Why do they make video games so hard these days?

[Argo]

Does anybody else think that Far Cry is too hard? And I mean this in a bad way. I've been playing Far Cry after a few months layoff and I remembered why I stopped playing it in the first place. The game is too damn hard. And I don't mean that in a good way - but in an annoying, constantly restarting way. I'm in a room where you get attacked my 2 mutant-monkeys and all it takes is 2 hits for them to kill you. Meanwhile, you have to shoot each one 3 times to get it to die, and they don't just run at you, they jump from the farthest side of the room at you in one giant leap.

At first it was great - you were walking in dark halfways with occasional tridents scaring the crap out of you. But then it seems like the creators just got bored with details and decided to dump as many monsters in a room as possible in order to prolong the "gaming experience" by making the player restart 10 times for each checkpoint.

The same goes for riddick and splinter cell - some of those levels are impossible to pass without getting killed a few times, simply because you don't see a way through until you die. Just seems like a lot less thought is going into the games these days. Anyways, off to Ebay I go with Far Cry, having finished only 50%. I don't have time to keep constantly restarting.

 

[SpunkyJones]

50% through?? You haven't gotten to the difficult parts yet.

 

[edro]

Yes, because want to beat a $50 game in 2 hours...

 

[Smilin]

No, I don't think they've gotten to hard for ME but I think games today could use a super easy mode. It's absolutely impossible to get a non-gamer interested in these things. I have buddies that don't game but love the cool stuff they see me play. The learning curve is just too steep to let them join.

Remember the first time you ever played a 3d shooter with a mouse? Imagine being like that in say, farcry or doom 3? Drunk @ssed, crooked walkin, can't keep your gun level with the horizon, always getting strafe and turn confused.

I don't think they've gotten too hard but it's never a bad idea to have real-easy and real-hard difficulties available.

 

[Maximilian]

Hmm well i enjoyed Far Cry Being killed in two hits was scary and made me fear those damned little mutant monkeys more than the fat bois.

Some games are a little too hard even on easy mode, for me i found call of duty murder on that certain level where you are a russian soldier and you with like 4 other men must hold a building against umpteen german troops and 5 or 6 tigers :frown: asking a bit much i think.

 

[Bar81]

Guess someone's got to break it to you, you're gaming skills are POOR. If you think FarCry is hard, much less hard 50% of the way through you would have gotten eaten alive during the 16-bit era. If anything most games today are *much* easier than in years passed. You might want to stick to games that are less challenging if you think dieing and restarting is a negative in a game. Others call it a *challenge*

 

[viivo]

Fairly subjective topic. I don't think developers are making games nigh-impossible just to stretch the play time. Personally, I found Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow extremely easy - with concentration and focused attention you are rarely noticed or killed, and that applies to most games. I don't plan on buying Far Cry (the feel and look of it reminds me too much of Serious Sam - gag,) but the demo didn't seem that hard, you just had to be alert as to how many enemies were around and where they were so you could get in the best position to take them out.

Call of Duty on the hardest difficulty level on the other hand.. Realism is fun, cheating AI that makes miracle shots is not.

 

[drag]

People like me need the very hard games, and I understand it sucks for a more casual guy.

For instance I play online against other humans and that's 10x harder then any monster in any game, so compared to that most single player games are just easy.

Also these games are kinda deceptive. I haven't played farcry but they are sometimes more puzzle then action many times. Like the monkey AI, you do this, they do that. So that if you figure out a way to beat them, then just do the same thing every time in that room and they'll be easy. Probably something stupid like once they jump they can't turn so you just sidestep and blast them when they land, and turn around and jump at you. Then you sidestep as they go sailing past you, and blast them as they stop and turn around again to jump at you. Rinse and repeat. Something like that.(never played farcry before)

Think technical vs artistic gaming. Steps in a dance vs running like a madman shooting.

Also turning down the details to get the fastest FPS performance is important. If your only getting 15-30 FPS in certain rooms things will happen to quick to react, if everything is at 60FPS then it's easier to see the monkey flying at you, instead of 1: shot of him around the corner, 2: him in the air, 3: him on your face. If you can't tell what is going on then it's hard to shoot at stuff.

I remember playing DOOM and stuff like that, and it was as hard as crap at the time, now I go back and I literally dance circles around the monsters.

Sucks.

 

[Cawchy87]

siht, they were never easy enough for me. Still haven't beat goldeneye or any other game i have (except call of duty)

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: drag


Also turning down the details to get the fastest FPS performance is important. If your only getting 15-30 FPS in certain rooms things will happen to quick to react, if everything is at 60FPS then it's easier to see the monkey flying at you, instead of 1: shot of him around the corner, 2: him in the air, 3: him on your face. If you can't tell what is going on then it's hard to shoot at stuff.

Now that's a VERY good point. If you're playing and it EVER dips below 30 fps you need to turn down the details or else you're going to get killed because of framerate a lot of times. Just because the game may run nicely doesn't mean you should be playing it at that resolution/detail setting.

 

[crazycarl]

as Bar81 said, older games are much much harder than todays games. i mean have you ever played castlevania or contra??? far cry is a cakewalk compartively

 

[Pocatello]

There are several different way to play Far Cry, some lead to a quick and violent death. The mutant monkeys are easily fooled. Throw a grenade, the monkeys run toward it, kaboom. The leftovers can be dealth with a shotgun. Usually the game designers put a Gatling gun to even the odds where there are too many mutants.

 

[Argo]

Originally posted by: Bar81
Guess someone's got to break it to you, you're gaming skills are POOR. If you think FarCry is hard, much less hard 50% of the way through you would have gotten eaten alive during the 16-bit era. If anything most games today are *much* easier than in years passed. You might want to stick to games that are less challenging if you think dieing and restarting is a negative in a game. Others call it a *challenge*

I don't argue that - I don't play games too much anymore, however, I would rather see different kind of difficulty. Istead of sending ordes of mutants at me, why won't they for a change come up with some kinda puzzle. Even old "doom style" puzzles, where red key was behind blue door, blue key was behind yellow door, etc, would be nice. They've turned first person shooters in just that - first person shooter. Just walk around shoot anything that comes at you and then restart.

 

[Kntx]

While we're on the subject of hard games... Has anyone ever completed ninja gaidon for NES??? That game is soooo hard.

 

[PricklyPete]

I guess everyone has a pretty different view of this.

I do totally agree that there is a large learning curve on a lot of these games. For a lot of us that is what makes the game so much fun. Learning how to move and shoot well in an FPS is second nature to us now...but to someone who has never played....learning to strafe and shoot while turning is a difficult process.

For someone who really wants to play, this doesn't end up being much of an obstacle and makes the game even more rewarding once we have mastered a certain move. For instance learning how to properly fly a helicopter in Desert Combat. The first 10 times seemed impossible...and then you start to get the hang of it...and then soon you're capping guys left and right while pulling all kinds of moves with the helicopter. Altogether a very satisfying experience.

On the other hand, you have people who abhore this. For instance my girlfriend. She has almost zero interest in playing 95% of the games I enjoy. She was just complaining to me and some friends the other night how video games used to be fun when they were extremely simple (control wise) like Super Mario Brothers or Tetris. The learning curve on playing was extremely short.

Now as for how hard the actual game is to beat...is a little different. I do not have a lot of time in the week to play a game. Walking around a game world for hours at a time to figure out some obscure game puzzle is not my idea of fun. I would much rather have a somewhat linear (in terms of story...not level design), puzzleless game where the hard part is the action (getting out alive). Far Cry did this perfectly for me and I'm hoping Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will as well. We'll see.

 

[Hadsus]

Alot of people are reporting FC to be hard.....so it's not just you, despite others trying to build themselves up by tearing your game skills down. I've never played FC (other than the demo) so I can't say how hard it is.

I don't play games to 'beat them.' I play 'em to enjoy 'em. So my idea of fun isn't loading up the same save game 30 times. That *is* fun for other gamers though.

 

[Jzero]

Haven't played Far Cry, but I don't mind games where you have to get killed a few times to figure out the key to moving on.

What bothers me is the ones where once you figure out the key, you have to do it perfectly 500 consecutive times and if you don't you have to start from the beginning again. That's just plain annoying.

 

[49erinnc]

I found Far Cry to be at the perfect difficulty a game like that should be. If I'm going to drop around $40 for a game, then I would be disappointed if I were able to beat it in a given weekend. Far Cry was probably the most challenging game I've played but that's part of the reason I was so addicted to it. It challenged me and I couldn't wait to get home from work every day to try and get to the next level.

I'm pretty decent at games but it still took me close to a month, playing it about 10-15 hours a week but I didn't play on the easiest difficulty setting. And like the other person said, if you consider it too hard to continue when you're only half way, then you're going to struggle even more towards the end....lol. My best advice for games like that is to just walk away from the game for a day or two so you can start fresh. When I found myself getting really frustrated on Rebellion and the last part of the Dam, I had to just quit playing. Came back the next day and got through it easier.

I'm expecting (hoping) Doom3 to be as, if not more, challenging than Far Cry. And for $50 (give or take $5), it better be. And if all else fails, just enable a unlimited weapons cheat code (God-mode is TOO ridiculously easy) if it means you'll continue playing the game. I don't condone it and would never do it, but it may keep you interested in playing if nothing else.

 

[notfred]

Games have been easy since they added "quick save" and unlimited lives.

Games were hard when dying meant starting the entire level over, not going back in time 3 seconds to your last save. Also, when you died 3 times, you had to start over from the beginning of the game.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Argo

Originally posted by: Bar81
Guess someone's got to break it to you, you're gaming skills are POOR. If you think FarCry is hard, much less hard 50% of the way through you would have gotten eaten alive during the 16-bit era. If anything most games today are *much* easier than in years passed. You might want to stick to games that are less challenging if you think dieing and restarting is a negative in a game. Others call it a *challenge*

I don't argue that - I don't play games too much anymore, however, I would rather see different kind of difficulty. Istead of sending ordes of mutants at me, why won't they for a change come up with some kinda puzzle. Even old "doom style" puzzles, where red key was behind blue door, blue key was behind yellow door, etc, would be nice. They've turned first person shooters in just that - first person shooter. Just walk around shoot anything that comes at you and then restart.

Perhaps that's the reason why you suck and find it hard. It's NOT just about shooting everything that moves, but strategy and tactics as well.

 

[biostud]

Nah, it's fine except for the place in the end at the volcano where you have to avoid far too many rocket guys, and other mutants with no place to hide, that is just plain stupid

Still stuck there

 

[Todd33]

Far Cry is a lot easier if you us e "~" and "\save_game <name>", I hate the system they use for saves.

 

[DefRef]

Just finished Far Cry on Easy and it was so brutal at the end, I had to use God Mode to keep from throwing the mouse. I shudder to think what the higher levels are like. There's a difference between being challenged and being frustrated that some developers don't seem to appreciate. (Dead To Rights is a primo example of turning a game into a miserable chore.)

FYI: I've been playing shooters since Jedi Knight and Quake 2, so I'm not a n00b.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: Todd33
Far Cry is a lot easier if you us e "~" and "\save_game <name>", I hate the system they use for saves.

And that was just how i finished FarCry, just now. It's unpossible in the end if not using extra saves. I still had to reload many many times. That was the only time it was insane IMHO (and riding the jeep), I played on challenge difficulty level.

 

[Argo]

I agree with most thta has been said in this thread, but I honestly haven't had enjoyable experience with a game since Knights of the Old republic. Now that was a fun game. I've been playing mostly sports sims lately, but with those as soon as you step a foot online you're faced with all the cheaters, which takes all the fun out of the game. Maybe I'm just too grown up for video games now.