I Wanna Be The Guy: Is this what passes for hard now?

[Vyce]

IWBTG trolls you hard the entire time. Double jumps that don't always work? Check. Blocks that don't appear until you land or hit them? Check. A path that ends in a dead end that can only be resolved by death? Check. Impossible jumps and spikes everywhere? Check. Patterns and other things you have to do perfectly or die horrible? Check.

SMB isn't near as bad until the later levels, and don't get me started on the nightmare versions of all the levels.

 

[StBishop]

I believe it was intended as a parody of old-style Nintendo games which were ridiculously difficult, and of how some older gamers are clamouring to go back to those days.

Moreover, how much of the "Nintendo hard" trope is due to fake difficulty clouded by nostalgia.

All of it. I assure you.

I hadn't played any Nintendo games with the exception of Pokemon and Kirby's Dreamland on Gameboy until this generation. Since then I've played a couple and they aren't any harder than many current games.

I thought Baldur's Gate was the hardest game of all time until I reinstalled it recently and realised that I was shit at RPG's when I was 9.

 

[Magikarp]

"Trust nothing" isn't a pattern, it's a LACK of pattern.

There is a pattern. It isn't a lack of pattern, it is a lack of coherence.

As you make mistakes and understand the environment, the pattern emerges. The pattern doesn't appear to be there, but through trial-and-error the world forms and is quantified as logic.

Suddenly you know where the apples shift, what pops out of where, and then the focus of the game turns to accuracy and efficiency.

I suppose that is a pattern, but what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't have to die to see each piece of the pattern.

 

[Pearwood]

i did keep on, dear god did i try to get into it, cuz i fucking loved the devil may cry series, but jesus bayonetta just didn't do it for me. for one thing, i'm not so much controlling as i am fueling the game as it controlls itself. i figured out a cool combo, just punch punch kick, simple. i tried to do it again, and i found that it only worked once every dozen attempts, becuase not only does the time it percieves as a pause between buttons presses fluctuate, but try this, just do a bunch of punching combos in the empty practice room. when i just mash punch over and over, i see that the game frequently imputs kick instead as if to say "yeah, that combo's all well and good, but this would be better!"
i thought it was like DMC and i had to turn auto mode off, but no, there was no such function.
and i thought "HEY! I am the one playing, NOT you bayonetta! if I say punch, you damn well PUNCH, don't just kick instead, if i wanted you to kick, i would have pressing KICK, but i didn't, i pressed PUNCH!"

Automatic mode is just easy difficulty, turn it up to normal to turn it off. None of the combos that need pauses between button presses are really worth it unless you're on an Alfheim where punches and kicks are limited, like I said the game is fast paced so there's not really much time for long intricate combos. And I think the combo you're thinking of is PKP not PPK.

 

[Wolfram23]

Demon's Souls is hard. The upcoming Dark Souls should also be hard. The Witcher 2 on Hard or higher is hard.

 

[Cogwheel]

SMB is fairly hard. IWBTG is harder but, yes, mostly fake difficulty, to borrow a TVTropes term. That said? I like it because its difficulty isn't boring, so to speak. It's so utterly absurd that dying for the 30th time is, at least for some people, somehow funny.

If you want skill-based, high difficulty games (with a great deal of depth at that), may I suggest roguelike RPGs? Nethack, ADOM or, if you want a less spiteful/mysterious one, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Maybe it's an acquired taste, but I quite enjoy them.