On Difficulty in Games, or How I Fought an Old Man and Lost

Amongst the crowd that consider themselves to be "hardcore gamers," a complaint with games is that some of them aren't hard enough. There are others who cater to the "games should totally be easy because I am functionally four-years-old and hate my life" crowd and beg for easy games. As a result, developers have struggled to build games that use the good old fashioned "difficulty curve": a video game that starts out easy to show you the ropes, then progressively gets harder as you go along. This is a good system. The best system, in fact.

See, many developers think that the best solution to this problem is to simply create difficulty levels. The problem with this is that I still don't know how hard your game is going to be. I have my XBox 360 set to default on "hard mode" in menus like this, because I typically enjoy a challenge, but some games translate "hard mode" as "horribly mangle your body and then throw the remains into a wood-chipper filled with fire and grenades," so I never know for sure what difficulty to pick.

I will say this, though: I hate games that simply boost the attack power of enemies, add the total number of enemies, throw late-game enemies into the beginning and call it a day. To those of you who have beaten every God of War game on God mode, I salute you; you are a better man than me (though I did beat the first DMC on Dante Must Die because I was a masochistic child), because to sit there and have the time to dodge roll after every single light attack and defeat bosses that require something like 50,000 hits to kill is something only someone with a very limited social life can do.

Okay, that's a little harsh, and I apologize. I know what it's like to strive for an extreme challenge, so that you can feel superior to the names on the credits as they scroll along the screen. But this isn't what difficulty used to be about. Difficulty used to mean challenging puzzles, different level designs, etc. I understand that, in this day and age, it takes a lot of time to change a level around, but at least changing the game up a little bit so that replaying on the harder difficulties feels a bit less like homework would do a lot of good.

Let me give an example. One of the very first games I ever played was the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. It was quite a huge step for me, as I had only ever played games that involved teaching me math before, and here was a game that had a story (albeit a horribly translated one, but I was five, what did I care?) and the ability to fight things. Cool! In this game, you are completely left on your own. There's no obnoxious fairy telling you where to go at all times. There's no ocarina that lets you contact your random Peter Pan best friend to give you advice. It's just you, your sword (that you actually have to find on your own), and an entire world to explore. It was incredible, and it truly felt like an 8-bit, top-down-view adventure.

Anyway, you all know what Zelda is so I won't go too deeply into this. I will say that I never beat the game until sometime last year. Like I said, the game is quite difficult, and finding the dungeons is about 70% of said difficulty. To clarify, this is the order I beat the dungeons in (they are numbered to tell you): 1, 4, 3, 5, 2, 6, 7, 8. Beating dungeon 4 with 4 hearts was NOT fun, in case you're wondering.

But here's why I brought this game up: once you beat the game, it restarts--like most NES games did--and puts you right back at the beginning with nothing. I was proud of myself for finally defeating the game, so I figured I'd dick around a little. I grabbed my sword, killed some of the local wildlife and ventured into the first temple. Now, what the game ever-so-gingerly neglects to inform you is that you are now playing on 2nd Quest Mode. In this mode, not only are the enemies tougher to kill and hit harder, but the dungeons are completely different. Ocarina of Time's Master Quest was a sort of nod to this mode: a version of the game with more difficult puzzles and enemies that hurt so bad you cry when they so much as look at you.

What followed was one of the most horrible things I have ever put myself through. I found myself attempting to trudge through every dungeon again. Why not?, I figured, I beat the fourth temple with four hearts, I can handle god damn anything. This also brings up another thing I miss in games: middle fingers dug deeply into your skull from the developers. Case in point, the room that caused me to quit 2nd Quest Mode and never look back:

This is something I need to get out, so let me just say: SCREW NINTENDO AND EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR FOR THIS. The first time you encounter this prick is in the fourth temple. See, every temple has one of these nice little old men that give you hints on how to find and defeat the boss of the temple. Now, a few times I had encountered one and they forced me to do horrible things, but nothing like this. Let me explain a little: in the original Zelda, acquiring 50 rupees was actually somewhat difficult, and dying caused you to lose all of your riches. And you died a lot (yes you did, don't try to tell me you're some kind of Zelda master, the game was HARD and everyone will laugh at you for doing so). Note, also, that that is not simply "lose one hit point or gimme your money lol." What he has on display there is a Heart Container, a beautiful, wonderful device that permanently increases your max health. When I entered this room I had 20 rupees, and was forced to leave behind one of my precious, hard-earned heart containers.

Later, in the 5th temple--a temple that I was having trouble with and truly wishing I had an extra heart of health--I ran into him again. I calmly put down the Wii's Classic Controller, shut the machine off, and cried softly for three hours. This is something that Dante Must Die mode simply cannot make a player do: it breaks you. It makes you question your belief in God. It makes you wish you could punch developers in the face. And I seriously miss the feeling.

This is what difficulty should be: throwing horrible tricks at you and making you regret ever daring to trust the game developers for a second. After all, they have the power to do anything. If they so desire, they can kill you simply for looking at a wall the wrong way. You should fear every level the developer designs. I also miss tougher puzzles. The Silent Hill series used to ask for two difficulty settings: Action (monsters hit harder, etc) and Riddle, which determined how hard the puzzles were to solve in case you were terrible at the badly-designed combat but wanted to be able to tell people you beat hard mode. Puzzles in survival horror games are difficult enough, but conquering Riddle Level Extreme was something that boosted my pride to the extent that I felt like I could run around outside naked and get praised for my awesomeness. Not that I did that, or encourage it. In fact, never ever do anything like that. Even Especially if you are drunk.

Zombies: Creepy Adversaries, or Roadblocks in Video Games?

One of the most common enemies you face in video games are zombies. In the recent years, zombies have risen in popularity quite a bit (that was a pun, by the way. Hurrr). And why not? They are the ultimate enemy. They lack emotion. They have no purpose, no will. They exist only to eat your brains and move on to the next living thing. This, apart from the fact that they can look like normal people, is what makes them so scary: their seemingly relentless desire to feed, no matter what the cost. If you chop off a zombie's legs, he'll just use his hands to get to you.

Left 4 Dead, a video game released by Valve a few years ago, was one of the first--and only--video games to truly capture the zombie "feel." While games like Resident Evil had you fight countless hordes of the undead, they felt more like obstacles than enemies, especially considering the large, mutated beasts you faced as bosses. Left 4 Dead took a concept and, playing it as a B-list horror movie that absolutely refuses to take itself seriously, somehow makes it work. While the game can be taken very lightly, there is a small level of tension as you plow your way through the levels in an attempt to get to rescue. The zombies can appear at any time, and sometimes they bring nasty, extra-mutated friends that require a team effort to bring down. This is how a zombie game should play out: a brutal fight for survival.

Apart from cheesy movies and video games, people play live action zombie-based games. At Kutztown University, PA, students engage in a semester-long game called Humans vs. Zombies, where the humans carry around Nerf guns to protect themselves from the "undead." If you get "bitten," you become a zombie yourself and must feed off of humans to survive. The game ends when every player becomes a zombie, or when the semester ends.

But why have zombies become so popular? What exactly is it about them that makes them so appealing? If you look at recent media, zombies have become less terrifying and more of a sort of in-joke in movies. In games, they serve as simple enemies. What better way to "scare" the player than throw a rotting corpse at them? But it rarely seems to work in games, and some developers seem to throw zombies in games just because they can. After all, nerds love them, right? Liking zombies is fine, but the problem with this is that developers will just throw a zombie on the cover of their game and expect it to sell. And sometimes, it does.

After Left 4 Dead came out, a lot of companies tried to get their hands on the Undead Cash Cow, and thus, games like Plants vs. Zombies, I MAED A GAM3 W/ ZOMBI3S IN IT!!1 (this is actually how it's spelled) and other games have surfaced on XBox Live and Steam. Konami has released a game for download called Zombie Apocalypse that is essentially a top-down Left 4 Dead, only... well, boring. Call of Duty: World at War featured a game mode where you had to fight zombies, and now games like Halo: Reach have followed suit with this. Zombie games are fun, and they bring in the money.

It seems that zombies are second only to vampires in terms of mythological horror creatures that can be used for profit. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. As I mentioned before, zombies have become a sort of in-joke in media. Video games seem to have created the notion that there is a level of fun to hunting them down, and there are movies that parody this. It has become increasingly rare that a zombie movie, or game, comes out that even tries to be scary or realistic, because it's so hard to take them seriously anymore. It's not impossible, though. Don't get me wrong, Zombieland was a terrific movie, but I'd like to see some more movies in the vein of 28 Days Later. You know what I mean?

There are developers out there, though, that are doing more than just slapping zombie skins on games and calling it a day. Undead Labs, a new studio created by Jeff Strain (an ex-programmer for Blizzard that worked on StarCraft and formed the development team for World of Warcraft) and other big names, is devoted to creating the ultimate zombie gaming experience with a zombie-based MMO. The game will have a big emphasis on those decisions you think about while watching zombie movies. Do you run into the gas station and search for weapons, or head to the grocery store for food and possible shelter? The game will focus on the survival instinct. Yes, you'll need bullets, but you'll also need food and water. Maybe you can go north in hopes of freezing the horde in it's tracks? The game has no release date yet--indeed, it doesn't even have a name--but it will be a console exclusive MMO, and takes place after the zombie apocalypse has ravaged the country.

Ever since Night of the Living Dead came out, zombies have been a huge hit with movies and games. There are even books out there dedicated to teaching you how to survive once the zombie apocalypse starts (which is so inevitably will). They're creepy, they're fun to kill, and they're hungry. So yes, like it or not, zombies are here to stay. They have been a staple of the gaming world since the NES days, and gamers will always get a kick out of killing them. Whether it be with a shotgun, a lawnmower, or a chainsaw. Or even, in some bizarre cases, with ravenous plant life.