Other What difficulty do you want from a video game?

I'm bored, so let's have another questionnaire thread. Feel free to suggest additional choices if you like.

Personally, I always try to play a game on the most difficult mode it offers excepting permadeath options. Admittedly this does mean that sometimes I end up spending several hours overcoming some obstacles, but when I finally do, there's a good feeling of sticking at something and beating it. Some games even have a built-in monitoring thing that recommends turning down the difficulty: when I see that, I get a bit pissed off and ignore it.

So, weirdly, even though I claim to game to relax, that's not really true. I like to think that each game I've completed has taught me something new, or made me have a real think about something. And in the long term, I hope gaming keeps my mind active and compos mentis for many years to come.

Looking forward to reading other folks' thoughts.

 

I'm too old and too fed up to play on anything other than easy or normal, I may come back to a game later for a challenge, but I have a backlog and I want to get through, just don't have the patience for hard modes, I remember my days when mega drive games would stress me out, I don't want that any more

 

Varies. Sometimes chill, sometimes outright pain (like yesterday's op...)

 

honestly gaming is my down time. much rather not have something that gets me in a rage.

i still play with the same bunch of lads i started playing doom, quake with back in the 90s many are much older than me still suprises me how serious they get worked up when gaming. its not just any current fps or racing game its even something like No Mans Sky which for me is the most relaxing and stunning games ever.

 

I like open world games, can pick and choose when I want to amble about like a loon or go for a fight somewhere.

It's why I like my dose of AC or the recent SW games as well as the likes of Cyberpunk, Witcher, KCD etc.

Been years since I did any GTA V or Battlefield online gaming.

 

I like games with lots of difficulty settings.

The PS2 era Ace Combats did it best. They went from Very Easy, which practically played itself, to Ace, which is every enemy has it's health doubled, aggression and AI improved (eg they use flares, attack in groups etc), but you are one hit kill.

Or more recently, Battletech has extremely granular difficulty. I like that you can tweak everything from fog of war and combat difficulty to random drop chances, or just hit default easy/medium/hard.

 

I have very limited gaming time available these days, so I'm not so much concerned with difficulty itself as whether the game respects my time. Unskippable cutscenes before a boss battle? Having to traverse a long distance from the last checkpoint to a boss encounter? Both of the above? Hard, hard pass.

 

I only play single player games now, so if the story is interesting, I'd usually want something to relax. For example, I have to admit using trainer cheat to get through Black Myth Wukong because it's just too darn difficult. But the story interests me as I grew up with Journey to the West.

However, some games are just too boring and games like recent Doom is supposed to be a little challenging.

 

You're supposed to enjoy games so any game that leaves me with keycap impressions on my fists and/or forehead is doing it wrong. However, I understand and accept that we are all different and that some of you may prefer a more challenging (read frustrating) experience; and I would just like to add that you're doing it wrong too.

 

Gimmie 'God mode' cheats, mod-able games, and ways to get off-map and out of stupid corridors. I want to play creatively because my reflexes were always shot. FPS games with PLOT suck too. I want a game not a soap opera.
Grenade launcher-only Stalker run? Wow! the stashes in the starter level have everything but a tactical nuke.
If I jump off this tall rock, I can land on the ceiling of the next level.

 

I haven't got the time or patience to go too difficult. A middle ground setting usually does for me. COD and sim racing are the exception as I'm either playing real people better than me or hard AI to get better.

 

It honestly depends on the game. If it’s a big narrative-driven single player game - the example that immediately springs to mind is the Horizon games - then I want something that is challenging, but not punishing or unfair. It should feel like I’ve achieved something if I defeat a particularly difficult boss, or a challenging puzzle, I don’t want it to be a cakewalk where I turn up, bash a few buttons, and everything drops dead (literally or metaphorically). I don’t mind if I get flattened by a tough enemy that I am hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with when the game has, in one way or another, warned me about it and discouraged me from pursuing it until I’m ready. But I don’t want it to feel unfair; for example, being smooshed in a single hit, and losing a bunch of items & progress, because I mis-timed a single button press by ~100ms.

Sometimes brutal difficulty is the entire point, and I don’t mind that so long as it’s the right kind of game. Rogue-likes, where a single “bad” RNG roll ends your run there and then. Rogue-lites, where you need to build up experience (either through RPG-like progression mechanics, or simply learning the game) in order to be able to cope with all the possible challenges that will be thrown at you; pixel-perfect platformers, where the point of the game is getting that jump exactly right and doing it at exactly the right time. Ever played any of Terry Cavanagh’s games, like VVVVVV, Super Hexagon, or Dicey Dungeons? The goal of Super Hexagon is to play each stage for one minute - if you’ve never played it before and you’re routinely getting to 20-30s then you’re doing incredibly well.

Most of the time, I leave the difficulty on whatever the default setting is. Usually that’s the experience that whoever created the game had in mind.

 

I don’t have time for games really. It’s an hour here or there. I was also addicted to Counter strike back in the beta and up to CSGO. Easy to pick up, play for a bit and put down. Online multiplayer.
But I’ve never got into any other multiplayer games as most are more fun with mates. Which over the years have disappeared to life. Now I have none.

When it is single player I get frustrated by cutscenes 5 min long that I can’t skip. As I just want to play.
But, other than CS - like to relax when gaming.
I started playing Satisfactory when it first released. Loved it. But didn’t actually play much. As I found it had mods and I end up pissin around with all diff mods and things just seeing what they do and mad stuff. So I’ve never actually played it fully through in any way, but love it. Love mods for games.

Like Adidan… open world like GTA. Just mucking about and having mods on it.
Looking forward to the new GTA. Not getting in launch though.

 

Story, challenge - preferably cerebral rather than luck- or grind-based, even if that's simply working out the best method of attack, co-op (I'll turn the difficulty up if co-op), skill-based (to a degree), no RNGs (if possible), nothing that can't be skipped, no long walks from previous checkpoints, ideally no "hit this bit three times then this bit three times then this last bit three times" bosses (because that's just unimaginative, especially if you die on the final set and have to repeat the first two), prefer being able to save anywhere because time is precious and unpredictable, no fkg grind for the sake of it (HATE), nothing requiring the reflexes of one of the old A-2s, no fetch quests, no hidden collectibles or achievements based around this or completion on Insane Ironman difficulty (because my OCD says I must attempt all realistic achievements) and no unbalanced matchmaking or unrealistic cack like bunny-hopping around a map.

I don't ask for much, clearly. So Pong or Peggle then (because Peggle has the Die Hard music). I did like Hexic and used to play that during conference calls when bored. Duet.

I guess Half-life or Portal kind of sum up the above to different extents. Geo Wars was quite literally a blast as well - might go back to that as there are some achievements I didn't get. I probably like some modern games if I think properly.

But I digress again. Normal difficulty.

 

Braid. Definitely Braid.

This seems to sum up most of what I wrote. I was thinking of something quick and straightforward but challenging to play and this came to mind as something I'd started on the 360 years ago. It's fantastic. I must admit, I've had to peek at help twice but I'm through the first three worlds and it's definitely a "non-holding hands sense of achievement generator". I did have a theory about the stars as well, but before I could look them up to see if I was on the right lines, I stumbled across a reveal when I was looking for one of the tips I just mentioned.

Have to say, there is no chance in Hell that I would ever have found out anything further to do with the stars on my own. It's nice that these things are hidden for the best of us to find properly, but sometimes I just want to be told what the mission is without fear of missing out.

Thoroughly recommend, along with Limbo and Inside.

 

In case anyone wants any more encouragement to pick any of these up, they’ll almost certainly run perfectly on a Steam Deck or an Android handheld via GameNative.

I definitely played Limbo on the 360, but I didn’t finish it. I think I played Braid, but if I did it wouldn’t have been for very long.