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Are Games Getting Easier?
grumpyman writes "A Tom's Hardware article posits that game are getting easier and less satisfying.
From the article: 'I've had Super Mario Bros for about 12 years and every time I pass that final Bowser stage, I still get a great sense of satisfaction. In contrast, when I conquer a game from this era, I just feel relieved that it's over.'"
Yes, but who cares? just crank up the difficulty and set your own limits(try playing all the way through saving only at the beginning of each map, for example). People that do speed runs are a good example, you have to become almost godlike at a game in order to do a good speed run, it's challenging and competitive.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
I've played many difficult modern games. Most of them are simply just difficult, aka tactical shooters. They might be fun after months of practice. While pac-man is fun the first time you play it, and not frustrating like many modern games are.
Are you really feeling that excitment from bowser? Or just your 12 year old self from the past.
The story has a bad example because Super Mario Brothers is one of the greatest games ever. It's like saying, "I just watched Star Wars again and that movie still gives me the chills, science fiction movies of today aren't as entertaining." I'm willing to bet that if you were to say "an average game from 15 years ago is harder than average game today" I don't think that is true. I can think of some really challenging games that are out now, super monkey ball 2 for the cube is tough, beating the developer ghosts on mario kart dd is hard, etc.
This reminds me of the poorly-written essays I wrote in high school. Some author gets the idea in their head that, after playing video games for 15 years, they've become "too easy", and sets out to tell you why. I can tell you that while I found Metroid Prime and Super Mario Sunshine to be fun but hardly insurmountable challenges, they are real struggles for my 10 year old, who can barely make his way through them.
The author needs to remember that he's a grown-up, and I'd prefer that it's reflected in his writing.
(And how could anyone say that the first Legend of Zelda is some immense challenge compared to any of the later ones?)
I don't think that gameplay is any easier today, but what makes modern games "easier" is how you can save in the middle of the game. Back in the olden days, if you wanted to beat a game, you had to do it in one sitting. You only had a limited number of lives, and an equally limited number of continues. Use them all up and it's back to level one for you. The Ninja Gaiden games were probably the biggest offender in this catagory. They were freaking hard, and relatively long. Beating them felt like an epic victory because you were mentally and physically exhausted from playing them. That combined with frustration of the several times before that when you made it all the way to the ending boss but fell just short of beating him. Now, I'm not saying that it's plausable for today's 50 hour games to not employ a save feature, but it sometimes just doesn't feel the same when you're allowed to go one level at a time with as many chances as you want until you accomplish the level, and then you can move on. With the older games, you had to do everything perfectly in a row, mess up one link in the chain and you were done. Beating those games truly felt like victory.
Tom obviously hasn't played Ninja Gaiden for Xbox.
This article doesn't seem to realize just how bad some of the trends whose passing he laments actually were. A game that forces you to start over doesn't make the endgame sweeter- it just generates a sense of tremendous frustration as several hours of progress is now completely wasted, and makes the earlier segments of the game unbearable as the player sees them over and over and over again. And "determine what you need to do next with very little in-game help" usually meant "Methodically try every single item in your inventory, then every pair of items in combination, until it works for a reason that may not be clear even after the fact". Game designers have realized that their aim is not to defeat the player and force him to give up as Tom seems to think is ideal, but rather to give the player an interactive escapist experience to partake of for a few hours, nothing more.
You know, for every person who beat Super Mario or whatever, there were half a dozen who just got frustrated and stopped playing because they couldn't make it past a certain point. I think to some extent, game developers have realized this and are targeting people who want to have a bit of a challenge, not drive themselves nuts.
... It _may_ be satisfying when you win, but it's very annoying to get there. Are 15 hours of frustration worth the rush when you win? Games 'back in the day' had a poor balance, often because of technological limitations.
Compare how many times you've thrown an NES controller in frustration to the number of times you've thrown an XBOX or PS2
And sometimes tedious repetition just because you keep flubbing one jump, or the boss uses cheap one-shot-kill tactics detracts from satisfaction. When you finally get past it, you're more irritated than triumphant, and you never, ever want to pick up the game again and have to get through that part.
Anyhow. Unrelated to the above, but related to my subject, the author has clearly never _played_ The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, if he thinks it's just some kid game. It's an innovative two-player game that requires coordination and a fair amount of puzzle solving and skill. Bosses require thought to figure out how to harm them, and the courses are timed; you can't just dally for an hour figuring out puzzles, or repeating it until you get it right. And it's quite exhilirating to squeak past the finish line before time runs out. If he hadn't dismissed it as a degraded platformer, he might've realized it's more or less everything he'd been looking for.
Judging from the article I'm a casual gamer (Despite the fact that I can and have played through HL 2 and Doom 3 as soon as the came out. Without cheating. I have also played a lot of very cerebral games. Rarely using a hint guide.).
I think it's good that most games allow me to save before important fights. I think end bosses are a stupid idea in the first place (Just like I laugh at any Pen&Paper GM who places them at the lowest level of the dungeon. Ridiculous.). I don't think the player needs to be punished when he makes a mstake, rewarding him when he does right is better. etc.
Well, I thought, he does sound like a very bitter gamer, who knows he's right and can't believe someone might disagree, but I don't think he should be left without games he likes. So maybe I'd suggest again the idea of having difficulty settings for allowing to save. Or hope that more publishers would carry what he called "old-school" games. A sensible compromise, based on the demographic, can surely be reached. Then, I read this:
"There has to be some kind of compromise that we can reach. We certainly need those casual gamers to add to the mix of the gaming community, but we can't let them dominate the kinds of games that are released."
Any you know what?
I think he's an asshole, because he thinks the overwhelming majority of players shouldn't be deciding what games get made in the majority? Don't tell me he believes there are more hardcore players than casual ones either, that would really screw the meaning of hardcore, y'know?
So, I conclude, choice is good and people like to play their games differently, so there ought to be more of each type + new and experimental ones, but having the hardcore gamers as target audience near exclusively, as he suggests, is dumb (Because it doesn't pay), arrogant (because he is right and the majority would get it wrong, because they like it wrong) and, foremost, insulting.
For those of you who never say Chasing Amy, when Hooper X made the following speech about Star Wars, it struck me deeply. Because some of it(take out the epithets) is exactly how I felt about the original trilogy.
"It's always some white boy got to invoke the holy trinity. Bust this! Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother-man down--even in a galaxy far far away. Check this shit. You got cracker farmboy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy blond hair blue eyes. Then you got Darth Vader, blackest brother in the galaxy. Nubian god!
Now. Vader, he's a spiritual brother, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker Skywalker gets his hands on a lightsaber, and the boy decides HE'S gonna run the whole fucking universe! Gets a whole KLAN of whites together and they go bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star! Now what the fuck do you call that?
Gentrification!! They gonna drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote-unquote safe for white folks! In "Jedi," the most insulting installment when Vader's beautiful black visage is SULLIED when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty old white man! They trying to tell us that deep inside, we all wants to be WHITE!!!"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano