Best boss? Taking out the Death Star in the original X-Wing by LucasArts. Since we saw it in the movies, we wanted to do it.
Oh and the Sar Matra from Star Control II.
I think a major issue is the amount of time we actually have available for gaming now, it's a lot less than it used to be. So something requiring that mount of a time investment had better a) be mind blowingly good and b) grab you from the get go or people are going to give up on it.
JB: So true. My console time is all very late night these days... with a very early wake up on Planet Parenthood the next morning.
I have a stack of games i never finished because the end boss was too f'n hard with no ramp up to the skill level required. If it takes me more than a week to kill the boss or even make reasonable progress through the game, I tend to walk away and start the next game. I have enough frustration in RL, i don't need any more.
JB: I can respect that. Cos I'm totally with you. A week of on/off gaming squeezed in wherever I can find time is about my limit these days. hence my never finishing Dead Rising. It's a great game, and I cant bring myself to throw it away, but nor can I ever go back and finish the thing.
I don't mind getting hammered a couple of times, but if it became a frequent event...then the fun part of the gaming exercise for me goes out of it.
I think its two distinct camps JB. Those that play purely for fun and those that although fun may well be a p[art of the exercise..its the challenge of completing the game.
Take Battle Field Bad company for an example. I have not completed the game in Campaign mode yet, die and restart, die and restart. For me, thats not escapism, its down right boring as bat shite.
Playing on line with friends...both my boys as well.....NOW THAT FKN FUN!, but thats why I play, for other..well its like you say, its more of the challenge in a very different sense.
JB: Yeah, I suspect Demon's Souls might be one for the Hard Core Only. Raises an interesting dichotomy though, between the goals of campaign play vs multiplayer.
Man, so true about Planet Parent. Every time I fire up the PS3 and wiggle into my couch-arse interface I find myself thinking about the laundry that hasn't come in yet, the dishes yet to be washed up after dinner, or the lawn approaching knee height.
How hard is too hard? well I got "Dead Space" with the console and havn't got past the big Hydraulic Rams, about 3 save points in. I spend about 20 minutes trying to get past them and I give up & go fold laundry, so too hard? I don't know, Insuficient time & motivation as the game hasn't actually engaged me yet? probably.
JB: Ah thanx for warning me off that experience then.
I was disappointed when Super Mario Galaxy only had a handful of truly challenging levels that raised my heart rate. I've been playing those games for so long that I can breeze through them with nary a thought.
On the flip side I threw the controller away in disgust twenty minutes into Prince of Persia 2 when the combat overwhelmed me. There is a level of balance to be attained but gamer audiences are split into 'casual' and 'hardcore' for each genre. How do you plan for that?
Also, that Sar Matra from SC2 was a bastard to take down.
Hard is good. Impossible is game destroying. There is a well deserved sense of acheivement in defeating the hard boss. I've raided in WoW for a long time and it's fun beating the raid bosses, but incredibly frustrating when you can't.
In my case I play for fun, and while I recognise that there is a feeling of accomplishment when I get to the end I is uppermost in my mind that I have got to then of several hours sitting on my arse in front of a computer screen punching keys.
So While I am happy to invest time to get to that final cutscene I am not prepared to invest hours upon hours. If it gets too repetitive, to frustrating I'll cheat.
I do not have a lot of time to invest in gaming these days so the return on time spent soon becomes to little if I have to put in so many hours for one 4 min cutscene.
JB: Poifect. I'll be off deadline.
There needs to be a) a real level difference selector or b) a built in AI skill adjuster.
Many games rely on you developing an otherwise useless skill set. A street fighter example- what does rhythmically and quickly pressing xxybaxya actually gain you?
The great games all escape the mechanics and leave you thinking about the abstract.
Counterstrike doesn't have you thinking about WASD, R, 1234, it has you thinking about the enemy soldiers and where they might be hiding.
Civilization doesn't have you thinking about letter codes you constantly enter - it has you thinking about the enemy civilizations.
Diablo 1, 2 and soon 3 (the clickening) doesn't make you realise you are clicking like a cricket on crack - it has you fighting monster.
If you loose the abstract, and spend all your time thinking about the pain of the mechanics, it's too hard, or poorly adjusted.
JB: I had no idea. And I've died LOTS in that game. L4D does something similar by ramping up the zombie numbers if yr getting too cocky.
Big bosses can suck. I have had occasions when I just get so frustrated I throw everything at them and when I get through I think "How did I do that?" It can be a let down when that happens. You should be able to defeat them with the tactics and special items you have picked up along the way, not with random shit.
JB: I think it's the random shit which is the MOST annoying part. To this day I have no idea how I fought that last battle in Myth. Was it simple pure arse? One dwarf getting one bomb thru at just the right moment with the battlefield arranged in a random constellation never to be repeated? Does me 'ead in to even think that like, guvnor.
I've yet to conquer the original Mario Bros game.
I'm a little behind the times.
JB: I think perhaps you should leave now.
Most of the console games i've seen have a weird difficulty curve, really easy at first to drag the player in, then ridiculously hard at the end so you can't just complete the game in a day or two.
You have to have a good challenge in a game to keep you interested, this is why perhaps the multiplayer games tend to be so good- the challenge is always there.
by the way have you seen the Doctor Who episode 'impossible planet'?
JB: We have whole black ops teams devoted to watching Sam very carefully.
I've never played a computer generated game other than something I think was called "Pong" many years ago - possibly sometime in the early 1970's. However, these Mario Brothers you mention, jenn, intrigue me. I shall google them.
And here is an interesting thought ref the level of challenge.
Like yo mention JB, the margin for error with this game is so small you must perfect each scene, each time you replay the scene, deleting the miss steps until, finally you outmatch what is the pre programmed parameters of the games engine and here is where you could say its gets interesting.
I think no matter how you look at it, in single player with this game type, you will if patient enough, finally get through, the games reaction to your moves are programmed after all.
However, in multilayer, its not the game engine you are up against..its other players, typically if you so chose at the start up or log in to the game, you can play against similar ranked persons or a pure free fpr all against people far better at that point, that what you are inn the game. This is where pure skill really starts to come into its own..no pre programmed moves or reaction based on what you do or do not do.
whilst sometimes its really luck as opposed to skill and that also depends on the game type you are playing..I think the Multi players, whe at the top skill level is far far more challenging and prone to pit you against scenarios which are more challenging than the campaign arrangement.
Having said that..we have seen as the games engines progress a steady decline i think in the ability of the player to outmatch the pre programmed parameters of the engine.
JB: We may revisit this very topic in the next week or two i reckon.
Having googled these Mario Bros. of which jenn speaks, I conclude that it is a silly concept and, as a consequence, I will not waste any more of my very valuable time on the subject matter.
However, 50 Cent: Bulletproof seems more my style, and I shall look into it further.
JB: It is indeed not just an excellent game, but a defining cultural moment. For some reason or other. Probably for the introduction of the word 'bitch' to geo-politics.
so are you guys all playing on the extreme level?
I have found that the truly good games only really challenge you to frustration when you play it on the highest level and near the end.
I am having this issue with HALO (all the acronyms that follow) We played it through all the difficulty levels but now can't get past the penultimate chapter.
"JB: It is indeed not just an excellent game, but a defining cultural moment. For some reason or other. Probably for the introduction of the word 'bitch' to geo-politics."
As true as that may be, I am enjoying the game for all the shooting, killing and for the explicit sexual content - but maybe thats just me.
Now I must return to the game, where I am caught in a web of corruption, double-crosses and shady deals that are leading me on a bloody path through New York's crime underworld.
I'd truly suck at this game, then.
I think that all games should have a 'fun' difficulty - because 'easy' can be just pointlessly hard sometimes, and once I've paid a good hundred bucks for a game I want to be able to enjoy it for certain.
This is mostly a problem in RTS hand-of-god games - you start the first level after the tutorial, have three little dudes gathering the shiny resource, and two gathering the blue resource, Barracks, eight gun-toting dudes built... and then the computer player sends a stream of 30 enemies into your base. Oh, I see, this 'easy' difficulty is only for the player who wants to spend every single moment locked into complete, not-fun levels of concentration, constantly only one-more-attack away from destruction, no time to built up an army, or research, etc etc etc.
If the computer player were a person at this point I'd simply ask them for a longer game, and if they still refused to do anything but consistenly prove how awesome they are by repeatedly killing me, in short, pointless games, I'd go do something else, they can play with themself. And later, when they come up and ask "whatcha doin? wanna play?" I'd say "nup. Go beat the computer players, I'm reading"
If I wanted to lose to a computer, I'd turn up the difficulty. So I should be allowed to lower the difficulty as well, yeah?
OOoh - the Crashing the Star Destroyer in Force Unleashed - how long is it actually supposed to take? How many times am I supposed to go through throw-crap-at-tie-fighters-grab-big-sip-and-pull-joystick-here-come-more-tie-fighters? I didn't actually do the last fight(s) against either Darth Vader or the Emperor. I read the walkthrough for the Crashing the Star Destroyer bit, spent an hour or so in from of the PS3, then went back and read the walkthrough for the final boss fight, watched a video of the cutscenes I was missing out on, and didn't play the game again. Anyone else think that was SH*THOUSE?
Myth was truly an awesome game where tactics actually made a difference - plus from recollection you had to conserve your forces or you were truly f&*ked. None of this I will just build soem more in my barracks (which always is a let down in a tactical level game). I can't recall how I won the final battle either.
I have just discovered Spore and know what you mean. The space level is giving me the s**ts big time.