I’m sure I’m not the only person that gets a tad frustrated with games sometimes. Simes has already waxed lyrical on the ruination of many a gamepad due to his occasional gaming rage The element that causes me the most grief is the difficulty curve. Most games have a reasonable level of challenge throughout, some are stupidly easy and can get a bit boring because of it. I must admit though I’d prefer a game to be as boringly easy as Prey was than to introduce a massive difficulty spike right at the end.
The sudden looming curve that Call of Duty 4 threw at me in the last few levels left me incoherent with rage. I threw a strop at the complete change in tactics Assassin’s Creed introduced at the close of the game. You’ll here me scream “CHEATING BASTARD!!!” quite often as I come towards the last few bosses in the otherwise generally relaxing Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. For me there’s nothing worse than than a wobbly difficulty curve in a game. I’ll put up with rubbish graphics, a terrible script even a poor camera but when the difficulty increase wavers from it’s uniformity a game stops being a game for me and becomes an insulting task.
Of course my huffs and tantrums could always just be the result of a bad temper and dodgy gaming skills but I’ll wager there’s thousands like me who find themselves choosing ‘easy’ difficulty and refusing to play a game after the twentieth attempt at a boss fight. For some beating a ridiculously hard boss fight gives a great sense of achievement but for others it’s simply a sign of poor gameplay balance… well that’s my excuse anyway.
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