Jimquisition: A Different Kind of Difficulty

[Jimothy Sterling]

A Different Kind of Difficulty

Jim Sterling, officially The Escapist's most popular celebrity icon, has come down from on high to deliver his sermons and change the way you perceive reality itself. This week, he bends your mind by explaining how easy games can sometimes be the hardest of all. Ooh, that's ironic n' stuff!

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[Siris]

Another fine video. The same goes for the Fancy Pants Adventure, which I would have loved to see brought up...

Any chance next week can be about the MML3 cancellation?

 

[ShadowyMOON]

Easily one of the best Jimquisitions so far. Good job Jim.

 

[Zenron]

Ha, that opening was awesome. Just because of that you get a thumbs up from me.

 

[messy]

Best one yet. The opening "black" bit was genuinely funny.

 

[JohnDoey]

Pretty good video and you make a good point about difficulty.

 

[brazuca]

Jim said "homos" instead of "homies".

 

[viranimus]

I sort of disagree. I grant you Jim, you bring up a good point, but the difference is that in those "difficult" games, games with death typically always have perfection challenge as well. Its just that the base is more difficult.

A perfect example is demon's souls. Its supposedly a hard game. However, if you have patience and persistence its not. If you compared Kirbys challenge of perfection, you would have to also compare it to the challenge of say earning 100%/plat trophy which typically takes 3-4 playthrus. Not just completing the game.

So in effect youve compared apples to oranges.

 

[Xman490]

After a moment of thought, I had a hunch that Epic Yarn and the concept of "optional difficulty" would be center stage in this.

 

[BabySinclair]

Have to say it's the first time I didn't find him grating. Must have dialed back his condescending manner a bit.

 

[millertime059]

Here's a big wrench to those who complain about games difficulty, harder =/= more fun. Not every game needs to be harder to be fun. Some are built with this in mind (I play Super Meat Boy too) where lowering difficulty would be less fun, but other times hard is used as a substiture for cheap tricks that make you screw up. Old arcade games, harder yes, better no. True skill challenges they were not, mostly cheap deaths that forced you to memorize the levels in order to inflate playtime, or quarter usage.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

As an achievement junkie, I am well aware of the concept of optional difficulty.

Nice job, Jim.

My only nitpick here is that games like Devil May Cry and the like typically also include a ranking system, a la the medals in Kirby. Adding difficulty...to your difficulty. So you can rage while you rage.

 

[snave]

Genuinely a good video once you chop the head and tail off it.

The true challenge (to get very meta here) is to find a game where the optional challenges are both fun and fair. And of course challenging.

And people wonder why I though the Arabian-themed Sonic game was genuinely good. Super Meat Boy level challenges hiding behind a facade of "groan, Sonic" and the odd cheap, blind cactus.

 

[lord.jeff]

Also a point I like pointing out to people how argue this is why are you using Kirby's Epic Yarn as the standard of difficulty of games today, Kirby games were never about being super challenging. If you compare games historically know for being challenging to a kid's game guess which one would be harder, here are a few harder games of today for you to try: Terraria, Demon Souls, and Ninja Gaiden.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I've never wanted to say anything like this before, but . . .

"Derp, you iz so dumbz for likings teh kirby gamz!"

I want to point out some irony that just showed up in my recapta thing (or whatever it's called). The word Difficult appeared in the first one it gave me. The second bit of irony is that I can't for the life of me make out the second word.
What I'm saying is I appreciate irony.

 

[Epona]

...and yet I don't care about getting Gold Medals just like I don't care about getting all the gold coins in New Super Mario Bros or getting a Rank A in Mario Kart or a high battle rank in Final Fantasy XIII. Those things aren't important to me. I play to beat the game and if you can't die then it just becomes a matter of time.

So yeah, this kind of optional difficulty is fine for some people but for others, it's meaningless. When you think about it, the Gold Medals and Rank A's are just bragging points and that only matters if you intend to show them off.

 

[Giest118]

Yeah, DoDonPachi is easy because the developers made it hard to beat.

Wait. That makes absolutely no sense.

 

[teebeeohh]

and if i want a challenge in my megaman game i can just play it in the worst possible order.
also: a game is not easy if you can win it by attrition, you can win demon's souls by attrition and that game was hailed as the second coming of Jesus(which it arguably was).

 

[TheDooD]

Difficulty and Death are a needed thing in games imo. It builds tension in the easiest fashion, it tests that you took what you learned playing through the game and if you didn't learn something you get punished for it. Losing gems that you can get back ain't shit compared of being punished by death. These days you have quicksave and check points that basically make it moot unless you really come unprepared. Then you're forced to either find an earlier save point or just start the game over.

Sonic been doing what Kirby's Epic Yard does for years. You want to collect as many rings as possible because they grant you extra lives, access to the special stage to get chaos emeralds and they keep Sonic alive from everything but pitfalls, drowning and being crushed.

In Demon's Souls you collects the souls of everything you kill so you don't want to die because you risk losing all the souls you collected with only a chance to collect them again after you start a new game plus. In fallout games you have a basically a carved path to take to gain access to beat the game and its normally easier then exploring the world to get weapons, armor or just to discover more about the world you're in.