The Game Mechanic – Rock Solid

Difficulty is a hard topic to cover (see what I did there?).  You’ve got to outline the difference between a game being difficult and a game being challenging, and even then it’s a wholly subjective topic for the most part.  I found Ninja Gaiden crushingly difficult, to the point where it became virtually impossible, but I know that there are those (freaks) who blazed through it without much difficulty.  Then again I found The Witcher 2 to be completely reasonable, even on Hard, but it’s renowned for being almost unfairly difficult.

There are times, however, when a game is just hard due to poor design.  I recently reviewed Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters and I found it difficult purely because of how badly implemented nearly everything was.  It’s difficult to shoot down a plane that flies slower than you can possibly fly when you’ve got 15 fighter jets trying to turn you into swiss cheese.  It’s also hard to protect a jet that flies faster than you can and does so directly towards anti-air missiles.  The “broken” difficult is something that will always be an issue with games, and something that lazy designers will be able to take advantage of to create a difficult game with minimal effort.

Some designers lean on the similarly lazy practice of simply doubling enemy health and damage output and leaving it at that (I’m looking at you, Epic) so you fight the same amount of enemies, doing the same things, but taking slightly longer and usually sapping any fun out of the gameplay at the same time.

This is where challenge comes in.  A challenging game can stay fun regardless of just how challenging it is, and it doesn’t even have to be hard at all.

Just think about the handheld Pokemon games, are they hard?  I really doubt you think they are, but they are definitely challenging.  They spur you on towards one goal after another from finding and defeating Gym Leaders, to facing off against the Elite Four, to collecting all 151 Pokemon after that and it never stops being fun (unless you use the Rare Candy cheat).

Batman: Arkham Asylum is another prime example of challenge over difficulty with its implementation of the Riddler Trophies scattered over the game world for you to find, each rewarding you with a character model, interview tape, or inmate profile to pique your interest.  Arkham Asylum is by no means a hard game, but it will take you a good long while to finish if you want to see all of it, even if you just want to see most of it.  This form of challenge also goes towards making Arkham Asylum feel much more expansive and open-ended than it really is, and does a lot for story in gameplay, plus it never stops being fun, and that’s the most important part.  Fun!

Let’s all hope that developers can latch on to this and realise that constantly respawning enemies, insta-kills, and moronically difficult boss-fights do little more than make it more likely we’ll need to fork out on new controllers.  What really keeps us engrossed is a challenge.  Something that makes us feel like we’re progressing steadily rather than just scraping by.