

There’s stranger ones too,

like one area where you

can see a room that appears upside down

and you read computer terminals,

you can sometime find
like hallucinated messages

directed at the player.

Combine that with a dark
and creepy atmosphere

these vaults all have,

and it’s a pretty unpleasant experience

that will mess with your head.

(gun fires)

And number six, Under the
Windmill from The Witness.

There are many parts of The Witness

that could qualify for a list like this.

Tons of crazy, mind bending puzzles

that make you feel like
your brain’s expanding,

when you finally manage to solve them.

When you find out that you
can draw lines anywhere,

not just the white puzzle boards,

it can feel like your brain
just totally exploded.

That’s pretty wild as it is,

but the game manages to take

even that concept a step further.

Under The Windmill you
can find a projector room

that plays various movies.

These movies seem like
they’re just a reward,

like you have to find special codes

hidden around the island to unlock them.

It feels like, “Oh, I found the thing.

“Wow, neat.”

But when you get really
deep into the game,

then you start to realize
there’s gotta be more to them.

And yeah, it’s on the list,

so there, of course, is more to them.

Occasionally, some of the videos
you can see these circles,

and if you manage to get the timing right,

you can actually draw a line

from the film to complete a secret puzzle.

There isn’t even just one.

There’s multiple secret
puzzles hidden in these videos.

It’s basically like
you’re solving a puzzle

in the real world.

There’s a reason there’s
so many of these videos

seeing The Witness style puzzles

all over the place in real life,

because the game basically
trains you into doing it.

It’s one of those situations

where the game isn’t just
messing with your brain,

it’s kind of expanding it.

You never really look at
the world quite the same way

after getting too deep into The Witness.

(white noise blaring)

And number five is Moo
Training in Earthbound,

a famously quirky game
that is pretty friendly,

as far as old school RPGs go.

There’s one moment in the game

that’s particularly strange however,

and it’s burned into the memories

of anyone who has played it.

When you first meet the
fourth party member,

a character whose default
name is Prince Poo,

you have to undergo a sequence
known as Moo Training.

Goal is simple.

You sit on top of a mountain
and ignore all distractions.

You’d think that’d be pretty easy,

but the game goes a long way

to try to trick you into making a mistake

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and ending it early.

Starts off simple enough, right?

Character tells you to end
your meditating immediately.

Of course, obviously that’s a trick.

If you actually stop, you have to restart.

It gets a little trickier
after that though.

The screen turns dark and a spirit appears

and says it’ll take your arms and legs.

If you don’t want to fail,
you have to say yes to that.

Like, all right, you go ahead
and take my arms and legs.

I don’t need ’em right now.

It does get crazier from there too.

When you agree to let it take your eyes,

the screen goes black, or take your ears,

all the sound stops.

Eventually, it has to
take your entire mind.

It’s a tense sequence

that seems like it goes a little too far

and you feel tempted to stop.

But your goal is to
ignore all distractions.

So you just have to go with it.

The rest of the game is nothing like this.

It’s just a fun adventure story,

so this moment catches a
lot of people off guard.

It’s also one of the
most inspired sequences

in the entire game.

And it still messes with my head

when I think about it.

(upbeat music)

(cow moos)

And number four is the countdown ending

from The Stanley Parable.

For a game as famous for
messing with the player

as this one,

there actually isn’t a lot
of mind-bending stuff here.

Usually the game plays pretty fair

with what you can and can’t do.

It’s limited, what actually happens,

and some of the endings
are a little unexpected,

but it never really lies to you,

outside of this ending.

This ending it lies to you in.

It’s actually one of the most basic ones.

So it’s the one that a
lot of players get early.

And it’s probably the
meanest of all of them,

when you look back on it.

To trigger it, you have to get

the mind control machine you find

by following the narrator’s instructions.

But instead of turning it off,

like the narrator tells you to,

you get this ending and you turn it on.

That triggers the countdown ending,

where the game gives you two minutes

to run around the control room

and try to figure out a way
to turn off the countdown

that ends in your death.

There’s buttons, keyboards,

and various controls all over the place.

And they all seem like
they should do something,

but the whole thing’s a trick.

There is nothing that you can do.

That’s what makes the ending so bleak.

The game’s messing with your head.

It gives you the room to run around

and press buttons and do things.

And none of it matters.

Even with the narrator
literally telling you

that nothing can be done,

it still feels like you
should be doing something.

Why else would they put
all the buttons there?

Eventually somebody just
opened up the game files

and confirmed that the buttons
have absolutely no purpose,

confirming what the game was telling us.

Again, it’s a game

that doesn’t really
lie to you a whole lot.

It can be mean, but it doesn’t really lie.

It’s a gamers instinct to
look for secrets though,

and this ending takes advantage of that.

There’s even some new
dialogue if you play it again,

where the narrator makes fun of you

for thinking you could get a
different outcome this time.

Sometimes all it takes
to mess with the brain

is a puzzle with no solution.

– Until the moment I say,
“Happily ever after.”

– And number three is
lilith.pk3 with Doom.

Sometimes missions and levels,

they don’t have to trick
you to mess with your head.

They just have to be disorienting,

frustrating, and intentionally unpleasant.

And that’s enough to get
the old brain chemistry

a little unbalanced.

Lilith.pk3, probably the purist
distillation of that idea.

It’s an aggressively unpleasant
series of levels for Doom

designed to drive players nuts,

not by messing with their inputs
or pulling tricks on them,

but by breaking the game
so much it’s almost scary.

The bizarre, glitched-out
visuals, jarring music,

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and creepy texts all
come together to create

one of the most weirdest,
messed up levels in anything.

And it manages to do it without

any traditionally horrifying elements.

Just a lot of glitches and bugs

exploited for maximum effect.

(creepy music)

At number two is the Gate
of Illusion from La-Mulana.

The previous entry is an example of

the avant garde messing with your brain.

It’s weird and disorienting.

Well, this, this is just cruel.

Found fairly late in the game,

the Gate of Illusion is a diabolical maze

designed specifically to leave players

frustrated and confused.

Secret portals, exploding
chests, secret ladders,

and important items hidden
in seemingly random locations

with no rhyme, or reason, or clues,

that’s just the start.

The whole area is designed
to drive you totally nuts

by being incredibly
obscure about its puzzles,

which by the way,

don’t work the same way
as the rest of the game.

And on top of that,

they’re confusing and
difficult to navigate.

It’s already a challenging game

full of a lot of tough
puzzles, but the stuff here,

it just takes it to the next level.

Many of the clues you find in this area

straight up lie to you about
what you’re supposed to do.

And in every way it’s designed
to just mess with your head.

And finally, at number
one is Cat Mario 1-1.

Released back in 2007 as a freeware game,

Cat Mario, AKA Syobon
Action or Mario From Hell,

is a recreation of the first stage

in the first Mario game,

but designed to completely
mess with your brain.

Everything you expect to happen,

whether you played a million platformers,

or you’ve just played the first level

in Mario a million times,

it’s all subverted here.

Blocks move, they get away from you

when you try to bop ’em,

enemies appear out of nowhere.

When you jump over pits,

invisible blocks are
placed in the exact spot

that it would need to kill
you when you try to jump.

Yeah, it’s all right there.

Basically, all cruel
tricks you can think of,

for any platformer, they’re in this game.

Along with a few more
you probably couldn’t

come up with on your own, or expect.

At least when it first
came out back in 2007.

These days, Kaizo hacks
are pretty ubiquitous,

but they rarely go as
far as this game does

to just screw with the
player’s expectations.

It’s one of those things
that, after a while,

you think you got it figured out,

but then there’s something
else that you didn’t expect

Solid Snake starts
breaking the fourth wall.

The whole experience gets
very strange in the last hour.

While it’s mostly just weird,

when you get a message saying
to turn the game off now

or the screen suddenly switches
to the game over screen

but you can continue playing the game

in the little window that
appears in the corner,

then yeah, they’re really
just trying to mess with you.

It is a legendary sequence.

We’ve mentioned it once or
twice already in other videos,

so that’s why we’re
putting it as just a bonus

rather than a full entry.

But yeah, we couldn’t not mention it here.

– What’s wrong with you?

– Don’t worry.

It’s a game.

It’s a game just like usual.

– You’ll ruin your eyes
playing so close to the TV.

– And that’s all for today.

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I’m Falcon.