Is it just me or are most modern games really easy? - General

I cannot for the life of me think of a new game that had a section that was frustrating for more than a short period. Usually it does come down to it because of ridiculous load times or other bullshit. Here's some games I played that were literally so hard I could chat with people about it and wear accomplishment like a badge of pride. [b]Men of Valour.[/b] Set during Vietnam, you're a GI and there's no COD style regeneration, you got shot, you bleed until you start bandaging. The game was the ultimate 'war is hell' demonstration - it never ran out of bullshit ways to kill you. Worst of all, when you die you witness fucks loot your corpse and there's a letter addressed to your parents that takes a while to skip. Literally in the last level the number one cause of death is being hit by mortars or by fire you can't even see. I never managed it beat the last level sadly. [b]Hidden and Dangerous[/b] All I remember is that this game was hard as shit. You got limited men and equipment, and had to undertake various missions with them. [b]Breed.[/b] This game broke my soul. From the first level you're chucked into an environment with dozens of enemies and patrols roaming the level, and you got a few grunts with different weapons. At times you're confronted by massive towering bastard aliens, hordes of them, little sods, and turrets that rip you to pieces. Again, no COD health, just medi packs. [b]Delta Force (various iterations)[/b] These were at times very hard, and they rewarded using your brain. There's a bit in 2 where you have to assault a base filled with enemies, at the start of the level you can chase after a truck, jump in it and wait until it parks inside the base. The game never even hints at it and it starts quite some distance away.

Game companies want to make more money by selling more copies, mainly copies of sequels, so if the first game in a series was considered "too hard", people would tell their friends about it and sales would be lower than expected. It all comes down to money.

In old school days, games had to be hard because they couldn't be long due to technical limitations. Nowadays, we don't HAVE to make games hard, so a lot aren't. Regardless, there are a lot of modern games that are hard. Super Meat Boy, FTL, and Hotline Miami to name a few. Everyone always says "games are too easy nowadays" or "games aren't as good as they used to be" but the former can be explained and also isn't even completely correct, and the latter is just buttfuck stupid because you can't judge a game's quality based on the era it was made in.

I think they can still be pretty hard, I just dislike how all modern games have to shove events down your throat to the point where it assumes you don't know what a button is and how a door works.

Difficulty is an odd thing to balance, you want your players to be able to feel challenged yet you don't want them turned off by the challenge and play the game as a chore or even worse just not play the game period. And since that's already hard let's just artificially increase the difficulty since that's what everyone likes!

[QUOTE=Novangel;42234774]Difficulty is an odd thing to balance, you want your players to be able to feel challenged yet you don't want them turned off by the challenge and play the game as a chore or even worse just not play the game period. And since that's already hard let's just artificially increase the difficulty since that's what everyone likes![/QUOTE] I like those type of games where ramping up the difficulty causes enemies to do things they never did in the easier modes. Trying to get back at the player or to show that they're more of a threat than ever, not even mattering if they're a common enemy.

I think a lot of it in higher budget, AAA and such titles is that you really don't want to do anything that your audience would find offensive. Unless it's in multiplayer little Billy doesn't want to be frustrated by his game, and you don't want to alienate anyone, so you just tone that difficulty down to inoffensive levels. [editline]19th September 2013[/editline] And just ramp up enemy health and whatnot in the higher difficulties.

Try Wargame: Airland Battle if you want a hard game. Holy shit.

Yes, you can see this across the board with the FPS genre, and its because making whack-a-mole "im a fuckin hero" braindead shooters to pander to the ADHD generation is a lot easier than creating interesting tactical scenarios or complex AI. Dark Souls/Demon souls is ridiculously hard and yet has a huge following, so I don't buy into the argument that people wouldn't play hard games. Developers are just getting lazy and why shouldn't they, shit like COD sells millions.

I even found Metro 2033 too easy. But I am comparing it to STALKER. The last game to challenge me was Dark Souls, hence why I am hooked on it.

No, I'd just say shorter. Or maybe not shorter, because even just more detailed graphics means the game will be shorter, but perhaps "cooler" etc. [editline]18th September 2013[/editline] Also depends on the game.. Some games are stupidly hard for no reason, and some games are simply stupid for certain things.

[QUOTE=The golden;42235455]Isn't just FPS. I think I made it through more than 3/4 of Assassin's Creed 3 before I actually had my first death to an enemy NPC. Holy butts that game was piss-easy.[/QUOTE] Assassins Creed 1 and 2 were actually pretty challenging. Brotherhood/Revelations just made you into such an auto-kill murder machine that the only challenge stopped. Kill one guy and click 3 times to kill everyone else. Sigh. Janissaries and Jaegers were one step forward and two steps back. They parry every blow and counter until the end of time, so your options for killing them are very simple - sequence of button presses or shoot them. No fun to kill at all. In 1 and 2 it was perfectly possible to kill templars and brutes without spamming counter attack and just using dodge and coordinated strikes. Ok, it wasn't quite old games level 'hard' but it was still somewhat of a challenge at times.

[QUOTE=whatthe;42235368]I even found Metro 2033 too easy. But I am comparing it to STALKER. The last game to challenge me was Dark Souls, hence why I am hooked on it.[/QUOTE] Metro 2033 is hard! Right now I'm stuck at the library because I'm scared shitless of the librarians. :D Edit: Right now I've been playing through Tomb Raider and I've found that the combat is quite easy, even against the super riot-shielder and heavily armored guys.

If you want a hard game then try Dark Souls, holy titfucks this game is amazingly hard

I thought that Metro 2033's combat was hard but for all the wrong reasons. The survival aspect was hard and respectable though. My ammo and resource management was abysmal on my first play through. In Stalker COP I had little trouble finding food or ammo, because its sprinkled everywhere and on every living thing. Combat was hard but a bit clunky.

Can't really blame the developers if easy money is just a given, the community just needs a diversion from life, they'll gladly spend money on anything that's available, as it isn't that much in the end. (Besides the boatload of indie games nowadays).

Honestly this is one of the few reasons I go back to NES and SNES games.

[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;42235522]Assassins Creed 1 and 2 were actually pretty challenging. Brotherhood/Revelations just made you into such an auto-kill murder machine that the only challenge stopped. Kill one guy and click 3 times to kill everyone else. Sigh. Janissaries and Jaegers were one step forward and two steps back. They parry every blow and counter until the end of time, so your options for killing them are very simple - sequence of button presses or shoot them. No fun to kill at all. In 1 and 2 it was perfectly possible to kill templars and brutes without spamming counter attack and just using dodge and coordinated strikes.[/QUOTE] If you think any of the Assassins Creed games were even slightly difficult then Men of Valour would make you cry and plea for death. I've never found a game particularly hard, sometimes it may take a couple of tries to accomplish certain things but that doesn't make it hard. However, Forza 2 was possibly the most tedious and lifeless game I've ever played, I never finished it for that reason, that game is hard because it's hard to pay attention to something so mind numbingly repetitive and unforgiving.

[QUOTE=Tiitaniume;42235651]If you want a hard game then try Dark Souls, holy titfucks this game is amazingly hard[/QUOTE] But not even in a bullshit way. Aside from those fucking cursefrogs, I can pretty much blame every death on myself. I wish more games relied purely on skill like that, it's nice to look at an enemy and know you'll only die instantly if you do something wrong. Well, unless you're looking at Super Ornstein.

This is honestly one of the reasons that I don't pick up most games from launch as they typically do not provide bang for your buck.

I picked up Metro: Last Light for twenty bucks a few weeks ago. I liked it a lot, but it was relatively frustrating at times. For comparison, I used to play Metro 2033 on Ranger Hardcore like it was a cakewalk. The nosalises were particularly annoying to deal with because they could attack very quickly in a few seconds, and on Hard difficulty, that's usually a death sentence. The burning spider things were also irritating as all hell, as fighting off two or three of them at once is extremely difficult. Because of this, I usually went with stealth when battling human enemies, as it's much easier and more efficient than spraying bullets. Although at times, it felt almost too easy. I never fired a single military grade round because I could buy a few clips of dirty ammo instead, and early on, I came across a silenced-shotgun-revolver thing, which could instantly kill any Nazi that I stumbled upon. My only worry was the fact that two of my weapons used the same ammo, depleting it twice as fast, but that's instantly mitigated by the hoards of military grade ammo I had stocked up.

I decided to play Grand Theft Auto the other day and I found it very difficult, a police officer merely touches you, you get arrested and if you get shot twice you're dead. "Good shot kid, you got him"

AAA games are generally easy, because they aren't interested in pioneering new game mechanics or anything. They're just interested in telling a story, blurring the lines between games and movies, showing off all the time their animators spent on rendering beautiful elaborate cutscenes. It's essentially luring people in with shiny pretty colors, and keeping them just stimulated enough to keep going. But plenty of indie games are still interested in challenging people, or being experimental with new varieties of gameplay and strange new mechanics or physics simulations. You just have to know where to look. Games had to be hard in the olden days so people would jam more of their hard-earned quarters into the arcade machine, hoping to "beat" the game. Nowadays we've ended up in this weird BDSM setup where the game [i]wants[/i] you to beat it. It just teases you along instead of actually trying to stop you.

Want a hard game? Try to play Dwarf Fortress. If you have no idea what the hell is going on, it's impossible.

[QUOTE=MingeCrab;42245384]I decided to play Grand Theft Auto the other day and I found it very difficult, a police officer merely touches you, you get arrested and if you get shot twice you're dead. "Good shot kid, you got him"[/QUOTE] Yeah. GTA5 is a lot more challenging then 4, but on the same side of things the combat is VASTLY improved, making it not so horrible to actually fight someone. Basically it's been improved entirely.

[QUOTE=whatthe;42235368]I even found Metro 2033 too easy. But I am comparing it to STALKER. [/QUOTE] Ranger mode is pretty difficult.

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;42246935]Yeah. GTA5 is a lot more challenging then 4, but on the same side of things the combat is VASTLY improved, making it not so horrible to actually fight someone. Basically it's been improved entirely.[/QUOTE] I was actually referring to the first one but I forgot to mention that. :v:

[QUOTE=Justin Case;42237266]If you think any of the Assassins Creed games were even slightly difficult then Men of Valour would make you cry and plea for death.[/QUOTE] The only thing hard about assassins creed (only in 3) was the fact that sometimes you climb a wall while running and fuck up the chase.

[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;42236655]I thought that Metro 2033's combat was hard but for all the wrong reasons. The survival aspect was hard and respectable though. My ammo and resource management was abysmal on my first play through. In Stalker COP I had little trouble finding food or ammo, because its sprinkled everywhere and on every living thing. Combat was hard but a bit clunky.[/QUOTE] Try the stalker COP Misery mod. Is hughe, makes the game look way better and makes is seriously hard. [url]http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-misery[/url]

Playing through System Shock 2 currently. Refusing to use my bullets against enemies wielding pipes which can 2 hit you. :v: