I’m all for easy difficulty options in games, but I’m never, ever going to use them. I just can’t motivate myself to play if I’m not accomplishing something.
Well that’s not true either. I mean sometimes, sure, but in general if you know what you want and you work towards it, you can accomplish things and be rewarded.
This is the thing, everyone is different. What is difficult for some, will be easy for others, and it will even flip for the same people on different games.
The best option is having a wide array of difficulty options. In stone games I get bored of it’s too easy, in others I get bored of it’s too hard.
I tend to err on ‘normal’ to ‘slightly more difficult than normal’. But some games I don’t want difficulty at all because I’m there for the ride.
I keep on getting told this by people, especially fans of FeomSoft and soulslikes.
I figured I’d take a crack at them this year, and also Bloodborne is my boyfriend’s favorite game, so I played it. And that feeling that everyone describes about the satisfaction and accomplishment… Never happened. I beat the bosses and was just like… Okay, on to the next one then I guess. I did have a much better time playing through co-op with him, but I still wouldn’t say I felt accomplished by it.
I don’t really like tower defense games, but I would never dream about trying to tell devs that they’re doing it wrong because I don’t like how they do it. I just don’t play them.
Well… You totally can. I like towerr defense games too, but I’ve never played one that I would call perfect. Even my favorite games I could dig deep and give design notes on. Where it’s feasible a lot of games have mods or hacks. A lot of people like Pokemon romhacks more than actual games. I put hundreds of hours into Civ 6 starting vanilla, but mods can fix a lot of the little inconveniences and add new content to the game. I think I’m in the minority of Skyrim players who prefers to keep it vanilla- most people mod the hell out of it.
Bloodborne was still fun, especially on subsequent runs and with co-op. I think it would be a way better game overall if they designed any sort of real onboarding experience. A training dummy in the hunter’s dream, maybe the ability to try out different weapons there before investing resources into them. Using better language (shooting someone is not a “parry”, and why does the axe do blunt damage while the hammer does piercing damage?). An actual goddamn map. A journal system to keep track of what you’ve done in the game so it’s easier to pick up again 3 months later. Clear item descriptions that include numbers. Explanations for what the stats actually do. None of this is what I would call “difficulty”, and once you gain the initial knowledge and experience these problems aren’t as big of a deal, but it does make the game a lot less accessible for new players.
And I question how much value their absence really adds to the players who do stick around to push through and get that experience. It seems like more of a marketing gimmick to be “different” and foment an elitist, hipster-esque fan base. Or maybe it’s a question allocating of the development resources. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of great design too, it’s just hidden behind these frustrating problems that the rest of the industry solved decades ago.
If I wasn’t motivated to play it for my boyfriend I would have just dropped it early on. I don’t feel like I accomplished anything by suffering through that frustration, I just feel annoyed that I had to deal with these problems I feel like I should not have existed in a 2015 game.
For me, good story and/or fun gameplay is the accomplishment, whether it’s difficult or not. If it’s too difficult, I just won’t bother. I don’t have time for that.
So I remember once “playing” a visual novel.
Over the period of ~10 hrs of reading (maybe ~ 4 hrs for a normal-speed reader), there was exactly 1 (one) point, where I had a choice to make.
The rest was just clicking “next”.
That could have been a PDF (or 4, because there were 4 options in the choice) instead of a Windows executable.
Then there is this thing in scripted events, that some of the high budget games are guilty of.
It’s stuff like press button to open door or sth, where you are essentially stuck in place with nothing else to do other than press the button and whatever action is done, doesn’t end up increasing immersion in the least, because it is just like a cut-scene getting paused in between, just to say, ‘press button to continue watching the cut-scene’.
I recently played the new silent hill and I didn’t hesitate to put combat difficulty on easy, it was a matter of my own health at that point.
I could endure a horror story, but the stress of getting beaten up and having to run away from grotesque monsters while trying to solve cryptic puzzles was too much for me.
Monument Valley 1, 2, and 3 (mobile games). An interesting set of puzzle games with good visuals. They only require single taps to work.
Also can get a mouse for the Steam Deck (or a PC if you have one). There are a lot of good games that you can likely use with a mouse if the hand/wrist motion doesn’t cause pain or discomfort for your thumb.
Might not be in your library, but mouse only game I’ve been enjoying is beat cop.
80s love letter to cop games, in the style of papers please. Reviews are a little mixed, it is a particular game, and it’s 80s warts and all. On sale currently.
The menu inputs require both hands on console, if it wasnt for that its pretty good for it. I played it a lot when I was holding my baby, bottle in one hand and controller in the other.
Does this actually get in the way when you’re playing with mouse and keyboard? I do use my non-dominant thumb for hitting the space, alt and strg keys, but in many games that’s kinda optional, especially when the games aren’t super challenging. Turn-based RPGs like Divinity: Original Sin or Baldur’s Gate 3 should work great.
I mean if it’s wasd then yes, idk maybe I could do some fighting side scrollers but I’m also really trying to baby this thumb so possibly might be a bad idea to get worked up
Vampire Survivors really only requires one hand, and if you use steam input to remap some buttons you can play it entirely with one hand.
For instance on the left hand side, since you navigate with the joystick, I set the d-pad to mirror the abxy buttons, and set L2 to be R1 which let’s you increase the game speed after you unlock the function in game
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