Challenging Video Games

[Hitman]

For me, the harder the better. It depends on the the game, but I normally play on the hardest setting possible.

Unfortunately nowadays, challenging games are quite hard to find. I still remember the days were one took weeks or months to finish a game, not days or hours.

 

[Garrett]

CoD4 has the same thing, since enemies keep spawning no matter what you do.

Ditto Call of Duty 2, though you can also be cheap back since they typically despawn once you pass a checkpoint. That's the only reason I got as far into the hardest mode (Veteran?) as I did.

I typically play on normal. Hard, if the game is too easy on the normal setting. I want the game to be somewhat challenging, but not so tough I have to fight urges to chuck the controller across the room. If the game has some rather cheap moments to make up for overall easiness, I'll typically just play it on normal.

Achievements might change my mind, though. I played Call of Duty 2 long after I had gotten sick of the veteran setting trying to pick some achievement points up.

 

[Mistral]

Halo 2 on legendary was next to impossible for me, so I gave up. But Halo 3 on legendary, we had four-player co-op and just blew through the game because someone could always run away and hide so the rest could regenerate and keep on going.

This is one of many reasons my copy of Halo3 now operates in a support role-it supports my beer while I play COD4!

 

[firehawk12]

^ Oh snap.

I found my exception though... Rock Band. Vocals on Expert seems to be fair - although there are some problems, but guitar... I can't finish the last tier of songs at all and for the most part I can only three or four star songs, but the lower difficulties just aren't interesting anymore. I guess I'm just stuck.

 

[dragunzng]

Ikaruga wins by default

Clearly you've never played Shinobi on PS2.

 

[unimatrix7]

^ Shinobi PS2 was designed for a particular niche audience who would not have accepted anything less than a brutal and unforgiving difficulty level.

But really, Shinobi isn't the hardest game in the world GUNVALKYRIE, by another Sega studio, Smilebit, is just plain vicious.

 

[BigFoot]

I usually play on the normal difficulty setting. I'm definitely not a hardcore gamer, so the more difficult setting are usually to hard for me.

 

[Lindley]

Gaming for me isn't about the reflexes as much as the ambiance and storyline. So usually I just use Normal on my first play-through.

If the game is good enough to warrant a replay, I'll try a harder difficulty.

 

[FordSVT]

For me, the harder the better. It depends on the the game, but I normally play on the hardest setting possible.

Unfortunately nowadays, challenging games are quite hard to find. I still remember the days were one took weeks or months to finish a game, not days or hours.

I've been playing games for almost 30 years, and I'm not sure what you mean. I go back and play Atari, NES, Sega, SNES games all the time and none of them are "longer". In fact, they are all invariably "shorter". I can beat Actraiser or Zelda 3 in a weekend, how is that any different from a modern action or rpg game? The newer Final Fantasy games are invariably longer than the old NES and SNES games. Most genres that existed back then that still exist now are far deeper and more complex. A lot of old games didn't have endings at all, but I'm not going to tout their "unlimited gameplay time potential" as one of its selling points.

 

[CorporalClegg]

^
I don't think he meant the actual completion time of game.

I think he meant that games just took longer to finish because they were so much harder.

Say, something like 1943: 20 hard as fuck levels and you get one life. You die, and you go back to the beginning.

 

[Unicron]

I've always hated the last mission on Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.

 

[FordSVT]

^
I don't think he meant the actual completion time of game.

I think he meant that games just took longer to finish because they were so much harder.

Say, something like 1943: 20 hard as fuck levels and you get one life. You die, and you go back to the beginning.

Those old twitch games were designed to do one thing: eat your quarters. The more often you died, the more quarters you put in. Anyone can design a game that's almost impossible to complete, but I don't think most of today's gamers would care to play such a game. A game should be challenging but not because it's designed to randomly be impossible. With the more complicated mechanics in play these days, more often than not it would feel too much like "cheating" on the designer's part if they made a game that hard. Could you imagine playing Call of Duty and every once in a while an unavoidable rock came out of the sky and killed you? Could you imagine playing the same game and getting shot once and being forced to go back to level one? There are so many games to choose from these days, people would get frustrated and they move on.

And there are still some really hard games out there, and you can always play the old ones.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I pretty much like carnage so I play on easy so I can kill everything and not die and have unlimited ammo if possible.

Once I have mastered a game on easy I will play harder modes just for the challenge, but I rarely complete a game in harder modes.

 

[CorporalClegg]

One thing I would like is some harder RPGs.

I love them, but they all become so homogeneous that they really don't offer a lot of challenge any more.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I enjoy games with some challenge and that you occasionally die or fail, but not so difficult that I die over and over again, since I don't find that fun at all.

 

[Mistral]

One thing I would like is some harder RPGs.

I love them, but they all become so homogeneous that they really don't offer a lot of challenge any more.

go get an old NES and the Ultima IV game. I logged 139 hours on it and got my balloon stuck in the mountains-never finished the game. Freakin' puzzles were so hard I spent 22 hours trying to crack one. Myst was easier by a long shot.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I finished all the old Ultima games years ago.

 

[Mistral]

you got too much time on your hands...

 

[FordSVT]

One thing I would like is some harder RPGs.

I love them, but they all become so homogeneous that they really don't offer a lot of challenge any more.

JRPGS are so stagnant it hurts. Pretty movies with effeminate males fighting an ancient evil and a million status spells that don't do anything worthwhile.

I must say though, I just finished Mass Effect and if you liked KOTOR, you'd really like ME.

 

[firehawk12]

The new trend is level scaling, so that the enemies scale up to whatever level you are... makes grinding almost pointless since it makes the game harder, which I guess is better than just plain grinding.
I just wish people did the BioWare thing of giving you XP from completing missions, not killing boars or rabbits... or the Bethesda thing of giving you XP for just doing things. Although, that means you look like an idiot jumping around everywhere to get your acrobat skill up.