there’s this one game that I really can’t beat till now, and everytime I play it again I just get bored =/
Codnames: Panzers I
I’ve noticed that most games I play now have more difficulty settings. I usually play on normal, but looking at Mass Effect 2 and Dirt 2 (the last two games I’ve played) there’s half a dozen difficulty levels above it
I haven’t got the time to play a game on ‘insanity’. I have a couple of hours free in the evening, and it’s not much fun if I just spend that time repeating small sections, especially as I’m supposed to be relaxing…
So the default may have got a bit easier, but the option is usually there for the hard core, along with achievements to show you’ve done it
Mass Effect 2 on Insanity is no laughing matter. Its taken me at least 4 times longer to beat it on insanity than it did on hardcore. I think that the AI actually gets smarter with each difficulty level. On normal all the enemies tended to stay in one spot until you killed them. On insanity the Vanguards would actually get closer, the adepts and commandos sit back and play as more of a support class, and the soldiers actually move from cover to cover while you’re reloading. Of course I might just not have noticed it as much on the other difficulties, but the enhanced AI along with the fact that enemies have waaaaaayyyyyy more health and they deal far more damage makes for a much harder and, in my opinion, enjoyable experience.
It wasn’t that hard. The beginning was tough, but by the end my powers made it pretty easy. Also nukes are nice.
I still find it a little bit challenging, mostly because I tend not to play games on their hardest difficulties the first few times around. I haven’t even recruited the second group of followers yet, so that’s probably why it hasn’t gotten any easier for me yet. On another subject of video games and difficulties, did anyone else think the leveling enemies of Oblivion took all the fun out of making your character more powerful? The one thing I always liked about RPGs was finding an area with hard to kill enemies and then training my character so I could defeat them. Then when I played Oblivion’s main story, I decided I would level up my character to at least 15 so that the first few quests wouldn’t be to hard. When I finally started the main quest, thinking it was still going to be scamps in Kvatch, I go there and find the place over run by dremora instead of low level enemies. It kind of annoyed me.
Oblivions leveling was pretty annoying.
Wolfenstien.
Yes, today in a video game, all you do is aim and shoot. Before you actually had to use your mind and think. For example, In HL1, you had to figure out what the hell you have to do and you would get lost and stuck from time to time. In HL2, what you have to do is always obvious and you don’t really have to think that much.
Cryptic != Challenge
The biggest change in difficulty over the years has been the clarity of what you are doing. Note the original zelda compared to new ones. If you only booted up the game, didn’t read the manual or hear anything about it, how would you know what to do? So there is a cave there, but there are also other places one could go ages without finding out the sword is in the cave. New Zelda games start out with a cut scene and tell you the objective.
If you ever go through the developer commentary on a VALVE game you will find that the put quite a bit of effort into making sure the player knows what they need to do. IE if the sand trap level in HL2 didn’t have that intro scene it would become much MUCH harder.
Now that games have gotten more story based they can’t just throw random shit at you without explanation as much. This creates clarity and makes the game easier. Is it a bad thing? Fuck no I always hated spending hours trying to figure out what to do.
I tend to agree, a lot of old games were hard because the graphics were crap as well. Especially old FPSs you’d walk about for an hour trying to find some way to progress because you were stuck in a bland grey hell. Although Doom3 has managed to recreate that well. Especially with respawning demons so you have no idea if you’re goin the right way or not, and waste all your ammo.
One thing I have noticed in a lot of FPSs now is a lack of a distinct boss, quite often the final level is just another level, with a mediocre challenge at the end of it.
As for good old platformers, which were fun and hard? Try metal slug my amigo, hours of fun, can still only get to the second last level without using a continue.
I think games in general are moving away from bosses. The thing is personally I find things like the end fight in HL2:EP2 way more interesting than a boss. There’s only so much you can do when you only have 1 enemy to work with.
Videos games are not only getting easy…and challenging too…
Theres also only so much you can do when your sent on a gauntlet through the same rabble you have been fighting for the past 6+ hours already. yes Halo, Modern Warfare, I’m looking at you. bosses (if done right) demand unique and different strategies to beat.
The ORIGINAL Prince of Persia. Very challenging, frustrating at times, but a true classic.
I never could work out how get passed my shadow on what I think was the second last level (still had 12 minutes on the clock usually).
I’ve now lost the copy I had. It was a sad day when my backup drive got a virus and I lost my backups of quite a few old classics that I had bought overs the years.
I guess the nature of video game difficulty is entirely subjective due to the rate of acquisition of game mechanics. My theory is that as a player plays more games of the same genre, they learn to think in those terms and instinctual figure out control schemes, tactics, and victory conditions at a much faster rate when grouped to the same genre.
After all, that’s the fun part about being human- we’re inherently unpredictable. It’s why we beta-test. What fun would a game be if we couldn’t beat it? Or if it was obscenely hard to beat? (That’s why the entire DMC series is still on my bookshelf, leering at me.) And yet, I managed to pick up Metal Gear gameplay very quickly after having been tested in Splinter Cell games. They have very different mechanics, but ultimately you use similar tactics across games, and the AI behaves similarly. By contrast, Splinter Cell Conviction is not your average stealth game, being more in the vein of Rainbow Six Vegas and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Now in bringing up game difficulty, I love F.E.A.R. because it’s a very smartly designed shooter. The AI is relentless, flawless, and completely ruthless when dealing with the player. They flank, flush with grenades, retreat with covering fire, and navigate complex terrain with surprising efficiency (hopping railings, crawling under storm drains, rappelling in from helicopters, busting down doors, etc.) Obviously there were scripted sequences governing them but in general it’s a very flexible set of AI controls and parameters. They made F.E.A.R. punishingly difficult at times, but rewarding to fight because of how smart you feel when you manage to out-think them.