Adaptive Difficulty Is Kinda Cool

 

Whenever a hard game hits the scene there is usually a debate that sparks regarding difficulty in video games.  The people struggling want options, the people who are happy think devs should be free to not include them and the whole thing devolves into an angry mess where people are being called nasty names and accusations of oppression and ableism are being thrown around like candy by the terminally online, it’s a fuckin mess

My attitude to the whole thing is that difficulty options are usually poorly implemented and are an outdated idea that probably shouldn’t be used.  Games should have a baseline experience aimed at all players, so everyone can get the ending or the story and then post-game extra stuff to test the players that want to go further.  Mario 64 is a good example of what I mean here where getting 70 stars to see the ending is quite easy but if you’re pushing to 120 there’s some tricky stuff to deal with. Obviously the opinion is more nuanced than that but for the sake of this post, this simple version will do.

The one facet of this debate I haven’t considered though is adaptive difficulty, games that get harder or easier based on the performance of the player.  It’s not a thing that gets talked about very often but it’s such a cool way of serving both audiences that I’m surprised it’s not used more often.  Games that use this even sometimes have traditional modes AS WELL to set the starting level of difficulty and maybe to prevent it dipping below a certain point.  It’s probably a pain in the ass to implement because you have to track a bunch of factors that controls the difficulty but I feel like this method would stop the whiners while also allowing the hard core players to swing their e-dicks around. 

I caught a shot of adaptive difficulty while playing Aero Fighters the other night and thought it was a neat part of the game I hadn’t previously known about while trying to 1cc it.  I was going through the game on an emulator and saving states in order to practice parts of the game I was struggling with.  Of course, while stating I’m not dying and I’m barely using bombs and about 5 stages in I noticed the game felt just impossibly hard, way harder than I was used to.  I then realized that the game was taking stock of my lives and bombs at the end of each stage and making the game harder or easier based on those numbers.  Going into stage 5 with 5 bombs and 3 lives and the enemies are all shooting like mad men with bullets on fast forward but with no lives and no bombs the enemy pilots age 90 years and get brain damage.  Cool for the players who are cracked at the game because that high score from not continuing represents a greater struggle but if you kinda suck a shmups, a win might still be open to you.  From my perspective trying to 1cc it, it poses an interesting additional mechanic to contend with where I can maybe justify spamming bombs or dying tactically to win on one coin which is not something I usually have to think about.

The first time I remember being conscious of an adaptive difficulty was back in 2008 when Left4Dead came out.  Valve named it “the director” and if my memory isn’t faulty it changed things such as health items, ammo, number of zombies and number of special infected.  It also had traditional difficulty settings and I’m not sure what those affected given the presence of the director but it’s a good example of having both systems in play. I don’t remember thinking that the director had a huge effect on gameplay with the base difficulty being more of a factor in success or failure but it’s cool feature to include in a game that had such a limited amount of actual content. 

A really interesting example of adaptive AI is probably the one found in Resident Evil 4.  I was barely even aware of its existence until I found a YouTube about RE4 speedrun and the narrator touched on it there.  From what I can tell it affects things like enemy aggressiveness, damage taken(?), item drops and stuff like that.  What makes it so interesting is that you would THINK that speedrunners want to run on easy, because an easier game is surely faster to clear, right? But my current understanding is the preferred setting is actually Professional.  Pro mode locks the adaptive difficulty to its highest point in an unmoving state and thus allows for runners to play the game in a more predictable and easily routeable way.  I’ve never once heard of anyone complaining about the challenge behind RE4 so whatever Capcom were cooking, the people are loving it. 

So maybe devs should use more adaptive methods of dictating game challenge, maybe with a setting at the start so more skilled players don’t dip into the easy stuff if things go tits up for them.  The only other alternative I think works is giving players full control over aspects of the difficulty from the options menu but I only enjoy this method when then options allow for insane jacking of numbers for challenge runners.  Really though, at the end of the day, instead of arguing over all this crap, if a game is too hard for you then just turn it off and play something else. 

Amnesia Rebirth: A Good Idea Left Unimplemented

 

At time of writing I have just finished Amnesia Rebirth, provided to me for free by the Epic Game Store.  I am also maybe the most frustrated I have ever been with a horror game in my life.

I'm not really here to write a review or anything but I'll quickly cover my thoughts on my playthrough.  Amnesia Rebirth is a game I was expecting very little out of based on the previous entry in the series called A Machine For Pigs.  The first game, The Dark Descent was greatly entertaining but Machine For Pigs was no more than a walking simulator spook-house made by a group of devs so devoid of talent that you could have probably made a better game by giving a new born baby a 1970s IBM and a big stick to hit it with.  Luckily Amnesia Rebirth is a bit more of an actual game and tells the story of a woman called Tasi as she gets stranded in the desert in a plane crash as she goes through caves and some alternate dimension in an attempt to escape and save not just her life, but the life of her unborn child as well.

Gameplay involves exploring areas, solving puzzles and occasionally hiding/running away from a monster.  The sanity management thing from Dark Descent is back where spending too much time in the dark or looking directly at the creature will cause you to freak out and die so managing things like your supply of matches and latern oil is something the game tries to convince you is important.  However Rebirth is also incredibly easy with pathetically easy puzzles and no punishment for failing encounters with the creatures, but I'll talk about that later.  That said though, it was just entertaining enough to keep me playing to the end without getting too angry with it so as far as "run and hide" horror games go you could in fact do a lot worse.  

So why am I so frustrated with it?  Well one of the main things in the game is the main character "controlling her fear" and "not succumbing to anger" and all that bullshit.  It's pretty clear, pretty early on unless you have some kind of brain problem that the events of the game are somehow her fault and she's actually retracing her steps finding out what happned to her and the crew of the plane that went down at the start.  As you play you encounter a monster that will, in certain areas, attempt to chase you down and get you, only if and when it does get you, you don't actually die or game over.  The game throws you a mini cutscene of the main character running through a couple of previous explored areas and then waking up either just before or sometimes just after the area you were just in.  

What I thought was going on was that every time the creature caught you, that was her "succumbing to her fear" and so each failed creature encounter would somehow affect the ending in some way.  What compounded my impression of that happening was the fact that after you are caught and get back to the monster area, the monster is gone from that zone.  Like you are now free to progress the game monster free at the cost of the ending.  Not failing any monster encounters would mean that she managed to stay mentally strong during the whole ordeal and you would get the best ending and failing all or nearly all of them would give you the worst one, maybe with some other factors thrown in as well.  

However none of this actually happened.  As soon as I hit the final cutscene and was given a "do X or Y" choice the rug was pulled from underneath me and I realized that all of that hiding and running away that I did barely mattered at all.  The only monster encounters that actually matter are the spoopy ghosts with the lanterns near the end because they dont actually despawn when you fail but, and I'd have to test thing, they lose the ability to "kill" you after the first time.  

The other reason I thought this was the case is because when you start the game you are given a choice between "normal mode" and "adventure mode".  Adventure mode basically just turns off the monsters and the sanity mechanic and lets you just explore and puzzle solve and is described by the game as "for people that don't want to deal with horror".  

There are two things wrong with this

One is that, like I said before, getting caught by the monster just deletes it from the area anyway so even if you're the worst hide and seek player of ALL TIME you still only need to suffer one minor failiure before you are allowed to progress.  Two is what the fuck do you mean by "dont want to deal with horror"?!  Why in the name of bloody fuck would you buy the THIRD GAME IN A SERIES OF HORROR GAMES if you didn't like horror?  That would be like me going to see a movie called "Love Actually 3" and then getting pissed off at the fact its a romance movie and not a supernatural thiller, what a stupid fucking mode to have in your game.

So what could have been a cool mechanic that encourages repeat playthroughs just wasn't used at all and now if I want to see the other endings all I have to do is load my save and pick the other other thing.  "Push a button on the Ending-tron 3000" is the shittiest, laziest most bullshit way a developer can implement multiple endings and anyone who's used that method deserves to have an entire day spent in wet socks, you're a disgrace.

Despite my griping though, Rebirth is still SIGNIFICANTLY better than A Machine for Pigs which granted, is not a very high bar to pass, but at least there is an attempt at an actual game here.  The most 5/10 horror game you'll ever play in your life

It's OK just just not play it sometimes

 

Recently two games came out, Sifu and Elden Ring, that dragged the tired and very stupid difficulty debate all over my social media feeds once again and good lord is it tiresome.

First of all, for the people that bought either of these games and are complaining, allow me to point out that your attitude to games fucking sucks shit.  MOST of the people I've seen whining about the difficulty of either of these games have very similar along the lines of "I don't have time to learn how to play", "I don't want to have to put in that much effort to make progress" and it's an attitude I cannot comprehend even a little bit. A lot of people in current year seem to view video games as a "one and done" thing.  Like you buy the game, play the story one and ONLY one time and then move onto the next game.  People who enjoy Naughty Dog games are especially prone to this kind of behavior.  So when a game like Sifu or Elden Ring comes along that actually tries to roadblock you and actually has a decent amount of challenge behind it, they get mad and pissy because they might not finish it before next game du-jour comes out.

But games are expensive and the hardware you need to play it on is even more expensive so why is this your attitude to such an costly purchase?  Some games are a one and done thing, things like Uncharted, A Plague Tale, basically any cinematic first person shooter and the like.  But games like Elden Ring, Sifu, Cuphead and games like it are asking for a bit of a time investment.  They want you to replay them, to explore their nooks and crannies for all their content, to master their mechanics and get a true sense of satisfaction for beating them otherwise what's the point?  

But OK fine, I don't understand the mindset but it's there.  So then maybe you should just admit that these games are not for you instead of complaining about it on Twitter, stomping your feet and demanding easy modes and assist options.

Me personally, I'm a challenge oriented kinda guy, I like these kind of stupidly hard games where I have to bash my head off the wall until I get a win.  I like the kind of games that I can really sink a lot of time into to master the ins and outs of them.  I like games that can then, once "mastered" can then have insane personal challenges attatched to them like deathless or hitless runs and have that really mean something to other people who also enjoy that kind of thing.  What I hate though, are slow paced, challenge-less life-sim type games.  Things like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, The Sims.  Things about farming or decorating houses.  Some people find it relaxing, I think its time wasting dogshit

So do I go on social media and demand that The Sims gets a hard mode where my family have to fend off home invasions?  Do I demand that Animal Crossing insert combat events into the game where NPCs come and kill all my villagers and I have to constantly defend my island from invasion?  No of course I fucking don't, I just don't play those games

One thing you have to remember is that while the whole "video games are for everyone" thing is true, "not ALL games are for everyone" is also true.  If you like Cinematic games with selectable difficulty then go play those, if you like time-wasting-ass life sims that you get all cozy under a blanket with and you can decorate a little house, then fine, I hope you have a nice time.

But if you then go play Elden Ring or Sifu, get your ass kicked and demand that the developer start catering to you specifically just because YOU don't want to put the time in to learn how to do a dodge roll or practice some combos, then go fuck yourself with a cactus.

I know "missing out" is something that people worry about but if a game isn't for you, it just isn't for you, and that's OK

Difficulty Options are Bullshit

The topic of difficulty options have, for some reason, become a hot topic of debate on social media.  I feel that every couple of weeks or so a series of threads turns up on something like Twitter either complaining about games not having difficulty options or people complaining that a game included some kind of "auto-win" mode or something like that and people of course losing their minds and throwing insults at each other.  So I got thinking about it and I have come to the conclusion that in most cases difficulty options are complete dogshit.

As a concept they make sense, skilled players pick hard and new players pick easy, and there are a variety of games where they have been used effectively but in a staggeringly large number of cases, the difficulty settings are just frustrating bullshit that's lazily mismanaged by whatever developers are making the game.  So for the next few paragraphs in this post I will outline just a few of the ways in which having an option AT ALL is a pile of garbage.

1) The Pump and Dump

This is probably the most common thing you'll come across in games, where a playthrough on easy and a playthrough on hard is identical in every way except the numbers on damage done and damage taken are just raised and lowered depending on what mode you're on.  The worst example I can think of this off the top of my head is basically any game made by modern day Naughty Dog.  If you play Uncharted on easy or normal, Nathan Drake can walk right into direct fire of a mounted machine gun, take all of those bullets to the face and the only thing that happens is the screen gets a bit grey and you have to suck your thumb behind a rock for a bit to heal up.  If you then play that game on Crushing Nathan turns into a man made of wet toilet paper and will go rag-dolling off into space if an enemy so much as coughs on him.  Everything else about the game is the same, the only thing your mode choice dictates is how much hiding behind walls you have to do.  This is especially boring if you're the kind of person who likes to play normal first and then hard because unless the game really gripped you, playing the exact same game again in the exact same way again but slower just isn't fun.  

2) Built for Upgrades

I feel like I never noticed this being a problem until semi recently but another way difficulty is mis-managed is linking it directly to the games upgrade system and new game + playthroughs.  The game that really hit home just how bad this gets is Dante's Inferno on PS3.  In that game you can pick at the start if you want to play on easy, normal or hard but if you pick hard mode from a new game file then you are going to have a hell of a hard time (lol).  But, if you play through the game once, get a bunch of upgrades and soul points, beat the game and then carry that shit over into a hard mode run, the challenge becomes a lot more manageable.  This is bullshit because when you die it starts to feel like it's not your fault.  Like imagine someone comes up to you and says "hey solve this jigsaw puzzle" but then the set of pieces they give you is just missing a bunch of pieces.  That wouldn't be fun, right? and that's exactly what it feels like to play a game on hard mode when it's been built around an upgrade system.

3) Locked

This is a real pet peeve of mine as someone who likes to play games on a harder mode most of the time but locking a hard mode behind a full game clear is an UNFORGIVEABLE practice and any developer that has done this deserves to stub their toe on the leg of a metal coffee table.  One thing people love to complain about when they talk about difficulty is that "they don't have time to learn the game and get good", which personally I think is a dogshit argument but OK I'll roll with it.  But by that same logic, I'm also a busy man with a large backlog of games and I do not have all the time in the world to play through a game twice just to get the experience that I mainly enjoy.  I can understand locking challenge modes behind a clear like Dante Must Die in Devil May Cry but when I buy a game, load it up and my options for difficulty are "easy, normal and LOCKED" I want to start swinging at people

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This is just 3 ways that I pulled off the top of my head and I'm sure if you gave me a stack of games and a couple of days I could probably come up with a lot more.  But what is the solution?  Well, it's to probably get rid of difficulty settings altogether.  A game that springs right to the forefront of my mind in this regard is Celeste.  The base game where you get the story of the girl going up the mountain is a challenging yet fair experience that I think anyone can clear with a little bit of practice.  When you finish the game, you can either fuck off and never play it again OR you can go and hunt down the B-Sides, C-Sides, Golden Berries etc. which are all challenging extras that players who want to push themselves with absolutely enjoy.  The game is designed in such a way so that EVERYONE can get a win but those who want to master the mechanics and platforming can get even more satisfaction after the credits roll

Another example of this would be a game like Bastion.  When you start Bastion up you aren't given any difficulty settings but a short ways into the game you unlock the shrine.  In the shrine you can unlock little statues that you activate and for each active statue you get an experience and currency bonus in return for the game becoming harder.  This allows players to customize their own experience to make the game as hard or as easy and they would like and players who do go for the extra challenge are appropriately rewarded.  If you don't like a hard game and just want the story, leave the shrine alone, but if you want to show just how good you are at Bastion then head into that shrine and activate EVERYTHING and see how hard the game gets.  The annoying thing about this example in particular is the time it takes to get the shrine and the statues but my point is that instead of having an "easy, normal, hard" mode setting, let players tweak certain aspects of the game themselves to get the challenge that they would like.

Obviously difficulty settings aren't just going to dissapear and like I said, they CAN be used well in certain cases but the point is that most devs are very lazy with them and in a lot of cases just letting the creators deliver the experience THEY want to give you is probably the better option.  Game too hard and has no modes? Just play something else.  Game has an easy mode that's far too easy for you? Just don't use it.  More importantly, shut the fuck up about it on Twitter

Hard Vs Bullshit

 

Recently I've been playing a game on stream called Wings of Vi.  Wings of Vi is a platform game brought to us by a guy named Solgyrn who is probably the most well known for creating a similar game called I wanna be the Boshy.  I Wanna Be the Boshy was a fan game of the notorious I Wanna Be The Guy, a platform game that was designed to troll just as much as it was to challenge the player.  

Hard games are something I usually quite enjoy.  If you were to come to me and tell me that a game presents an above average challenge I'm probably going to buy it.  When a game has multiple difficulty options I'm the kind of person to jump straight into hard mode and completely ignore the normal or easy settings.  I'm not saying this to flex any kind of gaming cred, of course, I'm merely pointing it out so that when I go on to call Wings of Vi "bullshit" in the next few paragraphs, I'm being genuine rather than just throwing my toys out of the pram because I died a bunch of a couple of bosses.

Difficulty is a hard thing for a lot of developers to get right and generally speaking I find that the best games in this aspect don't even have difficulty settings to speak of.  3D Mario games are one example of this where you can usually beat the game with only 70 of the stars/shines/dragon dildos or whatever but for players looking for extra challenge can find it in post game content or in challenging courses when trying to 100% the game.  Another example would be Celeste, a challenging platformer that presents the player with no difficulty settings in the traditional sense but instead gives a reasonable challenge to all players and then ramps up the difficulty in post game content such as B sides, Golden Berries and Farewell.  Dark Souls would be another good example of this where some basic knowledge of the games systems and adapting to the combat a little will get you through all the games story bosses, but extra bosses and self imposed challenges can help bring up the challenge for people who want a bit of punishment. 

Bad difficulty, I find, usually comes in the form of settings that one must pick at the start of the game.  The one that stands out extremely clear in my mind was Nier on PS3 where the hard mode just increased enemy damage and health to the point where almost all the battles were just long slogfests and death would be brought about by a loss of attention due to boredom rather than the game being actually hard.  The other bad example I can think of is Dante's Inferno, also on PS3 where the higher difficulty levels were designed specifically around New Game Plus and the carrying over of skills and stats.  Sure it's POSSIBLE to beat Dante's Inferno on hard from a new game, but it's not fun because you feel like you're playing with your hands tied behind your back rather than because the game is actually any harder than it was on normal.  From what I understand, Resident Evil 8 does a similar thing but I've still not played that yet so I can't say for sure.

Then there's bullshit games like Wings of Vi.  Funnily enough Wings of Vi actually does present you with difficulty settings that change the number of checkpoints and enemy damage but again, nothing actually interesting out side of "die less and jump better".  But the problems in Wings of Vi are much more than that in both platforming and combat.  Platforming bullshit comes in the form of challenges and obstacles that 1) You can't see before it's too late and 2) Aren't obviously clear how to get around them.  Platforming in Vi is extremely precise and the game is almost more of a puzzle experience in this regard than a straight platformer.  Working out which combination of jumps and wing flutters you have to do is difficulty and can be pretty satisfying to achieve when you get it down.  However there are often points in the game where you will be presented with a jumping challenge, you practice and die and attempt to clear it and eventually you get it, only for the screen to shift and you get given more instant death spikes with no time to react and no time to work out what the hell you were supposed to do.  Back to the checkpoint with you, idiot.   A good example of this is a section that involves dashing through rhythmically moving worms.  The timing on the jumps and dashes to get through but when you get above the section you have to make a diagonal dash to safety through an enemy and onto a platform that you CANT FUCKING SEE.  So yeah, har har you got me with the sudden direction change and enemy placement but the death isn't my fault.  Maybe if you had shown me that before I would have made it through but you just covered my eyes for a stupid "gotcha" moment.

The bosses aren't much better where the first 10-50 attempts will be just adapting to whatever attack pattern the enemy has and then every attempt after that is just doing it until you can that one "in the zone" run where you pull it all off.  One boss however, a giant 3 headed worm in a perpetually moving tunnel with floating platforms can make you lose runs to it just not working.  The bosses chases you left to right in phase 1, top to bottom in pase 2 and the left to right in phase 3.  The shift from phase 2 to phase 3 will ALWAYS bug out, I never saw it work properly once and you will die to platformings not spawning and leaving you trapped to take a big chunk of damage.  Bosses that do work right, like Ancient Constructs, aren't any better though, starting off reasonable and then just becoming jank Touhou by the end.

Sure, Wings of Vi and games like it are extremely satisfying to get through but "bet you didn't see that coming" platforming and "bullet hell with a jumbo jet" aren't fun to experience, it's just bullshit bad design so that idiots like me can say that we bashed our head off the wall long enough to get it done.  There's a reason Celeste, Dark Souls and games like it will be celebrated forever and shit like Wings of Vi will be forgotten and fade into obscurity

Difficulty Options are Bullshit

Ooooh isn't that a shamelessly clickbaity title and image I used for this post?  When people read a title like that the first reaction I imagine is

"Just let people enjoy games the way they want!"

Or maybe some stupid comment that involves the word "Gatekeeping"

But despite my clickbaity title I'm not actually here to rag on you for playing easy OR big you up for playing hard.  People SHOULD just enjoy games in whatever way they want, that's totally fine and not something I have an issue with.  My issue really stems from the way that difficulty is implemented.

There are a lot of games that, when started, will prompt you for a selection of how hard you want it to be.  Games like Wolfenstien or Doom like to put fun little titles on it but most of the time it just boils down to Easy, Normal and Hard.  If you choose Normal you generally get the sort of experience that I feel was intended for that game.  Easy tends to make your character beefier, reduce incoming damage and gives you more resources to use while Hard does the opposite of this.  In MOST games I've experienced, in terms of actual technical skill at the game, there isn't really all that much difference between the 3 modes.  All that you're really choosing is how heavily you want to be penalized for any mistakes you make during play,

Metal Gear Solid is a good example of this.  On the harder modes there tends to be more enemies with longer vision ranges, they do more damage, caution mode gets triggered more easily, you can carry less stuff etc. etc. This at first glance is a fine approach to the issue, especially for a first time player.  Someone who isn't confident that they can stealth and fight effectively are allowed to take more hits, carry more ammo and healing, makes perfect sense to allow someone new to the series to enjoy it for all its worth.  Now if you're the kind of person who buys a game, does 1 play through and then shelves it for all eternity then maybe you will not understand my problem.  However if you do multiple replays you'll start to understand why this system is so dull.  The leap between easy to normal and normal to hard isn't that great, not really.  If you feel that you are bad at stealth games and you put it on easy, I can almost PROMISE you that after an hour of getting used to it, you'd be fine to turn it off, start again, and play on normal, or maybe even hard.  MGS only really starts to get really challenging when you go into its top modes but at that point its doing stuff like triggering a game over on being seen at any point which is bordering on levels of daft.

Nier is another good example on why I hate these options so much.  When I first played Nier I put it on Hard mode and the bosses took so little damage that the fights became tedious and I started to get bored during each encounter, especially in the early game.  However after I beat that and tried it on Normal the game turns all its enemies into paper mache.  The enemies and bosses are doing the exact same things they were doing in hard mode, only they died much faster.  This ruins that hard mode because all you're doing is making it take longer, you aren't actually challenging yourself in any way.

A game that has difficulty options that comes so very close to getting it right is Furi.

At the start of Furi you can choose between "Promenade" and "Furi" with an extra "Furier" difficulty after you beat the game.  I say it comes so very close because in reality, Promenade is a waste of time and Furi is ACTUALLY the sort of tutorial mode to get you acclimated to the "real" game in Furier.  Furi is a game essentially about mastery of its controls and knowledge of its bosses.  You study the bosses, learn what they do and how to avoid/parry their attacks and then once you have that down you dance circles around them while you cut them to ribbons with your sword.  If you played Promenande then I'm not judging you for doing so but I feel sorry that content of the game was just cut for you entirely and you didn't get a chance to learn those things to build that confidence.  Entire phases of bosses are cut on its easiest setting which means if you go from Promenade to Furi, you aren't getting extra challenge but you're seeing all new things and in a game like this that feels sort of unfair.

The solution to all this? Player modulated difficulty, designing your game in such a way that allows the player to decide how hard or how easy they want it as they go along.  Dark Souls, despite its reputation, is actually very good at this.  Having trouble with a boss? Go farm some souls and upgrade your weapon and come back and give him a slap.  Boss that's weak to fire giving you trouble? Go get some firebombs and stand halfway across the room and lob them, means that you have to learn about half the attacks.  But some people aren't willing or able to put in that kind of time so a better example I have of that is Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami lets you pick a mask at the start of each stage each with a unique ability and you can pick it depending on what's giving you the most trouble.  Are dudes swarming into a room and killing you? Wear the mask that lets you kill them with the door to make your life easier.  Dogs killing you? Wear the mask that turns off the dogs.  Struggling to find weapons? Wear the mask that makes your punches deadly.  This is a very elegant solution to the difficulty issue because it allows the player to identify the thing they are having trouble with on a stage by stage basis and give them an advantage in that specific area.  What makes it even better is that for weirdos like me that like their games on the daft side, there are even masks that make your surroundings dark so you can see shit or, even better, reverses your controls to make the game just needlessly confusing as fuck, it's great.

Difficulty levels should be abolished and games in general should just be designed in a smarter way.  Not only would that be much more interesting, I feel, for anyone of any skill level playing it but it would have the extra knock on effect of getting rid of that elitism that you see in certain people who only like hard games and people who like.  Some games I understand need these settings like shmups or rhythm games but for the most part I feel like this crap solution to this problem needs to go.

Difficulty Nostalgia

I think everyone gets that nostalgic feeling some time.  When a memory of a game pops into your head and you get this uncontrollable urge to play it again.  When most people talk about their nostalgic experiences with a game they usually talk about a games quality, the game being either just as good or at lot worse than they remember it being.  One thing I noticed that people don't mention too much when talking about their trips into the past is difficulty.

The things I hear the most when people talk about older games the phrases I usually here are "yeah it still holds up today" or "man, that has NOT aged well".  I however had a strange case the other week when I decided to play the Vita remake of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a game that came out on the Wii in 2009.  As I slashed my way across ye olde Japan the game played EXACTLY how I remembered it, ar least in terms of gameplay and fun factor but I found it to be WAY harder than I remembered.

I seem to remember the game being pretty easy back in 2009.  It was fast paced 2D hack and slash heaven and I don't remember getting a death until near the end of the game but in my current playthrough the second boss is pushing my shit in really hard.  I don't want to believe that I've gotten shit at games in my old age but it's either that or my memory of how well I did is WAY off.

This also occasionally happens in reverse where the game is way easier.  For me it was when I was learning how to speedrun Silent Hill 2 and I was dreading the maze near the end because in my mind it was complex and full of shit trying to kill you.  When it came to it though I blazed through it and none of the enemies came even close to touching me.

It's always fun to go back and play old games and it can suck when it doesn't live up to your expectations.  Although in my mind it kind of sucks a bit more when you go back to a game you thought you were good at only to find that you suck.

No Punishment Is Boring

So recently I've been replaying Torchlight on PC, a hack and slash RPG on PC that plays basically the same as something like Diablo.  I quite enjoy this game but there's one thing that really irks me about the title is that the game is too easy.  It's not just Torchlight that's guilty of this but this is the one I've played most recently so I'll be using it as my example.

So Torchlight isn't by itself an easy game.  The game involves large amounts of enemies swarming you ALL the damn time and you have to utilize a decent amount of skills, planning and resource management if you want to make it through the dungeon.  However all of the challenge that the game poses is COMPLETELY pointless because death doesn't actually mean anything.  When you die you get to make a choice; come back where you fell for an exp/gold loss, start the floor over with a gold loss or go back to town for no penalty.  This sounds like a decent enough punishment but EXP is easy to accumulate, money rains down on you like a stripper in an expensive club and floors aren't actually all that big so even starting that over is more of a minor annoyance than anything else. Not only that but when you do come back everything that was dead stays dead, so even if you suck with some bone headed perseverance you can make it through any obstacle.

The game does feature some harder modes but these are all rendered pointless by the fact that the punishments for death don't actually matter and you can tell that the developers understand this with the inclusion of a hardcore mode.  Hardcore mode introduces perma-death to a character who dies but this is just jumping to the other side of the spectrum.  Perma-death is acceptable in a rougelike because you can, in a lot of them, clear the dungeon in one sitting.  Torchlight requires quite a few hours of play to get through so the idea of getting far and then losing all that progress  because you zoned out and didn't hit the heal fast enough sounds more annoying than anything else. 

Torchlight isn't the only game to do this, Bioshock being the other HUGE offender for this kind of thing.  You have this beautiful, atmospheric and immersive world and then you realize that none of it matters because you just INSTANTLY RESPAWN when you die and you lose a bit of money.  Again, money is so easy to get in that game that the penalty doesn't matter so it turns the big daddies from actual intimidating encounters to minor annoyance that needs dealing with.  Again you can turn off Vita Chambers if you do want more of a challenge but why can't the base game just be challenging rather than forcing me to turn on all these extra challenge modes if I don't want to be babied.

I don't dislike either of the games I've mentioned, I look at them quite fondly but this aspect of them is a frustrating blotch on what is otherwise a great gaming experience.  Going too far the OTHER way is also no good (Fuck you R-Type/Gradius) but that's another post for another time.  I'm not asking for every game to be Dark Souls but Jesus H give me SOME challenge.

The Return of Nintendo Hard....Maybe...

It's funny that I should discover this news today, just a few days ago I was talking about how hard old school Mario is and then this pops up.

So, first of all, let me link to to what the fuck I'm talking about

http://gimmegimmegames.com/2013/10/nintendo-focusing-making-games-easier-anymore-getting-lost-really-good/

If you can't be arsed to read the link, the story is that Eiji Aonuma of Nintendo said that he recognises that Nintendo games of recent years have been on a little on the easy side but there are plans to change that.  He basically says that some people at Nintendo thought that making games easier so that people could progress was better but him and Miyamoto think that having some degree of difficulty and "getting lost" in a game is way more important.

This is great news, I've always complained that modern gaming is way to hand holdy and way too easy.  Even the games that are touted about as hard games, such as Dark Souls, aren't actually all that hard once you re-adapt to not having your hand held through a video game.

Old school Nintendo used to produce some really REALLY difficult games back in the day, like the above pictured Japanese Mario 2 and the idea of them going back to that makes me extremely excited.  I want to experience an actual challenge and feel like the act of beating a game actually took some skill and effort on my part. 

Hop to it Nintendo, I want the hardest games you can possibly imagine, let's see what you got!

Where Did The Difficulty Go, Mario?

Look at this old motherfucker right here.  Whenever someone mentions video games, Mario is that one character that absolutely 100% of people will be able to recognise.  It doesn't matter if you're the hardest of core, super turbo nerd game enthusiast or the kind of person who doesn't know which way on a controller is up, you know this fucking  guy.

So yesterday, in a fit of absolute boredom I decided to fire up a bit of Super Mario Bros and play it through without using any of the warp zones, because I always use the damn things and I've forgotten what most of the game looks like.

Now I've not played any old school Mario game for a long long time.  Hell, the last Mario game I played a great deal of was Galaxy 2, but my memory of recent Mario games has been that they are all fun, but not exactly challenging.  Basically everything after Sunshine has had the challenge stripped from it in order to appeal to a wider audience, which is fine for a series like this with broad appeal, but Jesus Christ the old ones especially don't fuck around.

The first few stages are an absolute cakewalk, but once you hit world 3 or 4, the stages actually get pretty tricky with precise jumps, fiendish enemy placement and game overs that mean that you have to start over from 1-1 meaning that beating Mario Bros is no easy feat.

Let's not forget Super Mario Bros 2 as well, and no, not fucking Doki Doki Panic, real Mario 2.  Real Mario 2 was so fucking hard that they didn't even bother to release that shit overseas, they just re skinned an easier game and gave that to the west.  There are parts in Mario 3 and World that would make even veteran players groan at it's difficulty and I'm sure there is plenty of other shit in the older games that would make me lose a few continues even now.

The new Mario games are all good and fun and whatnot, but like I said before, the series hasn't seen a real challenge since Sunshine.  I don't blame Nintendo for wanting to get Mario in the hands of as many people as possible, but they should make a game sometime with that old school level of challenge.  I'm not just talking about bits that might have one tricky jump or something, I mean proper, full on, challenge out the arse Lost Levels type of difficulty.

Make it happen Nintendo, gimme some New Super Mario Bros EX Masters Edition or something, I'll even fund it for you.

Killer Is Dead

Killer is Dead is a game I have not finished yet, but due to it being fucking amazing I just had to talk about it right now.

The game follows one very smartly dressed assassin known as Mondo Zappa and his adventures doing work for an orginisation that involves killing an array of downright weird targets with the help of his happy go lucky school girl friend.  He has a big robot arm and a tormented past and he gets caught up having to deal with some guy called David doing all sorts of evil stuff from his base of operations on the moon.  Keep in mind though that this plot was written by non other than Suda51 of Killer7 fame and isn't scared to go right off the handle at basically any point during the game.

The gameplay revolves around hacking and slashing your way through levels of strange robot zombie things called Wires before eventually fighting one of the games strange and incredibly intresting boss characters.  On the way you'll find pickups to improve your weaponry, health and blood gauges that will help make the killing of extremely dangerous criminals a lot easier.

On top of all that there are a ton of side missions that involve all sorts of varied and interesting goals such as securing a bonsai tree or making laps of a Kyoto village while running over Wires.  If you need a break from the killing there are the games Gigolo Missions which involve hitting on attractive women and giving them presents so that their mutual feelings result in them giving you an upgrade of some description.  I could rant for an entire post about the press's reaction to Gigolo mode but instead of that I'll just say that the content off these missions has been grossly exagerated.

The graphics are also really slick with cool looking character models and interesting levels that are varied enough to stop you from being bored visually speaking.  The music is also pretty good and the game comes with both Japanese and English voice audio if you're the kind of person that wanted to hear the script delivered by the Japanese cast.  The English voice actors did a good job of delivering the lines though so it would be worth switching between the two for the full experience.

That said the game isn't perfect and the biggest thing they fucked up with this one was the difficulty.  Hard Mode was obviously designed to be played on a new game+ (assuming there is one) and playing it on your first time round can seem a little unmanageable at certain points, especially the side missions.  The problem with this is that normal mode is way too easy and I have no idea what the challenge is like on easy mode but judging from my current experience you could probably beat the game with one hand there.

The game also has a few bugs of which I shall share two stories with.  On one level, after performing a special kill on an enemy I just fell through the floor and had to restart the mission from a check point which was rather annoying because sometimes the checkpoints can put you quite a ways back.  On a side mission involving a gun turret one of my targets glitched behind a wall that I could not shoot through which resulted in me having to start the whole thing over from the beggining which pissed me off to no end.

Still, difficulty problems aren't game breaking as you can still enjoy the experience on any setting and game bugs are infrequent if a little annoying so Killer is Dead is still worth picking up and blasting through just for it's truly unique brand of Suda51 strangeness.

Character Booster?!

Final Fantasy 7 just hit steam recently and I don't really understand why since there was already a PC release and you've been able to download it for ages on PSN and whatnot, but it seems to be selling pretty well so what do I know?

Anyway, since I'm doing a stream of every Final Fantasy game I own, I thought I'd check out the Steam version because if I bought it on PC it might save me a trip to my basement to dig out my old PS1 discs.

While reading the description of the features in the game I discovered something that made me rather upset.  It wasn't achievements, since it has given a few people who haven't played the game in years an excuse to give it another go.  It wasn't the cloud saves since that's a fine idea, and it wasn't the optimisation for PC because making things work better is always a good thing.

It was the fucking character booster, a feature built into the game to give the player free health, mana and money.  Now you may be wondering why this irritates me so much, surely I don't have a problem with people wanting to experience the story of Final Fantasy 7, right?

Well you are right, I don't have a problem with people wanting to experience the story, but how much of a lazy fuck do you have to be to break your characters to the point where the act of playing the VIDEO GAME is pointless.  It's really sad that we have gotten to the point where people who play games feel that they don't have to put in some degree of effort to get to the end.  Final Fantasy 7 isn't a book or a movie where you can just kick back and let things happen, it's a video game, where some degree of effort is required for you to reach the ending.

What's worse is that Final Fantasy 7 isn't even a hard game.  It's designed so that as long as you don't run from every fight you get in, generally speaking there isn't an encounter that you would have a lot of trouble with.  Making smart choices in combat is part of the game and just because certain people are idiots who can't make common sense choices regarding battle decisions and materia setups doesn't mean that we have to stoop to their level just so they can see the fucking plot.  It's not like Final Fantasy 7 is some kind of great epic story that everyone must see before they die, so I don't see why they should just have it given to them on a silver platter.

If you're going to play a video game, put some fucking time and effort into it.  Almost every game released since the last generation has been super easy and they are only getting easier thanks to whiny idiots who can't be bothered to work out basic game mechanics and feel entitled to an ending.  Back in my day if you couldn't beat a game it was a case of "tough shit, get good" but now it's all "aww, well you could always pay for it" or "here, have a feature that will do everything for you".  It's pathetic and it's the reason why fun, challenging games are dying.

So in short, take your character booster and fuck right off.

Don't Lock the Difficulty

A while ago you may remember me having a bit of a gush about Metal Gear Rising, I thought it was great.  If you don't remember me having a gush about Rising, have a flick through the archive and dig out my "review".

Anyway, Rising, along with many other games did something that I really can't fucking stand.  In the game there are 5 difficulty levels.  Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Revengeance.  I'm not trying to sound big or anything like that, but if you're like me then you want the biggest challenge you can get out of a game, so I always play on the hardest settings when possible.  However Rising doesn't let me do that, I have to beat the game fucking TWICE to unlock revengeance mode. 

I just want to challenge myself with the toughest thing that game has to offer, why does the game feel the need to make me prove my worth before it'll even let me fucking try.  That said though, Rising is a bad example because it turns out you can put in the Konami code to unlock them all from the start, but who's going to go looking for cheat codes on a first playthrough?! It's still bullshit.

Still, Rising isn't the only game that does this whole locked difficulty thing, in fact most games do and I seriously wish they would fucking stop.  Games today are pretty fucking easy to begin with, so don't make me play through the snoozefest easy modes before I can even attempt what sorry excuse for a hard mode you came up with.

Bottom line, make all difficulties available from the start of the goddamn game! No cheat codes! No having to play the game multiple times! No any other bullshit you can think of to make me work for bullshit that should be there anyway!  Just let me play the game on the difficulty I want to play it at, arsebag.

Dark Souls

Well recently, I've been playing Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition on PC, so I thought I'd give some thoughts so far.

As far as the game itself is concerned, it's basically the same thing as the console version with a couple of extras for the PC, although these extras are being offered as DLC for the console versions as well.  This time round I'm playing a character focused on strength rather than speed which is how I played my console version character and there's a nice distinction in play style between the two types.

As good as this game is, the PC version comes with a few issues that werent present in the console version.  For example the frame rate and general performance has a habit of taking a dip in certain areas, most notably Blight Town where the frame rate turns to shit in certain parts.  Also the keyboard and mouse controls are fucking kak, and playing with a controller is pretty much required.  I've also not had any luck using summon signs, with every summon failing.  I've not had a crack at invading in this version yet so I'll update with how that goes at a later date.  That said, the performance issues have been remedied with a fan patch, but I'm too lazy to go get it, so no comment there either.

Since this game has been out for a while, I thought I'd use this post to talk about its difficulty, since there are some people that like to describe the difficulty in this game as a bad thing.  Some people have described Dark Souls as a "trail and error" game but I can't stress enough how bullshit this is.

The game IS hard, and it IS bullshit in some places but usually the bullshittery isn't fatal and amounts to nothing more than a sneaky enemy jumping out at you from inside a box or something in most cases.  But the game sets you up for this shit, you pay attention to your surroundings and you quickly learn that there are going to be traps around pretty much every corner.  The game rewards careful, clever play and punishes you for charging in like an idiot.  Some people like to argue that the game requires a lot of "skill" but I think that's a load of crap too.  You need to be calm, collected, careful and observant to win, not particularly skilled.

This is a really fun game with a refreshing difficulty and a nice online feature that some would argue is a little unbalanced, but as far as I'm concerned it's still a ton of fun anyway.  So check it out, and don't put it down when you die, because when you do beat a section, this turns into one of the most satisfying games of this generation.

Difficulty is NOT a bad thing!

So a few days ago I started playing Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on my PC and then today I started playing Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure on my DS.  Both of these games are fucking fantastic and I will go into detail about why these games are so good in future posts.

But for now, I've come across a problem with today's gaming community, and my problem is that there is a vast majority of people who have all become little nancy boys afraid of a little difficulty!  Now to be fair, I don't blame them, games today ARE a lot easier than they used to be, but for good reason.  Modern gaming gives you experiences upwards of 8 hours while older games only really had an hour or two worths of time on the cartridge or whatever, so older games were made really hard so that you'd play them longer.

But a challenge is fun right?  Part of the appeal of this hobby is that you are kind of being issued a challenge by the developer to beat their game, they've spent time programming shit to try and stop you, so you have to overcome that, right?

Well apparently I'm wrong and being challenged and being made to learn to play well is too much for people today.  Dark Souls AND Henry Hatsworth have both had criticisms thrown at them for being hard and having "unforgiving" or "frustrating" difficulty.

Now there do exist games which are "bullshit" hard, but Dark Souls and Henry Hatsworth are NOT that, yet people still get upset when the game throws up a couple of road blocks.  I mean come on, what the fuck happened?!  Back when I was a lad, when we played a hard game we wouldn't throw up our arms and say that the difficulty was a problem, we'd band together and come up with techniques and strategies to get to the end of the game!

It's about time companies started making MORE hard games, not less, and it's also about time that people started actually started earning those endings instead of just giving up after they realise they can't win if their brain dead playing doesn't work.

We need a balance of hard games and games that can be played just to chill and relax, and right now we don't have it.  But we're never going to achieve that balance if critics keep pointing out difficulty as a negative point.  Call it out if it's bullshit, but games like Dark Souls and Hatsworth are NOT bullshit, so fucking stop it.

Modern Game Difficulty

If you watched the last Saturn Month showcase that I did then you are probably aware that I mentioned that the difficulty of the Saturn version, was way harder than the difficulty of the Xbox Live Arcade version, well this got me thinking about difficulty in games and I'm going to share with you my thoughts.

Let's start by making a very simple and general statement, games are a lot easier now than they were a long long time ago.

Now, before anyone starts frothing at the mouth over that, I will say that this doesn't mean that games today are all cakewalks, it also doesn't mean that modern games don't have frustrating or difficult moments and I'm not saying modern games are bad in any way, shape or form.  It's all simply a case of the technology getting better and the gaming audience expanding.

Games today have become a damn sight easier, probably because there is just more people playing them now.  Not every "gamer" in 2012 has time to sit there for hours and get good at a game just to experience the story, so developers want to make stuff a bit more accessible to your every day guy or gal who just wants to experience the medium.  Also, with the fact that most people play online, the need to develop super difficult AI's is pretty much gone, you can deliver and experience with the single player and then leave the challenge up to the multiplayer.  After all, a human opponent will be way harder to figure out than a computer one ever will.

Also, games now are longer and this is a big factor when thinking about difficulty as well.  You had to pay £30-£40 for a new game on the Sega Megadrive back in the day, and the games aren't that long because of the technological limitations, so of course you'd have to make it super hard, just to get your moneys worth!

Now that's me being fair

While it's true that a lot of old games were "bullshit" hard, mainly because of bad design, modern game devs make games "bullshit" hard now just because they don't have a fucking clue how to make an actual challenge.  Let's take Darksiders as an example.  If you put the game on hard, all it means is that you take more damage, and the enemies have more health.  This is NOT challenge, dodging attacks is not a difficult thing to get good at after an hour or two of play, so it just makes things frustrating as you have to wail on a guy for longer.  Game developers today seem to have this bad habit of making games hard in the "bullshit" way, or just flat out way too easy at all times on any mode.

Old games were bullshit hard too, in a different way of course, but a well developed retro game feels fair in its difficulty whereas a well developed modern game, still feels bullshit in it's difficulty.  This isn't true for every game of course, but it's pretty commonplace.

So yeah, there's a little bit of an insight into what I think about difficulty in games.  Games I would breeze through as a kid now kick my ass, so it could be a case of me being bitter and wanting something to blame, but whatever, I'm still having fun with the medium anyway.

ADDITIONAL BIT:  A lot of games today also lock out the hard mode until you beat the normal mode, this needs to fuck off right now.  I like a challenge, so I like to put my games on hard, so don't fucking lock me out of it just because I haven't played your piece of shit game all the way to completion on normal, goddamnit