Easy games can be hard games
The Escapist has an article about how games are too easy nowadays. Kieron Gillen uses Lego Star Wars as an example. There’s only one problem.
Lego Star Wars is freaking hard. Depends on what you consider completion, but at the highest end, it’s really difficult. Getting through the “story mode” of the game is pretty trivial. There’s no chance of dying, and you, slowly but surely, just keep heading towards victory, plodding along until the storyline is complete. However, depending on who you are, when the story finishes is when the game truly begins.
You see, there are a bunch of things you to collect in the game (they’re.. lego pieces, and they hold no actual value to “the game”, they’re just cool-arse, and I expect there’s some reward if you collect it all). In order to collect everything you need a fair bit of skill. In fact, you need to play levels through multiple times, when you get more skills from further levels, in order to get all the little trinkets from the previous levels. There’s also the matter of finishing with “all the coins”. This basically means that you have to complete the level without being hit very often. This isn’t easy.
For a completionist, this is not a simple game to finish. Kieron argues that in order to sell, popular AAA games are becoming too easy, which makes it bad for hard core gamers. However, I feel that games are becoming multi-faceted, which allows them to be enjoyed by everyone.
Another good example of this is CoD4. It’s quite easy to complete even in hard mode, but after finishing the game you unlock more modes, like arcade mode where you have to finish the whole thing in one shot. The most difficult setting is also fairly difficult. The sky’s the limit as far as difficulty is concerned in CoD4, and almost all AAA titles have this sort of thing.
Kieron’s basically just got to realise that sometimes the music sounds like basic pop music, but underneath the surface is a sophisticated layer of heavy metal. Rock on sweet chariot1.
1 this makes no sense if you haven’t read the article.