Assassin’s Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson believes that easy modes ruin a lot of video games. According to Hutchinson, when a developer chooses to implement an easy mode, he or she has basically created the worst possible version of their game.
Do you prefer a game like Super Mario Galaxy 2, where it’s relatively easy to reach the final boss but challenging to complete the entire game, or a game like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, where players have the option of choosing the difficulty level prior to starting the game?
“A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes. If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game.”
“You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game.”
“It’s like if I picked up a book and it said, ‘Do you want the easy version or the complicated version?’ [Game designers] can simplify the language, you know; we can make it two syllables.”
I don’t see how putting a completely optional mode in a game is “ruining video games”
I think that some games can have different difficulty levels, others are made to be hard and may be broken if they have it. for me, it just depends on the game concepts.
Precisely, which is why I think MP3C was a bad choice for a picture. It had an easy mode, but the only difference was that enemies died a little easier, did a bit less damage, and you had a minute longer on that one escape part at the beginning. That was an example of a good difficulty mode, since you didn’t notice it too much and it didn’t change anything too drastic.
Anyone who has tried Hypermode difficulty knows MP3 (along with MP1&2 in the Trilogy compilation) can be an EXTREMELY difficult game.
Oh god this is why i don’t live in earth.
Together Wii U.
So you place games from space? HRUHRUHRHUR.
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Getting bored of space.
Isn’t the point of a videogame to try and do stuff you couldn’t normally do and have fun? Personally, being able to breeze my way through everything is boring for me. And if you make your game SO simple that the key mechanics are left out,
obviously it’s broken. Imagine playing DmC (not H&H mode) And every enemy dies in one hit. The point of the game is to be stylish about how you kill your enemies and do large combos, it would be boring as all hell if I could just lock on, fire one bullet and solve the problem. The blabbering about “So what if I don’t wanna learn how to do the key mechanics to win?” sounds like a kid crying about never getting the ball to me. The game wants you to learn a pacing, I think being able to just turn that off would take away so much of the experience. Games should be SOMEWHAT challenging. You can’t expect to play poker and get a royal flush handed to you every single hand.
The problem is that players are too soft these days! They can’t lose progress, can’t beat a hard boss, or spend days to find a secret in a game…
Pretty much.
Well said, Brazil.
when you have the internet against you, most of the game are getting spoiled that way.
Plus most players suck!Whenever i see them play games,wether in real life or in youtube videos,they really suck A LOT.
It’s not Easy Mode games that ruin video game industry, it’s the poor gamers that suck too much XD
metroid prime is fucking hard on the default setting . and its even fukin harder on hard mode when you unlock that.
ubisoft , stfu . you are a mediocre developer anyway , nobody cares .
when rayman origins and AC3 and zombiU all have scalable difficlties they will just be a bunch of hypocrits.
i prefer hard modes . others dont . nuff said .
LMAO, no greedy fuck companies like ubisoft is ruining gaming,
It’s made for people who don’t play games to try it out. Don’t make it so serious.
Nintendo games are too easy. They should be like the 80s super mario bros 3 not the new mario bros series
Name some easy nintendo games. and then name whatever difficult games you can think of if you want to make that comment.
all the kirby games and new mario games, zelda SS too much handholding.
Hard games, pretty much most of the NES and SNES library ninja gaiden, plok, zelda 1 and 2, ghosts and goblins, ninja turtles for the NES megaman castlevania, silver surfer
and many many more.
The reason the newer Mario games are easier is because it is becoming a much more family-orientated game. Skyward Sword was made to appeal to non-gamers as well as gamers so it couldn’t be ridiculous difficulty. Then for those who completed it, there was the harder mode.
for years there has been no difficulty settings in zelda it was always hard mode so ya skyward sword was way to easy u could figure out everything easily it took me a whole month to be twilight it took me 1 week to be skyward sword and 2-3 months for orcerina of time
I know there hasn’t been for years and I explained why Skyward Sword was easier than your usual Zelda game. It was designed to bring new players to the series and it would’ve done a damn good job if it wasn’t so late in the lifetime of the Wii.
skyward sword isnt that easy. if you dont use a guide at all. some of the puzzles are a bitch.
i personaly think ocarina of time is easy. so is twilight princess.
wind waker is the easiest zelda game ever made .
majoras mask is the hardest 3d zelda game .
skyward sword on hero mode is a good chalenge and its not easy .
It took me 1 week to beat Skward Sword as well, but the fun part of the game relies on the sword combats and boss battles. And you can also play in the Hero Mode where you receive twice as much damage. But yeah, I’d like it to be as hard as to make me spend 1 month paying it… I beat it in 1 week with all the sidequests completed…
Sorry, but I actually like the scenario of being able to get more than just a few game overs throughout the game. The combat was fun and challenging in SS but the temples were far too simple and easy, degrading the one of the most enjoyable things in Zelda games: trying to figure out a temple rather than always knowing what to do.
That’s why difficulty settings are a good idea. So people who are newcomers can actually play without continuous game overs and veterans can play the tough game they enjoy.
In the case of Zelda, perhaps an optional training quest would be a good idea of how the game goes. If the player is more experienced, they can skip to the main game as an already experienced adventurer, already possessing the usual items in their base form, in the middle of the game’s central traversal space and free to go anywhere(with about 3 dungeonsready to access).
I think some sort of median needs to be found, such as where the first dungeon is mostly getting used to basics etc, and then you could be given a choice as to whether go on to an easier difficulty or a harder one. It’s all about suiting everyone.
this one didnt made it to the hero mode
Sure SS had hand holding, but hero mode is pretty hard… :P
Oh and don’t even think of putting NSMB. We know what kind of game it is.
Handheld Marios are purposely difficult, due to the younger demographic on nintendo handlheld, but i did find NSMB2 reletively easy and 3D Land easy as hell but i started play Mario Galaxy again, and im getting my ass kicked haha Luigi’s so slidey :(
I find 3D Land hard! hahaha I beat the game with a few deaths, but getting all star coins was hard for me. NSMB 2 is the easier mario i’ve ever played, there’s no game over screen!!! but still rewarding when you find that secret level!
3D Land was a cake walk for me, i got all the stars, all the gold flag pole, and did it with luigi, no sweat.
I find NSMB2 harder to find the coins, and then theres all the secret areas, but the coin rush add a new kind of difficulty
Maybe it’s just because I got more excited with NSMB2 than 3DL, while in 3DL I played casually to find everything, in SMB2 i’m really hunting every Star Coin!
True. I didnt really have to look for the coins in 3D Land though xD
True! I admit they were in pretty obvious places, I just find hard to reach them hahah. While NSBM2 gets me more excited because, it’s not only 2D but have an old feeling to it, you have to replay some levels and figure out where the star coins are!
Yeah.
Id
say
theyre
equally
as
good
as
each
other
They are both amazing!
When i traded games with my friend for a week,i already defeated it.
SMB3. Hard. HAHAHA, no.
no saves. better than todays casual mario….
you prob weren’t even born and got used to the mario 25th anniversary edition…
WOW! There’s no saves in the game?! That makes it hard, right?
No, no, wait, it doesn’t.
Dumb ass. At best, SMB3 is schizophrenic, but not hard.
schizophenic? I think you got the wrong word lol.
Anyway without a save file you have to do it in one sitting…unless you know where the whistles are and that was hard to find as one…. as a kid and NO internet at the time :P
Oh boo fucking hoo, it was hard when you were a kid, no fucking crap, the game is easy, period.
hahahahahahaha
is kid icarus uprising a nintendo game?
yes it is. its a nintendo Franchise , developer by project sora , sora and directed by Masahiro Sakurai . the legendary developer of super smash bros.
its also a fucking amazing game imo . endless chalenge and things to unlock etc . perfect game. dont care if some spastics calnt control it properly . i love the controls .
Making games easier in general does ruin things, but allowing you to play in easier modes sure as hell does not. It’s meant to be there for younger/less-experienced players. A lot of games require you to play at an easier level to get into at first. Like FIFA, for example. You’d probably end up throwing your controller out the window out of frustration if you were forced to start at a relatively hard difficulty for a newcomer.
But the problem is when the game is easy, it ruins what you try to create, it breaks the rules you set up in a game, and the game mechanic that compliments the difficulty.
Take Castlevania on the NES. Punishingly difficult game. But thats because its build to be hard. Theres no damage levels, no enemy intensity, its build to be hard, but at the same time, you dont feel cheated when you die, if you die, its because you messed it up.
Now if the game was easy, it would just be boring. But if they put in a hard mode, it would be pointless, and it breaks the natural flow of the game
I’m not arguing your point or anything, but I disagree with the whole difficulty ruining games. I liked the way it was done in Skyward Sword, so that you could play through the game with easier difficulty followed by a much more difficult second run. Either way, Ubisoft developers can’t really talk with how easy a lot of their games are.
why should CORE players play the game on easy mode first? We want to play it first time on hard mode…
Once again, there’s always an issue no matter what’s done in regards to difficulty. I’ve played through Skyward Sword and found that the experience was nice the first time and the second time, I knew what I was doing etc. There is pretty much no valid arguments against a choice of difficulty though, so why is there so much complaining in regards to that? I don’t know you personally, but I take it that you disagree with difficulty settings and only care for the harder mode, but you don’t realise that all the setting is, is a way to sell the game to more casual players, not to destroy your gameplay or anything.
Also, as a friendly piece of advice, saying things like you’re a core gamer doesn’t go down so well on the internet (:
You’re not loking at the big picture. Making a game harder than it should be is also a game breaker. Imagine playing a game and never beating it due to the intense difficulty of it. You just wasted $50 on a game that’s almost impossible to beat, and left you with frustration instead of fun.
Im not saying hard mode are always a bad idea, but ive come across many games that are ruined in the same way but hard mode. Max Payne 3 for example, fun as hell, and challenging. When its on easy, its pointless playing the game because you dont need to do anything. But when you putting the difficulty on hardcore/old school, or even just hard, the whole slow mo dive, run and gun game mechanic becomes pointless because you’re just way to out i the open, and when 1 bullet can take over half your health away, you cant afford to do all the cool shit you normally, and it just becomes a generic 3rdPS.
That’s why players have the option of choosing the hard mode; even if they choose the easy mode, they can replay it on hard mode after finishing the former, and it will still be challenging for the player, so it’s not completely ruined, although I unerstand what he tries to tell..
I like for the game to be hard from the beginning. I don’t like choosing difficulty too much. I will feel more accomplished when i beat a challenging game. A good example would besome Megaman Network Transmission. But somethings a lot if games lack is stuff to do after you be the game. I like how in naruto ultimate Ninja 3 there were tons of things to do after wards to keep you coming back. Plenty of side quests
“artificial difficulty” might actually be used correctly on the internet if easy mode and trainers didn’t exist
FINALLY!!!
Besides atrocious business plans and lack of innovation and originality, my biggest problem with games is difficulty settings. Whhhhy the fuck do they exist?!
A game should be build to be difficult, like Ninja Gaiden, Metroid Prime 2 ect, but too many game has an easy mode, but at the same time, their “raised” difficulty does nothing but increase enemy damage. One of the reasons i love Kid Icarus Uprising so much is gecause the difficulty isnt flawed, it increases enemies count, and their likelyness to shoot you. THAT is how difficulty should be handled, not “do more damage”. To much time i spend playing game lime Mass Effect 2 on the hardest difficulty (and anyone whos played it know how punishing it is), where what you learn within the game on a “Normal” playthrough is totally destroyed when you play on “Hard”, Max Payne 3 is a good example however when the games difficulty (size of bullet sponge) is so small that the game stop being what it was on “Normal”, diving through the air, behind cover, all those awesome moves are useless on Hard.
Games should have default difficulty, period.
Some people are shit at games but like playing them. They won’t shell out £40 for a game they can’t complete, so hence different difficulties.
So i started playing game and was instantly good at it? No.
One of the firs games i played was Pokemon Blue, and Sonic the Hedgehog. As a 7-8 year old then, and being a 20 year old now, i often wonder how i managed to beat thosd games so easily. Persistance, and becoming comfortable with the game mechanics. Particularly in Sonic, theres an odd float to his jump, which often throws people off. But after you play it for a while, you adapt to it, you get better at the game. Same thing happened last year when i played Sonic Generations. I was pretty bad at the game at first, but a few days later i knew every shortcut, knew every obsticle and could fly throw the levels in one go, beating Green Hill in about 40 seconds.
Having a game that has an easy AND a hard option, distribs what you intend the game to be. If a game is naturally difficult like Ninja Gaiden, you’ll jump into it getting destroyed, but after the first few chapters, you start to kick ass. But if that games difficulty exceeded the point where it makes sense, people wouldve hated it.
20? hard to believe you are that age when you act like a 5 year old
Says the guy whos “trolling” on a nintendo site in his spare time
how am i trolling?!
You are the one that trolls when someone thinks differently to you.
Your opinion however is a joke. Its all fanboy trash, that makes no sense and bare insulting of everyone here, just because they play Nintendo.i hate microsoft.do i go on xbox forums and say it? No, because if they like it, regardless of what i think of microsoft,i cant change their opinion, neither do i want to, its their choice.
If you want to display your “opinion”,and even receive any amount of respect, then you dont blatently insut people without good reason, dtate opinionated bullshit and lies, and overall, dont be a cunt. But it doesnt matter anyway because you’re just a troll demanding attention because of abandonment issues and ignorant parents
there you go acting like a ignorant troll. You must feel insecure so lash it out on uNation who said nothing bad at all… just the obvious that you are a basement dweller ALWAYS on this site and on EVERY article.
Get a life. Bye!
um… do you even know who is who?
Your trolling since you have Unation’s name.
You are just totally right!
no i am, fag.
i am 21. i have the same story as you . these days i love hard games.
but games like NSMB2 and 3d land are just pure joyous.
the hardness comes in beating them 100% . not just waltzing through the levels without collecting star coins.
best game ever = metroid prime trilogy .
Prime Trilogy FTW!!!!!!!!!!
+1
i was waiting to see a Kid Icarus Uprising reference here. love that game. still trying to beat everything on 9.0
Agreed. Games are too easy, but why not just put a warning up on the difficulty select screen? : “WARNING!! Minimizing difficulty may diminish gaming experience!”
Well I like having the choice to enjoy the game in several levels of difficulty. The way I see it is: Normal should be the level of dificulty intended from the beginning. Easy should be toned down for rookies and newcomers and Hard should be a thougher experience for those that breezed through Normal. I don’t see it as “breaking” a game but rather still getting to enjoy it without the frustration of the “impossible”. Still people taking on harder difficulties will always get top bragging rights.
I completely agree. Difficulty settings aren’t just there to make things easier, but to also give people a challenge for those who want one. It would be completely pointless for a casual gamer to go out and buy a $50-$60 game and then stand no chance of completing it because they don’t really play games.
Reblogged this on Gigable – Tech Blog.
FAGGGGGGGG
He enjoyed being raped by said horse.
Ha. GAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Nintendo Fags Suck a fat one!
Bitch please, bitch please
stupid comment.
…..ignored it.
As a video gamer who can admit I’m really really bad at 90% of games I play, I can say that I like games where it’s easy to get to the final boss but hard to complete fully, because I won’t spend ages struggling to complete it, and then once I’ve completed the easier parts I can try and do the challenging parts. Gives me more motivation to play knowing I can beat it, because I’m more determined to beat the harder levels too. Plus, by the time you finish the final boss, you’re used to the game play and beating some or all of the harder levels is a lot easier. Of course, someone better at games may disagree, but I’m an 18 year old with the gaming skills of a 5 year old.
I also think choosing difficulties is good too, means you’re not forced to play too easy or too hard. I like Kid Icarus Uprisings idea of spending hearts to make it harder and letting the player choose how easy or hard they’d like it; means you can practice at easier difficulties and work up.
However, games that are deliberately too easy aren’t as fun, though depending on whats it’s about I’ll still play, like Pokepark Wii I found fun simply because I’m a huge Pokémon fan, but it was very easy and didn’t take me long to beat. I generally think a game is more fun if there is some difficulty, and you have the possibility to lose or die occasionally, but also the option for younger or just plain bad players like me to receive help, such as the Rosalina ghost thing in Super Mario Galaxy, where she guides you through the level, or the golden Tanooki suit in Super Mario 3D Land.
But maybe your “bad” at game because you’re used to easy difficulty? If you started playing everything on “Normal”, you’d get used to it.
But difficulty does take away the experience…i often find myself sondering ehich difficulty to play a game at when i first buy it, because i want to play it the way the creators intended it.
If you don’t want the experience to be lost through difficulty, why not just play hard mode? I used to play on easy because I was terrible at video games as a child and playing on Normal or Hard used to frustrate me to the levels of wanting to smash things. I continued to play on Easy and gradually improved, then moved up steadily.
I’m just saying this because I don’t really find it fair on those who aren’t so good at games like I used to be, who can’t actually get through a game because of it.
Difficulty affects the games experience both way, be it on an easy mode or hard. The game difficulty should be designed around the design of the enemies and the game mechanic, where its challenging, but do-able. For example, in hack and slash games, on harder difficulties, i just find myself doing 1-3 hits then dodging over and over, rather than doing insane combos. That takes away alot of the experience because combos moves start to become irrelivant, and before you know it, you have a game that you can even play to the fullest. Im sure you’ve played a game where you’ve gotten an ability, or a weapon, and then never used it. The game should be tailored to provide a challegning experience, but that allows you to use ever move/weapon/power at your disposal, to deal with every enemy type, and deliver variety and different options in how yoh tackle a situation/enemy, rather than “bang bang sit in cover bang bang”
I know exactly what you’re getting at. That’s why they have a normal/regular mode, of which the game is designed to be play on. I just disagree with throwing out easy modes altogether.
THIS^
It doesn’t mean they make the game harder.
You have to think of the markets out there. Some games are played by all kinds of people and depending on how difficult they want to play their game at is their decision.
Personally I play games on normal and then eventually give the more difficult option a go, but even I find the normal option hard at times. Doesn’t bother me as it’s a challenge, and a learning curve.
I only find a game most difficult when playing online because you’re playing against real people around the world instead of computer-generated AI.
the casual market is bigger than the hardcore market everyone knows that.
But the hardcore market is the one that you’ll need the most at the end.
I agree. Nintendo has to get the hardcore games even though I dont like that term.
not really, nintendo survive without the hardcore.
difficulty settings have been around forever and you can still make great and challenging games if you focus more on play mechanics, level design and enemy placement. i don’t hear anyone complaining about the original megaman games even though all non-japanese versions are easy mode, it’s still challenging and fun. lemme just say there’s a reason why airman will not die. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1woMCdTN3o
you’d be amazed at what good level design and mechanics can do for a game. don’t get me wrong, i do love a challenge with harder games and feel some games should give me an option of hard mode, but in no way does easy mode ruin games.
An optional easy mode is a better option than no option. I hate playing a game that is super easy and doesn’t have any harder difficulties.
Im not sure selecting a difficulty is ruining games. I myself, never select easy.
but i thought Nintendo games were easy anyway for the casuals and grandparents?
exactly you “thought”. next time use your brain.
Well sometimes there must be different difficulties. like guitar hero if you had to start a the expert difficulty you probably would not want to play the game again. the board would be to fast and it would be to difficult to learn good timing.
This is a great example.
If he said “Video games have been ruined because they’re getting too easy”, he would be KIND of right depending on where you stand.
He’s just bitching about an optional gameplay mode, what the fuck.
yeah even i don’t get that as well, if he want to play a hard game he should play nutting mudd.
*mutant mudds
This is ridiculous. Some players just aren’t as skilled as others, so they require using an easy setting just to play. There’s nothing wrong with it. If an experienced and skillful player chooses easy difficulty, then they’re ruining the game for themselves. The option to lower the difficulty prevents young and newer players from being turned off by it.
My only disagreement is that young player have this stigma of being bad at games. Most kids nowadays play video games non stop.
*Video Games Have Been Ruined By Graphic Whores
^ this guy
But games should stil have 1 default difficulty.
This.
The high costs of production, the closing of so many studios, and the lay-offs of so many employees in the gaming industry are proof enough of it. Look back at 2006 to see more of what I mean.
the only people who call others graphic whores are Nintendo fans buthurt because they are 7 years late to HD gameplay…
nope. not just nintendo fans, fans of any console and PC who acknowledge good gameplay and understand the rising costs of making AAA games. there are people out there that would not touch some games with a 10 foot pole just because the graphics might look sub par or far weaker than the competitors, this doesn’t just include nintendo but many indie developers as well across all mediums.
Jason. I have NEVER heard people call other graphic whores on other sites but Nintendo sites. I find it hypocritical because now Nintendo fans are boasting about 1080p visuals and how the new zelda looks amazing when they didnt give a shit during the Wii’s life cycle.
I am a nintendo fan but come on… HD is the norm and if nintendo want the hardcore back… they need to do what competition is doing… but with their usual nintendo magic. Miiverse is a fine example of taking elements of what live great and built on it.
it’s a tricky thing, graphics. love or hate, but can’t live without it. i’m guilty of boasting at times then feel foolish about it because that shouldn’t be the point of gaming, gameplay should. i agree with you. i think it’s the fact that it’s more vocal among nintendo fans than in most other communities. i do occasionally see some from time to time in other communities like currently in some steam greenlight games right now (some people just don’t understand pre-alpha or beta builds), but it does happen they’re just more of a minority and are less frequent. HD is the norm now, yes, but i can see this continuing especially since we are on the cusp of new consoles coming soon.
this generation has been very different hasn’t it? the first nintendo system to the weakest of the rest the competition (other than genesis vs SNES but minimal difference) and everyone turns a blind eye. but to me graphics have never mattered, they do look spectacular but only the icing on the cake to a really good game, no matter the system. there are hurdles from being late to all this but i’m confident that nintendo can overcome them.
The genesis had less than the SNES, the only thing it had was better sound output and of course none of this fucking censoring Nintendo did to games, especially mortal kombat.
I agree it’s about gameplay but today graphics are important too. The tech is there… why not use it? Nintendo were all about power too. Remember the your playing with power? or how about the n64 boasting 64bit… it still got beat by the ps1 32 bit but that’s because the 64 was extremely limited for developers.
People on here always think Nintendo is about gameplay when really they focused on power… donkey kong country shutting up Sega during the SNes vs sega war springs to mind.
okay my mistake with the genesis thing.
nintendo has always released all their home consoles at a lower price ($200-$250) but having more power than their competition and without taking a loss. this generation has been really crazy, microsoft and sony jumped the gun with “HD”, it’s not even real HD, and the tech forced them to sell their consoles incredibly high. the tech might have not been ready at that time to make a game console HD but affordable, but it is now. no doubt nintendo has always focused on power but they just as equally focused on gameplay, making sure you got a full experience out of their games and why many of their games still stand the tests of time.
the tech industry moves very fast. what wasn’t able to be done 5 years ago can be done today and at a fraction of the cost. if microsoft decided to make a super high end nextbox that matches PCs right now (could if they wanted to, they have an unlimited budget) the average consumer couldn’t even play it due to high costs. there’s a limit of how far you can go even if the tech is there.
Console gamers hate PC gamer, they called them graphic whores.
who did you not know that?
Dude this is what console gamers call pc gamers because they play on the best specs lol. The ps3 fans are called this because they only play movie games, devoid of any real challenge. Xbox fans where call graphic whores because gears of war.. Which lacked a lot. But had good graphics for an Xbox game.
^HAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then don’t play on easy mode…?
But you know people will play on easy mode. Thats why some people are “bad” at games. It like fighting a low level monster in an RPG, its easy as hell, but you get no experience, instead of fighting big monsters and getting alit of experience.
Exactly and this is why this article was just bullshit who cares. If people want to play it on easy then let them they just want to play a fucking game period. Perhaps they dont want a challange and just PLAY the game because thats what it is, a game.
What this guy fails to realize is that easy mode has an important place in games; it’s the introductory mode.
Someone who has never played a game of a particular type before might want to get into it, but doesn’t because one particular game of that type he wants to get into, left a bad impression on him because the difficulty left them thinking that was standard of all of them and that it would take too long and give them too much frustration to bother trying.
Like it or not, the future of the industry relies upon drawing in new blood towards the console side of things.
To do that, the games need to be accessible to first-timers.
The best way to do that, is to have easy modes, dumbed-down versions of the games that give the newbies the fighting chance they need to truly get into the games and grow their skills from the ground up, instead of being put off by higher difficulty levels.
Some games, of course, do this system perfectly and therefore don’t really need much tweaking[Kid Icarus Uprising comes to mind, as does the original Borderlands], but for the vast majority of games?
An easy mode isn’t ruining things as long as it isn’t mandatory.
FINALLY This guy is saying what I’m telling myself for a long time, Whenyoùu play super mario bras just compare it to the difficulty of super mario galaxy! It was cool, games are made to be chalenging, I’m not asking Developers to do games like rayman 2, no people whould throw their gamepad every hours around the room but make it challenging please, even Zelda has become easy we wan’t challenge!
dude this article goes with all games, not only nintendo.
Even if SS was somewhat easy or hard depending of your skills it is still way harder than the easiest Zelda ever OoT.
And though I somewhat agree with Ubisoft I think they should target games in general.
Games today are significantly easier than 3 generations ago.
Specially the bosses, they are such a joke I sometimes think I wasted my money…
Thats true. The only difficult
Zelda’s ive played were Link to the Past and Minish Cap. I didnt find Skyward Sword easy as such, I just had to think more. Normally i Zelda, its just stagger the enemy with new item, then spam B, but in SS i liked actually having to pay attention, and use the sword effectively.
Dats true all video games of dicktendo are easy and for babies hmhahahaa
You do realise they are criticising the easy option? You know …. which ALL games have, not just Nintendo.
At least Nintendo and Sony have exclusives worth playing.
this article is calling out all games dumbass.
Oh ya, like xbox’s kinect isn’t kiddie.
there are every few time that would even check for a easy mode option, I didn’t know that skyrim had a difficulty setting until I was told about it. i don’t think most people look for an easy mode option anyway unless they are frustrated with a game. it is the same with the internet walk throughs and cheats, they are so easy to get now along with game wikis too. but saying that it is up to the individual person to use these things
Skyrim and Fallout are pretty good examples, they dont actually give you an option up front, they just hide it away xD i liked that, plus Fallout 3 is one of my favourite games ever…when it doesnt freeze…thanks Broken Steel -___-
Lol Halo shits on metroid. Metroid is the only M rated nintendo franchise cause nintendo is for KIDS !! CANT YOU FANBOYS SEE NINTENDOS FOR KIDS ?? WHY DO U NINTENDRONES DENY NINTENDO IS FOR KIDS ?? LMFAO
to treat the word “adult” or “mature” as a term of approval, instead of a descriptive term, shows you lack maturity and that you can’t be an adult yourself. nintendo had plenty of M rated games in it’s time, still has a few on the wii right now. and it may not mean much, but nintendo just bought a trademark extension on eternal darkness: http://www.trademarkia.com/eternal-darkness-77932350.html
i personally would like to see a new one or HD remake for the wii u.
Halo is the only real franchise I hate. Without Halo, Microsoft would be dead. But the newer Metroids have disappointed me. The old Metroids though shit all over Halo.
Why do you hate Halo? Halo is an incredible franchise, with a really good story. It also has a great soundtrack.
Eh, never really interested me. That’s just me though, I’ve just always liked the RPG side of things.
Yeah, I prefer RPGs over most games, and for years I thought of Halo as just another bland shooter. But when I actually played through the story I really got into it, being a big sci-fi fan. As much as I love the games, I’m more of a fan of the overall story of Halo and the mythology of it. There are some really good Halo books.
A) Metroid’s not M rated…
B) Halo was originally going to be T rated, they made it M to boost sales. For an M game Halo’s pretty mild- what makes it good is the great gameplay and the epic story.
C) Halo and Metroid are both respectable games in their own rights, but they’re very different. There’s not much sense in trying to compare them.
D) No duh most Nindendo games are aimed at children… Why would anyone deny that? But just because they’re not “mature” games doesn’t make them bad games, or lesser games, it just means they’re more suitable to a wider audience. Hence, E for everyone.
*sigh* this retard again
PS3 shits over 360. Halo and Gears of War are seriously shit.
I wouldnt say Halo is shit, Gears is pretty boring, only good in co-op, but its the fact Halo and Metroid are completely. Funnily enough, its only now when Halo 4 is using ideas from Metroid Prime that it breaches the line between the 2, otherwise, completely different games.
*completely different
Theres nothing that Microsoft has that appeals to me. I’ve grown up playing Nintendo and Sony. Microsoft can go out of business for all I care.
Same. To be in the gaming business, you need heart, and you need to put that in games. Unfortunatly, Microsoft expoilts human stupidity a blandness, and love for violence by releasing nothing really worth while. Even Sony have slipped up a bit recently :/ i used to love the Playstation because even though i love Nintendo more than them, they still gave me a different experience and collectionof games, although they kinda lack the fan service, no titles have survived the psone era or stayed on playstation, which is a shame.
1Nintendo has more Ip’s than you think
2.Xeno blade FTW
Easy mode is for nintendo fans , hard difficulty is for GAMERS.
I’m a fan of all companies. I don’t buy games for a challenge though, Sure I play on hard but I really could not give a shit about what difficulty it is. Games are just meant for fun, it’s just another form of entertainment. My friend loves Sony (hates Nintendo) but only plays on easy, that throws your logic out the window. Also you have a terrible problem with grammar.
He/she is just voicing their opinion which isnt bad. We all know that its not true though.
Learn what defines a gamer before you speak of them.
Otherwise you have no room to point fingers.
You see, this just proves you’re a troll or whatever term you’d prefer. A gamer is someone who plays game(s) not some ignorant “fan-boy/girl” who decides they are due to what difficulty they play at. Nintendo has plenty of challenging games as does every other gaming company. Why are you on this site if you have an obvious hate for Nintendo? This a site for Nintendo based news. Not someplace to spew your hate. Do you seriously have nothing better to do? If you don’t like Nintendo/Wii u or whatever then don’t get one. No one is forcing you to. And yes the’re are some ignorant Nintendo fans, they exist in every fandom.
I’ve been playing games for many years, but unless it’s a turn-based game, I’m almost always going to be awful at it. I always play games on the easiest possible mode, otherwise I just get stressed out about not being able to beat the game. I play games for fun, and I don’t find always losing fun. I’m glad that games nowadays are made with easy modes, otherwise I’d enjoy them a lot less (I still love playing older games, but I can never beat them). If people want to be challenged by games, it’s cool that they can do that, and it’s cool that I can play games where I can actually the finish the game without giving up in frustration. Everybody wins.
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I feel this article is bad point to make. Easy mode in general should always be available in games so that new players and casual gamers can play at their own leisure. I disagree with video games being ruined by an easy mode. Easy mode in general is optional, so how can that ruin a game? Just because it is there does not mean you have to use it; just like most games are hackable or have cheats to use, you do not have to use them.
I feel people who are more into “hardcore” gaming are acting like they are the only type of gamers that should be catered to, and not casual players or newcomers. I prefer to play on normal or higher when I first start a game, but easy mode should always stay. Sometimes, I may want to breeze through a game after I beat it at a harder difficulty.
Just do not use an Easy Mode if you do not care for it. Everyone should have a chance to get used to a game, not just a few people.
Video game difficulty is really subjective. You can’t really act like one mode is superior, just because you enjoy it the most. Not everyone will agree that a super hard mode is fun. Just in artwork, in terms of quality and art process, there is a no “better” way to do it. You just have to enjoy what you find best to enjoy.
Let people have their fun on whatever difficulty they enjoy playing and do not act like you are “superior” over them.
*Just like in artwork
I personally want my games to be challenging, feels more accomplishing when i defeat a tough section of the game but after reading the comments here i forgot about the gamers who are less experienced in that gaming franchise or just fledgling gamers all around. So here’s what i believe: God, i personally think that games should have different difficulty settings at the start of the game, Ubisoft has to remember that casuals and core arent the only gamers.
Wierd. I’ve never played a game where game designers took out something critical from an easy mode. Only ones that add weaker enemies and easier puzzles.
I don’t care about easy/hard modes or easy/hard games, if some people get joy out of casual play-through’s like some people get joy out of difficulty, what’s the problem? …Either way, the people who don’t care/have time for hard games or the people who get satisfaction from difficulty may feel left out from a game.
That was off topic… I guess I got tired of the generalization of “Today’s Kids”, from the Internet. And the excuse of games needing to be hard because of the game’s pride.
TL;DR:
-Don’t single out people who like difficult games, or easy games.
-Do games even get rid of great gameplay for easy modes?
It’s not gamers pride. Back in the day games taught games play so the sequels would go even deeper and the AI got more advanced.
Just looking back we all fought against 100% aim bots but nOw people complain when a cheater uses one. This was not the case in quake 3 arena. These people where beat so bad they got bored with cheating.
If a gamers tactics do not rise then we will have to keep making the same games over and over until that game becomes stale.
One of the reasons why gaming has way more engaging users is because it was a engaging challeng. Games that are movies or games that don’t requir skill or only time sinks compared to a real game. Time sinks are fads. In a true game growth in your ability is very rewarding.
Gaming without the above is like eating without ever getting full or nourished. Eventually you will begin to reject anything but that as you get older because of the challeng.
100 million dollar budgets and movie style gaming will collapse gaming. We now have b movie watchers and sand box adventures rather than gamers.
http://youtu.be/P9o-F2Mm8ew
why are you posting the video again we aready saw it. oh and i’m a girl and your cute!
You do realize everyone can see you that you have the same gravatar, right? That’s really sad.
this^. fancy putting a vid of yourself being kicked in the bollocks, then pretend to be a girl saying you’re cute. the shame.
Gaming back on the NES was a different beast all together. Games were difficult to play and beat back then but most of the time it had to do with limitations of the hardware or software. Many games you could not save because they didn’t have battery backup and your only option in some games were passwords to restore your info. This made many games without either seem way harder because when you died, you lost everything.
Also many games back then did come with Easy,Normal and Hard modes as a selection from the begining title screen which made it fair for everyone. Every player had a choice every time they played to make it as intense as the wanted or as easy as they wanted.
Next, their where also a lot more tricks to help you even in difficult games. The Konami code when used the Contra gave you 30 guys. Super Mario Bros had the turtle trick by the flagpole that would give you 99 guys. These made even hard games more bearable, as you learned these tricks quickly in order to survive.
Today you get things like White Tanooki suits that make you invincible throughout the whole level or Stones in Zelda that tell you what to do next. This is something that longtime players should not have to deal with at all. I learned how to play on hard from day one as a kid because that’s how things should be. Life isn’t easy, there are no White Tanooki suits in the real world. Today people see a challenge and bi+ch about it, instead of going at it head on. Todays gamers get to save anywhere at anytime in most games…..and honestly it does cheapen the games. But I do feel that todays games should go back and incorporate the Easy, Normal and Hard modes again on the title screens.
Playing games on Easy just means there are less bad guys and they are a lot weaker, making them easier to defeat. That’s what you give your 6 year old brother to play. It makes a young person feel like they accompolished something. Plus I remember when people would beat a game on easy, the game would tell you if you want to see the real ending or the extened ending you had to beat it on hard. That was an incentive to play through it again. These kind of things are missing in todays games. The orginal Metroid gave you different endings based on how long it took you to beat the game. How many games do that today? Times have changed :/
I would love a hard Pokemon game.
Pokemon R/S/E
Only games I’ve ever had to use rare candies to win in. xD Definitely had the hardest gym leaders.
B/W were sorta hard up until the 4th gym, I thought, but after that it was easy. Except for when I got a Pokemon with surf traded to me and access all the water areas I wasn’t supposed to get until like 2 gyms later, so all the Pokemon’s levels were comparatively high. Why is it HM usage isn’t controlled by badges in those games?
really? I had no idea O.o
Yeah, like when they give you badges in all the other games they say, “it also lets you use HM-whatever outside of battle,” but in B/W the badges don’t do that, so the HMs can be used if you have a Pokemon with that move, even before you get the HMs themselves. I never would’ve found that out if it weren’t for the online trading. It was pretty sweet catching Cobalion the first time I went out on route 6, and was able to get to the cave on the river.
awesome
Makes some sense. Basically, games are balanced around their “normal mode”. Throwing in easy modes and hard modes may ruin the balance. Skew too far one way, and you have a game that you can just walk through, making it no better than watching a movie. Skew too far the other way, and you have a game that no one can complete.
So yeah, I get what he’s saying.
It really doesnt make sense, Why would and OPTION ruin a video game? That incredibly stupid and i think people have forgot what video games are for, which is to have fun with them, if people want to play on easy then they can play in easy because thats what they would enjoy. I myself have never chosen to play a game on easy, but its hood to have a choice and i choose to play games that are fun but also other games that are fun and difficult like dark souls XD
I think you’re missing the point. It doesn’t ruin the game itself (since you can still play on normal mode), but it ruins the game’s mechanics, within the mode itself.
Like the guy pointed out with cover shooters. You spend all this time balancing the game around using cover, moving between different covers, flanking opponents, etc., and then you put in easy mode, and all of those things are just thrown out. The player can still do those things, but there’s no need to. The balance of the mechanics is broken, and people can just walk around shooting without using the cover system, making it irrelevant within that mode.
So then you’ve made a mode where people who play it aren’t actually experiencing the game the way you designed it to be experienced.
So, it’s probably a little disheartening to developers to lovingly design a complex system, knowing that a lot of players don’t care about experiencing the mechanics and just want to walk around in god mode. So, there is some truth when he’s saying that easy modes are “the worst possible version of [the] game.”
A lot of the depth of games comes not from the story, but from the mechanics. Dumbing down the mechanics of a game is similar to dumbing down the story or symbolism in a book. If someone turns War and Peace into a children’s picture book, then they’ve made the worst possible version of the story, because they’ve lost a lot of depth. Does that ruin the integrity of the original book? No, but the children’s book certainly doesn’t have the depth or integrity of the original.
So, that’s what easy mode is (Actually, let’s refer to it as an “unbalanced” mode, because even hard modes can be unbalanced). It’s the children’s book of the video game. It doesn’t have the integrity or the depth that the balanced mode does, and therefore is the “worst possible version”.
Metroid prime is not easy even on easy. Had gamers seen more of that game less gamers would have settled for less creativity in a fps.
Should I start buying third party games on Wii U or keep buying them on PS3?
Actually dont answer that. Its a stupid question.
Like easy mode is the only option.
I would kill for easy versions of my Anthropology 101 books..
Thats like saying MKart series sucks because 50cc.
50cc wasnt always there….
Your thinking of 150cc and Mirror Mode
I would love a Naruto game.
When is Nintendo going to make another Mario game like Super Mario World? The early levels were fairly simple, the later levels were a bitch to finish. I could never beat the game as a kid, I finally finished the GBA version 100% some years ago and boy did it feel good :) To this day it remains my favorite Mario game.
Mine too if your talking about the snes version.
What do you have against the GBA version if you don’t mind my asking?
I agree 100% with what he said.
There were certain games in the past where you gain better and special reward in which difficulty how are you playing.
In some games easy mode never get you the true ending or the final boss.One Example it’s Plok, playing on easy will end before the flee queen stages same with shin contra extra stages not included in easy mode.
Today most games are to much indulge the player and the rewards are useless achievements and trophies.
Finally someone important sees my distaste for the white tanooki suit!
You can add casual wars 2 to this list -_-, PvE is a snoozefest.