Easy mode in videogames

Date: 2019-09-16

There is a debate in the last few years to make game easier for the general public, by creating a really easy mode. I'd just call it "journalism difficulty", since most people who write about games, are not really gamers. Long gone the people who played through their games, then write a review about it. Now it looks like it's enough to complete 50-60% of the game for writing an article.

Anyway the latest cry about difficult videogames is from Ars Technica. Starting with an interest subtitle:

"Not every player wants to suffer through gatekeeping challenges just to see a game."

See a game? I thought we want to play a game? If I want to see it, I go to Twitch or Youtube. To play a game is an interactive experience in most cases.

Then the article goes on about easy mode difficulty, including CHEATS, which was never meant for easiing the game, but to test it without actually playing through a game.

I have nothing against easy mode. Most games have it by default, usually difficulty level, like: easy, medium, hard. Usually the easy mode is really for people who struggle with medium. Some games don't have difficulty settings, instead the game becomes harder and harder, ease the player into the mechanics and story. They are not impossible games, but challenge the player more than usual.

There were games, like the Thief series, where mission difficulty wasn't based of the artificial intelligence, but basically mission objectives. In those games, easy meant, that you have to get less loot from the riches, and soon as your main objective was done the mission was complete. The expert difficulty was the real deal, where you had to collect an insane amount of loot, and you shouldn't kill anyone, plus most of the time you had to get out of the place, you broke in, and you had significantly less health than on easy.

Alien: Isolation devs made the choice to add 2 difficulty settings. By default the game had easy, normal and hard. The devs recommended hard even for first time playthrough as it reflected the best experience. Later they added novice difficulty, which was even easier than easy, practically made the game as a walking simulator. However they also added a Nightmare difficulty, which had considerable less crafting items, our navigation system (maps and motion detector) is gone, and the Alien become even more of a pain in the ass. Nightmare is for people who knew every little corner of the place, because there were no map that could help you.

Can you imagine Alien Isolation, with a helper like in the new Mario games? You died 2 times, so now we just remove the Alien for the rest of this mission? Where is the fun in that? If you struggling with a game, go on easy difficulty, but don't make the game really, really easy.

People who want to play Dark Souls, they already know that game is a tough son of a bitch to beat. The gaming meme of "x game is the Dark Souls of y genre", is true, but if you think that Dark Souls is hard, play Alien: Isolation on Nightmare mode, or play Thief series according to Ghost rules, which adds many extra difficulties for the game.