When does 'hard' become 'too damn hard'?

What is it that makes some people devote hours of their free time to games they end up trying over and over to beat until they’re screaming at the screen? BeefJack looks at games from both ends of the perceived difficulty spectrum – Dark Souls and Fable III – and tries to discover what makes a tough game ‘just right’ instead of ‘too damn hard’.

[dangert12]

When the A.I turns and headshots you In an Instant
When the A.I's bullets/weapons go through walls

[thor]

Totally agree.

My ideal AI in a game would be completely nonpartisan and equivalent to the human players in every way. That is, the player is not seen as "special" in their eyes any more than his teammates and they only shoot at him because of his uniform, and if the player is hindered by controls that only allow him to turn so fast, the computer players should be, too.

[HeavenlySnipes]

COD on Veteran. They don't make the AI smarter, they just make them cheap to give the illusion that they got 'harder'. They see you from places where you can't see them, even if you are planning an ambush on enemies coming your way, they will immediately do 360 headshots on you once you fire at them. All that BS

Since I'm using FPS's, I'd say KZ2 on elite is the best AI I've seen in that genre. No cheap BS. The4y catch you trying to be rambo, and you get mowed down.

[GarandShooter]

You missed my personal favorite, grenade spamming, especially when from distances no world class athlete could reach throwing, yet every average Joe in the military can manage when I step on the battle field.

[LukaX23]

in reply to the title. erm... twss? i so mature.

[Crazyglues]

When does 'hard' become 'too damn hard'?

Every dam day of the week.... LoL -(welcome to the Real world)

I often ask this question too but found the answer is a little harder then you might think, for example -
A 10 year old kid picks up a PS3 controller and does the X1 2010 challenge in GT5 with no problem, I (a grown ass man) try this same challenge and struggle to complete the first two races, never ever beating the third to this day..

Do I look at the game and say this game is too hard what were they thinking, or do I realize it's time to do something I never thought I could do..

Rise to a challenge so impossible at first, that I could not wrap my mind around it, but learn to understand that it's not the game that's hard, it's the answer to the question that's hard to see..

How do I do this...

Remember when games were hard, when you felt like you just did something amazing when you beat a game.. Today games are so easy our brains have fallen asleep, our determination has become less and less.. Hell today we expect the boss battle to be easy or at least not too hard, a few more shots and he should go down..

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[TopDudeMan]

I concur. Games used to be about learning it and getting right into the mindset of the game so it came second nature. But nowadays a lot of games are designed so you can just pick it up and play it for half an hour.

[DaReapa]

I second that.

[JsonHenry]

You know, the only reason I thought that Dark Souls was difficult was because I knew NOTHING about the game. I didn't know you could slide down ladders, I didn't know what humanity/being human meant. I didn't know what (and still not 100% sure) that some weapons scale with your stats and others don't. THAT was what made the game hard for me. It would be nice if the instruction manual told you these things.

But after playing it for a bit and learning the ropes it really isn't any harder than the NES games we played growing up. Trial and error. After that the game gets rather easy.

[brish]

Most weapons scale with stats.

If you look at the damage for a weapon you will see a +number beside it. That's your stats damage bonus.

If you look at the detail page for the weapon it shows a few letter grades by some icons. Those letter grades show how good the stat bonus is for each stat. The grades are om a,b,c,d,e with 'a' being the best.

On the ps3 you can press select for details on what the icons are. If you're on an xbox it should show the xbox specific command on the bottom of the screen.

[Dynasty2021]

Dark Souls is't hard.

Learn the animations that you cant interrupt and attack when they 'recover' and cant block.

Then it's easy. Dark Souls is actually quite easy. Dying is never cheap, you died because you tried to cheat the system and run through the mobs instead of taking your time. If you get pushed off a cliff, thats because you placed yourself too close to the cliff.

Dying in the game is your fault, it's never cheap or impossible. Every enemy has a weakness, even if they can one-shot-kill you.

[A-Glorious-Dawn]

Yeah dark souls just needs patience...

[Deputydon]

While I agree, Dark Souls is actually pretty easy game once you play it for a while, and know what to expect, dying isn't 100% your fault every single time.

The lock on has killed me a couple times (it did in Demon's Souls also) and one time I was fighting a Taurus Demon (No, not the first 'boss') and it was near a cliff. I was up against the wall, and when I killed him in a mere two hits, the way the body disintegrated into the ground, it sort of pushed my character into the air and wouldn't let me move and by the time it would, my character was on the very, very edge of the cliff looking the wrong direction. Needless to say, I died. Hasn't happened since though.

I've already beat it with three different characters (I enjoy coming up with the perfect PvP build, I don't so much care for the NG+ as it doesn't really add THAT much in Dark Souls. As far as I know nothing new opens up, and only some new armor is available to buy. And the enemies get harder. I basically go into a new game + since the invade rate goes up dramatically.

But This game is amazing. And once they patch it so the Fog Ring becomes useless for PvP, it'll be far better. I've been in a situation where two darkmoon covenant members invades me, and then a few seconds later a black phantom (Dark Spirit, whatever) also invades me and put us in a 2v1v1 situation. I managed to conquer though!

[RankFTW]

Haha yeah getting shoved off a cliff because of a disintigrating corpse is not good, I feel your pain.

[DragonKnight]

I f***ing HATE the lock on deaths. Like when you're locked on to an enemy, and wailing away at him from what you perceive is a safe distance; then the enemy falls off the cliff mid-swing and you go with it because you were locked on and your swing brought you closer to the ledge. It's the worst in the Great Hollow and Painted World areas.

I also wish they'd patch the online for a few different things. First of all, Ring of Fog. GET RID OF IT! Everyone wears it and then all you get are the backstab spammers who don't know how to win without circling you for eternity and waiting for backstab. Also, the bloodloss weapons. In Demon's Souls bloodloss acted the same way as poison; but in Dark Souls blood loss takes off a MASSIVE amount of your HP in one shot. Phantom reach due to lag is the worst. When you're 20 feet away and you get backstabbed, then you know something is wrong with the online.

Some of these problems existed in Demon's Souls and I'm disappointed that From Software didn't iron out the kinks for this one. But other than that, the game isn't cheap. It just encourages you to be methodic in your style.

*EDIT* I forgot to mention camera angle deaths. Like when you're walking on the branches in the great hollow and the camera moves quickly in the opposite direction you want to go and you fall to your death.

[creatchee]

Games these days (like the "Souls Games") are hard, but there is nothing this generation that was the nightmare of old school Nintendo games.

I dare anyone to try beating Contra without using the Konami code. Or Smash TV without unlimited continues. They can be done, but you have to be REALLY good and that still doesn't mean that you will.

[Ultraplayerxp]

20 years ago this question would've been 'when does too damn hard become impossible?' lol.

O.T.

I really think it depends on the game mechanics. A game can be designed really poorly and it'll lead to a very disappointing experience.

[Janitor]

Um, I got to level 18 in Tetris once.

Once.

[Pintheshadows]

Hey look, theres a guy hiding in undergrowth two miles away! Lets shoot him with our inexplicably accurate assualt rifles.

I'm looking at you Farcry 2. I think that's more frustrating than hard though.

[Soldierone]

I hate when games turn into frustration on hard difficulty. The most annoying thing in the world is when shooters turn into fragfest 5 when you turn up the difficulty. You shoot at them, they are for some reason Ironman so you HAVE to hide, and "NADE! NADE! NADE! NADE!" its annoying as hell.

Its almost as bad as the auto accuracy of AI. Even when you have teamates shooting at them, or barely popped out, they can pop your head off in a second?

[SAE]

lol , that's what happen when you play the hardest difficulty in call of duty , you die fast / you can't hide , if you hide the enemy will never finish , if you hide for 3 seconds 5 or even 6 grenades near you .. it's annoying but i enjoyed it on World at war but the others are boring to me....

[Soldierone]

Yeah I personally preferred Killzones to an extent. They didn't nade the hell out of you, but it was hard as hell to kill anyone. The only thing I didn't like is it randomly had those super AI guys that would kill you no matter what you did, and several areas were literally impossible so the game skipped it after you die 20 times lol

[earbus]

I used to have so much patience doing every little thing in a game finding items ,these days i just give up if it pisses me off lol. Enslaved was kind of fun till trip would fall to her death if i didnt make a cloud jump tried three times traded it ha ha ha,i play to relax these days not get frustrated.

[Pro_TactX]

Wow, gamers have really become soft haven't they? Back in the 80's nearly every game I played was harder that what is considered "hard" by today's standards. There was no health regen. There were no checkpoints (in fact a lot of games didn't even have saves). There was no auto-aim.

There was only you, the clock, the insane pixel-sized platforms over bottomless pits, and bosses that were easily as powerful as you or better.

When I fell into a pit for the millionth time in Mega Man do you think I cried about it? No, it was just the norm.

When I got all the way to the end of Ghouls and Ghosts, only to discover that I had to do the game all over again, did I whine about it? No.

When I got to Mike Tyson and he KO'd me with one punch, and I started back at Glass Joe, what did I do? I started rising through the ranks again.

That is just how it was back then.

[QuodEratDemonstrandm]

When you select a difficulty level, and a dialog box pops up saying, "Are you sure? It's not even remotely fair."

[SteveSmith]

I don't like when games are too hard. What is entertaining in dying at the same spot 48 times in a row? For me, single player gaming is for relaxing and forget about real life. I prefer medium difficulty, so I can enjoy the game but still have a decent challenge.

[rattletop]

The witcher 2 was hard. mainly because money is not easy to make and upgrading to newer items is tough. also most of the fights r hard. most often u r dodging enemies attacks instead of attacking them. and sometimes a single attack can kill u.

[chanmasta]

When it's in your mom.

lolderp.

[Mister_G]

Stuck on the 1st boss fight in Anor Londo..... the fat dude and the fast dude.

[spoilers follow] Killed the fat dude, and the fast dude becomes MASSIVE!

Gonna leave it alone for a bit, it's p1ssing me off now.

Thank god I found that shortcut through Sen's Fortress, going back and forth through it is a total nightmare even when you know what's coming.