That wasn't so tough...

Started by pkmin3033 March 16th, 2015 9:11 AM
  • 904 views
  • 15 replies
A common complaint amongst older, more experienced gamers is that modern games are far too easy. When a difficult game is released, it immediately attracts attention just for being difficult. Games like Demon's Souls even go so far as to boast that you WILL die, as though this were an uncommon thing in current generation titles. Being "Nintendo Hard" isn't a common thing anymore, that much is certain. But have video games really gotten easier, or has the nature of what makes a difficult video game changed?

A lot of older video games were difficult due to their punishing nature - making the slightest mistake in a platforming title could result in instant death, for example. However, the level design was often fixed, as were enemy attack patterns and positions. Once you learned the patterns of enemies, or where obstacles were and how to avoid them in a stage, the games were robbed of their inherent difficulty. In short, it was an exercise in memory; of knowing what to do and when to do it.

With modern games, this isn't the case. An increased difficulty level often means enemies will react differently, in addition to the boosts to health and damage, meaning that the margin for error decreases significantly, and the game itself is not an exercise in memory. So, perhaps modern video games, with their more advanced AI and unpredictable nature, could be said to be harder than those which could be easily finished once you'd figured out the best way to approach them?

So, what are your thoughts on the difficulty of modern games? In general, have games gotten easier as you've gotten older, or do you still find games to be as challenging as ever? Is a captivating story mode more important than a challenge to you?

Satoshi Ookami

Memento Mori

Age 30
Male
Abyss of Time, Great Seal
Seen August 5th, 2018
Posted July 3rd, 2018
14,253 posts
14.8 Years
We all can pretty much agree that games definitely ARE easier than in the past.
If nothing, we have mouse. If you compare to days when adventures had to be play by verb commands, anything newer just has to be easier.

I do like a challenge once and then but what I can't stand is a cheap difficulty that is difficult in annoying way... like due to randomness factor, time factor or too strict precision.
ROM hacking FAQ - Read before asking how to play a hack.

Anime List | PSN Trophy List

mew_nani

Pokécommunity's Licensed Tree Exorcist

Female
Far Lands
Seen May 28th, 2019
Posted August 25th, 2018
1,839 posts
13.4 Years
They have gotten easier due to the transition from an arcade style format and the advent of such things as save features. Before there was no way to save, and games were designed to be hard like arcade games were at the time; short, but difficult. The difficulty padded out the game making you play longer and use up more quarters, and during the early days a lot of games were designed around that format like Gradius and Super Mario Bros.

But with newer games came the advent of a save feature, which meant you didn't lose all your progress if you ran out of lives, and later came interwoven tutorials and lowered difficulty and...

I support:

R.I.P Isaac J. Southerland Jr.
1946 - 2017
Age 31
Male
Fortree City, Hoenn
Seen December 6th, 2017
Posted November 14th, 2017
1,276 posts
9.5 Years
One of my big criticisms of games is the fact you can't customise the difficulty levels very well.
It would be great if you count make some aspects that you like really hard and others you don't really easy.
For example take total war games, it would be great if you could keep the battles and map campaigns really hard but disable other features like rebellions and revolts to make the game a little more fast paced.
Or on Smash Bros if you could disable shields to make the game fully offensive or have stages where you can't fall off to completely promote a different play style.

Megan

She/Her, It/Its
Seen 8 Hours Ago
Posted 14 Hours Ago
17,811 posts
10.3 Years
I think one of the reasons why games have gotten easier (at least most mainstream titles), is the ongoing casualization. With people seemingly having more and more things to do, there's not as much time to spend on playing games. So in order to counteract that a little bit, overall difficulty gets lowered and save features enhanced.

At least, that's the reasoning most gaming companies use when creating their games.

There sure are exceptions, especially in the Indie game scene, but most of the times, when another difficult title (most of the time a platformer) is released, it feels like it's just a Mega Man copy, with extra spikes/more death. While I do like my Super Meat Boy once in a while, I also like playing something a little bit easier sometimes, like Shovel Knight. But those games sure are much rarer.
Moderator of Previous Generations, Forum Games and VPP
You got a thing!
Older games simply were harder. Mainly for two reasons.
1. Games couldn't be long, so you had to pad it out somehow,
and 2. Games were not as available as they are today, so devs didn't mind psyducking you over with the difficulty: You would play it anyway and try to get your moneys worth out of it.

But that isn't the way is today. Games are readily available so if you think a game is too hard you can just download a different one. And games can be very long now, so you don't have to pad out a game that way. Not to mention that most old games didn't have a save feature so most games had to be completed in one sitting and if you got a game over you HAD to start over.

Additionally, games can be difficult because of poor game design. This was VERY common among old games, due to weak hardware and other things like that. Not to mention game breaking bugs that were rather common.

Anyway; I don't mind a difficult game, and I don't mind an easy game. But the former can be horribly frustrating and the latter can be very unsatisfying. But I feel that many games today find a good balance between the two though. Some games are too easy, yeah. And games that are too easy usually aren't very satisfying. But some games (Like most Kirby games,) are very easy but fun. And I don't feel that modern games on average are too easy. Some are sure, but not all. And yeah, some games can be too difficult. But a game like Dark Souls manages to do it right, where any and all deaths are your fault. But I'm pretty happy with the difficulty of modern games. (And if they were to go back to "NES Hard" I'd stop playing modern games.)

And I'll be honest: I'd take a captivating story mode over a difficult game any day.

Sylphiel

Between your fantasy and my reality
Seen March 28th, 2023
Posted January 9th, 2023
13,114 posts
18.5 Years
As much as I might miss the difficulty of (some) older games sometimes, a lot of emphasis on the "sometimes"....really, there's hard and then there's the "nintendo hard" crap that's just inflated difficulty for the sake of it. The latter is just annoying at times. Yes, games as a whole tend to be easier now, but that's not a bad thing - it means I can actually focus more on the game itself now instead of getting frustrated at the game because this particular part is somehow extra fidgety about things. I have put down games before because of that regardless of how much I liked the rest of them. Jak II I am looking at you so very much right now.

If I want to play a hard game I will play a hard game; if I just want to sit and relax and play a game, then I still like a challenge but I don't want it to be too hard. I would definitely prefer a better storyline over a challenge that may or may not make me want to throw a controller at something.

(Could just be that I've gotten less patient with challenging things over the years, who knows. Maybe I'm not as willing to sit there and bang my head against a wall with a game as I was as a kid.)

Austin

Age 26
he / him
Arizona
Seen 5 Hours Ago
Posted 1 Week Ago
2,719 posts
14.1 Years
Older games were much more difficult, because, like Orpheus said, they weren't very long. For example, the original NES Castlevania could be completed in about 25-30 minutes if you played through perfectly. In order for the players to get their money's worth, the difficulty had to be higher so that they could play more.

Modern games are generally easier than older games, yes. I think the lowered difficulty makes it more appealing to a wider audience. There's not a complete lack of modern difficult games, though. If you want to play challenging games, there are many options, like Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy.

I, for one, enjoy a difficult game here and there, but for the most part I prefer a good story.
paired with Aslan

El Héroe Oscuro

IG: elheroeoscuro

Male
Chicago
Seen April 10th, 2022
Posted August 21st, 2021
7,237 posts
14.3 Years
Older games were much more difficult, because, like Orpheus said, they weren't very long. For example, the original NES Castlevania could be completed in about 25-30 minutes if you played through perfectly. In order for the players to get their money's worth, the difficulty had to be higher so that they could play more.

Modern games are generally easier than older games, yes. I think the lowered difficulty makes it more appealing to a wider audience. There's not a complete lack of modern difficult games, though. If you want to play challenging games, there are many options, like Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy.

I, for one, enjoy a difficult game here and there, but for the most part I prefer a good story.
Whoever actually completes the original Castlevania game in under 30 minutes is a god. I love that game but man am I bad at it - I always got stuck at the mummy boss battle. Also the Grim Reaper is the epitome of 'difficult gaming.' Those double scythes? Yeah, hehe, no.
The Mad Blogger

"Look, whatever you're thinking,
do me a favor; don't let go."

Daily Bloggity
Twitter
My Daily Articles
My Anime
Food Fight #18
VIPQOTD #4

Gamerscore: 629,694

Dragon

lover of milotics

Age 30
Male
Viridian City
Seen 5 Days Ago
Posted October 24th, 2022
11,170 posts
9.7 Years
I think it depends on the game. Most games back then were shorter at least, but also, you have to consider the time period. Now we have LPs, walkthroughs online, etc and back then it was just Nintendo Power essentially. So that being said, I think it felt harder back then because you knew there was no other way to figure out certain things in games. Now you can just look it up. If you don't give yourself that right however, then I think it's about the same.

Though on the other hand, The lives system and lives being sparse is just an archaic system back in the day that replaced proper difficulty and re playability due to the lack of better technology, like RPGs with random encounters~


"Let the fools who stand before me be destroyed by the power you and I possess...
DRAGON SLAVE!"
Whoever actually completes the original Castlevania game in under 30 minutes is a god. I love that game but man am I bad at it - I always got stuck at the mummy boss battle. Also the Grim Reaper is the epitome of 'difficult gaming.' Those double scythes? Yeah, hehe, no.
Mainly the difficulty comes from how the game is poorly balanced and often has horrible difficulty spikes. Still an excellent game though.

El Héroe Oscuro

IG: elheroeoscuro

Male
Chicago
Seen April 10th, 2022
Posted August 21st, 2021
7,237 posts
14.3 Years
Mainly the difficulty comes from how the game is poorly balanced and often has horrible difficulty spikes. Still an excellent game though.
I like to think of it similar to Metroid Prime. You get through like a quarter of the game breezing past everything then all of a sudden BAM. You get psyducked over by the amped difficulty lol.
The Mad Blogger

"Look, whatever you're thinking,
do me a favor; don't let go."

Daily Bloggity
Twitter
My Daily Articles
My Anime
Food Fight #18
VIPQOTD #4

Gamerscore: 629,694
I like to think of it similar to Metroid Prime. You get through like a quarter of the game breezing past everything then all of a sudden BAM. You get psyducked over by the amped difficulty lol.
A quarter? That happened to me the first time I played it when I faced Flaaghra! Then Phazon Mines happened...then the last boss happened. I can finish the game in under five hours now, but the lack of direction the first go around made it brutal. Then there was the sequel, which had dozens of merciless bosses and a world which drained your health consistently right up to the end of the game.

...looking back on it, I wonder how I ever managed to finish the two of them, and how I can do them so easily now. xD

El Héroe Oscuro

IG: elheroeoscuro

Male
Chicago
Seen April 10th, 2022
Posted August 21st, 2021
7,237 posts
14.3 Years
A quarter? That happened to me the first time I played it when I faced Flaaghra! Then Phazon Mines happened...then the last boss happened. I can finish the game in under five hours now, but the lack of direction the first go around made it brutal. Then there was the sequel, which had dozens of merciless bosses and a world which drained your health consistently right up to the end of the game.

...looking back on it, I wonder how I ever managed to finish the two of them, and how I can do them so easily now. xD
It's funny you mention that, Phazon Mines was actually what I was referring to when I wrote about the difficulty being raised exponentially mid game. When I reached that boss I was all "NOPE! I'M OUT!" I also think I was too afraid to actually play that part of the game and just shut off my game in fear lol.

I need to go back and play that game. Too bad my backlog of games to play is too damn long...
The Mad Blogger

"Look, whatever you're thinking,
do me a favor; don't let go."

Daily Bloggity
Twitter
My Daily Articles
My Anime
Food Fight #18
VIPQOTD #4

Gamerscore: 629,694
It's funny you mention that, Phazon Mines was actually what I was referring to when I wrote about the difficulty being raised exponentially mid game. When I reached that boss I was all "NOPE! I'M OUT!" I also think I was too afraid to actually play that part of the game and just shut off my game in fear lol.

I need to go back and play that game. Too bad my backlog of games to play is too damn long...
It wasn't the boss of that area I found hard (two or three Super Missiles and he's out of it) it was actually getting to him that was the problem. Metroids everywhere, multi-coloured space pirates, puddles of phazon...and this one really annoying jump sequence in the dark where you have to grapple onto a turtle and swing across to a mushroom which isn't quite against the ledge, meaning if you overshot it you had to run across a pool of Phazon and try again.

I loved Phazon Mines as an area, but that darkened bit was a nightmare to get across. Getting the Plasma Beam in Magmoor Caverns was quite difficult as well, since you had to do a lot of swinging and spider-balling to get to the top of the room.

Corruption's lack of difficulty was almost a relief. xD

Sonata

Don't let me disappear

Age 27
Male
Indiana
Seen 7 Hours Ago
Posted March 25th, 2023
13,619 posts
10.2 Years
I once listened to a rant about the difficulty of video games that I really liked and I agreed with pretty much everything the person said. I just wish I could remember the name of the video. :(

Video games as a whole are much easier today than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Most of the reasons have already been stated. Most games today just lack the need for you to use any form of strategy and the new definition of "impossible" is time trial or hit boxes instead of for example having to have a perfectly balanced and complimentary team with just the right moves to beat a boss.