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Denver, 4:25 PM
Sun Nov 8
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/07/09
11/07/09
11/07/09
I think it's just a matter of taste, and what fits a given game the best. Some people like easier games than others. Some kinds of game are better suited to a given difficulty range. To me though, the difficulty doesn't affect how good a game is as long as it's appropriate. I like Space Channel 5 (so easy I could beat it in my sleep with one finger...), but I also like the Touhou Project games ("It's like standing in the rain without getting wet"); Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo; Kirby's Dreamland, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Then there are games like the Lego platformers - I had a fair bit of fun with Lego Star Wars, but after a while I realized that as long as I sit there and make some kind of controller inputs, I'd finish the game for sure. Or I Wanna Be The Guy - an awesome concept, but death is so certain around every corner, across every inch of the game that there's no sense playing.
I think difficulty is just another artistic decision when creating a game, like color scheme or background music. It can be anywhere on the spectrum, it just has to fit. #nightnote
11/07/09
11/07/09
One thing I can't stand in a game is if you sink massive amounts of time and effort into it, but you get to a point where you're just screwed and have to replay half of the game better than before... #nightnote
11/07/09
Things were different in the early days of gaming, when the only story to them was the descriptive text printed on the back of the box or in the manual. Whether you ever beat Super Mario Bros. or not, you already knew everything you needed to know before you even started playing. There were no plot twists, character development, or interesting dialogue awaiting those who made it to the end. #nightnote
11/07/09
From this, one might argue that the very best games are those which integrate interactivity into the experience in such a way that makes it inseparable from the rest of the experience. In other words, to be truly playing a quality game, whether it has a story or not, and regardless of how good it is, the gameplay itself should take the most central role.
Now, that's all a bunch of fiction, since the reality is that not every game is amazing and not every game has "good" gameplay (far from it), but it is what games, you would think, are striving for.
Anyhow, to get to my point, the best games that I've ever played have almost exclusively had a finely tuned difficulty, with a level of challenge that served to enrich the overall experience. I had a friend who played the Metal Gear games on easy for the story, and I don't think he got nearly as much out of it as I did when I played them on a more challenging setting.
Video games are meant to be experienced, to be interacted with - not to be watched, and in the end this has all been an elaborate if ill-formed argument to essentially say "if you want to watch a movie, watch a movie - if you want to play a game, expect that medium to play to its strengths, and not just be an interactive story" #nightnote
11/07/09
As to the idea that games are supposed to be experienced and interacted with as opposed to just watched, I completely agree. But if an inexperienced gamer isn't skilled enough to interact with the game in its entirety, his or her enjoyment is going to be greatly diminished. Which is why I'm a big fan of easy options, even if I never use them. And just because the story isn't the main component of games, if it's a component at all, doesn't mean that players don't want to see how the story unfolds.
But like you, I much prefer a game and/or difficulty level that frustrates me to one that allows me to breeze right through. At the same time, I know some gamers who prefer a breeze. You don't need to look any further than people who use cheats for evidence of that. So ultimately, I think it's best for everyone when games offer enough difficulty settings to suit everyone's tastes.
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11/07/09
I have mixed feelings about the Touhou games - I can enjoy them because I can actually beat them, but it does take about a week of training to clear one on easy, and the difficulty goes up 3 more levels. After that there's an extra stage that unlocks that will kill anyone who hasn't beaten the game in under a minute. So it's somewhat accessible at the lowest level, but then you beat it and they basically go "bad end: Try beating the game on normal without using any continues!" Riiiight... right after I swim across the ocean in a straightjacket, carrying an anvil, or set a new land speed record by running on my hands! That's impossible! #nightnote
11/07/09
Bioshock. It was one of the first FPS's I had ever played in my life. I am a huge RPG fan, and I like to play games to experience the graphics and story. Bioshock was the perfect implementation of story and setting, and eased me into playing FPS's (I had hated them before.) I had initially started the game on normal, but moved it to easy so I could advance the game.
After I beat it, I realized I wanted more from it. It was my first 360 game, and my first exposure to achievements. Seeing there were others that gave more points and more length to the game, I decided to do the Brass Balls achievement. It was the very first time I had ever played a game on its hardest setting, won, and had proof that I had done it.
You are both so correct. If you have enough love and interest invested in a game, (and for me, a good reason to do it.) there is a market for super hard settings on games.
On the flip side, we have Mass Effect. It's an RPG, and I love it also. One of the achievements for that is to beat the game on its hardest setting, gather party members each playthrough, and beat the game multiple times with the same character.
Whereas with Bioshock I was excited to play over and over again, Mass Effect I beat twice and put aside. There is so much content and so much time invested, it's completely mind boggling to think of how much time I would need to put into it to even consider doing the hard settings. Factor in that's more of an action RPG and I wasn't very good at the combat system, I never have played Mass Effect on hard. Also, I didn't get the same impact Bioshock gave me.
To be fair, Mass Effect relied on characters I didn't really care about and Bioshock relied on a setting. But Bioshock is one of greatest modern games, it's hard not to get sucked into it. You also can't say the developers were intentionally trying to make the game hard, they were simply giving a lot of content for their fans to play through, which I like.
They are two very different games, and approach the idea of a hard difficulty quite differently. It's how you react to them that tells you what a difficulty setting's place is. For me? It's there to annoy me and frustrate me, when I dislike a game or it means doubled play time + added frustration. For a game I love? More reason to play more. #nightnote
11/07/09
11/07/09
Achievements aren't meaningless, I've always thought of them as a journal of a person's progress or abilities in games. This is especially true in Grand Theft Auto IV, which has notoriously difficult to get achievements. That stupid 200 birds achievement shows people have more time on their hands, in my opinion, and infinite patience. Why yes, I do have that achievement. Shut up!
I won't go into the insidious corporate design of achievements, but for what they do, they at least make the difficulty setting something other than a frustrating experience that masochists torture themselves over and over with.
Also, I did beat The Force Unleashed on the most difficult setting. Also because of achievements. #nightnote
05:37 AM
As someone who has played 7 & 8 (8 is so much easier than 7), the difficulty is deceptive- Marisa should be an easy character to play with her auto-collect abilities, but I tend to have more success with Reimu. I've actually unlocked extra stage on easy with Reimu- I had to max out the lives available, but I finished it, and was very proud of myself. With continues, I appear to have finished Final A on Normal in 8. #nightnote
09:50 AM
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and this holds true for games as much as it does art or women or anything else. Balance is an issue that will and should always be struggled with. That said, there are definitely games and developers out there that take the "We want everyone to beat our game, because winning is fun, and our game needs to be fun" mentality too far.
You (and I) both have friends or acquaintances that prefer easy games, or easy modes - I'm sure everyone does - and while it is very difficult to quantify how much enjoyment anyone gets out of a game relative to anyone else, I would be willing to bet that we could generally say those who walk through a game easily enjoy it far less than those who feel challenged. Some enjoy more challenge than others, but no challenge is universally bad (or at least lesser).
There are games I didn't beat when I was younger because they were too hard. Hell, I never beat Ninja Gaidin, and that wasn't too long ago. Am I mad? Did I enjoy those games less because I didn't see the ending? No, I don't think so. Perhaps it's just my opinion, but I think there is something to be said about challenge in games.
To use a recent example, the recent title "Borderlands" takes the single difficulty approach. My rough estimation puts the game with maybe 40-50 actual missions, most of which are optional. I think the games designers blew the number up a bit, but they counted stuff like "go talk to this guy 5 feet away" as a quest all by itself.
If you do all, or even most or many, of the sidequests (which aren't numerous, I must emphasize), you will be grossly overleveled when you advance to the next area. The only way around this is to completely avoid sidequests altogether, which will maintain a healthy challenge throughout the game. It will never be hard, but it won't be super easy and it will be possible to die. Keep in mind that it is a levelbased game, and thus, even with shitty gear, killing something way under your level is always easy. Killing something above your level, even with awesome gear, is always hard and if it's 3 levels above you or more, nigh impossible due to some scaling.
My point is that the game isn't challenging unless you go out of your way, skipping mass amounts of content, to make it so. If you don't skip most of the sidequests, enemies will always be 3 levels under you, and will stay that way to the end.
And I say this was intentional. They wanted a beatable game, because winning is fun. But is winning really fun? Is "seeing it all" really enjoyable on its own?
I think not.
(disclaimer - I enjoyed borderlands. It wasn't the best game ever made, but it wasn't bad either. Also, I'm not shooter virtuoso - I'm good at them, but when I play CoD: MW on the hardest setting, I die every 5 paces like most people) #nightnote
10:06 AM
This is more of an aside, but it probably wasn't that you weren't good at Mass Effect's combat system, rather it was that the combat system itself simply wasn't good.
Even with the best armor and weapons and whatnot, combat (at least to me) was always a win or a loss. True, you might say, of most conflicts, but what I mean is that I could walk into a room with a particular set of gear and party members and baddies, and get absolutely slaughtered, with almost no clue as to why. Reload, walk into the same room, same difficulty setting, same party and equipment loadout, and win without anyone taking more than a scratch and employing no different tactics.
That's not fun, it's annoying. #nightnote
10:26 AM
11:41 AM
On easy though, I have now beaten 8, then 7, 11 (1cc once as Mari-Patch), and just yesterday I finally beat and somehow 1cc'ed 10 with Reimu B - until then I'd only beaten 10 with Marisa B's firepower glitch. I really don't know if I'll ever clear 6 - there is no stage 6 on easy, and on top of that it autoscales difficulty, so the better chance you have of beating it... the less chance you have of beating it, lol
I guess what I'm saying is... thank god these games have an easy mode! haha #nightnote
11/07/09
Old school games like NES Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Castlevania, Battletoads hell even Metroid were completely unforgiving when it comes to difficulty and those are some amazing titles still beloved by millions. Completing games back in the day was never a sure thing so, when you actually did finish one the level of accomplishment you felt was unmatched.
Nowadays made are made to be completed by everyone so the difficulty is scaled back so that more people are able to complete the game. #nightnote
11/07/09
And some games are just fucking frustrating as hell and have bosses that can miraculously heal themselves, or cheap combos that instantly kill you. Or have levels with enemies that never stop spawning and rushing right into you.
I think the people who like those kind of games also enjoy having high heel shoes ground into their crotch.
11/07/09
After listening to this song for a week, I did, in fact, sit down and just plow through Megaman 1. And it felt WONDERFUL. #nightnote
11/06/09
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12:25 AM
I should not feel like the hardest part of the game is guessing what the computer thinks the words mean. #nightnote
12:49 AM
Even when a decision is to be made, there are multiple choices rather than the black and white choices of most games and what you think may have been the best course of action may have some unforeseen consequences and that's pretty true to life.
My advice is you choose whatever choice you'd choose if you, yourself were in that position and just see what happens. Pandering to the game for the sake of picking the "right" options will only lessen your enjoyment of it. #nightnote
11/06/09
I don't consider Demon's Souls hard because while the odds are still heavily stacked against you, there are strategic ways to deal with problems. Stealth kills, luring enemies away from groups to kill them individually, a dodge with a good amount of invincibility frames, several buffs to choose from, and range attacks that - unlike NG2's arrows and shurikens - are actually worth a damn.
As for why some games are hard and others aren't, I feel that in many cases it is a result of bad design. Making a game easy is also a result of bad design. It's when a game is just right - challenging without being frustrating - that a game has been designed well.
11/06/09
"Are you looking for a challenge!?"
In recognition that many folks are indeed looking for a challenge, thus do hard games exist. #nightnote
11/06/09
Or the game is just plain broken. #nightnote
11/06/09
And also, like mintycrys said, game design is a HUGE factor in difficulty level. #nightnote
11/06/09
Some games are hard just as a consequence of poor game design. #nightnote
11/06/09
11/06/09