For a significant proportion of people who play video games, part of the satisfaction of playing a game lies in successfully overcoming a challenge. If a game subjectively feels "too easy", then one doesn't derive any satisfaction from overcoming the "challenges" contained therein, as the challenges are too trivial to offer any satisfaction. Super hard games simply push this idea to its logical conclusion: maximum challenge = maximum satisfaction upon completion. Certainly an acquired taste, but it's only a quantitative difference from the subjective experience of the average player, not a qualitative one.
Like I said, an acquired taste, and different people have different thresholds for frustration. It even varies from game to game: I found the gameplay of XCOM Enemy Unknown absorbing enough that I spent hundreds of hours trying to beat it on Classic Ironman; while conversely, although I did enjoy the gameplay and aesthetics of Cuphead, I eventually gave up on it as I found it TOO frustrating to be worth the effort. (Although I do intend to give Cuphead another try at some point in the future.)
It's interesting to analogize this with books. I quit games when they stop being fun, but I don't do the same for novels. Given the quality of modern games maybe they deserve that same commitment?
I think that's an interesting topic too. I do the same thing. If I'm reading a book that I'm not really into I basically slow the pace of my reading to a crawl rather than put it aside and try something different. It's a bad approach.
But the weird thing is I don't do that with TV. I can think of lots of shows that I loved for years that took a nosedive. I always just shrugged and stopped watching. Why am I a completionist with books but not TV?
Soulsborne games are also not really that hard. People talk about them that way because they are almost unique in AAA gaming these days in the way that they demand focus, patience, and attention, 3 things that the last 20 years of modern gaming have stripped gamers of.
I haven't played a non-Nintendo console in over a decade. Breath of the Wild is about my limit for difficulty, and apparently everyone other than me 100%ed it blindfolded without touching the controller
I can definitely see an issue with too easy games. I bought some kirby game (can't remember which one) and I felt like I was watching my own let's play.
on non-Nintendo consoles the problem Eric describes is worse bc on, say, a PlayStation, you're dealing with so many big franchises that have dialed down difficulty over the years bc they're so primarily determined to be cinematic, and you break the flow of a pseudo-movie if you make the gameplay too difficult or even just too engaging at all.
Yeah, that's another thing about Soulsborne games, I don't care about the story so I don't care if I don't finish it. They're more like campfire retellings of old epics than narratives, anyway.
i do think there are a lot of bad secondary effects of Dark Souls being the modern gamer's only reference point for video game difficulty. you see this all the time on Reddit. someone will show up raging against a game they're convinced is broken bc they're having massive trouble and they just know the problem isn't them bc they "love Dark Souls." a sad state of affairs.
Soulsborne games ARE hard, they're just not hard in the way that people think they are, which is why superfans like me keep pushing them. :) The games are, above all, fair, and I think that's what people worry about.
You need to train yourself to be OK with ambiguity in the story - even the story doesn't hold your hand, you need to figure out what to do next yourself - and to be patient even when you keep dying to the same enemy repeatedly. You CAN beat them, there aren't "tricks" or anything like that. It's just patience with a slower paced game.
I never really understood the appeal of super hard games. I'd pass on this but it's not because of some disability
For a significant proportion of people who play video games, part of the satisfaction of playing a game lies in successfully overcoming a challenge. If a game subjectively feels "too easy", then one doesn't derive any satisfaction from overcoming the "challenges" contained therein, as the challenges are too trivial to offer any satisfaction. Super hard games simply push this idea to its logical conclusion: maximum challenge = maximum satisfaction upon completion. Certainly an acquired taste, but it's only a quantitative difference from the subjective experience of the average player, not a qualitative one.
I understand that, but I never find the satisfaction worth the annoyance.
Like I said, an acquired taste, and different people have different thresholds for frustration. It even varies from game to game: I found the gameplay of XCOM Enemy Unknown absorbing enough that I spent hundreds of hours trying to beat it on Classic Ironman; while conversely, although I did enjoy the gameplay and aesthetics of Cuphead, I eventually gave up on it as I found it TOO frustrating to be worth the effort. (Although I do intend to give Cuphead another try at some point in the future.)
It's interesting to analogize this with books. I quit games when they stop being fun, but I don't do the same for novels. Given the quality of modern games maybe they deserve that same commitment?
Funny enough, Moshfegh's McGlue is one of the few I just gave up on.
I think that's an interesting topic too. I do the same thing. If I'm reading a book that I'm not really into I basically slow the pace of my reading to a crawl rather than put it aside and try something different. It's a bad approach.
But the weird thing is I don't do that with TV. I can think of lots of shows that I loved for years that took a nosedive. I always just shrugged and stopped watching. Why am I a completionist with books but not TV?
Yeah, novel abandonment comes with a distinct feeling of guilt/failure for me. I think novels benefit from some kind of undeserved legacy privilege.
Soulsborne games are also not really that hard. People talk about them that way because they are almost unique in AAA gaming these days in the way that they demand focus, patience, and attention, 3 things that the last 20 years of modern gaming have stripped gamers of.
I haven't played a non-Nintendo console in over a decade. Breath of the Wild is about my limit for difficulty, and apparently everyone other than me 100%ed it blindfolded without touching the controller
I can definitely see an issue with too easy games. I bought some kirby game (can't remember which one) and I felt like I was watching my own let's play.
on non-Nintendo consoles the problem Eric describes is worse bc on, say, a PlayStation, you're dealing with so many big franchises that have dialed down difficulty over the years bc they're so primarily determined to be cinematic, and you break the flow of a pseudo-movie if you make the gameplay too difficult or even just too engaging at all.
Yeah, that's another thing about Soulsborne games, I don't care about the story so I don't care if I don't finish it. They're more like campfire retellings of old epics than narratives, anyway.
i do think there are a lot of bad secondary effects of Dark Souls being the modern gamer's only reference point for video game difficulty. you see this all the time on Reddit. someone will show up raging against a game they're convinced is broken bc they're having massive trouble and they just know the problem isn't them bc they "love Dark Souls." a sad state of affairs.
Soulsborne games ARE hard, they're just not hard in the way that people think they are, which is why superfans like me keep pushing them. :) The games are, above all, fair, and I think that's what people worry about.
You need to train yourself to be OK with ambiguity in the story - even the story doesn't hold your hand, you need to figure out what to do next yourself - and to be patient even when you keep dying to the same enemy repeatedly. You CAN beat them, there aren't "tricks" or anything like that. It's just patience with a slower paced game.