Where do you stand on difficulty in games?

I like to go with hard on my first playthrough then easy on my second so I can more easily appreciate things. However, games like Battlefield 3 ruin that for me, where I can't switch my difficulty, despite it being cheap as a motherfucker. Lol, I dislike that on games.

I like it rough.

Games are more satisfying and fun when you have to Get Good at them.

I usually go normal first, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, then hard to put my skills to the test, then easy to pick up any trophies/achievements if I am going for a Platinum/S-Rank.

I usually like it hard (...what?)
My usual routine is to check the achievements, if there's one for beating a game on hard I'll give it a shot.
If it gets overly frustrating I'll bump it down.

I usually go for the middle-of-the-road difficulty. Normal, that is. If there are Achievements associated with higher difficulties, I tend to start on the hardest one. I'm playing Batman: Arkham City on Hard right now, for example. It's not that hard if you don't try to button mash your way through the game.

I usually start with normal to test the waters. If that's too easy to the point of being bothersome, I play on hard. Usually normal difficulty is fine the first time through. Any subsequent ones I usually play on a higher difficulty level.

2 options? Pick Hard.
3 options? Pick Normal.
4 or more options? Pick the Second Hardest.

They should be difficult, but not because the controls are bad or unresponsive or not doing what I want.

I usually just play normal, a hard play through will come on my second time through if I liked the game enough to play it again. Sometimes I turn it to easy if I don't like the actual game play though. The uncharted games are great examples of games that I found more fun when you don't spend most of the game hiding behind cover, waiting for your health to regenerate.

@DarthOrange said:

I usually go normal first, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, then hard to put my skills to the test, then hard to pick up any trophies/achievements if I am going for a Platinum/S-Rank.

I think we have similar opinions on this.

BRING THE PAIN.

I don't like artificial difficulty, if I'm gonna get frustrated I'd rather pussy out.

@DarthOrange said:

I usually go normal first, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, then hard to put my skills to the test, then hard to pick up any trophies/achievements if I am going for a Platinum/S-Rank.

I think we have similar opinions on this.

I enjoy games being challenging, but making it take more bullets to kill something isn't challenging its unbalancing you to make it seem harder. I'll generally play on normal but I don't shy away from games because they are said to be challenging either. I don't mind a fair challenge.

Lets just say this.

My soul is very dark.

It depends, I guess? I like turning up difficulty settings if it means I'll have to master more gameplay systems or gain some sort of technical mastery over something, especially in driving games and flight-sims. If the game is simply going to make things more difficult for the sake of making things more difficult, then I'll play on the "normal" setting.

@OldGuy said:

2 options? Pick Hard. 3 options? Pick Normal. 4 or more options? Pick the Second Hardest.

this

I like a decent balance. I think games should be decently fun to play but present a good challenge too. Some games lack any difficulty at all and are just boring, where as others get so hard they're just frustrating and not fun.

Depends on the genre too.. RPG's these days are always far too easy. Even the so called "hardcore mode" in New Vegas was disappointing. Ditto for the Dragon fights in Skyrim.

If it's game that's heavy story I play on a easier setting. If it's a game that focuses more on the gameplay, scoring, leaderboards then I play on harder difficulty.

If it's challenging and puts skills to the test but it doesn't "bullshit" me to death a la Ninja Gaiden 2, I'm all for it. Demon's Souls was great at being difficult but once you learned how to play, you might go entire stretches without dying once. Something like World at War on veteran with its horrible checkpoints, endless grenades, and braindead squad AI is not something I enjoy.

If it's crazy hard like Dark Souls, I won't give it the time of day. But I do like a good challenge in games.

Games like Call of Duty single player are fine on normal, but playing that on veteran is just kinda dumb to me.

It depends for me. There are certain games where I know I just want to get story, for example I plan to play Uncharted 3 on Easy, but I dont like the gameplay too much. Typically I try out the first level or two on Hard, sometimes Hard is too hard to be enjoyable and I know id get frustrated before the end so I will restart on normal. Some games are just right for me on hard and I stay.

I played Red Faction: Armageddon recently and started it on normal, that game has many faults but personally I found the "normal" difficulty to be perfect for me. I died a few tiems in the game but mostly it just kept me "on my toes" and my health near the bottom so I had to be on point all the time but I it never felt like it was cheap.

At the intended difficulty level with an intended playstyle games should be challenging enough but never frustrating or tedious. The game itself should teach + guide you to get better and there should be a steady ramp up in either difficulty or complexity. There should be lower difficulty levels for more casual players and higher difficulty levels for hardcore players.

@Skytylz said:

I usually just play normal, a hard play through will come on my second time through if I liked the game enough to play it again. Sometimes I turn it to easy if I don't like the actual game play though. The uncharted games are great examples of games that I found more fun when you don't spend most of the game hiding behind cover, waiting for your health to regenerate.

Yeah, this is how I generally feel about most games as well.

Depends on the game.

@Rappelsiini said:

@AngelN7

@DarthOrange said:

I usually go normal first, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, then hard to put my skills to the test, then hard to pick up any trophies/achievements if I am going for a Platinum/S-Rank.

I think we have similar opinions on this.

I'm with you on this. Unless there have been suggestions from the developer or similar that say you should play game on harder difficulty (like GOW3).

same here

playing on the hardest difficulties made my BioShock 1 and 2 experience even more intense and ultimately better. to me, this was the best way to play the game.

I usually play a game a little bit to see how it handles and then select my difficulty soon afterwards.

Exactly WHAT is supposed to be difficult about a game varies from game to game and some games just add artificial difficulty by juicing up the badguys and making them take more damage. IT's not an increase in fun, to me, to have to just sit there hitting the same badguy twice as long to kill him.

Similarly, a game like The Force Unleashed, which had great graphics and story, had AWFUL gameplay. turning that game down to it's easiest difficulty only increases the enjoyment of it.

My favorite example of a good hard-mode game is the original Tenchu. You had complete control over your character and turning up the difficulty just made the badguys fight better. Essentially that meant you just had to be sharper in your sneaking around because being found could very well mean your death if you weren't on your game all the time.

I like difficulty that makes me have to pay more attention and think harder about the game.

Story driven games I generally stick it on normal to experience the story and then on hard if feel like playing it again. Games with very little story I'll happily give it a go on hard. I do appreciate games with no difficulty option at all, this is it, the way its meant to be.

@JazGalaxy: I think Dark Souls has the best bump up in difficulty for the NG+ modes because the enemies don't have a lot more health( only enough extra to compensate for your increase in lvl) but can kill you in two hits, even the weakest ones. That keeps you on you toes.

Depends. I like a challenge, but it has to be well designed and I am not hindered by the shitty gameplay. Stuff like Mass Effect 2 on Insanity was great for this, because it forced me to get creative and use everything at my disposal. Batman: AA and Arkham City were also very good at this. Halo is a standout, as well as Gears (finished both on Legendary/Insane).

Hard games are fun, so long as the difficulty spike is not just buff for enemies/debuff for player HP. Mirror's Edge on hard was also quite good.

So yeah, it depends on if the gameplay is in service of the challenge, or if the challenge is derived from working around the gameplay.

I play on normal, I assume this is how the developer wanted the game to be played. If the game was good I will attempt it on a higher difficulty. Also the game has to have a quick restart after death. If I have to wait 30+ seconds for the game to load the previous checkpoint just to die right away, then I will not bother. I don't mind a challenge, but I want to play a game, not watch a loading screen. Super Meat Boy was great, it was challenging, and when you failed you were right back up and running.

Usually, I play it on the normal difficulty first or, in some cases, the one above that (i.e. Hardcore on Gears 3, Heroic on Halo games).

Then, the second playthrough is usually done on the next higher up, the third on the one above that, and so on until I've beaten it.

Unless I really like a game, though, I won't beat it on the hardest difficulty. Some would say I'm less of a gamer for that, but I don't care. I play to have fun, not to rage because I'm constantly getting my ass whipped. I do, however, get disappointed when I go through a game and never die.

I'll usually do my first playthrough on normal to enjoy the storytelling then I'll crank it up to max difficulty for subsequent playthroughs.

Games are too easy these days, i think. i can often go through an entire game while dying only once or twice. So I'll usually start a game on hard and work from there. Plowing through everything isnt fun to me anymore.

usually normal, unless that appears too difficult i'll go easy. my main interest is story so i don't mind.

if its good i'll go back and play it on hard, but usually just start normal, easy if i get impatient and it feels like its getting in the way of progression

unless the game is fun in which case i'll keep it or bump it up to hard to get a tougher experience and enjoy the story / setting etc

Easy games are pointless.

@DeF said:

@Rappelsiini said:

@AngelN7

@DarthOrange said:

I usually go normal first, to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, then hard to put my skills to the test, then hard to pick up any trophies/achievements if I am going for a Platinum/S-Rank.

I think we have similar opinions on this.

I'm with you on this. Unless there have been suggestions from the developer or similar that say you should play game on harder difficulty (like GOW3).

same here

playing on the hardest difficulties made my BioShock 1 and 2 experience even more intense and ultimately better. to me, this was the best way to play the game.

Yep starting games on normal should be the way to go unless is a special case of a game being really hard to begin with (Catherine Jp version) or too easy but that dosn't happen too often then after that increasing the difficulty because playing on easy after playing on hard or normal feels like a chore to me even if it is just for achivements/trophies.