I wanted to find games where hard mode isnt just a modifirr but throws a monkey wrench at your usual gaming habits. From Titan objectives in payday to sudden inconviences. What are some example where harder mldes jsnt just a damage sponge?
Hard modes that adds complications to the game
- Thread starter gyrobot_v1legacy
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In Silent Hill 2 you can change the combat difficulty and the puzzle difficulty separately. It changes the puzzle clues and solutions completely.
Hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas makes your ammo have weight, and requires you to eat sleep and drink to stay alive. It kinda limits your ability to carry around a missile launcher and 100+ missiles and flit back and forth between vendors/wait in place for a few days to get them to restock items for easy ammo. Also sleeping in a random bed doesn't heal you and magically fix your crippled limbs any more. It makes the game a really tedious pain.
Hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas makes your ammo have weight, and requires you to eat sleep and drink to stay alive. It kinda limits your ability to carry around a missile launcher and 100+ missiles and flit back and forth between vendors/wait in place for a few days to get them to restock items for easy ammo. Also sleeping in a random bed doesn't heal you and magically fix your crippled limbs any more. It makes the game a really tedious pain.
XCOM: Enemy Within - you can get it right now from the Steam sale. Make sure you get the whole bundle with Enemy Within and Slingshot - they are also a blast. At any rate, normal difficulty is challenging for a start to newcomers (I died several times before I managed to get a foothold) but easy once you get the hang of it. However, classic difficulty really turns things up a notch:
- enemies have more health - something like 1 or 2 more but it actually matters - it makes some of the aliens be resistant to lucky one shots, which makes the tactics around them different.
- enemies get a buff to aim and crit chance and your soldiers have 1 less health - makes aggressive tactics more complex as you definitely need to play more defensively.
- changes up the strategic economy - outside of combat, the strategic base deployment is really important. Some of my early failures were due to screwing up there, not that much in combat. When the economy is reshuffled, it makes you need to focus more on what to develop and build. On normal, it doesn't really matter as much.
- most importantly - the AI starts to employ more advanced tactics against your squad. They start to use abilities and such much more and things that were quite safe on normal, can lead to a squad wipe on classic.
There is also Impossible where the aliens get even more of a buff, and your economy gets even more limited. It's not quite impossible but it's definitely there - one bad mission might be survivable in the long run but two (especially in a row) would probably destroy you.
- enemies have more health - something like 1 or 2 more but it actually matters - it makes some of the aliens be resistant to lucky one shots, which makes the tactics around them different.
- enemies get a buff to aim and crit chance and your soldiers have 1 less health - makes aggressive tactics more complex as you definitely need to play more defensively.
- changes up the strategic economy - outside of combat, the strategic base deployment is really important. Some of my early failures were due to screwing up there, not that much in combat. When the economy is reshuffled, it makes you need to focus more on what to develop and build. On normal, it doesn't really matter as much.
- most importantly - the AI starts to employ more advanced tactics against your squad. They start to use abilities and such much more and things that were quite safe on normal, can lead to a squad wipe on classic.
There is also Impossible where the aliens get even more of a buff, and your economy gets even more limited. It's not quite impossible but it's definitely there - one bad mission might be survivable in the long run but two (especially in a row) would probably destroy you.
In Mass Effect 2 on hard mode EVERYTHING has a Shield, or Armour, or Biotic Barrier.
While this DOES mean that the enemies become damage sponges it also means, that you need slightly different tactics for the enemies.
Let me take the Husk (Husks?) as an example:
On normal mode they are pretty easy to kill if you have a character that has biotic powers. Because everything that hits them with enough force (Newton, not damage) will instantly kill them. Because the "improvements" that the Reapers made also made them incredibly fragile I guess.
But they are immune against this sort of power as long as they still have their armour. This makes the sequences where they swarm you quite intense on the higher difficulties.
But the game is still not exactly "hard" you just need to think twice about which NPCs you want to take with you on the field trip.
While this DOES mean that the enemies become damage sponges it also means, that you need slightly different tactics for the enemies.
Let me take the Husk (Husks?) as an example:
On normal mode they are pretty easy to kill if you have a character that has biotic powers. Because everything that hits them with enough force (Newton, not damage) will instantly kill them. Because the "improvements" that the Reapers made also made them incredibly fragile I guess.
But they are immune against this sort of power as long as they still have their armour. This makes the sequences where they swarm you quite intense on the higher difficulties.
But the game is still not exactly "hard" you just need to think twice about which NPCs you want to take with you on the field trip.
The STALKER games are probably the most notorius, in that almost everyone will recommend you turn the difficulty to its highest level from the start and not even bother with anything lower.
At Master difficulty damage to the enemies and the player are equalised. So one shot can kill you, but one shot can also kill opponents, whereas at lower difficulties, enemies are bullet sponges who suck away all your hard scavanged ammo.
It makes the game far more immersive and atmospheric.
At Master difficulty damage to the enemies and the player are equalised. So one shot can kill you, but one shot can also kill opponents, whereas at lower difficulties, enemies are bullet sponges who suck away all your hard scavanged ammo.
It makes the game far more immersive and atmospheric.
I tried playing impossible once. My entire squad spent a turn missing 75%+ shots on a Sectoid who was out of cover. He then scampered back into cover, and shot a soldier in high cover, critting and killing him instantly. My entire squad then panicked and killed each other.DoPo said:
After that, I quit and went back to playing Dark Souls because that game never felt like it was actively trying to screw me over behind the scenes.
OT: While not actually difficulty, in Dark Souls: II you on later playthroughs extra enemies spawn.
Can't really think of a good example. The best I can think of would be Mass Effect 1, the enemies don't become sponges at least not as much that it becomes frustrating.
Instead they do a lot more damage or you have less health, doesn't really matter which way. Unfortunately that means several enemies can one hit a new character at the beginning, so it's not a very good example.
I modified some game files to remove that immunity, the result was still a little more challenging than lower difficulties, but a lot more fun.
Instead they do a lot more damage or you have less health, doesn't really matter which way. Unfortunately that means several enemies can one hit a new character at the beginning, so it's not a very good example.
I hated that aspect of the higher difficulties. Instead of forcing you to experiment and find new strategies and experiment with various skills, it makes most skills and most characters close to useless. Most skills are great to remove the weak enemies so that you could focus on the stronger enemies. Once you manage to remove the shield/barrier/armor you can just continue to shoot to finish them off. The result is a basic third person shooter.Dornedas said:
I modified some game files to remove that immunity, the result was still a little more challenging than lower difficulties, but a lot more fun.
While it doesn't change gameplay, the Hardcore mode in Diablo 2 and 3 makes it so that if you die once, you can never use that character again. That alone usually forces a change in the way you play and the skills you use, usually from offensive skills and tactics, to a more defensive set.
Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are practically different games at different difficulty levels because the objective lists change. Perfect Dark on easy was a bit dull as I recall, since all you had to do was move through the levels for the most part.
Yeah Perfect dark is the best example (along with I think some of the older thief game) where the game add objective that you need to complete. As mentioned above, mass effect 2 adding shield and armor to most enemy also does more than just make the enemy tanky, it means you have to put a lot more thought into what weapon and teammate you bring into battle, the gameplay is quite boring on normal you really have to play it on the hardest setting to appreciate the depth of the system.
Honestly I really don't like the current difficulty system of just buffing the enemy, you usually just end up with sponge enemy and the fight aren't harder, they just take longer. The only thing that's being tested is your patience. And the dev will usually only balance one setting and not even bother looking at the other one, so there often incredibly unbalance, where only a few ability are worth using and you can go from an easy area to an hard one back to an easy one, boss also often become the easiest enemy in the game.
Honestly I really don't like the current difficulty system of just buffing the enemy, you usually just end up with sponge enemy and the fight aren't harder, they just take longer. The only thing that's being tested is your patience. And the dev will usually only balance one setting and not even bother looking at the other one, so there often incredibly unbalance, where only a few ability are worth using and you can go from an easy area to an hard one back to an easy one, boss also often become the easiest enemy in the game.
Mark of the Ninja. You lose the ability to see the vision range of enemies, among other things. It makes the game a lot harder.
The vast majority of stealth based games on Hard Difficulties (or the completionist objectives, which is basically the same idea) tend to have much more stringent requirements on being seen or collateral damage allowance.
Strategy games sometimes will drop time-limits to force you to go lean and mean instead of turtling or attrition tactics. While others often do just give you less and AI's more, it has the effect of forcing you outside the box, as simply spamming hundreds of your main unit won't work anymore.
One of the UFC games had Stamina in the Hard mode only. And man was it a switch-up if you went from the non-stamina use to limited stamina as many of your favorite combos and strings would suddenly become much less usable, and the ground game became much more of a chess match in patience then spamming moves/counters at each other.
Strategy games sometimes will drop time-limits to force you to go lean and mean instead of turtling or attrition tactics. While others often do just give you less and AI's more, it has the effect of forcing you outside the box, as simply spamming hundreds of your main unit won't work anymore.
One of the UFC games had Stamina in the Hard mode only. And man was it a switch-up if you went from the non-stamina use to limited stamina as many of your favorite combos and strings would suddenly become much less usable, and the ground game became much more of a chess match in patience then spamming moves/counters at each other.
Dying Light's hardmode, from what I can remember, either gives your UV flashlight or normal flashlight a battery, and your inventory screen doesn't pause the game anymore.
Metro 2033's Ranger Hardcore made the game more interesting, no heads up display, Artyom became even more fragile, ammo became even more scarce. And the only way to check your ammo was opening up your objective list, or during trading.
Last Light turned it up a notch; same rules apply, but your ammo capacity was very limited, and you could only check your ammo count on friendly maps.
Last Light turned it up a notch; same rules apply, but your ammo capacity was very limited, and you could only check your ammo count on friendly maps.
Apparently Perfect Dark does it too, but the more you increase the difficulty in TimeSplitters 2, the more objectives you have to do. The first level on easy is basically a straight shot linear corridor, but on hard you end up fighting zombies and a helicopter. It really changes the game in great ways.
Ninja Gaiden Black.
Adds minion spawns to boss fights at every 1/4 health you take off.
New enemy types
New enemy encounters
Different item layouts/reward progressions
I might be missing something. Anyway, they have done the difficulty thing the best of any game I have ever played.
Adds minion spawns to boss fights at every 1/4 health you take off.
New enemy types
New enemy encounters
Different item layouts/reward progressions
I might be missing something. Anyway, they have done the difficulty thing the best of any game I have ever played.