There’s an ancient debate that’s been raging on for about ten years now. Alot of people out there think that games have gotten way too easy since the days of their ancestors. I personally agree but disagree at the same time. Games are easier in a way, but many of them are much, much less frustrating than some of my favorite NES classics.
If you want to delve deeper into my thoughts, follow me after the jump.
Sure, games are getting easier. With save points, and a large fraction of the game’s budget being spent on graphics, it was inevitable. Also, compared to games of the late 80’s, gaming is no longer a hardcore niche. Today’s gamers want to get enjoyment out of playing a game, not frustration. If you want a test of your skills, there’s always multiplayer for you to take on.
Now this isn’t completely the case. Those people who don’t like multiplayer but still want the near-impossible challenge of a single player game still have their choices: Bioshock without Vita-Chambers and Ninja Gaiden for two examples. There are games out there that get a lower review score or shunned by the general gaming public because they’re too difficult, but those are the games that the hardcore feed on.
So even though games are getting a bit easier, there’s still places for the hardcore to get their butts handed to them in a single player campaign, and the new approach to online multiplayer allows casual players to test their skill against players across the world. Seems nicely balanced to me.
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I don’t know about it being a tough game (personally I didn’t find the main game too difficult), but Dead Rising has THE MOST annoying achievement of all time in it in the form of the Saint achievement. Rescue 50 survivors?! Come on, who the heck has managed to get this? Like 4 people in the world? That’s the sign of a hardcore gamer right there.
In terms of single player difficulty, I’m going to put Ninja Gaiden at the top closely followed by Clive Barker’s Jericho (on hard without additional damage from registering the game). There are others but I don’t want to take up any more of this highly populated comments section…
Ninja Gaiden lives up to its predecessors name and is one of the hardest games i have played, V. hard is just torture. Multiplayer is the way to go, if you want a challengs on otherwise easy games.
The Devil May Cry series also put up one hell of a fight. I don’t know how many times I’ve got gray hair because of those games. Especially the third one, that almost drove me insane. Haven’t played the fourth one yet though, except the demo.
Admittedly I wasn’t that far into Dead Rising last time I played it, but I did find it a little difficult. I’d reached night and there were 3 or 4 missions I could do and I found them all pretty hard.
I still have no idea how to even do any damage at all to the clown.
I hate how Hard games get shunned just for being to hard, it really doesn’t make sens. It offers up a challenge so therefore it is bad? Like I said it doesn’t make sense
Well if you play on max difficulty where most of the challenges are… Do you want the game to last 3 years? I want to beat it before the next title comes out
I’d chalk this up to bad design. Any game with multiple difficulty levels has no excuse for being a walk in the park past “Easy.” Not everyone *should* be able to beat games on higher difficulty levels. That’s what makes it a worthwhile experience.
You are dead on. We have a nice balance now. Games for every mood. When I get home from work the last thing I need is a frustrating game, however on weekends I am often looking for a challenge. I have found that it has been easy to put together a library of games that very wildly in difficulty.
I think a lot of people forget how short a lot of these more ‘difficult’ games were. Yeah, they might have been ahrder, but in all honesty they had to be in order to prolong game-time.
Nowadays yeah the games might be easier, but they’re also a lot more detailed, they’re in general longer and still require attention to play.
I think Operation Flashpoint on the high difficulty setting was one of the more time consuming to master, but it’s old by now.
There was also the Battlecruiser line, but it was too bug prone to really count. Half the difficulty of those games was learning what caused it to crash and figuring out how to avoid it.
When a game is hard, it forces me to use all weapons, discover all secret passages, read the description of all itens, figure out the weak point of enemies.
When a game is easy, I will finish it without seeing what it had to offer me.
When I dont want any chalenge, I can watch a movie. For me, games are not movies.
What make a game a game is the possibility for you to lose. If you cant lose, you are not playing a game.