I love Capcom games. It's not because the keep cranking out Megaman games, and it's not because their characters are more badass than anyone. No, it's because they are fucking hard. Capcom are famous for making truly challenging games. Devil May Cry 3, arguably the hardest game of the last generation, combines fast-paced action with combination kills, hordes of enemies and incredible bosses with intricate strategies. One of my favourite games of this generation, Dead Rising, was criticized for it's save system. I saw it as a throwback to the days when you couldn't save, and were forced to remember a great deal of information to get the job done. Lost Planet is another title which feels like a throwback, this time to the old side-scrolling arcade shooters. Hundreds of enemies flooding the screens, your health meter constantly rising up and down from collecting T-ENG, and some of the most ridiculous bosses I've ever seen.
Maybe it's these challenging games that have made me look down on the current state of affairs. Health bars and pick-ups have been replaced by just taking cover and resting, save points are redundant now since most games let you save anywhere, bosses that require little strategy and can be executed rather easily. I don't get it. It seems that the more we want to move into realistic gameplay, the easier they get. I don't have to try my best to spare my energy anymore, since I can just hide like a little bitch until it comes back. No longer do I scream at the TV because I can save wherever I feel uncomfortable.
I don't know if the connection between difficulty and realism in games is significant, but it sure as hell seems to be. As the health pick-ups and save points disappear, they tend to make the games easier. It doesn't matter if the AI difficulty gets jacked up; As long as I can save and heal anywhere, it is easily doable. Hell, I am pathetically bad at FPS games, and I completed all but 2 sections of Gears Of War on Insane on my own (The rest I co-oped). The hardest difficulty of one of the most hyped games of last year completed with little effort at all. Is that really acceptable? I can understand if the default difficulties are ridiculously easy (Or vice versa, impossibly hard). But extra difficulties are supposed to add more of a challenge to games. When did that trend die?
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yeah games are getting too easy now a days (cough windwaker cough) but there are some quite hard games out there, such as Oblivion. while you can save anywhere and heal yourself, if you turn the difficulty all the way up i hear its really damn hard
YES
I'm not sure if it's related to realism as much as it's trying to make games more accessible.
Maybe realism and accessibility are connected -- as games get more realistic, people who are more attracted by the idea of an accessible cinematic experience than by the idea of a more abstract pattern-recognition "game" will play.
And boy will they be pissed if they play for an hour just to have to start all over. At least with a movie, if something goes wrong you can start where you left off. Not to mention games are so long now (as per our request) that few people can stand to be utterly, continuously defeated for 100 hours.
Difficulty being sacrificed for realism? Sure, there's a dearth of difficulty in games these days, but it has nothing to do with realism. RL is hard, dammit.
viewtiful joe is another good capcom example of hard shit. that game fully kicks my ass on the third hardest setting, with the forth telling me to give up before i stop. but it kicks ass, and is an awesome game.
i see what you mean about games getting easier. but hopefully we can rely on capcom for challenging and fun games (besides the RE 4 wii version :X)
My problem with Capcom is they try and overcompensate sometimes. Sure, a challenge is a good thing, but come on. Viewtiful Joe? DMC3? Maybe I'm not 'hardcore' enough, but those games just seemed to be hard for hard's sake, to prove some kind of point.
I'm not saying games have to be easy, it's just, I feel the art of difficulty is so difficult to get right and if you get too brassy and heavy handed with it, it can suck. One of my favourite games of all time is Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, and it's VERY hard. But it's also undeniably charming and awesomely paced, so as many times as I died, I kept coming back for more. A game like DMC3? No. I just don't respect a game that tries so desperately to be hard.
I don't know how realistic it is to get shot _at all_ and survive, but as I understand it, video games were original a coin-op affair, the point being to kill you quickly thus sucking another quarter out of you in order to continue playing. The early home console business following this formula for a lack of anything better. Limited lives, high score, all that. Modern video games have a better flow than games of the past. They're designed to be beaten, you're supposed to get to the end, then play the sequel. And if you've been gaming for a decade or more, then playing video games in and of itself is an old worn skill. I don't think video games are getting easier, I think they're getting better. Eventually, video games will have automatic variable difficulty that tests you just a little bit, and when things get too easy, the difficulty goes up a little more, so the challenge is always there. Maybe you'll be able to up that difficulty slider so the challenge isn't small but great, but I imagine that games will eventually learn from the player instead of the other way around.
If games were sacrificing difficulty for realism, then games would be FUCKING HARD.
RL isn't a cakewalk.
Mxyzptlk is right. What is more reaslistic-
I get shot, so I wait for 10 seconds, then I am totally fine
or
I get shot, I bandage myself to get better.
Games are becoming easier to include new people, and its because of games like Halo and WoW.
Fun. DMC3 did give me the impression of hard for hard's sakes, as someone elese put it, although I was trying to play it on a pc.. (Yeah, I know, heresy.)
The realism VS accessibility argument is a huge one, and the greatest example I can think of is the Quake 3 vs Counterstrike vs Rainbow Six debate.
All three were FPSs, but with totally different attitudes. In the end, the winner was the watered down "realism" that cs offered, winning both over the breackneck speed and technical gaming in quake 3 rounds as well as the "you get shot, you die" mentality of the rainbow six games.
Honestly, I hate said "watering down", because it is a real noob/idiot magnet.
If you want it to be realistic, give the player options to hide, take efficient cover, etc. The Max Payne, Splinter Cell and Hitman games convey this mentality of well applied realism pretty well, without being as tiring as Rainbow Six could be.
On the other hand, if you want a faster pace, you have to compromise. See Serious Sam, MDK, even Prince of Persia, where dealing with multiple enemies is norm, and requires a decent amount of skill, while still remaining playable.
...my 2 eurocents anyway.
Games are becoming easier because there is a larger audience beyond the hardcore that play videogames for the experience and to escape, not to be challenged.
There is a very large group of gamers that become immensely frustrated when they "die" in games and just stop playing. I just watched that video of the woman dressed up as the Ninja Gaiden character playing Sigma. She played a bit, then she died terribly. You think she's ever going to play that game again? Hell no. You cater to the hardcore and no one else will play.
I used to enjoy being challenged by games, but anymore I just get angry whenever I have to repeat a segment of a game, though it doesn't stop me from playing. I think there is a fine line between too hard and too easy (or accessible), but very few games seem to hit that mark.
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