# Have games got easier or have we got old



## DotCommunist (Dec 2, 2012)

Simple ask really

I recall games like the first Quake that you had to proper strive to defeat. Rogue, nethack- manic fucking miner

They were harder than blood diamonds

Have games become easier or am I just aging?


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Dec 2, 2012)

They've become harder for me as I don't have the patience or the time to play them as much.


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## tommers (Dec 2, 2012)

They've become loads easier. Absolutely loads.

For example, I played Wizardry 6 for a bit recently and there are progress-crucial items that don't appear unless you search for them on one specific square, in an area of 100+ squares. These days you would get a little hint after you'd searched for a few turns, or a big green arrow pointing directly where it is on your mini map. Wizardry doesn't even have a fucking mini map. If you don't find this stuff then you're stuck until you do, and this was on the first level. They didn't give a shit, and that was usual then.

It's rare that you stop playing a game these days cos you can't get any further, you usually stop cos you're bored.

Course there are still hard games out there, FTL on normal, Dark Souls if you don't really understand it - but they're few and far between. It's an area that developers really look at, they don't want people just giving up in frustration. They'd rather manage the challenge to make people feel like they're beating the game but never really allowing anybody to fail.


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## Mungy (Dec 3, 2012)

i could never get past eugines lair on manic miner


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## Pickman's model (Dec 3, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> Simple ask really
> 
> I recall games like the first Quake that you had to proper strive to defeat. Rogue, nethack- manic fucking miner
> 
> ...


what's happened is that over the years your game playing has altered your genome so that you now find computer games increasingly easy.


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## fuck seals (Dec 3, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> Simple ask really
> 
> I recall games like the first Quake that you had to proper strive t... /snip


 
get thyself to www.quakelive.com then, and test your theorem.  in other news, we all getting older and the in the rsi-impaired gaming generation if you can remember quake the 1st time round.


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## Mungy (Dec 3, 2012)

what has happened is computers and displays have become more complex. if you compare the original sonic the hodgeheg to manic miner you can control sonic much more than you can control willy, the animation is smoother, there are more pixels for the character to move around on. the further on technology has progressed we have more pixels, more powerful graphics engines rendering more realistic 3d scenes allowing us more time and space for things to happen.

of course i'm sure that after some programmers suffered at the hands of manic miner they may well have gone on to produce games that give you more time and space to react to the games surrounding


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## fractionMan (Dec 3, 2012)

The original bards tales were nigh on impossible unless you mapped out the levels on graph paper. Even then they were a bastard to get through.

I think moria may have been completed at some point by some person, but I wouldn't bet any money on it.


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Dec 3, 2012)

They're miles easier on the whole. And also massive - manic miner was only 20 screens it would be fininshed in no time if it was as easy as modern games, but there's no point having a huge open world game if you die every other step.

I prefer them easier tbh, I don't have the patience to put up with dying in the same spot over and over again any more.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 3, 2012)

then was the games rumoured to have been 'made impossible'. Usually the tale went that they ran out of money/time so the programmers just made a certain level impossible, and if you did manage it, your computer would crash

not sure if that was bollocks or not but Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat felt like it.


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## Chz (Dec 6, 2012)

If you think games have got easier, I recommend trying out Max Payne 3. It's fucking brutal.


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## marty21 (Dec 6, 2012)

I'm alright on Call of Duty/Medal of Honor type games - but when I have tried other types - haven't liked them or been any good - tried a FIFA football one - got bored - got a Game Of Thrones one recently - just didn't get it - and don't know if I can be arsed getting to grips with it


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## Random (Dec 6, 2012)

Try the app for Blood of the Zombies for an old school style difficulty. Still not finished it.


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## sim667 (Dec 6, 2012)

If they're anything like GCSE's then they've got easier


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## golightly (Dec 6, 2012)

I don't really see the logic of the OP.  As a self-confessed older fucker I can say that generally things get harder as I get older not easier, so if a game appears easier now than when I was younger I can be damn sure it is easier.  I've been playing Quake recently and it's still hard although the AI is virtually non-existent so I can work out the  sequence of monsters, health and ammo pretty  easily.  Tbh, I reckon I would struggle with manic Miner.


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## stuff_it (Dec 6, 2012)

Doing really well hasn't got easier but games in general have - when did all this unlimited respawning happen?


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## Ax^ (Dec 6, 2012)

Go buy dark souls


And report back


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## Voley (Dec 6, 2012)

Games have changed a lot. Skyrim, for example, you could fuck about in that for hours without even fighting anything. That's 'easier' possibly but in a very different way.

I'm playing Borderlands 2 at the mo and there are times when chucking your turret out (Matron!) and letting it massacre all the baddies is a bit easy. There are other bits (the timed driving challenges) that I find really difficult. As Monkeygrinder says above, though, I tend to lose patience with these bits and go off and do something else. Games tended to be incredibly repetitive in the past. I think people would get bored of that now.


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## Firky (Dec 6, 2012)

Back in the day computer games were never difficult, they simply repeated the same levels but all the monsters were speeded up 100 fold and there was never any health. IYSWIM.


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## DotCommunist (Dec 6, 2012)

Castle Wolfenstein was like that. It did get savage at somepoints though. Most early FPS's were a bit simple.

Stygian abyss wasn't though. it was solid and complex


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## Ax^ (Dec 6, 2012)

See my guitar is getting friggin easier..


Must be borked not like I've spent years messing with it..


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## Sunray (Dec 7, 2012)

Depends on the game, you want hard, do all the levels in Supermeat boy
1. Without dying a single time.
2. Inside the allocated time for every level
3. One after the other no breaks

When you have completed that challenge, get back to me about 'hard games'
Of course, you might have killed yourself because you died inches from completion of this task,  I'll scrawl a supermeat boy on your head stone.


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## TruXta (Dec 7, 2012)

100s of failed tries in Last Ninja. Although the 3rd one was far too easy.


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## free spirit (Dec 7, 2012)

chuckie egg - 2 hours + to get back to level 25 or whatever just to fail again coz it was reet hard, and there was no option to save it, just had to start again once your lives were up.

I wasted nearly as much time on that game as I do on urban...


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## fractionMan (Dec 7, 2012)

I completed xenon 2


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## Steel Icarus (Dec 7, 2012)

I dunno. I'm quite shit at computer games but have been playing them forever. Just not ones that are hard. I like games where it's about exploration as much as how good a shot you are. Lost count of how many games I've done up to the final boss then not been able to do it - but not been bothered. Games I've finished? Erm. Pokemon ones, as much as you can "finish" them. The 2 Zelda games on the N64, 1 on the Gamecube and 1 on the Wii. Shadowman. Mario 64. Lost Kingdoms. That's about it. Whenever a game is described as "old-school" I avoid it, though - but I always have.


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## FridgeMagnet (Dec 7, 2012)

Sunray said:


> Depends on the game, you want hard, do all the levels in Supermeat boy
> 1. Without dying a single time.
> 2. Inside the allocated time for every level
> 3. One after the other no breaks
> ...


Super Meat Boy is one of a breed of retro games that are deliberately hard partly as a reaction to modern games being too forgiving, though.

There are plenty of hard games out there if you want them, but I think the mean difficulty level is down slightly. There is also the point that tommers mentions, that it's less acceptable to have games be stupidly hard for no good reason - something that makes no sense and is completely unfair. This is a big issue with older text adventures I find, that sometimes the solution is entirely arbitrary and depends on you using a particular phrasing or doing something at a certain time that you could not possibly predict. It started with the "last lousy point" in Adventure and continued for a long time... nowadays most people would just say "well this is bullshit, fuck it" rather than "oh I must try everything possible".


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## tommers (Dec 7, 2012)

Well, just having save points makes things easier. Autosave even more so.

Look at Bioshock - there was no way of even losing progress. Dying was totally meaningless.

I think this is probably more true of "blockbusters" than other games though - that's the great thing about gaming at the moment, there are loads of reactions to all these trends and you can always get hold of something which scratches your itch. If you want a flashy, lovely-looking thing which shows you where to go and what to do and you can sit there and play through it, making pretty effortless progress, then that's available. If you want something that needs you to think about it and put in some work then they are about too. Whatever makes you happy.

Games have developed and evolved, same as anything else. A lot of the time in the old days you were fighting the interface as much as the game.

Oh, and internet walkthroughs.


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## Orang Utan (Dec 7, 2012)

I find those war games Impossible to play. too confusing and too hard. I usually play games on easy and with the walkthrough at hand so I know what to do. Can't be arsed working out what I need to do. That's no fun. Just show me who to kill. I just want to massacre.


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Dec 7, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> There are plenty of hard games out there if you want them, but I think the mean difficulty level is down slightly. There is also the point that tommers mentions, that it's less acceptable to have games be stupidly hard for no good reason - something that makes no sense and is completely unfair. This is a big issue with older text adventures I find, that sometimes the solution is entirely arbitrary and depends on you using a particular phrasing or doing something at a certain time that you could not possibly predict. It started with the "last lousy point" in Adventure and continued for a long time... nowadays most people would just say "well this is bullshit, fuck it" rather than "oh I must try everything possible".


 
Yes this is true. With (good) modern games there's a lot less trial and error than there used to be. Manic miner was mentioned as being hard and it was, but a lot of that was because you needed to work out exactly which pixel to jump at, and often that was basically guesswork. Then if you got it wrong it was back to the beginning. There was a skill element too but a lot of it was just persistence.


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## King Biscuit Time (Dec 7, 2012)

Mungy said:


> i could never get past eugines lair on manic miner


 
Or "Boggy Level" as it was known in our house.


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## FridgeMagnet (Dec 7, 2012)

Jet Set Willy really put me off arcade games when I was younger. I really wanted to explore the house, but I couldn't get very far at all without dying, and after enough of that it convinced me that I was rubbish at them and I shouldn't bother. I didn't put any effort into anything apart from RPGs until well into my 20s.

I'm better at them now - I completed VVVVV for instance and some of that is pretty tricky, all apart from that one absurdly hard bonus where you have to fall upwards dodging spikes through something like five screens then reverse gravity to loop round, pick up the bonus, then fall back down again. Maybe there's something about being an adult that means you're more likely to spend ages doing repetitive, pointless tasks?


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## stuff_it (Dec 7, 2012)

Ax^ said:


> Go buy dark souls
> 
> 
> And report back


Geez, I barely have time to play the games I already have! I'm just praying that the Mr can squeeze in my big puter at home this Christmas so I can get my game face on.


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## TruXta (Dec 7, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Maybe there's something about being an adult that means you're more likely to spend ages doing repetitive, pointless tasks?


 
Only if I get paid for it. As a kid I'd spend hours and hours trying to beat a particular challenge in a game, whereas now I'd give up after half an hour.


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## Sunray (Dec 7, 2012)

There is also the issue that developers spend 50 million and 2-5 years creating a game and you get to see less than 30% of what they created if the other bits are too hard.

Trouble is, if they weren't hard where's the reward? I'm playing Torchlight 2 atm and its got the balance just about right, go piling in to a heavy area and you will die in an instant.  More you die the less stuff from the boss you kill.


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## Ax^ (Dec 7, 2012)

stuff_it said:


> Geez, I barely have time to play the games I already have! I'm just praying that the Mr can squeeze in my big puter at home this Christmas so I can get my game face on.


 
ah well dark souls is more of an investment.. as you spend most of your time dying and attempting to see what you can bounce you're controller off so

maybe give that one a miss

until you have the time


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## tommers (Dec 7, 2012)

Or maybe drop everything else in your life in order to play it.


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## clickity click (Dec 8, 2012)

Sunray said:


> There is also the issue that developers spend 50 million and 2-5 years creating a game and you get to see less than 30% of what they created if the other bits are too hard.


 
This is one of the major contributing factors I feel.


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## Epona (Dec 15, 2012)

Trust me, if you get arthritis in your hands, EVERY game gets more difficult.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Dec 18, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> Have games become easier or am I just aging?


 
Both. You find new games for idiots a piece of piss but are now too ancient to win a starcraft tourny dues to slow eyes and crumbling wrists. So your fucked really. 

Stick to XCOM Classic Ironman.


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## Chz (Dec 19, 2012)

Yeah, XCOM Classic is brutal - though not inaccurate. It does actually get easy once you get a few soldiers to level up some. Can you imagine a TFTD remake?


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## Private Storm (Dec 19, 2012)

I generally find that most games have a difficulty setting. Select "hard" and then give it a go. If it's too easy, go one setting up. 

And if you find online games easy, you're playing against the wrong people.


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## Citizen66 (Jan 7, 2013)

What happened was the ethos of game design changed at some point from punishing to immersive. And higher spec consoles allowed it to happen. Previously they had to be punishing else there'd be no reason to return to the game as available memory didn't allow for immersive experiences. How boring were text adventure games when half the time was spent working out how to ask it to do something with an object?  



Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> They're miles easier on the whole. And also massive - manic miner was only 20 screens it would be fininshed in no time if it was as easy as modern games, but there's no point having a huge open world game if you die every other step.
> 
> I prefer them easier tbh, I don't have the patience to put up with dying in the same spot over and over again any more.


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## Idaho (Jan 7, 2013)

I struggle to summon the motivation to play games these days. I always liked the long strategy ones, and I no longer have the time. 

The hardest game ever made was an amiga game called Bloodmoney. Utterly unplayably impossible. We even had an infinite lives cheat and couldn't finish the first screen.


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## FridgeMagnet (Jan 7, 2013)

Citizen66 said:


> How boring were text adventure games when half the time was spent working out how to ask it to do something with an object?


Like I said earlier, that sort of thing was just unfairly and also boringly hard, rather than challenging. It didn't add to anything. I've been playing some of the "classic" Magnetic Scrolls text adventures recently - Corruption, for instance, requires you to play through it dozens of times (unless you cheat and read walkthroughs) so that you do not only the right thing, but the right thing at the right time, to win it. There is no way you can know to do this without failing and trying to analyse what it was that was going on under the surface. And that's at least mostly logical, once you work out what's going on.

It's a design decision not a technology one - there are definitely text adventures that make sense and are satisfying but use no more resources. People still write them using the same interpreters that the early ones used.


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## KristineStays (Jan 10, 2013)

I don´t really think they got easier in the terms of gameplay, but I sometimes think they got stupider. They are not as complex as they used to be and it feels like simplicity is winning - mostly because they are trying to be global and appeal to a wider audience. Of course this happens mostly in rpg. Like Bioware, look what happened with Bioware. Baldur´s gate, Kotor and their very loved intelligent rpg games. Then I thought Dragon age was an exceptional game, because it met something between old and new and could be very challenging. Then Dragon age 2 is out. That game is an abomination. And not only because the plot is awful. It´s to simple, too one dimensional.  

However, we still have great games, they are just more global. Something you must do if you want to appeal to everyone. But there is always Witcher or Deus Ex. Then again I played Dark Souls. I don´t remember dying so much in a game. As a PC player I blame the controller. Otherwise I would be too ashamed.


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## Citizen66 (Jul 29, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Like I said earlier, that sort of thing was just unfairly and also boringly hard, rather than challenging. It didn't add to anything. I've been playing some of the "classic" Magnetic Scrolls text adventures recently - Corruption, for instance, requires you to play through it dozens of times (unless you cheat and read walkthroughs) so that you do not only the right thing, but the right thing at the right time, to win it. There is no way you can know to do this without failing and trying to analyse what it was that was going on under the surface. And that's at least mostly logical, once you work out what's going on.
> 
> It's a design decision not a technology one - there are definitely text adventures that make sense and are satisfying but use no more resources. People still write them using the same interpreters that the early ones used.



My interest in them has been picqued again for some reason. You can create them using this site:

http://textadventures.co.uk/

Although I think you need to know a bit of coding if you want to do fancy stuff. I might finally get round to learning some coding then.


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jul 30, 2013)

I've been playing this game called The Last of Us. Really good graphics, but in terms of a game, it's more like walking through a movie, with some crouching and shooting added. And talk talk talk - incessant chatter by the characters.


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## 8ball (Jul 30, 2013)

Johnny Canuck3 said:


> I've been playing this game called The Last of Us. Really good graphics, but in terms of a game, it's more like walking through a movie, with some crouching and shooting added. And talk talk talk - incessant chatter by the characters.


 
Sounds like _Lost_ with a bit of button pressing.


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jul 30, 2013)

8ball said:


> Sounds like _Lost_ with a bit of button pressing.


 
No, it's zombies.


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## 8ball (Jul 30, 2013)

Johnny Canuck3 said:


> No, it's zombies.


 
I only watched one episode, granted, but that's still how I remember _Lost_.


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## 8den (Jul 30, 2013)

TruXta said:


> 100s of failed tries in Last Ninja. Although the 3rd one was far too easy.


 
Remember the hand gilder bit that the start?


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