As someone who likes the difficulty of Hollow Knight and Silksong (despite being pretty bad at the game), I think the best point in the video is that it would be really nice to give the player options. I would still play on the hard setting, but there are friends I have who would love exploring the map and seeing all the amazing art, but I can’t recommend the game to them because I know they’d be super frustrated within an hour or two.
Dead cells has something called assist mode. Doesn’t disable achievements or anything. Personally I use it as a second chance, the only setting I’ve touched is lives. Normally in the game you die, get sent back the start. With assist mode you can respawn (either at the level start or door you crossed). I usually have it on one life extra to avoid the “that was so bullshit” deaths but still keep death an actual consequence
It also has some stuff like bigger parry windows, lower enemy health and damage.
IMO it’s great because people can make the game as causal and forgiving as you want
Those are great because they don’t change the nature of the game. You just adjust the difficulty of the self-imposed challenge. It’s still essentially the same experience. If you ruin the game for yourself by setting it too easy that’s on you.
When people say stuff like “I just want to explore Elden Ring”, that’s like watching behind-the-scenes content or looking at a concept art book of a movie without watching the movie. It can be enjoyable but it’s not a complete experience, you’re missing the original context entirely. I wish people realized that.
I agree with you in that people are missing out but I’m of the mind that if that’s how they want to play the game, let them. Back to dead cells, there’s also a mechanic called aspects where the game will warn you that achievements are disabled and it may make the game too easy (maybe idr if actually tells you or just implies it). So they partially or completly remove challenge. But some people don’t want to challenge themselves they just want to nuke rooms. And I’ve done that few times and being an unstoppable force of nature via abilities can be fun
Another example is settlements with my buddy in no man’s sky. Yes he’s missing out on game content such as all building and timers wand watching the settlement grow. But he just doesn’t find that fun but rather building intricate bases and structures
Where you say people can ruin the challenge by making it too easy 1000% agree. In dead cells nothings changing me from setting that one extra life I get, to unlimited, effectively bashing my head against a level or boss till I clear, leaving death with no consequence and as such, making it so I don’t have to git gud. My comfort zone is difficult, but a little room for error
As for the part of easy mode or just exploring is like behind the scenes content or art books, I’m gonna have to disagree. Maybe I’m taking that to literally or missing something but I’d consider those supplemental to the original media. Like I don’t need to see a behind the scenes video to enjoy Skyrim, maybe I’ll pay more active attention to level design or how things are place to draw attention. But I can still fully enjoy the city of Whiterun without knowing the city was designed to route you through the shopping district, through the temple and up the castle.
I see it more as a different approach or focus. People who value exploration want that to be the focus rather than having a super tough fight. Some people want both, where that super tough fight is part of the journey see what’s across that clearing over there
TLDR, it’s about finding that sweet spot between challenging and comfortable people ARE missing content but it’s a trade off for what they find enjoyable
Edit: this kinda turned into a rant, hopefully it makes sense
Gaming is a luxury. I hate paying more for games but the best part of the current market is there are so many avenues to gaming.
Due to the surplus of so many games available we have the ability to buy sparingly and avoid buying at launch. We can support the companies and titles that are truly worth our dollar.
Personally, I’ll only buy titles I feel I must play as they release as the feeling of waiting is painful. Often it depends on the backlog of games I already have. Although, I do have a switch 2 and have barely played it (I’m ashamed). I do plan on Metroid Prime 4 soon and possibly some other titles. Overall, I’m not the biggest fan of Nintendo’s business practices but I’ll buy their games that I enjoy.
Obviously, Nintendo isn’t evil nor are any of these gaming companies. They are selling their product and the folks keep buying. If I never played a Nintendo game in my life cause it was outside my budget I think I’d be more than fine.
I’m so tired of the whole discourse. Why is Nintendo “evil” while Sony and Microsoft have been doing the same stuff, and for longer? Don’t even argue, I don’t care anymore. I’m just tired.
I like Switch 2 and I will play games on it. It’s a lot cheaper than upgrading my PC. I don’t play online, and eshop has better prices than Steam in my country. Don’t yuck my yum, and I won’t yuck yours.
Either wait for sales or just stop crying with these poorly constructed takes already, most of us have been telling you for years about this. It is entirely on you.
TL;DW: Mark lays out 3 reasons why a game dev might choose to make a game challenging, discusses why it is difficult to balance difficulty, and then talks about how Silksong balances difficulty by always giving players another path to explore when they hit a boss that seems impossible.
And I’m tired of pretending a completely unwelcome and tone deaf price increase is “evil.” I hate paying more for videogames as much as the next gamer, but the cost of living has increased by 50% in basically every metric. Rent, food, power, gas, restaurants, movie theatres, snacks, alcohol… Literally everything I spend money on has gone up between 25-50%. Nintendo is the first asshole in the video game industry cocky enough to up their prices by the same amout, and suddenly, “The Switch 2 is EVIL.” Really?
Listen, I am not a fan. $10 for a tech demo that should be packaged in is insane. But pull your head back and look at the wider picture instead of coming in here with these terminally online takes. If you can’t distinguish between “evil,” (like health insurance corporations condemning millions to chronic pain and, in extremes, death) and “shit I wish wasn’t so expensive” (like a singular brand of videogames) then maybe it’s worth figuring out where the nearest patch of grass is.
I mean the cost of living going up in all those other ways is also evil. Corporations soullessly sucking every possible shred of profit they can from a suffering population ks evil. Its not just Nintendo but they’re defjnitely part of it and the fact that every other corporation is also evil doesn’t absolve them in any way.
The cost of food and shelter driving people homeless and hungry is evil. The cost of Nintendo products causing people to play fewer Nintendo games is rude and unfortunate.
I’m just pissed off at all this misdirected frustration. We should be lobbying governments to manage grocery and real estate megacorps, and instead we’re creating YouTube videos about Nintendo being evil because the price of an individual game went up $20. The gap between unfettered corporate greed of UHC causing suffering on scales previously only seen in wars against Nintendo getting an extra $20 here and there if you want to keep up with their products isn’t even a fucking comparison.
I assume they’re talking about the DLC as well. All together, the game + DLC over here is $140. I assume it’s closer to $120 for America, but haven’t done the conversions.
Is that really fair to add? Nobody did it for PSN or xbox live. Also who is to say this is the only game you want online for? Then there’s family pricing which is often split amongst members.
$100 is already a lot for a game. No need to inflate the figure.
Probably because neither Sony nor Microsoft are locking single player content behind their online subscriptions. Not to mention you’re strawmanning really hard right now. Those two do it. In PC circles you’ll hear it bashed all the time. Meanwhile, Nintendo is doing it worse than anyone else because they’re deliberately locking single player content behind a subscription, not just here but also for any of their classic library, which just isn’t available for sale. Meanwhile, I could go buy a digital copy of an original xbox game on the latest xbox and it’ll just play and if I owned a digital copy on a previous console it’s transferable.
Stop it. The things you’re arguing aren’t relevant and even if they were, Nintendo is STILL the worst offender.
It's not at all uncommon for games with an online component to have elements you need to play online to access. That's been a part of Pokemon since the series first added online play. Hell, even before that, Pokemon was conceived from the beginning to be a social game, built around the Game Boy's Link Cable if you want to see and do everything. It's never been exclusively singleplayer.
All I'm saying is that if you count online play as though it was part of a game's cost, you should be doing the same thing for games on other platforms too. You can't selectively pretend it only counts here.
I think these online subscriptions are proving to be a major factor in why there’s been a migration of audiences from consoles to PC. People are seemingly running the long-term calculus in their heads and realizing PC is cheaper at a certain threshold.
I always preferred the HLL model of sweaty milsim over Squad but…
A decent number of games have tried (US-)Vietnam over the years and it just doesn’t work. Because people think of the Vietcong versus GIs in jungles or ambushes in towns and along the river. And… the problem with that is it was a ridiculously asymmetrical fight. Like, yes, some troops did have AKs but mostly they were using WW2 era weaponry and maybe SKSes And firing precision shots through a jungle was a whole thing.
It was incredibly rare that these were standing fights. They were bloody ambushes that either ended in slaughter or… kind of just wandering away. And while that could be REALLY REALLY interesting from a gameplay standpoint it also breaks the milsim model of “every ticket matters”
As for those standing fights? They really weren’t that different than any other cold war conflict except that the ridgeline might be a wall of jungle.
Also… look, playing HLL pretty much guarantees you are dealing with, at best, rampant racism because “They were racist back then”. As someone who has tried to find some fun shooters over the years… going to Vietnam IMMEDIATELY reminds everyone that it is still perfectly okay to be mark wahlberg levels of racist towards Asian people. The number of videos on games like Rising Storm that just have random “ha ha, spawn at ching chong” from even “respected” youtubers is just infuriating.
Have you actually played Rising Storm 2: Vietnam? I thought the setting worked decently well there. And I really didn’t encounter any racism aside from popular lines like “Welcome to the ricefields mfer”. It still has a couple of populated servers going even though it’s kinda outdated compared to HLL or Squad 44.
Yes, I have. RSV is mostly corridors outside of a few maps that try to represent a trenchline. It sort of works because spawns are fast and tickets are plentiful but it is still mostly just a day at the Metro in BF3+. Once you start making tickets count more, that starts being a lot less viable.
And yes, I experienced a LOT of anti-Asian hate while playing. Understand that some of us have different levels of tolerance for that than others (which was kinda my point on why this is gonna be extra bad).
My dude, most of the biggest battles of both Vietnam wars were against the standing army of North Vietnam (PAVN), which was a proper army, not just against the VC that were irregular insurgents attacking the South.
youtu.be
Aktywne