Does anyone who plays newish games get the feeling they're being cottled?

I rented God of War, and the gameplay's fantastic. But...sometimes I feel like I'm being spoonfed passage through the game. Like, when I was playing on hard, and died a few times on an enemy, it said "Would you like to set the difficulty level to easy for this battle?"

Then some trolls attacked that were pretty tough and it was very hard to hit the 50-some times you needed to without taking a lot of damage. But...there was an infinite supply of free life energy running around! I had no reason to avoid damage because I could just go refill to maximum whenever I wanted.

And when you die..this is the biggest difficulty in difference between old classic games and current games. If you die in an NES action game, you go back to the start of the level. If you die in a PS2 action game, you go back about five feet and get a full life meter. You never actually have to get good at the game -- you just need to be good enough that once in every hundred tries, you'll get through any given room.

This trend started around the N64/PSX gen. I remember playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and thinking "Shut UP you stupid fairy! I'm supposed to have to figure that out for myself!!" Imagine in Zelda 3 if some random fairy said "Link, maybe if you try walking through that waterfall!"

So, on the one in a million chance that video game producers read this thread. STOP COTTLING US! If I die, I should have to go back far enough that I actually have to conquer the level. If there's a puzzle, I should have to figure it out completely on my own. If I set the difficulty to hard, I want to play the game ON HARD. If I wanted it to be easy, there's an easy level I could pick whenever i wanted. If there's a boss that needs a certain trick to beat it, I should have to find that weakness for myself.

Every once in a while I try to beat one of the NES Ninja Gaiden games or Castlevania games. They all end with two or three consecutive bosses that you have to beat on one bar of life and can kill you in four or five hits. And if you die, you have to start over. When I was your age, I had to beat FIFTEEN LEVELS, on three lives, in the snow, uphill both ways! That's the way it was and WE LIKED IT!

And what's that you say, some people want it to be easy? Well, fine. Set it to easy! I want it hard.

Honestly, this is why I play sports games, because you can always set the difficulty to a level that you will have trouble with.
I've found the same thing, it happens to me alot in the 1st person shooter genre, as it has become more mainstream, you have people being really bad at the games that they are playing and as a result, the games need to be made easier to cover that wide area of audience.

I also think game reviews are hurting the problem more than helping it.

You read RPG reviews? Basically, they consider 'If the monster is made of ice, use fire attacks' to be 'using strategy'.

Difficulty in videogames is a delicate balance… the results being frustration versus enjoyment for the player.

In the past, the gaming market was much smaller. In order to succeed, you had to take a risk and for many developers, it was a labor of love. They built the games that they wanted to play.

Now, you have a huge established market. When you make a game, it’s not about what the developer wants as much as what the business analysts dictate is the safest way to make the most money. Taking a risk in today’s gaming market is not as lucrative as it once was, especially when you calculate how much time and effort it takes to develop a quality title. You don’t see any successful closet programmers making top-selling games anymore. (Richard Garriot, anyone?)

There are the few elite developer houses that have enough weight behind their names to make what they want to make, but again… they are usually trying to appeal to a multi generation market, instead of just the younger crowd (when I was a little buckaroo).

Just as it’s a real treat to stumble upon a good movie (wouldn’t want to take a “risk” and have a sad or depressing ending, Hollywood… Hmmm?), great games are just as infrequent.

As much as technology is allowing more and more independent filmmakers to emerge with intelligent offerings… so too will technology allow the closet programmer to build intelligent and challenging games. We’re just not quite there yet… but it is happening. ;-)

I can't say anything about the topic, but the professor in me is forced to make a statement: I think the word you're going for is "coddling" not "cottling." Don't take offense to my correction...I would hope you'd do the same for my grammar and word choice!

quote:

Originally posted by Cody K.:
Difficulty in videogames is a delicate balance… the results being frustration versus enjoyment for the player.

That's why difficulty levels are good things. So I can have a 'hard' level to set the game to and have it actually be hard.

Or maybe, Zelda: Ocarina of Time should have had a 'Shut up you stupid fairy and stop spoiling all the damn puzzles' option in the options menu.

Or they can just do what they used to do and have level 1 super-easy and the last level super-hard.

I play many games, but I generally dislike those that are impossible to beat. I enjoy playing on easy for the first play because I find it the best way to experience a game for the first time. I can always go back at a more difficult setting if I think that the game was worth playing again, but I can't really undo a "Hard" difficulty setting without starting over.

I can certainly understand your criticism Bob, but that has never really been an issue for me.

These are the games that I have stayed away from because of difficulty:

The "Hitman" series
The "Prince of Persia" series
Any "Metal Gear Solid"
Most difficult simulation racing games. (Save Gran Turismo I & II)
All of the "Splinter Cell"s except for the most recent.

I just don't enjoy having a game beat my ass, it just pisses me off.

Well, I certainly understand that Mike, but as far as me, I have trouble enjoying a game unless I have to put my brain onto the 'on' position in order to get through it.

There's only so much dreary button tapping I can stand. I like it when I get to a part I can't beat, then have to figure out a way to beat it.

Then I only play it again if I can find new challenges in the game. Like, with difficulty levels, or voluntary restrictions. Or timed runs (Mario 1 in 21:45 with no pipes!)

When I'm getting through the entire game by just throwing my strongest attacks at the enemy over and over and doing what it tells me to do, I get bored and start to think it's pointless to keep playing.

Then there's the issue of feeling a sense of accomplishment having conquered a challenge. I couldn't beat Kid Icarus when I was a kid, and when I went back to it ten years later it was extremely fulfilling to finally get through it. Same with Zelda 2.

quote:

Originally posted by philosopherEric:
I can't say anything about the topic, but the professor in me is forced to make a statement: I think the word you're going for is "coddling" not "cottling." Don't take offense to my correction...I would hope you'd do the same for my grammar and word choice!

No offense, pE, but only the dorkiest people on Earth would go into a forum they're not even interested in for the sole purpose of correcting someone's spelling.

To be honest, I don't particularly like games that are challenging only because they make the player die a lot; I'd rather just have tricky puzzles placed regularly throughout the game than rooms chock-full of obscenely powerful enemies or extremely long platform-jumping sections with no safety nets (figuratively speaking).

I'm all for adjustable difficulty settings, although just increasing the number of enemies and giving the player less health on higher settings is a bit of a cop-out in game design. From what I hear, the Silent Hill games are exemplary in this regard, by significantly altering puzzle sections on higher difficulties.

As you say, short of built-in difficulty options, there are usually ways that a creative player can adjust the difficulty of the game to their preferences. I've heard of one LOZ:OOT challenge that involves playing through the game with only three hearts (not even upgraded), and no potions or bottled fairies. That would be a task for a truly elite gamer (probably no harder than playing through the original Legend of Zelda normally, but hey).

quote:

Originally posted by Mike:
The "Hitman" series
The "Prince of Persia" series
Any "Metal Gear Solid"
Most difficult simulation racing games. (Save Gran Turismo I & II)
All of the "Splinter Cell"s except for the most recent.

These are actaully some of my favorite games. I really enjoy the premise of all of them and the freedom with which they give you to acomplish what you are trying to do. I like the hitman simply because you sneak around and kill people and I like splinter cell mainly for the same reason. It's badass to drop down kill someone, then just disappear.

I *love* how Zelda 1 did it.

They made a *second game* with essentially the same setup and same engine as the first.

I wish Zelda 3 did that.

It's true just adjusting the numbers can be a cop-out difficulty-wise. And sometimes the higher difficulty levels just have enemies with such obscenely high life that they take way too long to kill.

But I'd pick that over easy games because...if I beat a game that offered no resistance whatsoever I feel "Well..whoopdeedoo. That was a waste of time". For me there's no point in playing video games except to challenge myself. So there should be some games that are easy, and some games for people who would rather challenge themselves. Instead, all the games seem to be super-easy.

quote:

Originally posted by Biggles:
No offense, pE, but only the dorkiest people on Earth would go into a forum they're not even interested in for the sole purpose of correcting someone's spelling.

You got me there...it's pretty much true. But one of my pet peeves is the fact that people's writing on the web is so sloppy and bad, and that rubs off on their academic writing, which is what I have to grade. But I only offered a correction to bob because he's a smart guy and a good writer, and I thought he might care. But I am a college professor, both by trade and at heart, and that may make me quite dorky.

A general response to people who are saying 'But I like easy games, dang it!'

There's nothing in video games that bores me more than coasting. It's not like I want every game to be Ninja Gaiden 3 or the original Japanese Super Mario 2 (Lost Levels, better known).

But I simply will not enjoy a game if I'm just coasting through it. I like to, occasionally, come to an obstacle I can't get past, and have to think of a way to overcome that obstacle.

Whether it's figuring out a puzzle, thinking of a good strategy, finding the enemy's weakness..I don't care. So long as at some point, I can't get through the game at first, and later, I can get through it, because I found a way. (I also detest levelling and only ever use it as a last resort).

If a game is so easy (Like FF7 and just about all new games) that there's never an obstacle that I can't get through immediately, and I can just coast through it without ever coming to a roadblock, that's just flat out boring.

So it's not 'I want every game to be super-hard'. It's just 'I want to ever have any trouble getting through'. Which, with new games, I don't.