Difficulty modes then

[Strider]

Right then, this is something that Mayhem's made me think about.

Whenever I get a new game I always play it on Normal mode; I very rarely (if Ever) play any other modes available.

Few games (IMO) are good enough to warrent me spending X amount of time on them again and unless I know that the game is significantly diffrent (Halo for example) I just wont bother with other difficulties.

So what about you lot then, do you always start at a certain level, do you religeously complete ever possible difficulty mode, or are you lazy like me?

[Garibaldi Biscuit]

I always start on 'hard', I want to get the most life out of the game possible.

[kona]

Lazy like you. Play first on normal, and if the game is really special play again on hard. From this generation the games I went back to (with difficulty settings, there are other ganes I finished more than once) are Halo and Metroid Prime.

[Sketcz]

I dont like difficulty levels.

If you choose "easy", its like your admitting your a weak person, like the game is laughing at you....

"hard" sometimes has extra items or a better ending, but tends to require a great deal more effort.

I always start on normal personally. And sometimes, I might do the higher one if its a good game, like C:AoS
Hate it when they go higher than "hard" though, like "very hard", "super hard", and "ultimate" difficulty levels.
What is the point?


Difficulty levels often feel like a cheap way of lengthening the game.
Like they couldnt be bothered to put a new level in, so they simply gave the same one 2 difficulty settings.

Rarely do they add anything extra, unless the gameplay radically changes, sometimes a higher difficulty levels changes the layout etc of the game.


I much rather prefer going back to find the secrets I missed, than go back to play everything on a more difficult level.

Id say I have to agree with you strider, rarely do I play them all, if ever.

(on a side note, how did Halo change on higher difficulty levels? I thought it was awful on easy and normal, did it actually get any better on the higher settings? )

[Crispin]

Only play easy first and foremost and attempt to complete it.

Always fail/give up/get bored/get frustrated/realise that the developers should have been taken out back and shot/pokemon game comes out.

Halo is a rare exception. I started on easy. But went on to attempt them on harder levels. Never bothered with legendary.

I returned VJ because of it's difficulty.
TLoZ:OOT Master Quest isn't as fun as the original IMO because it becomes too hard. In MQ you weren't enjoying the world, since you kept seeing the game over screen.

It's why I liked TWW, yes it had it's flaws, but I only saw the game over screen once or twice, actually five times, but never mind.
I've even given up on Ikaruga. I love it to bits, but frankly the level of dedication it requires is daunting.

Love all of the Mario games, especially SMS, which, last time I checked, is pretty hard.

I am the ultimate casual gamer.

[Sketcz]

LTTP hard?

Dude.... Actually I am so baffled by that I cant even come up with a funny quip to counter it, insert your own.

I found it excessively easy, and I played it back in the day when it was on the SNES.


Would everyone agree that games in general have gotten easier? Back in the day of 8-bit system, few games had saves, and the difficulty was bumped high to hide most games relative short length.

EDIT:
Just read your last line crispin, dont lie, we all know your about as hardcore as they get. Hide behind your casual pretences all you want, pokemon is nothing more than a cover story.

[Ady]

I start on Normal and work up.

Hate it when they go higher than "hard" though, like "very hard", "super hard", and "ultimate" difficulty levels.
What is the point?

That annoys me too.

Having a Hard more is all well and good, but to then split that hard mode even more just seems silly and cheap.

[taurusnipple]

If there are rewards for completing games on other difficulty settings then I don't have a problem with them. I often play through a game on it's default setting first.

[Kubrick]

I'd also have to say "Normal" difficulty, and one credit only if it's an arcade game. Unless the game is significantly better/different on a higher skill level, I won't touch it.

I usually try and make driving games as difficult as possible for myself though. (Manual gears, ABS off etc)

[Jaxon]

A short anecdote before I begin. I was talking to a friend of mine about XBox games and mentioned the only game that I was really interested in playing for the system was Panzer Dragoon Orta. Suprisingly enough he took my interest in a title I had never played as an endorsement of the game and bought it soon afterwards. After he bought it, he told me that the cashier mentioned that it was a hard game, and that he should probably begin playing it on "Easy," as that is the only level that an average person could expect to complete the game on. When I finally got my hands on it, I began a game on "Normal" and found it challenging, but nothing a little persistence and proper exploitation of the controls couldn't overcome. I don't think it warranted his warning.

It seems the difficulty in videogames is now expected to stem from difficulty in problem solving instead of difficulty in hand-eye coordination. This is an unreallistic expectation. Harder difficulty modes almost always require you to perform better in the action department, not in the brainwork. It's pretty simple to explain: It's easy to crank up the action difficulty because it only involves switching a few numbers around for enemy hit points, attack power, or what have you. But to design more difficult puzzles to solve after the designers have already poured their best(or so we hope) creative efforts into making the original ones would take more time than financially feasable. One exception that springs to mind is Starfox for the SNES where you got almost a full set of new levels for each of three difficulty settings, but even that was a half-way effort. The harder levels were only harder because there were more enemies to shoot and more obstacles to dodge. So, to expect a completely new game with each difficulty setting is asking too much.

One other factor that can account for the lowering of the difficulty of the bar in recents games is in the save department. When a game allows you to save every few rooms, you're more likely to be able to fight through to the next save point or restart point in fewer attempts. A lot of the difficulty in a game like Viewtiful Joe can be attrributed to the game requiring 20 or 30 minutes of nearly flawless action performance before you're allowed to save your progress and move on to the next level.

For a game like Metroid: Zero Mission, the real difficulty doesn't lie in going from start to finish, it's in figuring out how to get all the items and then actually being able to physically perform the necessary actions to get them. You could consider each item to be a mini-puzzle in itself. You get the easy ones that are just lying on the road the first time through, maybe make a few steps off of the road where there is a sign pointing the way to a medium difficulty item, but the hard ones are completely concealed and require full use of your abilities and exact timing to reach. A harder difficulty mode where enemies hurt you more doesn't really add much to this game. You essentially play to your own abilities. If you can locate all of the items, and get them quickly, gracefully, and skillfully, then you've passed the only test that counts.

I therefore only play on harder difficulty modes when the challenge is enjoyable. For action games, I always set it as hard as I can get. For puzzle games, no thank you.

[fishbowlhead]

The only time i found it neccerssary to complete a game on every setting on this generation of consoles was Halo, I just had to prove to myself that i could do it on legendary, a rare thing for a game to do to me these days. I recently went through Devil may Cry and after finishing the game on normal i found it had about three more difficulty settings, i mean what was the point and after (attempting) to play it on the hardest setting (which is practicly impossible) i simply stopped playing it.

[Brighter than Daz]

Always noraml difficulty, unless I have finished the game and actively play online, then I will shift it up a notch just to improve my online sessions.


Is difficulty a major thing today though? AI doesnt change, and its only really twitch shooters that benefit from hard and harder levels. Just moving a few items or health packs around a level, and adding a few more enemies doesnt increase difficulty, it just adds a more cerebral approach.

Be nice to think Ninty might put a really hard level into Mario games, where the jumps are further apart tho

[stroppa]

I start most games on normal, unless it's a game I've become familiar with over time. One example of this for me would be the winning eleven series, which I only find a challenge on the hardest setting of 5 stars.

[JU!]

Me personally i will never ever start on anything other than normal. Special cases for me r if i have heard a game is rock hard or i just can't simply do it on normal. The only games i recalect having on easy R Biohazard: Remake cus i had Japanese version n cud not read it. P.N.03. I normally feel i have degraded myself as a gamer to put a game on easy that's just the way i play but i wud not be grudge anyone playing on easy cus sometimes this can make games more fun to play and at the end of the day that's what it is about and challenging yrself.

[Cacophanus]

Normally the hardest setting there is, unless the versus element doesn't use it (this applies to the Armored Core tournament rules). Also from a testing point of view, playing on hard is de rigueur (the most thorough normally) so I am pretty used to the (unecessary) brutalness of certain games.