Are Modern Games Too Easy?

bippy writes "Game critic Brian Crecente's weblog Red-Assed Baboon asks if modern video games are too easy. He argues, after playing the new Pitfall game, that what made the games from the '70s and '80s such as the original Pitfall! so much fun to play was 'because the game is so hard - brutally, temper-tamper inducing hard' - Crecente goes on to conclude: 'I'm not saying we should go back to the days of Donkey Kong and [the original] Pitfall!, but maybe developers need to worry a little more about challenging a gamer, instead of plopping them into something that is little more than an interactive movie'."

Comments

Obviously you haven't played

[Txiasaeia]

F-Zero GX. Most difficult game EVER. Check out some of the speed record vids - it's frecking amazing what these guys can do with an analog stick. The nice thing is the game is *fun* on Novice or Standard, challenging on Expert, and just this side of impossible on Master; there's always more to learn.

There's nothing more satisfying than boosting ahead of #1 racer at the end of the third lap of half-pipe in Emerald on Master (!), or nailing the turns and jumps on Serial Gaps. Unlocking racers, parts, even AX tracks (from the arcade machine) if you don't get arthritis first... It's even more fun tweaking your racer until the speed, weight, boost and accel are perfectly aligned with you and the universe.

Ah, crap... I was going to go to bed too :) Who needs sleep anyway?

Hard games?

[Cecil]

Try Chromatron if you're interested in a hard game. The best part? When you get bored of trying to beat level 50 (or 39, for that matter), there are two sequels of (I'm told) even more sleeplessness-inducing, head-banging, "this is god damn impossible, there's no way..."-mumbling fun.

That game has stolen countless hours of my life away, and I refuse to move on to the sequels until I complete levels 39 and 50. So there.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

The Demon Statue possesed Ryu Hayabusa's father, and Ryu kills him.

The problem isn't difficulty. Jumping over bottomless pits is in fact played out. As it turns out there is a difference between challenging and tedious. The originals are still fun because they're more than just the set of limitations to be excceded. They're also a time capsule, that allows us to reflect not only on the way things used to be but who we used to be before we grew up.

Read Tex's article.

[misfit13b]

Another article about the topic (focusing on quicksave/load) here.

Ninja Gaiden was just released...

[DeadScreenSky]

...so cease any complaints about games being too easy nowadays and go buy it instead. :D

(The best thing is how fair it feels, too.)