Hardest games (again!)

[ancestral-knowledge]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

Wow, this is one of the best reviews I have encountered so far. Who is this guy?

[stryc9]

Good review, confirming what we all already thought I'm sure.

[Pretas]

I found my Guevara 1CC DVD if you need reference. It's a clear on normal, a clear on very hard, and a famicom version clear.

Castro (P2) would be proud.

[GaijinPunch]

I found my Guevara 1CC DVD if you need reference. It's a clear on normal, a clear on very hard, and a famicom version clear.

Castro (P2) would be proud.

Oh, I think he is!

[Acid_Rain]

What do you think about the so called God Mode in Vanquish?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It's certainly tough, but by no means impossible. It's namely a huge adjustment getting used to being more fragile (the very first enemies in the game can kill you if you stay exposed too long, a lot of stuff like snipers and rockets are now instant death), and having much less boost/AR mode time.

It's a lot harder than Bayonetta's NSIC in my opinion. I'm not so sure about it being harder than God Hand on Hard (especially a KMS run), but it's definitely a brutal difficulty.

[BrianC]

Gun.Smoke (Arcade) might deserve a mention?

Excellent pick. And although it's tough as nails, it's not so much the absolute extent of its difficulty as the bloodthirsty nature of it. It's not bullet curtains or 9000mph sniper shots or treacherous puzzle box terrain that are the danger, it's that every single enemy is hell-bent on killing you, and they will corner and slaughter you if you don't fight like hell. Very personal-feeling shooter action, the antithesis of the "millions of dead popcorn" approach.

With an ultra-macho setting to complement. Brokeback Cowboys in STG HELL

Too bad the NES one isn't like that. It's funny how the NES version has all these added weapons, yet is nowhere near as satisfyingly hard as the arcade version. I love the NES exclusive music, though.

Bayonetta's NSIC

Does that mode have you investigating dead marines and communicating with a goth girl?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

You play a goth chick so I guess that's close enough, and Luka manages to be almost as annoying and lame as DiNozzo.

[Drum]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

This is a cartoonishly stupid article.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

This is a cartoonishly stupid article.

Care to back up that assertion?

[trap15]

Looks pretty well-written, and well-said, with a valid argument to me.

[DJ Incompetent]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

This is a cartoonishly stupid article.

Care to back up that assertion?

Iiiiii'll give it a shot!

He's a pendulum reviewer. After the thrill of rushing through the hot new content is gone, they'll actually spend real time with the game, but write something that completely omits what he enjoyed in the first place. These types of reviews scream "I was captivated enough by the game to work through and explore every nuance, nook, and cranny the game has to offer, but I'm gonna ignore all that and focus my expertise on only telling you to skip this because I'm very fatigued playing it now."

You only have to play the game flawlessly for half-a-minute at a time...
...Super Meat Boy is built for the moron who loads up a Super Nintendo emulator, opens Super Mario World, and hits “Save State” every ten seconds....
...no difficulty level exists because the player is never punished for sucking ass at video games.

In this example, the save state moron still needs to survive 30 seconds instead of 10. The penalty for not surviving 30 seconds is to replay the 10-25 seconds the moron already got past. It's bite sized, but it's still difficulty.
And then this is timed with leaderboards, so speedrunners still have a purpose; and beating this with a par time is the only way to unlock the dark world version of the same stage.

It spaces out micro senses of accomplishment throughout the game instead of receiving it all at the game's ending. It's not my preference, but it's a valid way to do things.

And even when the Steam and XBox Live achievement systems for Super Meat Boy reward players for sustained levels of play, Team Meat missed the damn point. The game’s vaunted “Impossible Boy” achievement...
...he can play the twenty levels in any order and get the hardest levels out of the way before focusing on the easier levels. Even when the game demands a no-death run from its most talented players, the player can undertake it at their own convenience.

So?

If no rank or powerup carryover is involved, I don't give a fuck what stage I start at. I'd love to start stage 5 of a STG and work backwards. There's no pride in beating stage 1 for the 43rd time. Take me to the challenge and continue the course from there.

Contra Shattered Solder was doing good things.

Super Meat Boy never bothers to provide the awesome feeling that came with finding hidden levels in 1990′s Super Mario World.

They're obstacle courses. I enjoy speedrunning to unlock levels over lugging a stupid key around. Who cares.

...Those inconsistent controls...

The correct answer is Meat Boy's hitbox is mediocre. The cray-cray-inertia is controllable and not the greatest, but it's solid.

Those inconsistent controls seem almost inconsequential when you consider that Team Meat has actually done the impossible: In parodying 1985′s Super Mario Brothers, they have actually created a video game that is less complex than the father of the side-scrolling platformer genre. “Oh, you’re just being crazy here!” Let’s think about it. The title character in Super Meat Boy can’t defend himself, because the entire premise of the game is that you’re nothing more than a stupid block of meat. Clearly, that was a far more interesting concept in parody than application. Super Mario Brothers allows you to attack enemies. It gives you numerous ways to kill enemies. You can jump on them, you can set them on fire, you can destroy them with an invincibility item, you can even kick enemies into each other! You can’t do any of these things in Super Meat Boy. The game has to establish complexity and depth somewhere else. So, you would think that Super Meat Boy could use his speed (and he has a hell of a lot of speed to work with) to turn the tables on everything that tries to kill him. Enemies, projectiles, and monsters can’t be killed ever. (Even the boss fight in the fourth world ends after the boss monster has gone through his pre-programmed animations and inflicted three successful attacks on himself. You do nothing to create that outcome.)

...

By 1988′s Super Mario Bros. 3, over fifty enemies and over a dozen power-ups were used in the creation of sixty-plus game levels. Compared to what? A dozen enemies, a couple of terrain palette swaps, and level design featuring the bare minimum for meaningful environmental interactions?

We get it, you want powerups. No thank you.

Player movement cannot be used to turn projectiles against their creators or other enemies. Enemies can’t be coaxed into attacking each other. Anti-gravity devices can’t be used against your opponents. Portals can’t be manipulated and can’t be redirected into more favorable outcomes. The only thing you can do is keep running, moving, and wondering why the hell you have absolutely no right to interact with the game world that’s trying to murder your block of blood.

legit complaint. But I was sold on obstacle courses.
Super Mario plot: Rescue Peach and defeat Bowser army
Sonic plot: Rescue animals and defeat Eggman army
Meat Boy plot: Rescue Bandage Girl .

A speedrunner's game gives no fucks about attacking the enemies.

This complete lack of complexity rears its head in Super Meat Boy‘s level design.

Apples to Oranges. He ignores the different worlds are unique, and that 4 macrostages are going to be worth remembering instead of 20 microstages.
Or did we really want Meat Boy to have a fucking water level?

You are using the same timed jumps to conquer the same moving saws that you saw in the first and second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth worlds. The final level in the game doesn’t apply any new concepts. The first thirty minutes of the game exploit every mechanic you’ll ever face.

Every world had different traps except maybe the final areas. Saws were used everywhere. Marios had Koopas everywhere. Sonics had spikes everywhere.

7 more paragraphs

Selectively comparing the work of a two-man team to Nintendo's or Sega's first party 1990s dev staff.

[Drum]

It's a terrible argument because:

- he arbitrarily redefines a word to suit his argument. In this case 'difficulty'. That's stupid and you shouldn't do that. He completely fails to create a convincing argument as to why one type of difficulty that he identifies is fake difficulty, and another type of difficulty that he identifies is real difficulty. An effort is made, but the argument just isn't there. Things don't improve much if you swap out 'real' and 'fake' for neutral terms.
- the emulator save state example poisons everything. Simply, save-stating your way through an emulated game is cheating. Super Meat Boy is designed around the quick reset. A cunty trick to play on the reader.
- says no punishment for failure exists in Super Meat Boy. This is just not true. You'll die a lot more in just about any given section of Super Meat Boy than you will in just about any given section of Super Mario Bros. He asks us to believe that micro resets just don't add up for some reason. I don't know if the resets add up to something more or less than those in Mario, but neither does he and it's his argument. I doubt he even thought about it.
- there's more but I just can't be bothered. I guess his use of bold makes me embarrassed for his family.

He's absolutely right that Super Meat Boy is just not a very interesting game though - certainly less interesting than Super Mario Bros. Super Mario can sustain multiple playthroughs because as you get better at the game, the game sort of grows up with you. This is down to the momentum in the movement of Mario (plus other stuff). Watching someone do a speedrun of Mario is very different from a standard playthrough. Meat Boy less so because it has a high skill floor but only a pretty high skill ceiling. So the micro-resets suit it well (larger ones would just make the game tedious on top of more difficult, in my view). But that's ok - that's valid. It's worse, by far, in my opinion - but it's not doing anything wrong.

[HenAi]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFSjmpYBEQ#t=2385

Let's see him beat this part. It's just a single minute so it can't be difficult, right?

[Ed Oscuro]

Drum and DJ Incompetent to the rescue!

My ten-second defense of savestates:

Savestates let me play through games that would normally take me a long time so I can put them down and move down to something that I actually want to learn. Not wasting time restarting from getting knocked into pits in Vice Project DOOM or running out of bullets in the throwaway cross-pad shooting gallery sequence = a win for humanity (and more time for other games).

Personally, I would like more games to have the short segment model, but I also see (and agree with) the contention that it can hurt fluidity. Not sure how to solve this one, besides just saying "we should have tough games you should slog through." But hell, Super GnG on the GBA and Ultimate GnG aren't ruined by saving.

[Bananamatic]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFSjmpYBEQ#t=2385

Let's see him beat this part. It's just a single minute so it can't be difficult, right?

When you can restart instantly and try over and over, it's really not
even if you suck, you will fluke your way through eventually

[BrianC]

Rocky
Boulderdash
Rock of Ages
Rockman series
Metal Gear series, especially the Solid games
Contra Hard Corps
Hard Corps Uprising
Flintstones
Metal Storm
Steel Empire
Hard Hat Mack
Hard Drivin'
Hard 'n' Heavy
Die Hard Arcade

[Pretas]

My ten-second defense of savestates:

Savestates let me play through games that would normally take me a long time so I can put them down and move down to something that I actually want to learn. Not wasting time restarting from getting knocked into pits in Vice Project DOOM or running out of bullets in the throwaway cross-pad shooting gallery sequence = a win for humanity (and more time for other games).

If you feel you have to cheat to get through a game because learning to play it properly is a waste of your time, then why play it at all? You should move on to something you consider worthy. Most retro games of significance have Youtube longplays now, if you just want to get the sights and sounds.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Why Super Meat Boy is a poor example of video game difficulty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuFSjmpYBEQ#t=2385

Let's see him beat this part. It's just a single minute so it can't be difficult, right?

When you can restart instantly and try over and over, it's really not
even if you suck, you will fluke your way through eventually

And the big difference between a terrible game and a proper game like DOJ is that good games don't count it as a 2-All if you savestate through the entire game dying constantly while making progress in single minute increments.

getting knocked into pits in Vice Project DOOM or running out of bullets in the throwaway cross-pad shooting gallery sequence

The hell? If anything, Vice is TOO easy for a game of its genre, and your bullets/grenades recharge to a small amount after a few seconds if you run out normally. Maybe not in the shooting gallery, but those are both extremely easy and mostly there as a change of pace. It's your own fault if you're sucking there and out of ammo. I mean, shit, I'm not very good at Ninja Gaiden-style games and I didn't have any serious issues clearing it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Marginal utility, my friend. Or diminishing returns. Take your pick.

I hope you realize that you're just trying to prove the superiority of the "my way or the highway" view of how other people play games, which is really funny in this day and age when everybody has pretty much dropped the progression model those games often used.

In my view, there's nothing wrong with the model of a game that has a reverse exponential curve where you asymptotically approach 100% completion for a stage the closer you get to the beginning of the game, and decrease by some amount over successive stages down to approach some percentage of completion per stage on successive attempts (above 0%). But there are two things we should note here: 1.) If you're able to quickly pass this without spending significant time on that curve, the game is easy.
2.) If you spend a significant amount of time on that curve, the game should be compelling.

I think many modern shmups are very good at meeting 2.) and some even allow you to beat the game without really exploiting certain levels of complexity (for scoring), so that 1.) only looks to be true to a clueless novice. Unfortunately, a fair number of older games don't really provide much motivation for me to try again and again to get past that curve.

Now, I'm not saying that my savestate use habits are good (they are not), but at the same time I haven't played a lot recently where I really feel like I'm missing anything.

And let's not throw around any accusations that people who use savestates are incapable of understanding a game's mechanics. If I were trying to approach beltscrollers that way, then maybe you'd have something, but I don't; I'm only talking about stuff like Super Mario Sunshine and some NES platformers here - games you might want to have a passing acquaintance with and then kick to the curb so you can get on with life. So I want to head that argument off before it develops.

The hell? If anything, Vice is TOO easy for a game of its genre, and your bullets/grenades recharge to a small amount after a few seconds if you run out normally. Maybe not in the shooting gallery, but those are both extremely easy and mostly there as a change of pace. It's your own fault if you're sucking there and out of ammo. I mean, shit, I'm not very good at Ninja Gaiden-style games and I didn't have any serious issues clearing it.

I knew you'd butt in with this exact useless comment because I read your comments about VPD before. Look, I'm not saying I'm a good platformer player. I'm not. I'm saying that when I'm going to spend time on my skills, I'm going to do it in a game that grabs me more than Vice Project DOOM, and I'm going to resent the game for trying to make me spend more time on it than the bare minimum necessary just to see the content.

Really, I can't overemphasize how bad I am at platformers. Does that make me an idiot? No. But I don't think you pay your dues more by playing a game until you aren't enjoying it anymore.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

games you might want to have a passing acquaintance with and then kick to the curb so you can get on with life.

Vice is one of the best Ninja Gaiden-like games out there and in many way improves on it (running while crouching, that nice huge whipsword radius, the multiple always-available situational weapons instead of highly limited ammo/pickups). Using savestates to reduce it a "well let's get this over with and move on" experience is just wrong, especially when it's a game worth appreciating, and that's problematic with any genre. It's akin to credit feeding a good shmup and calling it "done!" when you've seen the ending 20 credits later.

[Ed Oscuro]

We obviously don't agree on that intangible element - I obviously wasn't grabbed by it enough to want to spend that much time with it, even though I noticed (and appreciated) all the refinements. I also noticed plenty of things that weren't refinements, like the throwaway driving and shooting gallery segments.

Also, my taste is almost always to play games like this melee-only. The pistol just isn't my style, and using it feels like throwing shuriken in a Shinobi game. THAT is "just wrong." Speaking of just wrong, don't you hoof it through the final stage so you get to the final boss with the full complement of grenades, or are you happy with a third that amount (whatever it is you're likely to come by in the spawn point just before the stage)?

It's akin to credit feeding a good shmup and calling it "done!" when you've seen the ending 20 credits later.

But if it was a good shmup (or something I felt motivated to do the right way) I wouldn't say that.

And don't put words in my mouth. All I'm saying is that I understand the game, generally; I may well have missed some small detail. Hopefully uncontroversial pronouncement that perhaps you can agree with: I am confident that it would not have radically changed my life to play it differently. I certainly never have put myself out here dishonestly as somebody who is the final expert on the matter.

Speaking of honesty, there's a distinct possibility that maybe you're an idiot for trying to browbeat me with "expert opinions" as if opinions can be a matter of right or wrong.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Or maybe you're an idiot for trying to browbeat me with "expert opinions" as if opinions can be a matter of right or wrong.

All I'm doing is pointing out that savestates cheapen an experience you were supposed/intended to spend time learning (it's why the bosses have such obvious patterns), particularly with a game that's already on the easier side for the genre. What's with the sudden personal attacks?

Speaking of just wrong, don't you hoof it through the final stage so you get to the final boss with the full complement of grenades, or are you happy with a third that amount (whatever it is you're likely to come by in the spawn point just before the stage)?

I think I beat the final boss when I was low/empty on grenades. I just focused on learning its pattern and not getting hit. When you hit 0 grenades/bullets, you're not screwed, it just means there's a 3 second or so delay before you get a few recharged (I think it's 5 for bullets, 2 for grenades?). Pretty sure it's possible to hit the final boss with the sword safely too, but it's been awhile.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh, so the quasi-morality play slams against playing the game "the wrong way" were just your way of saying hello? Tell that one to somebody else.

Look, here's how it's gotta be: I'll be honest about where I fall down and you dispense with the self-righteous "this is the way to play it" bullshit. We all know that it's "the wrong way to play it" but in my book that's the only way it's gonna be done. I'm not spending my dreams wondering about when I can get back to the NES to see the next exciting area in VPD; just not happening with this game.

Christ, t's not like I'm running HG101 here and telling people off the game for ridiculous reasons, I don't think. I am kind of hard on VPD in some ways but I am also consciously trying to be deferential to people who've played it the right way and not reveal all my thoughts. Why the hell this doesn't work in reverse is beyond me - I'm trying to get educated about games, even those I don't feel a lot for. I've been messing around with NES games much worse than VPD, too, on top of all the rest of the backlog (as far as I see it, that's the entirety of gaming).

If it just so happens that many platformers just don't click with me, that does make me an outlier and that could bias people listening to me, so I try not to do that. At the same time you have to respect what the discussion was about. It just seemed like an opportune time to have a honest discussion about the fact that quite a lot of people simply don't miss the old days where nobody knew any other method of motivating player than "give him the stick, you little wankers". The style has got its place, sure, and even I don't mind it in the right doses and the right games. VPD just doesn't do it. As the man in the doujin said, "this thing only reacts to some games."

I mean, this is how it is: We're all gonna die eventually. So I could just be a saint and try to live in ignorance, lying to myself that I'd someday work up the appetite to pop Gun-Dec in the A/V Famicom and beat it - or I can just say fuck it and destroy the suspense.

In any case, I don't think I've damaged the game's replayability for myself. I might decide it is worth coming back to sometime (especially since the version I've got is the other region), and it'll still play as well as before.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It just seemed like an opportune time to have a honest discussion about the fact that quite a lot of people simply don't miss the old days where nobody knew any other method of motivating player than "give him the stick, you little wankers".

What... what is this even supposed to mean or be referring to? I am literally at a loss for what you're referring to game design wise.

[Ed Oscuro]

Maybe pull your head out and take a look at the posts I directly referenced above, and see what they were talking about; then you may have an answer.

(obvious typo correction: "motivating players," plural. But modern game design tendencies and sales do seem to indicate that the pendulum has swung - away from "force replayability even at the cost of inducing burnout in many players" to "assume the player is going to play only 30% of the game," which is a safe bet because statistics show this to routinely be the case. I think I am far more withering in my criticisms of current gen games, when I share them, which is pretty rarely, but fuck me; I am still burned up about the week of nights I wasted on Red Dead Redemption.)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

What is up with you being a douchebag and constantly responding with long, obfuscatory pseudo-essay posts as responses?

[Ed Oscuro]

I guess if "not taking shit from random people who think the way you play random forgettable NES games is akin to sticking needles in their eyes" is your definition of "douchebaggery" then I am probably guilty as charged.

What is up with never getting back to the point? I can't tell which one of my responses you're stuck on, or if you're just abandoning them one by one. You're surprised that invites dissipated-seeming responses? But yeah, that's just the way I post. I am not so full of myself that I would point out the irony of your asking for a shortcut past the glorious Oscurovian Post Experience in a thread where you take me to task for taking shortcuts in particular things I relish a little, but not a lot, I don't think.

But anyway, please cast your glance back to what DJ Incompetent and Drum were talking about. We're all hit and miss here as to what we can universally agree upon, but it is my fondest hope that choosing to engage with something in a slightly less enthusiastic manner than another won't be censured, if I do it humbly enough. Would it help if I get on my knees? Oh glorious gaming gods, you of the calloused thumbpads, I have sinned; please you to welcome me back into your creaking and decades-old-sweat-slick embrace! But I won't give up all use of savestates.

[Pretas]

Gun-Dec/Vice isn't "random" or "forgettable," it's a coveted hidden gem of the Famicom library. Save such a description for the countless throwaway movie and cartoon-licensed platformers on the system that actually deserve it.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm sure that post is going to change my life. Thanks for sharing and caring!

However you wanna slice it, Vice and Gun-Dec are just more games, out of all the games I could be playing (and games are just one thing out of all the other things I could be doing). I can say with a straight face that if I had to make some space in the 8KB of free RAM I have left upstairs after all my professional aspirations, my cherished memories of Vice would go.

Agreed about the actual sword gameplay being rad - I'd like the game a lot more if they let you do more with it than spend your time jumping in place to get over fan patterns of enemy shuriken, or speedkilling bosses by slashing away repeatedly. Same thing with the crouch run - not really a fan of the timing requirements in the penultimate boss deciding whether to stand and shoot or crouch and shoot; it's kind of a pain to deal with since my sense of timing is often wacky.