Jimquisition: A Different Kind of Difficulty

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Azure-Supernova

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Aug 5, 2009
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Crono1973 said:
I don't do any of those things. I don't care about bragging. For example, this weekend I beat 3 games, God of War, God of War II and finally New Super Mario Bros. DS. I wouldn't tell anyone (outside of this thread) because it doesn't really matter.

There was a time before Youtube speedruns, achievements and online multiplayer that most people didn't really care to show off. I am one of those types of people.
Well exactly my point. You either play a game for the experience of the game or for personal achievement. Either way there's a way to cater to everyone.
 

Beautiful End

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Feb 15, 2011
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You know how they show a single image from a video before you actually click it? I saw Megaman and I thought he would discuss Capcom and the huge dick move they pulled with MML3. Eh, well, it was still pretty good.

But I have to agree with a couple of people here. Either I missed the point of the episode or Jim did (Of course the blame goes to me, right?). I am one of those people who complain about SOME games being too easy. And here's why.

Yes, games back then were more challenging because you couldn't save your progress, you had no checkpoints and you had a limited amount of lives and no hopes of obtaining more. Also, very limited weapons. I'm thinking of Adventure Island, if anyone played that game. 8 worlds, few weapons, no checkpoints, good luck. Or if you want something simpler: Mario.

I'm not saying gamers back then were more "HXC BRO!" or anything. I'm just saying that I think that ever since games started reaching all sorts of people (Kids, parents, grandparents?), games have been divided into different categories. You have your easy games (Mario games, etc. I'll get there in a moment!), "hardcore" games (CoD and M rated games, I guess) and anything in between.

Back then, whenever you would buy a game, you didn't have to worry about how hard the game was or how family friendly it was. No, it was just a game. Think about that: a GAME. You didn't see people complaining about the content of the game and stuff. We didn't have GTA. It was just a game; a fantasy computer game with unrealistic plots and goals. Have fun with it. Battletoads could be just as equally challenging and family friendly as Ninja Gaiden.

But now that we've got kids and the Wii and games like...Brain Academy and...Wii Sports and stuff, things have been, for the lack of a better term, dumbed down a bit. No, I'm not saying those games suck. I'm just saying that games such as those are meant to hold your hand and guide you through the game, patiently patting your back and waiting for you to reach the end of the level. Yes, even a 5 year old could play with no effort at all. That is, undeniably, an easy game. So compared to NES games, where you'd be tossed into the game, no tutorials, no choosing difficulty and no mercy, you can see the difference clearly.

I'm not touching the Death penalty at all, if you notice. I agree; if death is missing from a game, it doesn't meant it's a 'wuss' game or whatever. A more simple example would be racing games like Gran Turismo. There's no death or explosions. And as a matter of fact, you can progress through the game without winning every single race. But there's that thing about winning every race! That's the challenge and the attraction.
On the other hand, give a 5 year old a copy of GT and they'll probably die of boredom. it's just too complicated/convoluted for a kid. Would a kid be able to play it and beat it, maybe? Yes, but I doubt it would be a game that you would want to give to a kid. Between giving an average kid a copy of GT or Donkey Kong, which one would you choose?

So personally, it does bother me that some games are usually toned down for everyone to understand. I don't expect to see fiery explosions, blood and gore all over the place. One of my favorite games ever is Kirby Super Star for the SNES. That game was challenging for many of the reasons Jim mentioned. But it seems the new gen. of games has the same qualities but they've made them easier to play. I don't want something all "HXC YO!" just because I'm selfish, but it would be nice if the new gen. of gamers can handle what we handled back then. You know, just for kicks. They're certainly more exposed to games than we were.

It just bothers me to see a kid show off by saying he finished Sonic Unleashed in one day and he's the 'best gamer in the world' when they don't really know/have encountered a real challenging game. Yeah, I've seen it happen. Tons of times too.
But I digress. So I'll stop now.
 

Danceofmasks

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Jul 16, 2010
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Real difficulty has to exclude people.

Getting gold medals in kirby's epic yarn isn't hard.
Might take a few tries, but most people can do it.

Take a fighting game as an example.
Most people can complete them. Yes, even on the highest difficulty.
(Although Shao Khan is a F****** cheap *****)

That's not difficult because 90% of players can make it through that gate.

Compare that to winning the Evolution tournament.
There's one winner per year.
So, most people will never, ever, get top 32 .. let alone win it.

That's difficult because it excludes just about everybody.
 

Orinon

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Jan 24, 2010
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I kinda appreciate your current Persona , your last one was annoyingly arrogant while I understand It's intended to be a Joke but Its not set up for humor so when we see you talking on a podium you tend to come across as annoying.
 

The Virgo

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Wow, this actually surprised me! I only watch Zero Punctuation, but on a whim I decided to watch this episode.

What he said actually made a lot of sense!
 

Lancer873

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Oct 10, 2009
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Finally! I've been waiting ages for one of the big escapist folks to bring this up! This is why I loved LittleBigPlanet and LocoRoco. The former had tons of bonus areas for rewards, /and/ rewarded you for beating each level without dying. Anyone who's aced the bunker can account for the fact that it can get really hard. The latter was insanely easy to beat (I pretty much never got a game over in it) but had a lot of fruit that made your LocoRocos multiply hidden around each level, and the ultimate goal was to beat each level with 20 of them (all fruit without losing any of them.) These are two of my favorite games of all time, and they provided a great challenge.

Most of all, I think we need more of these because it provides a serious bridge between the casual and the hardcore audience. The casual players get into the games because they're not tough, and when they really get into them, they start taking on the challenges. Sure, they might give up on some of them, but as they get more skilled and more dedicated to the games they love, they start undertaking the challenges more and more, and learning to love it. Thus, a hardcore gamer is made.

In reality, I think we've all come across these. The old days had Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, after all, which are epic examples. I'd imagine 100%-completion-bonus games are sort of the gateway drugs for casual->hardcore gamers. I certainly know that I never tried to undertake a megaman game when I was a kid.

Edit: Except for Megaman Legends, but that was kind of different, and even that I didn't get very far into.
 

The9mm

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Jul 24, 2008
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The incentive of some weird medal doesn't motivate anyone. I could also set up the rule that i can only jump a certain number of times in Super Mario and play accordingly. Death is used to withhold content from the player and thus frustrate him. You might play Kirby's Epic Yarn and try to get every collectible or whatever, but you will never experience the frustration of content being unattainable, because you did not collect everything. Therefore it will take a rare breed of person/hoarder to actually take the incentive seriously. The payoff is simply too small.
 

iron skirt

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Oct 24, 2009
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i've noticed a lot of you guys are sayng Jim's mising the point because what you call dificult games alsow have what he's talking about... wel gues what? you're mising the poit! games are now for everyone not just for hardcore gamers and that's a good thing... and when I say everyone Include the hardcore gamers (in case you aren't used to be included)... plus no one's stoping you from playng old "hardcore" games... I curentley only play games on the NES and some Warcraft 3(I am incapable of quiting warcraft 3... I suck at it though)
 

MonkeyPunch

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Feb 20, 2008
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Great show again. I still marvel at the awesomeness of Kiby Epic yarns graphic style.

4:30 scariest rendition of Kirby. Ever.
Or is it an angry ballsack with eyes?
 

Electric Yemeth

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Jun 8, 2010
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Love your trolling, also that metajoke you did by drinking. :> So anyway, yeah.. you're pretty much on the mark, however many gamers like to point out that 100% completion isn't necessary (I'm looking at you Yahtzee Sheeple). However you can still balance it a bit: Bayonetta and DMC did this as well and still had some quite hard moments.Anyway, keep up the good work and don't move away from The Escapist, would hate to see you on Youtube again :<

?dith: WoW did the same thing recently with hardmodes, and it wasn't well received. So yeah, mostly just little kids whining for forced difficulty, not real difficulty.
 

Angry Camel

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Mar 21, 2011
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Interesting take on difficulty there. It's amazing how much we use death and health as the sole measure of success. Super Metroid has both mortality, collection and time as part of the challenge. You could go through the game slowly, collecting 100% items, but have no peek under Samus' suit. Missing all the items got you to see her for a second, but a bad percentage. The ultimate challenge was getting everything in under 3 hours.

On a side note, loved the humour this episode, Jim.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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CM156 said:
bringer of illumination said:
And congratulations Jim, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of the people who complain about games being too easy today.

Of course Kirby's Epic Yarn is easy, Kirby games have ALWAYS been easy, and it goes beyond saying that the point of Epic Yarn isn't the same as the point of fucking Ninja Gaiden.

The people who complain about games getting too easy mean that ALL games have gotten too easy and that the "hardest" difficulty settings for games where the point is still getting to the end of a level without dying have become fucking jokes.

So this entire episode was basically a gigantic straw-man argument.

Bravo i say.
My problem with that is it appears that hardcore gamers suffer from sadomasicism. They can only enjoy a game if it spanks them hard enough.

And what do they want devs to do? Make a game almost imposible to beat?

OT: Bravo I say, Jim. But you're not black.
Well not all people are like that but if I play Ninja Gaiden or Megaman or a game on the hardest setting I expect the game to spank me hard. That is the point of the harder settings and yes some games have become easier and taken away that challenge. Even Halo 3 is a joke compared to other Halos.

Now this may sound odd but while I probably died more in Halo 3 in certain levels than others in the series I felt this was more due to design than the actual difficulty. Not that didn't add a bit of challenge to work it out. Some bits on Legendary I would blaze through without dying and go through several checkpoints easily then there would be one place where I would just die constantly. This seems to be the same for CoD series at the moment.
 

lostlevel

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Nov 6, 2008
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Glademaster said:
CM156 said:
bringer of illumination said:
And congratulations Jim, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of the people who complain about games being too easy today.

Of course Kirby's Epic Yarn is easy, Kirby games have ALWAYS been easy, and it goes beyond saying that the point of Epic Yarn isn't the same as the point of fucking Ninja Gaiden.

The people who complain about games getting too easy mean that ALL games have gotten too easy and that the "hardest" difficulty settings for games where the point is still getting to the end of a level without dying have become fucking jokes.

So this entire episode was basically a gigantic straw-man argument.

Bravo i say.
My problem with that is it appears that hardcore gamers suffer from sadomasicism. They can only enjoy a game if it spanks them hard enough.

And what do they want devs to do? Make a game almost imposible to beat?

OT: Bravo I say, Jim. But you're not black.
Well not all people are like that but if I play Ninja Gaiden or Megaman or a game on the hardest setting I expect the game to spank me hard. That is the point of the harder settings and yes some games have become easier and taken away that challenge. Even Halo 3 is a joke compared to other Halos.

Now this may sound odd but while I probably died more in Halo 3 in certain levels than others in the series I felt this was more due to design than the actual difficulty. Not that didn't add a bit of challenge to work it out. Some bits on Legendary I would blaze through without dying and go through several checkpoints easily then there would be one place where I would just die constantly. This seems to be the same for CoD series at the moment.
I think the difficulty caused by design is quite common in some games, sonic games in 3D involved a lot of dying in places because of glitches when the rest of the level was easy. I agree though Halo and CoD do have problems too but it's only when people exploit them online that it becomes a problem, for single player atleast it for the most part is up to you how you play.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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lostlevel said:
Glademaster said:
CM156 said:
bringer of illumination said:
And congratulations Jim, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of the people who complain about games being too easy today.

Of course Kirby's Epic Yarn is easy, Kirby games have ALWAYS been easy, and it goes beyond saying that the point of Epic Yarn isn't the same as the point of fucking Ninja Gaiden.

The people who complain about games getting too easy mean that ALL games have gotten too easy and that the "hardest" difficulty settings for games where the point is still getting to the end of a level without dying have become fucking jokes.

So this entire episode was basically a gigantic straw-man argument.

Bravo i say.
My problem with that is it appears that hardcore gamers suffer from sadomasicism. They can only enjoy a game if it spanks them hard enough.

And what do they want devs to do? Make a game almost imposible to beat?

OT: Bravo I say, Jim. But you're not black.
Well not all people are like that but if I play Ninja Gaiden or Megaman or a game on the hardest setting I expect the game to spank me hard. That is the point of the harder settings and yes some games have become easier and taken away that challenge. Even Halo 3 is a joke compared to other Halos.

Now this may sound odd but while I probably died more in Halo 3 in certain levels than others in the series I felt this was more due to design than the actual difficulty. Not that didn't add a bit of challenge to work it out. Some bits on Legendary I would blaze through without dying and go through several checkpoints easily then there would be one place where I would just die constantly. This seems to be the same for CoD series at the moment.
I think the difficulty caused by design is quite common in some games, sonic games in 3D involved a lot of dying in places because of glitches when the rest of the level was easy. I agree though Halo and CoD do have problems too but it's only when people exploit them online that it becomes a problem, for single player atleast it for the most part is up to you how you play.
Well multiplayer is a whole different beast when it comes to balance but I think in single players there needs to be a steadily increasing difficulty rather than easy, medium, child's play, brick wall, hard, easy, the AI is cheating. DOA4 is a good example of this.
 

BloodSquirrel

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Jun 23, 2008
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Jennacide said:
difficulty:
Minor problem with this arguement. The people that don't care about that difference are generally not the people who would whine it's too easy. Unless they just like complaining for the sake of trying to sound old school.
This is just flat-out untrue. Plenty of people are saying ?I want the core experience to be a challenge?.

Jennacide said:
I can't count how many times I will play a game normally, sometimes thinking "well that was too easy, but fun," so what is my next thought do you think? "Well, let's make it harder!" FO3 was too easy, but I love the game. Since then I never use VATS, and mod the game up to put restrictions in areas I believe were to lax, like carry weight. Now I will admit, this is a moddable game, so added difficulty isn't terribly hard. So let's instead look at another game I play the pants off of, Final Fantasy 12.


For FF12 it's easier to add difficulty, play Zodiac style. If you can't get an actual copy of it (there are english patches and instructions on how to do it, if you own both copies like me), just play like you were anyway. Follow strict job classes, and don't use any of the lame auto leveling or early item tricks.

Which brings me to another point, a lot of complaints about how easy a game is come from the same group that will use every cheap trick in the book.
If I have to bar myself from certain tactics, mod the game, and set arbitrary restrictions for myself, then I'm doing the work of the game designer. I?m not just playing the game anymore, I?m making design decisions and playtesting them.

Quite frankly, I probably don?t care enough about your game to do that. Jim is actually engaging in a common fanboy fallacy here- ?You don?t like my favorite game/movie/comic book? Well, you need to work harder at liking it!?. No, I don?t. I can just move on to something else that I do enjoy.
 

Joshimodo

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Sep 13, 2008
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Except that Epic Yarn is also very, very easy to get gold stars on. Sure, 2 of the platinum boss stars are a bit tricky, but it's still very easy and very forgiving.
 

ZtH

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Oct 12, 2010
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I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I think he certainly has improved greatly since his first premere on the escapist. I'm glad I gave him a second shot!