What's Fun About Difficulty? - The Bear and Badger

IanHamlett

Terry Cavanagh is my hero.

acemuzzy

davyK wrote:

I didn't get on with the controls in Meat Boy - but I'm using a cheapo control pad on my PC. May go back to it and try keyboard.

Keyboard will be even worse. You need something analogue. 360 pad works great with it. The controls really are superb. You should read the guy's views on the steam pad, they made very interesting reading.

IanHamlett

I haven't played SMB but it looks like the kind of game that would fuck me off with an analogue stick. Too much travel.

acemuzzy

It has more leniency in that regard than you might think. Controls really should not be something that concerns you about it!

Blue Swirl

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Has the old Japanese/PAL difficulty tweaking been mentioned so far? I can't remember which way it tended to go off the top of my head. Normal modes were shifted to Easy modes and whatnot. Rocket Knight Adventures, loads of others.

I've talked about European Extreme in Metal Gear Solid. I always thought, back in the day, that Japanese games must be harder because they played more games than we did. Apparently it's the other way around. I think it came up in EDGE, years ago. Europeans/North Americans don't mind not finishing a game, while Japanese gamers feel robbed if they don't see the end credits.

I think this also goes some way to explaining the difference in the most popular genres. You can usually see the end of a JRPG if you're willing to do some grinding, but you'll never get to the end of Halo if you don't learn how to use each weapon effectively.

Having said that, though, there was the "International" version version of FF XII released in Japan. It's not clear from the article, but I think that was meant to be harder than the original FF XII.

Dammit, now I want to play FF XII again.

Bollockoff

A commonly known one was DMC 3. EU/US Normal was Japanese Hard, and so on. Never did complete that bastard.

IanHamlett

Difficulty regulation in RPGs is an odd one. There's a massive cunt-dragon in area C so stay area B for an amount of time inversely proportional to magic management skills.

IanHamlett

DMC3 was interesting for making you fail a few times before giving you the easy option.

I failed hard a couple of hours in and decided to start again. I picked up different items from the shop and found it easy. After that I couldn't trust the game so I fucked it off. I'm not getting to an impossible boss 10 hours in because I didn't buy the right fucking shoes.

TheDJR

Vergil was fucking solid.

Bollockoff

The boss gauntlet mirrors were what ended my ambition. I fucking hate boss gauntlets. Almost spoiled Viewtiful Joe for me.

IanHamlett

I had a JP copy of VJ cos I heard all the cut scenes were English. The fucking shop isn't tho. I'd buy moves at random and not know what I had or how to do them.

I'm selling that soon if anyone's interested. Tiny JP GameCube box in a cardboard sleeve. Sexy.

davyK

F-Zero GX is just too hard for its own good. Took the edge off that game for me.

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

F-Zero GX is just too hard for its own good. Took the edge off that game for me.

The Story mode was all kinds of brutal. I'd still give my left nut for a "UX" or "3X" though. Heck, a 3DS version of X would do me.

On the other hand, the super hard story does mean you get crazy stuff like this: F-Zero GX Very Hard Story Mode speed run.

IanHamlett

I had a lot of fun getting to the point where I couldn't keep up.

davyK

It took me a few years on and off to unlock the Diamond Cup. Apparently I have to beat all cups including the tortuous Diamond at ~~Expert~~ master level to unlock the AX tracks.

As one who rinsed the original and X on N64 I felt the ramp up in the normal GP mode was just a mite high.

By all means make Master mode painful but at least let the mortals see all the tracks.

Maybe the key to this game is building a custom car though? Never really delved into that too much.

[Deleted User]

No reason a F Zero GX release couldn't have a difficulty tweak.
It was spas hard. I never got past the samurai boulders section.

Also the early make-a-car parts looked stupid.

IanHamlett

Fucking hell I just had flashbacks about shouting at the screen.

davyK

I was able to beat ch.2 on Hard but never got past ch.3

IanHamlett

I'd completely blocked that part of the game from my memory. Fuck that side of the game. I enjoyed the races tho.

retroking1981

davyK wrote:

As one who rinsed the original and X on N64 I felt the ramp up in the normal GP mode was just a mite high.

Yep. I went from 100% the first two to hitting an early road block with GX, shame as it looked incredible.

Little Franklin

Pretty sure I completed DMC3 on hard. Always meant to go back and have a crack at whatever difficulty came next. I fear my thumbs are just too old now though.

JonB

retroking1981 wrote:

davyK wrote:

As one who rinsed the original and X on N64 I felt the ramp up in the normal GP mode was just a mite high.

Yep. I went from 100% the first two to hitting an early road block with GX, shame as it looked incredible.

It was a shame. I just used to enjoy X so much. There was a time where'd I'd play nothing else. Switch on, choose a combination of cup and driver I hadn't done before, stick it on the hardest level and play through. I only stopped when I'd done all the cups with all the characters.

I got GX a while after it came out and played maybe 6 hours at the most before deciding it wasn't worth it.

TheDJR

Little Franklin wrote:

Pretty sure I completed DMC3 on hard. Always meant to go back and have a crack at whatever difficulty came next. I fear my thumbs are just too old now though.

Dante Must Die mode, I got to Vergil but I swear he was impossible.

ChopperByrne

The problem with GX is that was designed as an arcade game (with the most awesome cabinet ever) and was given arcade style difficulty to go with it.

IanHamlett

IIRC you can get to the arcade version of the code by holding some buttons down or something. I have an American copy of that game (cos I couldn't wait) so there are times when I didn't play it cos I couldn't be arsed with the extra disk swap.

davyK

There's an AR code for unlocking arcade mode. Works with any region disc. Problem is you need to source an older version of the AR disc that allows you to enter your own codes.

It's a bit of a pity as the game is stupendously good fun at the more manageable levels. Has a decent multi-player mode too. Such a pity Sega didn't make the effort to do a LAN mode though - the code is in the arcade version of the game to support cabinet linkup so it wouldn't have been a huge leap to implement GC LAN.

(Now I am wondering if the arcade mode locked away on the disc would work in LAN mode - highly unlikely but I can dream).

EDIT: It seems its been tried already. Pity.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/33515/f-zero-ax-uncovered-within-gamecube-f-zero-gx

IanHamlett

Surely someone could do this thru the dolphin emulator and then make it online and we could all leave our jobs and play it all day.

davyK

Or Ninty get their effing finger out and produce or commission an update.

IanHamlett

Nintendo have got their backs against the wall right now so I'm more optimistic than usual on getting a good instalment of all their IP and some new shit.

retroking1981

JonB wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

davyK wrote:

As one who rinsed the original and X on N64 I felt the ramp up in the normal GP mode was just a mite high.

Yep. I went from 100% the first two to hitting an early road block with GX, shame as it looked incredible.

It was a shame. I just used to enjoy X so much. There was a time where'd I'd play nothing else. Switch on, choose a combination of cup and driver I hadn't done before, stick it on the hardest level and play through. I only stopped when I'd done all the cups with all the characters.

I got GX a while after it came out and played maybe 6 hours at the most before deciding it wasn't worth it.

Sounds like we all had a similar experience and I think this...

ChopperByrne wrote:

The problem with GX is that was designed as an arcade game (with the most awesome cabinet ever) and was given arcade style difficulty to go with it.

sums it up. Sega were at their best with arcade experiences, the whole difficult to get you to pump more cash in.

I think there's quit a few examples of 8/16Bit console games despite their graphical inferiority being much better balanced games than their arcade originals.

Playing TMNT: The Arcade Game on XBLA was a real eye opener, the bosses take lives to just get more cash out you and with infinite continues the experience becomes very dull. It might look like shit comparatively but I have much more fun with the NES version.

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