Yeah, “Why does Ratatouille have A Nightmare Difficulty” Anyway? (Patreon)

ONE - ENTER THE NIGHTMARE RAT

So I can’t stop laughing about this very real tweet I saw “Why does Ratatouille have nightmare difficulty?”

We laugh because on its face, the juxtaposition is hilarious. The movie is this cute, but resonant little story about a rat who learns to follow his cooking dreams, yet the gaming equivalent apparently must be facilitated for hardcore gamers looking for an experience that’s so TWISTED that it will HAUNT YOUR DREAMS. But, as always, the answer as to why this exists is not that simple. And like a lot of little anecdotes that I put at the start of columns, this tweet actually taps into something that’s been rattling around in my brain for a while now. I even recently tweeted about something to this effect when I said:  “KENA: BRIDGE OF SPIRITS has a really confusing approach to difficulty...” Similar to the Ratatouille dynamic, it was a game I bought when 1) I saw someone talk about how they liked it, 2) saw it was on sale and then 3) I looked and saw this Disney like animation and these cute as hell little rot plants and thought “oh, this could be the nice little comfort I’m looking for right now!” And then you get to the first bosses and it’s like “What the fuck? Why is this Dark Souls hard?”

I don’t seem to be alone. Gaze at any forum and you’ll see tons of people echoing the same sentiment. But it's a question that doesn’t just have to do with just this one game. It actually feels like it’s part of an existential question that so many developers are wrestling with right now. After a whole period where games got (perhaps) way too easy and a number of popular series had audiences re-discovering an appreciation for difficulty, the question of tactful integration of good challenges sits heavy on their heads. But at this point you likely know that I like taking these very broad questions that get us to think critically about something that perhaps feels obvious. So I ask the following:

What’s the point of difficulty in video games, anyway?

To get right to it, Shigeru Miyamoto (aka the NES god who created Mario, Zelda, etc) said that the most important thing in games is to give the player a feeling of accomplishment. If you can just waltz through a game with no resistance, then why would you feel like you accomplished anything? To that point, when I was growing up, the notion of intense challenge seemed a fundamental part of gaming itself. Perhaps it was the limitations of a lot of 2D gameplay, but beating a game was rarely a given thing. You could put in all the hours you wanted, it often guaranteed nothing. I remember long afternoons with friends as we tried to make it through all of Mario (no warp whistles) or Sonic 2 or Bionic Commando whatever else without losing all our precious lives. And because it was a pre-internet world, we often did this in the hope that it would lead to the rare moment of glory and seeing some miraculous game ending.

But as video games 1) got more popular and 2) became capable of telling better stories, it actually led to an existential quandary. Because we realized video games were the only art you can’t participate in / complete if you aren’t good enough at the game. This matters deeply. Because that kind of satisfaction isn’t just about technical performance. It’s also about emotional connection with the story. And if you want to know what happens next, especially if your mind is fully engaged with what’s being shown, then why should that be limited by your own basic coordination? And as a developer, if you want to give people a feeling of accomplishment, why not give it to more people instead of a rare few? In essence, why would you gate-keep the artistic ending of your game?

Thus, games just got easier. Not just with the gameplay itself, but the simplest of features like endless lives and auto-saving. We also invented “story mode” for those who wanted to experience the narrative and have the least resistance possible. More than that, it feels we developed a whole slew of artistic games that were more “interactive experiences,” but really tried to put some resonant weight behind their thematic meanings. And while I’m sure some hArDcOrE gamers will bemoan these trends, all of this is probably the most important thing that happened to the medium. Not just in terms of accessibility, but artistic capacity. And it resulted in some of my favorite narrative experiences ever (like the Final Fantasy and Zelda series, Goldeneye, Starcraft, Mass Effect, Journey, Elder Scrolls, Portal, the original Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us, and Witcher 3, just to name a few). But a decade ago, there was also a little game that came along and slowly, steadily shifted the conversation back to the notion of difficulty.

Yes, along came Dark Souls.

TWO - LIFE IS DEATH

The company FROM SOFTWARE (often shortened to FromSoft) had technically been making interesting, challenging games since 1994, but it was that 2011 entry of Dark Souls that really seemed to rock the boat. I remember a few friends had been playing it and one of them eventually wrote something like, “Beating dark souls was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my life.” I was so damn curious about that sensation, so I jumped in. And maaaaan, did it feel like getting thrown in the deep end. You have these basic goals, but you don’t understand HOW you’re supposed to do these things. You just keep dying and there are these loose, but not TOO loose controls. Every time I felt like I’d get my bearings with the game, I’d hit some sudden obstacle a moment later. I kept waiting for it to speed up. But through sheer force of will I got to the infamous Sen’s Fortress and then was just like “I can’t do this” and gave up. I’m sure for many that would have been the end of it. But then a funny thing happened. People kept writing about how much they connected to the game and, specifically, HOW they approached it with a certain mindset and patience. The feeling like I didn’t give it a fair shot just lingered. And then, in anticipation for Dark Souls II, I went back and suddenly things clicked differently. I had the patience from the get go. I looked at let’s plays, got the strategies, learned basic terms like “cheesing,” hitboxes, and parry windows and basically came to understand the larger grammar of game play. It felt enthralling.

By the time Dark Souls III came along I was a veteran who could finally see the damn matrix of the thing. Slight changes to FromSoft gameplay suddenly felt revolutionary. In Dark Souls, I favored the classic shield and sword careful combo (though I had beaten them as a magic user too). But with Bloodborne, the removal of the shield emphasized dodging and speed. And then with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, an experience I documented at length https://www.patreon.com/posts/soulsy-ful-of-39644054 , I learned the incredible joy of the parry system, something that will likely alter the way video games use swords for the rest of time. In that same spirit, it may be one of my favorite games of all time. And while I fully understand why people may bounce off and hate FromSoft games (especially as I was once there) I know how many others, especially in game development, have come to love them, too. And as such, the effects of the FromSoft approach have been wide and varied. But it all centers on a couple of central questions:

“How do we integrate what makes FromSoft great into other games?”

And more importantly, “should we?”

By far, the most successful element of integration has been the understanding of “rethinking death.” That’s because most games until that point had a system where you die and then go back to the most recent save point. This inherently leads to a kind of repetition, but also a sense of frustration, especially when you get stuck. Because it doesn’t feel like those attempts “happened” in a meaningful gameplay way. But what the Dark Souls bonfire system reimagined is something more like: “okay you died, but it’s just your spirit going back to a certain place and everything you did still mattered. In fact, you can come back and get where you dropped your stuff.” Now, some enemies may reset and stuff, but the whole idea here is you are getting more value or more punishment out of your “loop” no matter what. Sure, you are dying, and far more frequently than you are used to, but this isn’t a hard reset. Instead, you are getting thrown back in this tense situation where you have to try to recover. Which makes it more difficult in one way, but far less psychologically frustrating in a different way. In short, you are finally gamifying the death part of games. In fact, that’s part of the exact process of growth and finding zen with the process.

In truth, these games just popularized something that’s already been a huge tradition of rogue light games. But since its rise to popularity, we’ve been seeing the influence of the “bonfire system” approach to death go wide. Deathloop, which I haven’t played yet because purchasable PS5s don’t exist, has been getting raves. Likewise, the fun, yet balanced dungeon runs of Hades always feels so damn productive, which helped turn that game into a crossover mainstream hit (the writing is also incredible and everyone’s hot).  And perhaps they helped popularize the notion of game loops in general. Even the most casual gamers talk about them now. Whether it's the 20 minute farming day of Stardew Valley, the titular hunts of Monster Hunter, or well, I won’t even explain the loop of Outer Wilds, both developers and players feel so much more aware of the nature of how we are looping our time. And bringing it back to the point, there’s real power in understanding what it does to “difficulty.” Because even though we may lose something on a given attempt, we are not “losing time” in the sense of overall progress. Our attempt and loop always exists. And thus, FromSoft clarified one of the most important things in gaming. But, like most things…

We also learned bad lessons in the “dark souls-ificiation” of games.

THREE - BAD APPLICATIONS, HITBOXES, AND LEARNING

From the very top, it’s worthless to acknowledge these series without acknowledging how the success FromSoft game inherently backs up the gross “rEaL gAmErS” mindset that’s all about proving how awesome they are, showing dominance, gatekeeping noobs, and promoting the “git gud” toxic cultural dialogue that’s basically insufferable. But as a counterpoint, I want to echo that these games also fostered a healthy flip-side to this, which is there’s no game series I’ve ever played that has had a community that offered more encouragement and community support. When I was playing Sekiro, there were so many others helping in that process, comparing our experiences, and rooting for each other along the way. It was kind of beautiful, honestly. And proof that so many things can go one way or another. But beyond this positive / negative cultural conversation, the troubling takeaway that some developers seemed to have was the simple notion that “our games should be harder” and aping the basic structural mechanics, without much concern for how FromSoft makes these great difficult games on a deep, structural-level.

I mentioned Kena: Bridge of Spirits at the top and you can see the influence of FromSoft through and through. From the tight parry timing of bosses, to certain move sets, to the rot slots that feel so close to the titular two deaths of Sekiro. You can see the game trying to find some cute middle ground between those mechanics and something like Zelda or Horizon Zero Dawn. But instead of finding balance, the “normal difficulty” is incredibly punishing in the sense that you die after only a few hits. Somehow, you actually have LESS healing than Dark Souls, and when combined with a system that requires the targeting of close by plants to get said heals (instead of, you know, just hitting square), it feels completely frustrating. And by making it so immediately punishing, it doubles as this bizarre choice that undermines any real attempt at learning and process. Whatever they’re trying to do in theory fails in practice. And sadly, Kena is not alone in this half-hearted application (don’t worry, we’ll come back to this game). Because there are a number of games that feel like loose applications of the entire FromSoft system without considering similar important details.

On paper, Jedi: Fallen Order seems like everything you could want. It’s full-on lightsaber combat that isn’t just some power-soaked beat-em up mentality (perhaps them learning a lesson from The Force Unleashed), but instead all about quick timing and precision! But the hitbox and window issues feel like they sink it. To wit, in FromSoft games, I always feel like I’m getting a 1:1 where what I’m seeing on screen reflects what is actually happening. In other words you can react “that hit me” or that “that didn’t hit me!” with confidence. Good hitboxes are so important in difficult games because it reflects fairness. Especially at the moments where you get hit and are like “ahhh, that was stupid of me, I shouldn’t have gotten so close” or “damn I was second too late hitting X.” I mean, it’s no accident you’ll see all these clips and montages of the company’s games having great “hitbox porn” where you can see the game of inches play out exactingly. But in Fallen Order, I constantly felt like I timed things right, but it didn’t work. Or that something would hit them this time and I wouldn’t understand why. Or that I had dodged something but still got hit. Or that some wonky frames dropped and something happened that was so damn unfortunate. Perhaps a part of the problem is the fact that you could actually adjust the windows of what makes a successful parry or not. But even when making it as tight and punishing as possible, the larger hitbox issue just made it all the more frustrating. I fiddled with it the whole game and never found something that felt right.

It all may seem like a little thing, but it’s genuinely what makes “a hard game” feel infuriating instead of challenging. It’s the kind of application that makes you mad at the game’s execution and not the deviousness of the gameplay / game design itself. Even when it came to the level design of Fallen Order, you could see them aiming for the thoughtful construction of the FromSoft compact ares / shortcut system, but even there they missed a key detail of approach. Because FromSoft is so good at “hiding” its smallness with clever structure / dungeon environments / opening it up with gorgeous views at key moments. Hell, it’s downright euclidian at times. But as inventive as some little sequences were in Fallen Order, it just kept making things feel small and artificial. Like there was no reason you couldn’t leap a step over to one place or another, let alone encounter a vista that felt powerful. Across all these incorporated elements of difficulty, you kept feeling like they were going “half in” on the difficulty concept. Perhaps thinking it was a concession to those who did not want something that hard, the in-between approach instead gives way to the realization that you can’t go halfway. That you won’t do the difficulty right - that you will only make it feel frustrating instead of challenging. Which leads us to a really important lesson…

Difficulty only works when it’s the point.

When I buy a FromSoft game, I know what I’m getting into. I know that it is going to be a process. But it’s not just about being prepared for difficulty. It’s about the philosophy of how you approach. Because I’m going to be playing a “learning game.” Granted, every game is kind of a learning game, but usually it’s more rudimentary. Entries at the AAA level give you a basic feel for gameplay and then you largely get to coast along. Your growth instead comes in the form of new abilities or weapons that feel powerful and cool or built from accomplishments. A game like Horizon: Zero Dawn feels like a perfectly balanced approach to both fluid combat, fun weapons, and focused skill trees (Ghosts of Tsushima largely did too). But there are some games, like FromSoft ones, where coasting is not going to be a part of the process whatsoever. Instead, they focus on incremental progress. Forget bosses or clearing areas, even a new rank and file enemy is going to pose a new challenge that is going to test you in a new way. But I know I have to figure it out. I know I’m going to have to watch their move sets and figure out if I have to block or dodge. And as it gets challenging, I’ll have tabs and tabs and tabs of the game’s wiki open in order to best understand the challenge. Because again, the point is to learn. And take the abstract idea and turn it into a practical gaming result. I love good learning games because they feel so specifically crafted in guiding you through the process. Whether it's puzzlers like Witness or Baba Is You, or even the fact I’ve finally been dipping my toes into Spelunky-verse (though 2D games like this have always been harder for me).

The important thing to understand is that Coasting and Learning are two very different approaches, both cerebrally and emotionally. If I’m playing a learning game, the incremental carefulness is part of the rhythm that I adopt from the outset. But if I’m playing a fun coasting game like Assassins Creed or Far Cry? Sure, I don’t mind the occasional look-up of something, but I sure as shit don’t want to stop half the time out of weird frustration. It just feels bad. And it’s often the antithesis of why I’m playing the game in the first place (and god help them if they put you back before the cutscene, which makes it feel 10 times more agonizing). This is a huge part of the reason that the “half-way” to FromSoft difficulty approach doesn’t work at all. It’s not like you’re getting fun little challenges along the way. It’s just throwing you into a process of stop / start instead of keeping you with the flow. And even then, the things that stop you may have very little to do with the gameplay itself. The problem is that sometimes…

Difficulty has very little to do with learning at all…

FOUR - ARTIFICIALITY, SPIKING, AND LUCK

You may have heard the phrase “artificial difficulty” before, which is a term “used to describe 'cheap' methods of creating difficulty used in games to increase the likelihood of failure.” Meaning the game is hard not because the enemy is now moving really fast, has better abilities, or better A.I. Instead, it’s because the new boss just has a ton of life / your hits don’t hurt them / one of their hits takes a ton of your life. And to properly face them, you just have to level up. Which makes your character have more life and / or hit harder. But please note this is not “more difficult” in terms of execution. It’s just artificial inflation. Granted, this is still an inherent element of most games because it helps give the player a leg up in completion, but the key is to minimize the effect and make the artificial difficulty feel as invisible as possible. The coup of FromSoft and even Zelda games is that it often only feels like a slight bump instead of a game changer. Beefing up your life and stamina bars just helps you a tiny bit in these things that feel like a game of inches. But it still all comes down to your ability. Unfortunately, you’ll notice how much artificial difficulty feels like it’s everything in many AAA games (and it’s still one of the biggest problems with combat in Dungeons and Dragons). It’s part of the ever-lasting push / pull of difficulty that feels good versus difficulty that feels cheap.

But the word “cheap” belies what’s happening in your brain on a deeper level.

Because the whole thing about difficulty is that you are actually having “a conversation” with the people making the game. Really. They go through a pain-staking process of creating scenarios for you to play and in good game design, you feel the cat and mouse game of their choices. If they come at you with the artificial difficulty of a leveling system, you go “ugh, I want to fight X, but I can’t yet for no good reason.” If you encounter a bad hitbox you go “damn, he didn’t even really hit me! And if a frustrating glitch throws you, then you go “damn they didn’t even test this shit!” No matter how those issues come to be, all those things make it feel like the developers are “cheating” against you, the player. But when it feels like they’re coming at you with bold choices? I.E. a character having a blindingly fast move, it makes me think, “how am I ever gonna defend that?” But if it's a good game, you trust the process and learn the rhythm and then it’s like “oh shit, I can do it!” (AKA the process of every Sekiro boss). But this is still true even when it comes to the most devious of traps in FromSoft games. You know, when you are waltzing along and you get spiked / logged / or bladed and you’re like OH FUCK YOU, GAME! THAT’S DIABOLICAL! But the whole thing is that it is temporary. When you know where the trap is you can better avoid it. Which means you can “learn” around it. So even though it’s mean as all hell, it’s not cheating in that larger problematic way. You can have a cruel DM, but not a cheap one.

But speaking of death traps, this all feeds into a conversation about “difficulty spikes.”

Because in any game, but especially learning games, the notion of “pace” is so critical to that learning concept. Ideally, you always want to feel like the game is always just a little bit ahead of you. So that each new step merely feels like it’s adding a layer, a wrinkle, or a complication. But in practice that can be much harder. You probably know the feeling when you’re going along and then BOOM, suddenly a boss or an area seems impossible. Now, if or when you hit a barrier, this is where trust in process matters most. As a player, you need to understand that there’s a reason for this difficulty. To wit, very early on in Sekiro there are two bosses that feel so fucking hard. But there's an important reason that they are. Because the first boss, the chained ogre, teaches you the game's dodge timing. And the second boss, General Tenzen Yamauchi, teaches you how to parry. Both are of CRITICAL import to playing the rest of the game. You need them to click so that you can understand the architecture of everything else. And in understanding both, you learn to recognize movements of characters and mix and match strategies (which will all be critical once the game starts getting insanely tough). But there are so many levels or boss battles that don’t end up feeling that way, do they?

In fact, you can count those moments in just about every AAA game where it’s like “wait, what?” For me it alway seems to be the sudden appearance of a platforming section (I can’t tell you how much the rest of my Destiny clan waits for me as I fall off everything during raids). I went to twitter to ask about what moments happened to you  and so many of you mentioned: Riku’s fight in Kingdom Hearts. Meat Circus in Psychonauts. Certain gym leaders in various Pokemon. The underwater level of the NES Turtles game. Others mentioned “the push cart” in RDR2 (a bane for me). And above all else the thing people mentioned speeder / barrier level in Battletoads. But you’ll notice that one of the big overlaps in these ideas is that you, the player, are suddenly confronted with a style of something you haven’t had to do in the game before. One person nailed the dynamic when they said: “Portal turned into a dexterity game instead of a puzzle game somewhere in what I think was the last mission. I'm not sure because I was never able to beat it.”

While I thought that sudden shift of that game was dramatic and purposeful, I fully understand why another would experience a roadblock. But that’s the whole thing, if you are suddenly changing the scope and operation of the game in a given moment, does it feel like it has productive purpose? Does the stupid mine-cart have any baring on the game going forward or is it just an infuriating one-off that should be removed? Did the Battletoad barriers feel like a coherent part of the game? Did those super tough bosses that came out of nowhere actually teach you anything? Most of these things rankled us because they felt like thoughtless diversions. Even in my first play-through of Dark Souls, note that it was the trap-laded Sens Fortress that bumped me and not something combat-related. Even if I now know it’s ultimately teaching you a lot of spacing tricks you’ll need later, at the same time, note that there was never really a level like that again in any of the series. And most importantly when I think about those infuriating Fallen Order bosses, I think: “did it feel like I had figured something out?” Honestly, it felt like I just got through it by luck. And that’s pretty much the worst possible result you can have to an encounter like this. Because after all that difficult ordeal, it’s not something that feels like accomplishment. But instead, something you got through only by a miracle of happenstance.

But please note that “luck” isn’t always a dirty word.

If used right, it can be gamified like anything into a two-way street. For instance, there’s two game series I adore that highlight the highs and lows of these luck dynmaics and that’s the X-COM and DIVINITY series. Now, it’s probably no accident that both are turn-based, party RPGs with semi-grid combat systems. Which is a system where every interaction effectively has a “die roll” of a chance to it. Which is why careful strategy is key to virtually everything. It’s all about getting a good position, then using the right type of spell or weapon at the right time on an enemy. And it’s also the reason that the tides of luck can turn really, really quickly. You send one scout into an area that you think is clear and suddenly there’s three dudes and UH OH. They're dead. Likewise, one missed shot means enemies can now gang up and you’re equally screwed. But that’s absolutely the thrill and stakes of these games. And it is why you are constantly weighing risk and reward.

Thankfully, there are two approaches to dealing with this complication of luck. The first is save scumming and honestly, I like playing like this. Yeah, it’s technically cheap, but it’s giving you that real Edge of Tomorrow sense of going back in time and mastering a scenario that has so many chaotic variables. The other option is to accept the chaos, turn into it, and play ironman mode - which is literally a thing in X-COM where you only have auto-save and constantly have to deal with nightmare losing situations and all the horrible things befalling all your soldiers. Suffering IS the point. Which is also why a big part of the metagame is naming all your soldiers after your best friends and loved one and then watch as they horribly die on the battlefield (note: this can be actually traumatic and I do not recommend doing this for most people, it utterly depends on your own sensibility). But unlike so many other games I mention in earlier sections, the player has to accept that probability and chance are a literal part of the game. You are inviting the variable into your life and are just going to test your luck. But you can either deal with it by replaying a sequence and doing it better - or by taking the bad break and living with it. But it’s all about that personal choice of how we want to deal with it.

It seems like that kind of choice is instrumental to the process, no? Well… sort of.

Because that leads us to the bigger rub…

FIVE - THE IDENTITY CRISISESIS’

The thing I want to repeat again and again in these columns is that making video games is really, really hard. And the more I learn, the more intense respect I have for the sheer amount of energy and dedication that goes into bringing them to life. It’s so damn easy for me to sit back and criticize, but it’s so hard to achieve the things I’m talking about. Only a handful a year really manage to be great. And the process is especially hard because the all important feeling of “balance” in gameplay doesn’t really come together until the very end of the development process / get meaningful player feedback. Play any game in beta and you can see how much this is true. It’s so easy to find an exploit or for the developer to make something that’s way more difficult than they intend. The endless, necessary tweaking just magnifies the gap of the developers intention and practical application. But even if I acknowledge the chaos of the process, it doesn’t change the chaotic end results for the player.

To wit, as much as I ultimately loved Divinity II with some time and space afterward, there were difficulty spikes that felt positively maddening for me. Like the first encounter with the scarecrows or several parts of Arx. I really had to EXP farm the game within an inch of its life to get to the end. And I really dislike how many sequences depended on finding the one lady who can give you a ton of gold or this secret little camping spot. And whenever I felt stuck and was going to the internet for solutions, it always felt like I only found forums of people complaining about the same issue with no solution - or that the only solutions were using some spell approach I didn’t have in my repertoire. These moments felt like game breakers. Parts where I could have just stepped away… but I just chugged through with sheer perseverance, accepting the frustration and save-scumming as much as I could. But then, the final battle was literally impossible for me. I was at top level and looked at every strategy, every option, every video. But it just wasn’t happening for my party build. I’d take one turn and then I’d die. I even employed help from old pros, but no one could make it work with my setup of characters. So I finally lowered the difficulty by one measly level and… comically beat it in two turns.

At the time, I was so frustrated by this. I look back at my notes and it seems like some angry screed. But the thing that really matters is that the whole “feeling of accomplishment” just didn’t sit the same way that a classic FromSoft game does. Sure, those games also have frustrating moments, but there’s a sense of zen I get from that process that I just wasn’t getting in the process here. What changed is the way I feel about it with time. I found I more remembered the game's intoxicating highs where the combat works brilliantly. And in recognizing that they’re creating something grander, more ambitious, and ultimately replayable. Maybe my next time through with the other characters I’ll have a leg up from the start (you know, just a simple 180 hour gaming loop!). I realized I still love the game because they created this system that feels like it can do anything, often inviting infinite variables. And even if you know they’re not nailing it, you have that anchor of understanding its intention. That for all the conversation of maddening difficulty, you understand WHY it’s trying to be difficult in the way that it is. You understand the point of their intent… But my ultimate leveling-down solution brings us a deeper question…

How can difficulty be the point when we can change it at our leisure? Especially when that change directly impacts the emotion you feel playing the game?

Last week, I was talking about this column as I was writing it with Landon and he directed me to this video on the same subject. Some crappy verbiage in jokes aside, the part that sticks with me is the bit on how Halo radically feels different when you jump from heroic versus legendary difficulty. Even though Heroic is technically easier, he notes that it felt way more satisfying to play. That’s because Legendary difficulty made the assault rifle basically worthless and thus changed the strategy to something that was less fun. You basically had to sit back and constantly power up the plasma pistol and duck and hide in order to even make a dent in enemies. Does playing this way mean you are “better” at the game? Does it make you feel more accomplished? Or is it just a laborious process that tests your boredom? It’s honestly part of a whole thing of how many games’ hardest levels are comically untested and basically reliant on making you adopt a whole lot of lame duck camping strats. Which is not only boring and less fun, but it annihilate the gap between kind of hard and fucking annoying.

Again, I ask: why? What is the point of this?

Because you can’t help but note how indiscriminate it all feels. It’s not just about cranking artificial difficulties up and down, but even basic set-ups. Are you playing with a mouse and keyboard? Are you playing on a weird controller? I know I complain about user interfaces too much, but it’s amazing how many menu systems are clearly designed for PC or console and using one on the other system can feel like literal hell (hovering menus right over the inventory I’m trying to scan is my kryptonite). And by changing a difficulty, you can literally be shifting the entire notion of how the game play functions. This matters deeply if people want their experiences to feel fine-tuned and well-crafted. Games like Dark Souls enthrall us likely because they only offer one difficulty setting that forces us to push through. We either figure out how to play it, or we don’t. Which is technically something true even for more forgiving games like Mario or Zelda. We are being crafted a singular experience with deep thought and control.

But the whole problem is that “we” are not a singular entity in return. We all have different skill sets. Someone familiar with first person shooters will have an easier time with 50% of games out there. It’s an irrevocable fact. And all my conversation of difficulty is completely worthless without recognizing the import of creating disability-friendly game options. Because we are talking about a huge, meaningful, devoted portion of your audience and our world itself. The idea of excluding anyone from such an experience feels barbaric. Thus, there is so little reason to be precious about game difficulty. For everyone fretting about what may seem “too easy,” they’re never thinking about how LOTS of games might seem “Dark Souls hard” to someone with a different level of experience. To that, the strides in recent AAA games are wonderful. Whether it’s colorblindness settings or the ability to tweak little elements to something that feels right to you (like a guard’s awareness A.I. and ability to recognize you). We’re getting so much better than the generic application of “difficulty levels” and instead can fine tune the elements the way we seek.

At least in theory. The uneasy truth is that “forcing” certain confrontations is unfortunate part of the challenge itself. If I go into the settings of my game and make a certain aspect a biiiiit too easy, am I therefore not challenging myself the way the game is intended? Am I robbing it of critical tension? What’s the big deal if I do? Isn’t that on me? Isn’t all these options the kind of thing that just HELPS tailor a game to ideal specifications? Or, by introducing all this variation, are game developers just making it all feel more chaotic and thus possibly more frustrating for a whole host of reasons? Just like what happened with Fallen Order? I mean, what about the kinds of FromSoft games that really, truly do need to be tailored down to the smallest frame? To make it clear, I do not have an easy answer on any level. Especially because so much of it comes down to various human behavior. But honestly, that interactive chaos is a part of what makes video games a special medium. And whatever path is chosen…

The thing I am ultimately looking for is thoughtfulness.

It returns us to that dialogue between the player and developer, I want to see that they are doing their best to communicate their expectations and my own. I love that a coasting game like Assassins’s Creed offers so many options of variation. But I also love that FromSoft crafts uncompromising experiences, and communicates that in every part of their DNA and reputation (but I also admit this may not be ethical). And as furious as certain parts of Divinity are, I love that the game understands that chaos and ingenuity are going to be part and parcel of the experience. And it is in that dialogue, that I realize my biggest problem with Kena: Bridge of Spirits is that I genuinely don’t get the intent of its approach. Not just in terms of of the weird difficulty rubbing up against the cute characters, but I spent the first half of game constantly asking “what is this part trying to teach me?” And how could I actually learn anything when the hitboxes and parry windows felt deeply unfair? And for every time some felt like I could learn through intuition, there was another thing that I had to look up, which thrusted me into the stop / start. Everything felt halfway realized. So halfway into the game, I lowered the difficulty from normal, but that put me right into story mode. Which completely stripped away everything and turned into a harmless beat-em-up with endless healing. You can see all the good intentions behind it, but it’s a game with an identity crisis. And I couldn’t help thinking, okay, should this game have had a normal difficulty that was closer to Horizon: Zero Dawn? Does that not feel like the most coherent goal? So what made them reach for the game as designed?

It comes back to that goofy, existential question: “why does Ratatouille have a nightmare difficulty?” Some part of me genuinely wonders if it’s secret nod to the fact that the Sega Genesis offerings of Aladdin and The Lion King were insanely difficult (to that, this clip of a younger streamer realizing how hard and punishing these games were is so delightful ). And while I’ve sadly never played the Ratatouille game, the idea that this meme represents is the seeming lack of cohesive intentionality behind a game. As if there’s this uniform idea that just because we CAN do it all, often means we often commit the sin of trying to have it all, which then often leads to something confused. A slew of games half-realized in all directions. But perhaps that’s all part of the growing pains of a medium that’s 1) still figuring it out, but 2) getting better and better with every passing year. And hey, maybe it’s an overreaction. Maybe cohesion just sometimes comes down to word choice. Instead of “nightmare,” what would the popular reaction have been if it just had a “five star” rating system like in the restaurant in the film? So maybe the lesson is simpler…

If you’re gonna make it cute?

Make it cute.

<3HULK