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Do you enjoy getting your ass kicked?
Dharma Bum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was just thinking about people who like hard games. I suppose they are a brand of "hardcore gamers." I do not understand this phenomenon, but all around me, I look at my friends' pants and I see creamed jeans. And those jeans were creamed by thoughts of BattleToads, God Hand, Ninja Gaiden, Halo 2 on Legendary, Dead Rising on a SDTV, and other experiences I'd rather avoid by jumping into a syringe pit. I even seem to recall a study that found that failure and success in gamers produced the same chemical reactions in the brain - meaning, people liked getting pwn3d? Perhaps I am not a bad enough dude, but this is madness.
So the questions are these. Do you like it when games kick your ass? Why or why not?
So the questions are these. Do you like it when games kick your ass? Why or why not?
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Personally, I like it when games intellectually kick my ass, particularly first person adventure games like Myst. Makes it all the more worth it when you succeed.
Mostly results in RTS dislikes. RPGs too.
Those are mostly what I play.
The hardest games are the ones that make you feel like the biggest badass once you've really mastered them. When I finally beat Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts with the fucking Princess Bracelet, when I five-starred Expert Misirlou in Guitar Hero 2, when I finally made it through Border Down (an insane JPN shmup) for the first time--all things I never thought I'd be able to do the first time I sat down in front of the game.
I think it just depends on what you see when you look at a really difficult game. An indefinitely protracted exercise in frustration, or a challenge to be overcome? Not everybody enjoys pounding their head against a wall repeatedly, and for some games I just decide not to bother. But for others I'll pound away.
So, no, not really.
If I'm fighting with controls or sloppy game design, then I'll pass.
My porridge is too cold!
My porridge is...just right!
That's more or less how I like my difficulty.
Against human opponents, this changes, and I struggle out of sheer determination.
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I do however, love games where after I've played it the first time and lost go, 'Oh that's clever' and then spend the next couple of tries working out the issue.
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And for the most part, I'm good, at most things I do and I never place expectations of myself higher than my skill level. For example, when I played CS competitively I had somewhat high expectations but when I was playing Q3 I had fairly average expectations after assessing my skill level and that of the other people.
So, I don't really expect to lose too often because usually I'll place myself in a competition within my skill level but sometimes I'll get myself into something with higher skilled people and I won't expect to win, but I know I'll play well, probably surprise myself and 1 or 2 others but ultimately, not win.
I severely hate sore losers, people who pump out excuses, those who think they're much better than they are and better than others and those who ragequit. Also, I would hate to suck.
Legitimately hard, that is. Games where the AI just cheats their way to victory aren't fun.
For example, I play F-Zero GX as a way to relax(and hopefully make some progress. I've managed to clear ONE grand prix on hardest difficulty, story mode is still impossible for me) and the AI doesn't cheat, I come close to winning, I just need to be a biiit better and have a bit more of an edge, since the AI is almost perfect.
On the other hand I get frustrated when playing RTS games on 'superhard' mode because the AI obviously cheats and it makes me angry and babble about unfairness.
A space marine terminator versing a bus of kindergarteners
But scale up, so you arent versing kindies
And that game is just cruel.
Guitar Hero games and their ilk are a little different cuz the gameplay changes so much and its funner on harder difficulties.
There are rewards there too. Otherwise I just play on default difficulty, what the developers intended, and move on to something else.
I like playing games that were designed hard on default - like F-Zero storymode and such. But I don't see myself replaying games on harder difficulties unless I suddenly can't afford new games and only have a small amount to keep my entertained.
hahah
Also, fucking christ Battletoads/Double Dragon
I've played that game on and off since kindergarten and I still can't beat it. But man do I love that game. Probably one of my favorites - yet I suppose that's mostly because of the nostalgia factor.
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lol what
F-Zero X is a much harder single player game than Mario Kart (DD or DS)
Yes, but it doesn't feel like it cheats.
And nothing is worse than an easy game. At that point I have to start making it hard for myself, and that doesn't always work.
It's just a better feeling to know I've beaten a real challenge. It gives much better closure than just beating the last boss, because video game storytelling just hasn't advanced enough to keep me so invested in a game that I'm happy to beat it just because I wanted to see the ending.
The only problem is that many games seem to expect you to beat their Hard modes by exploiting something.
My one real exception is the last Night Elf map for the original WC3. Fuck that map on Hard. Fuck it so hard. And it's mostly because the AI allies are completely worthless. If I could just control them! Or if they scaled along with the enemy. Ugh.
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i.e. without using the 30 lives code? :P
Shit son, I used to humiliate my friends when we took turns on that game. None of them could beat it even with the 30 lives code. I usually made it to stage 7 or 8 before dying.
I was also a virgin for a long time.
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I like videogames just like youuuu
In games like these the fun is in every single moment, you don't have to grind or wait for the fun parts. cutting a regular ninja in half in in very hard mode of Ninja Gaiden or defeating a hoarde of demons with an elecrtic guitar is always, always satisftying and enjoyable because since they killed you so many times before, you notice your significant increase in skill and it's always enjoyable to get revenge on them for all those earlier ass kickings.
Basically, if you finally kick the ass of the game that has been kicking your ass it's always a satisfying experience, as long as it's fun and fair to do so of course. If it's hard for the sake of being hard and not fun at all it's not worth playing. I don't get frustrated with tough games if I get killed, the only time I do is when it wasn't my lack of skill that killed me, it's when it was the game's crap control system, unresponsive character, bad hit detection, etc.
Well, I should have said Contra 3. I did beat Contra. Once. But Contra 3 was my game when I was a kid. And Metal Slug. I went to arcades in the mid-late 90s, when beat-em-ups and Metal Slug were the big thing, and if you lost you started again at the beginning. And the owners, who only wanted to make money, had no problem with cranking the difficulty of the machines up as far as they could before people started to complain. So Metal Slug 1,2, X and 3, D&D (I had a beastly Cleric and a Fighter that was almost as good, and of course you always go for the Red Dragon), Raiden (which was only hard if you weren't stacked i.e. as long as you didn't die the game was mostly a cakewalk), and Golden Axe: The Revenge Of Death Adder(sp?), though that game wasn't too hard since everyone played the Elf and camped the corners. But that aws only if you knew what you were doing. I 1 quartered every one of those games, and felt damn good for doing it.
Yeah, those were the days when you either did everything right and won like champion, or someone fucked something up and the whole thing went down in flames.
Helix: I was recently told the same thing. I never used those things, thought it would be much faster and cheaper to spam Huntresses and Archers, but I get mass skeleton mangled because Dryads are worthless for dispelling. And since I don't have very good healing it just wears me out after a while. I can make it till about 10 minutes left. I'm going to try again with hippo riders.
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As for me, a game that I really loved playing through on hard and found a tonne of fun was SWAT 4. This game (and REsodent Evil 4) pretty much brought me out of a year long gaming hiatus. If everything goes according to plan, you can be in-and-out of a mission in about 20 minutes max usually. I ended up re-playing missions a lot. And I mean a LOT. Until you get it into your head how to properly proceed is to take everything slow and steady, you're going to do a lot of dying.
The thing is, it's ALL about technique and following procedure. When you die, it's almost always because you screwed up, tried to rush things, and ended up dead as a result (well, that and the occassional time one or two of my squadmates would suffer an AI hiccup and charge blindly into a room or something). In any case, there's no saving. You die, you go straight back to the beginning of the mission. You can't clear a room, save the game and move on. You have to do the mission right or not do it at all.
So the game is pretty much all about getting the technique down to get yourself and your squad through alive. To give you an idead of how awesomely this works, the first major stumbling block in this game that almost everyone has trouble with is the nightclub mission. That's the first mission that you really face multiple heavily armed suspects and civillians all over the place. I must have tried and tried and TRIED that mission like 2-3 dozen times, but I loved every minute of it. I think it comes down to the following key factors:
1) I knew that every time I died it was because I had done something stupid
2) The levels were fairly small and self-contained, so there wasn't a tonne of backtracking
3) Enemy and civillian placement was randomised so you never knew what was around the next corner
Pretty much made the game addictive as heck for me. However, once I finally DID figure out the things I was doing wrong, I was able to move through the missions at a decent clip (except for the hospital mission. Frigging AI teammates can't or won't duck under windows).
I spent most of my game dying through the missions, but once I had finally managed to control everything the game was asking of me (this was by the addon pack), I literally blitzed the last two missions on my very first try in one sitting. It was awesome, and to me, that's the mark of a real hardcore game. Once you master the game's techniques, it doesn't matter even if the enemies are randomised, the game will play fair with you and you can take it down without taking a single hit. It's no longer about chance, it's about what you've learned versus the machine testing that to the limits.
Alright, 2 squadmates got shot on that final mission, but that's only because they ran into a room without permission. I guess they wanted to end in style. We still made it out.
Some conventions that I particularly hate:
The Multi-Stage Boss Battle - Where every time you deplete the bastard's health, he changes shape and becomes even tougher.
9 Million Enemies - The "we couldn't think of an ending" ending.
The Unskippable Cutscene - I'm already acquainted with the villain. Just start the fight already.
"What Are Checkpoints?" - Okay, now deliver the finishing blow. Oh, you fucked it up. Time to repeat the last half hour of misery.
In general, though, games that aren't made in Japan appear to be getting better about this. I haven't broken a 360 controller yet.
Two of my favourite games of recent times have been extremely short and extremely punishing, Another World and Heart Of Darkness. Both of them so incredibly harsh but every death CAN be avoided and not just through luck, it's timing and skill.
PSN: SirGrinchX
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You know what's funny? I imported Mario Kart 64, and it was HARD. I beat everything though, but then sold it to get the US version (I am an IDIOT) which was completely different and suffered from rubber banding AI, making it incredibly easy to get in the lead, but after which you would get bombarded by insane items. Plus the Japanese version had fake Mario cigarette advertisements and some awesome sound clips.
I love feeling like I am making progress. Portal was the most recent rewarding game like that. DMC3 was fun as well. Overall though I just can't take the challenging games anymore. I tried Ninja Gaiden/Black on XBox and just could not kill the second boss, and despite how awesome everyone said the game was, I just gave up.
I think something like the Gears of War setup is good, since I beat that 3 times, once on each difficulty. There were a few damn near impossible parts for me, but I kept feeling like if I just got past that part I would be ok. On the other hand, I can't hang on CoD4 on Veteran.
What it comes down to is that if a game is challenging but possible, it can be the best experience ever, and much more rewarding than a cakewalk (see: backlash over DMC2). That level is completely different from person to person though, which is why I can dabble with the big guns like DMC3, but never could finish the game on anything past normal.
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It doesnt cheat. Its just better than you.