Difficult or Cheap?

[Slingback78]

Two games that I instantly think of when thinking "tough, but fair" are Godhand(PS2) and Fallout 3.

Godhand will show you the game over screen many, many times, but so far it's never been because of cheapness, it's because of my own mistakes. I don't swear at the game, at swear at myself for not breaking guards, activating a roulette, wasting the frenzy mode, or just plain messing up. It feels really good to get good at it, because it means you've cracked it's technique.

Fallout 3 has so far been very good, and I really dig that it nailed the desperate themes of the series. You have to keep on your toes at all times and be on the lookout, especially seeing as how ammo is deeply limited. Just recently, I blew most of my ammo trying to take out a bunch of F%$*ing mirelurks, only to have exactly 13 slugs left in my rifle when I ran into a couple super mutants and some raiders. It's my own fault for not considering the future.

Take this from someone who HATES cheapness,difficulty van be done right.

 

[Sporadic]

I don't know if this counts, I was playing Diablo:LOD the other day, got my sorceress all the way to act 4 using nothing but warmth and inferno, constant flame and I never ran out of mana, but no, I walk out into hell, and i gently tickle the demons with my flames... I suppose it's mostly my fault, but still... A whole Char wasted... DAMN YOU FIRE RESISTANCE!!!

 

[Dapper Ninja]

I consider Ninja Gaiden to be cheap because almost every time I died, it was because the camera didn't feel like not sucking.

Metal Gear Solid 4 on harder difficulties is cheap because every enemy can find you if you so much as crawl too quickly around them and will then proceed to alert every other enemy in the level to come to your location in a matter of seconds and shoot you with weapons that kill you if you are hit about three times which you have virtually no chance of avoiding because you were crawling to avoid this exact situation and to run away, you have to press a button to crouch and then press the button again to stand up, and by then, the enemies have most likely gotten close enough to melee you back onto the ground and shoot you to death, and if you try to fight back, if you actually managed to survive long enough to draw your weapon and spray bullets at all of your enemies, you'll quickly have to reload, which is basically an invitation to murder you. Not fun.

 

[Jonathan Hexley]

Guitar Hero III.
Just Guitar Hero III.
Let's review shall we?
Boss Battles:
Pretty tough songs on Hard
Your opponents don't miss any notes unless you attack them
They'll attack you at the perfect time to make you lose

Game itself:
BS difficulty curve, with Hard going from 6 to 11 on the difficulty dial during the last tiers
Some songs spam chords (e.g: Three chords up the ARSE)
Extremely fast bits kill your arms

In short, if you can't get a five on at least most Medium songs, do NOT FUCK WITH GHIII HARD. It'll just fuck you back 10x harder.

 

[gigastrike]

I really hate the god-like reflexes the computer has. To tell you just how fast they are: in Guild Wars, an AI can interrupt a spell that takes 1/4 second to cast with an arrow that takes 1/4 second to shoot and still has to go through the air, and this happens EVERY TIME!

 

[this_was_a_mistake]

When you kill a boss but shortly after he explodes, with the blast radius of the entire field, and killing you instantly, so you'll have to start all over (i.e. Ninja Gaiden 2).

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

At this moment.. the first rails level on Gears of War 2 on the insane difficulty. In this level you are tasked to defend a rig from a 1 hit kill projectile by firing at said projectile with a turret mounted gatling gun.

Where it gets cheap is that the first several projectiles are animated and are not real... and you are using them to get a bearing on the arc of the projectiles, once you clear a falling boulder animation sequence then (without notice) all other projectiles are real and must be shot down. Once you know this, the 30 second intro animation fake sequence acts as a learning curve punishment since you now have to sit through its arbitrary bullshit just to get back to the actual beginning of the level.

Also, the gatling gun over heats requiring that you use controlled bursts however the gun takes half a second to get up to speed to even begin firing. Ultimately, beyond memorization the whole level is practically unplayable.

 

[shadow skill]

How many of you playing Ninja Gaiden one or two tend not to use the block button? That game is strange in that they expect the players to be defensive rather than offensive. Those games almost require that you watch a pro playing it or read a guide in order to figure out how to play them. But I would argue that for the most part Ninja Gaiden one and two are examples of how to make difficult games without them becoming cheap.

 

[Ameatypie]

Crysis in DELTA mode is almost like that - everytime i moved i got shot. I still managed to clock it though

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

I consider Ninja Gaiden to be cheap because almost every time I died, it was because the camera didn't feel like not sucking.

Metal Gear Solid 4 on harder difficulties is cheap because every enemy can find you if you so much as crawl too quickly around them and will then proceed to alert every other enemy in the level to come to your location in a matter of seconds and shoot you with weapons that kill you if you are hit about three times which you have virtually no chance of avoiding because you were crawling to avoid this exact situation and to run away, you have to press a button to crouch and then press the button again to stand up, and by then, the enemies have most likely gotten close enough to melee you back onto the ground and shoot you to death, and if you try to fight back, if you actually managed to survive long enough to draw your weapon and spray bullets at all of your enemies, you'll quickly have to reload, which is basically an invitation to murder you. Not fun.

Maybe because your an old man? Just maybe? You can barely walk with that suit on..Hmm.. I ran away quite a few times. Well not run, More turn a corner and octo-camo. Fucking failed a BIG BOSS Extreme and used a ration on the geckos.

If we were talking about MGO's "Hit the air ten feet from a persons head it will kill them" hit detection then you would have a point.. Why couldn't they have MGS4 hit detection instead of whateverthefucktheycallthis hit detection in MGO..

 

[Gestapo Hunter]

The Metal Slug series is both hard and cheap

 

[Dapper Ninja]

I consider Ninja Gaiden to be cheap because almost every time I died, it was because the camera didn't feel like not sucking.

Metal Gear Solid 4 on harder difficulties is cheap because every enemy can find you if you so much as crawl too quickly around them and will then proceed to alert every other enemy in the level to come to your location in a matter of seconds and shoot you with weapons that kill you if you are hit about three times which you have virtually no chance of avoiding because you were crawling to avoid this exact situation and to run away, you have to press a button to crouch and then press the button again to stand up, and by then, the enemies have most likely gotten close enough to melee you back onto the ground and shoot you to death, and if you try to fight back, if you actually managed to survive long enough to draw your weapon and spray bullets at all of your enemies, you'll quickly have to reload, which is basically an invitation to murder you. Not fun.

Maybe because your an old man? Just maybe? You can barely walk with that suit on..Hmm.. I ran away quite a few times. Well not run, More turn a corner and octo-camo. Fucking failed a BIG BOSS Extreme and used a ration on the geckos.

If we were talking about MGO's "Hit the air ten feet from a persons head it will kill them" hit detection then you would have a point.. Why couldn't they have MGS4 hit detection instead of whateverthefucktheycallthis hit detection in MGO..

I don't care about how much perfect sense it makes for it to be this cheap, it's still cheap.

That reminds me of another game that is both difficult and cheap, but only because of its attempts at realism: Farcry 2.

 

[MrHappy255]

Okay for cheap I don't care what anyone says but far cry on any difficulty really the enemy can spot you no matter where you are. I was so disgusted with the fact that you could be hiding behind all of the pretty shrubbery that was everywhere in the game and bam shot by ten enemy characters from a mile and a half away.

Wish I was that good in online mutli.

 

[Altorin]

the last boss of Quake 4 Arena on the hardest setting will kill you as soon as you spawn with a pinpoint railgun shot from across the map (it takes place in a big platforms in space level with a clear shot from either side of the level)

 

[Strategia]

Rail of War, insta-kill bulldozers that are bright yellow = difficult. Jungle level with large amounts of enemies hidden under foliage where you cannot see them = difficult. Including tons of aforementioned bulldozers, most often in pairs = cheap. Just about every time I have a good run, some bulldozer appears out of the foliage and when I see it it's already killed me. Bloody hell guys, that level is just unreasonable!

 

[SirSchmoopy]

Stars Wars the Force Unleashed. I played the game through on the hard difficulty and it was just stupid. Ever boss fight was me kiteing around shooting lightning at them. I know they wanted it to be difficult but using my light saber was suicide most of the time.

 

[Ace of Spades]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is the definition of cheap. In Yahtzee's words, "The armored enemies can take so many rounds to the torso that you'd think there'd be nothing left but a spinal column and the cornflakes they had for breakfast". It took me an entire clip of machine gun rounds to take down one enemy for christ's sake.