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?

Comments

Origianl Donkey Kong Arcade game

[raminator]

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.

Quake

[HardYakka]

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.

Nethack

[tttonyyy]

It's pretty hard getting that @ down to level 20.

hey Beavis

[Anonymous Coward]

hey beavis, that kid sits in his basement all day long beating his donkey kong.

Two kinds of hard

[Apreche]

There are two kinds of hard. One is good, the other is not.

The first kind is the kind you get in a Zelda game. You need to beat a puzzle to proceed. The puzzle is a real mind bender. You sit there thinking and thinking, maybe even dying, and eventually you figure it out. These are good since your lack of skill keeps you from continuing. Also like in a space shooter, if you keep dying at a boss its because your twitch reflexes and button pressing isn't up to snuff, so you don't continue.

What is bad is when arbitrary information prevents you from continuing. For example a Resident Evil type game. Let's say you get to a point where you are completely stuck. There is no puzzle solving or skill shooting or anything like that which prevents you from going forth. It's simply that you don't know that widget X goes in thing Y. The only way to know is to read a FAQ or try everyting. This is stupid and bad game design. If you want someone to figure something out, it has to be in puzzle or riddle form. Don't just give the player stuff and force them to try every combination of places and things with no logic behind it. If there is no thinking or hand moving skill involved its not worth my time.

However, in games with the correct type of difficulty, crank it up all the way. I remember when saying you beat a game was a badge of honor. Sometimes you couldn't even repeat the feat. Seeing the ends of games, however crappy, was the best thing ever. We have to go back to those days. *cough* Silver Surfer *cough*

Re:Two kinds of hard

[Torgo's Pizza]

I've just got to tweak your post a bit. The "two kinds of hard" that you are describing are actually two schools of game design; logic and reflex. The degree to which they are implemented is difficulty.

Logic puzzles can be extremely simple to just bizarrely difficult. An example of simple logic in a game is a dark room with a switch on the wall. Turn on the switch you have light. Insane logic would be to coat the switch with peanut butter then hold out a ferral squirrel with tongs so the rabid rodent flips the switch. Reflex puzzles mostly involve timing and key combinations. Occasionally they can be mixed with simple logic puzzles to focus in on key areas, such as a glowing spot on an enemy to show their weak spot.

A game will fail when it fails to scale appropriately for the player or the logic used to arrive at an answer is actually in fact, illogical. You are absolutely correct when you state that often a player has to "brute force" his way to a solution. Proper game design shouldn't give an answer away, but instead offer enough clues along the way to offer a solution. Infocom games, while extremely difficult, were possible to solve because enough context and clues were given to solve any puzzle. Riven was horrible for just dumping a puzzle in front of a player and walking away without any explaination.

In the end, you want the player to use his reasoning and increased knowledge of button skill to solve the challenges in the game. It's often too easy to toss out a kick to the crotch to a player by using insane logic or immpossible foes. Difficulty comes through design, not through tricked up foes and puzzles.

Re:Insanely tricky

[minotaurcomputing]

Oh please! That game is soooo simple. The trick to winning is not to play the game.

Difficulty vs. challenge

[Airwall]

There's a big difference between something which is just "difficult" - e.g. loads of baddies, psychic enemy AI, and something which is a real challenge.

My main criterion is, when I've been killed by something/crashed into a wall/allowed the coloured blocks to stack up too high, whether I'm thinking, "Yeesh, not again! How was I supposed to see that coming?", or "My fault - should have been more catious".

I know it was insanely successful, but I got seriously pissed off with MOHAA because of the sniper sections. Everyone I've spoken to who played it agreed that the only way through was:

i) Walk into new area
ii) Wait to be shot
iii) Try and work out, as you die, where the sniper was
iv) Load save
v) Walk into area, already pointing the right direction and waste sniper.

This is a waste of my time. I want to feel that if I die, it's my fault, and that I could have done better. I don't want to end up feeling that the game designers just deliberately wasted me. As an example of what I do like, I'd suggest Deus Ex and (to a lesser extent) its sequel. I got blown away plenty of times in both games (on "hard" setting) but each time I knew what I should have been doing differently, and learnt a lesson that helped with the rest of the game.