Challenging yet rewarding should be the name of the game, Devil May Cry 3 should be prime example of this where base game put you immediately on hard mode first. Special edition rolls out, more content and then Normal mode is actually Normal mode, giving a proper experience to play the game.
I think Doom: The Dark Ages has it right though. I personally love the idea of being able to make a custom difficulty for myself rather than have an experience that's either too easy or too hard. Being able to say I want fast projectiles that do a moderate amount of damage or I want slow projectiles that really deal a lot of damage that could potentially send me back to a checkpoint is a high luxury to me.
I generally prefer hard games, and pretty much always play games on the hardest difficulties (unless the hardest is some bullshit challenge troll difficulty, then I play on the second hardest). I truly believe to get the most out of a game, and experience it's mechanics to it's fullest, and see how all the systems really work together, you need to play games on their hardest difficulties.
Though there are some games I can't get the hang for/beat no matter how much I tried. Celeste, Ninja Gaiden Black, Sekiro...
I think Doom: The Dark Ages has it right though. I personally love the idea of being able to make a custom difficulty for myself rather than have an experience that's either too easy or too hard. Being able to say I want fast projectiles that do a moderate amount of damage or I want slow projectiles that really deal a lot of damage that could potentially send me back to a checkpoint is a high luxury to me.
I got attacked on Twitter hardcore for it, but I kind of hate that its going to have custom difficulty sliders. Sure, DOOM has always had difficulty options, but it's always been a defined, hand crafted, specific experience that expected players to learn some function of game mechanics to overcome. Investing in DOOM was rewarding, as you learned new strategies, secret areas, map traversal, and ammo conservation techniques. And it came to a peak with DOOM Eternal being the apex of games that encouraged player accountability, and engaging with it's systems to overcome a predefined challenge... to throw that away in The Dark Ages for player choice seems antithetical to what DOOM is to me.
There will be zero incentive to learn The Dark Ages mechanics with the difficulty slider. Why bother learning enemy attack patterns, or parry windows if you can adjust it on the fly?
It hurts the community aspect as well. There is no need to discuss strategies, or mechanics break downs if everyone is playing their own custom version of the game from start.
Some games are designed to be hard but are fun to play, others are hard but not fun.
People often say the challenge itself is fun but I kinda disagree with that: fun things are fun, challenging things are challenging.
Imagine, if you will, a game that every in-game minute remaps all your controls randomly. It may be Kirby Sweet Dream on Easyland or Darkborne III: Prepare to be Assblasted Edition. It will be hard and challenging but I don't think it will be fun.
Rule of thumb for me is: if game asks me to do X, I expect to get rewarded if I do X. If I do X but the game punishes me, I may not want to play the game anymore.
I like them very much but I hate when the hard difficulty is just more time wasting ,like more hp and better defence ,I like when the hard aspect of the game is actually part of the game design
I like them very much but I hate when the hard difficulty is just more time wasting ,like more hp and better defence ,I like when the hard aspect of the game is actually part of the game design
I generally prefer hard games, and pretty much always play games on the hardest difficulties (unless the hardest is some bullshit challenge troll difficulty, then I play on the second hardest). I truly believe to get the most out of a game, and experience it's mechanics to it's fullest, and see how all the systems really work together, you need to play games on their hardest difficulties.
Though there are some games I can't get the hang for/beat no matter how much I tried. Celeste, Ninja Gaiden Black, Sekiro...
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I got attacked on Twitter hardcore for it, but I kind of hate that its going to have custom difficulty sliders. Sure, DOOM has always had difficulty options, but it's always been a defined, hand crafted, specific experience that expected players to learn some function of game mechanics to overcome. Investing in DOOM was rewarding, as you learned new strategies, secret areas, map traversal, and ammo conservation techniques. And it came to a peak with DOOM Eternal being the apex of games that encouraged player accountability, and engaging with it's systems to overcome a predefined challenge... to throw that away in The Dark Ages for player choice seems antithetical to what DOOM is to me.
There will be zero incentive to learn The Dark Ages mechanics with the difficulty slider. Why bother learning enemy attack patterns, or parry windows if you can adjust it on the fly?
It hurts the community aspect as well. There is no need to discuss strategies, or mechanics break downs if everyone is playing their own custom version of the game from start.
To counter argue, not attack because I do think the Eternal argument is valid, I think the aspect of allowing us, the player to fine tune it to more of a Doom Eternal Experience or in my case, to tune it like a more Classic Doom experience should be welcomed. They said themselves that they'll have presets and the game will likely be balanced over those. Personally I didn't like the speed of Doom Eternal and how badly it relied on weapon swapping midway through a single encounter.
Very much why I hate Dark Souls 2 and love Dark Souls 3
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To counter argue, not attack because I do think the Eternal argument is valid, I think the aspect of allowing us, the player to fine tune it to more of a Doom Eternal Experience or in my case, to tune it like a more Classic Doom experience should be welcomed. They said themselves that they'll have presets and the game will likely be balanced over those. Personally I didn't like the speed of Doom Eternal and how badly it relied on weapon swapping midway through a single encounter.
Yea The Dark Ages very much feels like a game made for people who didn't like Eternal. Unfortunately, as someone who thinks Eternal is the best DOOM game, best FPS ever made, and very honestly may be the best game PERIOD ever made - I'm disappointed so far. But it is what it is. I'll still play the game. Hopefully I like it. If I don't, I'll just replay Eternal for the 100th time to drown my sorrows.
Either way, I'm not the biggest fan of custom difficulty sliders in general. It's basically playing a modded version of the game, and recommending playing a modded version of a game to somebody as a first time playthrough. You can't really get a proper understanding and feel for a game that way. How do you even discuss balance or design at that point?
It's one of the reasons why I love that Souls games don't have a difficulty select at all. Everyone has the same base experience, and everyone needs to learn how the game functions in the same way to get through the game. The variances come through in builds and stats, but the core mechanics of the game are the same for every player. And that's awesome to me.
A hard game? It's okay if it's done right but being hard for its own sake isn't really all that hard to do. Much harder to create a feeling of balance involving risk vs reward and making that meaningful. I think a lot of people fail to realize that good game design determines the outcome here. A game can be hard without being rewarding. It's all about that sweet progression
I like them if they are done right.
Like Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) or midnight club 2. I found those games hard, but rewarding, especially Midnight Club 2.
But if it's just inflated health/damage or "just put as many spikes as you can" in a platformer, it's trash and an absolute waste of time
For me, it depends. Usually enjoy games that are to me fairly balanced, e.g. Normal difficulty or games that don't even describe their difficulty rating. In most of those cases the games are challenging enough to be engaging with my in game abilities. But I've played difficult games before. Asides from the accomplishment of getting past them, I don't enjoy them as much as what I consider fairly balanced games.
Really I've always thought that as long as the game generally feels good, whether the game is hard or not doesn't really matter too much. I've probably played about as many games that were ruined by being way, way to easy as I have games that were ruined by a frustratingly high difficulty.
I like when games are a challenge as a way to make you feel accomplished, make you try, and help you remember the experience. I do not like difficulty just for difficulty's sake.
This is like the key point to talk about whenever 'difficulty' discussions come up. Like, it all depends on artistic intent at the end of the day. If a game is intended as difficult and it succeeds, then hell yeah. If a game is intended to be completely unfair, then god speed. Vice versa as well, if a game is intended to be a cakewalk then I respect the dev that makes it happen. Whether it's satisfying to you or anyone as a player is a separate conversation. That would just be a conversation on personal preferences akin to stating your favorite genres of music. (I'm not tryna dog on ppl for talking abt their difficulty preferences, OPs question is pretty open ended, love yall )
There is certainly a disconnect when a game has no intentionality in regards to difficulty, yet swings too far in either direction of being too easy or too hard. It can feel unfocused, but I'd posit that it CAN (not always, not usually) be camp. Tbh I'm kinda just stating that because I feel it to be true, so don't hold me on anything lol. Like when I think about camp in other media, I think about art made by a creator with a certain intention. But that intention isn't met, either because it misses the mark or, more likely in the case of camp, it swings too far in the 'opposite' direction in tone/production/technical skill/etc. The difference here is that with a 'difficult' movie, the viewer doesn't FEEL the difficulty nearly as much as one would a video game. Like if you popped in a game clearly meant for small children and it turns out to be stupid difficult for no god damn reason, you're gonna feel that difficulty like nothing else. But I'd say that hypothetical kids game, on top of being frustrating, would also be camp! I think. I dunno, I think I gotta think more on what it means to be a camp video game (specifically in regards to mechanics and gameplay, it's a lot easier to achieve campiness thru schlocky narrative).
I like hard video games. I can't say I like playing ever game that is hard, but I want games to be played. I'm also of the mind that not every game needs an easy mode.
Challenge is good and something that's hard to come by these days, especially in action games. In Ninja Gaiden (Black) the real game starts at Very Hard and Master Ninja, everything else is just warm-up. A shame you can't unlock it from a fresh save for returning players.
As I get older and have less and less time to stumble through difficult games, I find myself pulling up guides a lot more often.
As for technically difficult games, if I get too stuck, I either come back to it later or just never finish it. I was stuck on Maliketh in Elden Ring for a really long time. It was over a year before I went back to it to try again, and got it within a few tries(with summon help).
I don't have time to develop the muscle memory to 'git gud'.
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