Masochistic games

[djeeten]

I've been playing Ghost Recon Advance War fighter now for two days and man, this game is so punishingly hard. But I'm loving it. The fact that you get no quicksave and the autosave system only saves your progress a few times each mission forces you to really act very carefully. It's been ages since a game made me feel this frustrated, but somehow I think it only makes the game better. I wished more developers had the balls to punish the player like this instead of trying to cater for the 'casual gamers' all the time. Do you agree?

 

[Sensenmann]

In no way do I agree.

Black was good visually and gameplay-wise, but it was supposed to be fastpaced and then failed because of the checkpoint mechanic.

The reason checkpoints existed is because ages ago programmers didnt have computer ability to save so much information.

 

[Ystilix]

I've been playing Ghost Recon Advance War fighter now for two days and man, this game is so punishingly hard. But I'm loving it. The fact that you get no quicksave and the autosave system only saves your progress a few times each mission forces you to really act very carefully. It's been ages since a game made me feel this frustrated, but somehow I think it only makes the game better. I wished more developers had the balls to punish the player like this instead of trying to cater for the 'casual gamers' all the time. Do you agree?

In a word, no.
I agree with you about frustration and difficulty making you a better player, but the harder a game is, the more likely you are to reach for the cheat book.

 

[hypothetical fact]

It's a fine line between fun and cheatbook. If a developer persues masochism they have to make the game bloody hard so when you win it is so much more satisfying, but if they go overboard the game literally goes out the window and nobody is happy.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Squad Command for the DS

Its... Madness...

 

[djeeten]

Maybe it's just me but I think the tension in games is totally spoiled by allowing the gamer to save at any given point. I agree it is a fine line between making games more demanding and making them too frustrating but I think that in general the trend has gone way too far towards making games 'accessible', especially when it come to fps games.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

Veteran difficult on COD4, you have to deal with wave after wave of enemies, your grenade indicator goes crazy with a billion grenades and one level I had trouble with had machine gun emplacements that could slaughter you from miles away.

 

[CoziestPigeon]

Back in the days of arcade games, we would get lives in a game. If you died too many times, it was game over. GAME OVER. That wasn't fun for anyone. But yeah, they gottta be a little hard.

Thats why God(lol) invented difficulty levels.