Old School difficulty...

[Commander Sheepard]

So a couple of my friends and I were talking today about game difficulty. Specifically, we were playing Super Ghouls and Ghosts on the Wii VC, and were getting our asses handed to us. This lead to a general discussion about how it seems that current games lack the challenege of the 8/16 bit/earlier era. Now, I know this is a generalization, and that there are some badass games that have come out in recent years, but again, as a whole: Do you feel like games have actually gotten easier? Harder? Or is it just (as I have actually come to think) that games nowadays are challenging in DIFFERENT ways than games in the past?

[Bushmeister]

I think that while there are more games out there that are overall easier than before (i.e. even the supposed "Hard"-setting is easy as hell. Sid Meier's Pirates!, I'm looking in your general sexy direction), it's more of an issue where the games give you way more leeway than before. There are games out there that let you fine-tune the game's difficulty with many different sliders that allow you to pinpoint the exact level you want to play at, and there are some games that adjust the difficulty depending on your playing skills as you play along. These are all technical issues that have only become available as the machines running these games have gotten progressively more powerful, thus I think it skews the perspective that the games are easier these days.

[SeanDMan]

Part of the problem is that places like GameFAQs and the coin op arcade are around. I've been playing Twilight Princess, and without GameFAQs to tell me what I need to do, I've actually had a lot of fun getting pissed off, wandering around and trying to figure out what the fuck I need to do.

[Iain76er]

I can remember feeling cheated when you were allowed unlimited continues on Rayman (I think it was).

Now I feel cheated when I have to start from the beginning of the level after I die.

[Skummy]

Essentially it's because games are longer now, and have save features, and things of that nature, so you can play them longer. The only way older games could have that kind of longevity was to be bloody difficult, so it took you longer to finish them.

[apsham]

Skummy's got it right.. and I didn't exactly have fun playing Robocop 3, in which he moved so slow it was impossible to dodge anything without memorizing exactly where the person was. Same thing with Contra, people act all high and mighty when they made it past level two... but it's just not fun for me to know when something is coming and having to react to something I KNOW is coming.

[zero]

Essentially it's because games are longer now, and have save features, and things of that nature, so you can play them longer. The only way older games could have that kind of longevity was to be bloody difficult, so it took you longer to finish them.

Exactly. Games were limited in the 80s, generally by just being nothing but get from left to right. Now we have this massive, detailed worlds to explore. Some games are still way too easy (Crackdown), but you'll eventually find a ball buster now and again (Ninja Gaiden).

Look at the release of TMNT Arcade on XBLA, that game was fucking ridiculously difficult in the Arcade. But its purpose was to make money by getting you to drop in more quarters. Now, on XBLA, you can beat it in fifteen minutes. It's just the nature of the business has changed, games play for 80 hours instead of you taking 80 hours to beat a twenty minute game.