Games have taken a turn for the easy.

As you have read I was a big fan of the new Golden Sun game and with good reason. It had a great combat system, an decent story, and compelling graphics. What I was not a fan of was the difficulty of this game, especially the puzzles. Every time I went into a dungeon I just bumbeled around until I hit all the right switches and the last door unlocked. I never once had to stop and think about ANY puzzle in  the game. This kind of "breeseway" in games has really been pissing me off recently.

Now I remember when I was a kid spending hours on one puzzle before I would complete it. Sometimes I would even quit a game because I just could not figure out what to do. When I go back today and play the same games and can usually get through those puzzles but they are still hard. I played the original Tomb Raider again recently and that game about broke my brain! I actually had to set the controller down a few times and think about solutions to these problems. To be honest it was a refreshing experience.

I am not sure at what time games became "too easy" to be enjoyable but it seems as though it flew under our noses. I have a tendency to play games on the hardest difficulty when that is an option but even then the games really do not get any harder, I just die more. Take Modern Warfare 2 for example, I played it on hard expecting something more but all that changed is that I was easier to kill. Dead Space did the same thing, on impossible mode it took more shots to bring down enemies, though admittedly that made the game much more tense. And when I played Kingdom Hearts:BBS the puzzles did not get harder, in fact I can not even remeber the puzzles they were so lame.

Every fucking time...

Now before I rant too long about every game doing it wrong there are a few that do it right. Halo for example will make the AI smarter the higher the difficulty and I want more of that. But I do not just want it in shooters, I want it in ALL games. Give me an RPG that makes the puzzles harder as well as the enemies smarter and stronger. Give me an adventure game that does not give me cut scenes every time I flip a switch and gives me direction by the layout of the level instead. And finally give me a game where hard mode means HARD, not "you die more."

-Snickelsox

P.S. Check out my other pages. If you see that I have not posted here recently it is because I posted there! Links are ^ and then > and be sure to comment!