The terms "Casual" & "Hardcore".

[Fishyash]

snip

Sorry, but you're dead wrong. I'm not saying you won't be able to succeed in the above cases with a casual mindset, I'm saying it's very likely that you won't be able to play at all. If you pick up Ninja Gaiden or Kingdom Under Fire with the sort of dexterity and mental agility that Angry Birds has bestowed you with, it's going to be a case of you bashing your head against the barrier to entry for 25 minutes before putting the game down for good.

As I said, casual gamers aren't bad gamers. Some people will get the learning curve faster than others (I don't know which ninja gaiden you are talking about [is it fair to assume you're talking about the NES one?], but when it comes to hard platformers general skill with platformers doesn't help you anywhere near as much as simply memorizing the jumps and enemy/boss patterns, since ninja gaiden doesn't really have complex controls). I half take back what I said about KUF though, I still think multiplayer will generally make it more enjoyable to the casual player, but I was thinking about competetive multiplayer, however now I am guessing you were referring to the console versions.

X3 is almost impenetrable with a casual mindset- and it has nothing to do with the scale of the task of exploration. There is no fun to be had without first garnering an understanding of the *many* menus, assessing your strengths and best path to a better ship, and also examining the trade in your region of space and looking for a niche. No tutorial. The manual is fine for control advice and worthless as a source of market information or for otherwise shortening the road to gratification. Study and hard work open the door to fun in a little while, but that investment is mandatory.

Interesting point of view I guess, (for want of a better word here) 'getting the hang of it' must take quite a while, but I decided to quickly look at the review on IGN to see if anyone else shares the same view;

But that's just part of the genius of X3. Truth is that despite its almost frightening enormity and the high learning curve it sets out for those who want to play it to its full potential, it isn't as brutal for rookies as it seems. If, for instance, you haven't yet committed to memory the four full manual pages describing equipment and upgrades, the three pages on artifacts, or the twelve (!) pages recounting each of the game's key spacecraft, you needn't fear. You can pretty much just jump in and wing it, so to speak, picking up the knowledge you'll eventually need as you progress.

Indeed, you may not even need to consult said manual nearly as much as you might think. X3 offers up a ton of guidance and advice from within the game, in the form of helpful commanders and peers, liberal voice-over explanations, and of course that icon-based sidebar. Moreover, you can click on virtually any item within radar range for a fully detailed explanation of what it is and what it does. That the aforementioned manual is as accommodating, well-written, and downright enjoyable as it is, especially considering the wealth of information housed inside, is a real feather in the cap of the German design team.

According to IGN it doesn't seem as difficult to get into as you put it. Maybe it's only relative though to the hardcore nature of the space sim, it could imply that it's only slightly less hardcore than one might have thought.

You did pique my interest of X3 though, I definately will want to find out more about the game and play it.

I don't think it's impossible to enjoy a game that caters more to a more serious/involved audience, just like I don't think it's impossible to enjoy a game that caters more to a casual audience.

 

[Bad Jim]

You don't scratch the surface of street fighter by learning how to hadouken either. Scratching the surface and/or finding intricacies within game design is something a hardcore gamer will happily talk about/do, but people who play more casually won't tend to bat an eyelid.

I'd say learning the special moves in Street Fighter is scratching the surface. It's tricky and it takes a fair bit of practise before you can hadouken reliably under pressure. There is also a few things to know about executing special moves that hardcore players know and casuals don't.

You can execute special moves by releasing buttons as well as pressing them. But not normal moves. If you want to hurricane kick, it's safer to do it by releasing a kick button because if the move doesn't work you'll still be blocking, rather than doing a random kick. This is especially handy with Roses' Reflect move that reflects your opponents' fireballs.

There is also input leniency. Instead of that weird shoryuken motion you can tap diagonally twice. Charge characters let you charge while holding diagonally, so Honda can charge his torpedo while sitting in crouch block instead of walking back until he's too far away to hit his opponent.