#006: Hard Work

[CaitSeith]

Well, one of the reasons modern games seem less difficult is that they dropped one of the most annoying mechanics that old games often came stock-standard with - extra lives. Extra lives were a needless holdover from arcade games where sucking quarters from you was paramount and really had no place or use in console games except to ramp up the difficulty. Imagine Mega-Man if you had unlimited lives and checkpoints in four places on every level? The difficulty would plummet! Now imagine your first bunch of times playing through harder sections of Gears of War if, when you died a few times, you had to start the whole game over. Kinda puts things into perspective.

Super Meat Boy says otherwise. Infinite lives, and tough as nails!

 

[bz316]

Damn. Seeing Erin like this is really depressing. After years of seeing her so full of life and uncontrollable id, watching her just shut herself off from the world seems so wrong...

 

[rasta111]

... well now that I think about it, does Erin die at the end? Because the series is called Erin Dies Alone ....

...... That would be a sucker punch man.

In the end, all of us die alone, even if surrounded by friends and family when it happens. All of us face the eternal darkness on our own. The best we can hope for is for it to arrive quickly when it does, rather than slowly, painfully, drawn-out.
So, really, the title could mean that she dies in 70 years, after having a great career that's compatible with a happy family life!
Was what I just said crushing or uplifting? I'm not sure.

We all die alone sure, but life is for living not dying and when we live we're not alone, so it's not so much about how we die but how we live.

Erin's a comic character, so if she dies alone that only means no one is reading the comic, as long as you're reading it she's practically alive... Is that better? I think the title is literally just meant to illustrate her depressing lifestyle, her seeming inability to change that and little more.

 

[Gorrath]

Not sure I follow you. I merely claimed that many older games would be much easier with unlimited lives and checkpoints while many newer games would be exceedingly difficult without them. Hotline: Miami would be all but impossible without infinite lives and is still damned hard with with them, but much like Super Meat Boy isn't an older game, so I"m not sure which part of what I said you're objecting to.

Edit: Seems The Escapist or I are having issues. This reply is meant for CaitSeith.

 

[Gorrath]

Deleted Double Post

 

[iniudan]

Hey, not all modern games are that easy, I think the problem here is that over the years as video games have turned into a massive industry the developers have been encouraged to make their games more how shall we say 'sell-able'... In the old days development was more small time with just developers making games they thought would be fun... Somehow this quite often translates into ridiculously difficult by today's standards.

Speculation of course but some modern games live up to the old ways... Devil May Cry 3 for example, although it still shows in that they add in easy modes and settings to make the game itself easier but what's really wrong with that? Still they are rarer and rarer still these days...

I certainly get how games start to feel like work instead of entertainment... Could have something to do with so many people who actually try and make a living just playing games on streams and things like that. It's almost like they're voluntarily turning them into work... Somehow. I can hardly enjoy games anymore myself it can be so depressing... Feels like a really long time since I bothered with ANY game in fact. Make of all that what you will.

Well quite a few game, back in the day, were also hard because lot of game used to be based on arcade game design.

 

[rasta111]

Well quite a few game, back in the day, were also hard because lot of game used to be based on arcade game design.

That's probably true, it wasn't until arcades became consoles and consoles became mainstream that games really started getting dumbed down for the masses so to speak.

Arcades and the oldest consoles, were always a niche sort of thing. It used to be it was more profitable to make arcade style games as arcades had more range. In those type of games it actually does pay to be more difficult in theory but only if it's that good. When consoles and home computers were available for most people making games that we can buy and take home and play at our leisure actually expanded what developers could get away with doing while still remaining profitable in theory.

Personally I never played many arcade games so I never noticed that in particular really... When my dad bought an Atari ST we got piles of games for that, too many different kinds to remember properly, Commodore and Sinclair Spectrum before that... I must be getting old.

 

[Birdnest]

Regarding "old game difficulty", I guess I liked it back in the day, mostly because I had such limited budget that a game really had to yield long, long hours of playing. Since I started with SNES/Gameboy and got more games only starting with N64, this difficulty did however not come in Prince-of-Persia style die-and-repeat difficulty, but rather in terms of unlocking the extras in super smash brothers.

After starting my Diploma thesis and then the PhD, I rarely feel the need or want to deal with "challenge" in the evening any more. Challenge in the sense that I may die? Yes. Challenge in the sense that I probably will die several times before succeeding? Yes if it is something like Hotline Miami But I mostly gave up on Wings of Vi, Super Meat Boy and They Bleed Pixels after running into levels that reenact the frustrating difficulty of old.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah, we have it WAY too easy these days thank to being able to save in the game or the whole playthrough mode on some on the Nintendo games.

 

[BX3]

At first I thought the 3rd panel said "Might Guy"

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/5/59221/2242550-might_guy.png

Then I got slightly disappointed when I reread it and saw the Y.

---------------------------------

Rad Panda: "Wow, you're so bad at video games you died in not-Mario Paint. Better pull out the modern stuff."

Shots Status

Fired <--
Not Fired

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Ahahahahah!!!! A drastic F***** thing indeed, little gritty mascot!

Seriously, thanks. Had a worst day evarrrr.

 

[Fappy]

I was just talking about Mario Paint the other day! Loved that game as a kid.

 

[Jamash]

I'd argue that most older games had to be difficult, otherwise you would be able to beat them in a single afternoon (queue The Order jokes)

That's a good point.

I was watching some playthroughs of one of my favourite games from my childhood on Youtube and was pretty surprised by how short they were.

Robocop on the Amiga lasted less than 30 minutes from beginning to start, and this was a full price AAA big movie tie-in game that my parents paid the full price of £25-30 for. If it wasn't for it's difficulty it's simplistic gameplay and repetitiveness, it would have been a rip-off at a rate of around £1/min... which is even more than it cost in the coin-op arcade for a go (which is another reason for the difficulty of these games, a coin-op arcade game wouldn't be very successful if it could be completed in 30 minutes on one credit).

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Bionic Commando Re-Armed is arguably more difficult than the original bionic commando but just because of the general mushiness of modern controls compared to older gen controls.

Rogue legacy is as hardcore as any old platformer. Crimsonland is just as tough as smash tv. There are difficult modern games if you are willing to look for them.

Modern games aren't less difficult, they just generally do away with bullshit that older games used to pad the runtime.

Stuff like limited lives, no save, not enough/no checkpoints etc. Some stuff was truly challenging like the yellow devil in Megaman 1 and the patterns of Rush-n-Attack but a lot of the difficulty of old games was just poor design.

 

[Dandres]

I put all modern games that are easy in the casual category. If I can turn on a game and actually beat a level/section or 2 in less than 30 mins it?s a casual game. Which most of the news games I have played are. With the older games I had to dedicate part of my life to beating a part of it & the sense of accomplishment was greater. If this comic has taught me any so far. You can ether do drugs and suck at older video games or not do drugs and get that sense of accomplishment. No drugs for me.

 

[Rad Party God]

Will we ever see the modern iteration of Rad Panda?, if so, I want Rad Panda Generations.

 

[Akisa]

Well, one of the reasons modern games seem less difficult is that they dropped one of the most annoying mechanics that old games often came stock-standard with - extra lives. Extra lives were a needless holdover from arcade games where sucking quarters from you was paramount and really had no place or use in console games except to ramp up the difficulty. Imagine Mega-Man if you had unlimited lives and checkpoints in four places on every level? The difficulty would plummet! Now imagine your first bunch of times playing through harder sections of Gears of War if, when you died a few times, you had to start the whole game over. Kinda puts things into perspective.

But in Mega Man you don't start over... Well at least starting from 2 (never played 1)

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I always laugh when people present the theory that games only seem easier today because we're a lot more seasoned than we were back when we were kids. There was a time when I thought that theory might have had some merit; then I played some of my old favorites and wept a little.

 

[JohnZ117]

Now this i'm really interested in ... seeing her play modern games. This comic is really showing potential and I look forward to the next one guys ... well now that I think about it, does Erin die at the end? Because the series is called Erin Dies Alone ....

...... That would be a sucker punch man.

"Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths, while the brave die but once," and Erin looks quite alone holed up in her cave.