What difficulty do you games play on?

[madhair60]

I just beat levels 2, 3 and 4 of Jamestown on "Divine" difficulty.  Level 2 is this:

http://youtu.be/CwVHzibDQds?t=2m22s

THERE IS A DIFFICULTY LEVEL ABOVE THIS. ;_;

[RickyGerbail]

i see your Jamestown and i present the last boss in Ikaruga on difficult:

http://youtu.be/sQZuidKexBQ

wonder how many times you must play that boss to beat it.

[RickyGerbail]

a classic in old school hardcorez gaming heroics, some big street fighter tournament:

http://youtu.be/QgSAOxwr0xE

[madhair60]

i see your Jamestown and i present the last boss in Ikaruga on difficult:

http://youtu.be/sQZuidKexBQ

wonder how many times you must play that boss to beat it.

That's not Ikaruga!

Edit: Not being a twat here, but watching that video I genuinely think I could do that.  Until 52s in, there's no credible threat given the nature of the ship's hitbox and the bullet patterns.  1m26s is the first legitimately difficult bit.  Most of it's just complex-looking bullet patterns with actually quite obvious "safe" spots.  Even the nutty stuff at 3m12s effectively forces you into the safest place.

[RickyGerbail]

what game is it? is jamestown the hardest of all these games (without being impossible) or are there worse ones?

[Consignia]

It says on the video, Mushihime-sama.

It doesn't look too bad really, but I know I wouldn't be able to do it, since I've got spacky hands.

[Dark Sky]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who plays many games on Easy settings!  Feel a lot better about that.

I'm interested in the way different games handle differing difficulties.  Usually it's just a case that baddies are slower/easier to kill.  Sometimes it's just that there's less of them.

The first two Thief games were interesting in that they don't have an "Easy" setting.  They have "Normal", "Hard" and "Expert" (apparently because the developers acknowledged that there was nothing "Easy" about the lowest difficulty setting).  The higher difficulties don't increase AI awareness or anything like that...  It just gives you more tasks to do (i.e., having to get out of missions as well as getting in; extra items to collect; extra gold you need to collect; sometimes having to explore completely new areas for new side quests), and, most fascinatingly, makes you live by a more moral code: in "Expert" level you're not allowed to kill anyone, otherwise it's Game Over.  I love that.  In some respects it's less fun because gameplay is restricted.  Yet it makes you feel more like a much more skilled thief.

I started playing The Witcher over the last couple of days, and chose Easy setting.  This means that there's a whole aspect of the game (potions, I believe) I don't require to get to grips with to complete it.  I feel a bit guilty about that.  It also means enemies are easier to kill, and it gives you prompts during combat as to when you strike next (it has a weird clicking-at-the-right-time combat system).

[Big Jack McBastard]

I spent for fucking ever storming The Reichstag in COD WaW on Veteran, I restarted more times than a sane person might, it's so easy to get stuck into thinning out the numbers approaching you, that soon you get bogged down, moving cover to cover, making minuscule gains of turf but you still end up getting surrounded or grenaded to shittown and back.

The best ploy is make a very few[nb]This is COD mind you, so something like 10[/nb] select kills while running like mad to the next checkpoint up, you get shot to ribbons but it's survivable provided you have patience.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Playing on mad difficulty levels gives you a *little* training in how unfair the online games can seem when an obsessive git/gits on another team takes a shine to repeatedly killing you, sniping from nowhere again and again.

Grrr.

[Famous Mortimer]

Driving games on easy, usually, because I like playing them but don't like having to bother getting good.

RE4 I completed over and over again, I completed every last bit of it and got every unlock - there's nothing quite as much fun as playing with the suit, the unlimited-ammo gun (oh, and that laser thing that one-shots the end-of-game baddie too) and the president's daughter in a suit of armour. Makes me wish I still had my old save game.

Nowadays though, I'm in my mid 30s and don't have the time to play games over and over again for the challenge of beating them on hard. Which is sad in a way, but good in others. And it's also that there aren't many games that I'd really want to play through multiple times.

[Thursday]

RE4 I completed over and over again, I completed every last bit of it and got every unlock - there's nothing quite as much fun as playing with the suit, the unlimited-ammo gun (oh, and that laser thing that one-shots the end-of-game baddie too) and the president's daughter in a suit of armour. Makes me wish I still had my old save game.

This. RE4 was a rare game I pushed myself to get everything on, as infuriating as it could be at times. I could have sprayed Ashley with Chicago typewriter bullets while she was wearing that suit of armor all day.

And it never stopped being funny when Ganando's tried to pick her up and then dropped her.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Normal. I'd also prefer there was no option to change difficulty (unless it's something like puzzles in Silent Hill). Also, sports games now tend to have loads of difficulty sliders, which I spend way too much time faffing about with.

[MojoJojo]

I'm interested in the way different games handle differing difficulties.  Usually it's just a case that baddies are slower/easier to kill.  Sometimes it's just that there's less of them.

Yeah, I find this interesting too. The original Max Payne had an interesting take in that the difficult setting changed the number of saves you could make per level. I seem to remember Total War: Rome cutting lots of stuff out, which was fine in theory but it was basically a different game, and stuff you'd read elsewhere didn't apply anymore. I can't remember the details very much though.

Normal. I sort of agree in principal with pushing the difficulty up, to make games last longer and be more rewarding, but unfortunately too many games are just frustrating on higher difficulty levels.

I like the New Game+ modes that are starting to become fashionable, they can often tempt me into a replay.

[Famous Mortimer]

This. RE4 was a rare game I pushed myself to get everything on, as infuriating as it could be at times. I could have sprayed Ashley with Chicago typewriter bullets while she was wearing that suit of armor all day.

And it never stopped being funny when Ganando's tried to pick her up and then dropped her.

If there was a cheat to get all the unlocks, I'd probably play it through again.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Resident Evil 5 had a reactive difficulty system, where it made it easier if you were finding it too hard and vice versa. I think Max Payne did it as well, and you could set up Unreal Tournament bots the same way. Are there any other games that do this? I think it's such an obvious but great idea.

[Steve Lampkins]

Easy. I just don't have the time to play a part over and over. I liked the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 description: Easy - "Recommended for new shooter players or content tourists." I just wanted to see the fancy set-pieces and take in the cheesy dialogue.

Though I play 90% of the time on multiplayer games anyway.

[Viero_Berlotti]

I do like a challenge so I usually start a game on normal to get used to it, and then up the difficulty to hard or start again on hard.

Neil if you prefer your games to be a challenge then I would certainly recommend you give 'Dark Souls' a whirl. You can probably pick it up pretty cheaply now. No levels of difficulty on that one though, just hard and then even harder for new game+. 

[SetToStun]

I used to play the original Doom games quite a bit - expansion packs and all - and would always start on one level below the default and then work upwards as I got used to the controls and layout. Basically my reactions are too "jumpy" to wade straight in at anything other than "one step above 'pussy'". Then Quake came out. The first review I read said, in great big letters at the beginning, "DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME ON EASY!" and they even provided a handy cut-out-and-stick-to-your-monitor panel saying the same thing. Aparently playing on anything less than "hard" would devalue the experience of playing the game. So I tried to play it on "hard". For me, it might as well have been called "impossible; give up now you gimp". It ruined the game for me and no matter how long I stuck at it I ended up dying over and over again in exactly the same places, even though I knew what was coming. In the end I engaged cheat mode just to get through it - even though I'd switched back to "easy" by that point. I'd wasted enough time and just wanted to see what happened. Unfortunately that kind of tainted FPS games for me and until Quake II I just couldn't play them any other way. Even when I was still playing games a fair few years ago (Quake IV, Doom 3) I was still tempted to cheat because of that first Quake experience. Now I don't really bother with games, beyond  the occasional replay of QIV and I honestly believe the insane difficulty of past games has brought me to this point. What's the point of playing a game if you can't get through it without reading a walk-through or using IDDQD/IDKFA?

[Big Jack McBastard]

Just a general note to everyone on consoles, can't say this often enough:

If you have the option to change your look/aiming sensitivity DO IT!

Upping the 'look settings' to near the top vastly improved my performance on GoW3 and in many a shooter before and since, sometimes the very highest setting is a tad over the top and makes it more difficult to accurately get a line on someone/thing, but a hair off can mean the difference between getting your ass handed to you and handing the asses out.

[Dark Sky]

Yeah, I find this interesting too. The original Max Payne had an interesting take in that the difficult setting changed the number of saves you could make per level.

Did it?!  It didn't did it?!  Maybe on one of the unlockable harder difficulties?  I remember saving every three seconds!

Max Payne and its sequel do have the brilliant thing of adjusting the game's difficulty based on how you're doing.  I wonder if the new one will keep it.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had a similar thing whereby if you kept getting caught during the chase sequences it would start making the AI a bit stupider.  But then they were concerned about wanting people to get through the game and experience the whole story.  Which is fair enough, I think, for that game.

[RickyGerbail]

I just wanted to see the fancy set-pieces and take in the cheesy dialogue.

but why?

[HappyTree]

Easy mode for me. And if that proves way too boring then normal mode. But it usually doesn't. I play games to relax, not get all anxious. Maybe I'm easily anxioused. Like in Skyrim, I don't want to fight people for ages. I know I have to win to continue the game so I might as well win by dosing them with double-handed fire in a quick burst, rather than fiddling with potions and armour and, well, fiddly stuff. Just let me past so I can explore that tower.

With ME2 I didnät want a fight, I found it fun to blast people with seeking biotic warp and watch Kasumi do her sneak attack. Oh, and dominate enemies so they shoot each other, that was amusing. Oh well, well look for different things from gaming.

[RickyGerbail]

there should be only two settings: lil dick/big dick.

[AlmondAdam]

I will tend to start a game on "Normal" or whatever variant of they have. That said, I recently played through Crysis 2, and found myself, turning the difficulty down to "Easy" after two levels, then "Very Easy" after another two or three. It's seriously, unfairly punishing.