The decline of *Hardcore* gaming

[Iron Mal]

Some games might have seemed harder back in 'the day' because they were home versions of arcade games.

As we should all know, in most cases you aren't actually expected to complete arcade games (merely to get as far as you can while racking up more points than the other guy) since they often had a limited number of lives or attempts and strict time limits.

As for whether older games were badly designed or not, to a certain extent they were pretty shit in design, you died in one hit in most games and merely making contact with anything was enough to kill you.

Older games may appear better to some due to the effect of nostalgia while newer games will seem to be superior to others since they have more advanced features and capabilities.
In this case I will say that everyone is wrong and that every game is much of a muchness, it's a case of personal preference, I don't tell you what to play so don't force my hand.

 

[GonzoGamer]

As someone who never was able to (but did keep trying) beat Ninja Gaiden 1 or Caslevania 1 I can't say I mind all that much.

Reason being however, times have changed. The games used to be hard because they wanted you to keep pumping quarters into arcade machines, now they make them easier because they want you to finish the game so you'll go out and buy another one. Don't lose hope though; they may decide to make them hard again to battle used game trade-ins and rentals.

 

[antipunt]

games used to be harder. I'll admit that I'm like a 'medium' gamer. I was turned off by hardcore/difficult games in the past, but caught on a couple years ago.

 

[Artemis923]

The more I read about the next big game the more I hear about its amazing graphics first and the suspected gameplay last, I find myself stuck in a sort of...nostalgic mood that I'll explain further.

Remember in the *Good ole days* when sega was still a console giant and nintendo wasn't pumping out gimmicky motion sensor games. Remember when microsoft never crossed your minds and sony made those tvs you played all your games on? I certaintly do and I miss those days terribly. But enough reminiscing lets get to the topic at hand.

I grew up with games that were terribly frustrating, for example the marios. Some levels you would have to redo over and over just to memorize exactly when to jump and when exactly that flying koopa stopped low enough to get the right bounce to NOT hit that invisible block and the inevitable death that quickly followed. It was frustrating and caused more high blood pressure in young kids than Mcdonalds.

How about metriod? Well the first metriod is a perfect example right from the get go *you beam in, you look to your left and then to your right, you head left and see a shining ball sitting on a platform you jump and get it. Anyone remembers what happened next? A little music played so it was obviously good...but what did it do! There was no extensive reading on how it can be used properly you just had to figure it out and we loved that.

And those are just two examples in an extensive list of games that all stand out in thier own way. Now before anyone says well what about this new game, or this one? I want to point to the way of the title this is a Decline not a barren wasteland of hard games.

It just seems to me that there was a point in time where game developers decided that great graphics and flashy particle effect were more important then basic elements such as difficulty, longevity and originality. For example, the Resident evil 5, the first time I played through on professional i beat the game in under 5 hours earning myself the infinite rocket launcher...wait what...AN INFINITE, RAPID FIRE, ROCKET LAUNCHER....and it does indeed kill most of the games hardest bosses in one or two shots even wesker with a clever distraction goes down so fast you'd have lagged and missed it. and above all else, above anything I earned it on accident with a freind.

So lets start the thread part of this, lets hear yalls old school or new school hardcore gaming experiences, lets hear about the screaming frustration and laugh. Because I know personally my controllers spent 90% of thier life airborn, and thats a fact I'm proud of

Ah, a fellow greybeard!! Talking about how games where "back in te day" always makes me feel like some old man complaining about "them youngsters".

I grew up getting my ass beat day and night by the likes of Contra, Megaman, Gunstar Heroes, Punch Out!, Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, Castlevania...those were the greatest games of all time, in my mind. Eventually I did conquer them all, and that feeling of accomplishment that i got was astounding.

The last game I've played and destroyed on my 360 was Ninja Gaiden 2. On Master.

Too few of the games today actually test your skills and patience. Most of them are merely content with holding our attention from A to B and provide little challenge at all.

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

The more I read about the next big game the more I hear about its amazing graphics first and the suspected gameplay last, I find myself stuck in a sort of...nostalgic mood that I'll explain further.

Remember in the *Good ole days* when sega was still a console giant and nintendo wasn't pumping out gimmicky motion sensor games. Remember when microsoft never crossed your minds and sony made those tvs you played all your games on? I certaintly do and I miss those days terribly. But enough reminiscing lets get to the topic at hand.

I grew up with games that were terribly frustrating, for example the marios. Some levels you would have to redo over and over just to memorize exactly when to jump and when exactly that flying koopa stopped low enough to get the right bounce to NOT hit that invisible block and the inevitable death that quickly followed. It was frustrating and caused more high blood pressure in young kids than Mcdonalds.

How about metriod? Well the first metriod is a perfect example right from the get go *you beam in, you look to your left and then to your right, you head left and see a shining ball sitting on a platform you jump and get it. Anyone remembers what happened next? A little music played so it was obviously good...but what did it do! There was no extensive reading on how it can be used properly you just had to figure it out and we loved that.

And those are just two examples in an extensive list of games that all stand out in thier own way. Now before anyone says well what about this new game, or this one? I want to point to the way of the title this is a Decline not a barren wasteland of hard games.

It just seems to me that there was a point in time where game developers decided that great graphics and flashy particle effect were more important then basic elements such as difficulty, longevity and originality. For example, the Resident evil 5, the first time I played through on professional i beat the game in under 5 hours earning myself the infinite rocket launcher...wait what...AN INFINITE, RAPID FIRE, ROCKET LAUNCHER....and it does indeed kill most of the games hardest bosses in one or two shots even wesker with a clever distraction goes down so fast you'd have lagged and missed it. and above all else, above anything I earned it on accident with a freind.

So lets start the thread part of this, lets hear yalls old school or new school hardcore gaming experiences, lets hear about the screaming frustration and laugh. Because I know personally my controllers spent 90% of thier life airborn, and thats a fact I'm proud of

Ah, a fellow greybeard!! Talking about how games where "back in te day" always makes me feel like some old man complaining about "them youngster".

I grew up getting my ass beat day and night by the likes of Contra, Megaman, Gunstar Heroes, Punch Out!, Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, Castlevania...those were the greatest games of all time, in my mind. Eventually I did conquer them all, and that feeling of accomplishment that i got was astounding.

The last game I've played and destroyed on my 360 was Ninja Gaiden 2. On Master.

Too few of the games today actually test your skills and patience. Most of them are merely content with holding our attention from A to B and provide little challenge at all.

Ah someone who gets it, i'm still stuck on shining force 2, God i love that game and hate it at the same time. I play alot of games across all consoles and i find myself dissapointed more than anything, i wish i could say that i love more recent games but i can't. I like them, oh i like plenty of games in my extensive list but the ones i love, the ones that bring me the most joy are the ones that can be found in pawn shops and bins. I just want to see a vector man of the day, maybe a game that not only shows how the indusrty has grown but one that shows how it all started, with originalty and a difficulty everyone can enjoy, not scoff at.

But thats not going to happen and more *young uns* will tell us old greybeards why we are nostalgic fools...i got something to tell alls ya...theres a reason we are nostalgic, Its because it was better. Games didn't have difficulty setting u didn't have a cop out button, u just had to do it. My wife is no gamer but she still plays mario and likes it more than her loco roco on the psp, why? because it was BETTER

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

Ah, a fellow greybeard!! Talking about how games where "back in te day" always makes me feel like some old man complaining about "them youngsters".

I grew up getting my ass beat day and night by the likes of Contra, Megaman, Gunstar Heroes, Punch Out!, Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, Castlevania...those were the greatest games of all time, in my mind. Eventually I did conquer them all, and that feeling of accomplishment that i got was astounding.

The last game I've played and destroyed on my 360 was Ninja Gaiden 2. On Master.

Too few of the games today actually test your skills and patience. Most of them are merely content with holding our attention from A to B and provide little challenge at all.

Plenty of games test your skill. As far as testing patience. Thats not HARD. Thats just a waste of time. I don't have TIME for patience anymore. WHy should a game test my patience anyway? I have work, bills, traffic, a wife and kids to test my patience=) WHy should I pay $50 for a game to do it as well. I can only assume people who think games were actually harder back then are still LIVING back then. They haven't gorwn up and see just how far games have come. Also, guess who making all the games now? People like ME who grew up playing the C64, NES and so on.

Thas a pretty bold statement, if u don't have enough time to chill out every once and awhile and play a game u enjoy, ur twisting urself into a knot that'll end up in either a blood clot or a death. I don't live in the past, i thrive in the future, i have a wife, a kid, a job and a family, But i also have video games and the part of my childhood i will always remember playing them. I'm just pointing out that i'm shelling out 60 bucks a pop for a game I find mediocre as well (as this thread has pointed out on several occasions) as others do. I've grown up, ive seen what games have becomed and i just like my ole sega more, not to say i don't love my ps3, 360 and my wii, I play them more often in fact, bc i am often buying new games for them. we are not close minded so don't assume we are

 

[Yossarian90]

I think games are still hardcore (if you dont own a Wii) but I think some games were poorly designed back then but gaming is evolving. See I don't get the good ole days argument, maybe because im eighteen years old and I started gaming later, because gaming is evolving we are getting better story telling. Much better production values, better gameplay and better graphics.

Not that there arent bad games now, I just think that the industry has matured alot in good and bad ways. I think casual gaming is a good thing because its bringing perspective and it relaxes me to play Viva Pinata after I get my ass handed to me in Halo Wars

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

The more I read about the next big game the more I hear about its amazing graphics first and the suspected gameplay last, I find myself stuck in a sort of...nostalgic mood that I'll explain further.

Remember in the *Good ole days* when sega was still a console giant and nintendo wasn't pumping out gimmicky motion sensor games. Remember when microsoft never crossed your minds and sony made those tvs you played all your games on? I certaintly do and I miss those days terribly. But enough reminiscing lets get to the topic at hand.

I grew up with games that were terribly frustrating, for example the marios. Some levels you would have to redo over and over just to memorize exactly when to jump and when exactly that flying koopa stopped low enough to get the right bounce to NOT hit that invisible block and the inevitable death that quickly followed. It was frustrating and caused more high blood pressure in young kids than Mcdonalds.

How about metriod? Well the first metriod is a perfect example right from the get go *you beam in, you look to your left and then to your right, you head left and see a shining ball sitting on a platform you jump and get it. Anyone remembers what happened next? A little music played so it was obviously good...but what did it do! There was no extensive reading on how it can be used properly you just had to figure it out and we loved that.

And those are just two examples in an extensive list of games that all stand out in thier own way. Now before anyone says well what about this new game, or this one? I want to point to the way of the title this is a Decline not a barren wasteland of hard games.

It just seems to me that there was a point in time where game developers decided that great graphics and flashy particle effect were more important then basic elements such as difficulty, longevity and originality. For example, the Resident evil 5, the first time I played through on professional i beat the game in under 5 hours earning myself the infinite rocket launcher...wait what...AN INFINITE, RAPID FIRE, ROCKET LAUNCHER....and it does indeed kill most of the games hardest bosses in one or two shots even wesker with a clever distraction goes down so fast you'd have lagged and missed it. and above all else, above anything I earned it on accident with a freind.

So lets start the thread part of this, lets hear yalls old school or new school hardcore gaming experiences, lets hear about the screaming frustration and laugh. Because I know personally my controllers spent 90% of thier life airborn, and thats a fact I'm proud of

Ah, a fellow greybeard!! Talking about how games where "back in te day" always makes me feel like some old man complaining about "them youngster".

I grew up getting my ass beat day and night by the likes of Contra, Megaman, Gunstar Heroes, Punch Out!, Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, Castlevania...those were the greatest games of all time, in my mind. Eventually I did conquer them all, and that feeling of accomplishment that i got was astounding.

The last game I've played and destroyed on my 360 was Ninja Gaiden 2. On Master.

Too few of the games today actually test your skills and patience. Most of them are merely content with holding our attention from A to B and provide little challenge at all.

Ah someone who gets it, i'm still stuck on shining force 2, God i love that game and hate it at the same time. I play alot of games across all consoles and i find myself dissapointed more than anything, i wish i could say that i love more recent games but i can't. I like them, oh i like plenty of games in my extensive list but the ones i love, the ones that bring me the most joy are the ones that can be found in pawn shops and bins. I just want to see a vector man of the day, maybe a game that not only shows how the indusrty has grown but one that shows how it all started, with originalty and a difficulty everyone can enjoy, not scoff at.

But thats not going to happen and more *young uns* will tell us old greybeards why we are nostalgic fools...i got something to tell alls ya...theres a reason we are nostalgic, Its because it was better. Games didn't have difficulty setting u didn't have a cop out button, u just had to do it. My wife is no gamer but she still plays mario and likes it more than her loco roco on the psp, why? because it was BETTER

You're forgetting that for every classic like Mario, there was a piece of shit like the video game of Rambo.

 

[roboosh]

I blame the wii. Pfft. Casual gamers can bite my shiny metal gamer ass

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

Oh don't even get me started on the POS that is som old school games, But the good out weighed the bad by far, not something that can be said for today.

And story lines of today don't even get me started...halo is the worst of them all but L4D isn't far behind

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Oh don't even get me started on the POS that is som old school games, But the good out weighed the bad by far, not something that can be said for today.

And story lines of today don't even get me started...halo is the worst of them all but L4D isn't far behind

What was the storyline of Mario and Sonic, again? I'm sorry if I sound like someone who is a stubborn new gamer, but while I do realize there were a lot of "classic" games back then, there were also quite a few crappy games, and many, many games that didn't even bother with a real storyline. Name one NES game that had a story that you didn't pick up from reading the manual or have covered in the beginning intro cutscene. Besides Ninja Gaiden.

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

Oh don't even get me started on the POS that is som old school games, But the good out weighed the bad by far, not something that can be said for today.

And story lines of today don't even get me started...halo is the worst of them all but L4D isn't far behind

What was the storyline of Mario and Sonic, again? I'm sorry if I sound like someone who is a stubborn new gamer, but while I do realize there were a lot of "classic" games back then, there were also quite a few crappy games, and many, many games that didn't even bother with a real storyline. Name one NES game that had a story that you didn't pick up from reading the manual or have covered in the beginning intro cutscene. Besides Ninja Gaiden.

Any of the final fantasies, Vector man (sega), Any of the shining forces, front mission, seiken densetsu, and marios had a story line it was just weak...kinda like todays games, theres the baddy kill him in a veriaty of ways achieve end result...cake

 

[KingPiccolOwned]

I figure that the reason a lot of games have become somewhat more casual is because A- In a declining market, they need to make games as accessable to as wide a range as possible, to make a larger profit (especially with design costs being what they are nowadays). B- They want the person playing to be visually awed by what they are able to do in a game, after all a lot of the difficulty of old games comes from the restrictiveness of the gameplay. C- If you look at some of the more popular, and respected games out there, like Devil May Cry, for example; you will quickly see that a lot of people don't want games that are monsterously hard, Devil May Cry 3 was discredited for just that, but the others many people liked because they were cool, and you were able to kick ass.

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

Devil may cry 3 was hard...did i miss a meeting...post-it note...i need conformation, TO WIKI!

why is everyone saying that things were restricted back then! consoles in those days were very fexible in what they could do and what couldn't be done visually was done through a wall of text we all know and love (or hate if you can't read). Gameplay has nothing to do with graphics and its the connection that it does is the connection ppl keep making that bogs down and makes it ok to go in guns blazing for no other reason than...ALIEN!!

 

[Chewster]

First and foremost, this depends entirely on the genre of game, since each genre provides its own set of challenges and to try and describe games these days as being "too easy" without being specific, is a bit problematic. After all, games back in the day weren't more or less hard then they are now necessarily, they just required different skill sets to beat them (unless you're talking about Dragon's Quest for the NES, that game was impossible).

It helps to understand the evolution of gaming as an art. Back in the day, consoles emulated the challenges that were put forth in arcades (i.e. a limited number of lives with which to finish the game) and the challenge came from the practice it took playing the same games over and over.

As save technology advanced, console gaming became more like computer gaming, where the challenge was the difficulty curve that came from playing the game to the end and solving the puzzles along the way (such as was the case with a lot of Lucas Arts games from the early to mid Nineties) and being able to conquer it fully. Side scrolling arcade like games don't generally play too well on PCs.

Take Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Many were upset that the final boss fight was relatively easy without realizing that the challenge of the game was the actual level design itself. The final boss in that case was, contrary to general expectations, the complicated level that the player had to navigate. The challenge to beating the game was different from what people expected it to be.

 

[gurall200]

Meh, I prefer to have fun the spend 20$ a week on controllers because I throw them through a window. Obniouxly hard games piss me off, and make me wonder why I bought the damn things.

Also to note while those games were hard then, as movie bob once said your used to them, hell the arguement could be made that you need to find harder games and they are out there, Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, is among the hardest games I have played, one of the earliest bosses in the game can (and will) kick your ass faster then you can say "Holy Shit Batman", ninja gaiden 2...nuff'said. Yes while some have gotten easier (final fantasy being the example) the mario series has not, people have gotten used to their mechanics and now they feel easier, I know people who grew up on the N64 era nintendo games going "damn this is hard" go and play SNES era nintendo games and go "this is kinda easy", and others such as the Fire Emblem series have actually gotten harder over the years, no joke, go Fire emblem (or FE7) on the game boy advance then go play Radiant Dawn massive difference.

 

[Weaver]

there.

 

[Extravaganza]

Bump

LOL you really just "Bumped" your own thread. GTFO