What Makes a Game Difficult for You?

[February Eve]

As the subject says, what are some aspects that add to the difficulty of a game for you? And by difficult, I mean the "good" kind of difficulty, if you will - the puzzles that make you think, the bosses that have a pattern but you have to be precise, etc. Not difficult because of poor game design or controller issues.

For example, the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time is famous (or infamous to some) for its difficulty, and there's a specific reason it is for me - when you first enter the temple, there are three different levels, and several doors on each level. One thing that is guaranteed to confuse me is to present me with several options and not make it obvious which one should come first. To a lesser extent, the City in the Sky is the same way for me.

Another thing that makes a game difficult to me is when you have to talk to a certain character to progress in the game and the only way to know this is if you've talked to everyone in the area. In my case, I'm thinking specifically of Majora's Mask, when you have to talk to the Fisherman to get the seahorse. In general, I am not always good at remembering past hints - or for that matter, interpreting them.

I grew up on the original Legend of Zelda, and (at first) I had a little trouble transitioning to 3D because I think it makes it easier to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. With a top-down perspective I can easily get an overview, but with 3D it's easy to accidentally miss an area. While this could fall under the "bad" kind of difficult, I think it can also be used to designers' advantage. Going back to the Water Temple, that key under the block that rose up when you changed the water level is obvious once you already know where it is, but many people missed it the first time around, because it's not on the same level as you and it's just as easy to go up as it is to go down.

And to name some specific puzzles: I liked the difficulty level of Twilight Princess' guardian puzzle in the Sacred Grove, as well as the ice puzzles in Snowpeak Ruins. I certainly had to think about them, but at the same time, they're very logical to those that are good at puzzles but can be done by trial and error if really needed.

Again, all of the above are not bad things - they are things that add to my gaming experience because it makes it more challenging.By the way , my examples are all Zelda because that's what I've played the most, but feel free to bring in other games - that's why I placed it in the "General Gaming" section.

 

[athenian200]

Generally speaking, anything that involves timers or precise timing is what makes a game very difficult for me. Generally speaking... you could remove ALL timers or anything requiring precise timing from a game, and ask me to beat it... and it would be a lot easier.

The next up has to be controls that involve rhythm or precise movements, especially longer sequences, but these usually involve timing in some form, so it's hard to say which issue is really screwing me up.

Lastly, anything that's arbitrary and illogical. For instance, in one game, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. You were supposed to burn a rope with the Sorcerer's Ring, and this was fairly obvious to me. My ring was set to lightning, and I kept using it on the rope to no avail. Eventually, a long search online revealed that you actually had to set the ring to fire, burn the rope, and THEN set it back to lightining later. The problem is that that doesn't make any sense... wouldn't a flammable rope struck by lightning energy catch fire, or at least fall apart? The only possible exception would be a rope made of rubber or some similar flammable material that doesn't conduct electricity, and there was no indication of that. Quite frequently, I'm stumped because the solution to a puzzle is something arbitrary and illogical. Something that shouldn't work or make a difference, but does.

 

[Pocket Asian]

I can't think of a lot of things that would make gaming difficult for me, so I'll just list the ones that I'm aware of:

Ice. Anything with ice is a pain for me. The ice lowers the traction of the character if they stand on it, so they will start sliding even though you're not trying to move them with the analog stick or directional pad. Going to the Legend of Zelda, any puzzles in the games that involve ice are normally a nightmare for me. It takes me quite some time to complete these puzzles, especially when it comes to pushing a block and letting it slide on the ice to a certain spot.

Another one is control scheme. This would definitely go towards Resident Evil, 2, 3, 0, and Code Veronica. The controls at first were confusing. In these games, to move your character forward, you have to push the control stick up, no matter what direction you were facing. Pushing backwards would make your character walk back, left turns the character left, and right turns the character right.
Difficult control scheme also went to Sin & Punishment the first time I played it. I bought it on Virtual Console for the Wii and had to use the Classic controller. Everything was fine until it came to moving Saki or Airan around the screen. I was expecting to use the right analog stick to move them, but it was just another way to move the cursor. To move, I had to use the X and Y buttons, which really threw me off.

The last thing that gets me is if the game is in first person. I'm not too fond of first-person shooters or adventures, but I do like Metroid. The Metroid Prime sub-series is first person. It isn't difficult for me, but I still lose a lot of interest in the games because they are first person, so I'll stop playing them after not even an hour and put them on hold and play other games.

 

[DeletedUser9]

Complexity and depth.

I've played a billion games - and that includes games in the Zelda series - where the enemies and bosses can be difficult, but once you've figured out the trick it's not so bad. I'm brilliant at memorizing and analyzing details about the enemies or characters (in the case of a fighting game). It's like I have a mental cheat sheet and know exactly how to counter or avoid all their moves.

Now I'm going to use a single example: Devil May Cry. This is easily the single hardest game I've ever played, and brilliantly so; it's beautiful. In this game, there are only a handful of enemies. They are gradually introduced throughout the game, and indeed the end-game enemies are much tougher than the early ones. But to be honest even the early ones can slaughter you if you're not careful, even with all the upgrades. The enemies are complex. To be honest I can't memorize or read most of them. They have many attacks, a lot of variety, and have no predictable pattern to their attack strategies. In Mega Man games I can fight a boss battle and memorize the logic behind what moves they'll use as well as the giveaways for those moves. I can't in DMC... not at all.

Same goes for puzzles really. If the puzzle is simplistic, it's a piece of cake, usually even if it's a unique crazy idea. But even the most basic concept, presented in a complex puzzle, is mind-bending. A good example is many of the ice block puzzles in TMC or TP.

Now there are a couple of smaller things that can attribute to good difficulty, but I think these are the main things... at least for me.

 

[Petman1325]

Well, for starters, as some may have said, puzzles that make you think. I am a fan of the Professor Layton series and the Zelda series, so I know for a fact that a well placed puzzle can cause you to have to think long and hard about it, examine it carefully, and pick the path that seems the best. I mean, while Layton's puzzles require both logic and knowledge, Zelda's puzzles just require you to examine the environment and figure out what has to be done and such.

My next thing would be for dexterity and endurance. It's one thing to be able to point out enemies and kill them fast before they can kill you, but you have to keep doing it until you can't do it anymore. In platformers, you have to quickly find a path to go and keep to it without falling or dying. One good example of a game that requires quite a bit of dexterity and endurance would be Left 4 Dead (Yes, I have played Left 4 Dead, but you could have found that out on my sig). Thanks to the A.I. Director, it'll send enemies and guns out at you depending on how good your team is doing. Another example would be the Trackmania series, which the tracks (which most, if not all of them are user created with the level editor) require quite a bit of dexterity to keep moving on without crashing.

One of my final points will be strategy. There is always a certain way to kill an enemy. It can be some light and not difficult strategy, such as in the Mario Series, or it can be full blown tough, like the old Warcraft games on Battle.net (trust me, don't go there unless you're good). Strategy is applied in just about every game...you just don't know it. So, those are my reasonings as to what makes a game difficult. Like 'em, hate 'em, it's the truth...at least in my world.

 

[Smitie]

Good puzzles can make a game challenging and difficult. Petman already mentioned the Professor Layton series which has puzzles that requires you to think. My example of a good 'puzzle game' is the Phoenix Wright series. You have to find contradictions in testimonies, linking them with evidence or what people said to you during the investigations. Some contradictions are so tiny and require a good memory, it really makes you think out of the box.

Strategy can also make a game difficult. I'm personally not a fan of strategic thinking, I rather run into the enemies fortress with blazing guns instead of sneaking inside and silently kill all the guards. Especially with the improved AI during the years, games require strategic thinking and using a tactic to win. You have to think before you attack. I think Monster Hunter Tri is a good example. If you run towards a monster with your weapon with no tactic, you will die. You have to learn the behavior of the monster and think of a strategy to kill/capture it. Strategy makes games for me more challenging. This can be a good way, since it requires more thinking. Like I said, I don't like strategy too much. The newest FPS games for example are not suited for me, since running towards danger like an idiot is out of the question.

 

[Kybyrian]

Difficulty is always one of the things that I look for in a Zelda game, and I believe there are many aspects that contribute to the overall difficulty of a game while keeping it nice and entertaining. One would, of course, be the difficulty of the enemies. A lot of the enemies in Zelda games are subpar at best. I understand that we don't want to overwhelm people with hordes of enemies that are going to beat them down continuously and be hard to kill, but I think something along the difficulty of the 2D games would be nice. The enemies were pretty challenging then. All they would have to do to mimic their difficulty in 3D games would give them some fancy moves and make them deal more damage possibly.

I also look for good puzzles. I always want to see a puzzle with a decent difficulty that I'm not going to spend my entire life solving. Some of the puzzles in Zelda can be good and challenging, but I think that they've done well with not going overboard with the difficulty of puzzles. In fact, I think that a raise in difficulty of most of the puzzles would be great. Games like Oracle of Ages have very many good examples. The entire game seemed like a puzzle, and that's even better, yet it wasn't too difficult. Many of the dungeons had puzzles that were used throughout most of the dungeon, as well. That's even better. Make a decent dungeon that's basically a giant puzzle but doesn't quite feel like one. This is definitely one of the aspects of dungeons and the game overall that I look forward to seeing in future Zelda games. It really makes a good game difficulty and enjoyment-wise.

Another thing is the difficulty of the bosses, which sort of falls in with the difficulty of the general enemies. I think that Zelda for the most part does really good with their boss difficulties. Nothing that I've seen has ever been overly challenging or extremely easy. The only things that I can complain about being too easy are the first couple bosses in the games, which is understandable. They want newer players to get used the game and don't want to throw a challenging boss at them, especially when they only have 3 or so hearts to battle with. A lot of the bosses have great strategies that require an amount of intelligence and skill to get through, and I think that they are mostly at a good level the way they are. There are some bosses that you see every now and then in the games that could definitely use improvement, though.

 

[gUtSLyOiR]

While im a large fan of games that require thought, like tactical shooters or rpgs, both of which require strategy, the one thing im not great at is multitasking. I do like the RTs genre, and im currently addicted (and getting better at) StarCraft 2, but having to multitask and micro manage many units at any given time is somewhat difficult for me, when i can get the same strategic gameplay in a more focused method by putting all the thought id put into building an army into building one character in an rpg, even if its over the course of many hours, although sometimes it isnt, given that in a lot of newer games you can change your build whenever.

 

[Twilight_Prince]

if a game has a ton of enemies all coming at you at once, or even if its like assassins creed where they dont know u exist, but they ar still just another precaution that must be taken to make success as clean as possible. if the Spin Attack didnt exsist, i would get killed and just give up. theres a point at which saving a princess isnt enough of a reward for gettin chased by an angry mob of idiot enemies. another thin that makes a game difficult is if there is a specific order in which you have to do somethin in(press switches, kill enemies, etc.). i played a mario game that there were three layers of a stage and they dont give you the order + if you mess up on, say, the last one, u have to stary from the comlete begining. Despite this i like being a one-man killing machine such as Mario, Altair/Ezio, or Link.

 

[zbygy9]

I'm not to great at FPS's, at least multiplayer-wise. I don't know why.

 

[*M i d n a*]

The games I play aren't difficult at all. Not to brag but I am one hell of a gamer when I play, I always try to be the best at what I do. I quickly adapt to any game, to any control schemes, etc. If a game is difficult, the better, it is a challenge for me. Unlike some easy games like Mario Bros or Zelda, those are just a breeze.