Are Games Getting Easier?

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

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It seems like a simple question, but I'm willing to bet that it's one that could be answered a billion different ways. Age might have a lot to do with it as well, since if you've been playing games since the earliest days of the PC and game consoles, you probably know what a truly difficult game is. But what's the true answer here? Are games getting easier?

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Read the rest of our post and discuss it here!
 
Greg King

Greg King

I just kinda show up...
Staff member
If you haven't played the two new Mega Man games on either the 360 or PS3, you are missing out on some maddening, well made games. The same can be said for the new Sonic that's out.

I think some games focus too much on the story and others on the game mechanics. Some, in the case of everything Valve has ever done, hit both out of the park. Some games are fun, regardless of difficulty. Take Modern Warfare 2 for example. You mention that you played through it fairly easily. Regardless of the ease that you made it through the game, you can't deny that it's a well polished title.

Have you played Halo:Reach on Legendary? It's practically impossible but a hell of a ride to the finish. What about Uncharted 2 or God of War III? Those are difficult as well on the highest setting. There are still plenty of good games out there that offer plenty of challenge in my opinion.

Many games of our youth were hard as a by product of the technology of the day. In many games, if you died in the middle of the level, you had to start the whole thing over. This was because space was limited on the writable memory. Save points had to be few and far between. This resulted in an elevated difficulty and added time to the game.

The Igniq article really missed the boat. Three of the four games mentioned are designed to be long. Quality role playing games are supposed to take forever to finish. The fourth game mentioned... Half Life 2. Valve can consistently be counted on to make a quality title. The mere fact that the author fails to mention Portal, in an article devoted to bitching about difficulty is unforgivable. It sounds like the author is complaining about length, not difficulty. You can have a short game be horribly difficult and you can have a long game that's easy as hell. You have to focus on the game play. Medal of Honor might be short but that's sometimes what you get when a developer takes a "me too" attitude. This was EA's answer to Modern Warfare 2. It wasn't original and it showed. Knock the game, not the industry.

Oh yeah, Braid? It should be mentioned as well.
 
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Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Greg King said:
The Igniq article really missed the boat.
Click to expand...

I have to disagree, I think it made some excellent points. As I mentioned in our post, there's a major difference between the difficulty level being cranked up and the game being challenging by design. Sure, Legendary is a tough mode, but all it does is increase the damage done to you by the enemies. That's not exactly that innovative or exciting.

In the case of Medal of Honor, the game was easy in more than one respect. First, it's as linear as it gets... truly. It's almost impossible to go the wrong way, and then on top if it, in some cases it's almost hard to die. I didn't play the game on its hardest difficulty as I mentioned, but that shouldn't matter. There was just so sense of being challenged at all. In this respect, it was almost like playing a movie, not a game.

Don't get me wrong, there ARE difficult games out there, but there aren't enough of them. I almost wonder if some of the easy difficulty is due to the fact that a lot of games are console ports. I remember when Halo 1 came out for the PC, I found it easy, and I came to understand that the reason was because it was a console port not re-tuned for the PC. MoH, MW2, and others, are of course direct console ports.
 
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