Game difficulty has seen a resurgence of late. Most games are still being designed so younger gamers have a chance of beating them (Nintendo is guilty as hell of this), and the result is that older, more skilled gamers feel a little sidelined. But many games include options to turn up difficulty and some just un-apologetically kick your ass. So I am going to break down how different genres make themselves difficult and accessible at the same time.
First Person Shooter
Right off the bat, this genre isn't for everyone. It may be the most popular genre today, but some players just don't find it fun, no matter the difficulty. It also doesn't have a lot of tricks to alter the difficulty for people. Most games only have three or four difficulty settings, ranging from easy to hardcore. And these levels only make some combination of minor changes: enemies have more health or armor, you take more damage, or sometimes more enemies than in the other modes. This isn't really bad on developers part; the gameplay only allows some changes and this is usually more than enough for players. The most creative difficulty mode I have ever seen was Realism mode in Left 4 Dead 2. In this mode, the enemies are tougher, but the most damaging changes are in the removal of certain gameplay elements. As a team game, Left 4 Dead requires staying with your buddies; Realism mode removes the wall penetrating glowing aura around your team mates. This makes staying together much more difficult and demands military level communication.
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| Easy mode is appropriately called "Tell me a story" |
Strategy games have always been a bit of a secondary genre in the US, but its never maligned and generally well liked. The difficulty here was a big challenge for developers early on because so much of the difficulty stems from the intelligence of the computer opponent. Unfortunately, no computer AI has yet been able to challenge a human in strategy in a fair fight. So adjusting the difficulty is very game dependent. Civilization's enemy civs become more aggressive and faster at collecting resources than you as the level goes up. Making the enemy faster than you can ever be is a common trick, forcing you to be smarter than the computer. Other games pit you against unfair odds, or give you failure conditions that the enemy does not have (the cheaters). A game I just got for the 3DS called "Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars" is a turn based strategy war simulator. It does the standard pit you against unfair odds. A nice touch was that you can choose a difficulty setting before each level, and rewards to match the challenge.
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| Move 5 squares and bomb the tank |
A quick note about old style RPGs. They are rare nowadays, but because of how story dependent they are, the only way to make the game more difficult is by making enemies tougher, or you weaker. More modern action RPGs encounter a similar problem. They may offer difficulty settings, but their story dependence means that even at high difficulties, none of the story line missions can be prohibitively difficult. Game developers have long since solved this by adding extra content and side quests. Its usually in the side quests where the greatest difficulty can be found. Since these quests are optional, the difficulty can be cranked up to almost ridiculous levels; if you get stuck, just don't do it. In Kingdom Hearts, the multi-form final boss is depressingly easy for most of his forms. No, the real challenge was in the 4 optional bosses. The easiest was the Ice Titan, and the hardest was Sephiroth, the one winged angel with more health than health bar. An aside here on beating Sephiroth, if you don't have the game, skip ahead to the after the picture. Fairly early in the fight, Sephiroth uses a magic attack that kills you instantly. All the online guides I read said to use a potion right before it hits and the animation would overlap, healing you. I found that stupidly hard to pull off. I discovered by accident that if you hit him during the magic animation, he will stop the spell. He usually is too far to reach before the short animation ends, so use your special ability Strike Raid to hurl your key at him. Works much better.
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| There are waaaay too many pictures of this game. |
Platformers
The golden age of platforming is passed, but it is still a very popular genre. The ways of making the game difficult have remained mostly the same. Make it hard to perform, its really all that can be done. Whats changed is the application of difficulty. Mario and other classic platformers have neutered their difficulty to make them more accessible to younger gamers. The most recent Mario Game on the 3DS got some flack from reviewers for being a cake walk until halfway through. On the other side of the coin, some games, mostly by indie developers, have said screw and cranked up the difficulty to really punishing levels. Super Meat Boy is probably the most well known, but others have followed like "S'plosion Man" and "Dust Force". They are certainly punishing, but they have learned from the older generations and fixed some old annoyances. They don't limit your lives or continues and they make the controls tight so failure is usually your fault.
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| SHIIIIIIT!!!!! |
Sports game are a persistent genre despite little innovation and occasional blatant rip offs. The problem is that once the games accurately represent their sport, there isn't much more to do. Similarly on difficulty, they are limited by reality. The computer can react faster than a person, but the players it controls can't similarly be infinitely faster than human controlled players, so it can't be difficult like an RTS. Even in silly games like NBA Jam, the computer controlled characters can only be so fast, otherwise it isn't fair. Other than improving the strategy, the only change higher levels can make is to maybe give the computer more luck with the randomizer. Racing games have even gotten to the point of making the enemy drivers unfair. Mario Kart is notorious for giving the computer speed boosts players don't have, just to make it challenging. No, sports games really hope the difficulty will come from you playing your friends, just like.....
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| Some people still consider this the best football game. |
Fighting Games
Fighting games similarly design more for multiplayer rather than single player. They make sure to program decent AI, but they spend more time ensuring the fighters are balanced. Computers aren't as smart as people, but they are better at pulling of ridiculous button combos. But in general, people appreciate a balanced roster so that people can't break the game with practice and exploits.
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| Computers are cheap, South Koreans are cheaper. |
Pure adventure games are very rare; more often then not, its a hybrid genre game. And similarly to RPGs, they are so story driven that difficulty settings don't really change much. You can make the enemies take more damage, but most don't even include a difficulty option. Have you ever selected a difficulty level in Legend of Zelda?
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| The most recent Zelda has optional crafting. |
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