Difficulty Decisions

Something about the gaming industry has always confused me; why must we choose our difficulty level before even experiencing the game?  As a player, we can generally gauge how well we will do at a certain game, so the FPS veteran will pick a higher difficulty level than the Farmville fanatic. It’s something we’ve put up with for many years now and whilst some games, COD/Witcher 2 for example, have sequences that judge your difficulty level this is but a small step in moving towards the perfectly judged difficulty.

When a new player is faced with a difficulty selection screen, it generally provokes confusion. Attempt a higher difficulty level, or be insulted by the ridiculous ease of a lower level? It’s just another barrier stopping them from experiencing what the game has to offer. More time needs to be spent on the creation of a gameplay experience that moulds to the player. The idea of level scaling may seem like it is moulding to the player, but in practise, it creates a system that can be incredibly unrewarding. Instead, we should focus on difficulty “checkpoints”. Should a player reach point A with X amount of deaths, they will note the enemies becoming slightly stronger/more resourceful. Continue this and the difficulty rises slightly until the player hits a checkpoint with a higher death count/more damage taken. Obvious, this needs work – a lot of work – but I feel this kind of malleable difficulty is something that needs to be looked into with much more depths, especially the kind of game that pushes the player at a breakneck speed through a linear story. More complex factors, other than death, could easily be used; measuring the time taken between checkpoints, accuracy of the player and overall play style, a truly unique experience could be created in an incredibly linear space.

When a new player is faced with a difficulty selection screen, it generally provokes confusion. Attempt a higher difficulty level, or be insulted by the ridiculous ease of a lower level?

Killzone 3 - Standalone multiplayer brilliance

Quick post to flag up how utterly fantastic this deal is. The full Killzone 3 multiplayer experience appeared on PSN not too long ago for the tiny amount of £12.99. Now, this includes all the DLC that has been released for the game so far whilst also allowing you to avoid the tedium of having to play a Killzone game's single player mode.

The multiplayer aspect of the Killzone games seem to sit between the Battlefield series and COD series, allowing players to go around huge maps engaging in various objective based missions with their team. The brilliance is noticeable when rolling objectives come into play during Warzone mode. This mode allows your team to engage in a simple killcount mode one minute then be defending a point from a large onslaught the next. The dynamic nature of this mode keeps things interesting as the battle never stays in once place for too long and the class system allows you to change your play style between deaths to continually surprise your enemies.

While this core mode is fantastic some questionable choices really sour the experience. Due to the wealth of unlocks in the different classes its doubtful that you will even experience the full capability of each class as in my experience, playing for ten hours only unlocked one full class and various bits and pieces from others. Either way, this game is a huge time commitment. Coupled with the fact some classes clearly beat out others and two other mode which are very weak in comparison to Warzone, it's clear Killzone isn't the perfect experience. It is, however, more than worth £12.99 so I urge FPS fans to give it a try.

SSX demo - Why I need this game

I went into the SSX demo expecting something decently enjoyable. Three hours, hundreds of retries and thousands of swears later, i've concluded that SSX is utterly brilliant.

The tutorial is possibly the most horrendous way to open up the demo, however. Your boarder flies through the air spinning like a madman after being dropped from a helicopter, thousands of feet from the ground. It's slow, condescending and tedious. The on screen "tip" points out that you have successfully grasped one side of the board with your hand and then goes on to tell you this each time, making you weary of the over enthusiastic Australian pilot's chatter. Take solace in the fact it gets much better.

After the basic moves have been covered you're thrown onto your first slope. You get a nice feel for the controls with some (slightly intrusive) prompts guiding your boarder, whilst letting you muck around and bail as much as you want. Its a nice, simple way to explore the mechanics without any real worry though i'd argue that first sequence could have been cut out entirely or, at least, shortened.

Finally, you're let loose on either the "Trick it" stage or the "Race it" stage. Trick it is probably the more enjoyable of the two modes, with tons of opportunities to throw your boarder off stupid heights, throw some tricks and land without snapping all of your bones. the combo system allows for strings to last the whole level, if you're skilled enough, resulting in some insanely high scores that'll have leaderboards changing every few hours when somebody perfects a new route or strings a drop-long combo. 

Race it is the more traditional mode as it sees your boarder pelting down a single drop as fast as possible. Seemingly, the key to a fantastic time is to pull of tricks without jumping to high off of various slopes, to maximise your tricky meter whilst still going as fast as possible.

The SSX demo has really sold me on this game, the frantic speed and over the top tricks make it an addictive arcade experience that'll be supported with EA's online features. It seems like a game that is built to last and it's simply thrilling to play. Hopefully the full release will be the same but with more.

Artless but not Godless

Discussions centering around the idea of gaming being an art form are, possibly, the most irritating aspect of the industry in it's current form. It was never really talked about in the pre-Braid universe as players were quite content on enjoying their games without any pretensions. You know Metroid prime was one of the most atmospheric experiences known to man, you didn't need to screech from the rooftops about how "deep" or "intellectual" the experience was. You just knew it was something special and something mesmerising.  

So why are we now casting our eyes over every aspect of the medium to try and identify things as "art"? It seem kind of pathetic, really. We're not unlike a child making his father watch him perform a dive at the local swimming pool, we seem to look for approval from critics from other mediums who deem our media choice as mere entertainment. We know gaming offers a deep experience, so why must we attempt to dress it up as art and parade it around to those who clearly do not wish to understand the medium or dismiss it as childish nonsense?

It's this ignorance to the medium by those who have skimmed the surface and claimed to have seen all there is to see that draw out this discussion. We feel as though we have to justify the time and effort we pour into these experiences by calling it art. I honestly cannot comprehend why, in all honesty. Dark Souls consumed 250 hours of my life simply because it was a joy to be a part of that engrossing world. Street Fighter 4 has stolen even more of my time due to it's intricacies and fantastic competitive spirit.

To clarify, i'm not taking pot shots at the idea of games being rich and interesting experiences, i'm merely confused as to why we have to label it as art to prove to others that we aren't wasting our time.

However, after all my negativity Sony decided to slap me in the face with the fantastic God Hand, which has just been released (finally) on PSN/SEN as part of the PS2 classics collection.

God Hand is pretty much the best way to cheer yourself up. It has amazing combat, a great create-a-combo system and it's tough as hell. Sure, it's got bad graphics, repetitive enemies and quite a few more problems, but really, when you're performing your own custom combo and swiftly destroying stacks of enemies, you won't really care. 

I urge you to play God Hand. It's made for people who really love games and really love a challenge. It completely reminded me why I play videogames; for fun, for a challenge and for a great experience. I worry that the medium will forget these kind of oddities as it pushes away from traditional experiences but, for now, i'm going to play God Hand and forget everything.