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Archives => GW Blog => Community Content => Blog: Games => Topic started by: Sarevok on February 25, 2008, 05:26:59 am
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Recently I purchased Sins of a Solar Empire, some new space strategy game that (wrongly) claims to seamlessly blend 4x with RTS. I ain't gonna go into some big review about it but the short of it is after only playing a couple of games to familiarise myself to it I'm absolutely slamming the computer, even on the allegedly 'hard' mode. And it got me thinking; Are any games genuinely challenging these days?
Now I'm not saying a mind-bogglingly painful stampede through the gates of hell and back again armed only with a used bus ticket and a copy of the Sunday Times is going to be a particularly joyful experience, but come on at least give me something taxing that'll keep me from turning into some mindless rupee collecting vegetable. These days it's all about 'scaling' the difficulty to make it completable by the mainstream 'tards that are still stuck looking for the [any] key on the windows start up screen, and it's really destroying the games for the people who they were originally made for. It's really prevalent in the PC gaming scene these days (I don't play consoles so much anymore so I can't speak too much for them) but it is generally due to the horrible syndrome we're currently experiencing known as 'cross-platform'. It's a great idea for the console fans; get to play PC titles on their giant 4642 inch widescreen TVs. What happens to the PC game? It's dumbed down to the point of idiocy and becomes far less enjoyable than it should be. It's really not that hard to see how a ramp up in difficulty would've made a lot of titles over the last couple of years so much more intense and enjoyable, and without alienating the 'mainsteam'.
Crysis...it's 5 hours long. Five hours. £40 for 5 hours. Yeah the MAXIMUM POWER suit is pretty cool, but it's just God Mode in another form. Getting shot at from 20 guys by shotguns in your face? No problem! Stealth in front of them and they'll stop and spark up a ciggie and then go and watch EastEnders whilst you flee for the treeline and pull out your uber powerful godly rifle with every attachment you could ever want As it's accessible from the start until the point at which you no longer need normal guns it also makes every other gun inferior (and consequently is a better gun than every single bad guy you will face) Fun? Kinda. Would be more fun if it felt like the AI actually had a single weapon in it's arsenal that could stop you, then you might actually have to play sensibly instead of throwing MAXIMUM STRENGTH trolleys in their face.
Prey. Oh Prey how you failed me so badly. Don't get me wrong; I really, really loved Prey. But then something happened. About 3 hours into the game I cocked up and was taught the feeling of having my head separated from the rest of my body. Now just before I go to hit the quick load button what happens? I'm transported to the spirit realm where I have to shoot a couple of spirits with my bow and all of a sudden I'm back where I died with full health and power. There's no prizes for guessing what that did to my playing style...I got reckless. No longer did I care about dying, because it didn't matter. I would kamikaze everything and be frankly stupid and careless and just respawn if things got out of hand. I couldn't help myself because I really did not give a crap about dying anymore. The game ceases to be scary, challenging or more importantly fun after you realise death doesn't matter and it completely ruined the game. How to fix Prey? Crank up the difficulty by remove free respawns. When you felt helpless and were desperately trying to survive the game was fun. When you didn't it wasn't.
Couldn't leave out Bioshock could I? It's a wonderfully atmospheric game with remarkably good scripting and voice acting for an FPS, but why did it take a beating after the initial hype-filled 10 year olds went back to their halo deathmatches? It turns everything that should be a challenge into something you don't think twice about. Golden highlights on 'important' items, giant compass markers, near unlimited supplies of health, EVE and ammo, pretty much no negative consequences for either of the story 'paths', and in case you're really struggling we give you Free Unlimited Respawn Powers(TM) (Sound familiar?). A bunch of unnecessary features that made the game 'easier to play' for the console fans, and completely ruined the game for the *Shock fans. Hooray for Average Joe! Again not caring about death ruins the game. At first you'll reload..after a while you'll just keep respawning. System Shock 2 had it right. Desperately struggling for health and ammo the entire game made you feel vulnerable, and you could respawn but it cost you a fraction of your credits to do it. Yeah it was essentially infinite respawn in SS2, but nobody really did it because there was actually an incentive to not die.
Command and Conquer 3. At first I loved this but before I even knew which end of the gun to point at the enemy GDI command decided to throw me the Mammoth Tanks. What does Nod have to stop the GDI from their 30-strong Mammoth Tank rush (note: Mammoth Tanks when upgraded have double railguns which are lethal against buildings, infantry and vehicles. And missiles, which are lethal against air units.) Nothing. They might as well take their nucl--tiberium missiles and launch them at themselves for all the good they do. In an instant you go from playing a semi-strategic RTS which actually plays pretty well back to the oldschool yawnfest of mass and rush that ruined all the decent Command and Conquers of yesteryear. I never felt compelled to play much further as it was just too easy.
Back in 2006 or so we were all majorly hyped up about Spore. Some of us still are; I'm not. It's received 'The Sims Treatment' from what all the media is saying, aka it's been dumbed down extensively to cater for the less-than-two-brain-cell housewives that don't understand you can't buy double glazing for Microsoft Windows. Yes it's always intended to be a sandbox game but damn it just looks so incredibly easy. Going from single celled amoeba to godlike race of superbeings in the span of 8 hours? I dunno it just doesn't sound right to me. It reminds me of Dynasty Warriors 5 XL which had the great feature of 'Play as a normal soldier'! 'See what it's like not being an officer!' But then you play it, and you realise that after a single battle you become more powerful than your commanding officer and after 8 battles the game is over and you're God-Incarnate. Why? Because playing as a soldier in the first battle was actually challenging and heaven forbid some poor 11 year old kid might actually struggle!
I'm notoriously hard to please in games. Give me a game with a great story, great graphics, amazing gameplay and then make it completable by slamming my head repeatedly into the keyboard and I'll probably get bored of it pretty quick. Whereas something with decent gameplay and challenge but an abysmal/non existant story and even worse graphics and I'll probably play it longer. And no I don't enjoy I wanna be The Guy, there's a fine line between enjoyably difficult and breaking 3 keyboards in frustration.
Got a comment? Think I'm talking out of my arse and infinite free respawns is a 'good feature'? Then jump on the forums and give your opinion (note: it's wrong)
It wouldn't surprise me if soon someone releases Tetris but only includes the [][][][] shaped block.
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i think more difficult videogames would solve a lot of problems with american youth culture
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I think games were harder back then but at the same time they whole way they were was designed to keep you patient enough to keep trying. I know there were more than a couple games where the whole level was in plain sight all the time. If it was something like Castlevania for example, I'd say each area of that game was 3 or 4 screens long at the most. But something like Solomon's Key was one screen per level I think. Basically if you think of it that way, you can survey the entire level and figure out exactly how you're gonna do it before you even press any buttons. In newer games you don't usually come across that because you're limited to whatever perspective the game gives you. Sure you can have a mental map of the level if it's an FPS but the enemies don't have patterns like they did in the NES days, and even if they did it would be annoying as hell trying to figure them out if you didn't have a nice overview of all the guys moving at once. But then again I haven't played too many of the 3D platformers other than Mario 64 and crap
But I think the games are easier because they changed from this sort of "planning" gameplay to a kind of "quick reaction" gameplay (like in FPSes particularly. Not to say that FPS games are devoid of strategy but more of it is OH SHIT GUY IS SHOOTING SHOOT HIM FIRST when the old games were like 'guy shoots at regular intervals but if I jump this way I can dodge the very slow-moving bullets"
So I do think the new games reward quick reaction time over figuring out the right way to approach a problem which is inherently harder and probably involves a lot of that CRITICAL THINKING I've heard so much about
Again I have to say Resident Evil 4 was awesome because it had the quick reaction kind of stuff but it also requires the player to keep track of what the hell everyone's doing (like make sure there aren't any freaky guys with chainsaws coming up behind you) it isn't exactly the same as figuring out the exact jumps you need to do at what time but in the Mercenaries Mode you really got a feel for how hectic the formula could get as more bad guys get thrown in there
But uh like I was going to say in the first place I think it's kind of good that games are generally easier because if the games were ridiculously hard it would really hurt the flow of the story. Like I remember how cool the original Ninja Gaiden was and I loved the cutscenes but after a certain point I couldn't get any further and see more of the story. So after a while it was like no tidbits of story + frustrating and kind of small ugly stuff on the screen = not much reason to go on. On the other hand games are getting so good-looking the whole thing feels like a movie unfolding so maybe it's not so bad
I remember a while back I said how Dragon Warrior has no excuse for having high encounter rates anymore because at least in the old games your 'target' was in plain sight, like a staircase or whatever. But in Dragon Warrior 8 the world was so damn huge you're not really heading towards anything certain and to have AIMLESS WANDERING get interrupted is not very constructive gameplay
Edit: Dragon Quest 8 - when the hell did that happen :gwa:
Edit: But I think we could make games harder without being frustrating, it would just have to involve a different kind of gameplay imo - like I was saying Resident Evil 4 required you to keep track of lots of stuff on the screen but not to the extremes a space shooter would. Maybe somebody has tried already but if someone could recreate how hectic the 2D space shooters are but in full 3D without making the player chalk up their losses to a bad camera system/etc would be pretty amazing (also 2 1/2-D doesn't count btw - I mean like Starfox but with 1000 ships at once and they're all INSTANT KILLDEATH)
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there's a few games that i've gotten incredibly good at before and i still played them because it's fun being awesome
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Vidya Gayms were difficult way back in the day because they're woefully short and developers had to find a way for you to constantly shove quarters into the coin slot. Yeah, you can beat Crysis in 5 hours by fucking QUICK LOADING but what if you limited yourself to dying 2 times per game and started over from the beginning every time you went over this limit? See where I'm getting at here? Can you honestly complain about difficulty when you have the inclusion of QUICKSAVE/QUICKLOAD? Speaking in Prey's defense, all it did was eliminate the fucking uselessness of reaching your pinky up and slamming on f4/f6 every 5 minutes. Internet people complain about games being easy all the time but they're the first ones who abuse quicksave and complain whenever a first person shooter utilizes CHECKPOINTS.
Gayms getting easier is more of a blessing than it is a curse if you ask me. I'm not fond of games holding your hand but I don't want to play a masochistic piece of shit that PUNISHES me because one pixel on my hitbox touched a flying bullet and the computer is capable of reading your every move (p.s. the checkpoint happened to be at the beginning of the level and you just died at the boss HAHA).
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there are plenty of hard games.
they are on console.
article destroyed........
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in b4 TOO LONG DIDNT READ
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Sorry I've already had that on IRC.
edit: Okay lets get some replies going.
i think more difficult videogames would solve a lot of problems with american youth culture
Well it'd slow up the rate of school shooting anyway, at least until they perfected the new CoD games right Jack?
Edit: But I think we could make games harder without being frustrating, it would just have to involve a different kind of gameplay imo - like I was saying Resident Evil 4 required you to keep track of lots of stuff on the screen but not to the extremes a space shooter would. Maybe somebody has tried already but if someone could recreate how hectic the 2D space shooters are but in full 3D without making the player chalk up their losses to a bad camera system/etc would be pretty amazing (also 2 1/2-D doesn't count btw - I mean like Starfox but with 1000 ships at once and they're all INSTANT KILLDEATH)
I can't see that working at all. You can't see what's going on in front of you/above you/below you/behind you all at once so there's bound to be the odd one or two stray shots that hits you in the back. If they were all instant kill and there was thousands on screen at once it would be pretty much impossible. Yeah maybe Starfox 64/Lylat wars linear levels would be a way to do it..but those levels are essentially 2.5d really.
there's a few games that i've gotten incredibly good at before and i still played them because it's fun being awesome
I can't enjoy a game that I'm incredibly good at, unless it has an incredible story that keeps me playing, because I just can't have fun without some form of challenge anymore. If I 'win' a game without having to put in any effort or have the sense that I'm fighting for the win then victory just isn't rewarding enough and frankly doesn't feel worth bothering for anymore.
words words words
I don't actually use quicksave anymore. I'm so used to checkpoint FPSs that I just go back to the last level autosave or checkpoint if I die. They are usually so close to each other and the games are so short that it doesn't take that long to get back to where I was anyway. I agree with you about Prey to an extent, but as I'm not a quicksave/load spammer it completely ruined the game for me. An option just to disable it and game over when dead would've been good in my eyes. Also I think games have gotten SHORTER, not longer.
there are plenty of hard games.
they are on console.
They are hard because the controls suck and the resolution is 12x8
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when have games gotten shorter? what years are we talking about here? you could beat most megadrive/snes games (outside rpgs) in 1-4 hours. original doom wasn't known for it's longness. hl1 didn't seem any longer than hl2 (well.. maybe, but not much). when exactly did all these super long games come out?
but yeah my mum paid £40 for sonic 1, so you can't really complain about the price = hours thing. yeah, i replayed sonic a quadrillion times, but by today's expectation, it would have no "replay value".
so yeah the real problem is our expectations have gone through the roof, and it's just not feasible for the companies to keep up. nowadays we expect a bug free 20+ hours, maybe with a little replay value, a good soundtrack, good graphics (yeah, you may say you dont care about this, but a lot of people do, and releasing a modern game with subpar graphics is a good way to be a commercial flop) all for our £40. yeah, nowadays they crank billions more dollars into gamemaking than they did in the early 90s, but i'm just not sure it's actually possible to make the games we actually want.
not unless it's the last game the company ever makes, anyway.
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Jester has a real point. Dev teams have SWOLLEN from like 5 dudes to ridiculous numbers on big ticket titles. Also, dev times are way up too, as blockbusters spend years in the works. I mean, it used to be that you could make a game, then release a sequel the next year with virtually the same engine and people were down with it. Imagine if Bethesda released Oblivion a year after Morrowind and just ran it off the same engine with a couple of new features? That shit doesn't really fly in the POST 2D ERA if you will. Despite all this, we're practically paying LESS for games these days given the inflation since the early 90s. SNES game were between 49 and 59 bucks new in Canada, and even today, most brand new PC and next gen console games fall into this price range. I wish gas had that much value!!!!!!!!! topical joke heh
Ultimately, I think you're being way too hard on games. As people pointed out, DIFFICULTY was ultimately a mask used to prevent you from realizing that HEY THIS GAME IS SHORT AS SHIT. But then, I don't really LIKE being overly challenged, at least in RPGs. I mean, I don't want it to be a SNEEZE AND YOU BEAT THE GAME sort of thing, but dying constantly until you trick out your dudes just isn't fun for me.
Basically, we're jaded at this point, and as Jester said, our expectations are through the roof. Disappointment is soooooo much easier these days.
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I have a really hard time playing modern games, I think they're hard as fuck. (I am pretty sure a good number of you witnessed this on sunday SUNDAY SUNDAY)
Maybe you just spend too much time playing?
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I haven't played an easy game in ages, unless its replayingsome games on the Mega Drive. I'm not an avid gamer so I can't really tell if games have gotten harder or anything but all I know is most of the newest games i've played are HARD AS NAILS compared to what I'm used to with some of the old school shit. Not that it's a bad thing I find it hard, just means I get more playing time for money spent.
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Like Jester and Rowain said, we just became older and more cynical and we started to expect more from games. I think it's a two-fold issue. On one side the industry changed and now it's about releasing products and on the other side, our expectation changed. I'm gonna post something longer later but there's science to be done. (chemistry exam tomorrow)
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I can't see that working at all. You can't see what's going on in front of you/above you/below you/behind you all at once so there's bound to be the odd one or two stray shots that hits you in the back. If they were all instant kill and there was thousands on screen at once it would be pretty much impossible. Yeah maybe Starfox 64/Lylat wars linear levels would be a way to do it..but those levels are essentially 2.5d really.
I wasn't saying it'd be easy to design a game like that but having a game like that with such good play control you never feel disoriented (and therefore cheap deaths) would be amazing. This is what they should be using the Wiimote for imo.
But yeah it's good that games are more complex like enemies actually think instead of following a pattern nowadays, but if they kept it as one, two-hit kills like in the old days it would be pretty sucky. This is why I think I would suck in a war
Like when I play MGS I do want to get through EUROPEAN EXTREME mode where it's like instant death and you actually have to sneak around and use guerrilla tactics to survive - but I dunno it just feels too cheap most of the time and it's not like the game comes with a pressure-sensitive board that you have to walk on when you're sneaking around (I would actually sort of enjoy that if it were done right)
So imo the games got more graphically advanced at /depicting/ the stuff that's going on, but play control didn't advance enough with it, so if they did make games harder it would feel a lot cheaper because now you're trying to navigate in three dimensions with the same stupid controller we've had since forever. It was good they brought analog back though
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It's mainly about story. Games a lot are more story based, and are geared towards wanting to get the player to see everything. Crysis is a good example. on Farcry, most people stopped playing as soon as the Trigens got into it big so the last half of the game was played by virtually nobody. So on Crysis they made it as easily accessable as possible because they wanted people to get to the end and the aliens. There's a lotof hard games, but yeah they're more on console because that's where the "old hardcore" market is. PC games aren't aimed at that kinda audience so they're gnna be easy. Plus, y'know we're the generation that GREW UP PLAYING GAMES, so naturally we'd be somewhat NOT TERRIBLE at them and so perhaps we shouldn't judge the makers because they're doing the same they've always done. Plus, if games are too easy... get a mod. almost every PC game has 2,500 diferent GAME HARDER mods.
I think Hideo Kojima best summed up modern games when he was on about designing mgs3. He wanted it so that when you loaded a save, it deleted the file, and you could only save when you were turning off, you know to make the game challenging, but he decided against it, because he wanted people to see the whole game fully.
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Yeah that's really my opinion now, that play control is extremely important and underrated. That's why Sega CD was so cheesy, you just pressed a button on the right time and that somehow signified OPEN TRAP DOOR or something. I don't even think it has to have anything remotely to do with what you're doing in the game (like you can press DOWN a button and it doesn't feel weird that that makes your guy lift his arm UP to punch), it just that your actions in reality have clear and obvious effects in the game so it's got a good flow to it. Like I seriously thought synesthesia was a good metaphor for what game designers go for because if there was a game where absolutely nothing made a sound, it would feel awkward as if your external actions didn't do anything. But instead if you press the punch button you'll get this exaggerated WHOOSH sound to let you know your guy is punching. I sort of think that's why people find Tekken to be so awkward compared to Street Fighter and stuff and there's still this cult-like following for the old 2D fighters. Because in Street Fighter most moves are just like FOOT OUT and you essentially throw a punch as fast as you can push the button. In Tekken punching is more like your brain gets the signal to punch and then your little 3D dude has to make the motion to punch before it actually does anything. So it might even be like double the actual reaction time
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an even more basic question: how many people actually play videogames for THE CHALLENGE of it? maybe i'm just not a hipster but i didn't think a major reason for gaming was the pursuit of pushing your physiological limits in regards to the EYE and BUTTON PUSHING relationship. i thought that was what all the speed-runner communities were for; people who openly admit YES I HAVE PROBLEMS I BEAT METROID IN 13 MINUTES
that's not to say that it's a completely worthless desire to have. i really like games that possess some kind of legitimate intensity or tangible emotion, of some sort, that spawns from the gameplay. but that's honestly not the same thing as requiring DIFFICULTY, even though that definitely can be a part of the overall effectiveness of some games.
regardless, i don't see how anybody can really sit here and WISH for contemporary games to be harder. it's actually pretty hard, from the standpoint of a game creator, to set up a well-balanced game that is A CHALLENGE and NOT FRUSTRATING. it's exceptionally easy to wander into the realm of CHEAP DIFFICULTY and just start throwing MORE ENEMIES/BULLETS, FEWER HEALTH or the infamous UNBLOCKABLE ATTACK or something equally superficial at the player in order to achieve some sort of numeric difficulty. in this regard, i take what i can get. i'll be happy if the game's creator hasn't completely fucked up the balance of the entire damn game
anyway, potential frustration is a particularly important thing that game companies consider. game companies don't really want to make something mind-numbingly difficult that could potentially alienate people in their target audience. i think that when you really break it down, most people who play games don't play them to satisfy some ultra-competitive inner animal.
truly, i see this as being one of the absolute least important issues one could currently have with the state of videogames at the moment. just avoid picking up the solid red health packs and only get the red and white health packs. it'll be hard enough for you then.
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Go play Lazrael's new game if you think game's are too easy these days.
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Yeah actually I don't think difficulty is as important as making things seem really hard so you feel all godlike
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I agree! I dislike this new trend of the game industry, where they make games that occupy 30 gb each, with 30.000 polygon models everywhere and as many shaders they can put on them and then it lasts like 8 hours or less. If they continue to progress like this in a few years they'll occupy more than 1 TB and last less than 1 nano second. I think a good example of this is the deus ex series, the first one had "bad" graphics but was so cool and could be replayed so many times, and it took something like 20 hours to finish it, and it came in one CD. Then the second one had some pretty lighting and lasted 12 hours, and came in 2 CDs. They're making a third one that will be released in 2009. I predict it to come in a box with 2 DVDs, the game will occupy exactly 16 GB and last 6 hours or less, but will require a geforce 10 and 4GB or memory to run.
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an even more basic question: how many people actually play videogames for THE CHALLENGE of it? maybe i'm just not a hipster but i didn't think a major reason for gaming was the pursuit of pushing your physiological limits in regards to the EYE and BUTTON PUSHING relationship. i thought that was what all the speed-runner communities were for; people who openly admit YES I HAVE PROBLEMS I BEAT METROID IN 13 MINUTES
well, this depends on the type of game. rpgs and shit, yeah, they are dumb if they are challenging because the challenge is just BIGGER NUMBERS. but being challenged in like, a fps or something, it gives you a real buzz when you win. the final final level of call of duty 4 on the hardest setting, for instance, (spoilers: it's 1 minute long and has like a zillion guys between you and a hostage, complete with slow motion headshot-in-0.5-seconds-or-you-lose bit) is really really difficult and you feel excellent when you win.
i agree with the rest of your post, though.
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Yeah that's really my opinion now, that play control is extremely important and underrated. That's why Sega CD was so cheesy, you just pressed a button on the right time and that somehow signified OPEN TRAP DOOR or something.
you say that like it's easy
night trap is really fucking hard even with a walkthrough and it's almost impossible to get a perfect ending
Anyway, I haven't noticed a change in game difficulty at all, with the exception of quicksave making things easier than when there were save points (or NO SAVE AT ALL). Most games don't keep my attention long enough for me to beat them, but it seems like I give up more out of disinterest nowadays than I used to out of just plain being stuck. Besides those two things, games haven't changed at all for me, and they're equal on difficulty, but maybe not on INTERESTINGNESS? Only when a few gems come along do I even stick with those games and pay for them to begin with.
Also, as for playing games for the challenge, I only do this with games I already wanted to play. I won't play a game because it seems challenging (I won't avoid it either, it's just not part of the equation), but I may continue to play one if there is something I want to beat in it that I had trouble with and I manage to do it without it getting me too frustrated.
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I didn't mean Night Trap in particular, I just think games didn't go in the direction of FMV because even if it was cool and new at first it was wrong to think that real people instantly = IMMERSIVE, even if the actors are talking to PLAYER directly. Things went towards 3D polygon stuff imo because it was more the movement and navigating your guy through a LIVING 3D WORLD that gets people "into" a game more, not being convinced by the sounds and images that the game world is worth saving or the characters are worth caring about or whatever. Also the fact that the old games were HARD probably contributed to that immersion back then, because you had to think more about what you were doing. But puzzles in newer games seem to be easier in general because it's not so much about challenging your brain as getting you CONCERNED, and solving problems in a fictional world = real life problems off your mind and crap. And of course the problems in the game have a quick and easy feeling of accomplishment so they're preferable to HOMEWORK etc.
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Some games these days are hard. like any Metal Gear game, and any Final Fantasy game. But older games basically are harder, I mean just try to beat super mario bros without using those fast teleport pipes. Its too bad that games arent as hard as they were. :tsk:
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Am I the only one that doesn't use quicksave/quickload?
It makes game a lot harder, also for Bioshock, you can turn off the Vita-Chambers(resurrection chambers) if you download the 1.1 update. Also even if games have no punishment for dying apart from a minor setback. I still get one step closer to turning the game off when I die. I started playing Bioshock on Hard, and when I encountered my first Big Daddy(killable), I probably died about 20-30 times before I finally killed it. Needless to say, when I got done, I was down to just the wrench and pistol, and didn't feel like going any farther.
Theres a big reason why I don't play on Easy, or Hard. Easy is too easy, Hard is too frustrating.
And of course on Topic. 90% of games getting easier came from quicksave/load, and the other 10% came from having better/more control over the dude you control.
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The difference between Prey's way of handling death and Quickloading is that when you Quickload, all the enemies you've killed since you saved return, while in Prey they stay dead. This is most noticeable in large battles, where instead of having to load to the start of battle and learning how to defeat your enemies without dying, you just respawn and kill the ones you didn't kill before.