Difficulty in Games

[Euryalus]

So I've recently been playing Kirby's Epic yarn, because I'm like 4 years behind every game that comes out now a days, and it's a fantastic game. It's so adorable!

It nailed the aesthetic of childlike fun. The themes of the visuals, the storybook narrator method of storytelling, the simplistic music, all of it helped to give off this very... modern Fairytale storybook feel. It was great, and I loved it.

Even the story's simplicity was a boon to the game. The only real criticisms I have were that the gameplay and the story telling weren't integrated as fully pacing wise as they could've been (which isn't relevant to the thread), and the difficulty of the game.

I get that it's a Kirby game and the series is known for it's designed easiness as a "gateway drug" game, but it was piss easy.

You can't really die, getting hurt only causes you to lose gems, and it's not even that easy to get hit. Some of the waddle dees can't hurt you even if you touch them.

And I feel it was to the detriment of the game. I'm not sure why. I knew going in it would be easy, and I knew based on the childhood aesthetic that rage inducing challenge was not going to be a part of the package, but somehow I still felt like the game would have been better with some bite to it.

To make it feel like a journey through a field of floating cakes rather than a tour through a field of floating cakes.

I don't know. I think Kirby's Triple Deluxe had a better difficulty level to it while still having the Kirby easy.

TL;DR How much do you like difficulty in your games, and is it merely preference or is there, at some basic level, a need for difficulty in games like Kirby (ostensibly skill based).

 

[krazykidd]

I really like kirby's epic yarn. It's my feel good game of the year every year. It was so charming, i couldn't help but be in a good mood when i played. And i think the easiness was fitting for this game.

I love difficulty in games, i like my games tough as nails, but every once in a while i like playing a cute game with cute aestetics and fun relax and be happy go lucky.

Also did you beat it while getting all the collectable things in each level? There's some challenge for those who want it.

 

[Euryalus]

I really like kirby's epic yarn. It's my feel good game of the year every year. It was so charming, i couldn't help but be in a good mood when i played. And i think the easiness was fitting for this game.

I love difficulty in games, i like my games tough as nails, but every once in a while i like playing a cute game with cute aestetics and fun relax and be happy go lucky.

Also did you beat it while getting all the collectable things in each level? There's some challenge for those who want it.

I do tend to like the ease of Kirby games, but with epic yarn, the super easiness went too far I think. The first and second, as well as Triple Deluxe and Crystal Shards all had some level of skill you needed to have to beat it. It was easy, but you couldn't just bumble your way through in an extreme sense.

With Kirby's epic yarn I felt it should have been more a long the lines of the above. It make have a childhood aesthetic, but childhood isn't always piss easy

And as for the collectibles, I'm still playing for those. I don't feel collectibles are a good substitute for it though. I mean... I could tie my hand behind my back or try to play with my feet if that's the kind of difficulty I wanted.

All in all though it was amazing. Loved every bit of it minus the above thread topic. XD

 

[Pink Gregory]

Has Kirby ever been a particular difficult game, though?

Has it ever been comparable to, say, Donkey Kong Country in terms of challenge?

I'm asking because I don't know.

 

[Euryalus]

Has Kirby ever been a particular difficult game, though?

Has it ever been comparable to, say, Donkey Kong Country in terms of challenge?

I'm asking because I don't know.

Not particularly no, but you could die and would have to try. They've had a better balance IMO.

I don't know, my complaint isn't that it's easy so much as it's impossible to fail in many ways.

It feels off.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Kirby is... Kirby? I think the hardest a Kirby game has ever been is in one game mode of the SNES game that played like a JRPG without the turn based battles and random encounters. Or a plot. You would wander around, picking up upgrades and items while progressing through a huge dungeon. And even that wasn't hard, just frustrating at times.

I don't really have a preference for difficulty in games. If the developers intended for it to be played at a regular or hard difficulty, then I'll play it like they wanted it to be played. As long as it all fits together.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I've never tried those few platformers that strangely boast 'you can't die', and I must admit I'm iffy on the prospect. I feel like it just wouldn't be the same without at least the possibility of defeat.

The only ones besides Kirby's Epic Yarn I remember are Wario Land 2 and 3, which used the fact that everything comically transforms Wario instead of killing him to introduce puzzle elements. Epic Yarn didn't even have that, just a loss of points. Maybe if you had a certain score requirement to reach before the next level would be unlocked?

Of course with Wario Land the risk lay in from being hit by something that transformed you into something else so you couldn't use your previous transformation's abilities to access new areas. So you would have to go through a portion of the level again to find the transformation you wanted, which in practise is just like if you had died and gone back to a checkpoint.

Kirby has never exactly been Mega Man (Kirby has infinite flight for one thing), but I remember Kirby 64 being somewhat hard past the 3rd planet, doubly so if you're trying to get all the hidden items to unlock the final battle. Kirby Super Star and its remakes have The Arena, which will always be a challenge no matter how many times I play it.

Spoiler: Particularly this round

 

[LaoJim]

I haven't played any of the Kirby games myself, but I found your post reminded me of this episode of Jimquistion for a while back.

http://www.destructoid.com/the-jimquisition-a-different-kind-of-difficulty-207005.phtml

I think he makes an interesting case, but I can't really judge if he's right myself having not played the game.

Thank God for Jim.

As for me, I like to keep a mix of easy and difficult games around. Sometimes I'm in the mood to try and beat my high score on Geometry Wars or try to push a few checkpoints further into an Insanity level playthrough, other times I know that's just going to put me in a bad mood, and I stick a Lego game on and settle into a groove of inevitable vegatitive progress.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Being difficult for difficulty's sake is hardly fun, and I've played way too many games that are challenging but completely fall apart because that challenge isn't due to a well-designed problems the player has to find a way to overcome. The game may break its own rules or have poorly defined ones to begin with, or I'm actively encouraged to use tactics that don't work and discouraged from using tactics that work, or the randomness is so poorly done that whether the player wins or loses comes down to getting lucky, or the challenge may be so poorly presented that I may learn absolutely nothing from my failures. I would much rather have a game I can just breeze through than challenges like those.

With that said, though, having a well-designed and fair challenge is certainly enjoyable. Not all games need it, and depending on the reason for playing the game, it may even hinder the experience. However, many games have certainly benefitted from being very difficult simply because they handled that difficulty well.

In the case of Kirby, specifically, I think it can get away from having a lack of challenge. Nintendo has plenty of difficult platformers, and Kirby sort of fills that space of just being relaxing and not having to worry about overcoming difficult challenges. Granted, Epic Yarn may have gone too far, but it still at least understood where Kirby sort of fits in compared to Nintendo's other platformers.

 

[Racecarlock]

Uh, call me stupid if you want, but why not just play the game and try to keep all of the gems you get, thus making one single hit from an enemy a much bigger thing to avoid?

I mean, is dying a lot really the only sign of a game being difficult? If that's so, why isn't I wanna be the guy the most popular game in the world? I mean, it's more impossible than ninja gaiden on the NES. Isn't that what people want? That's what I keep hearing people say.

Really, what's so great about dying repeatedly and breaking your controller? What is so great about being constantly frustrated?

Oh right, sense of achievement and all that bullshit. Is that really the only thing? I mean, when I play games I just like running around randomly and vandalizing things. Or killing things. Or maybe just interacting with the environment. I don't need to feel like I climbed mount everest every time I play banjo kazooie.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I like games that give me a choice. I always do my first playthrough on easy though, mostly because I want to experience a story, look for collectables, ect.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I don't think games need to be difficult at all, but I do appreciate games that have well designed and implemented challenge. Kirby largely has never really been about challenge so when I go into a Kirby game, I don't expect to find it. In fact, I'd probably be put off by a Kirby game that was particularly challenging. At the end of the day, I just like variety in my gaming experiences and if every game were Dark Souls not only would Dark Souls feel less special but gaming in general would feel too samey.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

It depends on the kind of difficulty. If the difficulty is figuring out a puzzle, or mastering the timing to dodge a boss' attacks, then sign me up. Those kind of challenges force you to engage with the game, and feel satisfying to beat.

If the difficulty just means having loads of mooks thrown at you, and the strategy to beating them is just to mash the attack button as fast as possible? Nah, boring.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i enjoy a challenge, but the game must be fair, i also dont mind games with normal difficulty or easy difficulty if the rest ofthe elements in the game make the experience better

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

TL;DR How much do you like difficulty in your games, and is it merely preference or is there, at some basic level, a need for difficulty in games like Kirby (ostensibly skill based).

I feel it depends on the game and its goals. Something like Kirby I'm perfectly fine with being a little on the easy side because I know that it's a game meant to appeal to younger and/or more casual audiences. That said though, I definitely enjoy firing-up a game that doesn't hold back on it's challenge as long as it's fun challenge. I should feel that I'm the one messing up, that I'm the one who needs to improve, and that when I finish a given challenge it's because I improved enough to over-come it. I only get frustrated (at the game, anyway) when things like getting hung-up on terrain get me killed, or I otherwise feel like I'm wrestling with the game itself rather than the challenge it presented to me (like an enemy).

 

[FPLOON]

Huh... The more I think about it, the more I enjoyed Rayman Origins/Legends in the difficulty department... They were "easy" enough to play through without rage-quitting, but "challenging" enough as the games progressed and, especially, when you want to collect everything the games had to offer per level...

With that said, I rarely check the difficulty of most of the video games I play unless the game allows me to choose the difficulty ahead of time... and, when that's the case, I usually take the "easy" way out if I'm just there to veg out story-wise and then replay it again on a higher difficulty...

The only games I can think of right now where I just go balls-deep in the hardest difficulty are the Kingdom Hearts games (with the exception of 358/2 Days and Re:Coded), but mostly because it's the "easiest" way of getting them secret endings... or, if it's Re:Chain of Memories, I sleight-spam the fuck out of sonic blade because the game allows me to use such a cheap tactic most of the time regardless of difficulty... and it's the only way I can play that version of the game without "ranting" about the GBA version being more fun and challenging...

 

[AmberSword]

Well, it largely depends on the game, as has been pointed out.
One thing I will say though, a game's default difficulty setting should be representative of the developer's intended experience for you. You don't know what you're getting into until you actually play the game, so choosing "Normal" should be expected for most people, what gets me is when people complain the difficulty is either too hard/ too easy, then the devs or defenders come out saying "Well Choose another difficulty then!", when the game doesn't even have an option to switch difficulties mid playthough! You expect people to replay a game from scratch so they can enjoy it if they aren't lucky because they had no prior way of knowing whether they had chosen the right difficulty setting for themselves?

Also, if you're confident enough to only offer one difficulty setting, then you better make sure you know what you're doing.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well plain and simply the game should be challenging enough for me to consider all it's features in an effort to beat it, if it's far too easy I'll probably contend with one choice that works and then just use it through the entire game. Which also means I'll walk away terribly bored and at that point the designer just got all his work thrown away.

Another thing, fucking difficulty options devs! My level of challenge is not the same as your level of challenge so make that shit flexible.