Are games getting easier?

[Asknoone]

It becomes even more frustrating when developers cut out content on the lower difficulty levels, because it means you're missing out on some of the experience in exchange for not dying five times a minute.

Exactly.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

yeah I agree

 

[Warbie]

I think it depends on how it's handled. Golden Eye and Perfect dark increased the challenge on harder settings by making the enemies deadlier and by increasng the number and complexity of objectives required. They were better games for this as every aspect was made more involved and taxing, not just the combat, and both still stand as a great example of how a decent challenge done well can vastly add to the experience.

 

[Loke]

I think it depends on how it's handled. Golden Eye and Perfect dark increased the challenge on harder settings by making the enemies deadlier and by increasng the number and complexity of objectives required.

The Timesplitters games did this as well. Comparing Easy to Normal, for instance, the player needed complete various amount of added objectives while the maps themselves were also significantly longer and sometimes a boss, not present on easier difficulties, needed to be fought.

I think it depends a bit on the game - games like the Timesplitters series and all its hundreds upon hundreds of unlockable content only adds a large amount replay value to the game. But more story-driven games like Half-Life...? Nah. :/

 

[Wanted Bob]

Overall, I think that games are getting easier, but thankfully there are exceptions that are satisfying to play.

Games that give me a good challenge are Peggle (Master AI of course), UT 3, and Gears of War.

 

[Bad^Hat]

There's no real bar, though. I can play through Half-Life 2 on hard and it's still mostly a piece of cake for me save for a few deaths when health is scarce, but I tried playing Gears of War on "hardcore" the first time through and got ripped to pieces in the very first firefight. After dying about twenty times I decided to put the difficulty down to "casual," and while the game still presented a challenge plenty often, I also didn't die every ten seconds. That lack of consistency in difficulty between games makes it hard to judge what you should be playing on the first time through.

Idunno, HL2 is a pretty weak example of difficulty if you stack it up against any game, really. Gears of War went about things in a slightly different way as I took it, and skipped having a 'normal' mode at all. Casual lined up more with what you'd expect from a typical easy mode, which makes sense because that's what the typical casual gamer would pick, and hardcore was more in line with, well, hard mode. Insane was obviously trying to be the equivalent of Halo's legendary (but fell a bit short of this, if only because legendary is f*cking unfair).

Anyway, games are always going to be inconsistent like this because balance is such a personal thing to each game. It doesn't just depend on setting X difficulty at Y amount of health and Z amount of bullet damage, it's also effected by the game's mechanics, like how it controls, how the weapons behave, the enemy AI, the environments etc. It varies far too much to standardise it really, and besides which I don't think it'd serve much useful purpose to do so. A far easier way of accomplishing this is just to allow the player to switch difficulties mid-game, which some games already do (HL2). So if a player starts on normal and finds it a bit too hard, they can switch down to easy, and vice versa. It wouldn't work so well in something like Gears of War where the difficulty settings are so disparate, but in something like Half-Life or Halo it'd fit perfectly and save a bit of hassle.

 

[CrazyHarij]

if you consider modern games to be too easy, seriously, throw on some old school arcade games with MAME

 

[kineaesth]

Thus, pleasing everyone is difficult. No way.

 

[Bad^Hat]

if you consider modern games to be too easy, seriously, throw on some old school arcade games with MAME

There's a reason arcade games are so hard though, and that's cause they WANT UR MONEYZ.

Or in mame's case, they want you to wear out your F1 key... I guess.

 

[Omnomnick]

*Looks at thread title*

Yes, Hl1 was difficult at parts first time, Hl2 is easy as shite everytime.