During the heyday of arcade cabinets
difficulty and monetization of video games were physically intertwined.
You would put a quarter in the coin slot and...
Boom!
You can play the game until you run out of lives
which was often pretty quick.
For developers, the trick was to create a game that, when you watched it, you would go:
"Oh, that's so easy!"
The original Pac-Man is literally just one repeating level.
How hard could that possibly be?
[Pac-Man Death Sound FX]
Very hard, is the answer-
This was truly the first survival horror game.
The ghosts...
are just total dickheads.
Just when you think you know, that the ghost thinks that you're going this way,
turns out he knew you were thinking that and he went this way instead.
If by some miracle
you reached stage 19
you will discover that the power pellets no longer do anything.
It's like, at this point of the game,
the ghosts should say to you:
"Nope! You had your fun and now the game is over"
"Goodbye!"
Arcades were brimming with looping endless games that demanded one knee-jerk reaction after another.
I mean, look at this!
Can you describe to me what's happening here?
How do you play that?
These were games designed to kill you fast and suck down quarters
and people loved them.
Then, in the mid 80s, we see the focus shifting back towards consoles, with the NES.
Games start to take on the structure of having a set amount of stages and with this change
the role of difficulty is transformed.
Now the challenge becomes: "How do we stretch out a 30-minute game into something that will take months to complete?"
The solution...
"Nah! Just put a bunch of stupid fucking bullshit everywhere."
(Laughs)
Cheap-ass one-hit kills,
oblique puzzles,
broken enemy spawns,
impossible jumps,
enemies that constantly knock you off a ledge-
Go dig up an NES and tell me how many of those games you can actually complete.
None of them!
Don't lie! You probably can't even complete Bubble Bobble.
Look at you!
Even the titles that were directed specifically at younger children
make Dark Souls look like fucking DuckTales.
Except that DuckTales is probably harder.
Going forward, however
games would continue to become more and more approachable
as developers found out that people actually like to win.
Red Dead 2 is a bright modern example of this.
The game aims your gun for you,
it steers your horse for you.
It practically plays itself
and despite all of this
it is the most critically acclaimed game this year.
Is it so wrong that people want to play a game without getting their dick knocked off every two seconds?
No! I don't think so.
Not every game needs to be some death march,
but when you try to have it both ways
you run into problems.
Selectable difficulties are commonly achieved by simply giving enemies more health and damage,
but, in the back of my mind, I'm always wondering: "How much should they have?"
Halo 3 is the first game in the series that tells you "HEROIC" is how the game is meant to be experienced
It just straight up says:
"Hey! This is the real one. Those other ones are fake."
If only they told me this- Uh...
back in Halo 2.
COD 4 tells you that on Regular,
"Your abilities in combat will be tested."
which, if a dog picked up a controller with his mouth,
that might be right.
Veteran though, is actually pretty accurate.
"Ok. We got-"
"Oh"
"We got two grenades"
"I mean, that's- (stutters) Fine"
"Ok. Now, there's another one."
"All right!"
"Oh. There- There- There-"
"And..."
"My own guy just picked up a grenade and threw it next to me."
(Laughs)
"Ok, now. There's another grenade"
"We're just gonna chuck that-"
"Ok. And now, we just gotta wait for the flashbang to wear off"
"What killed me?"
When the difficulty is this blatantly artificial
it trivializes your achievements.
Some games do put in more effort, though.
For Silent Hill 2...
Uh... the easier difficulties cause the puzzles to make 4% more sense.
This year's Megaman 11
is full of NES era horseshit.
You have this part...
and then, there's this part...
and then, we got this classic part...
These severe jumps in difficulty are just the result of poor design.
Ideally, a game should get progressively harder as you play,
but the reality is, most of them are like:
Hmm...
Hmm- HAI!
Yee...
WAH!
Then you got Kirby...
[Heartbeat Flatline Sound Effect]
Then you got Donkey Kong Country
which is like: "All right!"
"We're gonna hit you with some difficulty bumps."
"Minecart level,"
"hard-ass barrel part"
"and then you get to K.Rool."
This is where the game goes from tough, but fair...
to tough, but "Fuck You!"
If you're gonna lock me in a hell fuck,
with a fucking Hitler bitch,
then at least give me some decent checkpoints, man!
Come on!
Undoubtedly
the cruelest part of older games is how when you lose,
they will just kick you all the way back to the start.
Even some of the hardest NES titles like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden
would have the courtesy
of only knocking you back to the start of the stage
when you got hit off a ledge by a guy
who spawned in midair
Uh... that you already killed.
Without checkpoints,
you force players to repeat large chunks of a video game,
which is not only irritating,
but fatal to the overall pacing.
On the other hand...
saturate your game with checkpoints and you lose that anxious feeling
which makes challenging games
so tense.
The iconic bonfires of Dark Souls
and not only a much-needed reprieve,
but a glowing beacon of your progress,
in a game whose atmosphere is dishearteningly oppressive.
Meanwhile...
Resident Evil 1, which is a game where doors take 17 minutes to open,
requires you to use an Ink Ribbon item, every time you want to save.
Fighting games are in a tricky spot where, if you play against the computer
–and this is on the hardest difficulty, keep in mind–
they're just Incapable of winning.
Then you hop online
and you fight this guy...
Team games like Overwatch and Call of Duty lower the bar for entry considerably by
allowing five other people to pick up your slack
and... if you lose...
you can just blame your team.
When you're losing a fighting game, though.
It's like:
"Dude..."
"Game sucks, not my fault."
Many players, when they're met with a seemingly insurmountable challenge
they just say:
"Fuck this!"
For me, that game was Bloodborne.
When I played this in 2015, I couldn't even get past the first boss.
It wasn't until last year that I actually figured out how simple these games are.
Not to suggest it's easy, just simple.
It's just dodge and hit.
And once you understand that's dodge and hit,
♪ then you realize that the game ain't shit ♪ (rapping to the beat)
- Pac.
I think it's always better to be inclusive
rather than exclusive.
Take Ikaruga.
This game is just...
Ridiculous!
What you're staring at here is, of course, Hard difficulty.
Now, let's turn it down to Easy...
"Ah, yeah!"
"Now, this makes it much eas-"
It doesn't pull punches yet.
If you go into the settings, it allows you to have infinite lives.
Now you may ask: "How can a game be challenging when you can't even technically lose?"
Uh... Like this!
"WHAT..."
"THE..."
"FUCK?!"
"WHAT THE..."
""F..."
"FUCK?!"
I died so many times on that first run-through
that, at one point, I thought I might run out of infinite lives.
It was merely the first step
and on subsequent playthroughs, I would go:
"Oh, wow! Only 68 deaths, this time."
"Oh, wow! 50."
"20"
"13"
Each time I returned to the game, I understood it a little bit better.
Just like the 80s Coin-Ops that inspired it
the idea of accomplishment
doesn't stem from beating the game,
but rather mastering it.
The thing about difficult games is that they tend to grow on you,
but...
is it the challenge that makes them so exciting...
or rather the artistry...
hiding beneath?
- Pac.
[OUTRO] ♪ "Bonus Room Blitz" - Donkey Kong Country OST (SNES) ♪