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Tough Love - Can A Game Be Too Hard?
Thanks to Slate for its article discussing the excessive difficulty inherent in some videogames. The writer argues: "Some [games] are so freakishly, spoon-bendingly difficult that they take 10 hours of solid play before you've even begun to master the basics... I usually discard them in frustration after a couple of hours and wonder: What's the point? What adult has the time to master this stuff? Could it ever be worth it?" He continues: "The latest test of this thesis is Tecmo's new Ninja Gaiden, a game so punishing that even some hard-core players fear picking it up." Although the piece concludes: "Just because a game is hard doesn't mean it'll have a payoff", what games have you played that are insanely tricky to master?
The origianl Donkey Kong arcade game was impossible to beat. I don't know if you could even beat the game or if it had an ending. I had one in my basement and I spent endless hours trying to beat it.
I have been playing first person shooters since the genre was invented. I spend about our hour a day playing Quake 3 Arena online and I still get my ass kicked most of the time.
I think some people must have an innate ability to master some types of games and others need simple games to keep from getting frustrated.
Masochists like me keep trying.
It's worth it.
I got a copy of Ninja Gaiden right before I left for Europe for a year and since I was planning to leave my XBox behind I had 10 days to either finish it or leave it alone. I finished it, and man it was worth it. Once you master the game, you realize how good you are and it becomes just plain old fun. There is a certain satisfaction in kicking a boss' ass because you know YOU kicked his ass. The progression from button mashing to (pardon me here for a second) mad skillz is part of the fun.
I don't always want something like Ninja Gaiden, but getting to the end, unlocking the secret costume and playing the first few levels on the unlocked "Very Hard" setting... well worth it.
Says I, anyway.
Diddy Kong Racing was ungodly hard. I find that many kids games have this problem - they make the game hard for the playtesters, and forget that their target audience is 8-year olds.
The second problem is this - my Dad tried to play a modern action game once (and only once). This man is an optical physicist, so he's at least of reasonable intelligece, drives a stick, so he can handle complex controls, and races in go-kart tourneys, so he's got at least minimal reflexes. Modern games assume you've played every predecessor in the genre, so they've got such incredibly complex stacks of rules and are so baroque that it took me 5 minutes to explain the intricacies of the rules (let go of the throttle before you hit the dash zones and you go faster), and another 5 for him to get his hass kicked anyways. This piling of rules upon rules upon rules makes for a nasty barrier to entry.
When will they learn: the good games have simple basis/interface and intricate play, not vice-versa.
There's better ways around the difficulty problem than quicksave. For example, the extremely challenging shooter Ikaruga lets you play any level section you want from the main menu. You also have the option of playing it in slow-mo to work out technique, or watching a master play through the level.
Ikaruga gives you all the joy of getting better at the game, without replaying sections you can get through. The design is centered around this, actually - and it's pretty satisfying.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Gran Turismo (PS1) is probably the hardest game I've stuck with long enough to master and what that game teaches you is incredible -- like high-speed racing is all about braking, unless you are in a Suzuki Escudo PP, of course.
I recall one specific night shortly after I bought GT where all I did was drive a 1985 nissan 280 around the short Autumn track for *SIX* *HOURS*. After four hours or so, I was able to get all the way around without spinning out in the hairpins. The best part is that different cars really are different, so you have to take some time to learn how to drive the tracks all over again. After you put enough hours in, of course, you adapt to new cars more quickly, but the learning curve over those first few hurdles is immense.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
There are lots of different kinds of difficulty.
There is the kind where you must hone your skills to razor-sharp levels to defeat the game. In my opinion, thats fine (some people might not like it, but thats their problem).
On the other hand, there are the bad kinds of difficulty:
Too far between save points: In some games this is OK, but mostly it's annoying because nowadays I don't have the time to play in 3 hours segments that often anymore. Of course this is nowhere near as bad as it was in the megadrive/SNES era where it was common for a game to take 6+ hours to finish and have no save states, passwords, or anything.
Related to this, I'd like to take the opportunity to moan about "Viewtiful Joe". It's a lovely game, but has one really annoying feature. Every time you kill and enemy you get money to spend on powerups, which make the game easier. If however you turn off without finishing a level, you lose it all. Therefore my game playing tended to go:
Play for 3 hours, build up 150,000 points, turn off in frustration.
Turn back on, build up 20,000 points and finish level refreshed.
Meaning I end up low-powered for the next level. grr!
Impossible to survive first time: Lots of games face you with parts which are impossible (in my opinion) to pass first time, so you have to go along, die, and then repeat.
Save coins / get level-ups: Some games (like Final Fantasy) are "hard" because you have to every so often break off and spend 3 hours doing random battles to get harder. Almost no-one enjoys doing this, it's just extending the game in an un-natural way.
Poor controls: One big problem 3d games had for a long time was poor controls (although they are getting better). I don't mind dying in games, but I hate dying when I feel it wasn't my fault (see Tomb raider and stupid jumps, turning around oh-so-slowly in Resident Evil, etc.)
So to sum up (and is anyone still reading?) Difficulty is good, as long as it is actual skill-based difficulty and not some artifical hack to make finishing the game take longer
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling