Is Elden Ring the Hardest Video Game Ever Made?

While many players contend that Elden Ring presents some of the toughest challenges in gaming history, when measuring by key difficulty criteria, a few other equally punishing or even tougher games edge it out for the top spot.

Defining Challenge in Games

Before analyzing Elden Ring‘s difficulty, it helps to define what metrics determine how hard a game is:

• Mortality rate – How often players die or fail objectives
• Completion percentage – % of players who finish the entire game
• Complexity – Steep learning curves for controls, builds, strategies
• Punishment for mistakes – Costs of errors like loss of progress
• Adaptability – How much the difficulty adjusts dynamically to the player
• Critical reception – Reviews and player feedback on challenge level

These measures allow some objective comparison of hardness between games, though some subjectivity based on player skill level exists too.

FromSoftware Set the Bar for Difficulty

Elden Ring comes from FromSoftware, the creators of notoriously challenging franchises like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. These games are synonymous with ruthless combat, mysterious worlds that offer little guidance, and unforgiving consequences for mistakes.

It‘s no surprise then that Elden Ring inherits the DNA of its "Souls-like" predecessors and features:

• Merciless foes including bosses with complex movesets
• Severe penalties for death like loss of currency/progress
• Little hand-holding or tutorials for its intricate systems
• Vast open world rife with threatsawaiting careless explorers
• Customizable builds and RPG mechanics that demand careful planning

These design elements ensure Elden Ring challenges players to master its third-person action-RPG combat through highly strategic approaches less skilled gamers may find punitive.

Metrics on Hardest Games

While Elden Ring‘s world of perilous exploration earns it a badge of difficulty, just how harshly does it punish players relative to history‘s most infamously tough titles?

Examining player mortality rates, completion data, and critical reception offers some perspective:

These games clearly devastate most who attempt them, but a few emerge even more unforgiving.

The Top Contenders for Hardest Game

The titles generally considered at the peak of difficulty based on the aforementioned metrics and critical reception include:

Battletoads – A mainstay on hardest games lists, this classic beat ‘em up sequel was commercially unsuccessful largely thanks to unrelenting, instantly fatal obstacles. Its infamous "Turbo Tunnel" stage alone turned away droves of less determined players.

I Wanna Be The Guy – More an engine for suffering than a full game, IWBTG‘s absurd animate environments, glancing touches of death, and lack of guidance make progress feel downright miraculous. Its sadistic design keeps completion rare.

Super Meat Boy – This iconic indie platformer earns its challenging stripes through intensely precise demands on movement reflexes. Long gauntlets of lethal obstacles must be navigated flawlessly for incredible durations with little room for error.

So while Elden Ring‘s plethora of threats make survival tenuous even for grizzled veterans, a few past games contended for even higher levels of hardship. However, for players struggling at the fringes of skill level, Elden Ring likely outweighs them all in frustration factor.

Difficulty Is Somewhat Subjective

It‘s important to acknowledge that these measures don‘t capture the full picture. Two players can face the same game but perceive and experience the difficulty quite differently based on skill level, genre familiarity, persistence and more.

For example, a seasoned Soulslike veteran familiar with FromSoftware‘s demanding combat design may better adapt to and handle Elden Ring‘s challenges compared to a newcomer still struggling with third-person action fundamentals.

So subjective skill factors make naming the outright "hardest" game virtually impossible. But we can say empirically that for the average player, Elden Ring resides among the most challenging video games ever conceived – though a few borderline sadistic titles still surpass it.

Elden Ring: A Transcendent Test of Skill and Will

While Elden Ring cranks up the difficulty dial close to the limit, it doesn‘t quite claim the crown for hardest video game. Yet what it might lack in raw mercilessness, it makes up for in scale, depth and grandeur.

Elden Ring stands as a transcendent demonstration of the euphoric highs difficulty in games can achieve by demanding excellence. For those seeking intricate worlds housing adventures as challenging as they are epic, it represents a masterwork.