I’ve always considered myself fairly good at video games. I used to kick all my friends’ asses at multiplayer Armored Core on the Playstation, and I ruled the Street Fighter 2 machine with an iron fist. But recently, I’ve been sucking. And I’m not just talking about all the Street Fighter 4 players that are beating on my ass online.
More and more, I’m finding that I’ve got to play games on the easiest setting rather than normal, which is what I’ve generally done in the past. Ghostbusters was the first game I can think of that I found too difficult and played through on easy. I told myself that it wasn’t a big deal – John had suggested that I play on easy, and many reviews I’d read spoke of the game’s many difficulty spikes. So I played the game on easy, enjoyed the story, and didn’t feel like a wuss for having done so.
Then I started playing Street Fighter 4 online and discovered that I wasn’t nearly as much of a badass at the game as I’d expected to be.
I’ve also been enjoying Prototype. The jumping, flying, and consuming challenges are a lot of fun. They’re just the right amount of challenge – it takes me a good half dozen tries to get a gold medal. But when I got to the battle with “The Specialist”, I was destroyed. I replayed that fight six or eight times, and didn’t even come as close to winning as I had the first time. I looked up a couple FAQs and walkthroughs, which suggested that I use whipfist rather than the claw attack I’d been using, so I tried that, and lost even more quickly than I had before. The primary walkthrough on GameFAQs says “This guy isn’t very hard to beat at all. He’s mostly just an annoyance.” You might imagine how frustrated I got to read this after having lost so often. So my plan with Prototype is to go a few weeks without playing, and then go back and restart the game on easy. I only hope that the challenges aren’t too easy.
The same night that I got my ass handed to me by The Specialist in Prototype, I tried to start playing Resistance: Fall of Man. I got the PS3 game cheap on EBay since it’s so old at this point. Long story short: I keep getting killed. I might have to restart this one on easy too. I suck at shooters where I can’t use a mouse and keyboard.
Lastly, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I’m currently stuck on this one. I think that if I have to restart this one on easy, I might just have to commit sepuku with a frisbee.
Where are you stuck on SW:tFU?
I had to stop playing SFIV and SFII:HD online, it was killing my self esteem
I will give it another go when MvC2 comes out but I don’t have any illusions of being any good.
In SW:tFU, I’m stuck at a point where I’m in the middle of some battle between guys with guns and robots. i’m not sure whether I’m supposed to fight them or get past them to somewhere else. As I kill them, more materialize from out of the ground, so I’m not sure whether they’ll appear endlessly or not.
There’s a glowing dome-looking thing on a downed spacecraft nearby and a glowing floor. I managed to jump up to the glowing dome thing once and destroyed it, but then I got killed.
I play all of my games on easy. Part of that is because if I’m reviewing something the lowest difficulty level makes it easier to make my deadline, but mostly it’s because I just want to play the game, see the story, enjoy the mechanics, whatever. Once you start, it’s hard to go back. it’s like all of your gaming is done on vacation. 😉
Sorry Greg, I have no idea what part of the game you are at
I stopped at the level with the annoying swamp bog guys where you have to kill their leader first or the other ones won’t die. I wasn’t stuck, just got swept up by Valkyria Chronicles instead.
Another confidence killer is in God of War, where if you die too many times it nicely asks if you’d like to play in easy mode instead. It was damn tempting a few times but I made it through.
I got past that part tonight, but there’s definitely a lot of aggravation in this game. Lots of instant-death pits and difficult platforming.