Comments on: Scattered Thoughts on Game Difficulty

By: Gideon

Gideon — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:22:05 +0000

I think game difficulty has gotten slightly more lenient over time. A more influential development where difficulty is concerned would be more precise and varied control schemes rather than a change in what the developer is striving for. Especially regarding twitch gameplay, modern gamers are given a more diverse moveset for accomplishing their goals. Shooters have blind-firing, cover mechanics, sniping, stealth, etc. Also the 3D perspective allows you to see farther ahead, potentially perceiving danger before it’s upon you.

RPG developers have mostly learned from the mistakes of old, having in game maps and quest logs almost standard at this point. Those were always the problem for me in the old days; not knowing where to go next. With puzzles, whenever I’m stuck I try to cheat by examining the as if it were a debug program. Rather than looking directly for the solution to the problem, I look for problems in the environment: game objects that don’t fit in with the rest of the scene, texture resolution differences (sometimes indicating parts of the environment that can be interacted with), camera angles (good developers will default the camera towards your next objective, ie. God of War). That usually works for me.

I usually play games on the default difficulty, but recently I’ve started playing 360 games on whatever difficulty is hardest at the outset. Solely for achievement purposes. Usually I get really frustrated somewhere towards the middle and wish I had started on normal, but I forge ahead anyway and eventually get to the end. At that point I’m usually glad I did since I don’t have to go through the game again just for the points. That’s another thing about me that I’ve noticed more and more that I’m probably alone in: I don’t start a new game until I’ve beaten the previous one. As such, the only games I own that I haven’t beaten are the ones I haven’t even started yet. It usually leaves me really far behind the times (I just finished Metroid Prime 3 and I play games chronologically; Bioshock’s up next), but I think it’s worth it.

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:18:56 +0000

The whippersnappers can talk all they want, but games really were harder back in the day. Try playing through some of your old NES favorites sometime and see just how hard it was to play without checkpoints, game saves galore and tutorials. You actually had to remember stuff!

BTW, Mega Man 9 is a great example of how punishing those old games were but also how rewarding it was to beat them.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:05:06 +0000

Big fan of stealth games, eh? I played one Hitman game, and it was… okay. My favorite stealth games, in order, are…

Beyond Good and Evil
Tenchu Stealth Assassins (PS1)
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Far Cry (PC)

Never got into Splinter Cell either.

By: Kris Johnson

Kris Johnson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:02:14 +0000

I feel your pain. I created a GameTap account over the weekend because the were offering Hitman: Codename 47 as a free download. I've played the first mission half a dozen times, always managing to pull off the hit but failing to make it to (or find, for that matter) the extraction point. I've heard similar complaints leveled at other installments of the series (a friend of mine quit playing Hitman: Blood Money after multiple unsuccessful attempts to complete the first missio) but I love, love, love stealth games, so I'm going to press onward. Meanwhile, I was flipping through the other free games and found an old favorite of mine: Elevator Action. I wonder how many quarters I pumped into the arcade version of that game? I wonder if I totally sucked at it as much as I do today? Honestly, I can't remember if—after all those quarters—I ever made it to the ground floor of the first level! Maybe it has nothing to do with difficulty in my case. Maybe I just suck at video games.