Levels of Difficulty

I’ll be honest here. I didn’t really have a topic for today. I may have messed up my personal schedule and so I wasn’t sure what topic to go with this week. That’s not to say I had no ideas, I just wasn’t sure if I could develop them the way I wanted for the post today. However, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t decide to just wing it so here goes nothing.

Now have you ever had a game where when you play it for the first time, you think that it is too easy? And then you beat it and unlock a higher difficulty to play on which feels more interesting to play and so you never touch the original difficulty? I have had this multiple times. It boggles my mind when different difficulty settings aren’t unlocked by default. I feel like it only makes sense to allow people to choose their own level of challenge from the start. Especially because most games require beating a harder difficulty to reach the best ending in the game. There isn’t much point to trying to acclimate at a lower difficulty in that case. Sure, maybe it is your first time playing and you want to beat the game. Fine, do what you want to do. I can’t do that though. I like to knock everything out at once when I play games so being forced to do multiple playthroughs can be a little annoying. I just want to have the choice to play the way I want to play. That’s why I usually take forever to finish games these days. That, and poor time management. Which is why I try to do everything at once, even if it means I have to scrape my body off of the floor after getting beat down time and time again. I might be a bit crazy.

Now, some games choose not to do any difficulty settings at all. They instead choose to only have one difficulty setting. This setting is either on the end of pretty easy or ridiculously easy. I feel like it could be a bit more balanced. In fact, maybe there should be difficulty settings for more games if developers really feel that we need to be eased into things. Truth be told, I just want to be able to experience the games differently. I do sort of understand why they lock the harder difficulties sometimes since it can feel like a new challenge. So I don’t understand only having one difficulty for a game unless the challenge is high enough so that repeat playthroughs will still feel rewarding to complete. I guess it is fine for some games to be one and done and that’s fine. I just feel like I would like to get more out of them you know. maybe the reason I can enjoy higher level difficulties is because I have played through the normal ones beforehand. Maybe I want to take up the challenge because of my enjoyment of the original so I want to just want an excuse to experience it again. I’m not really sure, after all I’m winging it, but I’d like to think it’s something like that.

All this being said, I do have one gripe when it comes to game difficulty and that is when the level of difficulty is not consistent. Like there are times when developers will make certain sections much more difficult to complete than others with no plausible reason for the sudden spike in challenge. I prefer games to challenge me, but I am not trying to just break open a wall with my face after getting into the zone. Truth be told, that can be the deciding factor in whether I continue playing a game or not since when the challenge ramps up too drastically I feel like it was a cheap effort to prolong the playtime by adding in something that is insanely cheap and unfair, rather than giving us quests or fights that challenge us without us feeling like there is no hope is getting past this new foe. Typically, this happens a lot in some platformers when they decide to give us levels from hell in the later stages. It also doesn’t help when I can’t platform properly. That’s on me though. Usually though I am stubborn enough to perservere, but every now and then I get lazy and can’t be bothered to deal with a high difficulty out of nowhere sometimes. This really has turned into a bit of a rant hasn’t it? Well, I guess that is to be expected. Winging it for the win! Anyway, sometimes I just like to have a game where I can play it knowing what to expect without knowing exactly what to expect. I realize how confusing that sounds so maybe I should stop here. Goodnight everybody! See you next time!