What are 'Easy' games?

[heyheysg]

I've heard (or at least read) this on the nets, whenever a game comes out, someone will either due to bravado or honestly believe that games are easy.

So what does it mean for a game to be easy?

Prince of Persia - Most common target, people say it's easy because you don't die. Well, not really, you do die, you just don't get punished for it with a loading screen. Compared to Mirrors Edge, released about the same time, they have similar checkpoints and similar platforming elements, yet people say Mirror's edge is too hard? Is it the deaths or punishment that make a game hard?

Street Fighter 4 - As seen on forum "Hardest mode is like super easy", while SF4 is mostly a multiplayer game, people have complained about the cheapness of the last boss, that is if you don't have 300 hours of SF2 under your belt, or figured out that the AI doesn't like Zangief's Lariats. Both require some sort of 'work' before you beat the game 'easily', I doubt regular Tekken/SC player could pick up SF4 and beat Hardest without dying once. And if you do beat it on hardest with 20 continues, is it still considered easy?

Bioshock - People said Bioshock is easy, which it would be if you gave up using the respawn point and chipping away at Big Daddies with your wrench, but to go through the game like any other FPS requires without 'dying' some sort of strategy. Do respawns count as easy?

Dragon Age - "Nightmare is painfully easy", I've played Mass Effect and am going through Dragon Age now, as I've never done the whole Baldur's gate thing, I find that FFT, Warcraft, Diablo, Oblivion to be cakewalk compared to this. Then i read another post below "I have 100's of save files".

So obviously these players are 'cheating' by using quicksaves, multiple saves etc and calling the game easy. If it was easy, you could go from start to finish using only one file, without needing to load when you wipe, again, and again, and again

 

[Kollega]

Pretty much yeah. The game is "easy" when you are at 100% health from start to finish. On your first playthrough.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, easy is subjective. On top of that you have to account for online bravedo especially when dealing with a young crowd. A lot also depends on how intuitive a game is for some people also. See, playing Bioshock on "Normal" it *CAN* be fairly easy if you happen to pick the right powers, and decide to tackle those Big Daddies at the right time or with just the right combination of toys. But if you aren't that lucky, or don't figure out the strategies right away, it can be rough and you wind up doing the "respawn and chip away" thing.

When it comes to Dragon Age, people calling it easy, even veteran RPG players, are generally full of BS. Hundreds of save files is right. The company even acknowleged that the game was too hard even on the easiest settings and their patch reduced the difficulty somewhat to be more around where THEY said it should have been. When you see things like that happen it's easy to recognize bravedo.

Fighting games are a touchy subject, overall I'm not all that good at them. However I will point out that it's a genere unto themselves and people who are "into" fighting games typically play a lot of them. Even if the moves/engines are a bit differant certain skills like buffering moves and attack cancelling and the like are things that carry over between games somewhat. Someone new to fighting games is going to have no idea about this kind of thing. On a fighting game forum someone might list a "bread and butter" combo that requires attack buffering or whatever to do correctly and a third person reading it might just see a bunch of move inputs and wonder how anyone could possibly input the commands in that sequence givern the way the game moves. Also when you play a lot of fighting games you tend to think in terms of exchanges, and coming out ahead based on what options differant characters are going to have. Once you develop that way of thinking it changes EVERYTHING about fighting games.

Street Fighter IV is not an easy game if your casual, or only play sporadically even if seriously (like me). It too me quite a bit to get into a groove when I was playing and I thought Seth was a bit of a pain on Normal when I first fought him. However to someone who plays a lot of fighting games it's pretty basic. To be blunt it's a joke compared to say "Arcana Heart" on the PS-2, and Mildred would eat Seth for breakfast (which is a game I played a lot at one time, it took me longer to get into a groove with that one, and I still think Mildred sucks). The last Dead Or Alive game also struck me as having a higher learning curve especially given the general lack of ranged attacks (though I suppose some of the teleport moves like the one Ryu has come close), though admittedly as cheap as it was I don't think Alpha 152 was as bad as Seth.


But still I mean if like SF IV is your first fighter, or you play these things even more sporadically than me, I can see where it would be pretty gruelling since even in the training mode it seems to expect you do things that aren't exactly intuitive pretty soon in the process.

Honestly if I had to pick a good fighter for newbies right now I would actually suggest Blazblue's limited edition. That game is about as complicated as it gets, BUT it does have a DVD to teach you how to play that actually presents viable instruction and introduces complicated, but commonly used fighting game techniques, and frankly if you can get Blazblue down your going to be able to take away skills you can use with any fighter thereafter.

There was also a series about SF IV tactics that I believe started on XBL when the game first came out that was floating around on youtube that might be able to help a true newbie. It introduces concepts like exploiting hitboxes, and provides practical demonstrations of this. Say for example when most people throw a flying kick in a game they think "realistically" of impacting with the foot on an enemy's body. If your playing seriously you can't think that way but have to see things in terms of the "box" and the video demonstrates this by showing how a good thing to do is to jump OVER your opponent in a rather WTF fashion and hit the back of their box on the way down, in a way that makes absolutly no sense but does work. Getting hit like that is one of the things that actually causes some newbs to scream "hax" if they don't understand it (and it can be even more mind blowing and stupid seeming in other games).

One of the fastest ways to beat a real nub is to intimidate them by doing something to freak them out and damaging them in a way that makes no sense based on the animations themselves is one way to accomplish this. But due to poor design today it seems most people in that situation just ragequit the match so psychological warfare isn't half as effective.

 

[About 115 Ninjas]

Pretty much yeah. The game is "easy" when you are at 100% health from start to finish.

I can't help but disagree with that. A game can be a serious challenge and you can fine tune your skills until you can get through it without taking a hit. I practiced for weeks so I could be Alma on Master Ninja mode without take damage. I've only done that twice. Start to finish, one of the hardest things I've done in gaming and by no means easy. I think the "easy" part comes into play in your thought process. If you can play a game and think about something like if the fruit on your counter is rotting, then yeah, it's kind of easy.

 

[Kollega]

Pretty much yeah. The game is "easy" when you are at 100% health from start to finish.

I can't help but disagree with that. A game can be a serious challenge and you can fine tune your skills until you can get through it without taking a hit. I practiced for weeks so I could be Alma on Master Ninja mode without take damage. I've only done that twice. Start to finish, one of the hardest things I've done in gaming and by no means easy. I think the "easy" part comes into play in your thought process. If you can play a game and think about something like if the fruit on your counter is rotting, then yeah, it's kind of easy.

Whoopsiee! Bad wording! Fixed.

 

[ShotgunShaman]

Okami was easy. Never died once, and figured out all the puzzles pretty damn quick. But I never did complete it 100 percent, so not sure if that counts.

 

[dududf]

Easy games are games, that don't require a gross amount of skill.

Example of which would be the COD4 campaign, Veteran is a real challenger, where on Hardened, with somethinking you won't die(Excluding freak 'ande spam that some times happens).

Portal was easy, and I beat it in an hour and ten minutes or so...

Half Life 2-HL2:eP2 is easy... OH and FarCry 2 is stupidly easy, no joke I only died by falling or getting hit by cars, and even then my friends teleport in front of the card and carry me away anyways.

Bioshock was easy for me, played on the hardest and only died once, and that was on the final boss. (Ran outta ammo, had to wrench for a while then got ganked)


OH! Last one, Fallout 3, no idea why just too easy, can't find one reason to pin point it on.

 

[SantoUno]

Well I think a game is easy when you can collect too much resources such as ammo and health items (like in Resident Evil 4 you can find so much ammo and herbs that you never have to worry about conserving enough ammo or health to survive), or when the enemy AI is too stupid to survive either by actually posing a threat or not walking into death (like in Oblivion when enemies walk off edges when running towards you).

 

[[Insert Name Here]]

Something that I can finish in a couple of hours, without dying on a regular basis.

 

[asdasdasdasda]

Easy is a different term to different people. I consider something easy if I beat it on my first playthrough without dying / reloading every so often.

 

[lostclause]

Lost planet is fairly easy. Quickly regenerating health from a massive pool of it means that you will have no problem of you're decent at shooters and still not too challenging otherwise. The VS takes a while to master though.

 

[Beatrix]

Games are easy when they are fun, and fun when they can be at least easy.
I hate it when games that allow for a "cakewalk" difficulty setting.

 

[squid5580]

A game is easy when there is no AI challenging you. When it makes all the jumps for you so you just have to press a button randomly to make it. And requires no thought to complete. You can often make an "easy" game more challenging to suit your skills (like Bioshock turning off the VCs) but a truly easy game you can't.

 

[KyleThePirate]

I consider a game easy if I can play it and not ever have to hunch doubled over, with my tongue sticking out to play any part

 

[Evil Tim]

Prince of Persia - Most common target, people say it's easy because you don't die. Well, not really, you do die, you just don't get punished for it with a loading screen. Compared to Mirrors Edge, released about the same time, they have similar checkpoints and similar platforming elements, yet people say Mirror's edge is too hard? Is it the deaths or punishment that make a game hard?

PoP also has the problem that it's ridiculously generous; much of the platforming is simply a matter of pressing the right button when you're within several dozen feet of the thing you're trying to interact with. The path is obvious and often the only one possible, with movement from obstacle to obstacle all but automatic. The feeling that the Prince is basically on autopilot is prevalent throughout any platforming, and then there's the fact that even if you screw up so monumentally as to actually die, you don't get punished in any meaningful way. Failing is difficult in itself + failing has no real consequences = easy.

Mirror's Edge has the opposite problem; it's about building up momentum and keeping going, but the first-person view means you often have to be psychic to figure out the route or end up stopping / dying a lot before you get it. This frustration and lack of automatic gameplay continuation means it's seen as harder. Failing is easy and often unfair + failing results in an annoying pause before restarting and the loss of all momentum = hard.

 

[Erana]

I classify a game as easy when the game is designed to be played without penalties even considered. The Path is one of the easiest: just stay on the path, like it says.
But with a "real game," I cite Kirby 64. Half the time your primary form of locomotion will be the thing that protects you from damage and pops the enemies. It has its moments of trickiness, but these are mostly moments in which obstacles are insta-kill, which make the design of the level more graceful than the alternative. There are few puzzles, and those that do exist are very intuitive and not mandatory to proceed in the game.* All in all, it was easy even when I was a little girl, but I can have fun with it even today. It manages to feel rewarding without having concequences to failure.

Prince of Persia bothered me, in comparison. Yes, you got the "space time rewind" stuff, but it would have played better if death had activated an extended rewind, or something. Going back to a loading screen is not graceful.
I guess that's what I've been searching for.

By modern frustrated-gamer terms, an "easy" game is one where death is a flow-breaking test of patience. In a "hard" game, death itself becomes a fully-fledged part of the overall game experience.
Which doesn't make sense...

 

[Daedalus1942]

I've heard (or at least read) this on the nets, whenever a game comes out, someone will either due to bravado or honestly believe that games are easy.

So what does it mean for a game to be easy?

Prince of Persia - Most common target, people say it's easy because you don't die. Well, not really, you do die, you just don't get punished for it with a loading screen. Compared to Mirrors Edge, released about the same time, they have similar checkpoints and similar platforming elements, yet people say Mirror's edge is too hard? Is it the deaths or punishment that make a game hard?

Street Fighter 4 - As seen on forum "Hardest mode is like super easy", while SF4 is mostly a multiplayer game, people have complained about the cheapness of the last boss, that is if you don't have 300 hours of SF2 under your belt, or figured out that the AI doesn't like Zangief's Lariats. Both require some sort of 'work' before you beat the game 'easily', I doubt regular Tekken/SC player could pick up SF4 and beat Hardest without dying once. And if you do beat it on hardest with 20 continues, is it still considered easy?

Bioshock - People said Bioshock is easy, which it would be if you gave up using the respawn point and chipping away at Big Daddies with your wrench, but to go through the game like any other FPS requires without 'dying' some sort of strategy. Do respawns count as easy?

Dragon Age - "Nightmare is painfully easy", I've played Mass Effect and am going through Dragon Age now, as I've never done the whole Baldur's gate thing, I find that FFT, Warcraft, Diablo, Oblivion to be cakewalk compared to this. Then i read another post below "I have 100's of save files".

So obviously these players are 'cheating' by using quicksaves, multiple saves etc and calling the game easy. If it was easy, you could go from start to finish using only one file, without needing to load when you wipe, again, and again, and again

Anyone who says Dragon Age is easy, is an absolute bullshit artist.
I have played hundreds of Role playing games, they are my favourite genre of games, and I've even had troubee.
At the start of the game, in the tower of Ishal, there was a trap that I couldn't deactivate or avoid, and it would take 3 quarters of my hp down immediately, then I'd have to fight 6 guys.
I tried getting past it for 45 minutes, and had to give up and change it momentarily for that part to easy JUST to get past it.
Dragon Age is by no means a simple rpg. It's one of the hardest I've played in a while and requires immense strategy.

 

[Evil Tim]

Prince of Persia bothered me, in comparison. Yes, you got the "space time rewind" stuff, but it would have played better if death had activated an extended rewind, or something. Going back to a loading screen is not graceful.

He's talking about the most recent game, which threw out the time-manipulation in favour of simply having an NPC who would drop you back at a checkpoint every time you died.

 

[Gunner 51]

I found GTA 4 quite easy along with Assassin's Creed 1+2, Bioshock, Hitman: Blood Money, Modern Warfare 2 (cakewalk) and Borderlands.

 

[MercurySteam]

Saints Row 2 has super fast regenerating health, cars that get returned to your garage whenever you leave them in the middle of the road, cash that is earned by merely owning teritory, 1 second gun reload times, stations that drop your full wanted level for a very small amount of cash and guns with infinate ammo that are resonably easy to obtain.

Still great game though.

As for Bioshock (with all the updates) the game is easy on 'easy' and you can even turn off the Vita chambers and you won't even feel an impact till you move up to the higher difficulties (especially when you're trying to get the 'Brass Balls' achievement).