Demon's Souls isn't a shooter, though. Shooters by default are really hard to make difficult without being cheap.

And I kind of disagree. Difficulty has taken the form of challenges and achievements, and it's more up to the player to decide how hard the game will be. Just because we don't "die" every 2 minutes like we used to in games doesn't mean they've gotten soft.

i agree, older games with more hardcore feel had better "dying" mechanics. it seems the mass market and console market has softened games.

look at the difference between borderlands and thief. borderlands coddles you more than any game i have played except.

i think a lot of console gamers (which is the majority) don't see this b/c they never played the older and truly great games. L4D is one of the only new games that actually penalizes you for being stupid in a good way that makes things interesting.

it would be nice to have creativity infused back into gaming

This whole article is what people of this gen need to read. Playing Demon Souls for like 20 mins and only to laugh and stop when a knight was healing just like me, I couldn't help but not want a PS3 so I could start my journey.

At least SOME developers see that gamers these days are still being held by their hands.

"And at such a time, I shake me head and walk away. 87% of US children are gamers, and they're all going to end up becoming entitlement begging brats who don't get the concept of earning something."

I love how this has come full circle. When we were little, our parents called us entitled brats who wanted everything to come easily because we played games and didn't do whatever the hell it was that they did when they were kids(probably just played with sticks or some shit). Now we say the same things to little kids today who play easier games than we did.

But I totally agree. Kids nowadays are pussies.

Gamers have turned into pussies. Give me a game with a finite number of lives. If you don't beat it, you have to try again you pussy. Sure, with some games it works to have infinite lives and checkpoints and stuff. but I would love to see some games go like old school Ninja Gaiden.

@gamadaya

Yeah, I know. It sucks, I'm 21 and suddenly I COMPLETELY understand what my parents were trying to tell me when I was a growing up.

The problem is, for every person that realizes this there are about 10 more who don't and will allow the same folly to persist infinitely onward until we become to lazy to continue existing.

I don't mind a game being challenging as long as it's fun. If I'm not having fun playing it then I'll go onto something else. The reason we have this "pampering" is because games are being sent out to larger audiences than they were 20 years ago. And to appeal to a larger group they do need to dumb down or make things a bit easier as not every video game player is hardcore about it.

@KIDA26:
Ninja Gaiden fucking requires infinite lives. I remember beating the first 2 and thinking I was invincible, but then finding out that 3 had a limited number of continues, and seemed to be just as hard as the others. I just gave up after that. I could try it with save states, but I would feel bad about doing so.

They did a pretty good job with Dragon Age. Most of that game is hard, but fair. Then, there are some battles you should probably just forget doing and come back to when you're more powerful. Sure, it can be frustrating, at times, and I've had to turn the difficulty down to easy to be able to get through a few fights, but the challenge in that you exhaust yourself in every fight, barely coming out of it alive, in many cases, is a fun change of pace from the way most games are developed these days.

@Insanity-Oo: Demon's Souls never had one hit kills, unless you were horridly under leveled. If you rush in recklessly, you WILL die. I played pretty carefully (Like you should play), and came out fine. I was in body form for 75% of the game. It is not really that hard. You just have to play a different way than what most RPGs do.

@Insanity-Oo

A great way to learn a boss fight in Demon's Souls is to help someone else do the fight as a Blue Phantom, even if you die you lose nothing.

@Ckarasu

You can't really say there aren't one-hit kills and then say it does but you are just underleveled. There are some places where you can get in over your head and you won't even know until you get dropped. Pure Black 4-1 Satsuki comes to mind, that Halloween event kicked my ass at the time!

@Ckarasu,

There aren't one hit kills in Demon's Souls? So.. you didn't actually play it, did you? I distinctly remember dying in about one hit from a certain red eyed knight in the first world, first level of my first play through..

@Ckarasu: Most of the bosses have one or two hit kills unless you really boosted VIT (why the hell would you want to do that?), in my experience. That being said, the game forced you to be careful, which was a great take on survival horror, in my opinion.

There were hard parts to the game, and I really would have rather traded harder bosses for having checkpoints right before the fights, but mostly, the game was made to be punishing of blind aggression.

@runtheplacered - And that red knight has red eyes, a warning to be sure. You defiantly take a chance when you approach a monster that is bigger than anything else you see, and its EYES ARE GLOWING RED. I'd say it's still the players fault.

@Silvain: Yeah, I kinda dumped a few point into vitality early on. I didn't put a whole lot into it, though. But, concerning your point: It would come down to how you "built" your character, then. It's not like the game tries to tell you how you should build your character. If you end up making a "frail" build and die in one hit, then that is your fault.

I'm glad to hear this. Seeing as you had to complete the game twice to unlock the real game where enemies have immunities.

They sure pulled it off in Dragon Age, so if they can pull it off in this it'd be awesome..

I completely disagree. I really don't understand why everyone is saying games are "too" easy. If I have to spend more than thirty minutes trying to get past a certain point, repeatedly dying, I'm only going to get frustrated. When I get past that point, I'm still going to be pissed off. Anger is not really an emotion I want to feel when I'm gaming.

When I beat Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on veteran difficulty on my dad's PC, I thought, "Thank god that's over." I wasn't any better at the game, I just knew a few strategies I hadn't before. I would have had no trouble at all had I used a strategy guide.

When I finally got through Green Grass and High Tides on expert guitar in Rock Band, I spent at least five minutes screaming "YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH" at the top of my lungs while running around the house. I then played through it again. And again. I looked back to about a year before that and realized that I wouldn't have had a whelk's chance in a supernova of beating that song on expert.

@KIDA26:

Having a finite number of lives and requiring the player to restart the entire game if they lose them isn't difficulty. It's a convenient way for developers to make their game take fifty hours to complete while only providing fifteen hours of actual content.

Left 4 Dead remains a perfect example of how to walk that line of difficulty & balance to perfection. the game was uncompromisingly hard (on the higher difficulties), yet never to the point of frustration due to broken gameplay.

Left 4 Dead 2, im afraid, completely obliterates that line for the inadequate excuse of simply making the game harder. the end result being the flow of 'difficulty and balance' (which Left 4 Dead executed to perfection) replaced by 'broken gameplay and frustration'.

what's really sad is that the reason for the drastic differences from 1 to 2 is the simplistic, juvenile mentality of; "we're cool because our game is harder now".

and it's a shame because L4D2 is superior to the first in every other way. go figure. *shrug*

Demons Soul's is a fantastic game that I am sure took an enormous amount of planning toi create. A game that is difficult and fair simultaneously is a hard balance to achieve. Personally, I hope more developers follow From Software's lead and take on that challenge.

Games are not only too easy now-a-days but are also on average too stupid. As in not at all mentally stimulating.

Recently I have played the original Call of Duty right after Modern Warfare 2 and the original is so much more challenging, involving and immersive. It makes you feel like you are really there, in jeopardy, and challenges you to make it out. MW2 on the other hand is just an interactive movie, plain and simple.

Compare Deus Ex to ANY shooter since, even a shooter/RPG hybrid like Mass Effect, and Deus Ex seems like it was made for mensa.

Whatever, the mainstream folks have taken over, I realize that. I'll just keep playing the oldies and enjoying the new games for what they are.

@Arkhon If you're repeatedly dying at that certain point, you're probably not using any strategy or thinking, for that matter, AT ALL. That anger is only you getting angry at yourself.

I'm glad that Bioware is going to do this. This is the age of the spoiled gamer. The mainstream people need a slap in the face with some good ol' challenge.

Does anyone consider, if they are in the camp of games today are too easy, that maybe you just play so many games and for so many years now that you are simply better at games, that your skill level has increased?

Instead of by some distant childhood memory, actually go back and play those ancient games. You might just find yourself breeze through them in a way you couldn't when you were younger.
I just wish all games had difficulty scales so the new kids still learning can hit easy and the lifelong gamers can crank it to the hardest. That's the best answer.

But I agree with Jim. It's a very thin line to screwing it up.
I'm all for higher risk if it's fair and requires more thinking logically, but most developers idea of cranking the difficulty is just turning down your health and upping the bad guys, which is cheap and makes me wish cancer on all developers involved in making those games.

Amen to that brotha

*Mass Effect 2