I don't care what game it is or what genre if there is a difficulty option i always choose the hardest
Yes even if it's my first playthrough i ALWAYS choose "hard" i did it in my first half life playthrough admittedly it wasn't my first FPS so i had experience
BUT even with 0 idea what's this about like Silent Hill and survivor horror i still choose hard from the get go , this meant i died 5 times to the flyer in the Cafe , partially because it was a new stressful situation , too panicked that i forgot what button to shoot , and died too fast to realize what happened
HOWEVER Silent Hill on Hard is a great experience , i went into the game thinking I'm gonna beat every monster i see and this resulted in over 50% of the game played with me using the Pipe to beat monsters , i did softlock myself in the 3rd bossfight instead of restarting i downloaded cheats and counted 30 pistol bullets once i shoot them all i had to use melee , the game however wanted to make my life harder and when i turned off the ammo cheat after i won the fight the game took out 7 bullets out of my only remaining clip so i ended up with 5 pistol bullets which I consider a fair trade for not wanting to restart the entire game again , what i learned was very valuable in survival horror you RUN a lot you "try" to ignore that thing hostile to you for me it's too difficult and stressful to ignore monsters I'm just not comfortable working in an environment with hostiles or monsters nearby but at the same time it adds to the horror and fear!
I played every Resident Evil game I played on hard without hesitation even after the softlock in SH1 i didn't struggle much with this one but 1st Chris playthrough required a lot of restraint , i did run out of pistol ammo in RE3 after the clock tower section so i traversed the garden by avoiding everything (it was trial and error) , in RE2 i got screwed like 5 times by the first licker and it didn't help my health was yellow.....i may play on hard but I'm not particularly skilled
I played Call of duty games on veteran as a first playthrough 10/10 experience i recommend it especially COD 1
System shock 2 the same happened , choose impossible from the get go the first playthrough was easier early on compared to my 2nd playthrough which i posted some pics from it in the screenshot thread
The Only game i choose to play medium difficulty is Sudden Strike mainly because how absurd highest difficulty mode is i first played hard or in SS2 case "general" there are 4 difficulty modes in SS2 named recruit , private , officer , general each mode gives different perks for one side so in recruit (very easy) and private (easy) the player army is more tanky and deals more damage , in officer (medium) the game offers the most fair and balanced experience in not giving any player unnatural advantages or extra armor or whatever , and general (hard) gives the AI those same perks and overpowered stat boosts you get in recruit difficulty
Now when i discoverd the difficulty modes i choose general and thought that it's the most fair mode , but years later (some 3 years ago) i decided to test how "fair" this difficulty is by making units of the same type fight each other and turns out enemy units even if they were the same as my units somehow fared better......i tested it again in officer mode and the game actually made a lot more sense , not to mention hard difficulty is extremely frustrating to work with because it decreases line of sight in a game where everything is blind so you end up wasting a lot of time on what would be trivial or hardly worth the effort matters on other difficulties
So yeah i went with normal and medium because they ensure no side gets nonsensical buffs like legit on hard difficulty a enemy T34-85 tank could and can destroy/cripple my panther tank but if we switch sides suddenly my T34-85 is one shotted by the panther like how? This type of nonsense is so off putting and adds a unnecessary layer of difficulty that can be achieved by more creative means
Sigh this post is long enough but i guess you already get the point if it's not blatant enemy cheating or some stupid nonsense like above i always pick up games on hard