The 3d Ninja Gaiden games (not the NES ones). They are unfairly hard, in the sense that they don’t really teach you how to play them before throwing you at massive problems. There are the people who find (or are told/shown) various cheese strats and thus say the game is easy (“git gud, scrub!”) but without using degenerate strats the game is nigh-impossible. I’ve heard it likened to bringing a brand new player to a fighting game tournament and making their first match against a mid-tier opponent— there’s literally no chance of victory.
I dont get why people think the difficulty with souls likes is so cool. It isnt difficult in a sense that you have to think a lot but rather that you memorise what moves the boss has and press your buttons fast enough. In a deep multiplayer game like dota2 or other strategy games you have real people who wont just do what they are programmed to. Heck i would say a auto battler like mechabellum is “harder” because i have to think on what to do… but do what you love…
Yea true, but a good part of the souls like people really get high from playing the “”“hardest”“” game. Not dimbing down mechanics is great…for multiplayer so “good” players see that they are better. Giving every player in a fps a aimbot wouldnt be fun, the fact that lots of shooters go further in the direction of less skill ceilling is propably the reason why stuff like arma, tarkov or squad gets players. Dying and getting shit on is as much of the fun in these games as is winning imo.
What you describe strikes me as reaping enjoyment from technical accuracy. I think of it like mastering Moonlight Sonata as opposed to riffing something jazzy with friends. Both enjoyable, but quite different.
Depends on how reductive you’re being. To me, your initial assertion that Dark Souls isn’t difficult (or is not as difficult as an online game) because it’s ultimately just a test of your pattern recognition / memorization and reflexes is ignoring the forest for the trees. If I applied that same mindset to playing an instrument, I could argue that, mechanically, they’re the same. You learn a boss’ pattern (I.e. learn the sheet music) and then it’s just a matter of moving your fingers to hit the requisite inputs.
Of course, I think most people would balk at describing making music as nothing more than playing the right notes at the right time, and rightly so. We tend to attach a certain amount of ineffable poetry to that act. I’m not saying that they’re 1:1 equivalent, mind you, but I’ve heard enough folks discuss a Souls boss fight in musical terms (tempo, rhythm, crescendos, etc.) to see the parallel.
Yea i get your point, i have to clarify that i ddont think that there is no skill involved but rather that the skill is more on the line of learning a pattern not of making descisions and understanding and adapting. If the music anology is used my point would be that learning sheet music is hard but understanding hoq music works to play together with a few people without giben sheet music is a whole other level. My point is that you dont just remember the pattern but that you have to adapt and no jam session is “the same” as in no other (musical) ülayed just plays the same pattern off notes every time.
I dont really care what is “harder” but i hate the culture in the souls like community where people think they are soo hardcore because they learned the sheet music/boss patterns.
No I hear you. I just think you’re letting your negative perception of that element of the game’s community weigh in a little too heavily on your analysis of the game. People being annoying by talking about the game like beating it is a badge of honor (spoiler alert guys, you’re meant to beat the game) and your assessment of the Souls-like gameplay loop are, at best, tangentially related.
No shade to you, by the way. How the culture receives and talks about media is as big a part of its legacy as any constituent element of the text, and it’s a worthy subject for criticism. It’s just that, in my opinion, criticism is sharpened when the author is very clear about when they cease to review the game/book/movie and when they start to review the phenomena around that media.
Fwiw, this subject has been on my mind since reading a review of the movie Eddington in which the author talked about the temptation to stop talking about the movie and start talking about the subjects the movie was touching upon. I have been making a concentrated effort to improve my critical writing this year, and that line resonated with me. So, this diatribe has been fermenting in my head for awhile now, and your post was my excuse to get it out. By no means do I mean to lecture you on how you should feel about Dark Souls or it’s fandom.
I was just making fun of it because all the players i see pretend this is the hardest shit ever. I dont really care if a game is hard or not, you are meant to enjoy it and if someone enjoys this well great but please people dont be so elitist there are plenty games that you arent good in because the gameplayloop doesnt suit the way you learn this game.
I still think that there is a fundemental difference of skill level when it comes to games. The nature of ranked style multiplayer will always mean every enemy will act different every time and strategy evolves. The skill ceilling gets higher with every hour the game exists you dont have that with single player games like this. The enemy you meet at the first playthrough is still the same in your 100th one. If every player did speedruns and only the top 10% would jeek each other off the community would be very quiet.
The community praises the game for being hard and itself for being super skillfull because they beat it. This sentiment is part of the media. If as a community you do that and as developer you make fun of people who dont have enough “skill” you deserve to receive flak and maybe made fun of. If people think the button pressing has to be so perfectly timed they should go to a tekken competition or something and see how that will go when the enemy is a person that can change their moves and also klick buttons fast.
isnt difficult in a sense that you have to think a lot but rather that you memorise what moves the boss has and press your buttons fast enough.
I see this a lot, but that wipes out like most games. Baldur’s gate you just click on stuff. Tekken you just hit buttons. Tetris is just moving blocks around.
Also you often don’t rote memorize the moves. People play by reaction or without knowing exactly what’s coming.
I dont think this would rule out baldurs gate, yea if you play your 19384728 playthrough and you already know the whole lore, what every dialog option would do and the respective dc what is the skill? In a normal playthrough you have to be generally smart about what you do. You have tons of options you can think of and you can solve problems in a bunch of different ways. Yea if you just do things and if it doesnt work out you reload i dont think there is much “skill” required to beat the game. But i also dont think that baldurs gate would be a game where skill matters. My point is that one is memorizing the awnsers for the test from trying it 300 times and the other is understanding the material so you could write any test without first failing it as soon as you are confronted with a new question…
And i would still argue that baldurs gate is inherently not as “hard” as a multiplayer game where matchmaking exists. The fact that in games with that, you will only win 50% of your games if it works half decently is something you wont get in a single player game. The game wont get harder on your second playthrough.
Sure, but that seems like a separate, closely related, topic.
I was mostly objecting to the idea that souls games are just memorizing and pushing buttons. That accusation could be leveled at most single player games, but people seem to mostly bring it up to denigrate souls games.
Multiplayer often has less memorization though, as you say.
The director should have reasons for the difficulty of the game. Celeste is a Perfect example. It’s hard but it lets you learn and allows you to try again easily even if what you are doing is hard. Hard games that punish you and make you walk for 20-30 mins just so you can learn a few new moves the boss does can be incredibly frustrating. Many people who play these games eventually look at videos online to help after multiple tries because just “getting there” is extremely time consuming. A lot of games have normalized looking things up and that is disappointing as someone who would rather figure it out on my own. But wasting 30 mins to be killed in 2-3 hits from multiple stage bosses is not enjoyable IMHO.
One can think of it just like about a fastfood joint. Two lines of coordinates: food and service, or user experience and mechanics. We do play clunky old games for their plot or shallow timekillers for their gameplay. Striking the right balance that is fitting your core audience is the goal. There, Kodjima thinks about better service, toning down mechanics so that everyone can eat their burger, while Miyadzaki serves artisan sets knowing their inaccessibility is a part of the deal for their niche audience.
I love ULTRAKILL for many reasons, but this is one of them. I would never have completed the Prime Sanctums if I had to wait longer than 1 frame to reset to the checkpoint.
This is the entire problem with modern gaming meta though. There basically is an assumption that people will look up the walkthrough, so you need to scale difficulty with that in mind.
I am like you, and this is a big part of why I’ve almost entirely stopped gaming. Either the game is too hard, or it has like 20 minutes of cir scenes per hour, or it requires an hour of supply grinding any time you pick it back up.
Like cyberpunk? The borderland series? Elder scrolls series? Expedition 33? Assassin’s Creed series? Tons more hyper popular games I’m not aware of because I play mostly arpgs too.
There’s plenty games that try to offer easier playthroughs, unless you wish for a game without easy mode but an easier baseline experience, in which case… Pokémon? The TLoZ games from Wii onwards? Idk, there’s plenty and plenty more I don’t know of.
I found expedition 33 to be difficult even in the story telling mode. It suggests a focus on the story, but you absolutely have to scale your characters correctly, learn boss fights patterns etc. I don’t like the fight gameplay (not my cup of tea), so I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t progress past a certain point. Love the story and universe, but wish they’d made an even easier mode because I don’t want to spend time learning all the mechanics and combos etc.
Weird, I beat everything but the last optional superboss (Simon) in hard (the difficulty before max) and it’s not like I learnt character combos much. Yeah I did learn enemy movesets, sorta, but I always dodged, fuck the parry. Enemies did hit my characters a lot and almost half the turns were spent reviving them, but the revives recover post fight so it’s whatever.
I did reach a point where Maelle and Verso were so strong that enemies hardly got a turn though.
I put exactly 0 thought to the characters builds, so I know it’s my fault and I suspect it’s not that hard. But I literally have no interest in the combat system, so of course the game is not entirely made for me. However, this story mode shows that some devs don’t consider difficulty as a pre-requisite to enjoy their art.
Maybe there’s a mod that autowins the battles for you if that’s something you would enjoy? If all you want from the game is the story and the art but go along at your own pace, so not game play videos, god mode cheats might give you what you want. I’m being 100% serious.
Don’t let the word cheat be a distraction, games are for enjoyment and if the default experience is not enjoyable for you tweaking is 100% fair in offline games tbh. My point was that I like there to be an actual default unified experience, but everyone is free to enjoy how they like. I’m one of the cheesiest players of offline games of all time lol.
Yeah no worries I dont have any issue with cheating in single player games.
I used loads of trainers in the past to expend the fun in a game after beating it. It’s just rarer the times I need to pull out one to finish it
Because the game is prettier/smoother running on my computer native res at 100fps, than watching compressed videos on YouTube.
Otherwise yeah I would have watched a play through instead.
Also going at your own pace and being free to explore the environment is more pleasant than watching someone do it for you
Something a lot of people forget is that looking stuff up is not something normalised recently, older games tended to have a freaking manual that explained most bosses and areas, it even gave hints!
I get that you would prefer that, lucky there’s plenty games for both of us.
Fair point. I always associated those with the fact video games were relatively newer media at the time but you are correct. Some times they would give you maps and instructions.
Respectfully disagree with your stance (which is fine, as fushuan said, there’s games enough for all of us.) When I was younger and played more games, I would frequently look up how to get through them on GameFAQ. The joy wasn’t in figuring out puzzles, it was in getting to see the story unfolding.
If you’ve never gotten it yet, get “Shattered Pixel Dungeon” on your phone. Completely free game. Most of what you speak of, and you’ll feel like you’ve really pulled some shit off after you beat it the first time.
SPD is proof that I’m just bad at vidya. I’ve gotten to floor 10 once. There’s clearly come meta I am missing, but I’ve read strategy guides so I’m just kind of lost at this point.
It’s just fucking hard. All the random builds and bad guys. The best hint is to use small walls to your advantage and to sometimes run away and avoid creatures. After you die and die and die you start to learn how all the baddies move around. You can eventually get good. It took me 45 attempts to get my first win, but I had 10 more wins by attempt 70. I was hooked on that game hard for a while.
It’s just about 5 new monsters I think and a few levels got some new designs. So nothing Crazy. They do mix things up a bit though. I’d say it’s worth it if you have the time
Return of the Obra Dinn and the golden idol games would probably work. I think you could do everything with mouse clicks or hitting a few keys with your good hand, nothing is time based. Other puzzle based games might work too (lorelai and the laser eye, Blue Prince?)
Mostly 2D factory games, like Factorio could also be doable. Would be a little annoying, but it would work.
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