Difficult is fine as long as it’s actually fun. I think a lot of people have found that games are artificially lengthened as of late, or the opposite being artificially hard. Both of which are mechanics to padding gameplay hours I guess.
Perhaps the fear just comes down to time to play; they just don’t want to have to slog through a whole game that is padded for length combined with poor difficulty scaling. Ie: one hit kills, barely surviving each encounter and knowing there are 250+ encounters and so much more game to complete.
a good example here of a recent game: Pillars Of Eternity Deadfyre. I love these types of games so I don’t mind playing it at above normal difficulties. But this game is probably their worst title when it comes to scaling. I’m still relatively early and I’m checking out because I know I have 80hrs of play left and these battles are nearly 20 minutes long at times.
other games like Below is just plain impossible to enjoy because of the number of one hit death traps combined with rushing through environments, combat, etc. Only a single life. Etc. This I would say is poor design.
Others like cuphead are just insanely much harder than the games before it. I know they are modelled after contra or even mega man, but those titles weren’t Cuphead hard. Cuphead is like nearly ninja gaiden impossible. This I would say is too difficult that people would rather spend their time elsewhere.
Last edited:
