Are Video Games Too Hard?

[SoulBlazer]

I was really surprised to stumble upon this well written and argued article:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2100116/?GT1=3316

I think the author has good points but there are just as many easy and mindless games out there if someone looks. :)

[Lone_Monster]

Personally, I don't think games are really hard. Of course there are some pain in the ass hard to figure out games, but it doesn't take ten hours to get used to it. Maybe the guy just sucks at video games and doesn't want people to know it. Anyway, I don't think they're hard, but my dad sure does. :roll:

[djbeatmongrel]

i think new games (32 bit generation and up) have become a lot easier. i've actually been able to beat a lot of the newer gamers in my collection with minor trouble. that dude must suck at games, that all.

[scooterb23]

I don't see games as being harder today than they were, say, 10 years ago.

I do think the shift towards having more "realistic" games, has made the control of a majority of games much, much harder...to a point where I'm almost surprised new gamers are joining the ranks.

If I looked at an XBox controller now, as a video gaming newbie...no way would I want to invest that much time and effort in a "game" just to figure out how to run around...heck, the reason I still don't own Halo for my XBox is that I still can't figure out the controls on that stupid game...if I can't get through the demo level, why should I pay $30 for the full thing??????

[cratermaze]

I don't think that the new games are harder once you learn how to play them, but he is correct in that most of the new games take much more time to learn how to play them. Very rarely can I just pick up a game anymore and just start playing them. For me personally after work, after looking for a better (i.e. REAL) job (hopefully I can eventually put my engineering degree to work one day) cleaning the house, working on my car, doing stuff with my girlfriend, well you get the idea, and I don't even have any kids or anything, I'm lucky if I get a few rounds of time pilot or a couple of laps on F-zero on the GBA WHILE watching the show I've been waiting for all week or right before I go to bed. I don't have time to read the manual and go through the tutorials (that too many games MAKE you do first) I dont think I've even put 10 hours total into my PS2 since I got it at christmas since very few of the games, and the only things I play are the arcade parts of GT3 or Crazy Taxi. I miss arcade ports being a large part of game companies catalogs since most successful arcade games are challenging without needing strategy guides or manuals and time to get comfortable with the controls. Hopefully I can get a new job soon so I can put up my feet and relax and learn some of the monstrous game backlog I've built up and enjoy them.

[KirbyStar27]

Nope
But stuntman is a bitch! :)

[Aussie2B]

Whoo boy... so many things wrong with that article. First of all, the guy only plays games that the public says are good? No wonder he sucks at games. He's must be playing nothing but the mainstream easy titles, while he's missing out on the best titles ever made that the public is too low-brow and unskilled to appreciate.

To answer the question of this topic, only the bad games. ;) A good game is only enhanced by a good challenge. Even with games that I find insanely difficult, like Battletoads and Blazing Star, I keep coming back for more, and I feel like I've accomplished something when I do well (or at least better than before).

Oh, and I bet that guy is just fucking around in Mario Kart. If he really tried to complete the game, he'd realize how hard it is on the higher difficulties and advanded cups. It's funny that he picked that game of all games he could choose to represent easy games. Games have been getting significantly easier over the years (less patience in gamers I suppose. They want a long game worth the money they spent on it, but they don't want anything to hinder their progress. Bigger storage allows developers to create big games that are easy to get through but take up a lot of time.), but Mario Kart is one of the few I actually find half challenging.

[jerkov]

I also think that games have gotten easier over the years, not harder. To make up for this, games are also a hell of a lot longer nowadays, but I still think that the average NES game is much more difficult than the average PS2 game.

Of course there are still some very difficult games out there. Stuntman was certainly a bastard of a game, I don't think I could ever beat the last movie (but it's been a long time since I've played it). And I'm going to agree with Aussie2B, Mario Kart does get hard as hell once you get to the later cups on 100 and 150 cc's. It starts out very easy, but it doesn't stay that way.

[YoshiM]

I don't think many games are hard today. As I said before in other posts the only true difficulty in many games these days is the amount of time you put into them. This is probably most evident in 3D platformers. The only real difficulty I had with them was the camera.

@scooter: Gaming has been steadily evolving and kids have been growing up on multi-button controls since the SNES. As technology gets intertwined more and more with our lives the complexity eventually goes away. Unless the person is very young or never ever played video games in some way shape or form, today's prospective gamer could probably figure out the controls. Especially since many games have a built in tutorial.

Heh, I find myself having problems playing older games. My timing and reaction speed is slower ever since I started playing more of the 3D games. I do really well in Mario 64 but kinda stink now in Super Mario Bros, even though I used to kick ass in it years ago.

[roxybaby]

I don't think that games are harder but the controls are worse. I'm not saying that the controllers themselves are bad, but there are so many times when I feel like the game has a delay on what I'm telling my character to do or I tell it to do one thing and it does something else. I feel like the response time on my Genesis is much better than my Dreamcast and that the finesse moves work better on my older systems. This is why I yell at my videogames.

[RCM]

Are games too hard? It really depends on how you play and what standards you hold yourself to. The hardest games for me have to be ones with contol flaws. Jet Grind Radio comes to mind. It controls ok but isn't perfect. When playing the later levels it becomes a pain in the ass that isn't fun and isn't worth playing. Those are the hardest games for me. I don't think todays games are easier per se. I believe that todays games give you more options to make them easier such as unlimited continues and more so then that, saves. The ability to save games has dumbed down the gaming public in my opinion. I think saves are ok for 60 hour+ RPGs but I don't really see them as being a requirement in an action title or a vert shooter. I really find a game to be difficult when you hold yourself to a high standard of playing. I can get through Radiant Silvergun on hard perfectly fine with 20 continues. I can't (yet) get through without losing a life. I think "hard" is a state of mind. It depends on your skill and your standards! Amen my sisters and brothers!

THE ONE, THE ONLY- RCM

[scooterb23]

@ Yoshi - Good point. You're probably right, kids do tend to latch on to technology quicker these days.

I think the idea of "pick up and play" as in older games is quickly going away. And I hate reading manuals :P

I still don't see the need for more than two buttons in a baseball game...Baseball Stars (for NES the best baseball game stil) only needed two buttons to play a smooth game...World Series Baseball on the XBox uses all 8 buttons, and all 3 control pads / sticks (3 control sticks?? how many hands do you have??) and the game isn't as good as that old NES game...l [/fuddy duddy mode]

[maxlords]

I'm in the "they're definitely easier than ever" camp. I go back and play the older games and it blows me away how hard they are. Then I play current gen games, and sometimes I can waltz through a game cold on ONE life! That's just sad! Either that or they're artificially beefed up with side quests and mini-this and etc so that they seem longer than they are, but the gameplay suffers.

Modern games are more complex to control, yes, but I don't think that has a lot to do with the challenge. I think companies are making games easier in general. Why this is, I'm not sure. Maybe so that people can beat them more easily and then go on to buy the sequels and other releases faster. Personally, I've had games come out with 2 or 3 sequels before I even got around to playing the first game in the series :D

Regardless, each game DOES have it's control quirks, especially in 3D, and adapting to those is something we're all experts at as gamers, so I don't count control as part of the difficulty, unless the game wasn't betaed properly. And I still say modern games are far too easy OVERALL. There are exceptions, like Ninja Gaiden and a few others. But I'd say that article is dead wrong.

@ RCM...what's wrong with the JGR controls???? I found the entire game to be totally dead on...one of the best games I've ever played....and it's all about controls! JGR is my idea of an almost perfect difficulty curve. It took me a bit over 2 weeks to beat through the game (not getting all the Graffiti Souls of course). Challenging, but possible, and all the challenge is from the design, not from mistakes in control or camera angles. I don't think there's ANYTHING wrong with that game....

[hydr0x]

@ RCM...what's wrong with the JGR controls???? I found the entire game to be totally dead on...one of the best games I've ever played....and it's all about controls! JGR is my idea of an almost perfect difficulty curve. It took me a bit over 2 weeks to beat through the game (not getting all the Graffiti Souls of course). Challenging, but possible, and all the challenge is from the design, not from mistakes in control or camera angles. I don't think there's ANYTHING wrong with that game....

well, you are right, there's nothing wrong with this game, but only AFTER you have mastered the controls. after getting the game i tried it two times for a while and both times i stopped because i couldn't control it as i wanted... but with the 3rd try i got the controls and played through to the end

[Mayhem]

Some games today are as hard as they used to be. Many games are easier. On a comparitive scale, I'd say it was fairly level in overall difficulty.

What no one has said so far however, is what separates today from back then, and what makes games today comparitively easier, is the fact we can save our progress a lot more often! Fuck up a small section? No problem, restart and reload from where you saved. Couldn't do that in most games back then, it was try again from the start of the level, or even the start of the game. Hence the emphasis more on becomming good at the game, rather sometimes than just muddling through and passing it by the skin of your teeth...

[Lady Jaye]

I agree with Mayhem that savepoints are probably a bigger factor in the overall difficulty level of a game than we think. Compare any of the first 3 Super Mario games with their 2 remakes. The NES version is the hardest (no save point in any of them), followed by the SNES version (Super Mario All-Stars introduced the possibility to save for all 3 games...), then by the GBC (in the case of SMB) and the GBA versions (aka Super Mario Advance and Super Mario Advance 4). The gameboy version is even easier, since Nintendo tweaked down the difficulty level.

SccoterB was talking about baseball games. I recently got MVP Baseball 2004 for the GameCube. It's quite a complex sim, and there's so much to do that it can be mind-boggling (incidentally, that game isn't made for the current 251-block memory cards... the new card, which will hold over 1000 blocks, is only coming out in June). I like the whole sim aspect of the game and its complexity, but it's true that I'd rather play Baseball Stars if I want an arcade-style baseball game (and this despite the fact that Baseball Stars was the first "sim" baseball game, with its team management features and the option to play though a whole season).

[Lady Jaye]

I was wondering where I'd seen the name Clive Thompson before (he's the author of that Slate article).

After a bit of googling, I got my answer: the guy used to write for the Canadian technology culture mag Shift (which now only exists via its website)! Since I have several years of issues of Shift, including the final couple of years of the mag, no wonder the name rang a bell!

Anyway, I find his choice of games for the article mind-boggling. Ninja Gaiden has the reputation for being a tough game, so most games compared to it will feel pretty easy to play. And the latest Tomb Raider?!? Hasn't anyone told him that that game is considered as a sucky game by many people? Few highly anticipated games have flopped as badly as this one...

Frankly, you can't draw conclusions after playing half a dozen games, which don't even spawn the wide range of genres currently available.

And it's not whether today's games are easier or harder than yesteryear's titles. In reality, the shift from 2D to 3D gaming makes it impossible to compare them. Heck, I sat out throughout the 32-bit era because I was convinced that I could never get used to 3D gaming. Now, I can pass from 2D to 3D and vice-versa without problem.

It's like for MVP Baseball 2004, which I mentioned in my previous post above. At first, I really sucked at it, because I just couldn't get my timing right and everything. With some practice, I'm already doing better, even though I still don't control the game perfectly. I don't think the learning curve is that high for MVP Baseball, but you do need to take the time to ajust your timing and learn the mechanics of the game. As I've said, if I want a straight-out-of-the-box baseball arcade experience, I'll play Baseball Stars.

[RCM]

maxlords wrote:

@ RCM...what's wrong with the JGR controls???? I found the entire game to be totally dead on...one of the best games I've ever played....and it's all about controls! JGR is my idea of an almost perfect difficulty curve. It took me a bit over 2 weeks to beat through the game (not getting all the Graffiti Souls of course). Challenging, but possible, and all the challenge is from the design, not from mistakes in control or camera angles. I don't think there's ANYTHING wrong with that game....


Maxlords- I felt the control was a bit too loose for my taste. I felt they tweaked it a bit more for Jet set Radio Future but it still wasn't perfect. I don't think i'm the only one that had issues with the control either. It's just my opinion. I felt the loose controls ruined the game in later levels. I beat the game, but I didn't have a fun time doing it. I am glad you dug it, but I didn't. But I did buy Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future. So I guess you can't relate to my post, but i'm sure there are some people out there that agree. Hell, even if everybody didn't i wouldn't care. Later

THE ONE, THE ONLY- RCM

[GamecubeFreek]

Most recent games are much easier than older ones. However, there were quite a few old games that I breezed through, and quite a few recent games that kick my butt. There are always exceptions.

[Azazel]

I mostly agree with RCM. I could never get into it cause of the controls. Well that probably not the only reason.

[whoisKeel]

i'm surprised to see that very few brought up ninja gaiden in this thread...i have heard that game is hard as hell, and the articles was pretty much based on it. i have yet to play it.

i liked the article...he wasn't saying video games can be too hard, he was just saying games that are hard can be rewarding, or bad games that are hard just aren't worth playing.

i can't think of any nes-era games that are as hard as ikaruga, f-zero gx, or maybe even rogue squadron in their genres.

[Nature Boy]

I have to agree with the Save function argument. Have you ever played a classic game using an emulator and the save state function? I never had the patience to finish "Journey to the Planets" on my 8bit back in the day, but I had no problems finishing it when I could save right before I did anything ... foolish.

And you know - I liked the game better *with* the saving ability. Why should I be forced to fly back to a planet just because I died on it? Why not start me back at my ship or something. The reason I never finished it as a kid was that I'd get frustrated because I had to be *perfect* or I'd be back at square one.

Sometimes repeating actions to get something done is a good thing. I had no problems repeating actions a million times over in Splinter Cell until I figured out a way through a level. But more often than not it feels like artifical lengthening to me. They did it back then and they do it today.

I like the article by the way - thanks for posting it.

[Azazel]

You bring up a good point about the save states. I try not to abuse them as much as possible. It's also nice for some of those long action games that I don't have the time to play through in one sitting.

[einbebop]

Yes they're harder, and no they're not.

Having been raised on video games for years, I find that for the most part they're incredibly easy to beat now. Video game producers seem to want to make them a LITTLE bit of a challenge, but you can usually get through any tough spot in two or three tries. (Ninja Gaiden being a notable exception)

On the other hand, they are more complex. Compare your X-Box Controller to your Atari joystick! If you went away for several years and came back, today's games are downright intimidating. I know this is true, because I'va had some friends who have tried. :D