/vr/ - Retro Games

In Defense of Difficulty

(Note: This applies to action oriented games, number and point system games like pure RPGs have their own issues but they're not the purpose of this rant.)

I often see retro games being disparaged by people these days. I read things that talk about how the lives and game over systems were flawed, that the character movement sucks just to make games harder, and that one can “build a good difficult game without those archaic systems.”

Fuck that.

Let me start off; just because you pirated or bought a game, just because you handed over $240 for the special edition with the titty figurine and the hat you'll never wear, just because you love everything that developer has ever made--YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GAME COMPLETION. You do not deserve to see the ending, you do not have the unalienable right to unlock everything 100%, and you especially do not have the right to complain when a game is too difficult.

Games are only worthwhile because of the potential for failure. I'd even go so far as to say that these current gen games like Yoshi's Wooly World, or the Arkham Batman games are hardly games at all and just storybook experiences that guide the player along to the end. When is the last time you've heard of someone competent at games saying that they've had to drop a current gen title due to it being too hard to beat? Even Dark Souls and Bayonetta—while spectacular games—suffer from this casualization.

Now there's a good business reason for casualization, it leads to more sales for the developer. This is completely fine if the game has a high difficulty ceiling like the prior two mentioned. But in so many, so so many games these days it's outright impossible to fail--Nintendo games are particularly guilty of this.