Just a general discussion to hear some points of view. I have seen a lot of reviews lately saying "this game is too hard, 1 star" Some of which are quality games. I was reading a review of OMG Pirates when it got me thinking. Like that game or not is "too hard" criteria for basically crapping on a game? Maybe we are just getting spoiled with too many games. No need to hold our attention when we can just move on. I myself often move if i get stuck but i dont trash a quality game for it! Or if it sucks I say why it sucked. Being in my 30s i grew up in the 80s. If your parents got you even the crappiest game you finished it. I think the appreciation for a game is going the way of the dodo. Does anyone else remember pounding on your little brother when he tripped over the power cable on world 6-2
LOL its the casual gamers that are the sissys I still appreciate my games and finish them before starting another or at least trying. I didnt have a brother to hit, but I did lose my head when I was far on double dragon on my NES and then it froze.
The shorter the game, the harder it was, back in the day, simply because this was how a game with such limited software resources justified it's price. There was a day where replayability equated to tough as nails. Try some of those Atari games, then you can really kiss your ass good-bye. But the NES was notorious for its hardcore difficulty level as well. Brutal difficulty to cover for the overall shortness of the game. God, I am glad we are beyond that. Honestly, I owned Mario 3 for the NES back when it was a brand new game. I smashed the hell outta my controls and my systems back in the day. Seriously, I would physically assault my NES and my Sega Genesis. I would punch them. I would pound on them. I would toss my controllers across the room. I'd smash my controllers. I don't even have a bad temper either. I never experience temper spats during the course of modern gaming. Well, online occassionally. I get frustrated a little here and there. But never do I feel the actual urge while playing the campaign mode of a game to beat on my 360. In short, if you under the age of say, 30 or so, you have no idea. You have no idea how vindictive and torturous video games used to be. I don't miss it. I don't miss it at all.
NOBODY F*CKING RIPS ON OMG PIRATES JUST CAUSE IT'S HARD! wtf???? what nooby reviewers. also, i disticntly remember mario 3 had saves? is this the one with the raccon tail? and modern games can be unforgivingly hard as well. try ninja gaiden. or ultimate spiderman for GBA. that was a pisstake, but i loved it.
Unless ive lost my mind, Im 99.9999999999999999 + infinity sure it had no save. I'm sure it could be verified. They may have added a save on the "lost levels" addition
Mario 3 might have had saves, but I also kinda remember always having to play all the way through. It's a little vague though. There was a level in the 8th world where you have to fly across the entire level using the P-wings. You have to fly blind, up at the top of the screen, and drop down on the star, even though you could never quite tell when you were at the end of the level. If you dropped down too early, you would die. There was a place where you go the P-wing earlier, but you only had one. If you failed to P-wing that level, you had to turn off the game and start all over again from the beginning. Essentially, this level without "cheating" could not be beaten. It was demonic beyond comprehension. I remember failing at that point and having to restart numerious times. In the end, I beat this game six or seven times. I have a tad bit of video game A.D.D., so for me that was a record. The difficulty level of these NES games. Oh, the difficulty level. Cruel doesn't even begin to describe it.
I used to watch this adult I knew back when I was a kid play the original Castlevania and she was good at it too. She was really good. But she never beat it. She never came close. You'd have to be some kind of video game savant to have actually beaten those games. And if you've ever played Mike Tyson in the NES version of Mike Tyson's punchout. Jesus Christ. That's all I gotta say about that. Jesus Christ. I played probably a hundred NES games. Outside of 4 or 5 of them, I could not come anywhere near beating any of these games. I could've played them for 100 hours and still, I'm telling you, no chance.
newflash: old games weren't difficult. they just required you to play through hundreds of times until you could remember everything. there was no "golden age" of video games.
There are only a handful of real, skill-based games from the time. Most of them simply created artificial difficulty to churn quarters out of you.
Yes, current gamers are lazy. Look at Dead Rising on the 360. The number one complain was about not being to save anywhere you wanted, which is basically saying "i don't care if it makes sense to have saves like that, i want this game to be the easiest thing in the face of the world, then i'll complain the game is too easy". Now Dead Rising 2 will have the toddler-level saving. I think online makes things ever worse, as gamers now think every game needs online and needs it to be perfect lag-free endeavours, even when the ammount of data being transfered every 1/60 of a second is massive. To this day you see losers complaining about SF on iPhone not having online play. Newsflash: fighting games need dozens of new sprites being shot back and forth every second, and it's the genre with most precise gameplay of them all. In a FPS or similar game, if you get lag, the game can calculate your position and render (polygons, not sprites) you there to make up for it. Not so with a fighter. You lose a frame in a fighter, might as well give up for the round. I've seen it happen over two hundred times (dead serious). Guy complains fighter isn't online, sequel is released online, same guy complans online is laggy. People nowadays are spoiled. Kids jailbreak their iPhones then download their games illegally, get 10 iPhone games a month and never play them to completion, won't go to theaters to watch movies (just torrent them), don't buy newspapers or magazines... We're a generation of lazy couch potatos that get everything delivered in a silver platter. And the best part? People still think they're entitled to criticize the stuff they stole.
Uh, the Dead Rising argument was that it didn't make sense to have saves like that, because one badly-timed save could make progress impossible. I don't mind difficult games at all, but saving a game should just save it, not brick it. But yes, gamers are getting wimpy, probably because more people play games these days, and also partly due to the fact people want a quick fix and won't invest time into repeating the same level over and over. Personally I enjoy a good mix, there are times when I just want to relax in a stress-free game environment, and others when I want the difficulty piled on hardcore. I manage to find games that suit both moods.
I agree, in the present day there are far more casual gamers in the market than there were previously. Even if the more hardcore gamers (me included) are going to whine about it, we just have to deal with it, and just accept that not everyone is as into gaming as us and game companies' priorities are to make money. Ironically, my 'sit back and relax' game at the moment is Sin and Punishment 2. And that game is pretty hard .
haha, my freinds would come over and i would be like DONT EVEN BREATHE NEAR MY NES i was world 8-1 without the whistles...that stupid TANK level i hate you monkey wrench pieces of poo!!!!
Who had a copy of Battletoads? I got so angry after playing, I smashed it with a sledge hammer. What sucks is my parents got me game genie the week after that. I think console games should have a one time save like SMB Wii, then, you couldn't manipulate saves. After you saved, you got taken to the title.
Dude, that is the definition of a "difficult" game. A trial and error game requiring a hundred plus failures is difficult. And I beat my NES and Sega until parts of the systems fell off. That's how hard these fricken games were. It felt more satisfying to strike it with you actual fist, like just pound it, then it would if you were to use a sleagehammer. Trust me. And I beat Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, NES style, before the invention of FAQs. Those games were based 100% on trial and error, memorization, & repetition. So, I could do it, but it was such a chore and such a grind that it kind of takes away from the main component of what a game should actually be, fun.
