"Life's a journey, not a destination" - Steven Tyler
I've said as a criticism of many games, "games are meant to be played" or "I like to play my games, not watch them" and a major part of that is the difficulty of the game and how challenging it is.
I'm by no means an expert gamer, just ask anyone who knows me. What I am is a walking talking encyclopaedic of game story (which is mostly because I love looking for hidden secrets and that I read everything that there is to read within the game). So when I can perfectly complete a game on a high difficulty I ask serious questions. Maybe it's just my experience with games and the "gamer sense" that all gamers get over time; like coming to a fork in the road and releasing that in one direction is probably a side objective or a secret. But games are getting easier, and more story/cinematic based. So, what do I think of these, am I grabbing the bars of the cage and shouting out, or am I welcoming easier games with open arms. Well sit back, put some tunes on and come with me on a journey on my thoughts on difficulty in games.
And as always, spoilers!
Tid til å se filmen - Time to watch the movie
One defence of easy video games is so the gamer can experience more of the story in the game rather than losing all the time and getting frustrated in the playing of the same section over and over again. A fair point in my opinion. If a game is story based and you're in the middle of a very cinematic game play where a lot of things are being revealed to the player, it would be a pain in the ass to play the section about five times because you weren't fast enough. But. This to me sounds like an excuse for particular sections, sections which you couldn't tell the difference between game-play or cut-scene.
Example if you will; The beginning of Mass Effect 2 during the destruction of the SSV Normandy.
Imagine how annoying it would be, if you made your way to the bridge and you stopped to look up and into space, when you didn't see an oxygen meter running down, and you suffocate, forcing you to replay the section again from the lower deck. Annoying, right? There it could be forgiven. You want the player the ability to look around for a bit, without having stress about dying so soon.
But say if during the Shadow Broker DLC, during the car chase, was impossible or fail, or crash during it. Taking away all the suspense and turning it into merely an interactive cut scene. I would most certainly be disappointed.
And that's the key of the subject, should video games be an interactive movie experience, impossible to fail, but able to craft in your own way? Or should video games have a large sense of challenge and over coming that challenge? Surely that conflict is present in many different media's, not just gaming.
For this, Id refer to quite a peculiar example... Pokemon.
Only recently have I completed my first Pokemon game. Not because of difficulty (although I did find the elite four quite a challenge and always do) but I'll come to that later. The elite four portray a unique form of difficulty, the challenge. Yes, you might have made it to the last part with maybe only losing one or two battles the entire time. But here it is, the final challenge. To overcome this challenge, you may wish to put more time into, training up your Pokemon while jumping through the story line hoops along the way, like facing team rocket or other gangs. But taking down the grunts of these organisations isn't viewed as easy, it's viewed as necessary, in order to get more XP allowing later challenges to become easier. Here you have a decent blend of "easy" game play and story.
Having a hard time, are we?
On the subject of Pokemon, I found quite a telling version of difficulty, represented, by experience level. Sure, if you go up against trainers that have higher level Pokemon than yourself, you're going to run into a little difficulty, but the thing is, They're not the highest level Pokemon in the game, in fact in some cases they're quite far from it. You, if you put in the time, can have a more powerful team making these challenges far more easier.
At the moment on Pokemon Sapphire, my team is a far lower level than the team of the final trainer. By about 10 levels in some cases. Problem being (and I've worked it out) It would take 4 hours of constant battling for one of my Pokemon to go up 10 levels, this frankly is just time I don't have.
Another example if you will, my second favourite game of all time, Fable.
Now, Fable isn't necessarily a difficult game, however it is compared to other games in the franchise. But anyway, Fable also has different experience levels and you can gain experience via doing different tasks, for example, going into the same area a couple of times and getting XP from killing different monsters. Fail a mission cause an enemy was too difficult, well you can restart from before you started and go and get more XP and make yourself more powerful. You put the time in, you can defeat the game more easier. Some view this as a time filler, I view it as a legit way of doing difficulty. Want to beat the game? Put the time in to become more powerful.
But, as always some games can get difficulty wrong, or just underestimate the power of their own game. For me, there's a game which highlights difficulty done wrong. And hopefully, this might raise a few eyebrows but raise a fair point at the same time.
Enter Black and White.
This game, around about the 4th island did a double back flip in terms of difficulty. It became a peaceful game, which could be approached at your own pace at times, (as long as you didn't let down your guard) and then BANG! Oh my god, flee, flee for your lives! It turned from, wow, this is quite the beautiful world (even though it's graphics are quite dated by current standard) into hell on a screen. Fire balls constantly (and I really mean, constantly) raining from on-high, thunderbolts periodically hitting a building which you need to protect and a dark red which petrifies everyone in your village. It's no joke that if you don't know exactly what to do at the time, you might as well accept the game over and start from scratch.
This sharp incline in difficulty has meant that I've had to replay hours of game play just to figure out what the hell to do. All hours which I enjoyed playing, but still. There's no feedback to how to defeat this threat, it's all learned by experience, almost as if the developers wanted you to play the game again. Would have been much simpler to give feedback to the player at the time. It's one thing over coming the challenge, it's another to at the same time figure out what the challenge is in the first place.
But I don't wanna play the game, I wanna watch the story.
So, a new game comes out. Bioshock infinite for example and you listen to reviewers who actually know what they're talking about and it springs up that the game play isn't all that great. Still a great story, but the game is a little lacking. So you do one of two things. You watch the game being played on Youtube, that way, you get the telling of the story without having to waste time and money by getting an only half decent game. Or, you buy the game anyway, and only play through for the story. Both are fair, both do nothing to back up that games need to get harder.
The worst by far, is buying the game anyway. You should have realised by now that it's rare for game developers to directly listen their fans. Mostly they listen to the the numbers, and the numbers listen to the money. You buy a shit game, unless thousands all speak up saying the game is shit, you're encouraging this behaviour.
Watching the game on youtube, doesn't do as much damage, but well... By saying that you're only in it for the story, the game developers will listen, best way to deal with players only wanting to see the story is to only have more story and less gameplay. You'd think they'd do the clever thing of actually working on the gameplay and make it better, but it seems a lot of game developers are not as clever as we hope.
But that's the double edged sword. An example of this. Fable 3.
I won't give a picture cause It don't deserve one.
So, Fable 2 game along and the everyone said "but the gameplay isn't as good as it used to be". And the apparent way of dealing with this was the bright idea of making the game play even worse, taking out all forms of difficulty in order to have more story. A shame, a crying shame.
But, I'm a God, why is this Mud-Crab's power level over 9000?
There's only one example that I can think of in example where gameplay negatively effects the game play, other than being shit. And that's the "rags from riches" story line. For this I use Darksiders as an example.
So, you play as one of the Horsemen of the apocalypse, a total bad ass incarnate and then you're striped of your power, forced to reclaim it via going on a long winded journey of self discovery and a path of vengeance. Problem is, yes, you've been striped of some of your power. But you've still got all that experience, which no one could take away and there it is. A low-level demon in comparison, is stronger than the horsemen of the apocalypse. Brilliant, just grand. It seems like a forced form of strategy.
So, should we, burn all easy games at the stake, refuse to play "easy" games any more Of course not. There are evident examples of a perfect mix of gameplay and story. Mass Effect being a great example, however it's also clear that ME1 is a thousand times harder on higher difficulties than ME3. But I think it's bearable.
So should we burn easy games at the stake? Of course not, but we need to let game developers know that we;re on the lookout for a more fulfilling gameplay experience We want things to change. We want to play our games, not watch them. If we wanted to watch games, we'd buy the Xbox: One.
That's my thoughts on difficulty in video games, If you think I've missed something or think I'm wrong in general, let me know. And if you have any positive or negative responses, let me know in the comments bellow.
My name's been ThespainHunter. I've got Balls of Steel. and Ill see you next time.
