Are Video Games Becomming Too Easy?

By ttocs November 2, 2009 11 Comments

 

  A couple weeks ago I read about a new game that came out called Demon’s Souls. The game is for the PS3 and is developed by Atlus, one of my favorite RPG developers. The game is receiving amazing reviews with most being either a 90 or a 100, but some people are still complaining about it. Why are they complaining about it? Because it’s too hard. The game is making headlines throughout the internet because of it’s brutally hard difficulty. Before I get to that though, the premise of the game…Basically you play a guy who died and you’re trying to get back to the world of the living. It’s a hack and slash type game where you pick up loot, defeat monsters, level up, etc. Each level culminates into a big boss battle that is supposed to be pretty damn epic. Sounds awesome, right? Well, how do you feel about death traps? Traps set up to insta-kill you the moment you step near them like the spikes in old Mega Man games? What about no save points, save for one at the beginning of each level…no where else though? How about enemies that jump you at importune moments with a bunch of their buddies leaving you unable to do anything but die miserably? How about losing all your currency whenever you die, and then given the option to go back to you body to retrieve it, but if you die a second time, it’s gone forever. These are the things that Demon’s Souls is being applauded for and also chastised. In my opinion, I find it refreshing.
  
 
  We, as a society of

gamers, have sort of de-evolved. Games nowadays are just way too easy to beat. Recharging hitpoints, save sports around each corner, you name it, we got it nowadays . I’m going to go back to the Mega Man series of my childhood because that was a game that caused me to break a couple different sets of NES controllers. Mega Man was a badass, but he could only take one “bullet” and he was destroyed. Knowing this made you calculate each jump, each shot, and each forward motion with t he utmost care to make sure you wouldn’t be replaying the exact same level 30 times. Sure, we had anger issues, but we were damn go od at video games. Somewhere around the time when the PS1 came out, this all went away. We traded hard games with feelings of accomplishment for safe games that we could finish in a weekend. The RPG genre continued down the same path as games before instead removing the hard factor and replacing it with the time investment factor. Recently though, even RPGs can be beaten in a weekend or so.

So, who do we blame for this or do we blame anyone at all? I think it’s due to the general surge in video game popularity that games are becoming so “mild.” Developers know that if they make a game so hard, people won’t play it. Honestly, I’m probably guilty of that too. I work 50 hours a week and in my time off, I don’t want to spend it tirelessly chipping away at a game. I want something fun that I can jump into, get about 2 hours of playtime in, and then jump out. On the weekends, I might have a 5 hour gaming marathon from time to time, but not always. Home duties, family, and other things always seem to poke their nose in and remove any semblance of free time I may have. So, that’s me, what about others though? What’s their excuse? Kids nowadays think FPS games are hard. Honestly, FPS games like Call of Duty and Killzone are probably one of the easiest. Sure, they are amazing fun to play, but your health recharges and you get enough firepower to take out a third world country. That’s not hard. Jumping from ledges as a little blue man in a metal suit while dodging balls of light flying at your damn face is hard. Don’t believe me? Go download that new Mega Man demo on XBLA or PSN. You’ll see.  
 
 

Going back to the Demon’s Souls game, I’m honestly thinking about picking it up when it drops in price. Why would I do that when I just said I don’t have time to spend on hard games? Call it nostalgia. I miss tough games. I miss spending time on games. Most of all though, I miss the feeling of accomplishment you get from finishing a really hard level. I don’t subscribe to the theory that achievements and trophies are hard. Sure, some of them are, but most require only time (multiple playthroughs) and luck (kill 5 enemies at the same time with this weapon, etc.). That’s not hard. Clearing a dungeon full of skeletons that block, dodge, and regroup all while avoiding insta-death pits with no save spots is hard.

So, what do you guys think? I think they should bring back more of these games. Maybe have a resurgence of hard games. As the scores on metacritic show, people (well, game reviewers at least) like the hard games. Put out a few more and see how the people react to them. If the game you make is well designed and flawlessly executed, you’ll sell a shit ton of games regardless of how hard it is.

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