Discussion: Super Easy Mode – Is it really all that bad?
I recently stumbled upon this hilarious video, but there actually are modern games that take easy mode seriously. The question is, is this really that bad?
When Megaman 10 was released it came with a easy mode where pits and spikes were covered up. I guess many people found Megaman 9 too difficult, though I’ve beaten all the bosses with the megabuster only and no E tanks. I hear some other people might have found it difficult *exit douchebag*. Bayonetta had easy combo mode where you didn’t have to learn any complex button combinations to perform awesome moves. Then there’s New Super Mario Brothers Wii that provided a walkthrough of the level if you died too much (optional, but still present). Are games too hard and we need to start putting in really easy modes, or have gamers gotten too coddled?
On one hand I look at something like Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey and think that if it didn’t have unlimited lives, I would have never finished it. It was one of the first games that really displayed the usefulness of having unlimited lives that I can remember. I found the puzzles alone appropriately challenging without having to complete the game from the beginning if I failed too much, and god how much I failed. There are also, as Brian discussed on GameCrashers Radio Episode 51, pits that contain secrets while others that contain instant death. Would the game have benefited from a lives system to make it more difficult? No, it’s plenty difficult on its own. Plus the game wanted to promote exploration. No one would jump into a pit if they had lives to worry about (incidentally, secret pits are indicated by dust falling off the edge of the platform). Back in the day, games were completely content to give you a very limited amount of lives and if you failed to complete it, you had to start the game over again. This also had to do with limited save capabilities.
It seems the happy medium is to have unlimited lives and reasonable checkpoints. This is probably why my head split after all these years when I tried to play Bit Trip Runner because there are no level checkpoints and everything is one hit kill. It’s probably the hardest game I’ve played in a while. I hesitate to say that’s what we as gamers really want though. Yes, we want to be challenged, but I can only curse at the screen so much before my wife starts to question my coping abilities.
A game like Prince of Persia comes out where there are no lives and no reasonable way to die, checkpoints are virtually the same ledge you fell off, and suddenly I start hearing complaints of it being too easy. It really isn’t that much different from other games, the checkpoints were just much much tighter.
So it seems we want unlimited lives and checkpoints that are punishing enough without coddling us, no? This is what I think. Gamers should be able to choose their difficulty based on their preferred play types. If you play on easy, you’ll never become good at the game but you’ll get through it. This is enough for some. Playing on hard mode forces you to become a master and a perfectionist, though not everyone wants to be. I find myself in the middle ground. I want to be good at the game when I come away from it, and becoming good at it depends on how hard I pushed myself during gameplay, but I don’t want an 8 hour game to take me 20 hours. I have things to do.
So ultimately, if you want a game to play itself, more power to you. If you want the game to play you and destroy you, have at it. Honestly I don’t see a problem having obscenely easy modes because it’s all individual preferences. Let players be individuals, just make sure I can play the way I like to play.
I’m completely happy with user-selected difficulty modes. I know there are some games that don’t do this (I’m sure it’s a hassle to balance each level two or three different times), but I think it solves all problems. No game should be so hard that the player can’t beat it, because then it ceases to be fun – which is still key to any game.
If this means that one player can blaze through in hard mode while another has to knock it down to easy, then so be it. Both players finish your game and enjoy it.
At the same time, I’m totally cool with locking out trophies/achievements for beating higher difficulty levels, or rewarding players with better loot for playing at a harder level. No reason why there can’t be risk vs reward as long as the option is there.
It’s games like those in the 8 or 16-bit era that gave you an easy mode, but stopped it after the fifth level with the “you’ve done okay so far – now play on hard to beat the game!” messages that annoyed me. Or games like Bit Trip Runner that (it sounds like) don’t have a difficulty selection at all. Sure there’s something to encouraging players to challenge themselves (which you can do with selectable difficulties and appropriate trophies and unlocks), but actively seeking to make a game that “not just everyone” can beat seems a bit silly. We’re way past the days of taking Polaroids of our high scores and seeing them printed in Nintendo Power.
Though let me ask you this – would you be offended if you beat Mega Man 10 on it’s standard (hard) difficulty and someone else talked about “beating Mega Man” but had only done so on easy mode? Would it bother you that those two accomplishments were being treated or thought of as the same?
Some people want to be punished by their game, others just want satisfaction and enjoyment from their game. At the end of the day, gamers should be happy with what they purchased. Thankfully there are enough games out there now that everyone can find a game that will suit their fancy. That’s is most definitely a good thing.
For real guys, you always have amazing discussions and i commend you for it. Gamecrashers on a whole is great because you guys have a passion for games and have knowledge on the subject. love listening to your discussions and wish rob wouldnt rush you guys on :p. also props to Boris for writing some damn good articles. brown nosing complete.
As for the topic at hand, in my opinion, it depends on what game im playing. if im playing for example, NCAA football, i have it set on the hardest difficulty because im good at the game and want to be challenged by the cpu. otherwise i blow out the other team and its not nearly as fun or heart pounding as those tight games. now if im playing something story driven ill usually play it on normal just to finish the game and get the story experience. if im playing an action game ill usually put it on easy just so i can blow shit up and have a fun time.
keep up the great work guys
Thanks aots for the compliments. Your check is in the mail.
Sport games ideally need to be neck and neck. It’s the suspense really makes the sports experience exciting. I believe sports games would benefit from on the fly difficulty scaling to provide this so that the exceedingly good players remain neck and neck as well as awful players like me.
As for story games, I’ve always wondered about the appropriateness of the main character dying. I like it best when they make it contextually logical that the main character can die and the narrative still move forward. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time had the main character telling his story, so if he died it was him telling the story badly and he just took it back a beat. Bioshock actually created a new version of the character at the nearest vita chamber, so theoretically the physical character isn’t the same person. I can buy this.
Then you have a game like Uncharted where death is completely inappropriate. He’s basically Indiana Jones, he can’t die. The narrative doesn’t allow it. I love Uncharted, but death in a game like that holds no meaning or weight. Personally I always believe that if dying isn’t intended to be an option within the narrative then the challenge should come from somewhere else and death shouldn’t be called death. Of course I don’t think Uncharted would have benefited from either a no death scenario or from an explanation of the death scenario, but it would definitely have made more sense. But generally I think games where the narrative doesn’t allow for death of the main character should explore other ways to end the player’s run without calling the character dead. This is all case by case though.
It doesn’t even need to be a good explanation. Take some of the the Legend of Zelda games. If you fall in a pit, you wake up at the door. No reason why you got there, I just acknowledge that Link has some sort of help to bring him back, or a secret guardian or whatever the heck. Either way falling into a pit doesn’t equate to death and the narrative continues sans death. If Link dies though, Game Over. If the main character truly dies in a game like that, then I believe there should be a complete Game Over to title screen or “continue from last whatever” to clearly bookend the fact that this is “the end”. Now I do not think that the reloading into game process should take long to get through, less than 15 seconds, but still clearly indicating that what you just did killed the character and your restart isn’t a do-over, but rather the former never happened at all in the narrative. If you want to have an easy return to checkpoint though, keep the narrative intact and don’t call it death. Who’s with me?
Agreed on the sports games needing dynamic difficulty scaling — an example would be racing games. Obvious rubber-banding is irritating, but so would the player winning every race by miles. Dynamic difficulty scaling works in other games too; Warcraft III had it from my understanding, and I don’t think its a coincidence that that game is one of the few RTSes that I’ve actually completed (I’m horrible at RTSes).
But yeah, as everyone has said, user-selectable difficulty levels are basically a requirement for games as far as I’m concerned. I can see that there might be certain circumstances and oddball game designs where user-selectable difficulty levels won’t work, but for 90% of game designs, they are essential. If you are making a shooter or an action-adventure game or a strategy game, etc., and you don’t include difficulty levels, you’re doing it wrong.