Duke vs Half Life = Difficulty

[Unseen]

I've played many shooters from the 90s, but HL and Duke are imo the hardest ones least on base difficulty. But what I'm having a hard time deciding is if ones harder than the ohter.

In HL the lambda core and several other areas were very difficult to me, climbing that reactor with energy arcs everywhere was very frustrating. I eventually got through it with a lot of luck, placement, and save scumming. But that was not the only part of HL1 and its xps that was hard. HL felt like if you made a fps but made it an nes game with lots of game overs and instant deaths.

Duke on the other hand is hard for different reasons. Episode 2 beat me down, and that was way before the boss. Bullet sponges everywhere, bad lighting, hidden tunnels and passages everywhere, and lack of ammo, least for me. I don't take pride in legit gaming so the get gud and skill issue stuff does not effect me. I even cheated blood at one of the episodes cause it softlocked me, only to be told cheater you don't get the ach. But not like the episode was hard just replayed it again. Blood and shadowwarrior both seem easier than duke. And by that I don't just mean secrets, duke has a lot of tough parts for enemies and dangers. La rumble was easy, but the other episodes, especially the birth which was imo ridiculously hard towards the end.

So these rank up with the 2 hardest shooters of the 90s imo. If there's a harder shooter I have not played it.

[haha nerds...]

I think they're hard in different ways, as you say, but Duke's difficulty to me felt a lot better balanced. I always found Shadow Warrior and Blood to be harder, though.

[Unseen]

At least blood doesn't have super tanks all over the place, but then again I have not played blood or duke on the hardest setting. The gargoyles seem like they would be tough.

FPS I started on turok, beat it several times on all difficulties. Turok2 is more challenging, but still not terribly hard. I always thought shooters tended to be easy, all you do is mass survival and ammo. Like resident evil, then I played these 2 and yea... I don't think shooters are always just resource grabs anymore. Not counting anything after 2000 cause they embraced squad shooters and duck and cover gameplay which is not the same. And can be randomly hard or easy. But the 90s games, doom2 is a good example. Didn't think any of the levels or challenges were hard until the icon of sin because its ridiculous spam saturation.

[haha nerds...]

Originally posted by Unseen:

At least blood doesn't have super tanks all over the place, but then again I have not played blood or duke on the hardest setting. The gargoyles seem like they would be tough.

Yeah, Duke's enemies are pretty tough, so you gotta approach it a bit differently. Use the most appropriate guns for the enemy type, use cover a lot and keep moving. Enemies have pretty clear patterns so you can learn when to dodge.

[Unseen]

Like the queen boss, what the hell thing is fast for its size, hell of a tank, and all underwater so time limit. I know if I watch a ytube video on the hardest difficulty someones got some easy strategy for it, but just going in that boss was unusually hard imo.

[Cat]

Half Life.

[QUAKETALLICA]

Lol no.

Blood is the hardest. Even on second hardest difficulty it's ridiculously brutal. Not even close. I would still put Shadow Warrior as harder than Duke or Half-Life, but still not as bad as Blood.

If I had to pick Duke or Half-Life, I'd probably say Half-Life is harder. Non-stop die, reload, die, reload on practically every enemy encounter. Hitscanners can't be dodged. If they see you, they hit you.

[Teratus]

Hmm.. there were some parts of Duke that felt a little hard at times but I dunno if I'd say HL or DN are particularly difficult..

Especially when you can save scum with quick saves and jump right back in, no need to start the entire level over like we used to decades ago lol.

I think the hardest parts of Duke Nukem 3D was probably the add on levels.
I found Nuclear Winter quite a challenge in parts and Life's a Beach too wasn't easy at times.
I also got lost a lot in Duke it out in D.C lol
These are not part of the World Tour version though unless you mod them in.

I only bring em up because I recently achievement hunted both World Tour and the Megaton Edition and these levels were by far the most difficult ones in either game.

In fact Megaton Edition may have some different difficulty scaling.. I dunno for sure but that version did feel harder at times even on the easiest difficulty.

As for Half Life.. I don't think those games are difficult at all tbh.
I played all of them last year (except the VR game).
The Black Mesa remake was probably the most difficult one but even that wasn't that hard.

Hardest thing imo in the Half Life games are those achievements where you have to carry objects through the game.. the famous Gnome in one of the HL2 Episode's and the Hat and Pizza box in Black Mesa.
But these are entirely optional and annoying things you can do for achievements.. they're not mandatory at all.

If I had to pick 1 classic shooter series that I genuinely found difficult.. it would have to be Timesplitters.
Those games were awesome fun but on their hardest difficulty settings, I remember them being brutally hard XD