Difficulty

News

Permanent Consequences Up BioShock Infinite’s Difficulty Like It’s 1999

1:00AM January 20, 2012 | Mike Fahey

Today’s gamers crave choice. Choice in how they progress through a game; choice on how they develop their character. The gamers of 13 years ago needed not these things, which is why Irrational Games is including the punishing 1999 Mode in BioShock Infinite. More »


Retro

Surely The First Console Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game Wasn’t This Bad

5:00AM October 19, 2011 | Mike Fahey

Dorkly’s rewritten the theme song to Konami’s 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES to reflect the overall quality of the title. Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad, was it? More »


PC

Hard Reset Gets A Little Softer With Patch 1.01

7:20AM September 24, 2011 | Mike Fahey

Was Flying Wild Hog’s cyberpunk shooter Hard Reset too hard for you? Patch 1.01 eases your pain, removing weapon cooldowns, improving gun swapping speed, tweaking the sprint system, and allowing players the mercy of mid-game difficulty changing. Pansies. [Steam Forums]


PC

Super Meat Boy Is Tougher Than N+

9:00AM December 23, 2010 | Stephen Totilo

Science has not told us whether notoriously hard video game Super Meat Boy is tougher than notoriously hard N+. So we must rely on a second-best method. More »


Too Big And Too Hard

12:00AM May 15, 2010 | John Davison

Video games are too big, and too hard. Even for those of us that will argue against this notion until we’re blue in the face, there is an increasing amount of data that proves it. Here’s what seems to be going on in game development right now to address it. More »


News

Next Madden May Solve Game’s Notorious Difficulty Problem

11:00PM April 26, 2010 | Stephen Totilo

If you’d like to play video game football but you stink at it, don’t worry. The next Madden will put a voice in your ear, telling you how to excel. More »


News

In A First For Rockstar, Red Dead Redemption Gets Difficulty Settings

12:30PM April 17, 2010 | Owen Good

Rockstar says Red Dead Redemption will feature three different difficulty modes, and while they’re limited mostly to just the game’s aiming feature the studio is calling the variable difficulty a first for any open-world game it’s ever built. More »


In Praise Of Hard Games

11:00AM October 30, 2009 | Leigh Alexander

I’ve been roasted by a dragon, used as a pincushion for ghoul spears, and hacked to death by an axe knight, repeatedly. I keep trying, and I die and die again. Are we having fun yet? More »


Too Much Work Or Not Enough Fun?

4:00AM September 13, 2009 | Owen Good

In an essay for Gamasutra last week, academic Lewis Pulsipher mused that games have become so complex as to feel like work, and the stratification of hardcore and casual gamers puts games in a far less inclusive posture than other entertainment. More »


News

Dragon Quest IX Is Gonna Be Hard, Yo

7:00PM July 6, 2009 | Brian Ashcraft

Just because Square Enix is releasing Dragon Quest IX on the DS, doesn’t mean they’re putting out an easy game. On the contrary, DQIX is going to be difficult says series creator Yuji Horii. More »