Can a videogame be ruined due to excessive difficulty?

Since someone mentioned it...

Has anyone in here actually beat Master Blaster? All the way through?
That game wasn't so much hard, more tedious than anything.
 
Final Fantasy Legend was super easy. All you needed to beat the end boss was the Saw. I remember borrowing the game from a friend and beat it over a weekend back in junior high.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Since someone mentioned it...

Has anyone in here actually beat Master Blaster? All the way through?
That game wasn't so much hard, more tedious than anything.
Click to expand...

Never did. I got very close once but ended up getting killed by a boss when I mis-timed the whole glitch with grenades and pausing. It wasn't the absolute last boss, but I believe it was the next-to-last one. Getting there took hours and hours, too. I was only around 11 or 12 at the time and I think I actually quite the game for good after that!
 
Of course a game can be ruined by excessive difficulty, it needs to be balanced well enough that you are punished for making too many mistakes, but feel rewarded when you get through a difficult sequence.
Now, there are some masochists who actually enjoy meat grinder games like http://www.hardestgameever.net/ or I Wanna be the Guy

I miss old school Command and Conquer, and Vanilla WoW Raiding, Perfect Dark, and the Sonic legacy, games that weren't excruciating, but actually required user input and strategy other than mashing prompted buttons. Imo games like that had appropriate difficulty and felt rewarding to play.

I grow weary of the typical scenarios in games lately - You're walking along in your nanosuit, enjoying the pretty scenery, suddenly some random tentacle-thing springs from the ground and grabs you!! 'M!' 'SPACE!' 'G' 'SPACE!' 'E!' Oh good it's dead. Well that was strategic.
 
I think Super Meat boy is an excellent example of how to make a "hard" game. The game starts off ridiculously easy and trains you every level. Death is quick and getting back into the game just as quick so you don't lose time to mistakes. By the end of the game, you're blasting through the Dark world Cotton Alley like it's cake, whereas a new player wouldn't make it 10 feet in one of those levels.
 
wtburnette said:
I would say yes, they can be too hard. Worse is crappy games that have save points instead of being able to save wherever you want. I won't even play those games anymore. I have WAY more fun playing a game like Skyrim where I can save at any point so that stupid mistakes don't force me to sit through 15 or more minutes of gameplay over and over again. I don't have the time for that kind of repetitive shit. Games are for fun and I don't find that fun at all. I'm not trying to "beat" the game as much as experience it. To each their own, but that's the way I like to play.
Click to expand...

This exactly sums up my feelings. I want to enjoy the game, not keep repeating things over and over and over.

Seeing as how someone mentioned Master Blaster.. that I remember. I was about 8 or 9 when playing it, never could beat the final boss. Never could finish battletoads either. Even with a game genie that game was a bitch.
 
Oh man, Master Blaster was tough. I owned it twice, the first time I snapped the cartridge in half.
 
I think it depends how tolerant you are of the current challenge in the game. I've had some times where I felt like just giving up but would find myself going back and completing the task. Once that happened it helped me keep going and not give up so easy.
 
IMO its not ruined if you have the option to turn the difficulty down. The whole point of higher difficulty levels is to push people. I think its kinda sad that some games area easily beat on their highest difficulty level. The real ptoblem is not the difficulty itself but the lack of intuition. For instance making a person aim better makes sense, making AI smarter / variable in tactics can make sense. Simply turning the AI into a an aimbot on rage mode with wall hacks does nothing for the game. The problem is this is the easiest way to make a game harder. In the end the point is that a good game will do difficulty in good ways but most will simply take the cheap out.

Also most games really are not difficult they just take some unintuitive trick to get through. A specific weapon or tactic. The problem is, why is it so hard to make weapons / tactics make sense.
I think game just need to be made where your control of the charecter is what makes the game more difficult. Its funny how most newer games have absolutely no movement skills.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Hmm, I was actually thinking of Blaster Master for NES, but yes.
Click to expand...

Ah! I always do that with this game! And I'm not dyslexic.
BLASTER MASTER, not Master Blaster grrrrr!

zcDFIqH.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top