Poll: Too easy..

[shadow skill]

Are you serious go back and actually read the accusations that Xbreaker said, and your own accusations towarsds me and then come and tell me who is picking a fight. How is claiming someone is deluding themselves not picking a fight but saying that current games are easier than the older ones is bull is? Fact of the matter is no one is picking a fight other thhan possibly you. Read the posts in your own thread before you start trying to label people.

Shadow Skill you clearly have missed the point of what I said. No where in my post did I say half a decade of experience would have no effect on a player's skill. I simply refute your claim that modern games are no harder then older games. I stand by that. You use Halo 3 as an example. Give that game to anyone who has some gaming experience and they could beat the entire campaign in a weekend. Where by the same note if you put an older nes game in front of that same player and it would probably take weeks to get though it.



Yes, as you gain skill in playing games in general are going to get easier. But this is not a question of them getting easier for an individual player. This is about the games getting a bit easier overall. I'm not passing judgment as to whether it is a good or bad thing. Those of you who like the trend towards easier game see to take it as an insult that others think games are getting easier as a whole.



Is Ninja Gaiden Black hard? Hell yeah. But even that cannot compare to the difficulty of some of the controller killers of the past. Save games and infinite lives are a big part of the reason. Yes, people die in modern games. They die a lot. But you just respawn and try it again. It makes for a much easier experience when death's penalty is a quick load screen and losing 10 minutes of progression. Again, I am not condemning you for liking the more forgiving trend of modern games. But don't fool yourself into thinking that games today are just as hard as they were in the 80's



People are asking why anyone would want games to be more difficult. Simple, it is for the sense of accomplishment you get when you conquer it. It used to be a lot of fun to see who could beat what games. When you could knock out Mike Tyson in Punch out you got a certain level of bragging rights. Now days I never asked my friends "Can you beat...?" it is now a question of "have you beaten...?" And even when you aren't just showing off on the playground there it feels great when you finally click with a game and beat it for the first time. Yeah, it will frustrate a lot of people. It will turn some people off of the game entirely. Some people like that challenge though, and there are very few games that provide it.

Emphasis is mine.

 

[Kikosemmek]

I usually prefer difficulty to be in the area of creativity and intelligence- if a game of any kind presents you with a puzzle, I think it should be something for you to ponder.

I'm not a big fan of hyper-reflexes, and any game that depends on it makes me hate it very quickly. I'm also not a fan of frustration- if I die in the middle of a game without being able to restart to a recent (not as recent as in Bioshock...) spot.

A good example of what I'm talking about would be the Monkey Island series (you don't even die there), Commandos (1,2,3, they were all challenging and fun), Rome: Total War with the Europa Barbarorum mod (where your enemies, including the rebels, are extremely aggressive and cruel).

For me, Half-Life 1 was just about perfect. It was by no means easy, but it was not frustratingly difficult. If something was hard it took around 4 or 5 tries, but usually not more than that.

 

[shadow skill]

You might enjoy the newer Prince of Persia games then they have some neat platforming puzzles.

 

[xbeaker]

Well shadow, you clearly don?t want to see anything beside your own opinion. I am not preaching about the ?good old days.? There were a lot of really bad games back in the good old days. But we aren?t talking about quality of the games. We are talking about difficulty. As a whole the old 80?s games were harder. I have tried every example to get through to you but you still seem to want to go back to the idea that 5 or 10 years ago games felt harder to you because you were a new player and now they feel easier to you because you have experience. Even with all of your skill I think you would have a hard time with a lot of the twitch games from back in the day. The reason for that difficulty is not the issue, only that it is harder.

You say:

Yet somehow you magically do not discount the fact that you have a wealth of experience playing games of various types and magically I am offended by your flat out ridiculous suggestion that overall difficulty levels have dropped when compared to the bad old days where developers could only have very small environments and had to find a way to make their product last, and therefore resorted to techniques that really only alter the length of the game rather than increase its difficulty. If a game has ten levels and each takes about thirty minutes to finish and you use a no save system and say you die on level four and have to start all over again the only thing that has happened is that the amount of time it will take to finish the game has increased.

My very point is experience doesn?t come into the equation. We are not talking about if the games are harder for you or me. We are talking about if games are more difficult in general. The player doesn?t enter into it. If you want to contend that they are only more difficult because developers had to use cheap tactics to drag out the life span of the game by killing you off and limiting your restarts, that is fine. It still means they were more difficult. You are trying to back your argument by putting in conditions until the only outcome is the one you have decided. You can?t say that games of today are just as difficult as days gone by if you don?t count your ability to save your games and if you play within the strict guideline of how you think the creators intended. If you can play MGS by running and gunning, then that is an acceptable way to play. Will it add more challenge to play with stealth and care? Yes. But you don?t need to play that way.

I really think you just don?t understand what people mean when they say the games have gotten easier. It means they are more forgiving. It means they are less frustrating. It has nothing to do with the length of the game total, your skill at playing, the quality of the game or anything else. It also can?t factor in personal skill.

Are you serious go back and actually read the accusations that Xbreaker said, and your own accusations towarsds me and then come and tell me who is picking a fight. How is claiming someone is deluding themselves not picking a fight but saying that current games are easier than the older ones is bull is? Fact of the matter is no one is picking a fight other thhan possibly you. Read the posts in your own thread before you start trying to label people.

Where did these ?accusations? come from? I didn?t realize we had put you on trial. I certainly have not accused you of anything. What are you defending? This is an opinion / poll thread. ?Are modern games too easy?? I have not once seen someone ask ?Is Shadow Skill wrong for thinking modem games are not too easy?? I am not picking a fight with you either. If you really want to trace this back to the first verbal blow though.. how about ?Xbreaker what you just said is total bull? You really have to learn to relax a little. (and my name is xbeaker btw)

 

[Alan Au]

Are modern games too easy? Yes. No. It depends. Do you count if the AI enemies have perfect aim but get exploitably stuck on the level geometry?

I like challenging games. I don't like frustrating games. Good designers give me a check box to enable "iron man" mode (and then it's my own fault when I lose repeatedly). Bad designers make me do timed jumping puzzles during insta-fail stealth missions.

- Alan

 

[shadow skill]

Why claim that I and by extension others who don't agree with you are fooling themselves? What do you call it when someone says you are insisting on pickin a fight? What else do you call that but an accussation? The whole premise you use fails to take into account the simple fact that the majority of the good games over this period of time have simply shifted away from the ending credits as the goal of the game, fails to recognize that the continue systems that were used back then had no real bearing on the difficulty of any game, what they changed was the play time. They had to be in games becuase overall there was not that much content that could be fit into the games because of size and memory limitations. The premise in effect requires that the focus of games remain constant which they clearly have not. Now you are trying to change what you are even talking about from the difficulty in seeing the end credits to some tripe about the developers allowing different types of play styles instead of demanding one or two types translating into an easier game.

My very point is experience doesn't come into the equation. We are not talking about if the games are harder for you or me. We are talking about if games are more difficult in general. The player doesn't enter into it. If you want to contend that they are only more difficult because developers had to use cheap tactics to drag out the life span of the game by killing you off and limiting your restarts, that is fine. It still means they were more difficult. You are trying to back your argument by putting in conditions until the only outcome is the one you have decided. You can't say that games of today are just as difficult as days gone by if you don't count your ability to save your games and if you play within the strict guideline of how you think the creators intended. If you can play MGS by running and gunning, then that is an acceptable way to play. Will it add more challenge to play with stealth and care? Yes. But you don't need to play that way.

By this logic the ability to use cheat codes automatically means that the game is "easier" because you are no longer locked into the parameters that the developers have setup for you by default. It's quite obvious that the existence of cheat codes has no bearing on the difficulty or lack thereof in any game at any time. (Has anyone noticed how cheat code type stuff has sort of vanished from console games of late?) You have to shoe-horn reality in order to make your own premise work in the first place because it has to ignore all of the things that I have mentioned previously.

Let me repeat myself:
If you are going to say games today are more forgiving than they were twenty years ago you cannot ignore all of the other changes to the nature of game design that have occured within that time frame. Once you define "easier" as "How long it takes you to get to the credits." you must also recognize that the credits are no longer the real focus of some of the best games out there right now. Otherwise you've got nothing.

 

[incoherent]

It's a matter of playtime, as far as I can tell. If you want your game to provide 10 hours of play to an average player, you can either make 10 hours worth of content that the average player, or you can make 30 minutes of content but make it difficult enough that the average player will need to play each section an average of 20 times. One of these requires significantly less disk/cartridge space and to an extent less development time than the other, and if your audience doesn't mind, why not do it that way?

So yes, I would say that modern games are easier, but they're also longer.

It helps, or hurts depending on your point of view, that modern games tend to at least make attempts at a story, and if the player can't actually make it through the game, that's a lot of storyline that they don't see. Contra didn't have what I would call a "deep story". Quicksave is also one reason you might consider a game less difficult: if you screw up, you lose 5 minutes of gameplay time as opposed to "GAME OVER" and back to level 1.

 

[xbeaker]

Shadow, I am simply done with you. You seem unwilling, or unable to view anything as a pure black and white where the person either totally agrees with you, or you assume they refutes everything you have said. Your main point so far seems to have been games seem easier only because people are getting better at playing, which I disagree with.

Meh I don't think modern games easier than the older ones. I just think that as we get older we can apply different tactics to various games.

Xbreaker what you just said is total bull, what you are telling me is that having played had maybe a decade worth of experience would have no effect on a player's ability to get through a game like smb 1? Do you really think that people don't die in modern games even if they take 15 hours to finish? If you have never played a certain type of game before and therefore have no real pre-existing knowledge of how the game probably works it is going to be much more difficult than if you have decades worth of prior experience to draw upon.

Yet somehow you magically do not discount the fact that you have a wealth of experience playing games of various types and magically I am offended by your flat out ridiculous suggestion that overall difficulty levels have dropped when compared to the bad old days (?)

So, tell me.. where is this:

Let me repeat myself:
If you are going to say games today are more forgiving than they were twenty years ago you cannot ignore all of the other changes to the nature of game design that have occured within that time frame. Once you define "easier" as "How long it takes you to get to the credits." you must also recognize that the credits are no longer the real focus of some of the best games out there right now. Otherwise you've got nothing.

Repeating anything you have said before? Yet you claim I am the one changing my argument.

If this is a fight, and I hardly think it is, you are the one who picked it. You have relentlessly attacked me, and yes, you came after me first with the ?Xbreaker what you just said is total bull? line.

I am not denying they design philosophy has changed quite a bit in the last 30 years. I agree completely with incoherent above me. And yes, since the first code that let you fire 2 bullets at a time in Space Invaders, cheat codes are, in fact, a way to make games easier.

And for the last time, we aren?t discussing the focus, the quality, the age, the preference, or the play style of these games. Just the difficulty.

But if it makes you feel better, just for you Shadow, you are right, games are no easier then they were years ago. Can we stop the petty bickering now?

 

[shadow skill]

You still have not addressed

But don't fool yourself into thinking that games today are just as hard as they were in the 80's

which basically states as fact that games of today are easier than games of two decades prior. Its disengenuous really to then say I am unable to see any other view points.

I have to disagree with you there shadow skill. Simple test.. go play one of the old games on the nes. Something you have not mastered from before. Even with all of the skill, tactics, and co-ordination most of us have developed over the years I doubt most people could make it through even half of the first Super Mario Bros. on their first try (literally, first try. As in never-played-it-before) Forget about the true killers of the day like Kid Icirus. Where as most people can make it through any modern game in about 15 hours of casual play.



That is the crux if this topic, the overall reduction in difficulty in seeing those end credits

This quote actually states that prior human experience in other games of the same type is all but irrelevant. That's why I said it was bull, prior experience in simillar situations will affect the difficulty of any task. That is not an attack at all nor can you conviniently try to turn it into one.

You then go on to state that the crux of the topic is the overall ease of seeing the end credits. However the end credits are not nessecarily the focus of many games right now so how can it be used as a measure of the ease or lack thereof in games in general? It's a general statement that does not make any real sense at all because its being applied to all games.

I really think you just don't understand what people mean when they say the games have gotten easier. It means they are more forgiving. It means they are less frustrating. It has nothing to do with the length of the game total, your skill at playing, the quality of the game or anything else. It also can't factor in personal skill.

Here you now back pedal from your previous statement where the skill of the player is not relevant at all to games are less frustrating, and that games are more forgiving in spite of the fact that I can name entire franchises of gamees where achieving perfection is most certainly not an easy task.

Is it really more forgiving to allow players to save progress because the games in existence now have orders of magnitude more content than they did twenty years ago? Is it really more forgiving when you think about the fact that the lack of save points in a game has no effect on the difficulty of the task itself, what it does effect is the ability for you to complete the task because you have a limit to your own endurance? The difficulty in a game like Super Ghouls and Ghosts never came from the lack of save points because the overall difficulty of any of the levels remains constant what does change however is the amount of energy and cognitive ability that you have during the course of your play session. The game itself does not actually get harder at all, you as the player just get physically and mentally weaker over time until almost inevitably you do in fact fail at a level and have to start from the first level again.

Games have begun to resemble books and movies in the sense that the point of games moved away from simply getting to the end into beinng about the experiencce itself. The challege has predictably moved away from "getting to the end" to finding all the secrets, getting all the achievements, getting the highest ranking etc.

Repeating anything you have said before? Yet you claim I am the one changing my argument.

If you read the first paragraph in my last post you will see that I already stated what I then repeated in that quote block you have there.

The whole premise you use fails to take into account the simple fact that the majority of the good games over this period of time have simply shifted away from the ending credits as the goal of the game, fails to recognize that the continue systems that were used back then had no real bearing on the difficulty of any game, what they changed was the play time. They had to be in games becuase overall there was not that much content that could be fit into the games because of size and memory limitations. The premise in effect requires that the focus of games remain constant which they clearly have not. Now you are trying to change what you are even talking about from the difficulty in seeing the end credits to some tripe about the developers allowing different types of play styles instead of demanding one or two types translating into an easier game.

 

[propertyofcobra]

Anyone who thinks that games aren't easier nowadays should pick up, oh...let's say Any of the Ghouls 'n Ghosts (or Ghosts and Goblins, or Gaggles of Gorgons, or whatever they're all named) games. Now play it. And play it through until you win.
...done yet? Holy smokes, did that take a lot of hours to get through or what?
Now do the same to Halo 3. Any difficulty, doesn't matter.
...wow, you say it only took how long? Seriously?

Someone, too lazy to check who, got it on the head. Saves and checkpoints, baby. You messed up in Ghouls 'n Ghosts one too many times, you go all the way over again. From scratch. And no, you can't pick the special weapon up yet, you have to complete the game once more first.
While in Halo 3...not only is it HARDER to die in Halo than in Contra, or Ghouls, or whatever, but when you die, you pop up five minutes back, ready to try try and try again until you win!
In Contra, even if you have the first three levels down to an artform, every time it's game over, you need to do them over again, and messing up early means less room to mess up later.

Games today ARE too easy. Sad but very true. And I don't think there's a way to change that, people moaned and whined about Dead Rising being too hard because, good lord on a pogo stick, there were checkpoints, and they weren't every two feet! How dare some people do that to you?!


And you CAN have a full-time job, a family AND a hobby at the same time. Ask anyone who does it, they'll tell you that it IS possible to find an hour or two (on a busy day, at that!) to just do what you want.
If you use your free time on something aside videogames, then you can't complain that you don't have free time to play videogames.

 

[xbeaker]

Ok, I take it back, maybe I am not done with you Shadow. That was actually a very well written and thought out post, and it make a lot more sense then some of your previous ones.

You are latching on a bit too hard to individual statements I made. ?You are fooling yourself...? May have been a bit harsh, but after you started your post by telling me what I say is total bull, well. I still believe the old games are more difficult, and I agree with you that it is because of programming constraints. I remember thinking as a kid, ?In real life, this would probably be a lot easier then in the game.? Because the games lacked so much due to the limitations of their platform.

On the subject of human skill being irrelevant, again, I believe it is in the context of this discussion. But it is a factor in the overall difficulty for any given game, or a person?s overall gaming experience. I have one friend who seems to excel in all games, from Halo to Pac-man he pretty universally beats us all at everything we play. Games are a bit easier for him. After years of playing different games he could probably get through any of the old games a lot easier now then when he picked up a controller. But that doesn?t mean that those games themselves have gotten any easier. He would still (and does actually) have a lot of difficulty with the older games simply because they are more difficult.

Many people have written that games feel easier today because of the skill they acquired over the years. I believe they are easier and the skill you have gained only serves to amplify it.

Also, I regret throwing in that end credits line. You have taken it a bit too literally. I do not really believe that is the goal of any games. I meant it in an almost ironic sense, since most of the games of the 80?s A. had no end. B. had no credits. They were quarter gobblers where people strived for score. Even progression type games like Mario gave a score because that is what they were really about. We could actually have a lengthy discussion about what it really means to ?beat? a game. But that is for another post.

So, even as you say, simply getting to the end is not the true goal of games, then what is? If you can?t define the goal then how do you define the difficulty? I believe it is a question of progression. How hard is it to make additional progression through the game. This is where my line about frustration and punishment comes in. If you want to see the 3rd race in Pole Position you needed it be nearly perfect in the qualifying race, and the 2 preceding races. Add in a less then realistic control and physics model and this is a very daunting task. If you want to see the third race in Project Gotham 4 you play the first race until you win, or place close enough to it. Then play the second race all you want until you place there. Then you can race the 3rd one all you want. If you made a mistake the second race, you don?t have to replay the first one again. If you are having a hard time with the first race you can drop the difficulty down until you can win it.

That is what I mean by have gotten easier. That is what I believe most people mean when they say they have gotten easier. I wasn?t backpedaling when I tried to refine my definition for you. I was only trying to make it more clear to you what I meant, and from what angle I am coming at it.

What I think our major barrier in this discussion is that we both have dramatically different ideas about what makes a game difficult. You have never really explained your point of view as to how you are gauging the difficulty. Or more to the point you seem to believe that since games have changed so much that you can?t compare them. To some extent I can agree with you there. Games no longer have to rely on how many quarters they gobble to determine their profitability. They tell much deeper stories, with real character progression. The content is such that without a save system most rational people couldn?t ever see the later stages of the game without one (quick aside: I do know someone who beat Resident Evil without ever owning a memory card. Never turned off his Plastation unless he died. I think the final run in which he won took about 3 weeks.) But even still, I think the ability to save, while necessary, also makes the game easier.

 

[dnv2]

Anyone who thinks that games aren't easier nowadays should pick up, oh...let's say Any of the Ghouls 'n Ghosts (or Ghosts and Goblins, or Gaggles of Gorgons, or whatever they're all named) games. Now play it. And play it through until you win.
...done yet? Holy smokes, did that take a lot of hours to get through or what?
Now do the same to Halo 3. Any difficulty, doesn't matter.
...wow, you say it only took how long? Seriously?

Someone, too lazy to check who, got it on the head. Saves and checkpoints, baby. You messed up in Ghouls 'n Ghosts one too many times, you go all the way over again. From scratch. And no, you can't pick the special weapon up yet, you have to complete the game once more first.
While in Halo 3...not only is it HARDER to die in Halo than in Contra, or Ghouls, or whatever, but when you die, you pop up five minutes back, ready to try try and try again until you win!
In Contra, even if you have the first three levels down to an artform, every time it's game over, you need to do them over again, and messing up early means less room to mess up later.

Games today ARE too easy. Sad but very true. And I don't think there's a way to change that, people moaned and whined about Dead Rising being too hard because, good lord on a pogo stick, there were checkpoints, and they weren't every two feet! How dare some people do that to you?!


And you CAN have a full-time job, a family AND a hobby at the same time. Ask anyone who does it, they'll tell you that it IS possible to find an hour or two (on a busy day, at that!) to just do what you want.
If you use your free time on something aside videogames, then you can't complain that you don't have free time to play videogames.

You deserve an award for that post dude!

 

[Don Alejandro]

Games today ARE too easy. Sad but very true. And I don't think there's a way to change that, people moaned and whined about Dead Rising being too hard because, good lord on a pogo stick, there were checkpoints, and they weren't every two feet! How dare some people do that to you?!

Seconded. Lemming syndrome is a huge problem in FPS's's's's's because you can just blaze your way forward like a moron and make it to the next health checkpoint. I'm no great shakes at games, but I'd like to think I'm competent. That said, the only way for me to play F.E.A.R., Call of Duty, etc. was on the hardest "Get shot in the face and it's all over" style difficulties because everything else really was too easy. Halo, the XBOX messiah, is really a glitzy standard FPS with some gimmicks and mode names like "Legendary" that make you feel macho as you roll through levels like some kind of Metal He-Man who has the Goddamn Power. Boring. That shouldn't be the highest level of difficulty because it isn't difficult.

I think the FPS genre could do,then,with making you about as healthy and strong as your opponents. The difference? You're outnumbered, but you're smarter, more adaptive, and with better reflexes. You don't want to charge a whole group, you pick off some of the more dangerous fellows and mop up the rest. We need to bring back difficulty modes that mock you, too. Anyone remember Rise of the Triad? Yeah, it was a gratuitous super adrenaline-packed gore fest but it had a sense of humor. The game made fun of you quitting, berated you for picking Baby difficulty levels and praised you for picking higher difficulties.

Let's replace Easy or "Medium" (What is this? A fast food shop?) with that sort of stuff. Cheap laughs, etc. but let's try to actually get some challenge back in games. You can accommodate casual players along with other fellows at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive necessarily.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I think there's a second argument in here, that should really be addressed.

It's not whether savegames and checkpoints and such have made games easier, but whether that's necessarily a bad thing.

I find games these days infitely more satisfying and fun to play than my old Spetrum games because they can be made far more varied, and those varied challenges can be introduced gradually as the game progresses, most of the old games that were brutally hard were so hard because that was the only way they had with such limited hardware to extend the gameplay and hide the fact that they really couldn't develop it in any way. Ghosts & Goblins is designed to kill you so often you don't realise that it's an extremely repetitive pattern memorization affair, rather than a truly interactive and emergent game.

Old games had to keep you from progressing so you didn't realise how thin the content was spread.

 

[purifiedinfire]

yes modern games are too easy, but at least they are still fun. bioshock was rediculously easy on hard mode but its still one of my favorite games because of the story, and the fact that it was so fun

 

[clockpenalty]

No, modern games are NOT too easy.

They have simply become less punitive.

If you played Bioshock like contra, and restarted each level after three visits to a vita-chamber, and restarted the entire game after three level restarts, AND started from the BEGINNING each time you loaded the game, you would realise that it is MUCH MUCH MUCH more difficult than Contra.

Those who claim Halo 3 is easy on legendary ae ignoring the fact that if it was a retro game, they are effectively playing with an action replay and 'INFINITE LIVES' plus 'START AT ANY LEVEL' cheats enabled...and thats on solo mode. In co-op, there's also a bizarre cheat mode that respawns you as soon as you die if your friend can reach safety.

To see how difficult halo3 really is, give yourself three lives and agree to restart each chapter when you lose all three. Always start your play session from ARRIVAL.

Frustrating? hard? Of course. Modern games are LONGER, HARDER and MORE COMPLEX than retro games, and as a result they have a huge plethora of 'cheats' enabled by default. If you love a modern game, you can always add difficulty by taking these cheats away. Games like HALO make it easier with the skulls that can do sadistic things like returning a player to the beginning with each death.



SECOND POINT:

Someone asked earlier: why dont games improve the AI rather than just fooling with damage modifiers?

The answer is simple: you risk hiding the best parts of a game from plain sight. On HALO PC, there were certain tactics the enemy would not use on normal difficulty. I breezed through the game assuming the AI was useless, and would have taken that impression to the grave had my younger brother not introduced me to the harder difficulties. I marvelled at the increased depth and wondered why the hell they disabled the AI on normal.

Personally I would rather the machine brought its full AI capacity against me on normal, and on harder modes it becomes a case of me switching on 'handicaps' to make it harder to beat a foe I already have completely sussed out. I also don't mind the computer cheating on harder difficulties, as long as it doesnt cheat on normal. By choosing HARD i have given the computer a license to cheat. If I can't 'defeat' M BISON three times in a row before he finally decides that he should update his life meter and agree that he's dead, I have no business playing on eight stars.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

Play new games then go back and play old games. I must have been a genius when I was a kid because I can't beat Warcraft 1 now but I was somehow able to beat it back then. I went back to play C&C original and Red Alert and found myself stuck and restarting regularly. Homeworld is painfully difficult at certain parts and you have to play well early to do well in the late game or else you will be crippled by a poor unit pool.

By comparison Warcraft 3 was so easy I could count the number of losses on one hand and the final level was so easy I felt like shooting my computer. Take some cues from Warcraft 1...now that was a brain-destroyingly difficult final level. Dawn of War, while good, isn't difficult at all and neither are any of the expansions. Multiplayer and gameplay are great but the campaign is child's play.

I'm not so sure about FPS's, I think they have always been rather easy and I never bother to go back and play a game on "Hard" because it isn't harder there are just more enemies, or enemies with auto aim, or more health or you take more damage or whatever. Clicking on "Hard" just makes a game more tedious not more difficult. Call of Duty is a perfect example, the bad guys still come at you in the same way from the same place using the same weapons and all you have to do to win is not play like a meth addict with rigor mortis of the trigger finger. Give me difficulty settings like "Toddler", "Civilian", "Soldier", "Special Forces" where the AI uses varying tactics and reacts in different ways.

 

[Moe The Bus Driver]

I will say that yes, todays games are easier than the older ones. Though this does not make them less enjoyable. Most games today, at least to this poster, seem to be more about story than they are about knowing the patterns of the next endless wave of ghoulies coming to kick your teeth in.

Let's compare two games, shall we? Bioshock, as has been brought up countless times here, is an easy modern game. However, it's well written, with a fairly grabbing story, and can keep your attention because you want to see how it unfolds for our John Doe of a protagonist. The game is about story just as much as anything else, and if you can't get through the game, than you're left without knowing how the story went. It'd be like someone coming into your home and pressing stop every so often on your DVD player while you were trying to watch a movie. Even worse, think if you had to start all over from the beginning each time. The first thirty minutes of The Shawshank Redemption is great, but if you have to watch it over and over again, it will get dull.

The other game I have for you is Contra. A widely known to be a hard game(save for the Konami code). Now, it's fun blasting all those mooks to high hell, but does anyone here remember a story that went with the game? Not really, it was about blowing aliens and robots to hell, not an engaging romp through the character's psyche. So you had to be given something to replay over and over again, thus making the games about points, and some feeling of accomplishment(however nebulous it may be). Making a game hard as nails is a way to do that.

The way I see it, if a game is there to tell a story, it will err on the side of easiness. If it is there to just pose a challenge and little more, it will err on the side of 'Nintendo Hard'. If it's there to suck quarters out of you, it will insult your mother while erring on the side of 'Nintendo hard'.

So yes, easier, but for a good reason in my opinion.

 

[Panzeh]

Play new games then go back and play old games. I must have been a genius when I was a kid because I can't beat Warcraft 1 now but I was somehow able to beat it back then. I went back to play C&C original and Red Alert and found myself stuck and restarting regularly. Homeworld is painfully difficult at certain parts and you have to play well early to do well in the late game or else you will be crippled by a poor unit pool.

By comparison Warcraft 3 was so easy I could count the number of losses on one hand and the final level was so easy I felt like shooting my computer. Take some cues from Warcraft 1...now that was a brain-destroyingly difficult final level. Dawn of War, while good, isn't difficult at all and neither are any of the expansions. Multiplayer and gameplay are great but the campaign is child's play.

I'm not so sure about FPS's, I think they have always been rather easy and I never bother to go back and play a game on "Hard" because it isn't harder there are just more enemies, or enemies with auto aim, or more health or you take more damage or whatever. Clicking on "Hard" just makes a game more tedious not more difficult. Call of Duty is a perfect example, the bad guys still come at you in the same way from the same place using the same weapons and all you have to do to win is not play like a meth addict with rigor mortis of the trigger finger. Give me difficulty settings like "Toddler", "Civilian", "Soldier", "Special Forces" where the AI uses varying tactics and reacts in different ways.

If you had a good AI would you wait until the hardest difficulty to show it off when it's already hard to show off in the first place?

 

[clockpenalty]

You didn't address the issue of punishment?

That older games give more stringent punishments for error while modern games have infinite lives, recharging health, quicksaves, etc?

I stand by what I said: modern games are no less easy or hard. They simply give less brutal punishments for losing.

I don't consider Bisoshock easy. I would call it easy if I could guarantee that i could get through it without dying, not by claiming that i got through it in 3 hours with 1,000 deaths rendered ineffectual by endless vitachamber ressurections. Bioshock doles out death without mercy and it comes again and again. It just punishes you a lot less for dying.