Easy Mode is for adults that just want to see the story.
I’m an adult and I like Hard Mode (or higher) because I play for the challenge. What could be more challenging than juggling a demanding work/home life and also trying to progress in a long game with only 2 hours a week to play on the hardest possible difficulty? At any moment a kid or pet could unplug the system and corrupt my save. It’s like everything has a hardcore mode.
Yeah, the last of us is an example of a game with a moderately compelling story.
But it’s also a game that does a really good job of offering brutal difficulty in a way that’s fair, engaging, and makes success all (OK, mostly) about you. There aren’t really cheap fails. If you approach encounters intelligently and execute your actions, you will succeed. If you don’t, you get punished. The mostly is because resources are scarce and there’s some RNG to drops, so if you’re too low, some harder encounters can vary in difficulty based on the ammo that you get.
If that’s not what you want, that’s fine. But I read books and watch TV for stories. I play games for mechanics. Is it nice when a game like Horizon makes a character like Aloy really compelling by having her have to present advanced tech to primitive tribalist cultures? Sure. But if the mechanics weren’t good, writing couldn’t even sort of mitigate that for me.
Flashbacks to when my daughter had just started walking and pressed the button on my Xbox while I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2, corrupting my save file at 90% completion.
I was like “no no no no!!! Ahhh…awwwwwww….”
Poor thing got so confused, I had to tell her it was alright but explain to her not to do that.
Couldn’t really get mad at them, they literally didn’t know they shouldn’t do that thing yet, lol, but damn did I have to start all over!
Easy Mode is for adults that just want to see the story.
I’m an adult and I like Hard Mode (or higher) because I play for the challenge. What could be more challenging than juggling a demanding work/home life and also trying to progress in a long game with only 2 hours a week to play on the hardest possible difficulty? At any moment a kid or pet could unplug the system and corrupt my save. It’s like everything has a hardcore mode.
Yeah, the last of us is an example of a game with a moderately compelling story.
But it’s also a game that does a really good job of offering brutal difficulty in a way that’s fair, engaging, and makes success all (OK, mostly) about you. There aren’t really cheap fails. If you approach encounters intelligently and execute your actions, you will succeed. If you don’t, you get punished. The mostly is because resources are scarce and there’s some RNG to drops, so if you’re too low, some harder encounters can vary in difficulty based on the ammo that you get.
If that’s not what you want, that’s fine. But I read books and watch TV for stories. I play games for mechanics. Is it nice when a game like Horizon makes a character like Aloy really compelling by having her have to present advanced tech to primitive tribalist cultures? Sure. But if the mechanics weren’t good, writing couldn’t even sort of mitigate that for me.
“At any moment, I could be shot in the face! I LIVE HARDCORRRRRRE!”
Flashbacks to when my daughter had just started walking and pressed the button on my Xbox while I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2, corrupting my save file at 90% completion.
I was like “no no no no!!! Ahhh…awwwwwww….”
Poor thing got so confused, I had to tell her it was alright but explain to her not to do that.
Couldn’t really get mad at them, they literally didn’t know they shouldn’t do that thing yet, lol, but damn did I have to start all over!