The 25 most challenging video games of all time

Bloodborne's combat can be tougher to grasp since it's tuned toward hard-hitting, fast attacks. In addition, there's not really an option to hide behind a shield here, and the Rally system encourages aggression to recover health. So, until you get used to it, you'll find Bloodborne's dodges and Blood Vials more difficult to handle than Estus Flasks and rolls.

Contra's frantic run-and-gun action made it one of the first smash-hit co-op games and one of the hardest. Protagonists Bill and Lance are incredibly fragile guys and can only take a single hit anywhere on their bodies. The merest graze has them pushing up daisies. Considering the number of enemies fire you face, even side-scroller experts will need a hefty amount of continues to make it to the end.

Cuphead is a beautiful side-scroller filled with '30s-inspired cartoon art. Underneath that charming exterior lies a cutthroat game with grueling bosses that can take hours to get past. Its gorgeous classic animation is fascinating to look at while you're absolutely pummeled with challenging encounters and bullets whizzing by. 

The hardest thing about Dark Souls is that it requires perseverance. Unlike Elden Ring, which allows you to dip out if you get stuck, it's up to you to bounce against a problem until you defeat it. Sometimes that means grinding for a few hours to raise your stats or get the materials to upgrade a weapon. Other times, you'll fight a boss 20 times before it finally goes down. 

The original Souls game is still challenging. This is where FromSoftware's level design philosophy matured, and ambushes are waiting around every bend to prevent you from making it to the following shortcut or Archstone. It also has the complex world tendency system players must master if they want to obtain certain items, which is a huge pain to manipulate.

The original arcade version of Dragon's Lair is one of the most frustrating games of all time. It requires fast reflexes and memorization to make it through the short adventure without dying. However, it also features some of the most beautiful video game art ever made, making the struggle worth it.

Driver itself isn't that tough. The tutorial you need to pass to start the game is the most challenging section. What makes it so hard is that the game expects you just to know a whole slew of complex driving maneuvers. Sorry, but eight-year-old me had no idea what a Slalom was or how the game wanted me to accomplish it.

The challenge with Dwarf Fortress comes from its complexity. As an overseer of a Dwarf Fortress, you can do practically anything, and things can get out of hand quickly. The ASCII graphics were another factor that made the game hard to grasp, but fortunately, a GUI version is finally available 15 years after the game's launch.

A man with his lower body in a pot propelling himself through the air with a hammer sounds grueling, so the simulation found in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy seems pretty accurate. The premise is simple, but the difficulty comes from the fact that you can quickly lose all your progress. There are no checkpoints, only your will to keep going no matter the cost.

It takes one hit to strip your armor and another to kill you in Ghosts 'n Goblins, and it's Nintendo hard throughout the whole game. Adding to the challenge is that once you reach the end, you must play through the entire game again on a tougher difficulty to get the true ending (which is incredibly underwhelming).

Ikaruga's difficulty comes from its relatively complex polarity system. Your ship has both white and black forms, which you have to switch between to maximize damage and charge your special attack, and even skilled shoot 'em-up players will find this unique gameplay element challenging.

Space travel is tough, and Kerbal Space Program is one of the first games to show the complexities of that with nuance. Getting that first rocket into orbit without blowing up is challenging, much less figuring out how to transit to other planets. 

While Punch-Out!! starts pretty easy with Glass Joe, you soon meet fighters with access to a much larger repertoire of moves than you. To beat them, you must memorize their fighting patterns and slam them with hits at the right moment. Tyson (or Mr. Dream, in later versions) is extremely quick and hard-hitting, and you'll likely find yourself playing through the game several times before you gain the skill needed to take him down.

This game doesn't have any timers, enemies, or adversaries, but man, it tried our patience back in the day. Some of the puzzle solutions in Myst border on nonsensical, and you better keep a notebook around to keep track of all the random clues you get.

This game is very tough and got even harder in Master Ninja difficulty that was added post-launch. However, it's an excellent hack-and-slash that gave its contemporary, Devil May Cry, a run for its money. All three games in the second trilogy are challenging, but we'd start with the first and play them in order.

Team Ninja's spin on the Souls formula takes players through a dark fantasy version of the Sengoku period and has you fighting Yokai as samurai clash under Westerner influence. It blends Souls and Ninja Gaiden gameplay elements and presents a unique challenge against terrifying foes.

Returnal's AAA rogue-like gameplay surprised gamers, especially since Housemarque didn't pull any punches when it came to difficulty. Since the map changes each time you die, you can never get too comfortable. Even when you're at your strongest, navigating the game and taking down the aggressive inhabitants of Atropos continues to be challenging.

Even Dark Souls veterans will have some trouble with Sekiro. It requires much more aggression from the player than FromSoftware's other games and doesn't allow you to turtle up and tank damage. Again, timing is crucial here, as you only have a parry to deflect oncoming hits. 

The arcade version of Shinobi is a product of the time: a hard side-scroller geared toward earning quarters. However, even the console editions of the game, which featured a health bar instead of a one-hit kill, are incredibly tough.

In this game, you have to pull off various stunts for six fictional movies. The problem is the game requires an unnatural amount of precision for your attempts to register as a success. The car physics also aims for realism, so don't expect to be able to turn on a time.

The real Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in the West as The Lost Levels. Instead of the weird conversion of Doki Doki Panic we got, the sequel to the original Super Mario Bros. is much more difficult and features the dreaded poisonous mushroom. We don't know what happened to Miyamoto to make him so angry during the production of this game, but we're glad he's okay now. 

Some of the hardest Super Mario levels ever are available on Super Mario Maker 2, but that's not the only thing about the game that's challenging. Making a good level is trickier than it seems, and this game can put your creative muscle to work.

The development of Super Meat Boy coincided with a trend in the late 2000s centering around super hard side-scrollers, which included the romhack series Kazio Mario World and the indie game I Wanna Be the Guy. As a result, it's an incredibly difficult game, and you can expect to die over and over before things click and you manage to pass a level. 

The first X-COM game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, set the standard for unforgiving turn-based tactical games. Even when you're doing great in this game, you have to be on guard constantly. One bad mission and you could find yourself unable to continue a save you've spent tens of hours playing.

The sequel to Zelda took things in a weird direction. The side-scrolling combat is frustrating, and even figuring out where to go next is confusing. Fortunately, Nintendo returned to the original game's winning formula with the next game in the series and didn't look back.