Difficulty in games

When I play games I don't like getting angry. I don't think it's a good reason to be angry at something so trivial. While I consider my self as a mellow person, I tend to loose it when playing games sometimes. When I played Resident Evil 2 I didn't want to die on the same spot over and over again. Only to find out I was going in the wrong direction. This counts for all games. The boat levels on Uncharted 2 is more boring and frustrating than fun. They lay out is cool and what happens is awesome. So what's wrong with it? The amount of guards and the very few places you could go. It had the trappings of all the best levels the franchise is known for, but fails. There where only two moments in the entire game where I truly raged at. The Boat sequence and the sandstorm sequence. Everything else can just pass of as annoyance when dying. I don't mind a challenge. I welcome a challenge, but if that challenge isn't any fun to play then there is no reason to play it in the first place.

That is not going to save you.

KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE

I do tend to play games on hard sometimes. In order to do that, however, is I would have to beat the game several times so I know the layout and enemy placements. When I had a 360 I had Call Of Duty 4. I played that single player mode about 7 times. Then as the game got a bit boring I decided to take on Veteran. By that time I only beaten on Normal, so I look down and started to play the game on Veteran. Much rage was taken and it did took me months to beat the game. At the time my controller's Left Bumper button was not working properly so I really didn't mind it. All I had to do was to push the button hard. It was rarely used so I didn't mind. Then, after beating CoD4 on Veteran, I decided to get the High Mile Club achievement. After hours of trying I decided to go online for the best strategies I can use to beat this mission. The best solution? Flash bangs. It's kind of obvious, but me not using grenades that often shows how little I used them. I went in and tried it again. And again. And Again. Then I threw my hands up in frustration, I took my Collector's Edition of Halo 3 and traded it in for a wired controller. I've been wanting a wired controller for a while because I don't want to worry about my controller dying on me. I couldn't get it on a whim either. I had to have a good reason to get a new controller. What is the sense to buy another controller when the other one works just as good expect one button? After I got home with the wired controller I put the game in and after an hour of non stop of playing that mission I finally did it. I got the achievement. This was the only time I felt pride on beating something on hard difficulty. About a year or so later I found out that not a lot of people has gotten the achievement. When I showed off the achievement to friends they couldn't believe it.

TICKA TICKA TICKA

Oh, look. He's talking about Alan Wake again

I had gone about my business with playing games on Normal. It wasn't that often I would play a game on easy. In Bioshock I was not aware that when you died everything you did before you died saved. Meaning that Big Daddy I had SUCH a hard time with could still have the same health when I was killed. If I knew that at the time I would have never dropped the difficulty down. I really didn't want to have a headache by a game. Then a few years later I played Alan Wake on Nightmare Difficulty. Except for ONE part towards the end of the game, nightmare wasn't as difficult as I thought. Challenging yes, but because I finished it about 8 times I knew all the strategies I need to know to get a good handle on things. Getting the 'Gunless Wonder' achievement was harder than Nightmare Mode. When I finally played Uncharted 2 for a number of times I thought that it would be great to beat the game on hard, and so I did. The entire third act was a nightmare fuel rage. That was nothing compared a few months ago when I decided to play New Game Plus on Batman: Arkham City. New Game Plus to me is chance to play the game again with all my upgrades nothing less nothing more. If other games with it had a bump in difficulty I would not have noticed it. It would be the ultimate Batman experience. Batman New Game Plus was so bad about the difficulty that I slammed down my PS3 controller, which is something I never did. I don't want to break a controller because of rage. I didn't mind that the alarm above enemies head was not there. I did not mind that getting hit took a good part of my health. What I did mind, however, was the shotgun acting as a sniper. I was half the map trying to dodge getting shot at. When getting killed by a shotgun when the shotgun is clearly out of range was the last straw for me. Which was a shame too because at the time it was the only way I could play the story mode with my Animated Series costume. I nearly broke it again when playing Uncharted 1. I was so angry in fact that I used the Weapon Select option every time I ran out of ammo. I didn't have the one hit kill and infinite ammo cheat for Uncharted 1. You had to beat the game in Crushing in order to get that. So I used a loophole and just kept pushing pause every time I need to get the ammo back.

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

And now I'm like him

I can get why people would prefer to play on the hardest difficulty. I have no problem with it, as you can most likely tell by now I do to. They think it's more fun and more rewarding, I get that. But I don't feel THAT rewarded or pride on beating a game on hard. I feel pride for two seconds and then think to myself 'Thank God! I won't have to deal with that shit again!' When I was young games where hard. Yeah. However, when I was young I didn't care if I beat the game or not. I only cared about having fun. That is all what gaming is to me, fun. I didn't mind that I could not beat any game I had. Now with checkpoints and saves it's much easier now to beat a game now.

Should games get easier? No. I don't mind that it's hard in some places. I'll rage, sure. But I'll get over it. Normal should have the most balanced difficulty. It's not too hard or too easy. Games now are getting too easy. When I played RAGE I played it on easy because I only had it for that one day and I didn't know how long it would take me to beat it. After beating the game I tested out Nightmare and it was not that difficult at all. I got through the first few missions without really dying. It could get harder later on though. It does not help at all that everything is in a fixed prices. What costs $25 for ammo on easy is still $25 on Nightmare. Getting money in that game is surprisingly easy.

PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE DID IT

This made older games more fun sometimes

Do you remember cheat codes and how it made a game more fun? I do. I really miss them. While I don't really condone cheating til after you beat the game, there is just some games that is much more fun with them. Case in point; Grand Theft Auto. That game is known for it's amazing cheat codes. It made the games much more fun to play. Resident Evil 2 is another game. I played Leon's storyline without cheat codes and had a great time. I had an even better time with Claire's storyline with the cheat code on. It is breaking the game considering that having infinite ammo should not make a game scary. The beauty with Resident Evil 2 is that even having infinite ammo it still was scary. Having little to no ammo should not be the reason why a game is scary. In Resident Evil 3, which I'm currently playing, they dump ammo on you so much that I even have handgun ammo in item boxes ready to be used. What makes that game scary is the amazingly fast and amazingly relentless Nemesis chasing after you. Every time I saw him coming out I tend to freeze in fear. No amount of ammo is going to take him down. It's not often I use cheat codes when playing a game for the first time. Most of the time I wait till I beat the game. No one should tell you how to play a game. It's your game that you got with your money. No one should tell you that if you play on easy mode or use cheat codes that is not the way to play it. There is a reason why easy mode and cheat codes exist. Just play the game, have fun, and don't let anyone tell you any different. You might think less of me saying that I only play games for fun and not taking it serious enough, but I don't care. Games, to me, should be fun with the right amount of challenge so it won't be boring, but not hard enough to give me a headache. The only time to be truly mad at a game is if the game you really wanted sucks.