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.
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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.
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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?
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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’).
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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.
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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.
FWIW, I think the Uncharted games are guilty of the same things I’m complaining about with Wolf2
Yeah, realtime is just stressful.
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.
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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.
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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.
It’s hard to articulate, but for me personally I find challenge rewarding when it forces me to hone skills, but is also good about teaching me those skills over time. For example, I am terrible at Puyo Puyo, and I don’t find getting better to be rewarding because the difficulty curve is a vertical cliff and there’s virtually no process to get better in game. It doesn’t scale well, it doesn’t teach in layers, I either figure it out myself or I don’t. Compare that to say Pokemon where it starts off laughably easy and adds layers of complexity over time until you’ve slowly been taught through gentle trial and error what works and what doesn’t.
Lots of shooters scale difficulty by making you weaker and enemies stronger, which normally doesn’t involve getting better as much as adjusting play style entirely to being far more conservative. I’m not adding to the skill I learned on normal, I’m playing a totally different game. It’s why, to go back to my original example, I find games like Bayonetta so enjoyable to master. Normal teaches you the skills necessary, but doesn’t overly punish you for not being perfect. Harder difficulties require you to do the use that same set of skills, only better. It slowly pulls away your advantages and gives you smaller windows for error.
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It is hard to articulate, I think some of the replies have been better than my root post. You make a good point with Bayonetta, the difficulty levels on that definitely force you to learn your combos and make you choose carefully how you equip yourself, and how you choose to spend your halos with Rodin.
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I’m loving the revival of higher-difficulty games. Given that these last few years have been an avalanche of exceedingly good games, there’s also a nice amount of choice in the market in terms of difficulty levels in most genres.
I do wish developers would offer more customization for difficulty, though. It’s so much better when you can adjust things like damage, health, and grind requirements to your liking. And it’s a shame to get frustrated out of an otherwise fine game due to one poorly designed difficulty spike.
