On Difficulty Levels

[Spectre39]

So I'm currently playing Ninja Gaiden II for the first time. I played the first one a few years ago, so I thought I knew what I was doing. When I start up the game, it asks me to choose between the path of the acolyte, and the path of the warrior. I thought it would be an insult to Ryu Hyabusa to lower himself to the level of an acolyte. He's a ninja, dammit! Not some pussy samurai!

Well, I think I spoke too soon. This game is kicking my ass. I've made it through to chapter 4 so far, but I'm typically broke from buying so much healing grain. I've thought about going back through on acolyte. However, I've decided to soldier on and go as far as I can. If it was way too difficult I wouldn't have made it passed the first level, now would I?

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Not that both aren't great, but these days I'm enjoying Extra Punctuation more than Zero.

 

[OceanRunner]

Fallout 3 had an interesting system. You could adjust the difficulty through the pause menu to one of 5 settings (V.Easy/Easy/Normal/Hard/V.Hard) and on the harder settings enemies award more EXP, creating a sort of risk vs reward system.

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

Fallout 3 had an interesting system. You could adjust the difficulty through the pause menu to one of 5 settings (V.Easy/Easy/Normal/Hard/V.Hard) and on the harder settings enemies award more EXP, creating a sort of risk vs reward system.

Or you know, totally breaking the game... Very Hard enemies when you can easily heal, and switch it down in more perilous areas. It's practically begging to be exploited.

 

[AeroBlade]

I believe that one of the Lego Star Wars games actually gaged how many times you died and adjusted the difficulty level from that. You could also manually change it any time in-game, and also choose to turn the difficulty gauge thing off. Every game should have something like that.

 

[HoverWhale]

Actually, Mario Golf on the N64 did do something like that. You could use two of the C buttons to either compliment or insult the other player(s), and that would make them easier or harder to play against respectively. It would be good to see it used in a proper game though.

 

[Harkonnen64]

I forget which game it was, but it had separate difficulty sliders for "action" and "puzzles." Something I wish more games had.

There was another one that had separate sliders for "items" and "enemies" so you could adjust how many health kits and ammo you got versus how tough the enemies were.

I think it was Silent Hill 2.

 

[Dhatz]

could run around asking what happened, but istead I answer: the way games are made and understood on other than player side are gone too far from where it all needs to be.

 

[Wutaiflea]

Personally, I love difficulty settings. I would never have been able to get through Saint's Row 2 without it's retard mode- I'm just not great at that kind of game.

That said, I don't think I've ever switched difficulty mode at a mid-point in any game where its been an option (except maybe Tekken when I was about 10) so personally, I don't see the point of it. Maybe this is just something that applies to Yahtzee's profession, as I can be an utter gaming wuss when it comes to some genres, and you'd think if anyone'd chicken out of Hard halfway through, it'd be me.

As for the concept of the game picking your mode based on your performance, in my opinion, that's an idea that can truly go and fuck itself.
Just because I have the capacity to 98% or better playing Hard on Rockband does not mean that I should be forced to sing Number of the Beast on Expert as our Saturday Night/Sunday Morning piss-up finale when I'm fucking 12 pints down.

 

[OANST]

Hey, Croshaw. We don't want to play your games any more than we want to read your books. All we want is for you to dance and make stupid faces for us. You know, like you made a career out of doing.

 

[Slangeveld]

If the current one is normal, I would very much like a Brutal for Assassins Creed 2 ... 0_o

Nice article.

 

[jtiberiusk]

Hey Yahtzee,

You've made more than one comment that you would like to see a non-serious FPS where the protagonist essentially picks up a gun and shoots. Well then I would recommend any of the Timesplitters game. In case you haven't played them already, the Timesplitters franchise consists of three games which essentially clone the gameplay mechanics of Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 and allow you to play as one of over 100 entertaining esoteric characters with fully customizable weapons and maps. Best of all, you need no mates, for you can place bots in the game to fight alongside or against you.

It's definitely not a perfect game. Neither the gameplay or the story is very in-depth, but it is exactly what you are looking for, a non-serious 90's shooter.

So I suggest you check it out and humbly request that you review it.

 

[jtiberiusk]

I think of the Metal Gear Solids came pretty close to that.

 

[jtiberiusk]

I think some* of the Metal Gear Solids came close to that.

 

[jtiberiusk]

Ah dammit, those last two were meant as a response to another reply. Disregard.

 

[godofallu]

This is so true. I am currently replaying a game I had beaten numerous times in the past on "Normal".

I picked normal because I am playing it on a different and fairly new to me platform and didn't know if I was good enough with the controller to go straight to hard.

Now I feel like I need to go back in time 20 hours to swap to hard. So dumb.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I'd like to hope Mr. Croshaw reads this far in the commentary; I hadn't had a chance to read this article until now. Here goes:

Personally, I sorely miss the selective difficulty that was commonplace in simulators prior to the whole FPS genre of games. *Red Baron* for example, had easy, normal and hard, but those were preset configurations of their "realism settings" page that would allow you to toggle things like flight engine complexity, frequency of gun jams, skill of opponents, mid-air collisions and so on.

In the FPS genre, this form of configurable difficulty would translate fairly easily, such as ramping up the AI of the monsters, the accuracy of snipers, toughness of heavies and bosses, the blue sense of guards (to discern your sneaking missteps from other background noise), length of time-limit countdowns and so on.

I also fantasize about the same thing applying to RTSes in which not only can the AI be customized (preferably with personality variances) but common cheating devices (bumper crops in unit manufacturing, resource bonuses, build speed adjustments, damage handicaps and peeks into the fog of war) could be individually turned on or off.

That said, many of these things could easily be adjusted on the fly, so there's no reason why not.

Around the time of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, there seemed to be a convention for FPS difficulty that I liked. It worked as follows:

EASY didn't require tactical savvy. One could run and gun freely and (mostly) live. Mockery of the player by the game is optional.

NORMAL required tactical savvy. One needed to use cover, exploit terrain and so on.

HARD required taking advantage of in-game bonuses such as shortcuts and secret caches of weapons (usually to get newer weapons sooner, and to replenish health and armor) to get through.

VERY HARD required speed run tactics. There isn't enough ammo to take down all the bad guys, ergo one has to find ways to evade or circumvent some of them.

IMPOSSIBLE (INSANE, NIGHTMARE, etc.) was not adequately playtested, and was not guaranteed by the developing team to even be possible. This is for someone who wanted to break the game, or break their own sanity.

It'd be cool if we returned to using a convention like this when it came to defining our difficulty levels.

 

[griffinmills]

The real interesting part to me was that a long rant about difficulty with some not-so-blatant bragging about gaming skills with an emphasis on how most folks could probably "do it" if they "stuck with it" is then followed up with talk about FSG:The Hiatus wherein you basically say the same thing. That Yahtzee could do it if he wanted but don't feel like "sticking with it."

"It's just a hobby project." Sounds like my exact take on video gaming. It's just something I do for fun. I never really thought about difficulties in depth until that Ninja Gaiden remake hit and tried to use "it's really hard!" as a selling point. At that time I realized that I didn't have to automatically throw games in on "hard" difficulty and, in fact, went the opposite and started always beginning them on the easiest setting available. And I love it!

I cut my teeth on 2600 and "Nintendo hard" games so fuck just about any attempt these days at calling something "hard." It's really rare that there is any actual gameplay difference in a harder difficulty setting anyway. Notable exception(s)? Rock Band style games where you have more to do and more ways to do it. If anything, harder difficulty usually remove the options of doing longer and more intricate game play options. Most shooters you find yourself unable to use any of the weaker weapons because the enemies wont die or most "like God of War BUT" games you can't use any of the longer combos or wind up attacks because you will be interrupted, etc. A lot of games confuse "hard" with "boring" IMO and just jack around the hit point and damage modifiers making things take longer.

Great topic though, going to cut myself off here since I'm just ranting on a comment board!

 

[Furt]

I really disagree with Yahtzee on being able to change difficulty settings midway. I find that difficulty settings are more for a feeling of accomplishment, rather than to make the game harder. Like, try saying to yourself, "I just beat game X on insane difficulty!" Then try saying, "I just beat game X on insane difficulty! Except for the last room on the second chapter, and the mini boss on the 6th chapter, and the final boss!" In my opinion it just makes it feel much less rewarding that pretty much anyone could beat the game just by switching around with the difficulty switch a few times.

 

[Spelonker]

God Hand had a cool way of determining the difficulty. When you start a new game you get the "Easy - Medium - Hard" choice (and depending on which you pick, Gene will either call you a wimp or tell you you're a bad ass). But then, in game, you have this little level metre with a picture of a skull in it. It goes "Lvl 1 - Lvl 2 - Lvl 3 - Lvl DIE" and changes corresponding to how much ass you kick in game. And beating an enemy at higher levels equals more cash at the end of the chapter. It also dictates how much damage enemies do, what attacks they'll be able to use against you, how many will attack at once, and if they attack you from off screen or not. Taking a few smacks yourself will lower the level if it doesn't kill you first.

But if you're always feeling you can Grovel at their feet to put it back to Lvl, at which point everyone laughs at you and you hear the crowd boo. Fair enough seeing how you're a gigantic pussy.