Yeah Baby, I Like It Hard

In this thread we talk about hard games.  Do you think hard games are fun, or do you tend to prefer easier games that let you breeze through them?  Are their any particular hard games that piss you off?  Are there hard games that you love?  Is there a difference between a good kind of hard game and a bad kind of hard game?

Let's hear your thoughts, Giant Bomb.

inb4 "thats what she said"

Hard games are fine when they aren't made hard just to be hard.

Ninja Gaiden? Stupid hard.

N+? Good hard. It's as challenging as you want it to be, and creating your own content allows you to push your limits if the game can't, although the game should. You know it was designed to accomodate failures, from the easy level restarts to the deaths achievement. They made it easy to play something harder.

Not sure if that made any sense.

i love hard games. makes completing it worthwhile. and when i get a new game i always start on the hardest difficulty. unless it's too hard which i go down  notch XD. as for multiplayer games yeah i like em hard as well. can't beat the satifaction of winning a game of level 48s on halo. although you have to mix in some relaxing "fun" with it

I think Ninja Gaiden is good hard because it's rarely unfair.  There's always a counter to everything the enemies do.

N+ I would agree is definitely good hard, because it pretty much gives you instant respawns, encouraging you to try again immediately.

"I think Ninja Gaiden is good hard because it's rarely unfair.  There's always a counter to everything the enemies do.

N+ I would agree is definitely good hard, because it pretty much gives you instant respawns, encouraging you to try again immediately."

if a hard game is rewarding it doesnt matter if its hard in my opinion

Recently i played through GH3 and that game is hard in a bad way, you beat the song and what do you get nothing?
Its pointless to try and beat it if there is no real reward for it.

To me, I Wanna Be The Guy fits that bill, while Ninja Gaiden is hard but you feel totally badass while you figure it out.  IWBTG just makes me want to cry.

IWBTG made me cry. :(

I can't think of a hard game that i've really enjoyed. I play videogames for fun, not for a challenge. I'm sure some people do, but anything trickier than trying to beat my Geometry Wars 2 high score and i'm not interested.

The Call of Duty games on Veteran.  I always struggle with them.  And die and die and die ad nauseum.

I enjoy hard games, because its never frustrating hard to me usually...easy games you can breeze through I completely can't stand. After you deal with the unforgiving difficulty of some 2D games with no saving that is unforgiving from the earlier years(megaman/Ghosts N Goblins)..so many games that are classified under being 'hard' this day and age really don't fit the bill at all, least to me. I'll only play game son the hardest difficulty, regardless of how hard they are supposed to be anyway..I need the challenge because mostly people get their hand held in games these days, and even the hardest difficulty of some games is way too easy to me..besides when you play a 'hard game' on the hardest difficulty, like NG on the hardest difficulty their is, everytime you beat another boss and finally beat the game, its all that more satisfying rather then walking through the game with no challenge..I'll always enjoy that.

My problem with hard games is that most of them are cheap. For example Ninja Gaiden 2 the enemies were really cheap hitting you before you even see them, when you fight with some of them others will throw at you explosives even sometimes enemies explodes when you kill them. It just gets frustrating not challenging.

"My problem with hard games is that most of them are cheap. For example Ninja Gaiden 2 the enemies were really cheap hitting you before you even see them, when you fight with some of them others will throw at you explosives even sometimes enemies explodes when you kill them. It just gets frustrating not challenging."

I like it when games are challenging, but not when they're brutally unfair. When a game is too easy, it's just not nearly as fun. One game from last gen I really loved was Stuntman, which was quite difficult and could be frustrating (mostly because of the really long load times). It really pushed you to achieve perfection, and I liked that. You could make a couple little mistakes here and there, but you really had to try to make your run as smooth as possible, which in often cases would mean you needed to attempt certain movie shoots multiple times. I did enjoy Ninja Gaiden 2's difficulty. The regenerating health bar definitely made it more tolerable. Braid is another game with a solid difficulty level. It'll really stump you at times and you may have to go back to some areas multiple times before it finally clicks, but in the end, I would say there were only a couple of puzzles that were kind of ridiculous.

A recent game I played that was stupidly difficult was Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. Now, for the record, I've been playing the series from the beginning. Honestly, I'm pretty darn excellent at the Tony Hawk games, however some of THPG was pretty ridiculously hard and stupid. Just poor mission design, really. Like when you need to take photos of yourself doing tricks, so you switch to the camera few, and while in that view you're unable to balance your character which means most of the time you'll bail. It was just poorly put together. Quite a big disappointment. Freekstyle of last-gen comes to mind as another game that was too hard for no good reason. There's a totally cheap rubber-band feature in the game. Some of the most ridiculous and unfair comebacks I've ever seen in a game happened in Freekstyle. You could be in "freak out" mode (your fastest turbo speed) on a straight away 30 feet from the finish line and get passed by the computer right at the last second, despite having a flawless run, a big lead, and being at the highest possible speed.

another styupidly but awesomely hard game was rainbow 6 3 and the expansion but not expansion things which i forget the name of. back then terrorist hunt was EPIC it was like you go i have 1 health no YOU GO i went last time XD. then thrid person cover and health regen did something magical called ruining the game. i mean you could aim in cover wtf in rainbow 6 you couldn't even SEE in cover.

I agree, GH3 is stupid hard.

I find when games tend to lean on difficulty for playability i get fed up. As well as when games rely on your ability with the controls over your ability for strategy.

Now i like a challenge in games, but the game requires some sort of incentives to keep me moving through it (story, development).

Its really a fine balance.

"another styupidly but awesomely hard game was rainbow 6 3 and the expansion but not expansion things which i forget the name of. back then terrorist hunt was EPIC it was like you go i have 1 health no YOU GO i went last time XD. then thrid person cover and health regen did something magical called ruining the game. i mean you could aim in cover wtf in rainbow 6 you couldn't even SEE in cover."

"crunchUK said:

"another styupidly but awesomely hard game was rainbow 6 3 and the expansion but not expansion things which i forget the name of. back then terrorist hunt was EPIC it was like you go i have 1 health no YOU GO i went last time XD. then thrid person cover and health regen did something magical called ruining the game. i mean you could aim in cover wtf in rainbow 6 you couldn't even SEE in cover."

Wait you mean back when Rainbow 6 was good?
There was nothing overly hard about those games."

One "hard" game that I loved was Devil May Cry 3. At first, the game massacred me until I beat it on Normal the first time, but now it's just a challenge (and even sometimes less than that) since beating it once practically forces you to memorize everything.

i just want to make sure that everyone understands that ng and ng2 are 100% pure skill and not luck. if you happen to think a boss or an enemy is too hard then that's because you lack in skill.

there are a few games this gen that are hard but 98% of them are too easy.

Baroque is the most stupidly hard game i've played. You're in a dungeon, trying to find the exit, dealing with a terrible camera, with little health, trying to escape from a million enemies who follow you everywhere you go and to top that ridiculously weak weapons.

Patapon.  Rain Miracle sequence.  Not hard; broken and/or terribly designed/stupid idea.  I stopped playing when I came to that sequence.

"if a hard game is rewarding it doesnt matter if its hard in my opinion

Recently i played through GH3 and that game is hard in a bad way, you beat the song and what do you get nothing?
Its pointless to try and beat it if there is no real reward for it."

The Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry franchises are kind of up there for me.

Also Viva Pinata is hard as fuck.

Hard games make me very mad.

"Hard games make me very mad."

I really enjoy difficult games where skill is involved. Let me rephrase that. I love games that are challenging, but balanced, not games that just give you less health, or more enemies. Everyone has said Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden as examples but those are the perfect balance of difficulty IMO.

Anyone else like multiplayer games with a learning curve? Right now I'm just getting into Counter-Strike: Source and usually have about a -10 kill to death ratio, but I'm loving every second of it. I like learning all the lil nuances and tricks to slowly improve my stats.

I don't know if anyone else play Splinter Cell: PT or CT multiplayer very much, but that game had the steepest learning curve of any multiplayer game I've ever played. The community was so dedicated and there were literally hundreds of tricks, places to place mines, and strategies. But no game has ever been so satisfying as when I finally got really good at it.

Anyone else played any multiplayer games with a steep learning curve?

As said, blind luck is bad, but difficult games give a really rewarding feeling when you complete them. Starting this past year every game I've played I've started on a higher difficulty than I'd normally pick. It's more fun and really does make you better at the vidya gaems.

Well it depends. Right now I'm working my way through Gears on Insane, and I'll probably replay SoTC on Hard Mode after I finish it, but no, for the most part, I play games on normal/easy difficulty, leave it for a month or two, then come back and tackle it on hard.

"Well it depends. Right now I'm working my way through Gears on Insane, and I'll probably replay SoTC on Hard Mode after I finish it, but no, for the most part, I play games on normal/easy difficulty, leave it for a month or two, then come back and tackle it on hard."

Ninja Gaiden 2 pissed me off. Really, really badly. That game is dumb, and I hate every single person who ever worked on it. It's just a stupid, unfair game riddled with horrible design choices and the worst fucking camera conceived by man. I finished it, and I will never touch it again, ever. That game can go die in a fire.

Games that were challenging and hard in a good way, to me, recently, were Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 on Realistic, especially the first one. They aren't so hard that you keep failing, that's bad hard, but they are hard enough that you will die if you just expose yourself to enemy fire, and when you die it is 99% of the time your own fault, and not a shitty camera's, or a cheap enemy's, or what have you.

I never played Ninja Gaiden 2 but I heard that it did have really bad controls and camera issues. The first one was pretty damn good though.

Bah the enemies & controls aren't bad, just the camera.

The camera is really, really bad though.

"The Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry franchises are kind of up there for me.

Also Viva Pinata is hard as fuck."

"Bah the enemies aren't bad, just the camera.

Rocket wielding enemies - Simple zig zag jumping to defeat.  For howitzer-spam enemies simply run in a wide curve around them. (not to mention there's plenty of time between their rocket fire to close the gap & kill them)
Ranged flying dudes - Use charged bow attacks with the auto-lock.  Simply jumping & firing level 1 UT's repeatedly with a bow works like a charm and you will not get hit on thef irst two difficulties.
Dumb-ass robot things - They have no hit stun, but move slowly.  Hold back & charge up UT's with the scythe for massive damage.

tl;dr - You're no ninja.

"crunchUK said:

"another styupidly but awesomely hard game was rainbow 6 3 and the expansion but not expansion things which i forget the name of. back then terrorist hunt was EPIC it was like you go i have 1 health no YOU GO i went last time XD. then thrid person cover and health regen did something magical called ruining the game. i mean you could aim in cover wtf in rainbow 6 you couldn't even SEE in cover."

Wait you mean back when Rainbow 6 was good?
There was nothing overly hard about those games."

"inb4 "thats what she said""

"Rocket wielding enemies - Simple zig zag jumping to defeat.  For howitzer-spam enemies simply run in a wide curve around them. (not to mention there's plenty of time between their rocket fire to close the gap & kill them)
Ranged flying dudes - Use charged bow attacks with the auto-lock.  Simply jumping & firing level 1 UT's repeatedly with a bow works like a charm and you will not get hit on thef irst two difficulties.
Dumb-ass robot things - They have no hit stun, but move slowly.  Hold back & charge up UT's with the scythe for massive damage.

tl;dr - You're no ninja."

So basically what you're saying is...

I'm too easily frustrated, I have no patience, and sometimes a short attention span. I just play games, I don't usually play on more than one difficulty except like Kingdom hearts (the second one was insanely easy, i hated it). One reason why trophies and achievements never matter to me, I won't try hard enough.

If you like hard games you should play my game Robocop vs The Terminator.

I do not like "hard" games. Hard games usually end up being too frustrating to get any enjoyment out of them.
I do enjoy "challenging" games. Those I can have fun with.

having played games since i was 5 i need a game to be challenging but there is such a delicate balance between challenging and rewarding difficulty and just pure frustration.
some games are hard because the controls, level design suck, lack of save points etc...  and they are just a cancer. the one game i always remember for stupid difficulty is MDK2. it was too frustrating in parts to be fun. i prefer a challenge to come from good level design or puzzles that are cleverly thought out and give a sense of satisfaction. i am against a game that is hard because it just keeps throwing waves of enemies at you. Wrestling games are a good example of what i hate, when you increase the difficulty they just ramp up the reversal rate of the AI. it makes the game harder but in the wrong way, the correct way to do it is to have seperate AI's for each difficulty so when the difficulty increases the AI "PLAYS SMARTER"
its such a hard thing to quantify though and few games get that balance right. i thought the POP (Sands of Time) was a great example of challenge done right , you get put in a big room and have to get from point A to point B and it looks impossible but you can logically figure it out and the time rewind mechanic allowed you to try different approaches without dying.

I like it when the game isnt stupidly hard just to be hard. Games that you can actually get better at and eventually it wont be so hard then yeah, I really like that.

"http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3787/difficulty_is_difficult_designing_.php

I found this to be an interesting read on the matter."

great read. i especially liked the comment

"A player must always feel like the failure of a challenge is entirely his own responsibility, and not a fault of a poorly designed product."

as that sums up my belief in a nutshell

"great read. i especially liked the comment

"A player must always feel like the failure of a challenge is entirely his own responsibility, and not a fault of a poorly designed product."

as that sums up my belief in a nutshell
"