Difficulty in Games

Difficulty in videogames back in their infancy in arcades was used for the sole purpose of getting money from kids. I can’t remember all the quarters I dumped into Ghosts ‘n Goblins or Donkey Kong in my youth, back then that was what you got you had to deal with the punishing difficulty to progress. Now we live in the world where you can set the difficulty of a game to your skill set.

I’ve finished every Call of Duty game to date on Veteran difficulty, same with every Halo game. I’ve finished Mass Effect 2 on “Insane” difficulty, and I play every music game instrument on the hardest difficulty. One of my favorite experiences in any game to date is in Call of Duty 2 while playing on Veteran difficulty, storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, knowing darn well any of the millions of bullets flying overhead could land and kill me instantly gave me such a rush it has still yet to be matched.

To counter that, I recently went back and played The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. This was one of 2004’s best games that very few people played, what’s more it stands tall as possibly the best movie based videogames ever released. Butcher Bay was great; the visuals were stunning at the time (and still hold up very well by today’s standards), the story was compelling, the lighting was extraordinary, the stealth gameplay remains some of the best around, and the hand-to-hand combat is brutal and satisfying. Then Butcher Bay starts to dismantle itself, it makes you pick up a gun and start shooting. The shooting in Butcher Bay is broken, guns have very little weight, they’re clunky to use, and 90% of the time you’ll miss your target even when you’re close enough to bash them with the butt of your gun. Usually that would be a deal breaker for me, this game requires you to shoot through the majority of the game and the shooting is downright bad, most games I would turn off and never look back. Butcher Bay though had so much to offer, I wanted to keep progressing through the beautifully gritty world and see what else there was to offer. So for the first time in any game that I can think of, I went into the options and turned the difficulty down to easy.

Once I did that my enjoyment of Butcher Bay shot up ten-fold. Enemies would die after a believable number of shots to the head and every shot I took didn’t demolish half of my health. I went through and finished Butcher Bay and loved every second of it. The game played out in a very satisfying way and the final battle was still incredibly challenging, I’d hate to think what that fight would’ve been like on “Normal” or god forbid “Hard” difficulty. However, I also left Butcher Bay feeling a little conflicted, had I really beaten the game, as long as I’ve been playing games I’ve always had the belief that if you turn down the difficulty on a game it’s almost the same as cheating. I mean that’s what you’re doing; making the game easier, removing the challenge, making it to the end of a game without having to give it your all.

Then I started to think differently, the way I play videogames has changed. I used to play games for the purpose of “beating” or “winning” the game. That’s changed; I now view the majority of videogames more as an experience and less as a game. Now there are still games where “winning” is the purpose; Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is a great example where my one goal is to get a higher score than all my friends. The same can be said about sports games or racing games where the point is to come in first. Games like Butcher Bay and Grand Theft Auto 4, though I play not for the goal of beating the game but to follow the story that is being presented. Sad to say, but the fact of the matter is that I have missed out on some great games because they just didn’t work right or were to hard and I had to much false pride to set the game to easy.

Difficulty is used for a variety of reasons, some games main selling point is the hyper difficulty, it can be used for replay value, and it can be bragging rights, at points though it can start to affect the actual experience of playing the game. I almost didn’t finish Dead Space 2 because the final chapter had an unkillable enemy, and constant death. It took two hours and multiple “You Died” screens, but I finally finished the last chapter, there was no fun to be had. A friend of mine played through the same part only he switched the game down to easy. At first I silently mocked him because he couldn’t accomplish what I had, beating the difficult part on a challenging difficulty. In the end though he won; he didn’t break a controller out of anger.

Now have I done a complete turnaround, no. I still enjoy challenge in my games, and there are certainly games that thrive off difficulty. I can’t imagine Demon’s Souls having an easy setting because the draw of that game is its punishing challenge; I feel the same way about the classic Mega Man games. Varying difficulty is nice because it allows everyone a chance to enjoy the experience of a great game. So don’t feel inadequate because you had to turn the difficulty down on Starcraft 2 or Call of Duty, they can be near impossible if you aren’t a master at their playstyles.

I had a conversation with a friend on Twitter (after I mentioned my turning down Riddick’s difficulty) where he suggested that “Easy” mode in games be renamed “Good Times Mode,” and I have to say, I’m inclined to agree.