Have you played a game with a "hard" difficulty setting that is unfair or busted?

[Hubbl3]

It is just a matter of labeling convenience. If you call harder difficulty "normal", you will upset a lot of weaker players.

Good example is Warcraft 3. Before patch, there was only one difficulty, but it was deemed too hard by many players. Then they introduced a new difficulty and started calling it "normal" and the old difficulty - "hard". That is "normal" =/= "standard/default".

I'm pretty sure that Normal and Hard where in the game since day 1.

And Hard wasn't hard at all

The only thing that was added to the game was a Multiplayer AI slider - where the hardest AI (Insane) was cheating.

[docterfreeze]

The hardest difficulty in any sports game gives the AI superhuman abilities and makes your players have mental issues.

[darkwarrior42]

There have been games where I thought the hard difficulty was very hard, but none where I thought it was unfair or busted.

And generally speaking, I just set any game I play to the highest difficulty from the beginning, especially if it's got a good story; if it's supposed to be an epic story, it just feels much more satisfying to me when the battles are actually hard.

[Yunru]

Mental omega (very hard AI).....just pwned my ass.....

The all knowing Ai attacks pretty much every unit that was outside defense. And after this it send magnetrons into my base destroying it super fast (no money for defense or units left).

[Kalcheus]

There have been some mentions of Civ 5, but the original Civ (or maybe Civ 2) at higher difficulty levels would cheat and give an enemy AI roughly 20 tech advancements in 1400 AD if you were running away with it.

[May90]

I'm pretty sure that Normal and Hard where in the game since day 1.

And Hard wasn't hard at all

The only thing that was added to the game was a Multiplayer AI slider - where the hardest AI (Insane) was cheating.

Well, that's weird. Maybe my copy was bugged then, but I really didn't have any options to choose from...

Hard in RoC was not that hard (for me, at least). Hard in TFT, however...

[Mordhause]

Not only the OP opponents, but the reduced rewards leave you little room to upgrade when you have to repair...along with randomized events

That game on hardest difficulty isn't meant to be beaten. More like a test to see how far you can get before the game starves you and kicks ur ass.

You should check out LethalFrag on Twitch. He's beaten 24 of 28 ships on Hard playing without pausing. It's a thing of beauty to watch.

[zephid]

Well that's usually how the games manages to make it hard. It cheats. If it didn't it wouldn't be hard.

[Aurimas]

I always thought it was stupid that Civ just give the AI advantages, instead of making it "smarter".

I know it's not nearly as "simple" as chess, but you'd think you could get a couple different levels of AI into a turn based game.

[McNeil]

Red Alert 1 skirmish with a hard CPU....... he just constantly keeps sending tanks at u early on, no way you can win against him