Hardest Xbox 360 Games Published By Microsoft

The Xbox 360 was a console that arrived when the gaming industry was truly booming, and the competition between it and the PlayStation 3 was fierce at the time. Microsoft, in order to have as many huge exclusive games on their console as possible, started churning out some amazing games through Xbox Game Studios.

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Thousands of games were released for the Xbox 360 during its long lifespan, but these are often considered to be the most challenging of them all.

But it wasn’t just developing, Microsoft also made sure they helped indie developers and other small companies get their games out on the Xbox 360, never wanting to miss out on potential huge successes. Despite the general difficulty of games getting lower during this era of gaming, there were still some games published by Microsoft that truly challenged gamers.

7 Halo Wars

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.23/5

The Halo franchise has always been one of the biggest exports for Microsoft as a gaming company. For two decades now, the franchise has consistently been a major release whenever it makes an appearance. But Halo Wars was a slightly different entry in the series, and it is still considered one of the hardest games in the franchise despite not being a mainline title.

Unlike other games in the Halo series, Halo Wars is an RTS game. Taking place twenty years before the main story seen in the franchise’s other games, Halo Wars involves the crew of the Spirit of Fire, who must attempt to stop a fleet of ancient ships from falling into the hands of the Covenant. Despite there being some difficulty to the Halo games in general, Halo Wars was in such a different genre that it came with some growing pains, many of which were later fixed in Halo Wars 2, and these helped add extra difficulty to the game.

6 Ninja Blade

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.23/5

• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360
• Released: 2009-01-29
• Developer: FromSoftware

It is unsurprising to see a FromSoftware game appearing on any “hardest games” list, although Ninja Blade isn’t quite as well remembered as the Soulsborne series of games. This action game is set in modern-day Tokyo, a huge departure from most FromSoftware games, and features a modern ninja fighting against a massive outbreak of “alpha-worms.”

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These terrifying creatures make for ferocious opponents, and with FromSoftware’s goal being to create a Hollywood action movie style for this game, Ninja Blade was never going to be easy. Indeed, despite being one of the easier games made by that company, it is still more challenging than most games released for the Xbox 360.

5 Kingdom Under Fire: Circle Of Doom

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.27/5

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Released: 2007-12-05
• Developer: Blueside

A great but somewhat forgotten franchise of RPGs, the Kingdom Under Fire games always produced fantastic strategic and action-focused gameplay. However, they also provided a challenge, and there was plenty of that in Circle of Doom, the fourth installment in the series, which remains difficult to play due to it not being backward compatible.

The biggest challenge in Circle of Doom isn’t the enemies themselves; it is more that the weapons players can get early on are generally pretty weak. There are many stronger weapons in the game, but obtaining them feels like it takes a long time. This led to a lot of frustration for players, as it often forced them to take on challenging enemies with early-game equipment.

4 Gears Of War

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.28/5

This much beloved third-person cover shooter has evolved a great deal since the release of this entry. Gears of War has become a massive multimedia franchise, but it started off as a shooter with some real challenges behind it, making it easily the most difficult game in the franchise to date.

Gears of War is a franchise known for challenges, mostly because of the “insane” difficulty setting. But the first game didn’t feel very balanced between difficulty levels, and players still complain today that some sections feel too similar to the highest difficulty level while playing at the lowest.

3 Limbo

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.35/5

A fascinating game that helped to inspire other famous titles such as INSIDE and Little Nightmares, Limbo is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that is mostly puzzle-based. It follows a young boy, controlled by the player, who is searching for his sister in a black-and-white world filled with dangers.

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The style was unique, and so were the challenges, in which players were generally meant to die, sometimes several times, in order to figure out exactly how to succeed. This made the game intentionally more challenging than many platformers, giving it a flair that has translated into many of the games inspired by it. Though Limbo was developed by Playdead, it was published by Microsoft Game Studios for the initial release for the Xbox 360 before it was ported to many other platforms by Playdead themselves.

2 Spelunky

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.25/5

Another game that has since helped inspire a genre with its style, Spelunky, is a roguelike game set in a cave system that introduced a lot of platforming elements that generated a lot of interest in the roguelike genre. It prompted developers, particularly indie ones, to include more of these elements as time went by.

Players may struggle greatly to learn even the basics of Spelunky, especially if they’re not already exceedingly used to this type of game. There is an incredibly high skill ceiling that has a brutal learning curve to it, and players will likely sink a huge amount of time into trying to beat even lower difficulty levels.

1 Ninja Gaiden 2

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.26/5

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Released: 2008-06-03
• Developer: Team Ninja

The Ninja Gaiden franchise hasn’t seen a new entry in a decade now, but the games are well-remembered, particularly by hack-and-slash fans who love a challenge. Ninja Gaiden 2 is a surprising game because it filled a genre that is normally about stringing together many kills at once into a much slower style, making it a challenge for players to ever let go of the block button.

In Ninja Gaiden 2, players find themselves in the shoes of a master ninja, forced to take on the Black Spider Ninja Clan to stop their evil machinations. Players will be constantly surrounded by enemies, with traditional hack-and-slash style combat disrupted massively by the way in which the AI has enemies attack. This title forces players to completely master the game before they have any chance in later levels.

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