5 PlayStation 4 Games That Were Basically Too Hard to Play, Including One That Might Break Your Brain

The PlayStation 4 was a massive victory for Sony. After an up-and-down PlayStation 3 cycle, Sony came out of the gate hot, capitalizing on Microsoft’s mistakes with the Xbox One, while also delivering dozens of great games. With so much success, it’s no surprise that developers flooded players with thousands of games. A few of those took difficulty to a new level, giving fans some truly malicious options. Importantly, developers also got weird with it, delivering a few tough games in surprising genres. Here are five of the hardest games on the PS4.

5) God of War

Most players aren’t going to have a tough time with 2018’s God of War reboot. Sure, there are a few challenging bosses that might give you trouble while adventuring with Kratos, but the base game isn’t too bad. However, if you decide to flip the switch to the “Give me God of War,” you’re going to run into a wall almost immediately. Switching to that difficulty changes God of War to one of the hardest games of the generation and requires consistently perfect play.

What makes it even worse is that the “Give me God of War” difficulty is actually the hardest at the start. When you first step into Kratos’ boots, most normal enemies will kill you in one or two hits. As you progress, you’ll unlock new options to make combat slightly easier. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still nearly impossible, but you’ll at least have a chance. You’ll need to learn to play with patience and master parrying to get through this challenge.

4) Crypt of the Necrodancer

Crypt of the Necrodancer mixes the roguelike and rhythm genres to devious effect. As you explore the dungeon and fight off enemies, you’ll also need to match the beat if you want to do anything successfully. In fact, you can’t even move if you’re not timing your movements to the beat. It’s a weird system to get your mind around at first, but once it clicks, you’ll start flying through some of the levels.

The problem is that some of the later levels and characters you unlock really bump up that difficulty. You need to manage two things at once, which makes the initial challenge of finding the beat not actually the most difficult part of Crypt of the Necrodancer. You do have to stay on beat, but you also need to react to everything happening around you. If you just want to be Necrodancer with one character, you can probably do it, but there’s a reason many see it as one of the most difficult platinum trophies to get on the PS4.

3) Enter the Gungeon

There are a handful of games that could slide into this slot as tough-as-nails action roguelikes. Whether it’s Binding of Issac, Nuclear Throne, or Dead Cells, all of those games can make a claim as the hardest in the genre on the PS4. That said, I’m going with Enter the Gungeon because of its mix of top-down shooter and bullet hell action. You’ll need to master your positioning, which takes most players dozens of hours to perfect. That’s because each enemy has its own bullet pattern, so memorizing how they shoot to evade their bullets is a big undertaking.

Then you get to the bosses. You’ve been learning how to move at pace, dodge attacks, and aim while slipping through chaos. The bosses are the final tests of every skill you’ve been building. Most players won’t get through Enter the Gungeon without dying hundreds of times. Like God of War, the best thing you can bring to this challenge is patience. You’re going to be here for a while.

2) The Witness

For this entry, I’m taking things in a different direction. Most of the games on this list are difficult because they challenge your reflexes and ability to process scenarios at speed. The Witness is totally different. This puzzling masterpiece instead challenges your brain with hundreds of mind-bending puzzles that will leave most players feeling like they’re back in school after a week of studying for finals.

It seems so simple. Each puzzle you come across just asks you to move the dot to the end of the maze. How could that be so hard? Well, every puzzle adds a new element, building on itself until you reach the point where the puzzles look almost nothing like the ones you started on. There are dozens of factors to keep in mind, and each region changes things up. Whether it’s audio cues or manipulation of color, you’re going to spend hours staring at what appears to be a simple maze. And if you want the platinum, you’ll have to solve a series of tough puzzles in a short timeframe to conquer The Witnesses‘ final challenge.

1) Bloodborne

Much like Enter the Gungeon, there are a few Soulsborne games I could’ve included here. In fact, I think Sekiro has a very strong case for being the most difficult game FromSoftware released during the PlayStation 4 era. After all, that game doesn’t let you level up your enemies like most of its other games. However, I’m going with the only FromSoftware game that’s PlayStation-exclusive, since this is a PlayStation list.

Don’t take this as a pity award either. Bloodborne is absolutely one of the most difficult (and best-looking) games on the system. It injected a dose of adrenaline into the slow-paced combat of Dark Souls, turning players into whirling dervishes of death. Because of that speed and the lack of a shield, you have to stay in the fight. There’s no sitting back and letting the enemies come to you. Bloodborne forces you to dictate the pace, making for a frenetic and fun slice of the FromSoftware pie.

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