I don’t mind difficult games being marketed on their difficulty. There is an audience for that, and it is reasonable for developers of difficult games to want to connect with their intended audience of players who enjoy difficult games, just as developers of narrative-heavy or [insert era here]-nostalgic or scary games want to connect with their intended audiences. It is fine for a game not to be everyone’s cup of tea. I will never care for DDR or SSBM or DotA or Wolfenstein or Silent Hills or an innumerable quantity of other popular games, and that’s fine. If a game advertises itself as being super difficult, my eyes glaze over and it no longer exists in my world, and that’s fine.
It’s a different issue if games are getting their difficulty cranked up for no coherent design reason just to be able to claim the adjective, of course. That kind of thing happens all the time to various kinds of adjectives and it is very silly.
I don’t remember the exact setting, i think it was Hurt Me Plenty? That’s the same setting I played the TNO the first time through. I actually beat TNO on Ultra, but that’s a whole 'nother story. Definitely not planning on doing that with TNC.
I actually love all 3 of those games you mentioned (Dark Souls, Spelunky, SMB). The difficulty in them is justified. Another game I find to be very difficult that I can’t put down is Downwell. Probably my favorite game that I’ve never beaten before.
One of my problems with TNC is that sometimes it felt unfair, specifically that court room fight. I would be dropping tons of bullets into one enemy, just to get cut down from behind. Obviously I adjusted my strategy and was able to get past that part, but it wasn’t really satisfying in the way I usually like. It almost felt like I just had a lucky run, if that makes sense.
Is TNC more difficult than TNO? I played on the second-hardest difficulty level in the first game and there were a few really tough areas/boss battles that took me multiple attempts. Nothing too egregious as far as I remember.
For me it was, definitely. I kind of breezed through TNO (the ending was a little difficult), and The New Blood gave me problems until I committed to the fact that it was a stealth-only game. There were just some fights in TNC that gave me big problems. Court room, Stall the Nazis, a few others. Just brutal at times.
I think dual wielding is a little bit more mandatory than in TNO. Bullets are plenty but expect at least a shotgun and an assault rifle in each hand in order to manage wave of enemies
I think difficulty needs to be considered in context of the type of game it’s in. For a game like Super Meat Boy it makes sense, as the pleasure comes from conquering challenges. But for a game like Uncharted where the story is the main draw, difficult sections simply break the flow and immersion of the game.
Also, this thread needs to be titled “Hard Games? Hard Pass”. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
I agree, and this game does shine when dual wielding. I think they have done an excellent job with heavy weapons, also. Man, they are just so fucking satisfying at times.
If I get any hint that something is challenging I immediately scratch it off my list. Too much out to mess with it for me. I have too many entertainment options available and other hobbies I want to engage in to mess with something I’m probably going to just get frustrated.
And see, I’m someone that despite a lifetime of playing games I have trouble with games most people don’t consider hard, like say Doom or Dishonored 2.
I don’t enjoy difficulty for the sake of difficulty, but when I really enjoy what a game is offering I will almost always go back for a hard playthrough. I tore through all the difficulties in Bayonetta because I just enjoyed mastering the controls that much. When getting better stops being rewarding or the only challenge is pure slog, then I check out.
You know, it sounds to me like you don’t have a problem with hard games as such. Spelunky in particular is a real monster of a game. Your distinction between justified and unjustified difficulty is interesting, and that’s the part of this discussion I’d like to dig into. Would you say it’s about fairness, and giving the player enough tools to handle difficult challenges?
This is the key with those difficulty spikes in TNC. Dual wield and keep moving. It’s so ingrained at this point with shooters that when things get difficult, you just hunker down and whittle your way through the fight. I know I had a difficult time adjusting. But once things went loud, just bring up dual shotguns, or a shotgun/assault rifle (or shotgun/machine pistol or shotgun/laser and/or dieselkraftwerk. Really just make sure one is a shotgun) and keep running and gunning and never stop moving. The moment you stay still, you get flanked and are down in seconds (and that was only on the 3rd lowest difficulty, ‘Bring it On’).
Here’s an idea that I have that’s maybe too fancy for my own good, but I wanna run it past people in here anyway: I don’t think difficulty is, strictly speaking, a property that games have. I think difficulty is a property of our experiences with games. Does that make sense?
For instance, I find soulsbornes taxing not because I die a lot (although I do), but because of the emotional intensity of trying to not die in real time and dying anyway, especially amplified by dramatic boss music and huge hits that erase half my health bar. I’m probably not really worse or better than average at action stuff, but it engages me in a way that’s, well, difficult.
In contrast, I find something like XCOM relaxing even on max difficulty or with Long War nonsense, because I have all the time in the world to make the best moves that I can see, and then just roll with the consequences. It’s still “difficult” in that there’s a lot of trial and error involved in learning what the best moves generally are, plus the random failure chances, but I don’t enjoy it because it’s “brutal” or “unforgiving”, but because it engages my brain in a satisfying way.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the personal/emotional side of difficulty, but it’s all kind of half-formed and I’m interested if anyone’s been thinking the same things.
Yes, you are correct. This is definitely the gist of what I’m getting at, but that’s not my whole point. Maybe I made my post after a bit of frustration and didn’t explain my point very well.
One of the things that separates the 3 games from Wolf 2 (DS, Spelunky, SMB) is that they are very gameplay focused. I hold all 3 of them in high regard because they are such fair games, even though they are hard (although SMB gets a little “fuck you” at points).
One of my problems with Wolf 2 is that I feel like I’m being purposely slowed down. I love the story and can’t wait to get to the next cutscene, and sometimes the battles feel like they’re there to just slow me down to make sure I don’t consume the game too quickly. I can deal with unfair (Ori and the Blind Forest escape sequences anyone?), but I hate when it feels like my time is being wasted.
I think in this context, the common parlance takes “hard” to mean games that are difficult because they are designed to present a mechanical challenge which the player must acquire mastery in order to complete – not necessarily that the player is going to experience high stress levels.
On a literal, nonspecialist level, a game can be difficult in so many non-personal ways:
It is total RNG and programmed to give players only a 0.0000000000001% of winning
It requires a high amount of stamina due to its extreme length or repetitiveness
It is intended to be emotionally taxing
It is intended to challenge players’ preconceived notions about the world
…none of which are the meanings generally used in the context of games marketing, I think.
Yeah, I guess if I even have a point here outside of saying words online it would be: it’s worth laying all of that out because otherwise people end up at some fairly fuzzy definitions. I know it feels like splitting hairs? But it seems important to me to take apart the idea of what’s challenging, for whom and in what way.
Especially when disability gets brought into it? I’m especially concerned about the nonspecific way “disability” is talked about as this unitary thing that interacts with your experience of a game in a unitary way, and can be solved by some fancy algorithmic wizardry without really getting to the root of why some experiences might be challenging, or on the flipside, comfortable and satisfying.
an interesting thing about bullet hell is that most of them can be beaten just by putting in more credits and they often also provide you with tons of power ups upon continuing. if you’re not great you can probably still mash through a lot of them and see the end if you really want
I like how Odyssey is doing difficulty: Just getting through the game is pretty easy and barely any moons are actually required, but getting everything is really tough (not saying Odyssey invented Collectathons, but it’s a good recent example) + it has some other good options as well. Additionally, you never need to use more than Mario’s basic moves but if you do you can skip a bunch of stuff and whatnot which is cool.
I also enjoy how the new Donkey Kong Country games handle varying levels of difficulty. The game itself is pretty hard but you can buy powerups to make things easier with a pretty common and easily grindable currency. I don’t use those options but I’m glad they exist and I’d rather see games like that than games that force one difficulty.
I’m sorry that’s had such a big impact on you. I’ve never really had the reflexes to lose, but my way to beat difficult games was usually to try and strategize efficiently while beating my head against the game for hours. Now that I’m significantly more busy, I look at things like the Bloodborne DLC and realize I’ll likely never have the time to beat it, which really bums me out. It’s definitely forced me to be okay with playing as much of a game as I can stand and letting that be it. Like I’m pretty sure Cuphead for me is the first world, the damn clown boss, and maybe watching a playthrough eventually. Still, it sucks thinking that there are swathes of games that might be locked away from me now due to these limitations.
