What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

When I started NIER last night I paused for a few moments to debate whether or not to play on Easy or Normal. I eventually went with Normal.

I almost never drop a game down to Easy, unless I'm just planning on plowing through it to consume it. Also, I figure that normal is the way the developers assume most people will experience the game...and things should be just about right. Most modern games aren't difficult though. With checkpoint respawns, unlimited health and other bullshit it's merely a matter of putting in the time, rather than skill.

When playing there needs to be some challenge or moments that raise your pulse. Otherwise...why bother? This isn't a commentary on dropping a game down to Easy...rather how most modern games simply lack a good challenge. The games aren't designed to be hard to finish. Offering those that have the skills a badge of honor upon completion. Rather they're designed so that the player experiences a story.

The reason the Demons' Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne games have been so successful is that they bring that challenge. They bring that FEAR. Back in the days of arcade gaming when you played for high score you were driven by the challenge and the fear. That fear that comes when you're trying to top your all time high score and one slip up with your last life, on your last quarter means Game Over. Your palms sweat as they grip the joystick. Friends start to gather and watch. You get into a do or die situation and it's incredibly hard, but really fucking satisfying.

Moments like that are what made me fall in love with videogames. It's rare to find something that gives a similar sensation on these modern consoles. Everything is so homogenized that games are practically sterile. You just sit there like a pulse-less zombie, mindlessly plowing through it until the end credits roll and the shitty story is complete. Go back to Castlevania on the NES. It's incredibly hard and requires you to learn enemy patterns...memorize levels...quicken reflexes. Finishing the game requires a commitment and gives you a sense of accomplishment. I really miss that and it's a big reason why I mostly stick to retro games instead of newer games.

I think games can provide incentives to play at higher difficulties to overcome the limitations you see on the artifice of just making enemies harder to kill. This is exactly the difficulty progression that DIABLO takes. You don't see any new exotic dudes in higher difficulties; just the same enemies with more attack strength and toughness. Actually, you might see some more abilities tacked on to "elite gangs" but it's still an aspect of attack/toughness. Why would you ever, right? Because incrementing the difficulty provides more currency drops and better loot chances. Some items don't drop at all unless you are at level 4 or higher (there are nine levels of difficulty). There are other items that don't drop unless you are playing Hardcore mode (i.e., character death is permanent). No one plays DIABLO for the story. They play for that obsessive loot collecting minimax dynamic on all the gear. As such, you are constantly trying to push the envelope on the difficulty to maximize your chances at that sweet lucre.

I'll contrast this with HELLDIVERS, where a different dynamic is at play. In this isometric action game the difficulty is independent of the player--you can't pick a difficulty level at all. You can do missions that are labeled with different difficulties, but the enemies are the same in each of them (Objectives might be harder to get to, or there may be more enemies). But the more difficult levels are designed with an assumption that you'll need more than one player to beat them. It's a co-op game, where up to four folks can play a mission. So you could try to do a Challenging mission on your own, but you'll likely get fucked. Everyone's successes contribute to the global effort to bring liberty to the galaxy (via guns). Even the Easy missions still help progress the overarching game; but if you want to play the tough stuff, you need to have some friends pop in or jump in and help others on their open games.

I guess I don't play video games to feel like I've accomplished something. I'm happy to just experience it. Every time I try to start an action game at normal instead of easy I am acknowledging that I will not complete the game because at some point it will get too hard for me to continue. Witcher II I couldn't even get past the opening fights which boggles the mind...yet there it is.

I'm also just fine not completing games, really. I play until I feel like I've seen enough or I just can't get past something. Sometimes I get so frustrated with an aspect of gameplay (a lot of times this is the camera) that I up and quit.

Egg Shen wrote: When I started NIER last night

Do yourself a favor and don't do the sidequests. They are some of the worst examples of fetch quests I have ever seen. My enjoyment of the game (overall high, with some issues) would have been severely degraded if I had gone after even a small percentage of them.

iguanaDitty wrote:

Egg Shen wrote: When I started NIER last night

Do yourself a favor and don't do the sidequests. They are some of the worst examples of fetch quests I have ever seen. My enjoyment of the game (overall high, with some issues) would have been severely degraded if I had gone after even a small percentage of them.

Thanks for the tip! Usually side quests are my undoing in a RPG. I tend to focus on them (for fear of missing something) and if they suck I lose interest in the game. Somtimes I can ignore them and get back on track with the main quest...but if I don't I'll give up on the game. I'll be sure to be careful with these.

Yeah, those sidequests are TERRIBLE. I think the problem is that Cavia were trying to keep up with trend, which at the time was these kinds of really crappy fetch-quests ("I need X number of flowers", "kill Y number of these monsters", etc.) which somehow people are TOTALLY FINE with in a Bethesda game but nowhere else. Stick to the storyline and you won't really miss anything.

Jeb has a good point about increasing risk and reward, even if the difficulty is artificial. I absolutely love how Sakurai has done difficulty in Kid Icarus: Uprising and in Smash. You have to actually pay for difficulty with in-game currency that you've earned by playing it. BUT, you also effectively wager it against your success. If you go all in for level 9 difficulty, you lose money and have to dial it down while also losing some of your rewards earned to that point. So you choose how hard you want, and you put your money where your mouth is in terms of how hard you want it to be. Of course, at those higher levels there are better items, more rewards and more money to be had so there's the incentive for those as well.

One of the reasons Witcher III sounds so interesting to me is that the side quests supposedly have stories built up around them so the rinse-repeat nature of them is mitigated. Also that they're less fetch quests than witcher quests, which sound intrinsically more interesting.

Still, I have to force myself to try Witcher II on easy again before I can fall for the same combat undoing me yet again.

Side-quests in BORDERLANDS 2 were silly too. Some of them were hard, but for the most part you would get them from playing the game. Something like "Kill 5 Billymongs" can be accomplished by just driving to your next real quest, taking care to run over any Billymongs you happen across. On numerous occasions I was surprised to see a Quest completion bonus pop up--I had forgotten all about them.

Working the hardcore Barbarian in DIABLO 3 right now. Got this amazing Belt that I might never replace, even though it's Lvl 23 or something (Levels go up to 70). It applies all my skill runes (think: skill nuance) to my main skill. So, doing the thing I normally do (hit stuff) now does like eight things (shoot lightning, scare guys, stun guys, freeze guys, gain life, &c).

iguanaDitty wrote: I guess I don't play video games to feel like I've accomplished something. I'm happy to just experience it. Every time I try to start an action game at normal instead of easy I am acknowledging that I will not complete the game because at some point it will get too hard for me to continue. Witcher II I couldn't even get past the opening fights which boggles the mind...yet there it is.

I'm also just fine not completing games, really. I play until I feel like I've seen enough or I just can't get past something. Sometimes I get so frustrated with an aspect of gameplay (a lot of times this is the camera) that I up and quit.

There are games where I reach a tough point and just give up... but the mark of a truly great game is reaching a tough point and feeling like you should give up but you never do and as a result you eventually beat it. Games that make me want to throw my controller but still have me hitting continue are some of my favorite games of all time. But they are very rare. Most games do not warrant that level of difficulty at all.

I can play games for fun or sometimes for a challenge but there is, for me, no one way to do it. It's VERY game dependent.

I have to say, I loved Witcher 2, but never really found anything hard in it except the Kraken fight and once I realized it was just a trick that was easy too. Great game. It's one of the only RPG's I played last gen that really got it's hooks in me, so much so that I played it twice to see the other story. Usually I hate adventure games and just want pure action...I also generally don't give a shit about story all that much. But Witcher 2 clicked with me for some reason. I'm not sure what it was because I lent it out to some friends who were fans of the genre (Skyrim or Mass Effect type stuff that doesn't really appeal to me) and they didn't like it at all. Perhaps I just don't get that genre. Witcher 3 would be really appealing if I had a new console but that is not going to happen for some time.

Occasionally a game is so good that I play it on the hardest difficulty... I think Vanquish is the best example of that for me. I just adored that game, beat it like 6 times and played it on every difficulty available (the short length is one of the big reasons it's so re-playable). God I'd love a sequel to that on Wii U.

I'd just like them to release a PC port of Vanquish that supported mouse/keyboard as well as controller. I never got around to getting it on console because I suck so bad at aiming with a stick that I figured it wasn't worth it.

Speaking of more reasons why the WiiU is the best console of this generation, here's a half hour of gameplay from the new Fatal Frame game. This looks like a really fantastic use of the gamepad.

[youtube][/youtube]