Can video games be too hard?

[cevik]

I found this article on Slate (of all places) discussing the how difficult games often are the best payoff for playing.  The game he discusses in detail is Ninja Gaiden:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2100116/

I thought it was a decent read so I figured I'd link it in case anyone else was interested.

[schild]

Hmmm. Games that are purposefully made hard or are hard due to horrible design aren't fun. Games that are hard due to good gameplay coupled with good level design are fun.

Ninja Gaiden is hard, but only because it's sorta of a POP:SOT on angeldust. More enemies, quicker response, razor sharp abilities, and better level design.

One game that was incredibly fun was Dark Cloud 2, but without the players guide you will never 100% it. That's NOT fun. So I have the game and the guide and will never beat it.

If I think of more, I'll list them, I guess.

[Alluvian]

The first ninja gaiden final level was of the NOT FUN difficulty style.  Any jump missing a platform by a pixel sent you back to the start of the level.  Die vs the final boss?  Start of the level.  NOT fun.

New Xbox ninja gaiden is FUN hard.


More hard NOT FUN games:
Battletoads NES
TMNT NES
Bionic Commando arcade
Final level of Driver for PC (@#$^%#!$^!)
Final level of Starlancer for PC (protecting paper mache ships in a shitstorm)

[schild]

I liked TMNT for the Nintendo. I eventually beat it, but if I went back to it together I would'nt remember shitall about it. I wish I could remember the super hard games for NES that turned out to be not fun at all but it seems as though I've blocked them out and I only remember the good stuff. How convenient.

[Alluvian]

Bruce Lee for the XBOX!!!

It was hard because after the first few seconds, gathering the will to continue playing that utter piece of gaming excrement was nearly impossible.  Holy shit that game sucked in ways few have sucked before.  Thank god I had the gamers pass at the time and could immediately take it back for something else.

[koboshi]

I think you make a good observation there Schild, it does suck not to get a hundred percent of what you paid for in a game, but I have to say that I think that's more of a problem of how shit is laid out in a game.  In Ninja Gaiden the greatness spawns from that intangible of all video game attributes, gameplay.

     I'll explain using pong.  In Pong to get 100% of the game you just have to play it for a few seconds, however the game lasts longer than that, there are multiple techniques and strategies which can be employed, I don't think for a second I have hit every angle on every wall, on hard mode I couldn't keep up unless I was in some sort of Zen-like state however it was a great game.  Ninja Gaiden is the same way, it's not what you kill its how you kill it.  I can have fun killing the same guy 20 times over in 20 different ways.

     The truth of it is that the great games are endless in their variation and finite in their rules.  It's all about making chess again.

[Rasix]

I liked TMNT for the Nintendo. I eventually beat it, but if I went back to it together I would'nt remember shitall about it. I wish I could remember the super hard games for NES that turned out to be not fun at all but it seems as though I've blocked them out and I only remember the good stuff. How convenient.

I could never beat that fucking level with the van. Could never find the damn rope and when I did I'd die soon after.  I hated that game worse than Battletoads.

[HaemishM]

Game that was hard in the absolutely not fun FUCK IT'S EATING MY FACE OFF way:

ET for the Atari 2600.

[schild]

Mentioning ET is a cop out. Comeon now, you know that.

[HaemishM]

The pain is still fresh, 15 years later.

[Daydreamer]

I liked TMNT for the Nintendo. I eventually beat it, but if I went back to it together I would'nt remember shitall about it. I wish I could remember the super hard games for NES that turned out to be not fun at all but it seems as though I've blocked them out and I only remember the good stuff. How convenient.

I could never beat that fucking level with the van. Could never find the damn rope and when I did I'd die soon after.  I hated that game worse than Battletoads.

Same.  And I usually lost that whiny loser Raph to the electric seaweed in the bomb diffusal level.  But who needs him?

[schild]

Odd, that's where I dumped Raph also.

[Fabricated]

Here's a question: How do you feel about games that require you to beat them on their "hard as a motherfucker" setting to get new features, bonuses, better endings, etc?

[Rasix]

Here's a question: How do you feel about games that require you to beat them on their "hard as a motherfucker" setting to get new features, bonuses, better endings, etc?

I almost never ever ever even do them.  I did when I was a kid, but I really had nothing better to do (living in Arizona it was 100-110+ degrees outside in the summer).

[Fabricated]

I almost never ever ever even do them.  I did when I was a kid, but I really had nothing better to do (living in Arizona it was 100-110+ degrees outside in the summer).

Same here, except there wasn't anything to do where I lived.

I'm sort of dealing with that now playing RE:Outbreak.

Getting all the neat extra costumes and goodies requires finding a bunch of hard to get items, playing on Very Hard, and completing the scenerios with all the characters (some of which really suck ass).

[Arcadian Del Sol]

Prince of Persia was hard because some of the levels made you think. You didn't know how or where to go and all the buzz saws and fire etc - the 'hard' part was unwravelling the mystery of the map itself to figure out how to get from point A to point B.

Games like this are hard in a good way.

Ninja Gaiden is hard in a bad way. They clearly scaled up the difficulty artifically when at some unknown point in testing, it was determined the game might be too easy and short. None of the levels are mystifying or even thought-invoking. You may as well be standing on a conveyor belt that shuttles you along the map.

I liked Prince of Persia. I hated Ninja Gaiden.

[Xilren's Twin]

Prince of Persia was hard because some of the levels made you think. You didn't know how or where to go and all the buzz saws and fire etc - the 'hard' part was unwravelling the mystery of the map itself to figure out how to get from point A to point B.

Games like this are hard in a good way.I liked Prince of Persia. I hated Ninja Gaiden.

Well, I think the only reason PoP falls into the good category is the Rewind power.  If every time you missed a jump or guessed wrong or even got your ass kicked in combat you had to reload and replay large sections of the levels, that would have sucked.  I can't remember in the end stages of the game when you don't have your dagger anymore having to replay a section with a fight and thinking "well, this sucks if I have to do it more than twice".  That's what I hated about NG: too little room for error means unless your perfect, you do the same level repeatively and my reflexs ain't what they used to be when I was a teenage button mashing crack monkey.

So both games are faced with the same problem, but PoP handles it gracefully with good game design.  NG just makes you do it over til you get it right like a sadistic metal shop teacher.  Course, that sort of difficulty can also be looked at as purely a marketing ploy to sell game guides (and get in bed with game mags' to publish super secret cheat codes that seems to be so popular now).

Xilren

[Arcadian Del Sol]

I used the rewind power four times in the whole game, and once just to show off the effect. What made PoP hard was clever level design. what makes NG hard are level bosses with double-wide health bars (i.e. shoddy design).

[Piperfan]

Anyone ever play Emperor of Fading Suns? Not the d20 RPG stuff, the strategy game from '97 or '98.

It falls in into both good and bad catagories in my view.

[Azhrarn]

Most commercial games want you to eventually be able to win, NetHack
doesn't care if you win, Slash'em wants you dead and ground into paste.  (Some mangled quote I half remember hearing a while ago)