Difficulty Tuning in Games
Someone once wrote this:
Balancing a competitive multiplayer game is orders of magnitude harder than balancing a single player game. When we try to balance a single player game, we are basically striving to match the "skill" of the computer to the skill of the player. There are many techniques for doing this, and there is a large margin of acceptable error.
For example, consider what happens if Joe Hardcore figures out a super sneaky way of beating almost every enemy in a single player game for free. Further suppose that this method is very obscure and discovered by less than 1% of all players. Factoring in strategy guides and the internet, sure, others will figure out this method, but the overall impact will be small. Joe Hardcore feels full of himself, the computer doesn't mind being beaten, and most players will never know about this method at all. It's bad, but it's not that bad. If the same trick/bug existed in a competitive multiplayer game, the game would be totally ruined.
--Sirlin
Though balancing a competitive multiplayer game is extremely difficult, balancing a single-player game is no cake walk. Before we can even talk about how to do it, we've got to decide what exactly we're trying to do. Is the goal to challenge the player? Is the goal to empower the player? Is the goal to give the player a particular experience? Is the goal to give him busy work and use operant conditioning to tap into any latent OCD tendencies he might have? (If the goal is that last one, then please stand up World of Warcraft. You're doing an excellent job!)
The game industry is still trying to figure out whether games should be really hard or not. Really hard games challenge the player, and potentially create a lot of gameplay time because the player has to play a lot to master the techniques, the patterns, etc. They also give the player a sense of accomplishment for beating the game. The games of old were great at this, and there are too many ridiculously hard games to even mention. For starters, try Ghosts'n Goblins, Spelunker on NES, or just about any top-down flying shooter.
The gaming market is a lot different now than in the old days though. We used to have a much smaller market of relatively hardcore players. Now the market is much, much bigger and it's possible to sell many millions of copies of a single game. Do many millions of people actually want to play a ridiculously hard game? To the dismay of many old-time gamers, I think the answer to that question is "no."
Let's compare the difficulty of these four games: Ninja Gaiden (Xbox), Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (PlayStation 2), Devil May Cry 3 (PlayStation 2), and God of War (PlayStation 2). These games immediately fall into two camps: 1) The designers sat around all day wondering "What can we do to make this game more friendly to the player?" and 2) "How can we infuriate, frustrate, and repeatedly kill the player?"
Prince of Persia is the nicest of the 4 games. The prince himself is very acrobatic and the controls feel very fluid and great. There's a lot of context sensitive moves, and they always seem to do exactly what you wanted them to do. The enemies aren't very hard, but you get to flip around and do cool stuff when you fight them. If you are ever low on life, you can just drink some water anywhere you can find it. Water is incredibly plentiful, so no problem there. Most games give you life back when you pick up some kind of health item, but then the item disappears. In Prince of Persia, the little pond or fountain or whatever is still there, so you can drink repeatedly (before a fight, after a fight, even during a fight) and get your entire life meter back.
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| In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, like in all games, you push a box at some point. |
This game sure has a lot of water. |
It also includes the ultimate player-friendly feature: the ability to rewind time! If you miss a jump or get hit by an enemy, just rewind time to before that happened and try again. You need sand to power this time-rewind, but you can get it easily from almost any enemy. The Prince of Persia design team wants you to succeed. They are rooting for you every step of the way. While some gamers thought this was "too much hand holding," I think the majority of the audience found it "accessible and inviting."
Now consider the stark contrast with Ninja Gaiden. This game wants you to die repeatedly. One friend said, "It's basically a single-player fighting game where you are forced to fight intermediate-level opponents, even though you are a beginner." Even that is pretty kind, since I have still never beaten this game. Fans of this game seem to enjoy the concept of "I died at the boss, now I have to do a huge portion of the level over again." That gameplay model, to me, seems like it's from the 1980s. Itagaki, creator of the game, loves to talk down to players who can't handle his game. He released online expansions to Ninja Gaiden called "hurricane packs" where he made his ludicrously hard game even harder and harder and harder. He was pushing the limits of "impossible." He then collected these hurricane packs together into a title called Ninja Gaiden Black. When asked if he would put in an option to make the game easier, he said something like "I do not think we should, but some people think that everything in life should be handed to them. They are like dogs. That is why I have put in a new mode called 'Ninja Gaiden Dog mode' just for them." Itagaki has lost all connection to reality and has now directly insulted his players.
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| This is the hardest first-boss in any game I know of. Thanks Ninja Gaiden. |
Get used to this screen. |
God of War and Devil May Cry 3 repeat this same pattern. God of War is relatively easy because it concerns itself mostly with giving the player an experience. You feel like you are on an adventure and that you get to do many things (fight lots of enemies, swim, climb walls, cast magic spells, open treasure chests, etc). God of War views itself kind of like a movie; it wants everyone to experience the journey from beginning to end and be entertained.
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Here's an epic moment in God of War that everyone got to enjoy, even without a raid group of 40 people. Blizzard can't figure out how this is possible. |
Devil May Cry 3 is a very similar style of game, and yet it wants to ruin your day at every turn. The Japanese release defaults to a difficulty called "Normal" that is in fact incredibly hard. If you beat the game, you unlock another difficulty called "Hard." In the US release, the game defaults to Japanese "Hard" difficulty(!!), but it calls it "Normal" just to mess with you. After you die a bunch of times (and you will), the game tells you that you have unlocked "Easy," which is incidentally the same as the Japanese "Normal." Many people have asked me if they should buy DMC3 and I have to tell them, "I loved it, but you should not buy it. It's too hard and you'll hate it."
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| This Cerberus boss will own you before you even know how to play Devil May Cry 3. |
At least Dante is pretty cool. |
God of War outsold Devil May Cry 3 by 2:1 as of this writing. Capcom, creator of Devil May Cry 3, is actually publishing Sony's God of War in Japan. We can debate easy games versus hard games all day, but the mighty dollar is hard to ignore. That Capcom is now publishing its rival's game is telling.
Speaking of Capcom, they won Gamespot's award for best game of 2005 with Resident Evil 4, and probably rightfully so. Overall RE4 is difficult and you will die a lot of times, but it's far more forgiving than Devil May Cry 3. Yes, Resident Evil 4 has great graphics, great design, and a much better control scheme than the series ever had before, but without its auto-adjusting difficulty levels, I wonder if it would have touched so many gamers in just the right way. It's challenging, but forgiving. Secretly, there are 5 levels of difficulty. Every time you die, there is a 66% chance that you will switch to the next easiest difficulty setting. You probably go up a difficulty level if you play well for a while, but I don't know how exactly it works. I do know that the easier difficulty levels have fewer enemies who are each less threatening. Sometimes, even mini-boss enemies such as that blind enemy with "wolverine claws" are replaced with regular bad guys if you die too many times.
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| Resident Evil 4's chainsaw guy kills you in one hit. By the way, if you're against violence in video games, you're against the First Amendment. | These are level 60 World of Warcraft players who found out that the end-game is totally raid-centric. |
Though it might be frustrating to try to get past a certain situation only to find it different (and easier) after dying a few times, I think it's much more frustrating to encounter a situation that's just flat-out too difficult and never lets you by. Auto-adjusting difficulty schemes are a lot of work, and I've seen them done poorly, but Resident Evil 4 shows what a huge success they can be.
Another clever feature of Resident Evil 4 is the rocket launcher. It's one-time use weapon you can buy from any vendor, and it's powerful enough to kill a boss in one hit! It costs just enough to make you want to save your money and not buy it, but if you are really fed up with a boss, you have a get-out-of-jail free card. I used it two thirds of the way through the game on the typical "boss with a vulnerable eye that you have to shoot so he opens up his real weak spot for a few moments, then goes back to slashing at you various ways with tentacles." I've fought enough bosses of that exact type in my day that I didn't think twice about taking a "pass" on this one. Skipping something I found annoying really made my day, as most games don't give me that option, ever.
Finally, there is one special game that bears mentioning in this tale: Sega's Rez. Rez is a critically acclaimed game that got completely lost in the shuffle whenever it came it out. It's one of the best games you've never played. I know a few people who don't like the game, but I think they just "don't get it." On the one hand, Rez is a rail shooter; your character flies along a pre-determined track and you shoot stuff along the way. But to describe it that way is a horrible injustice. Rez is an experience.
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| Well, here's Rez. So...um...these pictures won't help you much either. Go buy it yourself, which you can't, because it's almost impossible to find. What a shame. | |
As your progress through each of the 10 layers of each stage, another layer of music is added. The sound of your shots and of the enemies being destroyed work together to create music as well. The levels are psychedelic and basically indescribable. They are hypnotizing and not like anything you could ever dream up. Just watching someone play through Rez is mesmerizing. Try watching someone play EverQuest and see how long that lasts you. Try watching someone play Tetris or Counter-strike or Mario Sunshine. Even though those games all have virtues, they are not "amazing" to watch like Rez.
And yet, Rez is a very easy game. Most enemies cannot even hit you. Some can, and some shoot projectiles that can hit you. There are also some engaging bosses, but relative to other games, it's all very easy. Rez doesn't want to kill you; it wants you to experience its beauty, a beauty of sight and sound. In fact, it even has a mode called "traveling" where you cannot die! In this mode, you are free experience Rez in a totally non-threatening way. Can you imagine this mode in Super Mario Brothers? Or Street Fighter? Very few games are genuinely entertaining enough that you would actually want to play just for the fun of playing them without any threats. (Exceptions I can think of are Grand Theft Auto, The Sims, Sim City, and Katamari Damacy. And maybe Burnout.)
The flipside is that Rez is actually a very difficult game if you want it to be. For example, to unlock the "Boss Rush" mode you have to get a shot-down rate of over 95% on all 5 of the main levels. That's pretty difficult. To unlock some other options in the "Beyond" mode, you have to get 100% shot-down rate on the those levels. That's incredibly difficult. Other unlockables require you to get 1st place in various "Score Attack" stages. If you are a fiend for Rez, there is plenty of challenge if you're looking for it, and very little challenge if you aren't. An interesting note is that the unlockable items that require 100% shot-down rate because automatically available after 10 hours of play-time. Rez figures that if you are willing to put in that much time, then you deserve to have some of the extras, even if you can't complete the difficult objectives. If Itagaki were dead, he'd roll over in his grave at that thought, and so would the creators of any massively-multiplayer game.
I submit to you that perhaps Rez is the ultimate example of difficulty tuning. First and most strking, it is fun to play for its own sake, apart from any objectives. That is a rare and wonderful property that very few games can live up to. Next, it allows a very wide range of players to experience that beauty and fun. It also gives a high challenge level to those who seek out challenge, and even then it throws you a bone if you're struggling. Perhaps this is the winning formula we should all be striving for.
--Sirlin
February 28th, 2006 at 7:42 am
I’m enjoying this entry (good to see you’ve not abandoned writing new entries, even if there was a 2 year break - I guess for the book), but before I finish it I’d like to point out that on my browser (Firefox) the apostrophes are being rendered as “’”. It makes it tricky to read so, if you can find out the problem you might like to fix it for the benefit of other readers.
Nice one!
February 28th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Jim: Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I know how to fix the problem, will get to it.
–Sirlin
March 1st, 2006 at 7:40 am
nice article, actually I’m playing DMC3 SE, the game isn’t that hard when you know how to manage yourself, with the guns and styles, but somethings are really ridiculously, like the health items, at each level it increase the cost, and of couse your not going to expend the hard gained money on that while you can buy some new improved skills, the fire guns are simply weak (hail the father sword) the bosses are joke too, after you figure out how to kill them, it tooks like 20-30min to discover it, in some cases more, but the most ridiculous thing are the secret missions, I simply stopped trying to accomplish that when I reached mission 4 (ride up the elevator). The game is good, graphx, sound a dark ambient and Dante is cool (its rainnng girls? lol), all OK, but the points I said above oh god….
March 1st, 2006 at 7:45 am
I forgot, tell me how to fix the I’d problem too
March 1st, 2006 at 3:17 pm
DMC3 SE might be easier than the original btw. I’m not sure.
The I’d problem is on my side, I have to fix it. I did for the Difficulty Tuning article, and I will fix it for the other articles, too.
March 1st, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Yep, DMC3 SE is tuned a lot. More difficulty levels so you have all there ever were. The save system was set back to Japanese style yet offers two different choices. On top of that, enemies have been retuned and many fine tweaks been added. I will definitely get that when it gets out on PC ^^
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:12 am
DMC3: SE’s Normal difficulty is equal to the Japanese Normal difficulty.
Also, if you play as Virgil the game is even easier.
March 3rd, 2006 at 1:31 am
Personally, I thought the original DMC3 (even in DMD mode) wasn’t too tough.
If anything, I felt the styles and Dante itself (esp RG) were abit too powerful.
It’s a game that forces you to learn the ins n outs of each style/Dante/step cancelling/style+weapon pairing combos.
Once you know it, it’s like any tough combo in a VS game. It becomes dead easy.
Coming from a VF background, even Akira’s infamous knee is considered easy to many.
After consulting a wee bit with ben(tragic), we both felt that SE is indeed, easier. Personally, this was somewhat of a dissapointment. I was hoping they rammed up the difficulty lvl abit haha! At least I still have the original to go back to ^^
I do agree that Itagaki insults his players. However, I feel it’s nothing more than marketing ploy. Some players will do anything to inflate their ego. Itagaki feeds their ego.
Their world is a perfect place. Yay!
However, it is my opinion that no game on earth is tougher than the Ghost n’ Goblins series.
In my 20ish odd yrs of gaming, never known a gamer that finished a GnG title!
March 4th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Has anyone ever played “Castle” or “Castle Excellent” for the MSX? Most of my friends took 14 years to finish the first one. And that by cheating. I have played Rez and it is simply beautiful. The last stage is amazingly wonderful.
Personally, I hated Need for Speed Underground because of how hard the last stages are. And I almost always get annoyed when there is a mini-game in any Square RPG. I remeber “Full Throtle” in which there was an hovercraft destruction derby arena. I tried but couldn*t complete it, so all I had to do was hit V and get going with the story.
The thing is, to reach a broader audience, the game must tailor its content to the player. And that is what Rez, in a sense, does with just one difficulty setting, leaving the player free to choose how to play the game.
March 11th, 2006 at 1:10 am
The way Rez handles unlockables is a sound idea. Make it so that there are multiple ways to unlock things. GGXX did this as well: You could unlock the hidden characters and the EX/Shadow/Gold characters by playing through all pathways in story mode, OR you could finish all missions in Mission Mode, OR you could simply play the game for 96 hours (I forget if certain stuff became unlocked at different intervals, but I know that after 96 hours, everything was unlocked). Or some combination of the above. With the time aspect especially, that means that people who want to play the game competitively don’t have to waste time playing the abritrarily difficult missions, or slog through the story mode that required an FAQ to get all the paths. You could simply play the game.
Many games do this. In Gradius V, you only have a few continues at the start, but you get additional continues every hour after a certain period of time, and after 17 hours, you get unlimited continues. Thus, there is a tapering of difficulty, where no matter how inept the player is, there *will* reach a point where the player *will* be able to get past a sticking point. The player is enouraged to play onwards, if only so that a certain reward is met which may make getting through the rest of the game a simpler process. But in addition, In the case of Gradius V, the player is getting better due to practice, so that by the time the unlimited continue feature is unlocked, the player is already good enough to beat the game without it! Brilliant! Furthermore, now that you have the unlimited continues, it’s now possible for two players of unequal skill to enjoy the game (since the continue pool is used by both players). The game now becomes *more* fun for all. Absolutely brilliant. I wish Contra Hardcore had this feature (and wasn’t more than twice as hard in 2 player mode).
March 20th, 2006 at 12:06 am
“Secretly, there are 5 levels of difficulty. Every time you die, there is a 66% chance that you will switch to the next easiest difficulty setting. You probably go up a difficulty level if you play well for a while, but I don’t know how exactly it works.”
dmc3:se has this secret feature as well. after i lost so many times to the boss in level 2 in DMD mode, the boss (big grim reaper thingy) became easier with less defence and started using only 2 special attacks (you hear *ding* then he teleports and rushes you) in a row and not 3 in a row like before.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
You also get Rogue-like games, such, as ZAngbandTK, where all but the basic stuff is left to you to find out. You’ll spend your first few plays learning, say, what the different spells do, and getting a general feeling for the details of your chosen race/class, and dying. A lot. Then you’ll realise that you died because it was your fault, and you’ll be annoyed enough to play again, and try to be better. www.alwaysblack.com/blackout/zangband.html is a good example of this.
Sometimes games are good BECAUSE you keep on dying and you know you’ll never win.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Ninja Gaiden isn’t really that hard. There are generally logical patterns that can be used to defeat most of the bosses. If your having difficulty with a boss that has a long section of fights between him and the save point your being sent to when you die, kill all the enemies up to the triggering fight, then go back and save. There are only a few areas thatt infinitely respawn after they have been cleared. If you’re having lots of difficulty, find one of these areas and grind it till you can buy whatever it is you’re needing. In fact, there is an area like this at the start of the game. It’s where the ninja’s come out through the revolving fake walls. The white ninjas often drop healing energy. It takes about 7 minutes to get 10000 gold. On normal mode you can max small health potions for 2000 and I don’t remember what it is for the large ones. And it would be more accurate to say that
Your a ninja, with cool ninja skills. Unfortunately you are fighting Master Ninja, demons, monsters, tanks and helicopters. Advantage : not you.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
There’s some pretty deep seated WoW hatred in that article. While very true that the end game is entirely raid-centric and a poor experience for anyone without access to a large guild, if you do infact have a large number of active friends playing the game, the end game dungeons are hard enough to provide an interesting challenge and sense of group accomplishment. Though it may come at the expense of the solo play, there is something to be said for the appeal of large group challenges that actually pose a challenge above the act of assembling 40 people in one place. Your article also reminded me very much of ikaruga, a modern day top down shooter, which breaks from shooter tradition by ultimately not being all that hard to complete, having unlockable unlimited credits on the basis of time played, and allowing you to start at any level you wish to ’score attack’ the level once it has been cleared. Much like res, the real challenge of the game ultimately becomes long combos and score attacks, rather than simply progression. Which is far less frustrating.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Nice article - I’m a big fan of the site.
I love DMC3 because it is difficult, but I can see why others are put off by how tough it is initially. However, like all good games, you do get a great feeling when you finally start owning all the enemies in DMD mode. :)
More difficult games will appeal to hardcore gamers who like a challenge and are prepared to put in the extra effort to master them. I don’t think that these games are designed to intentionally frustrate the player, but to encourage them to get better and achieve new peaks of gaming excellence. If a game is too easy, it has more mass appeal, but it will never push back the boundaries of gaming, which is what we should all be working towards.
Hardcore gamers of the world unite!
April 7th, 2006 at 7:44 am
As a newer reader of the site, I have to say you do exceptional work, and this article falls under that same category.
One thing I do have to say though is that Ninja Gaiden/Ninja Gaiden Black is not all that difficult on normal, it simply requires you to actually develop some skill as opposed to being far too forgiving. Certainly the first level is a little rough, especially the first boss, Murai, but that is actually good for the player. Once you learn to defeat him you’ll be well on your way to developing the skill you’ll need for the rest of the game. Quite honestly more games need to be like this. Games should be made so you will constantly be developing skill throughout the game rather than just finding some cheap abusable tactic in the first level and not having to change it until you hit a road block on some boss near the very end.
Also, I love your playing to win articles.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
i have a comment about the article on warcraft, i dont care if this is published or not, but there are a few things i think were a bit unfair in that article, 1 you dont have to be guilded to do anything in the gaem, i have been unguilded from lvl 1-60, i have good gear for both pve and pvp all it takes is some determination and patience, i have a few great epics(again from patience and determination, but with a little luck). 2 the 40 man raids, i have been on a few even tho i remain unguilded and i enjoy them this is partly because of my personality, i enjoy playing with other people, but also i have soloed every quest i can i have pugged every instance possible and i am happy to get in a large well organized group to do something challenging. i am now looking for a guild because i want to take the next step on the game to do the end game instances,and yes i think that it is fair to need 40 people to do it, and remember all the end game stuff is entirely optional but i think if there is a boss that aaccording to the story it took an army to kill him then it should take another army to do it again. im not saying that i disagree with you on all the points just a few, i do think the terms of use is over kill and the honor system is insane. just looking from another persective
May 15th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black are not as hard as you think. Each enemy has a weakness, and a weapon they are weak against. Ninja Gaiden may seem hard at first, but that’s because the game doesn’t hold your hand while you learn it.
I actually agree with what Itagaki says. Anyone can beat the game for the first time, they just need to keep trying. Ninja Dog is for those who give up too easily.
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Well I think some people like hard games, I have somewhat affection for them and my brothers loves them. I think we just like the challenge, sure there are games that you are practically invincible and those can be fun too, but I don’t think how hard a game is can always affect how fun or good the game.
For example, the Metal Slug series if a very fun series of games to play, but with one shot kills, it’s not the easiest game to play through. Learning the layout of the levels and the bosses eventually help, but I’ve never been able to get through one without losing a few lives. It’s fun, and hard, all at the same time.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I definitely want to reiterate the beauty that is Ikaruga. I now only play on Hard Mode because the game is only fun when it’s challenging. I can’t be the game without dying on any difficulty, so I figure if I’m forced to die on a regular basis, I may as well be enjoying it as I do.
Ikaruga on hard >>>>>>>>>>>>>>fun>>>>>>>>>>> SNK boss syndrome.
I’ll be looking for rez rez though, it sounds like I’d enjoy it.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:21 am
I think Rez is kind of like Sonic for Genesis. coins give you a free ride if you want to take it slow. The special code at the intro alows you to play it safe and to see everything in the game. And speedruns weren’t so easy. sonic 2 got even better, with Super Sonic Mode. That is the most invincible and enjoyable you can get, IMO.
But hard games sometimes are inviting and not frustrating. The jetski stage in Battletodas for NES is the best I can remember. People didn’t get frustrated by it. Once you passed ecah substage, you feel you’re getting closer. And at each attempt, you really go farther, since its just a matter of reflex/some memorization to help. When people lose in it, they cry “almost” and go again. instaed of throwing the controller at the wall (which may happen in a couple of latter stages). Not perfect, but good enough for a hard game.
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:22 am
Sonic 2 is easily a good game to view here… and Rez was an awesome choice, congrats on having played it… S2 is a game that is easy to play, easy to beat, impossible to speedrun. Currently, I myself hold right to 3rd place for S2 overall, and 4th for Primary… I can tell you now that my records are very hard to think to take down…
Yes, I enjoy games that are hard… I’ve been gaming since I was 2, and I’m an avid Sonic fan, to boot. further, I’m a speedrunner and an LLG player, and I’ve done quite a number of challenges. Also, I have completed Black without dying (4th run-through, deffinately not the first!) (also a speedrun) and I can vouch it’s probably the 4th hardest game I’ve ever played…
Bangai-O (DC, not N64) is probably the hardest game I’ve ever played… the last boss isn’t that bad if you figure out what you’re doing, but if you’re playing it “old fashioned” (No GFaqs for you!) then you’re going to have a hell of a time… beating that I fell asleep just like I had a good orgasm.
try FFT without p-leveling in an Squire-chem-only-no-acc-no-weap quest… then come back and say something….
try the “sub6″ SMB run… or better still, get close to the WR of 5 minutes! (my best is 5:13… not complaining, but I’m done until I feel I need it)
try to join the S1 :25 + 1:13 club…
or the hardest, yet theoretically easiest challenge… beat Emerald Hill Zone 1 (Sonic 2, Genesis) with the game-clock reading 19 seconds… I’ve done that too
in short, I’m a hardcore gamer, and a SEGA gamer… I hate the fact that companies that make AWESOME games, difficult in a drastic fashion, with an emphasis, not on graphics, but on gameplay and story and difficulty, go down because their money source are a bunch of people who can’t play very well…
I’d like to state here that I welcome and Mentor gamers, so I’m no hypocrit… I teach people how to get good, and I made a jock beat NGB over a period of 4 months (mostly training time)
to quote Yuji Naka’s speaking on street fighter, “get good, or get gone”
July 14th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
In response to the comments about Rez, I’d like to point out that much the same can be said of stealth games, particularly the Splinter Cell series. In those games, you can slowly inch your way through each level, sticking to the shadows and observing enemy behavior, which allows you to complete the mission with a minimum of risk. You could also “Rambo” your way through the mission if you’d like, as Sam is remarkably well-armed for a spy.
The truly hardcore, though, are only satisfied with a mission once they’ve “ghosted” it; that is, completed the mission with no kills, no knockouts, and no alarms triggered. Ghosting a mission is extremely difficult, but well worth it. Not only do you get to feel like the world’s sneakiest infiltrator, you also complete the mission much more quickly than you would otherwise.
As for my feelings on difficulty, I prefer to beat games on Easy, then Medium, then Hard, then (hopefully, not all games have it) Expert / Ultrahard / Whatever. I also can’t stand games that have some stupidity or another, like a boss that kills you in one hit, with the intent of being more difficult. It’s not more challenging that way, just more idiotic.
July 14th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
‘I also can’t stand games that have some stupidity or another, like a boss that kills you in one hit, with the intent of being more difficult. It’s not more challenging that way, just more idiotic.’
So you prefer long passages over low error tolerance when it comes to difficulty design?
When it comes to difficulty tuning, there are two things you can do to increase it: Either make the passage (between two checkpoints) longer, and keep the number of allowed errors on the same level or keep the length of the passage and reduce tolerance to errors (or add new possibilities to make some).
Since I prefer the later method, I would favor one boss killing you the moment you mess up in the 5 minute fight over having to beat 3 opponents before taking away 2 energy bars of the actual boss in 60 minutes and finally get killed (see Viewtiful Joe, Leo).
July 15th, 2006 at 5:17 am
“And yet, Rez is a very easy game. Most enemies cannot even hit you. Some can, and some shoot projectiles that can hit you. There are also some engaging bosses, but relative to other games, it’s all very easy. Rez doesn’t want to kill you; it wants you to experience its beauty, a beauty of sight and sound. In fact, it even has a mode called “traveling” where you cannot die! In this mode, you are free experience Rez in a totally non-threatening way. Can you imagine this mode in Super Mario Brothers? Or Street Fighter? Very few games are genuinely entertaining enough that you would actually want to play just for the fun of playing them without any threats. (Exceptions I can think of are Grand Theft Auto, The Sims, Sim City, and Katamari Damacy. And maybe Burnout.)”
It sounds to me as if Rez focuses mostly on its “psychedelic” art and music, in which case Rez is the exception and not the rule for games (you have the rhythm genre, which heavily features music - though just as much on the gameplay - and I can’t think of any other can that revolves around sound). For most games, however, the *gameplay* is central to the game’s success. Gameplay isn’t something that can easily be shared, like sounds and visuals. So it isn’t a special pleasure to watch somebody play Super Mario Bros., because you aren’t getting the full experience of the game without the controller in your hand!
In any case, though, it seems that you’re suggesting that most games should revolve around music and graphics, and not gameplay! Granted, you explain that Rez contains some extremely difficult goals as well as psychedelic sights and sounds, but do you truly think the actual *game* in a video game should be just a fallback? If I want the sights and sounds, I’ll go to the theatre; if I’m playing a game it better have some thrilling gameplay, and for gameplay to be thrilling and not just mindless, it needs to be *challenging.* Not cheaply difficult, as in having to time some jump to the frame, or press some button a million times a second, but the game should at least require me to think before I reach the end.
July 19th, 2006 at 8:37 am
This is my first time at Sirlin.net, and this is the first article I’d read–I am also of the belief that Ninja Gaiden (Black) is not TOO difficult–it does something that I appreciate in that it makes the gamer earn their skill.
Much like ShetenshiSenshi said, the insulting “Ninja Dog” difficulty is there for people who give up too quickly. The game takes itself (a little too) seriously, and expects you to keep up for better or for worse. If Ryu’s getting slapped around by monstrous demons, then you too shall get slapped around by monstrous demons, because he’s an above-average guy with a sword, and they’re monstrous demons.
It is completely understandable to say, though, that this kind of vicious difficulty makes the game very, very inaccessible.
In another note, the sales of God of War over Devil May Cry 3 may be attributed to another factor: Kratos is all that is man (or at least all that man wants to be). Yes, Dante has an actual female fanbase, but Kratos is the kind of raw, skip-rope-with-spinal-cord hero that DMC’s backflipping, Gunkata-using lead can’t quite match up to in the American market. Of course, I could also be completely wrong on that, but the thought had crossed my mind while reading.
July 24th, 2006 at 3:54 am
As a guy who played DMC3 and God of War, I think that DMC3 was an awesome game, but should have had a somewhat different introduction, notably a more thourough tutorial with emphasis on teaching a player basic skills such as dodging, noticing enemy signals that are made prior to an attack, etc. Also, one aspect of DMC3 could do with INCREASED difficulty: the puzzles. I should actually have to think a little on occasion when playing a game such as this. If it had had a good tutorial followed by the rest of the game as-is, it would be quite difficult but not so off-putting because people would be more able to beat the boss of the third level and advance farther.
God of War was, if anything, a bit too easy. It would be nice if they made perhaps two changes to the game: upped the difficulty a little, and perhaps made the God’s Rage or whatever mode where Kratos does more damage and can cast spells for free happen more often (because using it like 3 - 4 times in a game isn’t really enough).
One thing I liked about DMC3 over both Prince of Persia and God of War is that everything the character does is dictated by the player’s moves. In DMC 3 every dodge, jump, block, slash, gunblast, etc is controlled by the player’s controller. In GOW some actions are and aren’t, with most of the cooler actions being an arbitrary button-pressing game. For example, in GOW a giant monster is fought by jumping all over it and eventually killing it. In GOW this is handled by like 4 button presses prompted by a screen indicator. In DMC3, a similar situation would actually use the jumping mechanics from the rest of the game and the player would control exactly what happens, which helps to not destroy immersion and makes the game much more responsive. Finally, Prince of Persia’s system of “press one button and do a kick off a monster and then slash downwards automatically” only to do so again and again and again in exactly the same manner is the height of user-friendliness, but also leads to boredom, monotony, and is less cool than other options.
I guess what I’m trying to state here is that DMC3’s system of “Everything handled directly by user” including all jumps, strikes, rolls, etc. makes the game more fun over the long term in terms of mastering the game, and advanced (higher difficulty modes, speed runs, etc.) play, while Prince of Persia’s and GOW’s systems of more automated attacks and defenses are great fun over the short term for broad-market audiences but lack appeal over the long term (Here’s a minotaur, time to mash a button again! What fun!)
For sales, I suspect that the easier games have a far larger market. Also, DMC3’s sales were like as not crippled by the terrible DMC2 that was almost unplayably bad.
August 5th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Greetings.
I have greatly enjoyed reading your articles, all of them, i think they are spot on, and should be highly valued by all who read them.
While you did make the point that the mighty dollar is king, i do feel that exceptionally difficult games are few and far between these days. I agree with the fact that dieing over and over with little progress is extremely frustrating, but i also feel the need to point out that games have gotten a lot easier over time, to cater more for the casual audience, because they are more likely to buy games that they can complete quickly and easily.
In my opinion, these people are a form of “scrub”, while that really doesnt matter, seeing as making games easier makes companies more money, it can be frustrating to the minority who are able to play those exceedingly hard games.
For example, take Resident Evil, while the first one isnt exactly the greatest contender for hardest game of all time ever, it wasnt easy, zombies did large amounts of damage, their was a limit to the amount of health an ammo in the game, and certain enemies could kill you outright (hunters for example, even when using the inf health cheat)
On the flipside, its sequel, was incredibly easy. Capcom got my £30 when it came out, but i had finished it that same day. Not that i didnt get my moneys worth, ive played Resident Evil 2 easily over 150 times, im crazy about it, its one of my fave games. But it’s a prime example of games getting easier.
It all comes down to a personal choice at the end of the day, unless a game is actually impossible, then its a question of how much time and dedication you are willing to put in to see the next segment of the game. If the answer is, not a lot, then your obviously not that interested, which boosts the initial dificulty anyway, because if you dont really care about seeing the next segment, you are unlikely to give it your all as often, or as well as you could.
If you really want to see the next portion of the game, then you have to put in the effort to proceed. It’s comparable to the “That tactic is cheap” situation, you either remain a scrub, brush the game off as too hard and go away, or continue, find a way of beating it, and become master of all the universe and all that encompasses it (well, maybe not ALL the universe, just the small portion of it contained within your mind)
Undeniably though, it is a cold hard fact that an exceptionnaly hard game will not sell as well as an easier game, however, how much extra effort would it be for developers to include another difficulty for the people that like an insanely hard challenge and all associated bragging rights.
Bah, its late haha, i doubt anythin i said actually made any sense haha. Im just frustrated that some games are way to easy these days (what am i talking about, ‘these days’ >.
August 5th, 2006 at 4:59 am
It appears my comment was cut off a little by the system. Ill finish it.
(What am i talking about ‘these days’ im only 18 haha)
Apologies for that.
August 7th, 2006 at 6:19 am
Yeah well in between being an elitist ego maniac Itagaki speaks wisdom. If a game isn’t very hard to complete, then it loses it’s excitment. Would penetrating deep into Ninja Gaiden be so fascinating if it were easy to do? The mysteriousness of an easy game is never as intriguing as the games that are harder to explore. If we just continue to make games easier we are so obviously just headed for the next gaming crash.
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Ninja Gaiden is pretty damn hard even on normal. I think some of you guys are underestimating the time/effort you spent to get to the point where you’re good enough not to get regularly pwned. The combat is mostly manageable, but the unforgiving platforming elements combined with the unwieldy camera was absolutely maddening at times.
I’m speaking as someone who beat HP2 with a master ninja rating-the game _still_ surprises me at times, even on normal.
That said it’s _doable_, but you definitely have to have a much higher tolerance for failure than the average gamer.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
ccclol
August 25th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Rereading this article and noticing the ability to comment! And the only comment worth making: F-Zero GX story mode chapter 7.
In this case, we have a game which is of average difficulty most of the time, and of ludicrous difficulty at one particular point. Did they just not think it through, or was it intentional? Well, either way, this is probably the worst thing you can do: present your player with a single, ridiculous difficulty spike.
Warning: this is a link to a profanity-laden (but very funny and well written) rant.
http://somethingawful.com/automaticturban/junk/fzero.mp3
My personal favorite point: “You should have just added a little door to the console through which a hand pops out and flips me off, because I am insulted.”
September 7th, 2006 at 5:15 am
Yet, part of what is fun is the sense of accomplishment that you get. If a game is extremely easy, won’t that it remove some of the fun? Maybe games today are more like curves rather than a upgoing hill where difficulty increases steadily as the game progresses.
I feel many people forget that the player actually gets better and more skilled at the game as the game progresses.
Which brings me on another note. I have seen some games which attempt to learn you everything at once via a tutorial. But maybe the player should only learn what he needs to get past the first levels, and when he reaches a new challenge he can’t handle, he will be taught something new which will be easily memorized as it is 1 new thing he has learned. Not all the stuff at once.
Paper mario: The thousand year door comes to mind as game which has done this extremely well if not perfectly. The first things you learn are very basic and easy to memorize, no need to learn about combos or style moves just yet.
Then after a while when you have gotten used to these controlls, a new control aspect is introduced, which requires you to use a button you never used before. Since it’s one new thing to learn, and you know the other basic controls like your own pocket by this time, you easily pick up the new move and proceed with the game.
The games difficulty is sort of easy. But it’s difficulty gradually increases from very easy to hard when you fight the last boss.
It’s an awesome game which I think everyone should have played.
September 13th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
I’m coming late to this article, but I wanted to point out the “Gungrave” game. It is quite easy to beat, but the combo mechanic certainly allows the player to find a harder challenge. So: easy difficulty, hidden depths that allow for greater challenges. Yet to me the game as a whole wasn’t compelling, despite terrific art direction and a terrifically visceral feel to the shooting.
I think that might be because the combo challenge itself is not compelling, at least to me. It requires that a player memorize a level and perform the inputs in, basically, the prescribed way the level design implicitly requires. I think this is true of Ikaruga as well, in fact.
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Ninja gaiden is easy as pie once you get that diving jumping slash ability.
RE4 is only really hard at the start if you try to kill everything and run out of ammo, instead just run and don’t activate the chainsaw guy by going in the house with the shot gun or up the path where he is waiting. DMC3 is easy if you choose the right style to begin with (Sword or Gun I can’t remember) but yes the secret missions can be hard to meet the objective and rez I never played.
October 11th, 2006 at 12:17 am
“Ninja gaiden is easy as pie once you get that diving jumping slash ability.”
Really? How far are you? I mean it maks the gamer much easier, but like, its still the hardest game you can buy really. Also, in Ninja Gaiden Black they rebalance that move (flying swallow /red hot iron brand), some enemies actually get moves that are nothing but counters to flying swallow.
For the record though, I totally disagree with sirlin about Ninja gaiden and I think its the best action game ever created, by a wide margin.
October 12th, 2006 at 5:10 am
I’m a gaming masochist. I like it when games show no mercy and beat me up. I like to struggle. I haven’t played Ghosts ‘n Goblins, but I want to. I’ve beaten Battletoads for the NES. I’ve ascended in Nethack. I find that the most unbalancing ability in single-player games is the ability to quicksave and quickload at will, which allows you to play a game by stringing together ten-second segments of successful gameplay even though you can’t go thirty seconds without getting killed. Getting frustrated usually makes me even more motivated to go on, unless the game is just being unfair in some way (so it’s not my fault that I’m losing). I want to fail at something at least once in a while, so it seems like my successes have actual meaning.
I do realize, though, that people have widely varying skill levels, and I’ve become very good at getting through certain games. I wouldn’t recommend Battletoads to someone who just picked up their first controller, just as I wouldn’t recommend something called “Classical Music Made Difficult” to a beginning piano player. Difficulty does need to be tailored to individual players, but the various ways of doing that often come up short. Automatically adjusting the difficulty based on the performance of the player seems like a good idea, but there is one problem with it: it’s done without the player’s explicit permission. It’s like winning at tennis because your opponent deliberately went easy on you; it can feel like you’re being treated with kid gloves, like you’re not a worthy opponent, like you’re being insulted. I want honesty and transparency from my difficulty adjustments, not pity.
October 15th, 2006 at 1:49 am
On the ninja theme, has anyone played Shadow Dancer for master system?
the levels are easy (seem like ~5 min) but the bosses are hard to get past. There’s a good reason why there’s only 4 levels…
Forget 1-crediting it, how about 1-life’ing it if you want to keep that shuriken powerup?
Just to make it more difficult: everything kills you in 1 hit, and some enemies can’t be killed without wasting your ninja magic. But I love it all the same :) I swear he says something like “BEING SOMEWHERE’S A TROUBLE! HYAAAAAAAAAA” when he does one of his magic stunts, too.
November 17th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Concerning the comparison of DMC3 and GoW, I find myself subconciously replacing the latter with Mega Man 1-3 and the former with Ghosts n’ Goblins.
MM1-3 have their fair share of very difficult moments: the Yellow Devil, the Dragon, Dr. Wily’s ship, the beginning of Guts Man’s level. But in these situations, you are challenged, not overwhelmed, not only because you can get energy tanks that refill your life, but it takes more than two hits to kill you at full health.
Mega Man is challenging, Ghosts n’ Goblins is overwhelming. This perhaps explains why I will gladly go through a Mega Man game again and again, but one would have to prod me to go through Ghosts n’ Goblins again.
December 20th, 2006 at 4:00 am
Here are two games that many find difficult, but I do not find them too hard, and there are reasons why:
A game that many may find hard is Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts, as which is a related game to Ghosts n’ Goblins. However, I find that mst of the difficulty dimishes once you master the double jump feature. There is no real difficulty curve to this game, but once you get on top of the brick-wall difficulty curve, it is not as bad. One of the worst tuninig parts is that you can get better suits, but you will still lose it when hit, and then lose the weapon enhancement the suit offered.
Super Mario Brothers 2: The Lost Levels has a steep learning curve, but not as steep as the first game I mentioned. This is because you can simply run through most of the stages after playing them enough times, because your mind will remember the layout of the stages and wil be able to move though them as if it was a control combination to pass the levels. A fine part of the difficulty curve is that while small, you may die in one hit but you can be more evasive.
Both games essentially come down to trial and error, and lack a gentle difficulty curve. Bringing this into mind, I beleive most people find games hard because of the steep/poorly established difficulty curve found in the games. Designers must find better ways to set the dificulty, because once you master most elements, and the obstacles are passable by trial and error, the games become easy.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
The problem with WoW is, in my opinion, not so much that you have to get 40 people together to play endgame (though I think that reducing that number to 25, as they are, greatly improves the annoyance factor) but rather the degree to which you are punished for failure in the form of losing equipment durability and all the potions and other consumables that you have to bring to have a real chance. This translates into a lot of time running around trying to gather money and trade items and not actually playing the (fun parts of the) game.
I bet that all this could be changed in about half an hour, but it won’t be.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
“I bet that all this could be changed in about half an hour, but it won’t be.”
Yeah. All of WoWs worst problems could be changed in about half an hour in fact. The horrible xp grind (kudos to other mmos for being even worse here) is an obvious one.
The item grind is pretty bad too. You could conceivably complete a several hour long raid and get zero new items.
Sirlin has spoke about the pvp system.
Blizzard has always lacked the mathematical skills to balance damage over time skills (except for priests I hear. w…tf.). This was a problem in diablo ii as well.
Er… travel times. Nuff said.
And last but… by no means at all least… the xp formula. Unlike most other MMOs (one of those ms supposedly means multiplayer), you gain xp slower while in a party than while alone. Now, soloing should be viable, yes, but so should partying. This is a multiplayer game. Furthermore, the interactions between the skills of multiple party members is far more interesting than the endless repeating attack chains of a solo adventurer.
Gimme a day or so with the WoW source code and I could make a much, much better game.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
PS: same with ninja gaiden, devil may cry and every rpg ever made. One day, better game. In fact, I’m fairly sure this is what they did with the special edition of Devil May Cry 3. They added a non stupid continue system, started you on a reasonable difficulty, and boom, much better game.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am
NGB is difficult, yes, but the way the combat system works is that every enemy, puzzle, and boss can be be beaten if you put the time into it and learn how to block and dodge. It’s not terribly complicated. I’m still very newbie-ish at it (sticking to Normal so far) and even I’ve seen the end credits multiple times on both NG and NGB.
Now, that being said, NGB is VERY hard to get GOOD at. To become one of those masochists that rocks faces Master Ninja requires more time than I actually posess.
Now, all of your “difficult” games pale in comparison to Ikaruga, an arcade game made into a port for Dreamcast and ported later to Gamecube. IKARUGA is mind-numbingly complicated yet intrinsically simplistic. It posesses a very simple premise and then proceeds to cram a few very well-deserved deaths into your throat. Go check it out. The game is insane.
By the way, Rez is simply amazing. A friend of mine from my hometown had a 40-inch TV and a recording studio (complete with surround system, etc.) in his basement. I’d go over there and play Rez or watch him. After a while, you’re vaguely aware that you’re moving and grooving to the beat and you can’t look away. Rez is definitely an experience, not a game.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:56 am
You know…Sirlin’s a fan of fighting games. And every good fighting game that comes to mind necessitates hundreds of hours of play to get mediocre. But…then he complains about NG and DMC3 being too hard?
And Itagaki is right. People are bitching about Ninja Gaiden…because they don’t have to work at it, which makes it not fun. That teeters on calling it cheap.
February 18th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
If you are a designer on a very large team, you have a responsibility to your team members to design a game that will sell as well as possible. I think making the 1p adventure game into an “experience” that everyone can enjoy is the way to do that, not to make a difficult skill test like Ninja Gaiden. The skill testing 1p adventure game has a market, but it looks like a smaller one.
Also, as I’ve said before, if you want a challenge, you have got to be kidding me that a 1p adventure game is where it’s at. Beating a super-hard AI is really nothing compared to playing against humans. Play Virtua Fighter, Guilty Gear, or Street Fighter for a true challenge.
That said, Ninja Gaiden and DMC aren’t bad games or anything. I was trying to give advice to adventure game designers on which method would produce a game enjoyed by the most number of players. I’m sure the niche of hard 1p adventure games will continue on.
–Sirlin
February 19th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Holy crap I got replied to o.o
I love my Guilty Gear and SF and such, but like any other fighting game, I expect there to be a whole lot of work. If I want an easy fighting game, I’ll play something from Bandai Games. You don’t walk into the better fighting games expecting to figure out how to do the moves and then just coast by, while you do expect it from some Inuyasha fighting game.
Similarly, there’s a game like Zelda: Wind Waker and Ninja Gaiden. I love Nintendo, but ten minutes into their games, you’re playing it simply for the sake of beating it. Once you’re past the opening skirmish/tutorial/first mission, you’re just coasting until you get to the credits. Then you get to Ninja Gaiden, and it makes you WORK to beat it. And it doesn’t ease you into it. I mean, if Guilty Gear said “oh, you can’t FRC a gunflame? That’s ok, we’ll just make it automatic” or if Street Fighter said “oh, you can’t do a Hadoken? Ok, we’ll just make it so you just press forward and punch.” The DMC3s and Ninja Gaidens aren’t really there to be strolled through. And the experience they’re giving you isn’t there to be just charged through.
There’s no shortage of single-player games that are there for simple, mindless fun. Just like how there is no shortage of fighting games that are there for simple, mindless fun. I appreciate the Kirby Canvas Curses and the Elite Beat Agents and the Wariowares of the world, but the best of games are the ones that make you have to try.
(and when it comes to selling well, Ninja Gaiden and DMC3 both sold pretty well)
February 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
In all fairness, just because a game is easy doesn’t mean it is simple or mindless. It is interesting to reflect that most anyone may get through Hamlet but that neither adjective is typically applied. Some games, it seems, can be classified along with books or movies (although by this I do not make suggestions about the level of interactivity) while others fit more appropriately with other non-video games (ie as tests of skill). Making games of the first class single player makes sense, even when you could easily make them multiplayer (although of course they can be multiplayer). But making a game of the second class single player, when you have access to the internet, seems to be intentionally disregarding what is by far the most effective mechanism for introducing a meaningful and satisfying challenge to a game. Sometimes this is a good idea (just like it is sometimes in non-video games), but such cases are probably exceptional.
Video games which present themselves as tests of skill can also provide a sense of accomplishment without actually requiring accomplishment, which is clearly something you can’t get in multiplayer games, but that is another issue altogether.
Sorry for the rambling =\
March 1st, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I don’t get the prejudice here for fighting games - or vs human games in general.
Something such as Guitar Hero is at least as hard as any of the Street Fighter games. If you want to be up on score hero, you need to be able to 100% expert level songs. Having done this myself, I can tell you that it takes a few 100 hours to do this. If you spend a few 100 hours playing SF and are actively looking to improve your game, you’ll get pretty damn good at that, too.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 am
I’d say that Guitar Hero doesn’t even compare to competitive fighting games. It’s notes are set in stone; you just have to remember the notes, have good dexterity, know when to activate Star Power, and you’re basically set. Sure, there’s insanely hard songs that nobody has even gotten 100% in (Jordan), but high level fighting games are much harder.
But that’s just my opinion, and I’m not at high level Guitar Hero or high level fighting games (yet), so what do I know?
March 2nd, 2007 at 6:33 am
“I was trying to give advice to adventure game designers on which method would produce a game enjoyed by the most number of players.”
Ninja gaiden is not an adventure game.
March 10th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It’s a pity that DMC3’s initial difficulty is prohibitive to some, because it’s really one of the finest action gaming experiences out there. Truly ironic is how easy it becomes after a moderate time commitment.
The combat system is very fluid and intuitive. Almost every attack in the game can be canceled in five ways: jumping, rebounding off enemies’ bodies, shooting a projectile weapon, and using the weapon switch system to initiate a different attack with the secondary melee weapon. The fifth, exclusive to the Royal Guard style, is guard canceling. Evasion is just as intuitive. While novices tend to struggle with the somewhat awkward roll mechanic, experienced players will take advantage of the invincible frames of the standard jump’s ascending animation to pass right through any impending attack. Coupled with the aforementioned attack cancels, this simple property facilitates a near-boundless variety of seamless combos.
DMC3 is the most accessible of all the games this article covers. All weapons, health upgrades, items and currency carry over to subsequent plays. From a single concise screen, difficulty, costume changes and individual levels may be selected. There even exists a code to unlock everything, which is especially nice for players who are unenthusiastic at the prospect of playing through each of the game’s modes to earn the extras in standard fashion. DMC3: Secial Edition fixes the notable flaws of DMC3, namely the punishing difficulty level and the ill-conceived continue system. With these refinements, and the inclusion of an additional playable character with a fully realized and exceedingly well-rounded move set of his own, I feel DMC3 is the best action game of its generation.
Readers who find themselves unconvinced may wish to check out the quintessential DMC3 combo exhibition, Hell=Sloth Is Dead. A streaming version can be found on YouTube.
March 12th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Capcom always has a way, I notice, of including things that are reminiscent of fighting games. Be it DMC3’s combo system or Keith in Dead Rising having a launch that can be combo’d with his tackle that is suspiciously similar to Urien.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
I think one of the main problems many developers have with difficulty systems is making sure the player won’t drop their controller by frustration or apathy within the pivotal “First 5 Minutes”. Every game I’ve ever shown to non-gamers, casual gamers, and myself lives or dies by this time frame and the experience they have within it. For instance, after I got a copy of Resident Evil 4, upon hearing all the praise about it, the opening town scene convinced me that I had no interest in playing any further. Introducing you to its awful controls and camera by having an unavoidable, especially when you’re at such a low level of skill, instant kill monster absolutely sapped any sort of fun I was having out of the game. Why would they waste all their time making Leon the most agile zombie hunter in the cut scenes only to have him become some sort of cripple in the main game?
Here, the developer would try and defend their choice by citing something like “challenge” or “setting the mood”. Here’s the thing though, once I’m dead there’s no real point in setting said mood. My character ain’t alive to see it, so why should I care what happens next? If it’s in terms of challenge, well then their just terrible designers who can’t make a decent control scheme to save their souls. Oh and you game will automatically loose 50% and/or 3 stars from me is you make babysitting a core mechanic of the game. Leon is a bad enough dude to try and save the president’s daughter, but I don’t really care for her.
Dead Rising, yet another Capcom game, is one title that is completely based upon the five minute rule. While I personally had a lot of fun with title, most people I’ve shown it to hate it within a few minutes due to how unforgiving it is. Granted, there are more than a few flaws (Listen, just once I’d like to “clear” an area of zombies, even if only for a few moments) but overall I had fun time reaching level 50 with it. Of course, it did suffer the “Capcom inability to balance” during the last boss fight, but that’s expected from the guy who made mega-man. Oddly, I didn’t mind dying in this title as much as I did in Resident Evil 4. It’s probably probably because I never felt as “cheated” as I always did in RE4, especially since RE4 suffered from that bull scaling difficulty.
I picked up Ninja Gaiden on a whim a few days ago, played it for a few minutes, but then became horribly bored. Not because it was too hard or easy, but I really wasn’t seeing a point in anything I was doing. The camera felt chunky so I was busy fighting that while I pressed X repeatedly on some foot clan members. Then I got lost for a while in some rooms yet it turned out I had to walk through what appeared to be a solid wall to get to the next area. It was at that point I realized they inserted a keyhunt into the game, so I shut it off and haven’t tried it since. I wanted to be a badass ninja who slices faces like in the old NES games. Not whatever this was.
God of War, another title mentioned above, was yet another game I could never get into as well. I got to about the 4th or so level, after he gets the third power if I remember right, but the game too itself so seriously I couldn’t help but roll my eyes during every cutscene. I also hated those minatours you had to kill from the second level onward. Breaking my controller by slamming buttons repeatedly is not my idea of a fun game. It also felt awfully plain in terms of the environments and fighting. Half the time I couldn’t even see my guy as the camera was so far away.
Devil May Cry 3 I really enjoyed but can admit openly is a terrible game for anybody with a social life. You honestly have to sit down and tell yourself “I will get decent at this” if you want to play on anything above the “Dear God You’re Pitiful” difficulty. On the flipside, compared to Ninja Gaiden and some of the other titles, the game is an awesome spectator game since both the cutscenes and the actual combat just seep with it’s over the top silly style. You get eaten by a skyfish and then kill it from the inside! Whats not to love? Well, there’s the fact that anybody who said “Hey can I try that” after watching immediately threw the controller aside in disgust due to how hard it was, even on easy for most people. Granted, the SE improved its fun level for most folks quite a bit.
Now that I’ve finished my long winded whinefest, here’s my complete personal and subjective take on what would makes a level of difficulty “just right” in games.
If I’m playing some sort of action game, I should feel like the hero by the time I reach a decent level of skill. DMC3 did this really well, but such a feeling shouldn’t come merely from the fact you can now carry the “+5 Sword of World Ending” into level 1. Instead, make the enemy AI predictable and just intelligent enough so that the player will need to take some time learning their patterns. The Doom series and Quake excel at this since they offer enemies that are threats both in numbers and mano a mano. Sure, only the highest level of difficulty may even phase some players, but such an AI would go a long way to getting players “hooked” into your game. It worked wonders for Half-Life 2 apparently, as their AI is as dumb as bricks yet I nevertheless enjoy killing the City 17 police. At first you’re terrified of them when fighting them alone, but as your skill increases so too do their numbers and level of firepower. At the same time, you know how they think and act, so it’s possible to do all sorts of cool and fun things with the gravity gun or some weapon combos in order to dispatch them.
Next, make some sort of unique mechanism to prevent the endless cycle of quickload/quicksave or, in the case of consoles, tapping the reset key. Prey did this prefectly with their addition of Spirit Walking. By never requiring me to load up a quicksave, I never once felt like I lost connection to the game and the world I was in. Even better, I was able to experience this in a game where I don’t simply wander around for the next 8 hours attempting to solve some sort of cryptic riddle. If you can’t do something like that, give the player some sort of heroic advantage over the AI to make them feel as though they have a fighting chance at all times. Bullet Time, Life Regen, Control of time, whatever. Just make it so that I feel like a larger than life hero. After all, if I wanted to play in “reality”. I’d play some Tom Clancy games… of course I’d fall asleep faster than if I took a bottle of NyQuil. Call of Duty 2 (though suffering from abysmal level designs in some places) became a fun romp due to my superhuman ability to soak up bullets. Was it realistic? No, but it felt like I was involved in a war movie where I was the star. In the end, isn’t that the point of a game?
Next, think about the “pick-up and play” social gamer in your difficulties. This is especially true for the Guitar Hero games, a series which, so far, has never quite managed to score that “just right” level of challenge. Don’t get me wrong I love the series and see it and most music based games as my ideal way of playing now (due to their pick up and play nature that’s, you know, fun) but Guitar Hero’s 4 difficulties never really correspond to what the game is actually like. On Easy, people feel insulted by how simple it is while Hard ratchets up the difficulty to levels where you have to play the game frequently to be any decent at it. Worse yet, said level is the point where you’re finally able to use all the fret buttons on the controller. What that game needed more than anything else was a 5 level called “Standard” or something, at this stage the game would move at the speed of normal and use normal level note patterns, but add in the orange fret. It’d get players used to it and, at the same time, let casual folks shred without the need to invest too much time in it.
Automatic adjusting difficulties, despite my mocking of it in Resident Evil 4, are a great way for players to get both more challenge and replay out of a title. Case in point, the rather vanilla Sin:Episodes game. Though it’s feel and play is rather meh, I can’t help but get addicted to it due it’s unique way of handling how hard the game is. Though it took a few patches to actually make it, you know, work, the game lets you play through it however you choose and learns to play along with you. Moreover, the developers factored in several different playstyles through its score and stat tracking, causing me to become a number crunching fiend in an attempt score that “prefect run”. Moreover the bonus “1 life and no saves” option makes this relatively short game a fun arcade style adventure that, while possible to beat in about 2 hours, becomes an incredibly tense and exciting game since it’s always finding ways to break whatever strat you’ve come up with. Unfortunately, the game suffers from my previously mentioned “way too accurate for their own good” AI. Granted, I expect them to become more dilligent and better shots at higher difficulty levels, but health loss shouldn’t be a constant fact every second I’m in a gunfight.
In conclusion, well, I don’t really think I have much of a point besides the fact I like how most games aren’t simply going for the classic NES method of simply having you die at every possible opportunity. Instead, their actually making experiences you grow with.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I don’t know what this says about my tastes, but I thought Prince of Persia, although having fun puzzle elements, had terrible combat. I’m not sure I understand how that boring (yet flashy) combat system could be considered good game design.
I personally love hard games. Fzero, God Hand (you heard me), Ninja Gaiden Black, and Devil May Cry 3 are some of my favorite games and I would hate to see them disappear. And while God of War was fun, it has no replay value and fairly boring combat, while Ninja Gaiden and DMC3 are games I could play for years. It does a lot of things right though and it is probably the perfect casual game.
If these games are truly in trouble a simple difficulty level adjustment would fix that I assume. Just don’t call easy mode easy, something like casual mode from Gears of War would do. I think Halo did difficulty levels right by offering something for everyone, playing on legendary almost feels like an entirely different game.
I’m not completely out of touch with casual gamers (I hope), and I still see the value in experience games, but certain games should be hard. I don’t expect Zelda or Okami to be hard, but God of War should really offer a deeper combat system since most of the game is spent fighting.
On a side note try God Hand everyone.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:15 am
I have made a solid vow for all of my gaming. When a game has three difficulty levels (e.g Easy, Medium, Hard), I will always start on the medium difficulty. Otherwise, as I get further in the game, I begin to be able to easily take any new challenge, and get bored. I first tried this with Spartan: Total Warrior. Brilliant, brutal game. And now, If I can get through a game without both having fun AND dying every so often, I get all upset. Besides, going through medium and having the challenge made me want to complete it in hard for more of a challenge. If I had played easy, I wouldn’t want to go through twice more for different difficulty’s. The game would have died there.
Also, if one plays easy difficulty, one can get away with developing bad habits. I know that if I had played Spartan on Easy, I would have neglected blocking, ignored knockback attacks, and generally been a useless gamer, only winning because of my enemies complete stupidity.
Altogether, all games need to have different difficulty’s. I don’t mind if the game does as little as adding enemy damage and reducing your health, or goes as far as adding whole new areas. Its just something as important in a game as, say, ammo. You can live if its not there, but the game feels empty.
(Metroid Prime is excluded from the idea of needing ammo, because it kicks ass)
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
I disagree with that article on a few points…
First, you can’t compare sales of DMC3 to God of War. You’re looking at one franchise that is mostly played out (DMC3, notice the THREE on the end of it) versus a totally new franchise that gets a lot of hype. By the time you’re on DMC THREE, people pretty much already know if they like DMC series or not. You’re not going to get a lot of new entrants to the series at this point. God of War, of course, totally new franchise, and with a different style of gameplay to boot… the worst thing about DMC3 is not how hard it is, it’s how stylistically limited it is - if you don’t like hearing the same hardcoor rawk tracks over and over, the game loses a lot. And Dante is annoying as fuck.
Second, how do sales differences explain difference in difficulty? Wouldn’t you have to, you know, play both games to compare their difficulty levels? It’s like saying that movie ticket sales are explained by how people who saw both movies liked them. Sure, maybe they tell their friends and there’s some influence there, except movies make such a large % of their sales on opening weekends. Games, like movies, are about marketing and hype.
Third, DMC3 was not too hard unless you sucked at video games. I wish players would get some fucking balls and stop crying about how hard games are. You’re supposed to lose at them, they are supposed to crush your spirit. If you want something easy, go watch a movie and pat yourself on the back everytime you press pause and play to go get some more cheetos. Fucking Americans have ruined video games with their pansy ass “everyone’s a winner” mentality. I’m sorry video games aren’t the risk-free escape from gym class and organized sports you thought they would be.
September 9th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Ehhh….Sirlin was kinda right that Devil May Cry 3 is trying to ruin your day. It’s not the hardest game out there and it’s certainly not unbeatable, but it’s a no-nonsense game. I never beat DMC3 (mainly because I got Ninja Gaiden and DMC3 together, then ended up beating Ninja Gaiden and never getting around to DMC3) but I got several levels in and it really didn’t like me getting that far.
But either way, having a game be hard doesn’t end up making it inferior to another easier game. And getting an “experience” doesn’t have an “easy” prerequisite.
Oh yeah…America>Europe and Canada combined.
September 14th, 2007 at 4:48 am
Romothecus, you just ruined wipe out any credibility you could hope to have just for being an elitist ass over something as trivial as video games. As somebody who plays bullet hell shoot-em-ups on the hardest difficulty and tries to never use continues as a hobby, I know that a hard game does not neccessirly mean a fun game, and I don’t expect anyone else to be good at bullet hell shooters and blame them for ruining gaming.
Sirlin is right: Single-player games should generally be a certain experience. That game being so hard or so easy should support that experience. And guess what? The average person, regardless of nationality (so don’t drag “omg America ruined video games”), can’t play Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry 3 because they’re too hard. They don’t get any good experience out of either game. Do you swear at them for sucking at video games and ruining it because they only dabble in gaming?
Face it: Video games are not a niche hobby anymore. People want to play video games without devoting a lot of time to getting good at them. They are a medium of entertainment and art like movies and music are. What the hell is supposed to be fun about re-trying the same part over and over again?
And really, the only genre of games that have suffered from becoming too easy in order ot appeal to more people are role-playing games, especially Japanese ones. Since Final Fantasy 7, it has become impossible to lose at them as long as you spend time grinding. That’s basically the reason why people play them: You spend fifty dollars to win (after a couple hundred hours). In every other genre, there are games for everyone: The casuals can play Halo, Super Smash Bros., Dead Or Alive, Command and Conquer, and God of War, while the hardcore have Quake, Street Fighter 3, Virtua Fighter, StarCraft and Ninja Gaiden.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:12 am
“Also, as I’ve said before, if you want a challenge, you have got to be kidding me that a 1p adventure game is where it’s at. Beating a super-hard AI is really nothing compared to playing against humans. Play Virtua Fighter, Guilty Gear, or Street Fighter for a true challenge.”
I also agree with this. The only games I play for the difficulty are fighting games, as humans beings can challenge you in ways AI cannot not. When you get right down to it, the only thing action game AI really challenges is your ability to memorize patterns. Someone good at Street Fighter can test your wits, ablility to stay calm, technical knowledge of the game, execution, quick thinking, ability to react to entirely new situations, and sportsmanship.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:51 am
“Third, DMC3 was not too hard unless you sucked at video games. I wish players would get some fucking balls and stop crying about how hard games are.”
FFS, quit bragging that games aren’t hard enough, and get over yourself. Sirlin’s not crying that a game was too hard for him to beat, he’s wondering how to make money when games are getting too hard to play for a growing portion of the market that doesn’t want to spend that kind of time on “entertainment”. At least Ramsen made a suggestion about this instead of bragging about being a hardcore douchebag. I’ve watched Sirlin play Ninja Gaiden & DMC3, but it’s boring to watch someone play a difficult game, and he doesn’t seem to care about what those 1Ps can teach him if he puts in the time. Also, Sirlin has a girlfriend who doesn’t want to play these games, eventually tires of watching him play, and would prefer to nibble on his ear and get him to turn off the damn TV (unless he’s playing GoW, that was fun to watch).
Romothecus, maybe your attitude will change when you start dating. In the meantime, if you’re trying to be good at something, play a competitive game instead of a 1P.
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I’m currently in the process of playing Devil May Cry 3; I used to be pretty good at video games in general, but yes, this game is in fact incredibly difficult, to a degree that I’ve not encountered in a very long time. The original Devil May Cry game had a pretty good difficulty level; sure, it was hard, but it did not feel like Devil May Cry 3. Devil May Cry 3 is at a great difficulty level for me, but I ENJOY really hard games. I may be a machoist or whatever, but it is fun to have to try and work (and work hard) to win.
I think the biggest flaw of DMC 3, though, is not its difficulty level. Yes, it is absurdly hard on normal mode, and you will die, a lot. But that’s okay; its the sort of game which is supposed to be difficult. I think the biggest flaw is the death system. You do not keep your red orbs by default; you can save and keep your orbs (which I do) but that isn’t the default way it works. It should work such that if you die, you keep the orbs (and other one-time collectables, like blue orbs and other such things, though obviously these wouldn’t reappear); this means that even if you die a ton, you’re still making SOME progress towards something.
The other big flaw is bosses at the end of levels wherein you’re healed before fighting the boss. Cerebus is a good example of this, as is the level 5 boss, the pair of demons with fire and wind swords. You’re at 100% health at that point, and it is clear that you can, in fact, beat the level minus the boss. But time and again, you have to fight all the way through the level to get back to the boss again, where you invariably die. Yellow orbs are nice and all, but I think a better way to deal with it would have simply to make the statues into “checkpoints”, and if you die, you can restart the level from the last checkpoint rather than from the beginning. It is, after all, the challenge in between which kills you, not the challenges before, and in general the prior challenges aren’t all that bad - normal enemies can, in fact, kill you (and will kill an inexperienced player most likely at least once, and later on some of the nastier ones may kill you even if you’re “good” until you learn how to fight better) but if you can beat normal enemies once, chances are you can do it again without much trouble, so why force the player through the repitition?
Thing is, though, I don’t find games where I’m not challenged fun. God of War was okay, but I’m enjoying Devil May Cry 3 (and enjoyed the original Devil May Cry) a lot more. I think more ability to select difficulty levels would help a lot - if they’d included a real easy mode, a normal mode, and a hard mode (which is this game’s “normal mode”) I think it would have been better all around, as people who DON’T want to fight a super hard game can go on easy mode, people who like to be challenged but aren’t very good can go on normal mode, and I can happily wend my way through hard mode. I hate it when I have to play a game all the way through on normal mode (which is far too easy for me in many games) just to unlock hard mode (which is what MY normal mode should be). Yes, super-hard difficulty levels may “want” to be hidden to avoid annoying players, but too easy a game will put me off and make me not want to play the game through again (or sometimes even finish a too-easy game) even if the higher difficulty modes WOULD have been rewarding for me; I simply don’t want to invest the time to find out.
FYI, my deaths for DMC 3 so far (and I think the pacing here is reasonable, mostly, though Cerebus and the two demons with swords are probably a bit too powerful for this point in the game):
Level 1: 0
Level 2: 1
Level 3: 4 (Cerebus is here. He was quite nasty, but I figured him out and beat him, and fortunately his level is actually quite short, most of your time being spent fighting a giant dog. And hey, if you hadn’t learned how to before, now you know how to use your guns, eh? Or quit in frustration, I guess :\)
Level 4: 1. (Yay, a reprieve.)
Level 5: 8? At least? (I finally bought a yellow orb in frustration, then promptly beat the boss without dying or even using any healing items, having over half my health left. I guess I finally figured him out. This was a level wherein having to play through it over and over was a pain; I was getting quite frustrated and ended up replaying the first level to get more red orbs so I could get more health to beat this boss.)
Level 6: 0 (After the last level, I was glad for a break; this level was pretty easy and felt good to beat).
Level 7: 2 (Both times I used yellow orbs to bring myself back to life in the previous room, then promptly beat the thing that killed me. This said, this level was nearly an hour long, and had I died here I would have been -very- annoyed. I liked the level and all, but it was way too long and it had several extremely difficult fights. I’m glad it was tough, but it would have been nice to have it broken up into two levels rather than one super-long one. Not to mention, dying on the boss on an hour long level, then having to replay the entire level would suck a lot. Fortunately, the boss on this level is actually pretty easy, so it wasn’t a real problem - kudos to the design team for that, at least, though it wouldn’t be necessary if the level wasn’t unreasonably long.)
Secret Mission 4: While I have died on this a couple times, that was mostly out of laziness rather than actual dying due to difficulty. Instead, I’m simply unable to beat this mission (it is insanely difficult) and will probably end up coming back to it. I don’t mind this too much, though. This is the infamous elevator mission others have spoken of.
December 23rd, 2007 at 6:17 am
The funny thing about the death system in DMC 3 is that in the Japanese version, you always started at the last room when you died, and yellow orbs revived you on the spot. Capcom restored that system and fixed the difficulty levels in the Special Edition release here and left in an option to play in Crazy No-Checkpoints Mode.
December 25th, 2007 at 12:58 am
So what difficulty did you beat God of War on, TD?
January 10th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Rez is going to be released on Xbox Live Arcade! Looks like people will actually have a chance to play this game now.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:42 am
What always confused me in DMC3 was how insanely much larger your health bar gets by the end of the game. That would normally make perfect sense… except you’re allowed to do New Game+… which means once you’ve beaten cerberus with low health a single time, you never have to do it again. Even if you want to replay on the higher difficulty levels, you’re allowed to use all the health boosts you had, and it makes the game ridiculously much easier.
I had friends who quit in frustration right at Cerberus, and then came and tried the game on my save file, and beat him in one attempt, because my character could take more than 2 hits from him or w/e, and survive. That always seemed particularly unbalanced to me… shouldn’t the player who’s proven themselves a good player be allowed to play a harder game is they desire (less health), rather than setting it up the opposite way?
Same with the secret missions, since people mentioned them a few times… most of them are nearly impossible to beat on your first playthrough, but once you come back with all the weapons/abilities, they become much easier.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:09 am
“Same with the secret missions, since people mentioned them a few times… most of them are nearly impossible to beat on your first playthrough, but once you come back with all the weapons/abilities, they become much easier.”
That makes me think of Dead Rising.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Mr Sirlin, clearly you have written a thought provoking article here. The fact that comments are still coming in nearly a year later says it all.
What has fascinated me about games since the first console I remember being in our house (the Spectrum 48k), is the variety of challenges and experiences they offer. It’s what you get out of them on a personal level that draws you in, keeps you coming back for more.
Difficulty, generally, has lowered over the years. But the wide demographic of what turns individuals on about a game hasn’t. So you’ll never have a “perfect” difficulty level. It’s about analysing what makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and tailoring you gaming purchases to suit those needs.
No game can give me the same fulfillment as an evenly matched 2 player fight on Super Turbo. The difficulty is what makes it exciting, but the difficulty comes in knowing the mind of my opponent, not from the sadistic mind of the developer.
Keep doing what you do best Mr Sirlin.
Nick
January 21st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Rez: I’m pretty sure that (spoiler alert) level 5 in Rez autobalances itself in difficulty according to how well you played the rest of the game up to that point. The level 5 boss was actually a challenge.
The Wikipedia article confirms it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rez
Just interesting that the game you praise for being kind to the player, is actually kind to the player.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:14 am
“Also, as I’ve said before, if you want a challenge, you have got to be kidding me that a 1p adventure game is where it’s at. Beating a super-hard AI is really nothing compared to playing against humans” - Sirlin
I disagree. They are simply completely different experiences, but none of them is without merit. Just like you play SF to win, but also because of your love for the game, according to your articles; I do exactly the same in Ninja Gaiden Black, which, as many have already pointed out, is not as hard as you claim it to be. It just requires one to try out a lot of things and then find good stategies that work, which then get countered by the game in higher difficulties, which in turn forces the player to improve those strategies or find new ones. However, it’s not only memorisation, as many times one might come up with some new creative strategy on the spot. Only because the skill set necessary for such a game is different then the one required for a fighting game it doesn’t make it the 2lesser experience”.
The only thing one could say is that NG often fails to even hint you on what might be a useful strategy, but I guess that’s the whole point. This all sounds very familiar to me, as it’s very similar to your view on fighting games expressed on this site.
But to get back on the point. For me, beating everything in Ninja Gaiden Black on Master Ninja was both a huge satisfaction AND also a lot of fun. Other people would go to tournaments for that, and that’s okay. It’s simply a matter of preference (and I also DO like fighting games).
Now that doesn’t mean I wont enjoy an easy game. In that regard, props to you for mentioning Rez, a game whose obscurity really saddens me. However few games can be as exhilarating as NGB or most schmups to me. And that is why I am glad that people like Itagaki exist (no matter how out of touch he is with reality), as it is people like him that garantee that I won’t be running out of games of that type; despite the fact that it would seem more logical from a business point of view not to go for a niche audience of games such as myself…
…which is a notion I would also like to question. Because while it may be true that GoW sold better then DMC3, I still question if DMC3 would have done better if it were made easier and more accessible. You see, if all 1p action games were like GoW, their sales might also spread. Instead, we should be glad that the game market nowadays is big enough so that even niche games can survive. And as long as those games follow those formulas, they will continue to get my money. So it does seem like a solid business, as there are apparently enough people supporting such games.
Anyways, getting good in NG is just as manegeable as getting good in those fighting games you seem to play alot of; and while you may get more satisfaction out of beating a human opponent, it’s mostly a matter of taste.
As my final words to you concerning NG:
Wall jump attacks >>>>>>>>>>>>>> first Boss Murai (at least on Normal)
Now on some other commentaries I saw:
-Mission 7 in F-zero GX is indeed very hard. It also induces an incredible adrenalin rush if you’re close to winning. However if you think that it’s vastly harder then everything else in the game, maybe you should try some of the staff ghosts (especially twist road’s and sonic oval’s) to see if that doesn’t change your mind.
-ikaruga on hard = really really hard. However, watching highscore runs on this has a strangely mesmerizing effect on me. It certainly shows to what extent of near-perfection one can get. If you want to see what true sadism is though, you should look for vids on the final bosses of mushihimesama + mushihimesama futari. After seeing that, I just can’t complain about other games being difficult anymore.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:56 am
You’re mistaken in thinking that they’re “different skill sets”, cozy duck. In general, fighting games require everything you’ve mentioned about NGB, such as coming up with new strats on the fly, as well as a whole new set of skills, such as adapting to your opponent continuosly… once you learn a trick against an AI, that’s it, you’ve won, there’s nothing left to learn. Plus you’re learning skills like how to deal with competitive environments, and you may even get rewards such as monetary prizes for winning the tournaments. There’s just a lot more substance in multiplayer. (This is coming from someone who also loved NGB, though I found I didn’t have time to play through the entire game 5 seperate times to unlock master ninja, so I never beat that mode)
Also, DMC3 sales would have been better had it been easier… the sales were considerably less than the original DMC, and there’s huge portion of the fanbase from the first DMC that complained quite loudly that they really wanted to play another DMC game, got stuck on that Cerberus boss on the first day, and returned the game.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
As far as simply beating a game that is true. However consider going for hogh scores in a game such as ikaruga. While there is no real randomness to it and you are “fighting the computer” in a sense, the game still seems to have almost unlimited possibilities to improve. Despite being a 20-minutes game, some people have invested 1000s of hours into perfecting their playthrough, yet even someone whith only moderate knowledge of the game can see that the best runs are not perfect.
Now of course beating the A.I. will always be a simpler task then beating a human in a tournament. But even in a game like NGB people do score runs, which forms a similar type of competition to a fighting tournament. That will not need exactly the same set of skills as, unlike in a tournament, when playing a game for score you always have the option to restart. It doesn’t make the task easier though, it simply means that your “battle” is carried out over a longer period of time.
You see, the main point where I disagree is when you said “there’s nothing left to learn”. Given enough depth (see Ikaruga again), there’ll always be something new to learn, since the game is designed in such a way that absolute perfection is far beyond human ability.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 am
You’ve got two issues, optimization, and adaption (for lack of a better term?). Single player is entirely an optimization experience, as you said… you just find what works against the computer, and do it really well. Multiplayer also requires an adaptation component… what works really well against one human opponent won’t work at all against another.
That’s really the end of the debate… the can optimize and optimize all you want, both in single-player and multi-player, but the addition of more necessary skills in multi-player means there’s more to master, and in the end it will take more time, and be more difficult, and is also more rewarding.
I also disagree with your last sentence… that is perfecting a speed run is not “learning”. Once you’ve determi