Dark Souls is well known for its high difficulty and the whole "git gud" meme. The game is incredibly fair, but fiendishly difficult. So what games are there that have bullshit difficulty? And how would you know it's unfair?
Literally 90% of FPS games just give more health and damage to enemies at each difficulty level, making them bullet sponges at higher difficulties.
As has already been mentioned, a lot of strategy games just give the AI more resources.
But notably both of those genres work best when fighting human opponents, so making good AI isn't usually high on their priority list.
Any survival game with rapidly depleting meters, forcing you to babysit the protagonist instead of playing the game.
Also thousands of games are simply difficult because they're broken from a design or coding perspective.
Then there are incredibly hard platformers and bullet hells (the genres can easily mix) like Wings of Vi, but I consider that one to be fair. Results my vary.
Roguelike-like games like Binding of Isaac or FTL: Faster than Light will often put you in a situation where you're either guaranteed to die or to at least lose a considerable chunk of resources in escaping. I still love them, but I'd call that fake difficulty. Getting a series of worthless items in Isaac, or a three-gun enemy in an asteroid field in sector 1 in FTL, is a recipe for frustration and disaster.
As much as I love Baldur's Gate and BG2, their concept of open world exploration wasn't as refined as modern games like Skyrim in terms of scaling. Especially in the original Baldur's Gate, if you take a wrong turn, you can wind up getting 1-shot in some high-level area with zero chance of survival. And even if you DO follow the prescribed path, the series often pits you against enemies of much higher level than your party. In mid-to-late BG2 you might survive with a shrewd plan on the fly, but in BG1, an 8 HP level 1 protagonist is gonna get annihilated 90% of the time by either of the early-game Mage battles where the opponent has access to level 3 spells.
Any old RTS game. The AI doesn't get better, it cheats itself extra resources and faster production times.
Well, Theres several types of "Artificial Difficulty"
The only unfair ones are where...
fallout on veryhard harcore mode
I feel like there are a ton of fighting game bosses who have loads of cheap moves.
Basically any good rhythm game on hard mode
Final Fantasy Theatrhythm: Curtain Call Project Diva Future Tone Etc.
Destiny 2 is full of "fake difficulty". Nightfall aren't hard, they're annoying and you pretty much cheese them everytime. The if one person does in a raid the whole group dies is also annoying when you could have easily finished the fight.
Civilization games where you play Prince+, the AI just get free resources but are still just as retarded.
Try playing 2-player Battletoads on NES if you want some bullshit difficulty.
