"Tell me, when was the last time you really played a difficult Mario platformer? Nintendo game's difficulty level has always been easier than most. "
Just to clarify, I was talking about boss difficulty, and lack of a feeling of danger from damage in regular locales. There's a certain sense of drama and thrill from struggle. Mario Sunshine for example had pretty difficult stages and levels (especially when you had fludd taken away) which were amazing, but quite a few of the bosses fights would have benefitted greatly if they didn't have the 3-hit rule.
Another thing, there are different types of boss fights that make them difficult. One requires precision and timing. Another requires strategy/logic/etc. (and of course, most bosses require both)
The 3 hit rule works for bosses that take a while to figure out what you have to do and therein lies the difficulty, but when you're talking about bosses that require timing and precision, it'd add a lot more to the fight if you had to inflict damage multiple times.
The early Megaman games are a good indication of this. Even knowing the bosses' attack pattern and what is required of yourself to win, it was difficult to execute it and execute it multiple times. (Personally, I think that the Megaman games were a bit TOO hard in this respect btw.) If it took just 3 hits, 4, or 5, a lot of the struggle and essentially a lot of the fun factor would be taken out. It just ends too quickly and easily. Making the amount of hits more is not at all a shallow way of increasing difficulty.
me: "Nintendo should, for the kids and newcomers, make things easier. I'm all for that. For the industry to survive, kids need to be able to break in."
Ian: "I don't get this. We were kids once with no previous game experience and yet we were tossed in to the deep end and didn't drown. When I was a kid games were probably the hardest they've even been. I sucked at games then and I suck now and I actually benefit from lower difficulties but lowering the standards for the next generation doesn't make any sense to me. What disadvantage do they have that we didn't?"
I meant compared to adults and hardcore gamers. You were comparing Kid Ian vs. kids of today. Maybe you were better, we can't really go back in time and empirically discover that. However, I think its safe to say you are a better gamer now, then when you were younger. In other words, Adult Ian>Kid Ian. Your reflexes are more refined, you're smarter, you have more experience, etc. (well maybe you used to play a lot more when you were younger and in that case, maybe younger you was better).
For all players of any age, for a traditional game (not Nintendogs) to have maximum enjoyment, it needs to be a step or two ahead of the player. There's needs to be a challenge that seems within reach, but takes some work to get there. If it seems out of the player's grasp, they will give up. What you ideally want is for there to be a progression, so that the skill level of the player goes up. Let's not lose sight that games are meant to be fun. Difficulty itself doesn't make a game fun. It's just a single, miniscule part of it.
Topic: Difficulty levels on Nintendo games (Read 14627 times)
