Games are Getting Easier, Here's Why...

[Liquidize105]

Mark Raby, the author of the said article (http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20050902/index.html) on Tom's Hardware thinks modern gaming needs a throwback to the olden days.

He argues that the shift in design paradigm, "from how the game plays to how the game looks," has made gaming easier across the board. In addition, games are being made less challenging to accommodate for the growing, increasingly mainstream audience who simply can't handle restarting the game a bajillion times. Can you?

Legitimate concern or old man's rambling? How would you cater to both prospectives?

[mkelehan]

How would you cater to both prospectives?

Simple: Normal, Hard, and Expert difficulty settings. It's working great for DDR.

[Heretic Machine]

I say it's just an old man's rambling. Some games are easier, some games are harder, some are just now getting to be realistic in their expectations of the players. Do we really want Ghouls 'n Ghosts games that are impossible to beat these days? Do we want the Babblefish style puzzles in our adventure games (what few we have)? I don't think so.

[Bushido]

Grandpa needs an Iceflow...

[Fonz]

BAHHHH!!!!!!!!!, I need my cough syrup sonny. Some MGD will do.

[Liquidize105]

Simple: Normal, Hard, and Expert difficulty settings. It's working great for DDR.
For DDR; but for the rest, simply jacking up the number, the HP, and the damage of the fodders is too shallow of a way to increase difficulty.

Games are easier to navigate, easier to solve, and boss characters are easier to beat.

For one thing, difficulty made the game more replayable - because of stat-keeping. I think more games need meaningful stat-keeping that gives gameplay-altering bonuses, like painkiller or swat4.

[EvilBob46]

If I want a real challenge, I usually play an online game against other players. In SP games, I usually choose Easy or Medium as the difficulty because I play most of these games just for the experience - the atmosphere, story, characters, etc. Besides, it ain't no fun to get your ass kicked by the AI when you just want to get on with the damn game. Games today can rely on more things than just challenging gameplay to produce interesting gaming experiences.

[mos]

Some games are about the story, not the puzzles. I'd have been pissed if I couldn't finish HL2, for example, just because they wanted to make the game challenging.

I also don't want to play a game that I don't think is solvable. For instance, I would never play a modern Ghouls 'n Ghosts, I just don't have the time to restart restart restart restart restart.

On the other hand, some games are just ridiculously easy, and aren't really much of games anymore. I think the biggest culprit here are the Final Fantasy games. I love 'em, but really, when was the last time you were challenged by one of them? Never? Maybe the first one?

[ElectricMonk]

it does annoy me when a game is too easy (like dark cloud 2, the lack of difficulty made it get old very fast)

but then there weren't many nes games i finished due to difficulty when i was young. many nes games were just poorly game balanced too, it wasn't difficult because it was fun they were difficult because it was the last level. so i think it's ok that kids games are easier.

ninja gaiden xbox has the perfect game difficulty though so it's not like things are all bad.

[KamaItachi]

Hey, he's right, gaming's too easy and we need to get back to the old days of coin gobbling arcade toughness, also, books are too easy to read these days. I demand we go back to Victorian-style broadsheet print and vocabulary, I don't remember the last time I saw the word "sneakthief", "foppish rogue" or "Oxters" in a newspaper either.

Seriously though this guy just comes across as a bitter old bastard that games have become mainstream. So games have become easier, so what? A lot of us don't have the time, nor patience to wade through the same levels time after time trying to get past one boss or be able to perform pixel perfect jumps in our sleep.

We need to start giving these players some real challenges, otherwise the future generations of gamers will be weaker and the gaming culture as we know it will change dramatically
What the fuck does this mean? Has he just been watching the Last Starfighter too much? Or does he mean we might no longer have the game makers hurling cheap deaths at us? Won"t someone think of the children!?

For example, the "life simulation" genre, pioneered by The Sims, involves the player doing nothing more than menial tasks that require very little exertion from players.

Yeah, heaven forbid games might be played for enjoyment. Oh, no sorry, I forgot, every single game in the world has to be tailor made for this guy and his wrists of steel

Some of the earliest computer games, like The Secret of Monkey Island, relied heavily on your ability to puzzle-solve and determine what you need to do next with very little in-game help.

Or alternatively "obscure, mind-bogglingly abstract twistings of logic and sense made to make a 25 minute adventure game last at least a few days".

[Darkman]

It is pretty clear that Mark Raby, the author of the article, is unfamiliar with how current game development works.

There is going to come a time that all of the Hard Core Gamers who I think by and large are a pretty bright croud, are going to realize that games are not made for them, nor are they made for some higher purpose. The only reason games are made today is because they can make money.

Thats it. Money. And before you cry foul, those early arcade games, yep you guessed it were made so difficult so you had to continue to put quarters into the machine so everyone could make Money.

Game developers would like nothing more than to design something fiendish or cleaver in a game, but the reallity is if a Publisher can't sell X number of units of something becasue 99% of the people buying it can't play it, well they aren't going to fund its creation.

While difficulty levels are implemented in some cases, these are at most attempts by the game developer not to totally alienate that hard core audience. If they didn't go out of the way to do this, the publisher would never even push for it.

I think though the real downfall of the difficulty in games come from none other than the hard core audience of gamers. All they do is complain. If the game has save anywhere but no auto save, they bitch. If the game is not all the pretty looking but has clever or inovative gameplay they bitch. Game Publishers read this crap. And you know what? If they could get rid of this section of the market who just complains about everything they would just as soon do so.

They would rather sell to Swanky Susi, and Clueless Larry, as they buy something to shut their kids up while they are out doing whatever they want to do. These people don't complain and think that there well spent $50 bucks shut up little Jonny till next week, when they will rinse and repeat.

So there you have it. You can complain and whine all you like and every time you do Game Publishers look the otherway and say "How can we get rid of the whiners?"

Game Developers still do care about creating fun and compelling entertainment that is challenging. But as long as the Game Publishers hold the purse strings, the thing they care about more than anything is Money. And if compelling, challenging, hard, and brain teasing, gets in the way of that, I can tell you where they go. Into the trash bin...

[Royal Fool]

You only need to play Need For Speed Underground 2 to see how true some of the statements in that article are.

Thait said, I'm pretty much happy with games as they are today. Most of them.

[bobbler]

I think this is a bit flawed. We have games now that are many times more complex and the expectations upon the player are much much greater than was the case in old style games -- players now have to react to the game instead of just memorizing what comes next. Games on NES required a person to pay attention to maybe 2-3 different things going on at a time, if that, games now days often have 10+ different enemies on the screen doing different things and then you have other things to pay attention to also (health, jumping over holes, etc, etc). Most of the difficulty that old games had were in the form of pattern recognition, not the kid of difficulty where the game reacts to you. Mario (or any other platformer of the era) is a perfect example -- it was difficult only because some places you just had to know what was coming and exactly where to jump to win (meaning you had to die the first time as a test run, most likely). We have games now where enemies react to us (often in rather dumb ways) but you can't say a static game which is based entirely off memory is more difficult than most of the games we have now. There is a lot more going on and players have to pay attention a lot more than they used to.

Maybe I'm crazy, but Mario and any other game from that era (nes era) are not difficult games, they just require you to memorize what will happen next and you've won. That Ghouls & ghosts game is not patently difficult either, it was tedious to learn the levels and such, yes, but difficult... ? It is hard to explain, but I don't consider games where all you need to do is die a bunch and remember what comes next a difficult game. When I think of difficult I think of a game like Ninja Gaiden (the Xbox one, not the NES ones -- those were more side scrolling and remembering the pattern of the level) where the enemies are what make it difficult, not jumping over holes as you scroll through the level. Don't get me wrong, a lot of todays games are like that too -- if you know the pattern of the level you can do it easily (sometimes the AI doesn't always do what you want, but it is usually easy to dispatch as well), BUT the levels now are tons more complex and have lots more going on than they did in Mario or Ninja Gaiden 1 or Pac Man, etc, etc. How anyone can claim games are somehow "easier" now is insane. I'll admit games are far more beatable than they were, but that is only because developers WANT you to beat them and see the entire game -- where as games from nes era and before had the arcade mentality where sucking down quarters was what made the money. Just because you can beat games now doesn't mean they are patently less difficult or less of a strain on your brain. If being able to beat games now is a bad thing then I hope these "bad" games continue to be made.

Sorry if this is sort of incoherent, I'm struggling to find the words... I guess defining difficulty as how many lives it takes to win is a rather flawed method, that's what I'm trying to get at.

[Liquidize105]

Disregard the topic - that's a pretty bleak view, Darkman.

[Worldcrafter]

A couple things:
I think the author of the article is forgetting he is an adult now, and those games he so fondly remembers were a lot harder when he was a kid.

Secondly, if you want some hard games, you can find them: Ninja Gaiden, Maximo, Contra, RE4 (play that one on pro and tell me it isn't satifying to survive any encounter)

Finally, he gives "The Adventures of Cookie and Cream" as an example of a derivitive children's game. At this point he shoots himself in the foot, because that game, while bright and cartoony, is certainly not meant for children. The controls are hard to get used to, and the puzzles take some real thought. The author is dismissing a game that is exactly what he is looking for. He also mentions "Tales of Symphonia", which I never played, but all the reviews I read claimed it was a hard RPG.

I don't know, seems like the only real differences in difficulty between today's games, and the games of the past is the ability to save more often, or at all. If you really want a challenge like you used to get, don't save your game, or reset your game after you die 3 times. Simple.

[JazGalaxy]

I think he is spot on. Games were harder back then. There are some games, now, that still contain the same level of challenge and I love them for it. Megaman Battle Network is a prime example. GTA is also a good example.

Games ARE getting easier, and I think a reason he has forgotten to mention is pacing. Because so many games are trying to be movies instead of games, they have pacing issues to worry about. Having a hard level in the middle of a story driven game is akin to watching the middle of a movie over and over and over again. So, then, htey have to kill the difficulty in order to not kill the pacing.

Also, games are easier because they are not games. Game design itself isn't even an issue in the production of most modern games. I can't count the number of games that have automated things that used to be gameplay features in the name of making them more "user friendly". First you no longer have lives to deal with... then you can save anywhere... then the game will reload for you... then the game will aim for you... and soon enough we were playing games that played themselves. Gamers didn't care, though, ebcause a lot of those gamers were only playing the game for things like the titlation factor of things like violence, half naked women, etc.

My friend brought up a good point a while back though. They always blame the simplfication of videogaems on making them more user friendly for mainstream gamers, and yet the chief "mainstream gamer" games are sports games which are ridiculously complicated. What's up with that?

[Mister Pie]

I personally think that ramping up the difficulty to insane levels is just a cheap way of making a game seem longer. Games should be challenging, but the games back in the day were too absurd.

[PixelSamurai]

There are two ways to make a game hard: make it challenging or make it unfair. A lot of the old NES games were hard because they were unfair and frustrating (Didn't Contra require you to beat the game in 3 lives or something?). A good example of a challenging game would be Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. Challenging games reward the player's skill, and unfair or frustrating games reward the player's patience. It is also far easier to make a game unfair than to make it challenging, and since unfair games completely turn off casual gamers and people in the "mainstream" demographic, a real firm decision needs to be made in developement "Do we make this game challenging and risk making it unfair, or do we try to appeal to the larger customer base."

[civx]

games are more eaiser if you pet the donkey but thats not to games are hard look at ninja master very hard gme alma was a giant beast but i threw the ps2 acrross the room i was grrrrr this article does not soup well you know mario was a giant speaker with ice cream mario twins made me laugh but was easy my control did work sticky sticky but ya the paper bag wrong games are nigger fun :) :) :)

[Heretic Machine]

I've reported you to the mods civx, your little "joke" has worn out it's welcome.

[The_Reckoning]

Multiplayer has the best AI possible.

Single player games like RPGs just need harder enemies, stricter rules and better AI to up difficulty.

And console games are usually dumbed down anyway.

[Mr_Snuffle]

games are more eaiser if you pet the donkey but thats not to games are hard look at ninja master very hard gme alma was a giant beast but i threw the ps2 acrross the room i was grrrrr this article does not soup well you know mario was a giant speaker with ice cream mario twins made me laugh but was easy my control did work sticky sticky but ya the paper bag wrong games are nigger fun :) :) :)


Tha.... that's one of the worst posts I've ever read.

*slap*

[bobbler]

Civx, how did you go from being able to put together coherent sentences to this? The past two days you haven't made a tittle of sense.

Are you translating what you type from english to japanese to russian and back to english in babelfish or something?

I lived with foreign people for 17 years (at any given time there was literally 1-4 people from other countries in our house), so I learned how to decipher engrish pretty well, but jesus, that is from Mars.

[civx]

I've reported you to the mods civx, your little "joke" has worn out it's welcome.

oh no. 6. is down.

[Heretic Machine]

I lived with foreign people for 17 years (at any given time there was literally 1-4 people from other countries in our house), so I learned how to decipher engrish pretty well, but jesus, that is from Mars.

He's just typeing random, disruptive shit. He thinks it's funny.

[civx]

He's just typeing random, disruptive shit. He thinks it's funny.

It's very funny. Also, I have like 6 accounts I haven't used so good luck getting me banned buddy.

[Heretic Machine]

See what I'm talking about now? Just one more moron we inherit from Gamefaqs as that site spirals downard.

[civx]

See what I'm talking about now? Just one more moron we inherit from Gamefaqs as that site spirals downard.

Only I didn't come from gamefaqs.

Also, the site hasn't spiraled yet? Yeah, "The PS3 GPU Is More Powerful Than The Geforce 7800" is high class material.

[if76]

I think this man forgets just how tedious it is to have to replay easy sections of a game just to get to the hard ones. Games like SMB are the rare exceptions because even the early levels are fun and somewhat challenging. There are plenty of Genesis and SNES games where you had to go way out of your way in the easy sections to find the continues, just so you were stocked when you finally got to the hard sections. This just isn't fun and is not good game design.

He also says that puzzles in games are easier now (something I disagree with) because if the designers make them too hard people will just buy a strategy guide and cheat. This kind of logic is just insane. If a puzzle is gonna be easy because it's simple or easy because people cheat why should developers all choose to make the puzzles simple. Also I don't think Zelda or Monkey Island have that many excellent brain teasers. I think Zelda Link to the Past has a lot more clever puzzles than the original.

[Chandler]

If they're making games hard, they should make it so that if you lose its your fault and your fault only. That's how it was in the 2d platform days.

Spending hours in Super Mario Sunshine for the last red coin because it's impossible as hell to tell where you're landing because of the bad 3d camera is NOT cool.

[FunkyPoopMonkey]

I dont want to read the article, but I do think a big reason why I cant find any good games this generation is because very few have challenge. What's the best game in the past 3 years? I'd say Viewtiful Joe. It was hard as hell on the final difficulty, but not cheap at all. If you practiced, if you paid attention, you could do it. But then theres games like Devil May Cry 3, where even normal mode is close to impossible, due to so many bosses and even common enemies acting in cheap ways you can't defend against.

[bean19]

Difficulty != fun

At least not automatically. Challenge is important, and I could go on and on about it, but the average gamer has a LOT of options, and either they are hardcore (and have a lot of games to choose between) or they are casual (and may not have the time to master a game).

I think designers should avoid "punishing" players when possible. I simply wouldn't play a game that is too difficult, rather, I'd prefer a lot of depth to a game where advanced skill is rewarding and fun. Think of chess as the model for gameplay. You can play poorly and have fun against another poor opponent or play very skilled and have fun against a more skill opponent. Team Fortress Classic was an excellent example of this. I have seriously had scores like 150 kills - 4 deaths when playing on public servers in that game, but in a STA match (against other guild players - players playing together and using strategy), I have had my ass handed to me.

But nobody cares that I can double conc in TFC and sometimes pull out a flag capture against 4 hardcore veterans defending a flag in unison. It is a useless skill except where it served me in being immensely entertaining.

If you make a game that is fun from the moment I pick it up and then has enough depth in it for me to spend hours upon hours mastering. . . FANTASTIC. But don't make every game require that level of mastery. . . or even worse, difficulty that is "try and die" despite your skill level (I eventually was able to pull off most any move in Ninja Gaiden, but STILL got my but handed to me by many boss mobs even when I followed strategies on the net. . . maybe at some point someone somewhere has gotten Hiyubasa to perform all his crazy moves without taking a hit, but I don't know that I care to play the game long enough to memorize the AI of each boss in order to win. The result was that I fought and fought until I eventually got lucky. Repeated attempts are just as difficult even now that I've won once before (and btw I never finished that game and will wait for reviews before buyingin the future no matter how cool the game looks. That game is too damang hard!).

[ChunderMan]

One of the main reasons games are easier now than they used to be is simply because of the heightened complexity of what the player can do.

For a simple example, look to Mario. What could the player do in the original Mario, (Super Mario Bros)?

Walk
Run
Jump
Duck
Shoot (Fireballs)


Not very much... This meant that the player could only beat enemies a certain amount of ways. Which meant that as enemies got progressively harder, they got much harder to defeat because Mario didn't earn any new abilities as the player progressed through the game.

Flash forward to Mario 64... Now Mario could:

Tip Toe
Walk
Run
Jump
Triple Jump
Wall Jump
Slide
Dive
Punch/Kick
Change Forms
Butt Stomp
Climp/Leap from Trees


And I probably forgot a few things. In this game, Mario has about a million more ways of dispatching foes than he did in the original, while the enemies don't seem to have gotten (much) smarter. But even if the enemies had (gotten smarter), the shear amount of potential for damage the player has at their disposal is staggering when compared to the original.

You can see this trend across nearly all types/platforms of gaming. In fact, some of the only "difficult" games I can think of now are some of the Flash web games. The ones that limit what the player can do to just a few simple moves.

If players truly want a more difficult play experience, simply try beating a game without using the plethora of moves available to them. Try playing God of War with leveling up any of Kratos' abilities. See how far you get then.

:)

[MosBen]

Forgive me if this is mentioned elsewhere in the comments; I have not the time to read them all. I think everyone should read the book "Everything bad is good for you" because it covers a lot of what I'm going to say. I think games are "easier" because they are more complex at a basic level. You could describe the concept of how to play something like Pac-Man or Ghouls & Ghosts in a sentence or two, but I tried to teach a couple friends how to play Halo the other that really never play FPS and it was like pulling teeth. The skills involved with navigating the world and approaching it on its level have gotten so complex that the skill isn't in being able to thoughlessly use your reflexes like you did in Gradius, the skill is in knowing how the world works and thinking your way through it. It's knowing the layout of the city in GTA and moreover knowing the various efficiencies of routes from one place to another and which vehicle is capable of what. It's the nesting of tasks that games like Wind Waker require of the player, not the lightning fast ability to hit buttons that was required in so many side scrollers. Making games "harder" in the traditional sense was a way to compensate for the technology in the old days. Pong got super fast because the hardware and software couldn't offer anything to the player other than the same game, but faster. Gradius couldn't offer anything more than just more enemies on-screen and shots represented on-screen to be dodged. Feats of mechanical skill are certainly laudable, just watch a DDR freak go and try not to be impressed, but it's not all that games are anymore. Just because we're not all pinball wizards doesn't mean there's not a lot of skill going on in the background.

[Mason]

Yeah, I concur that challenging and punishing tend to get lumped under the term "difficult". Ninja Gaiden was both; it was pissy about its saves and continue points, and refilling health. To me, the ideally challenging game is where every encounter is hard as hell, but you never have to redo encounters and aren't cumulatively punished by stingy health refills (where winning a fight with 10% health is as good as dying, since you'll never survive the next fight). I actually had to redo a boss fight in Ninja Gaiden, since they were such dicks about providing save points (made it past the pink boss and then got sick of it).

God of War was a good example of this. It wasn't amazingly hard, but it had some good meat to it, and yet was careful never to be punishing. Just a great overall game.

Plus, "hard" means different things for different genres. Is a RPG hard because you have to grind so much, or because you have to min-max your characters so precisely, or because the enemy AI requires such careful planning in your strategy?

But in the end, people aren't often willing to pay $50 for an arcade-difficulty game that takes a ridicuous amount of practice to even beat, and requires a full restart after three deaths. The occasional Ikaruga works, but people don't buy those in huge numbers.

[Deadend]

So... in the entire article, did the guy even ONCE say the word "fun" or "entertaining"?

I am not sure he ever talked about fun.

Modern games tend to be more fun as they are crafted more as an experince, not just graphics but an entire experince.
Just because say... Incredible Hulk is an easier game than almost any 8-bit game, does that make it less fun? Hell no, fun and difficulty are not directly tied together.

Difficulty does play a part, but like everyone says, it's about the game pushing the player to near their abilities, not pounding their face in like Ninja Gaiden, nor full of targets like Dynasty Warriors. Fun is the balance where the player is pressed, but not crushed.

[TheKeck]

I think the author of the article is forgetting he is an adult now, and those games he so fondly remembers were a lot harder when he was a kid.

This is so true. As an adult, I have gone back and played a lot of the games that I used to think were so hard as a kid. My friends and I are sometimes amazed to find how easy these games really are for us now. We refer to it as "old man strength".

While there are some games that are just ridiculously hard, it's just because they throw so much at you or make you do things so fast that it's pretty much impossible. I don't find that very fun.

[TheKeck]

A lot of the old NES games were hard because they were unfair and frustrating (Didn't Contra require you to beat the game in 3 lives or something?).

Incidentally, Contra wasn't a very difficult game. I was able to beat it without the infamous 30 lives code, even as a kid.

As an adult, I even beat it without dying, period. I only mention this, because I basically consider it to be the pinnacle of my mortal existence. :D

[TheKeck]

I don't know, seems like the only real differences in difficulty between today's games, and the games of the past is the ability to save more often, or at all. If you really want a challenge like you used to get, don't save your game, or reset your game after you die 3 times. Simple.

Ok, one more thing from me..... I couldn't agree with this more. I remember reading about people complaining that Half-Life 2 was so easy. All I could think was, did you play it on the hardest difficulty without saving? If they did..... more power to them; but I pretty much doubt it. I mean, if you are really so gung-ho for something difficult, there are ways of creating that experience.

[Rangoth]

I still think there is room for old school, hard as fuck beat-the-ever-loving-shit-outta-you-make-you-cry game like the Contra games always have. There is something to be said for a game like Ghouls N Ghosts that is just so f'ing hard that if you beat it you can wear that damn thing as a badge of pride man. They are rare but sometimes a team tosses a game like that together, puts it out and then taunts the world to step up and see if you have the balls to try.

[DarkEternal]

I'd also like to point out that some modern attempts at difficulty have failed, making the game less marketable and less profitable. The game I had in mind was the Fire Emblem series for GBA. In it, if you're characters died in battle, that's it, they were gone forever unless you restarted the chapter you were on. I've heard of people liking it, but, for me, it was just a hassle and completely eliminated risk-taking. It degraded from the game greatly because you had to play through the first moves over and over again until you actually hit on that 75 percent.
For me, like some others have said, gaming is less about the "always being killed until you get through it", than the "having a good time playing through it".

[if76]

I think a game should be as difficult as can be as long as the designer doesn't make you replay easy parts every time you die at the difficult ones. I think a lot of old school shoot-em-ups did this and where's that genre now? I'm not saying it died out because of this, but I'm sure it didn't help.

The worst part is when you're flying through the 10-20 minute easy sections on your way to the hard sections that gave you your last game over and you lose one of your precious lives because you were so bored that you weren't paying attention.

I think Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was pretty good at keeping each section at a pretty consistent difficulty. Even though you sometimes had to replay a section for 10 to 15 minutes, the difficulty curve in each section was pretty flat and provided you with a constant challenge.

[Varsity]

Also, I have like 6 accounts I haven't used so good luck getting me banned buddy.
Arrogance and ignorance, the classic combination.

[Crabby]

I'd also like to point out that some modern attempts at difficulty have failed, making the game less marketable and less profitable. The game I had in mind was the Fire Emblem series for GBA. In it, if you're characters died in battle, that's it, they were gone forever unless you restarted the chapter you were on. I've heard of people liking it, but, for me, it was just a hassle and completely eliminated risk-taking. It degraded from the game greatly because you had to play through the first moves over and over again until you actually hit on that 75 percent.
For me, like some others have said, gaming is less about the "always being killed until you get through it", than the "having a good time playing through it".


That isn't modern at all. The FE series has had that as a staple since the first one for the Japanese Famicom. That stuff used to significantly alter the story for those iterations.

I dunno where I stand on this whole issue, but I do have one thing to say. Come talk to me about difficulty when you've beaten Final Fantasy 1 using bare-handed combat.

[PotatoNinja]

I think this man needs a little time alone with Devil May Cry 3.

[Darkman]

Disregard the topic - that's a pretty bleak view, Darkman.


I wish it wasn't but from my desk at work thats the truth.

[Adam Blue]

I've been saying this shit for ages. I fucking brought it up in that '5 reasons halo 2 sucks' thread. Games are too fucking easy now. And you say it sucks just because its CHALLENGING.

It's like NOW we discuss this when I've been bringing it up for forever. I slightly mention it in my gaming blog. Resident Evil 4 was too damn easy....yes a departure from the typical style, but still too easy.

People fucking complained about not being able to use a flashlight with a gun in Doom.....how fucking panzee, scared of the dark that much??? You know how much that bothers me? you guys fucking cry about the lamest shit.....seriously so many of us gamers are panzees. It sucks for me but every one fucking complains when a game is hard. You didn't like Ninja Gaiden because of the camera? NO....you suck at gaming.

I've been drinking and I aproove of this. it's 2:47am here in texas.

[Vandenh]

Two words:

Ninja Gaiden

[StANTo]

I'm ready for a chaaalleeeeeeeenge - that's why I play the Myst series. 'level em ups' like mmorpgs are far too linear and dull for my liking. The focal point ends up being on levelling rather than the game content itself, and once you've reached your max level, what then? the game becomes boring - there's nothing else 'to do' and 'pvp' gets dull because in my eyes I prefer real time, fps combat like Fear, Stalker, Half Life 2, Quake, etc.

So perhaps I'm biased. I see it as presenting no challenge.

SSX Tricky, geez, how many times did I have to restart the slope in the effort to get a gold? That was challenging, and the focal point was unlocking the next track doing the best you could. That seemed like a good challenge. SSX3 focussed on levelling, you're high level, you've unlocked everything - who cares about what score you get? You just enjoy yourself. Free roam, fine, but I preferred the prodminant challenge in the way SSX Tricky was put forward.

Games are either getting easier, or their design focal point is in the wrong place, or parts of the engine (re: levelling) should be hidden or simplified to focus on the storyline or game itself, how many people got bored of GTA San Andreas because you had to level at the gym to get the edge?).

[Kelegacy]

it does annoy me when a game is too easy (like dark cloud 2, the lack of difficulty made it get old very fast)

but then there weren't many nes games i finished due to difficulty when i was young. many nes games were just poorly game balanced too, it wasn't difficult because it was fun they were difficult because it was the last level. so i think it's ok that kids games are easier.

ninja gaiden xbox has the perfect game difficulty though so it's not like things are all bad.

Dark Cloud 2 is easy? I think it's pretty average, and some of the battles are downright difficult sometimes. And that's talking about the random levels, not the bosses.

But I agree, when I was a youngster with my NES, games were MUCH more difficult, if not impossible.

[Kelegacy]

I've reported you to the mods civx, your little "joke" has worn out it's welcome.

I was appalled to discover that this civx guy is 25 years old. I thought he was some 11 year old like my bratty cousin. I dont know what compels people to think this stuff is funny, because it's not. I concur, it has gotten headache inducing. I guess I've always got the ignore feature I have yet to use on anyone.

[Mister Pie]

It's very funny. Also, I have like 6 accounts I haven't used so good luck getting me banned buddy.

Actually, it's kind of stupid.

[retsudo]

True. And bad. Buncha fucking retard console gamers whining that games are too hard because they are shit at them are to blame.

[StANTo]

But I agree, when I was a youngster with my NES, games were MUCH more difficult, if not impossible.

Might I point out the obvious that you were younger then.

I think what's lacking, aside from what's already been pointed out in this thread, are games with difficulties depending on your age group perhaps. Or, more fitting for an age group. Though I think it's being looked into at too great a depth. There's a debate going on in the Myst V forums at Ubisoft that the Myst games are difficult for anyone under 30. Yet I completed most when I was under 16 or 18.

I think to discuss this you would have to define what everyone would deem as 'difficult' and set that as a benchmark.

[civx]

True. And bad. Buncha fucking retard console gamers whining that games are too hard because they are shit at them are to blame.


Yeah....no.

[civx]

I was appalled to discover that this civx guy is 25 years old. I thought he was some 11 year old like my bratty cousin. I dont know what compels people to think this stuff is funny, because it's not. I concur, it has gotten headache inducing. I guess I've always got the ignore feature I have yet to use on anyone.

Since when have I been 25.

[XkyRauh]

Bring back High Scores! Give players incentives to take risks or replay the game. Viewtiful Joe was great, giving the player a score not only after bosses, but after sections of the game. Monkey Ball was awesome, giving players a high score screen for difficulties and minigames. There're other games out there, too, which give the player a ranking and end-level stats.

Bring back Par Times! Sure, you can breeze your way through level 6 of the latest FPS by crouching behind trees and sniping all those guys... but at the end of the level? You're gonna be twenty minutes over par. :-) Don't just have "par times" in the sense of Time Attack mode, or used only to unlock additional content... just have them for the sake of having them! Give us some end-level statistics tallies like the old Wolf3d. Tell us how many guys we killed, secrets we found, and how much of the treasure we picked up!

I miss games being GAMES. TFC beats the pants off of those World War II simulations. :-(

[Kelegacy]

Since when have I been 25.

Since March of this year, jackwad, or you've lied about your age in the registration for Evil Avatar. Figures.

[Kelegacy]

Might I point out the obvious that you were younger then.

I think what's lacking, aside from what's already been pointed out in this thread, are games with difficulties depending on your age group perhaps. Or, more fitting for an age group. Though I think it's being looked into at too great a depth. There's a debate going on in the Myst V forums at Ubisoft that the Myst games are difficult for anyone under 30. Yet I completed most when I was under 16 or 18.

I think to discuss this you would have to define what everyone would deem as 'difficult' and set that as a benchmark.

Actually, I have gone back and played many of the same games on emulators and they are even harder today for some reason. Maybe because these days I dont have as much patience and I have grown used to the relative ease of modern gaming. Don't get me wrong, I like to be able to beat a game instead of being frustrated and punished the entire way, but some games have taken the fun out by making them easier.

[Crabby]

Overall, I enjoyed the time when *all* games followed one simple logical train:

If the level is hard than the boss will be easy, and if the level is easy than the boss will be hard.

:)