Difficulty in Video Games
Well, hello there, reader! Long time no see, am I right? Anyway, let us cut those greetings short, because today I am going to talk about games, hard games, the ones that make you cry out of anger... or not.
Yes, difficulty is a pretty widespread subject in today's video game market. Every hard game is "the Dark Souls" of their genre, which, at least in my opinion, comes from lazy game journalists who can not be arsed to properly review a video game.
Anyway, why do hard video games exist? Near their inception, video games resided in arcades and their purpose was to look and feel interesting while snatching your hard earned money, because the arcade machines running those games were coin operated and to get more continues, you guessed it, you had to fork out cash. So far so good, but how does this translate to modern video games, aka "the Dark Souls games" of the modern times?
Today, the difficulty of video games is a spectrum, being different from game to game. Some games are easy, story-driven affairs. Some are hard and infuriating, because the difficulty comes from stats that are against you in every aspect, giving an unfair experience. Others just require you to master their mechanics, becoming less difficult the more you learn. I personally prefer the last category, and the rest of this article will be about it.
To emphasize the "hard but fair" discussion, I will bring up a game I have finished recently, and that is Furi. This game gives you four mechanics to master and a small array of enemy attacks which you have to defend against or use to your advantage. Your tools are an automatic gun and a sword and your defensive maneuvers are a dash and a parry. The gun and sword can be charged up to amplify their damage, but this takes time, so you need to chose the moment of your attack very carefully. The dash can also be charged up, to give you an extra few meters of distance. And then, there is the parry, your only way of regaining health in battle and to avoid melee attacks from your foes, but if you time it right, you can also unleash a devastating counter attack. Bosses have melee attacks, which are telegraphed with a sparkle of their weapon and a short ding, their projectile attacks are colour coded to show you which you can parry, shoot or dodge through. They also have pulse and beam attacks which follow the same manner of telegraphing. The kicker is the fact that these attacks can be mixed and matched in different patterns, which you have to adapt to in order to survive and bring your foes down.
Another great game which follows this difficulty design is Doom (2016). In that game you have to enter a state of flow by mastering shooting, healing and movement. You have to know how to move in order to avoid damage (standing still will kill you), know how to accurately shoot in order to dish it out in an optimal manner and also know when to rush in and execute an enemy in order to heal. Arenas have multiple layers most of the time, so you can be like Obi Wan and claim the high ground for yourself. The music also kinda turns Doom into a rhythm game, enhancing the felling of catharsis you get while playing. Every weapon has situational usefulness and each enemy is weak to a certain way of receiving damage and your ability to adapt on the fly to the mob ahead of you is crucial to your survival. The absence of weapon reloading and iron sights is a welcome cut down which helps the game flow smoothly, removing the pacing issues of modern shooters. All in all, Doom is a really solid action packed shooter which has a very solid rhythm, but you have probably already played it and you already found out for yourself.
Based on my short analysis of these two great games I hope you now understand why I love difficult games. It is all about the flow and mastery, overcoming a hard challenge, in which the game does not cheat you out, but it is thirsty for your blood and, oh boy, will it get it if you are not up to the task.
i think kids today are spoiled when it comes to difficulty in games, having the choice of how difficult it is takes away from the game i think. being an 80's kid, all the games i played were difficult to begin with, and as such, 'hardened me' to the point that today, any new game i play is automatically set to the hardest difficulty level. i find a game is much more enjoyable when it is more challenging to play.
great post dude.
Thank you very much!
I completely agree with your view on difficulty. Lazy developers often like to raise it by implementing mechanics that are not really fair, or sometimes by not solving bugs that actually work against the player. But yeah, a good game should push the players beyond their limits to master the mechanics and actually become good with them.
How would you relate this to difficult racing sims vs. arcade racing games? I'm sure some lazy game journalist will say the next Gran Turismo is "The Dark Souls of racing," now that you have brought this up.
They already did this to Project Cars 2, so I have little hope that history won't repeat itself.
I see I overlooked that headline in your collage.
You keep mentioning "the dark souls" as some kind of measurement. Have you ever played the souls series? Including demon souls, bloodborne and Nioh? Even though Nioh is not from the developers of the souls series this game is often compared to it as it has very similar aspects and the difficulty level is insane.
I am just wondering because I am personally a great fan of the souls series. The difficulty and the fact you just start without any information at all and the tuturial is just to show you what the buttons are for.
I am always looking for new challenging games and I wonder if you could help me in my search ;-)
I am a fan of the series myself, having finished everything from Demon's Souls to Bloodborne and also playing Nioh at the moment. In the article I criticised journalists who call other, unrelated games "the Dark Souls" of their genre. For example, Crash Bandicoot being called the Dark Souls of 3D platformers, or Project Cars 2 being the Dark Souls of racing games. I find this label lazy and unprofessional.
I agree, I got your point but I was just wondering if you yourself have been playing these games and if you also feel these games set a certain level of difficulty.
I personally enjoy Nioh and Bloodborne more as the pace is a lot higher and it is more focussed on dashing instead of blocking.
May I ask how far in Nioh you currently are?
Well, I reached the mines in Nioh.
The difficulty of the Souls series is not always fair. There are unavoidable attacks and also traps that you can not see coming, cheapening the experience as a whole. I started playing because of the robust combat system and remained for the interesting lore, so all's well that ends well.
@originalworks