What Happened to Video Games That Challenge?
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I finished just finished Metal Gear Solid 2. Yeah, just now. I never got around to it in the 5 years I’ve owned it. I have to say the entire game bored me to death. It didn’t challenge me at all. Sure some of the levels were difficult at times, but when I died, I wasn’t really penalized. The game just throws you back to a certain part of the level and you start again. I have been playing Super Mario Galaxy also. That game just lets me start from the beginning of the level as well. So really, it doesn’t matter how many times I die. I can just start over again.
What happened to the games that really penalized for death? I’m talking challenging me the way games like Contra for the NES used to. You get 3 men and 3 continues, after that, you have to start all over. Even with the 30 men code, I had problems completing that game. Now with newer games, it seems you can just play forever and it doesn’t really matter if you die. There truly is very little penalty. It’s gotten to where you can walk through any given game straight to the end in a matter of hours.
I think people are getting bored of not being challenged by video games. Game creators don’t want to frustrate their audience too much anymore though. No challenging elements really go into the game design anymore. It’s all about graphics and making things explode. I think games like I Wanna Be the Guy that challenge you and annoy the piss out of you are much better and more entertaining than something with good graphics that I can just walk through. How about a game that only a few people in the world can complete? One that really requires some skill to see the ending
4 Comments
Alex - Blog.exe
July 16th, 2008
at 6:59pm
I think games ARE challenging now…
Alright, so if you play the game on regular difficulty, you can walk through it. However, games do have a VERY HARD setting as well!
Take Call of Duty 4 for example. I completed that on veteran difficulty, and only a few of my friends have been able to do this. It took me ages to complete it, and it was very tricky to do. Completing that game on veteran is just too difficult to do for some people. I consider doing that a huge acheivement. It was very hard!
I got huge sense of acheivement from doing that. Alright, so it might not be AS challenging as some of the games which you talked about, but how annoying would it be to have to start ALL OVER AGAIN if you die loads? People are not going to like it if they’re on the last level after hours of gameplay, and they die and have to start again!
bee
July 16th, 2008
at 7:11pm
AMEN
Martin Kruse
July 16th, 2008
at 7:33pm
I don’t mind more challenge, but i’m definitely not having “more” fun replaying the same game hundreds of times having to start from the beginning. I like the classics, but i doubt i’ll ever have any real interest is playing games like pac-man/centipede/1942/contra anymore.
Liquidsnake
July 17th, 2008
at 9:22am
Umm I don’t know if I agree with you completly. Having a game through you back to the beginning doesn’t make it more challenging. With games being so long now, you couldn’t have that or something similar, would just make people stop playing games.
There are different challenges now though. For example in Metal Gear solid 2, collecting all the dog tags is something really fun to do, makes you think of different ways you need to approach an area in order to get them.
Sure if you play games now without really completing all the games have to offer, is no fun.
Getting the 120 stars on Mario Galaxy was really fun, and some levels were challenging. You could finish the game with 60 stars or so, but lke I said, it’s not as fun or as challenging to really doing everything the game has to offer.