Topic: Are Games Getting To Easy?

[honda_insightful]

I like the hard mechanics of old games.  There's something extremely satisfying about dying on Screen 1 of Mario Brothers or Super Metroid, and then, over time, learning to improve yourself to beat the game.  It feels like you've accomplished greatness.

There's nothing satisfying about just "walking through" a game... you might as well just be watching a movie instead... because you have not improved yourself.

[getupkids]

yes games are too easy! tell them to stop making games easy its a jip-off.

[PIAC]

not all games are easy. a blanket statement like that is ignorant, ikaruga is not easy, viewtiful joe is not easy, advance wars 1 and 2 is not easy, metroid prime is not easy, metroid fusion is not easy, need i go on?

[Mario]

Wind Waker is one of the easiest games ive ever played,  a huuuuuuge disappointment in that regard. I hope the next Zelda is much harder, and i dont want 3 new hearts every time i kill an enemy.

[Huzkee]

It has to do with the change in focus by developers. Earlly games had to be hard to keep players entertained with low quatities of gaming code due to technological restrictions, memory, storage medium, etc. Today all those limitations are gone and developers have to find different ways to keep game longevity up. Now a days exploration is a big part of game lenght whereas before it was playing similar levels at higher degrees of difficulty.

That being said I do find that even hardcore gamers are becoming increasingly turned off by games that require even a medium level of difficulty. I'm talking specifically about gamezine reviews of games that require a higher skill level and went on to get much lower than decerving scores. EGM sometimes baffles me with some of their scores: Waverace Blue Storm, excelent lauch game, requiring finesse and skill to complete the higher courses received scores no higher than 7s because of difficulty. F-zero got two scores that put it below the 8 mark because it was too difficult. Totally unacceptable. Finally, PN03 has been shunned by most game critics by being too short/too difficult/too bland. I personally love it and think the main reason for the low scores being difficulty. Reviews have gone as far as admitting they could only play the game on easy mode, then they complain that the game is too short, that's coming from supposed hardcore gamers? I think this generation of gamers has become too dependant on light and whistles instead of a challenging gaming experience. If you want an indication of true laziness just look at all the cheat devices on the market. Even in entertainment the lazy take the easy road.

[nemo_83]

WW, Metroid, and ED were all too easy.  I want games that are hard like the old Mario Bros. games like this new FZero.  Games can be easy to get into and perhaps even simple but Nintendo seems to forget that they need to be challenging in order to be fun.  I'm also not a fan of fighting the game rather than the enemies like in Metroid.  I found myself fighting the control setup the whole way through.  I found myself fighting mindless pirates rather than AI.  

The crown jewl though would have to be just how easy bowser was in Mario Sunshine.  I beat him the first time.  Bowser has always posed at least some challenge in the past.  

[GoldShadow1]

The difficulty of Wind Waker didn't really bother me.  Zelda difficulty is all about the puzzles (although, thinking about it, Wind Waker's puzzles were very easy too... dangit).  

I am rather perplexed with how everyone seems to think Mario Sunshine is so hard... I didn't have that much of a problem with it, it was certainly easier than SM64 (though probably because I'm more used to the controls).  I think it's about medium difficulty.  And of course, for some reason it's a Nintendo tradition to have a very easy final boss (compared to earlier bosses, even)