That fucking helicopter level

By "helicopter level" I assume you mean the RC helicopter in GTA: Vice City.

Funny, for me it was the RC Plane Level in GTASA.
There RC plane was even worse
I immediately thought of Crysis.

San Andreas when you have to chase the train on a dirt bike.

All we had to do was follow the damn train!
Shaka when the walls fell
One you learn that you just have to stay a certain distance rather than trying to race it. It's fine. You just find that sweet spot where smoke is constantly shooting and you're good

NES TMNT swimming bomb defusing level. Aaaaaaaaaahhh!!!

I just learned that the intent for that level is to pause the game and switch which turtle you're playing because they get a full health bar when you do.
- 🤯
The electric shock sound when you touch the sea weed will forever be a trigger for me.

That was the final level.
- The objective of the game was to return your frogs to the deep river, it really was just a reimagining of frogger.

we don't go to ravenholm.

nah but the level is sick tho.

Excellent horror level, with great resource starvation that forces you to use the gravity gun. Also introduces the poison headcrabs I think? Either way, uses them really really well. Like that part at the end where they're all creeping around an abandoned mine? 👨‍🍳

"that fucking helicopter level", for me, refers to the rc heli missions in gta vice city

Same! I even played it on multiple platforms, no good
Man, fuck those levels. I literally could not progress in the game because I was stuck on one of those. That experience lowered my opinion of the entire game, and I've never gone back because of it.

I was playing Mafia, and it’s a pretty cool game, then suddenly they drop in an F1 racing level where you need to grab first place against a bunch of AIs that never make a mistake.

The worst bit is, in the previous mission you did a lot of work to sabotage the rival’s car ahead of the race. So you shouldn’t even need to drive all that well to win against him, but it just forgets that.

I just never beat the race, so the game came to a halt for me.

That's like game design 101 -- if you're introducing a new gameplay paradigm that isn't part of the core experience, make it really really easy.
Maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall the Warthog escape sequence at the end of Halo getting this right. It felt epic, but was actually very doable based on the limited driving skills required by rest of the game.
- That's why many of us are so fond of the warthog. Many games at the time introduced a vehicle and suddenly the game is ludicrously hard (... That fucking BattleToad battle bike...). But the Warthog is introduced as a helpful aid, and then it actually does it's job with minimal fuss.
shouldn’t even need to drive all that well to win against him, but it just forgets that.
His car breaks down right at the start, which ironically makes the mission harder as you have to dodge the car as everyone passes it.
That said, the hard part was not tipping over, you could get quite a few places by just not giving a shit and flying over the chicane after the first turn.

Jackal snipers...

There's a level in one of the Battlefield: Bad Company games where you're ambushed by two attack helicopters in the desert and the only cover is a small building. Did I mention Bad Company has fully destructible environments and you've already fought in said building so it's full of holes before the helicopters start blowing it apart? Or that a third helicopter shows up mid-battle?

It's not too bad if you know what's coming and preserve some cover, but if the building is in bad shape when they show up then you're not going to have a fun time.

Any game with a mandatory stealth section all of a sudden

I had an opposite situation with Death Stranding. Was enjoying the "stealth" till suddenly had to fight Mads Mikkelsen guns blazing. The forced change in approach made me drop the game.
- The opposite is obviously quite frustrating too.
  I've heard the same issue with one of the possible endings in Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, where you're forced to kill dozens of enemies (if you didn't pick the narrative choice that forces you into a forced stealth section à la Alien Isolation). Both choices can derail from the rest of the gameplay (100+ hours)
  Great DLC nonetheless
After MGS blew up EVERY GAME had to have a stealth section all of the sudden, even if it made no sense in the narrative and clashed with the existing game mechanics.
- And now it's the era of Darksouls, where every game have to make you puke blood instead of having fun
Deadpool.
Big reason I never finished Witcher 2
- I remember frustrating parts in the Witcher 2 but I don't remember a stealth section
OG FF7 did it right.
I don’t mind shaking the gameplay up, but if I fail the stealth a couple times, just go ahead and let me go in guns blazing.
Fucking ff14, doesn't do stealth well at all, why is it in so many main story quests ugh

On a rail

I'm so glad Black Mesa truncated that section
I mean it's manageable, the HECU fights are always fun for me, especially with explosives. And you can just ditch the train and bhop all the way.
Now Xen+Interloper on the other hand........

I know what everybody is thinking: 50 Cent Blood on the Sand, but that's a misconception, you actually mean 50 Cent Bulletproof--the one other, and less perfect, of the 2 games that exist

I was thinking earthworm jim bro.
- Blood under the Sand

those barrel mini games in Donkey Kong 64

Lord of the Rings: War in the North and the fucking protect the door level

My helicopter level was in Ninja Gaiden. Used all my healing stuff before it and couldn't beat it. Never picked it back up.

The sister bullshit fight in fallen order.

Or, all the fights actually

I wanted a hybrid easy mode for that game so bad. One hit Stormtrooper kills but smarter enemies than vanilla easy mode.
- I HATE sequel lightsabers being just glowing baseball bats.

I can’t think of a specific example, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved an escort mission.

For years this was MAP16 ("suburbs") of Doom 2, but over the years I've grown to appreciate the more chaotic/abstract levels.

See also TEETH.WAD ("express elevator to hell") from the master levels. Punishing and IMO tedious.

Wolfenstein's fucking helicopter level on impossible.

Misty in Pokémon Blue

It'd be easily fixed with a new save, a more balanced approach, and four hours... but fuck that, I've spent two summers grinding to beat her but nope

Just go catch a Pikachu. Won't take 4 hours. A pickachu from viridian leveled against Mt Moon zubats for 10-30 minutes would wipe the floor with the whole gym.
- This is why I roll bulbasaur.
  Wipe both Brock and misty out.
- Magic. I'll give that a punt this summer! Thank you!

Company Heroes 2 in Hard difficulty. The AI in RTS single player games tend to simply swarm you. I have to tone down the difficulty but there is little sense of satisfaction in playing easier modes.

The Trial of Tassadar

Every once in a while I decide to replay StarCraft. I always breeze through the Terran and Zerg campaigns and the first few Protoss levels. Homeland is a struggle but I can get through it. I can never seem to beat The Trial of Tassadar though. I always get destroyed before I can even venture out of my base.

More carriers

I was stuck on the crazy missile tank dude in Armored Core 6 when I got to him because apparently he was fucked up and more OP than intended. Played through a few months ago, well after he was nerfed, and absolutely demolished the game 100%; though I credit it more to finding out that you can unlock a machine gun through the training sessions I never did. That thing just wrecks every dude in the game if you keep moving 🤣

Honestly kinda miss the OP release bosses, did my first playthrough one them, wouldn't mind a setting to turn them back on. (With the exception of Ibis because its actually harder now than it used to be)

Deathstroke fight on Batman: Arkham Origins

It did give us an awesome trailer though.
It was certainly much better than the Deathstroke fight in Arkham Knight...
- Maybe that was the one I was thinking of? It's been a while. The button repetition with insta-kill just stopped the game dead.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I can't get the stupid mini game in Astral Chain where I have to balance a bunch of boxes and take them to someone without dropping them all. It adds nothing to the story afaik and it pissed me off to a point I just stopped playing altogether.

I'm sure I could beat the piano guy in Luigi's Mansion 3 if I played it enough times, but it's not nearly fun enough for me to stick to it

NES Adams Family game.

My cousins had it, so I couldn't try later.

The freezer level.

I suck at platformers, always have, but the slippery change to traction fucked me over hard and I could not adapt.

Then their dog got out and that crisis took over.

Every time its the same

„I wonder why I havent played Elite in a while“, then proceed to find myself in the outer rim of the galaxy in enemy powerplay territory with a sidewinder

I mean, catch a taxi? How'd you manage to fuck up Rule 1 so hard you ended up in a sidewinder with no way to import cash in enemy powerplay (which btw got redone and probably doesn't apply anymore)

Psi Ops the Mindgate conspiracy.

Could not beat that pyro bitch

That game was so much fun though! I remember it having a really weird 2 player mode where you each get to control half of the guy.

The goddamn blood trail jumping puzzles.

It’s me on Half Life Alyx with the blind dude who has you cornered. I legit was looking to insert a saved game to bypass this level and it seems I’m not alone with others sharing that specific save game.

It’s too damn hard 😩

Nah, not hard. Just not immediately obvious what you have to do.

Every goddamn PS2 game

Body Harvest airplane mission.

The fucking asteroids in the original Dead Space, fuck those things. Though knowing my luck they were locked to frame rate or some shit which made it difficult on PC.

I think it was the crab boss on the original S/NES blaster master. 3rd or 4th boss. They've since made the game a little more forgiving.

Tutorial.

Helicopter level is nowhere near as bad as everyone says it is.

I remembered it as being hard from being a kid. But every time I've played it since as an adult I've been very surprised that i was able to do it either my first try for that playthrough or at the second or third at most.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is the most notable example of this. The monastery mission is absolutely brutal both by how difficult it's intended to be, and by how broke it is, on a technical level.

It's definitely interesting, but it's so difficult.