I like to think I’m an intelligent gamer, and I’m intelligent enough to know that my opinion doesn’t speak for anyone else, (though it might) but I think difficulty is what makes me most upset in modern gaming… Or better yet the lack of difficulty.
Now you might be saying, “But there are plenty of difficult games! Call of Duty on Veteran is a nightmare! Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are some of the hardest games ever created! Put up the difficulty, you bitch!”
That’s not my point, though. Maybe “challenge” is a better word than difficulty. There is more to a difficult game than making it hard. I miss the nostalgic difficulty of not knowing what is exactly going on. Zelda is a great example, if you ask me, because the original game is probably one of the hardest games ever created. I know some of you may claim “Pfft! Blah-blah was such a harder game!” and it may be true but I would say “Shut up, nerds! You don’t know anything because…” Where was this going?
Hand-holding! That was the point. Yes.
Hand-holding seems to be a huge freaking problem in video games. I get the concept, I’m not a naive gamer. I understand that Dead Rising has that little map navigation line-thingy because gamers aren’t all hardcore and they want some help figuring out where the hell they have to go. This is why things in games you can interact with always glow or something, or walls you can break have cracks in them. When you break it down? It just becomes a huge game of lock and key. Games make it obvious that something can be done and you need to find the right ‘key’ to do it. It might be a certain weapon, or ability, or item, or whatever… My fear is that this erases so much mystery.
It’s been a long time since I felt it was my own ‘smarts’ that got me through a problem. Uncharted has sometimes gotten this right. Naughty Dog presents you with generally no help outside of a few clues from Drake’s journal, and even if the puzzle WAS simple (to hell with you Uncharted 3’s board game-like puzzle) you felt like Indiana Jones after you completed it… You felt like a bad-ass. Sometimes.
I bought 3D Dot Game Heroes (which is a great game) and I was so excited for a throw back to “Old School”, but I got bored about half-way into it because it felt like it had the same hand holding issues that plague the modern Zelda titles… It was just harder cause you died a lot.
I guess rolling back on the Zelda references isn’t expanding my points but it’s the feeling I miss. The original Zelda had no plot. Well, I guess technically it had a plot, but nothing that couldn’t be summarized in a few sentences. You were dropped into this world, with really no idea where to go or what to do and you slowly just figured things out and… Ya know what? It felt like a freaking adventure. It had mystery. It had action. It had suspense. It had tension. I was afraid, I was filled with joy, I was filled with confusion, I was filled with EMOTIONS.
I realize I sound like some kinda Nostalgia-Twat. I don’t feel that the current industry of gaming is in a bad spot, I don’t think that every game needs to be classically hard and impossible. I just miss the feelings. Journey (not the band, the PSN game) is an example of the type of game I want. Just exploring a world and enjoy the adventure. Yes, there are open world games that let you explore but the worlds never seem to have any real life to them. Shadow of the Colossus did a great job of creating a real world and making me feel like I was exploring it. Even if that world was only occupied by walking giants and lizards… And there is Skyrim (a modern game, yo) which did a pretty good job as well… But it was plagued with other issues that got in the way, but that’s another story.
Maybe one day I will feel like I’m on an adventure again. That Christmas feeling, feeling like a child that is completely bewildered by everything going on around him. What an awesome feeling.
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