Be Excellent To Each Other

I've just read Bruce Ree's (rather good) review of Braid, and this line caught my attention:
Now, in my head, 16-bit games were much harder than the current-gen ones. Have I just got better? Or have games become less hard so more people can play?

I'd say that more games have added difficulty levels, so can be both hard and easy at once.

I'd say more games these days are designed to provide entertainment by being a fun ride rather than a challenge. And as Curiosity points out they add difficulty levels so that the challenge is there for those who want it. There are some obvious exceptions to this but I'd say that on the whole people have an expectation to be able to complete games without retrying the same sections over and over.

Or to complete them at all.

Games must be easier, because I can actually finish them these days.

Quite.

I don't remember ever expecting to finish any Spectrum game I ever [bought - Ed]. And I don't think I ever did.

Old games are basically rock hard because they used incredibly basic rectangle based collision detection and could also be quite unresponsive to control. Geometry Wars feels more forgiving in both ways than its old granddaddy Robotron. Obviously there are other factors, such as the obvious massive increase in the number of heart pieces dropped by monsters between The Legend Zelda and The Wind Waker, but there you go.

Also, Defender is a bastard because it just is.

I'd say games are becoming easier.. thinking about the whole time line of games right from the Spectrum, to modern day games.. they are easier.

It's all graphics over substance etc etc...

I was just thinking this. Obviously I was a lot younger then but I hardly finished any Spectrum games at all (Robocop, Batman and Chase HQ spring to mind) plus some didn't have endings like Bruce Lee.

With some games though, I can't imagine ever trying to complete them - Jet Set Willy, Roller Coaster etc. Although with Roller Coaster, I used to just try and go on as many rides as possible.

I completed the majority my 16 bit games far quicker than many of my modern games.

Also modern games offer much more fun to be had online once youve completed the single player modes.

The only games that I owned which I couldnt complete were pre-console games which didnt really have a save game option nor an infinite amount of continues . (by pre-console I mean my Spectrum before I bought a Game Gear and Mega Drive)

That's incorrect, certainly as a sweeping generalisation. I recall reading a thorough description of how to implement mask-based collision detection in a sprite based game in one of the Speccie mags back in the day. Indeed, collision detection is much easier with sprites than it is with 3d engines.

I suspect Mr Dave has an opinion on this.

Wasn't there a record on Gamesmaster for completing Sonic 2 on the Megadrive? Didn't someone do it within about 3 hours of buying it?

I don't know why I'm asking these as questions because I'm sure this happened.

I'm trying to think of a game I actually completed before Super Mario Land on the Gameboy and, so far, I'm drawing a blank.

Hmmm. Earliest I can remember right now was Saboteur on the Spectrum, but there must be others. I certainly completed Target: Renegade, and Laser Squad 1 and 2.

Although thinking about it, Saboteur and T:R both just sent you back to the start when you completed them, and upped the difficulty level, so I don't suppose I really completed them as such.

I completed Blue Max and Bop (and - Ed) Wrestle on my Atari. Those were the first ever.. after that, I think it was Tomb Raider 1 on the PSone.

Actually this reminds me of when I worked at GAME and had a load of CVs in for christmas jobs. One guy had listed every single game he'd completed ever! His CV was about 6 pages of games. What a guy!!

Yes - obviously there are exceptions

I think the first game I ever completed was Wizkid, but even then I didn't get enough cats to row the boat, so maybe it doesn't count.

The Secret of Monkey Island, but I used a walkthrough.

Max Payne? There must be something before that.

I completed all the early (first 5, at least) Dizzy games.
The first one I completed, though? Hmm. It may have been Super Stuntman.

Even Treasure Island? I salute you as it was rock solid.

Saboteur was released in '85, whereas T:R and LS1 were both 1988 so I'll call it that for now. Until I think of another. Of course, with the profusion of long-lived budget priced games, and the covermount games malarky that went on late in the 8-bit era, I might have played games out of release date order.

I also remember completing The Trap Door (released 1986). I had my first Spectrum in 1984, I think, so there must be games before that that I completed. Rebelstar, maybe, that was 1986. Dizzy was 1986 but I don't think I managed the first one (did complete most of the rest of them though). I defintely completed Robocop too, but that was 1988.

I did that one. God, it was hard.

First game I completed was possible Police Quest 1 or Hero's Quest (or Quest for Glory if you prefer) on the Amiga. I was awful at spectrum games.

The first PC game I finished was probably a Sierra adventure - Space Quest 3, I guess.

The first console game I finished was either Startropics on the NES or TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan on the Gameboy.

Yes, games are easier. But then, games don't really exist in the same sense that they did in the old days (except when high-concept types like Jonathan Blow decide to and then charge you £10 for it, that is).

They're also a bit more forgiving... if you consider FPS games to be something of a successor to platform games as the dominant genre, in this example. You don't run out of lives in an FPS game, you just spawn back at a checkpoint. So, while the game might still be fairly hard, a lot of the backtracking (which you could just as easily screw up while getting back to where you were) of old games is gone. Hell, Call of Duty 4 and Halo are reduced to tiny vignettes on Veteran and Legendary respectively. Die dozens of times until you somehow struggle through a section, then die dozens of times again on the next section, and so on.

That's the first Dizzy game I completed. It took so many tries I think I could still write you a walkthrough, even after all these years.

Took me ages to get the Level 5? Kitten because I couldn't get an item from Level 3. BUT I DID IT.

The final boss is killer.

I wish more games would have decent difficulty options. I generally like games to be quite hard, but it goes both ways - if you wanted them to be easier or harder, you could do a lot more with an FPS having, say, a few sliders for "number of enemies", "enemy weapons", "enemy health", "enemy intelligence", "your health" and so on, than you can with a simple easy/normal/hard. It'd add to the longevity of any game, and mean you're more likely to play it at any given time as you can adjust how it plays. I can't imagine it'd be difficult to implement either - just a simple change to spawn rates and damage counters etc. would be better than the all or nothing piss-easy/stupidly hard way.

I think games are generally a little easier, or rather, there are more easy ones. It could just be my imagination though, and they're just more forgiving since you can be repeatedly killed on a level and just keep playing until you get through it instead of having to start again or go back to the start of that level. Also FPS games in particular are made to be more idiot-proof (and sadly, even things flashing enormous "LOW AMMO, FUCKWIT" in the middle of the screen don't seem to be enough for some), which helps create an impression that they're easy, whether they actually are or not.


I'm still really pissed off at Rainbow Six Vegas Two Charlie Oscar Tango Niner for forcibly adding a grenade detector icon thing with the last mandatory update. The least they should have done is made it optional. In fact, I strongly dislike the whole forced update thing of the current batch of consoles altogether. I've paid for this game, and now you're coming into my home and changing it months after I've bought it? What? At least make patches optional, and game-altering updates should at a minimum tell you what they're going to change. You wouldn't let an estate agent barge into your house and knock your kitchen into your front room three months after you moved in, so why let a company fuck with your games?

With some games though it appears that the difficulty levels are there just to add longevity in a quantity-over-quality approach. I've finished two of the four Warriors Orochi storylines and once I've done the other two, I could then take those characters and run though Hard and Ultimate (think that's what it's called) but I think it'll just be more of the same rather than doing anything different. EDF is similar but at least you're consistently getting newer weapons as you go along.

The first Soldier Of Fortune game let you do this - set the enemies to "super-weak" and "lots of enemies" and you got a Time Crisis clone

There is more of a spectrum to what games can be like now. Whilst a lot of games have gotten easier I think it's more a case of different aims becoming important. More games are about taking you on a ride for 8 to 10 hours, rather than outright challenging you. But I think a lot of games are better for it.

Whilst the best games in teh 8bit and 16bit days were hard in a beautiful way, the vast majority of games back then were just cheap.

The first game I ever completed was probably Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System. I remember physically shaking and being over the fucking moon. Thems were the days.

With all the emeralds or not?

You think? Comm odder 'ere here and say that.

Compare Spindizzy to Spindizzy Worlds to Super Mario 64 to Super Mario Galaxy, and you'll see this thread neatly concluded.

Super Mario on the NES... you can complete that in a matter of minutes if you know the portals... and it's still do-able in the afternoon if you aren't a spack-handed fool... not sure where that fits in.

SHUT IT YOU!

(I could never get the one behind the chain on Sky Base )

I managed to do that, but only because my best friend at the time was a computer game whizz and showed me where the emaralds were and how to get them. He used to sit and complete Sonic games on the megadrive for fun. I have never finished a Sonic apart from Sonic 1 on mastersystem.

I beat the rowing race on wizkid after many attempts. But then found I didn't have the coloured gems to do something or other and was rubbish at the arcade game bit. Bah!

Games are (sweeping generalisation, but hey ho) way easier now, I feel. I set up my Amiga a while ago thinking I'd be able to piss through all my old gsames easily but i am as cack at them now as I was back then, probably even more so.

Jump off the left of the skybase at the start of the level and you landed on an invisible flying platform. Wait for that to get to a ladder, climb the ladder and grab the extra life, then jump off the right of that to land on another invisible flying platform, then keep going until you get to the Emerald.

Thinking about it, a lot of games are indeed getting easier. This is not, however, a bad thing necessarily. The best games have new and interesting content throughout the game, involving new gameplay or layouts, graphics, levels and so on. Back in 'the day', I remember there being a lot less variety, and as such there being less of an imperative to a) see it all and b) let the developers show everything they have made (now at great cost).

Take a lot of the games I used to play, such as the Alien Breed series, Desert Strike, various shmups and side-scrolling beat 'em ups. You just went on and on with it getting harder and harder until you ran out of lives (or the will to live). It was fun, but these days that is less what games are about. Most games these days are about the enjoyment of content, replay value, online experience and so on and so forth.

So whilst it might be easier to finish a game these days, it's also very often a lot more fun than finishing the old ones would have been!

I play games for fun. If I want a challenge, I'll play against other people, or pick the times crossword (which, in effect, is the same thing).

But then again I'm currently stuck on GTA IV again and missing EvE something chronic.

Thanks!
It's come out in the states for the Wii's VC and as soon as it does here, I'll do just that. (Just because I want to play it on a nice dpad)

Sorry, that just looks like commode.

I'd say they have got easier. Reasons are manyfold. The most obvious one, mind, is the ability to save game progress. Treasure Island Dizzy, very hard, but play it on an emulator with save states, and it isn't really, so long as you're aware of the pitfalls (Creating unenterable screens) or save many different states.

Overall fidelity is up - Collision, control and so on. Analogue sticks are so much better for many/most games.

There is now an expectation to be able to reach the end, and see all content, which was never there in ages past. (More's the pity, I really liked the secret areas in Doom/Quake. They're generally a thing of the past)

But similary, due to QA, devs use far fewer really cheap tricks (I'm thinking to of, for instance, the coin search at the end of fantasy world dizzy. some very cheap tricks used there)
Not only that, but full game QA with actual testers.

(I needed a guide to Magicland dizzy, why? I couldn't get past the goat/troll scene. Because I thought the yellow wasn't a rope, but actually beams coming out of the goats eyes. I spent _Ages_ trying to find a mirror to reflect them onto the troll. So better quality of graphics also helps)

I hope you didn't sit there pressing the fire button or wiggling the joystick. (I did that the first few times until I realised what I was supposed to be doing.)

You need the coloured gems from the previous Levels to

Leaving five of the Toads to SUFFOCATE in the castle dungeons.

I certainly think that game have got easier, and I'm not really sure gameplay has really progressed that much - there's now an emphasis of finishing a game because of the story rather than anything to do with gameplay. Games have certainly got longer, though. Symphony of the Night is easier to *play* than Castlevania III, but certainly takes longer to finish.

Interestingly, at the time I considered Treasure Island Dizzy to be easy - not that it was, but the fact that it was possible in a mere couple of weeks (as opposed to mastering a game over a period of years, which would be Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf for me).

Also, Hello!

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LTIA

Hello Ltia and welcome!

My brother got this for Christmas, I finished it on boxing day.

Malc

Hello LTIA!

I for one welcome our new 'ltia' overlord.

I found Ati Atac mainly hard due to the utterly daft 'qwert' controls. Having since played it with a joystick, it's not too hard. (And I did enjoy the entire making a map aspect. That was ace, and something that has all but disappeared since)

Aw man, I made a huge map for Jack The Nipper 2, lovingly drawing the screens out. Curse you modern screenshot powers!

Was The Legend of Kyrandia a really hard game?

I remember it being really hard but then again I also remember crying every time my dad beat me at draughts.