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When games are too difficult.
The Last Gent
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Just random thoughts shooting around in my head, my apologies if they're unstructured. I decided on a whim to download Kid Icarus on the VC, after playing the Brawl demo. "How hard can it actually be? Really?" I thought. After all, I usually like challenging games.
Yeah.
First level took a few tries, but I did it. Second level, I spent an entire week on, we're talking multiple attempts every day. Third level, it's been 3 days, and I'm seriously debating putting it down, and kind of regretting the 5 bucks, as I can honestly say it's starting to become hard to the point of no longer being any fun. Yeah, the music is catchy, the controls are tight, the levels inventive, but it's hard to get excited if all you're doing is repeatedly running through the same level 562543735 times desperately trying to make it a little bit farther and not get nailed by those damn snakes that fall from the ceiling, or those one eyed flying things.
Now, I usually like challenges, though I'd describe my skill level as medium to low-medium, typically on the losing end of multiplayer bouts. But this was too much for me, suddenly it's a chore instead of a game.
I think some of it boils down to game design making it monotonous and repetitive more than anything else, like in the harder modes of Guitar Hero 3, which I'm not very good at. My issue with the hard mode there is not the gameplay itself, but the fact that in Hard or Expert, you have to play every single song in a tier to progress. When I was doing medium, I was comforted by the fact that fail or not, I could opt out of one song, and if things got dire near the end of a tier, I'd have 2 songs I could alternate between at the end to cut the monotony, only needing to beat one. But in hard mode, you end up having to listen to "Story of my Life" 50 times because it's the only one left, and you can't beat it, but now you HAVE to, and lo and behold, it stops being fun. So far, it hasn't really killed too much of the fun for me, but I get the impression that I'll hit that anti-fun barrier eventually as I progress higher through the story mode.
So, discuss, I guess. When does a game become so difficult it stops being a challenge and just becomes a chore? What do you think causes this? Got any examples of what games did this for you?
(p.s. I'm leaving for work, so I won't be replying again for awhile)
Yeah.
First level took a few tries, but I did it. Second level, I spent an entire week on, we're talking multiple attempts every day. Third level, it's been 3 days, and I'm seriously debating putting it down, and kind of regretting the 5 bucks, as I can honestly say it's starting to become hard to the point of no longer being any fun. Yeah, the music is catchy, the controls are tight, the levels inventive, but it's hard to get excited if all you're doing is repeatedly running through the same level 562543735 times desperately trying to make it a little bit farther and not get nailed by those damn snakes that fall from the ceiling, or those one eyed flying things.
Now, I usually like challenges, though I'd describe my skill level as medium to low-medium, typically on the losing end of multiplayer bouts. But this was too much for me, suddenly it's a chore instead of a game.
I think some of it boils down to game design making it monotonous and repetitive more than anything else, like in the harder modes of Guitar Hero 3, which I'm not very good at. My issue with the hard mode there is not the gameplay itself, but the fact that in Hard or Expert, you have to play every single song in a tier to progress. When I was doing medium, I was comforted by the fact that fail or not, I could opt out of one song, and if things got dire near the end of a tier, I'd have 2 songs I could alternate between at the end to cut the monotony, only needing to beat one. But in hard mode, you end up having to listen to "Story of my Life" 50 times because it's the only one left, and you can't beat it, but now you HAVE to, and lo and behold, it stops being fun. So far, it hasn't really killed too much of the fun for me, but I get the impression that I'll hit that anti-fun barrier eventually as I progress higher through the story mode.
So, discuss, I guess. When does a game become so difficult it stops being a challenge and just becomes a chore? What do you think causes this? Got any examples of what games did this for you?
(p.s. I'm leaving for work, so I won't be replying again for awhile)
The Last Gent on
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Nah. It was overly reliant on memorization, but nothing was unfair after you experience it once.
My Collection
But why Witchsight, you may say, why dont you want to challenge yourself at games you loved?
Well for exactly that reason... i really enjoyed the game if im going to replay it. Putting it on hard seems like a grand idea, but AT SOME POINT, i am going to say, fuck this is hard as tits... and get pissed at my beloved vidjagame. And that makes me sad more than anything.
Minerva: Metastasis was guilty of this, and so, surprisingly, was Bioshock on hard. You'd spend more bullets killing an enemy than you would be able to refill within a reasonable timescale. And you guys know my accuracy. Eventually I wound down Bioshock to normal, because, fuck it, plugging an enemy with a full clip of tommy gun should kill them. It just should. It was just no fun to chase them around gradually wearing them down.
See: Early text and graphical adventure games, where having three hundred ways of making the game literally unwinnable and forcing complete restarts were considered a feature. Fuck you, Sierra.
Reason #63504 that Crysis is awesome.
Harder difficulties are like, harder for a real reason, not just Health/damage shit.
Also, yeah, when a game is really hard because it's difficult, that's good. When a game is hard because it's cheap, that's bad.
Damn, my money was on the OP.
Especially those levels where you can get trapped behind obstacles you don't know are coming.
Or that level in R-Type 3 where you have to fly through the stage backwards.
Sometimes I wonder if the reason why people beat R-Type is because they are so angry at it that it just wouldn't do to let the game get away without a sound beating.
Try Blaster Master. :P
Battletoads was simple, man first time for every level. That hover board shit, to easy if you ask me. I marched back to that store and demanded my money back even.
Fuck that shit.
I had that bomb level memorized as a child. I was the only one that could get through that entire game easily. I was a god among children.
Also, battletoads took me some time, but I managed to play through it too. God damn that snake level.
?
I thought there were only three levels in battletoads
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
Also impossible to beat co-op without cheating.
That was my motivation. It felt pretty good when I succeeded too, and I'm not really that good at shumps. It became rote memorization and luck, and I doubt I could do it now if I wanted.
Try 12. But most people gave up after the 3rd level.
That was the joke my friend
...C...Contra?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYUEArg5xTQ
It ... it isn't.
* Completely different gameplay from the main game, often poorly executed (i.e. the minigame of DOOM)
* Timed segments requiring precision platforming. HATE.
* Instadeath if your reflexes are off, bonus hate points if you could not have predicted the instadeath the first time
* A lengthy section of challenges, all of which you must repeat if you fail/die even once
* A lengthy unskippable cutscene before the difficult challenge, of course with no ability to save after the cutscene
These things have caused me to abandon a number of games that I otherwise loved, such as Dark Cloud II and Okami. I'm getting picky in my old age and I don't have the patience for things that make me want to throw my controller through the TV. I wish more games were like Super Mario Galaxy; flexible enough that you don't have to complete that one section that you just can't get.
That's a Half-Life 2 thing, rather than a Minerva thing, isn't it? And to be fair, adding in more enemies is going to be limited be the system, greatly increase the time needed with map making, not going to be suitable for all situations, and would no doubt would be a nightmare play testing/balancing. Same thing with increasing the AI, if people could make AI smarter, they would. Most of the time increased AI just means cheap stuff like superhuman accuracy, psychic knowledge, unlimited energy/powerups etc.
And complaining about harder difficulty levels being hard is fairly dumb in my opinion.
Fuck that. FUCK THAT.
If you're ever tired of playing the same songs that you can't beat, you can always just use a cheat, unlock every song, and play any songs in any order in Quick Play mode.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I'm playing through Dark Cloud 2 right now, and I haven't run into anything like which you've mentioned, except for the optional spheda minigame (which is loads of fun anyways).
Aside from that, I love ass rapingly difficult gameplay. But only when it's fair. I like to know that the reason why I failed is because I fucked up, not because the game was all like "reaction time slower than 1/20th of a second? Fuck you."
Minerva Metastatis on hard mode gave enemies approx. 15 times their normal health. Try 5 headshots with a magnum to kill one bad guy. Then try realising that you're fighting 10 of those bad guys in areas with no cover whatsoever, and they have unlimited grenades.
'Fairly dumb' my ass. Harder difficulty should be about responding to player skill, not just ratcheting everything up to stupid. Call of Duty 4 on Veteran is hard as shit, but it's fair. Metastasis is not.
F-zero GX was actually fine by me. I never beat hard mode, but I'm fine with that because I know it's my driving ability not being good enough, rather than the game being super-cheap.
Pokémon HGSS: 1205 1613 4041
no u.
Those levels made Mario Sunshine worth it. They are fucking GLORIOUS.
It's also why the GameGenie became so popular
But yeah, it's one of the things I love about most modern games. They're *fair*. And I don't mean "easy", but literally fair -- most deaths at least make sense, you don't generally run out of lives and have to restart the game, and typically the game is set up to keep you moving forward. That's *excellent*. I love playing a game and generally not being "stuck" anymore. Most stupidly difficult sections are reserved for extra content, like hidden bosses or levels that don't affect the story.
And yes, as Zxerol points out, it's why I have no interest in ever going back to play old PC click adventures that I missed out on. I'm not nearly masochistic enough to wish to play most old video games. My youth was spent renting stupid NES games, thinking I was simply bad at them, only to realize as I got older that they were just dumb and cheap.
Lemme guess... ghost fish?
why would you put the ghost fish in
who thought that was a good idea