Game Essentials - 20 Difficult Games

Last week, in a discussion of the essentials of game design by John Harris, Gamasutra posted a list of twenty really difficult games. It's interesting not only for the purposes of the article (examining the concept of challenge in game creation) but also simply as a personal scorecard for your own gaming career. My personal albatross: "8. Monkey Ball, a.k.a. Super Monkey Ball. Putting that monkey in the ball may have been a whimsical masterstroke, but don't let it fool you. This game is hard. Design lesson: If you're going to make a super hard game, make it fair. No one thinks Monkey Ball is unfair. There is no randomness. Everything that happens is a direct result of the player's actions, and there are no hidden portions of the level waiting to destroy the player. It's not like a boss enemy with secret attacks the player couldn't possibly survive the first time seeing it. It's not only possible to reach and finish Monkey Ball's Master levels, but it could be done on one's first try. Winning the lottery is more likely, but it's possible." How many have you mastered?

Comments

Ikaruga

[benbean]

It made me sit through eleven pages only to find Ikaruga wasn't on the list. Pah.

The TMNT game for NES

[EraseEraseMe]

Now that game was F'ing hard. I could finish every other game on the NES we had in my youth, except that one. Getting to the technodrome, with it's one hit kills and various baddies was hard enough. Shredder then would proceed to live up to his namesake and spit out a gutted turtle corpse. It wouldn't be so bad if you could restart from where you lost your original turtle, but no such luck. Back to the beginning of the level you went, often with the weakest turtle to fight Shredder with.

Re:FOSS classics

[Mprx]

Just because you suck at Nethack, doesn't make it "difficult".

Hardest Game Ever...

[blahlemon]

...Duke Nukem Forever Why do you think it hasn't been release to the general population.

Re:Hardest Game Ever...

[PFI_Optix]

So now games have five difficulty levels:

Easy
Normal
Hard
Impossible (but not really)
So hard you can't actually play it, we'll just TELL you it's hard.

Sort of like Brockian Ultra Cricket when you think about it.

Try Battletoads

[Alicat1194]

The only time I ever managed to get past the first speeder bike level was when I accidentally hit a level warp (and got sucked into a surfing level, where I was quickly killed off)

Got to say it did wonders for the heart rate though - no need to exercise, just play Battletoads and watch it go!

You won't see any more of these.

[Fross]

Oh for the days, when computer games rewarded ability rather than perseverance.

Computer games used to be about developing a skill, playing it until you got sufficiently good that you were able to complete something on a higher level. Nowadays, it's about who can put the most amount of time into a game. The difficulty level is a gentle gradient if not entirely flat.

Compare modern games to the simplest and most iconic of old games - Pac-man. It only had one level, one playing level. One! Yet the same level played again and again, with increasing difficulty. Faster ghosts, less time on power-pills, etc etc. The only way you would see level 20 was if you were good enough to beat level 19, and that was damn hard.

Compare to games these days, such as the GTA series, Half-life 1 and 2, Halo, World of Warcraft, whatever. The end of these games is not significantly different in difficulty from the beginning. The last levels involve generally the same baddies, but more of them, and you have bigger weapons to handle them. The experience is constant throughout the cycle of the game, so that a little perseverance will reward you with progress.

Why is this? Games are now a much bigger proposition, and the audience is wider. And the audience wants easy gratification and no frustration. Sure, it's meant to be entertainment, not a challenge. But for many of us, the entertainment is in the challenge and ultimately, surpassing it.

I remember spending ages playing Pac-man, Defender and the rest as a child trying to defeat the higher levels. When you achieve something you hadn't done before through your own skill and ability it's far more rewarding than just cruising through it.

Games are about perceived value now, and someone who fails to finish a game will not have gained that full "value" from it. So games are tailored so almost every user can finish it, that Bob the Button Masher will be able to work his way to the end and see all the pretty bits eventually as long as he doesn't run out of Cheetos in the meantime. But this is at the cost of a real sense of progression and challenge, and hence accomplishment, by those of us dedicated enough to put the effort in to get good at something.

Many games used to be open-ended, with just increasing skill levels and no defined end. I guess this got past that problem as every level was a measure of ability and a goal in itself. You can defeat it on level 15? Well I can get to level 20.

Games used to be closer to a martial art (simply in terms of dedication, application and training), now they feel more like a particularly wimpy yoga session, where as long as you can make it through the time, you can say you've completed it.

(No offence to any yogaers out there, you know what I mean)

Re:You won't see any more of these.

[kisrael]

I've been a classic gamer for a long, long time, I was posting on r.g.v.c. since like '93 or so...

Here's the thing: games now have distinct content, lots of it, not just one playfield or enemy set speeded up.

(Ideally, this content involves new interactions, i.e. involving programmers as well as designers, not just the artists saying "well, here's a 'new city' to 'explore')

So people want to get the game that they pay for. Me, and maybe it's a personal fault throughout many aspects of my life, I don't like challenge for its own sake. I want to play with novel interactions in as economical a way as possible. (And, oddly, the time a game uses is counted both towards its cost and its benefit)

Most games, especially sandbox ones, will have some rewards for the really dedicated and skilled player, or at least have challenges so such a player can self-motivate and have something to do. And now you even have youtube and specialty sites to show off your 'l33t skillz. Quit griping that big chunks of content aren't being created (and tested) just for you and your dedicated little band...

Re:You won't see any more of these.

[brkello]

I think what you wrote is a load of crap. Pac-man is in a different genre than the games you are talking about. It belongs in the puzzle game category with games like Tetris or even guitar hero. Can you beat all the songs at 100% on the hardest level? I bet you can't. For that genre, you have simple gameplay that gets progressively harder. Comparing this to World of Warcraft and Half-life is silly.

World of Warcraft is based on an RPG. As long as you keep at it, you will progress in this game to the max level. It slowly introduces skills to you so by the time you are max level, it is actually a lot more complex than when you first started out. Also, there is challenge when encountering new raid instances. Of course, most of the strategies are written online before you get a chance...but it is still difficult to implement a strategy with X other people in the group.

Half-life is an FPS...and if you think the game in the beginning is as easy as it is by the end...then maybe you should to replay it. As you play the game, you get much better at it. On a normal difficulty setting, they try to pace the action so you learn at about the same rate the difficulty increases. Try the game at the hardest setting and you get a real challenge. Say you master that...then you move on to multiplayer where the potential challenge has no limit.

Yeah, I have been playing games since the NES days and I know how hard a lot of those games were. But the big change isn't that they have gotten easier, it is that designers have implemented multiple levels of skill so that their game can be enjoyed by the hardcore and the casual alike. If you long for the challenge of old games...play every game on the hardest skill level from the start.

Re:You won't see any more of these.

[vecctor]

These two comments seem to contradict each other:

Oh for the days, when computer games rewarded ability rather than perseverance. and

Computer games used to be about developing a skill, playing it [for hours and hours, repetively] until you got sufficiently good that you were able to complete something on a higher level. Nowadays, it's about who can put the most amount of time into a game. (bold statement added by me - but it is accurate)

Old games were TOTALLY about perseverance. You had to play that game to death until you mastered every move and memorized every aspect of every enemy. You talk about putting time in with current games, so what do you call the constant pracice/replaying to get good in the older ones?

I don't think that type of gameplay was all that great, and it certainly required MORE time and was less interesting than current games.

Not hard

[Pancake Bandit]

I don't really understand the purpose of this list. At least the author doesn't pretend that these are the 20 hardest games ever, just 20 difficult games. Mischief Makers, even getting all the gold gems, was a bit of a challenge but not an extremely frustrating one. Lolo wasn't that much harder than a lot of puzzle games I've played. A few of the games on the list were only difficult because they suffered from poor gameplay, silly programming decisions or lousy instructions.

toughest ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting laid.

The Incredible Machine...

[benfinkel]

...and it's sequels. Those games were brutal!

How about "In Search of the Most Amazing Thing"? Anyone remember that? I remember finding the most amazing thing and then being killed by one of those monsters-disguised-as-a-fueling-rock on my way back to home base. Jerk.

Battletoads

[Databass]

My brother and I could beat Battletoads for the old NES. As if that weren't enough, we could beat it beat it playing straight through the twelve levels (ie, not warping.) On top of that, we did in two-player mode- ie, if one person failed, we both failed. Well, up until the second to last level that is. (The game cartridge has a bug on the clinger-winger stage where if you are playing two-player, player two loses control.) Looking back, I honestly can't believe we ever did that.

Battletoads starts out survivable and fun on stages one and two. Then on stage three, the speed bikes in the Turbo Tunnel, is as far as I'd estimate 9 out of 10 people will ever get. Walls come at you at maybe 60 miles per hour and you have to twitch your way around them. You have maybe a second of lead time.

Ice Cave- Slide around dangerous spikes
Water Surfing- Surf around logs, beat very large and dangerous boss who can flatten you in one hit
Snake Cave- Jump between spikes on giant metal snakes, finding difficult paths through
Jets- Fly between tiny holes in the fire
Tunnels- swim and jump through more dangerous spikes
Rat Race- Race a rat downwards between girders to a bomb at the bottom. If he gets there first you die.
Clinger Wingers- Suction cup unicycles. Outrun a deadly ying yang. If you twitch a corner just right you gain .1 seconds.
Twisty Tower- a rotating 360 degree tower. To fall is to die. Climb to the top and defeat the Dark Queen.

I couldn't beat Battletoads today except in an emulator with Quicksave and Quickload. I have NO idea how we did twelve stages back to back where the slightest wrong twitch meant death. It reminds me of doing twelve complicated, difficult and dangerous circus tricks with no net, in game terms anyway.