Does anyone remember when games were actually hard?

TorontRayne said:
Well I would definitely put that option in my RPG if I ever made it.
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TOEE had it. Well, except that autosaves are bugged as hell, so if your party doesn't die, you're likely to get your save corrupted eventually. I don't think there's a record of anyone beating the Ironman mode :roll:
 
I've recently had a bit of a stroll in adventure game land again, god did I miss those games. But it made me remember about this discussion on games getting easier and dumbed down. If it's noticeable anywhere, it's in the adventure genre.

I don't know whether adventure game creators call it 'evolving' or 'improving' or something, but almost all of them come up with some shitty reason to put enemies, sneaking, perhaps even fighting, and thus dying in. Adventure games were never, ever about the action, the adrenaline of a good sneak action (that's what Thief is for) or whatever. Adventure games were about a huge amount of (un)spoken text, a huge amount of interactive items and often an even bigger amount of confusion of what the heck to do next and usually a ridiculously large amount of creative work and humour.

Granted, Discworld and games like that had me do stuff I couldn't seriously consider calling 'logically deductible' in any way. But the fun, oh, the fun. And if I did figure out stuff, which I usually could really, then the feeling of achievement was just great.

Now, skip forward. Broken Sword 3 and Dreamfall are the latest two installments of adventure games I've been playing in the last..oh I don't know, few years. Instead of the usual huge amount of items, you're suddenly stuck with, what, 5 at most? Interactions or 'puzzles' in Dreamfall ranged from 'bring a sandwhich from the local inn' to 'use either of two items in your inventory on the world'. Or even to 'I need a rope' while finding a rope 2 metres behind you. Seriously, I felt like playing an interactive movie. The first 'Longest Journey' game was marvellous. great (non-chaos theory) puzzles and so on. Now it's suddenly all gone and in its place are some swanky notions of storytelling.

Seriously, I don't think there's been a good adventure game in the last 5 years. At least, I don't know about it. It's a dying breed probably, just like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Thief 1 & 2 are. All of them got 'sequels' more or less, and all of them failed, more or less.
 
Yes I remember when games were actually hard. I still possess many of them. Give a kid a copy of "Blood" set to hard difficulty and watch him convulse and destroy his PC because he gets owned hard by ruthless enemies. That's merely 1 example. Many games today are more "politically correct". You know don't want to frustrate the kids. Challenge is bad. Let everybody win no matter how terrible they are. Just let them happily romp through whatever in fool proof games. Remember games are about having "fun" and billy isn't having fun when he's getting owned hardcore and can't adapt. Don't make billy cry. billy needs a trophy.
 
There just seems to be no real sense of danger in a lot of games, especially action/adventure games, and even RPGs. I hate the feeling of playing an interactive movie.

On the other hand, I'm a grown up now (yaaaay :roll: ) so, I guess I don't mind not having to get frustrated and stressed over a hard ass game like I did as an 8 year old.
 
A brand-new game with balls-out difficulty is Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the DS. Some of today's best games is being made for that thing. And worst, I guess.
 
rcorporon said:
Give Mega Man 9 a spin.
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If/when they release it for PC, I will.

aenemic said:
I haven't played Ninja Gaiden 2, but Ninja Gaiden Black for Xbox is pretty damn hard.
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A friendly acquaintance of mine gave up on 2 because it was too hard which made it sound like a must play game for me. I love the DMC games (need a new PC so that I can play 4 T_T) and Onimusha but no other game has been as fun (God of War is massively overrated, not enough play variation and you can fuck yourself by hitting a save point with low health (I got stuck on a room with half health that I needed 2/3s to 3/4s to do) [shitty save system].

I hate that I pretty much have to play every game on hard mode (which is the hardest difficulty for half of the games) when it's brand new in order to have enough of a challenge for it to be fun. I think the other problem is that they just plain quit making some types of games; 2D platformers are handheld only and that's probably going to die with the DS and PSP, 2D action games are in the same boat (god I miss contra), adventure games are dead (to be fair, the market was flooded with nonsensical crap which probably did a lot to kill it), TBSs and TBCRPGs are dead, and arcade style sports and racing games are all but dead.
 
I loved NG on the Xbox, and felt quite happy when I finally managed to beat it on "Hard." I couldn't clear the first level on "Very Hard" though :).

I doubt they'll ever release Mega Man 9 for PC... too bad as it is a perfect re-creation of the old 8 bit games. Relentlessly hard.
 
Deus Ex was pretty hard for me at the time. Those commandos were very difficult without a one-shot sniper rifle.

Civ4 on the harder difficulty settings *shudder*.
 
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