For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
DayZ SA hardcore, my reactions have improved and I have become more cautious as a player, especially of people.
Well, I can tell you this. I grew up playing Mega Man. People say those games are hard, but I have them all memorized, so they’re all pretty easy for me.
Sometimes I play platformers that people consider hard, and I’m just disappointed by how mind-numbingly easy they are. Celeste is one example. I kept thinking, surely it must get harder. Maybe when I do the B sides. Surely there must be at least one part I struggle on. There never was. I never found anything hard about the game. The story was amazing, though.
So anyway, my answer is Mega Man. Not Mega Man X. Those games are amazing - quite possibly my favorite platformers of all time - but they’re too easy to fit into this category. The classic, 8-bit mega Man games from the NES (Mega Man 2 excluded. That one is also too easy).
DOOM 2016 on Nightmare (not ultra)
Sniper Elite
Hotline Miami
Dead Cells
Dying Light on Nightmare
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
The last of us multiplayer made me a better sniper. Smash bros amplified my reaction time. And halo improved my hand eye coordination with grenades.
