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

Yossarian

Sega were at their best with Streets of Rage. One of the finest series to have ever graced videogames.

hylian_elf

Oh no not that again.

Yossarian

Don't make me get atheist on your arse.

hylian_elf

Feel free to do so, just don't bring up that Halo shit again either.

Moot_Geeza

SOR2 is miles better than Final Fight. Not even a contest for me.

hylian_elf

SoR2 has a killer soundtrack. I love it. One of my favourites.

Koshiro

Bollockoff

Die Hard Arcade is untrumpable.

Moot_Geeza

Koshiro is going back on the mp3 player for next week.

Die Hard Arcade was great fun but an extremely short-lived experience. From memory it was under half an hour long. Enjoyed the sequel too, was one of the early Japanese DC game my sister's ex owned (Dynamite Cop? Dynamite Dekka?)

adored

IanHamlett wrote:

Terry Cavanagh is my hero.

Yes.
Even his Flappy Bird game was brilliant.

Dogfingers

Its a strange mix for me, but here's a good example. When I bought Fire Emblem Awakening I was terrified of selecting the wrong difficulty setting at the beginning. I didn't want to breeze through what I had enjoyed to be a taxing series. I picked Hard and ended up with exactly the right balance. Forgive the ignorance but I don't really see the appeal of the genre if you're going to stick a tactical thing like this on easy and blitz through it.

I like games that are a challenge in the right circumstances, I like a challenge not an endurance test. F-Zero was mentioned earlier. It wouldn't have been the same if the difficulty was subdued. Half the appeal for me was how it actually managed to get my pulse racing mastering those story missions, the thrill of victory etc.

What I get tired with is upping the difficulty though means of making it more of a slog. COD and the like. RPG's are also a main offender, I hate the idea of grinding to be able to beat something. I really enjoyed FFXII's gambit system, it felt like I could pretty much take anything having tweaked my party. I never felt like I had to waste my time and five dozens of enemies just to be able to take boss X out.

davyK

Dogfingers wrote:

I like games that are a challenge in the right circumstances, I like a challenge not an endurance test. F-Zero was mentioned earlier. It wouldn't have been the same if the difficulty was subdued. Half the appeal for me was how it actually managed to get my pulse racing mastering those story missions, the thrill of victory etc.

F-Zero X was balanced - it still has the seat of your pants feel but is just that bit more forgiving. I had no problem with the story mode being that tough in GX - it was the GP mode that pissed me off. I have completed 4 cups on normal but the difficulty just cranks up too much on expert which I was able to handle on X - given time I reckon I could do it though.

But the bloody thing then expects me to beat all cups on master level before unlocking the AX tracks - that's a bit extreme.

Now - the difference may well be me being older and having less time to invest. Not sure.

IanHamlett

The harder levels of CoD4 are really fucking hard but you're rarely more than 30seconds from a checkpoint.

Dogfingers

davyK wrote:

Dogfingers wrote:

I like games that are a challenge in the right circumstances, I like a challenge not an endurance test. F-Zero was mentioned earlier. It wouldn't have been the same if the difficulty was subdued. Half the appeal for me was how it actually managed to get my pulse racing mastering those story missions, the thrill of victory etc.

F-Zero X was balanced - it still has the seat of your pants feel but is just that bit more forgiving. I had no problem with the story mode being that tough in GX - it was the GP mode that pissed me off. I have completed 4 cups on normal but the difficulty just cranks up too much on expert which I was able to handle on X - given time I reckon I could do it though. But the bloody thing then expects me to beat all cups on master level before unlocking the AX tracks - that's a bit extreme. Now - the difference may well be me being older and having less time to invest. Not sure.

I did it back in the day, the only thing I never did on that game was unlock the taxi character

Blue Swirl

Dogfingers wrote:

I did it back in the day, the only thing I never did on that game was unlock the taxi character

I got him, but only because I found an arcade with the AX machine and took my GC memory card with me. The old school equivalent of microtransactions, I suppose.

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