Difficulty: Does it equate to fun? – Volume 1

It is very common for a lot of game players prefer to find a challenge in the games they’re playing, it is satisfying to overcome challenges by beating them regardless if it’s in a game or not. Slowly though, there has been a misconception that a game must be played in the hardest difficulty in order to be enjoyed at its maximum potential. Many times, many friends I know prefer to play at the hardest difficulty because they’re “hardcore” and “that’s how the game is supposed to be played”. What baffles me is that if that is if that’s how the game supposed to be played, then how come “hardest” isn’t the normal difficulty?

Usually, I play the games on normal if I were given the choice, I play games because I want to play them, not because I have to justify some title because my “honor as a hardcore gamer” depends on it. If the game was “meant to be played” on hardest, then that’s the developer’s problem for not having the backbone to have the game “the way it should be played”.

I love a lot of hard games, Etrian Odyssey, Demon’s Souls, Ikaruga are to name a few, but when I am given a choice I would always go for the normal difficulty. From experience, a lot of games aren’t very creative when it comes to difficulty, emptying 2 magazines and a half of bullets to pinch an enemy while the enemy tosses a crumpled piece of paper at me to cause internal bleeding, BECAUSE I decided I have a title to hold, isn’t exactly my idea of having fun.

People seem to forget that’s what games are for in the first place, fun. Admittedly, there are a few games that play better on hardest, Doom and Quake especially. Generally though, the usual time I pick the hardest difficulty is when I find the normal way too easy to be fun (Deus Ex: Human Revolution being a prime example, but even when I played it at hardest, that didn’t help the oversimplified augmentation system and the health regent from being infuriating).

In the same time, there is a countless number of games that are easy but in the same time very fun to play, and not many of them are in fact new games, many of these games are from the 8-bit and 16-bit era. Games like the ones in the Kirby series and Pop ‘n’ Twinbee have concentrated on being playable and entertaining rather than challenge the player to concentrate harder. If these games were released in a more recent time, many people would have dismissed them as “casual games”.

This will be a series of articles explaining my thoughts on game difficulty, what are your thoughts on game difficulty?

Mohammad AlHuraiz

Founder, editor and host of Lochal Archade. Mohammad has been running Lochal Archade for years and working hard in bringing video game-related content to the UAE and the Middle East as a whole.

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