Why did you use footage from MG Signt and not game play?

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Nice rantin'. This is why everyone should play Half Life 2 and all its incarnations on expert - it's a whole different game when you have to hang onto that few precious drops of blood, scavenging for tender morsels of health and ammo in previously overlooked areas with only your gravity gun,crowbar, and imagination at your disposal. That's when headcrabs SUCK.

I have a question why does hald the screen NOM NOM NOM on your arm?

But seriously, would you say that it would be a good idea to attempt playing on these difficulty modes after you have already beaten the game on a level where you get challenge but can enjoy just playing without the stress of constantly dying all the time. It seems like I will only feel comfortable with upping the difficulty setting if I have beaten a game on normal or easy. If I start playing on hard right a way I'm afraid I may confuse the difficulty level with the game having poor design that causes me to die instead of it being my own fault for not having the necessary skills.

Interesting RevRant. I definitely agree about the difficulty levels providing new ways to play, rather than just throwing in more enemies or making them harder to kill. I think games that only do the latter are a lot more shallow because the extra options to the former were always there, you just may not have been challenged to the point of having to use all options. Whereas with just more/tougher enemies or levels, they really only add to the frustration. If more games could figure out a way to use difficulty to expose different ways of playing, I think that not only would the average replay values go up, but the average first time play through would be much more enjoyable.

I do wonder how some games would handle that challenge, though. Each genre would have to address it differently, obviously... but wouldn't it get to the point where certain things just became standard and easy to see/find after playing a few of these sorta games? Would that lessen the experience or only make that good experience spread out over more games? I kinda fall on the "we'd start to take it for granted" side of things... but maybe not.

Good nightmares y'all.

I did like how PvZ was difficult and frantic without being punishing. I must suck more though, because I think I died once or twice through the normal campaign.

One of the interesting ideas in PvZ was the thing where your second time through the campaign, Crazy Dave would choose three plants for you to use. The idea behind it is that you would have to come up with different strategies because you are limited to only a few of the plants you're used to.

For me though, with one exception, it broke down in practice, because you're also playing through, earning money, and buying more seed slots. So instead of starting with six slots like my first time through, I was starting with nine slots my second time through, and three of the slots were taken by plants I might or might not use.

I say one exception though, because I found a great way to go through the setup phase because I was forced to use Potato Mines on one level. I had previously dismissed the Potato Mines because of their one-time use and their long recharge time, but I found that I could get ten Sunflowers down before putting down any Peashooters by using Potato Mines and Imitator Potato Mines to take out the first few zombies in the map.

And then, I'd have enough sunlight income to start out with Repeaters or Snow Peas instead of regular Peashooters, making me much stronger at the beginning.

I do think that difficulty settings could be explored much further in games, and it is something I have actively thought about for the game I am planning.

Very nice points. I tend to love games that allow me to exploit all the game's options and strategies without bashing me repeatedly over the head with a shovel. However, many gamers only enjoy a game if it allows them to experience a kind of bragging-rights masochism - such as attempting one game task (an arena battle, an escort mission, a boss battle) hundreds of times, getting more and more frustrated with each attempt, but unable to pry themselves away until they surpass it, only to bask in the temporary afterglow of success.

Screw that. A game can be challenging without wasting your time. Makes me think of Jak II - I won that game ultimately, but the pain it put me through - oh, the pain! At least it let me play Jak 3 without regrets (a much more balanced game).

Guess I'm the only one who died multiple times in the PvZ career mode. Some gamer that makes me!

You know I didn't die once in the adventure mode of Plants vs Zombies either, but I didn't even think about it because the game kept me constantly on my toes. I hadn't thought much about it until this video and I think there is something to be said about that kind of difficulty. It was satisfying.

Plus, once you finish the game and work on the mini games it becomes serious business. I've died a ton of times on those.

I agree with you and altough I have no problems with shmups and other games that relies on memorizing and stuff, I really like when the difficulty from games comes from making me think and strategize and do things in unusual ways and not from just punishing me with death or something and making me redo half-stages.

Never cared a lot about MGS and never died in the PvZ demo. Won't buy the full game but I liked its difficulty curve.

Samit... that was horrible.


Yeah, I was just about to say that. People tell me that if I don't shave for a week. Looks like you have 3 weeks growing there, though...

"Anyway, this week I recorded a Rev Rant about game difficulty. It is, like the others, highly unresearched."

I love you, Rev. I fucking lol'd and I'm sitting alone in a dimly lit room.

Also, not Scroobius Pip, but

1-Nice hobo beard
2-Is it just me , or you extended a 30 second sentence into a whole 5:41 minutes video?

Nice beard. Also you've made me want to play MGS3 on extreme. I now feel like I missed something.

As usual good sir, fine rant. :)

I for one love the idea of adaptive difficulty, or the type of difficulty you mentioned in the video. Where by, in real time, the game changes the A.I (possibly, I'm a little shady on this one) location and damage the enemy inflicts. I believe as time goes on, this feature will be further implemented in more games. As you said yourself, we see snippers of the system in MGS4, and, IMHO, a little bit in MGS4. I swear the AI reacts a little diffently, serches more places and serches for longer everytime I get seen, or the enemy thinks that they have seen me. I could be wrong though! I have seen this in KZ2 as well, in fact the A.I is something else on that game and the devs need to be appaluded for it. I have not yet bothered to play the story mode on the higher difficulty levels (multiplayer beckons me to it's awesomeness), but I was flabbergasted at the AI even on the easiest setting.

Rather than act like idiots, I saw the enemy actively look for cover, shoot from cover, not make themselves static targets, hell they even peeked around sandbags for a spilt second in order to see if it was safe to shoot. Oh, and let's not forget the act of trowing back grenades at you on a constant basis. It was awesome playing the game because it was genuinely challenging. I expected to beat the game easily, instead I had to work, and felt immensely happy about it.This is a perfect case where adaptive difficulty was used very, very well. I could say the same for F.E.A.R, probably only second to KZ2 in terms of AI in FPS's. The AI on FEAR 2 is decent, but I dunno, it seems easier compared to it's predessesor.

The AI director in L4D is a prime example of why I love playing it. Yes we seen the terrible vids of people 'hunkering' down and making a near impenetrable fortresses on survival mode. But to actually make it a challenge for yourself and to kepp moving, shooting and strategizing on the fly with your fellow teamates is a blast. I'm sorry but I hate just making games like L4D easy for yourself, experiment, play differently, it's amazing to do so.

When I face a game which has a hard level which actually makes the game harder to complete, I love playing that game. Even though DMC3 was a game whereby the accusation of cheapness in game design can be legitimately levelled against it, I loved the game.

I really like hard games, maybe that's why I dig multiplayer on FPS's a lot, I like being challenged by other people. :)

OBJECTION!!!

I meant MGS3 when I talked (or typed) about snippets of it being in MGS3, and I think in MGS4.

Also, cool beard, ingnore Samit, he obviously has never seen a terroist beard on TV if he thinks the length of yours can be compared to that of Osama Bin Laden or a person like him. The reality is that your beard, and speaking as a muslim, is very small compared to the religious leaders I have seen and the relgious people that go to pray.

i enjoyed mgs3 on normal. I tried expert, HARD AS BALLS.

I kept getting distracted because your arm kept getting cut off.

I can dig it: I think I do understand your stance.

Good food for thought.

trim your neck a bit.

Your beard is growing at an exponential rate. I'm worried that by the end of the year, we may have to amputate your face.

I'LL SHAVE THE FUCKING THING ALREADY

The difference between how you and I seem to play MGS lies mainly in the fact that I hate getting spotted to the point where, if I do, I usually let the guards kill me so I can go over the section again. Being spotted and hiding and then slapping one or two heads in the dirt, before the intense bleeping becomes a sparse, serene, submarine-like blip in the distance takes me out of the experience. How am I to believe that they think that everything is clear 30 seconds after they saw me rolling into the tall grass, conveniently near a hollow tree.

For this reason, I found MGS3 both a challenge and rather fun.

The boss battles, aside from The Pain, which you focused on, were each very different and a great challlenge (for me, anyway). Playing this game on the hardest setting would have done little to change my experience - probably would have served as a reason for me to lie under an army truck for WAY too long. Way longer than I already did sometimes (which was a LONG time, I think).

Really enjoyed the clip.

Don't shave the beard.
Don't listen to the pre-teens who can't grow facial hair.

grow it till the next E3 just to see how epic it can get:O

don't shave
don't shave
don't shave
don't shave
come on everybody
dont shave
dont shave :)