Game difficulty and my slow lean towards games on easy mode….

I have always counted myself as a capital G Gamer. I always preferred to play all games on hard (not always the hardest mind) and always wanted to look in every nook and cranny to find the loot or lore. I have always enjoyed this and wanted the challenge of this level of difficulty. It wasn’t an ego thing as almost exclusively I play single player games which means nobody would know if I stuck it on story mode in order to get through the game. If the game is multiplayer I play cooperatively with friends or family and they set the difficulty for us. I am not a world class Soulslike player who breezes through any soulslike but I can muscle my way through even if I end up battered and bruised by the end of it. Like I said this was my difficulty level by choice as it was my comfortable challenge bar where I enjoyed the game.

This is not to say that I was too proud to reduce the difficulty when I had had enough. While playing Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order during the fight against Malicos and again against Trilla I reduced the difficulty from Grand Master to Story just to get the fight over with. I knew I could beat them on the hardest difficulty as I hadn’t really had too many issues through the game where I felt that I couldn’t defeat the opponent. If I died, I knew it was something I had done, whereas with these two fights specifically, I felt that there were many unfair attacks and at a certain point during the combat encounter it stopped being fun. Oddly I never felt that way during the fight with the Ninth Sister although she was difficult, I always felt the fight was fair and I felt beating her was just a matter of time.

This is a rare occurrence. Or should I say it was a rare occurrence. Recently I have been just playing on normal or one difficulty higher if there are multiple difficulties. I have also been editing the difficulty settings if there are multiple options in order to tailor the game difficulty to fit my specific feeling at the time. Sometimes this is a challenge, other times it is just to experience the game. I am firmly in the camp of having difficulty settings even in souls games. I know this is a controversial viewpoint, but I am of the mindset that people should be able to play the game as they want and if that is as the developer intended, then so be it. The argument that sometimes a game is not for you has never held water for me personally as I would rather as many people as possible play a game and not be held back by arbitrary difficulty settings. Many of these games where people complain about not wanting difficulty settings are single player and therefore only effect the person playing the game. It makes no difference to me what difficulty someone completed a game on. The content of the game and the experience of the game is what counts. Many, I know disagree and that is fine.

I have recently come to the realisation that I will probably be playing games on normal from now on and even lower depending on the game. This is not because I suddenly find these games too difficult in my advancing age, but rather because I have too many games to play. Putting 100hrs into a game that would only take me 50hrs on normal means I have 50hrs to play something else. I have multiple RPGs on my ‘you really must play these games’ list, each totalling 50-100hrs each. I have yet to complete both of the Pathfinder games as well as the original Obsidian Pillars games. I have yet to complete the Persona games as well as the Yakuza games (Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth). Then there are the Yakuza side projects of Pirate Ya(r)kuza and Ishin. There is both of Larian’s phenomenal Divinity Original sin games as well as actually completing their masterpiece Baldur’s Gate 3. I have 47 games on my Steam list titled ‘Games to Play’ which includes only games I felt I REALLY need to play. I have multiple strategy games to play more of including the Amplitude Endless games (I have then all) including the new Endless Legend 2 which I have played sparsely but I can see it is firmly continuing in Amplitudes amazing track record of making interesting and slickly beautiful games. Really they are the absolute kings at making slick UI elements and many could use lessons from them.

This deeply affecting epiphany came while playing Yakuza Like a Dragon. There is a section where your scrappy bunch fight against the amazing figure of Goro Majima. I actually can’t remember what difficulty I am playing on but there is a section where he splits into multiples of himself and destroys me before I can do anything. Now again I know I can win this fight, I have beaten difficult battles before, but this just made me stop and think ‘I don’t want to’. I decided I would rather drop it down to story mode, destroy him for a change, and spend the vital few hours of banging my head against the wall playing something else once I am finished the game.

This has been a stellar year for gaming. Last year was almost as good. Next year is stacking up already to be amazing even if you ignore the GTA 6 hype (not an interest of mine as it is really not my sort of game) and we haven’t even had the Game Awards (otherwise known as the trailers for upcoming games with some meaningless awards thrown in to break up the adverts and game announcements). There are bound to be a few ‘WORLD PREMIERS’ and one last things at the end. There is just not enough time to play everything in 10 lifetimes let alone one incredibly busy lifetime with work and kids and other things life throws at you.

I was discussing gamming with my son on the way home from school, and I realised how many great games I would love for him to play. Many are 18yrs rated (although he is a mature 16) some of these are still a little above what I would want him to see or experience. I also realised he is enjoying playing Roblox games that are, to me at least, just time sinks and a waste. We have discussed this and he agrees but he has fun playing them and I imagine the dopamine hit he gets is part of that. Every time he ‘finds’ a game through a cool (or cooler than dad) YouTuber or a friend (obviously cooler than dad!) he is amazed that I not only have the game but have played it. He is obsessed with both of tobyfox’s games Undertail and recently Deltarune. He is pestering me to play Deltarune which I will when it is out and complete. The point of this side ramble is I wish I had his time and certainly his dexterity. There are so many games I would get through if I had that time and freedom.

I have been making a concerted effort in the last few years to complete games that can be completed and to play games that don’t necessarily have an end point further on than I would normally. I recently re-downloaded City Skylines 2. This is a chill game that I usually play when I am too tired. This fits in with other city builders like Banished, Timberborn and the Tropico series. We all have go to games that are just easy to play. I find Stardew Valley is my most played game for just this reason. There are multiple games I have installed that have bever been deleted off my PC and where ones that were the first downloaded when I got my new PC. I have also tried to stop playing early access games past the point where I am certain I want to play the full game in its entirety (I am looking at you Valheim with 272hrs!).

I don’t feel the press of my backlog like I used to as a list of failure where I felt a pressure to play the games and therefor a sense of guilt or remorse. Rather it is a sorrowful list of potential great games that I just cannot get the time to play. It saddens me that I will not experience these games. This is why I feel I may be more ruthless in turning down the difficulty based more on the thought that I want to experience the game rather than the need to dominate it or get the hit from the challenge.

I think I will start with the Like a Dragon Majima fight because let’s be real, there are not many who can beat The Mad Dog Goro Majima.