Game: What game are you currently playing??

[shinta|hikari]

Same here.

[Animeniax]

Still playing BF4... lvl 103 now. There are so many assignments to complete that forces you to try new classes and weapons, so it keeps things interesting and challenging and sometimes frustrating.

Also playing through Silent Hill Downpour a second time. It's a lot more fun playing the second time because you're not as scared so you pick up on things you missed the first time. I recommend it for horror game fans, though it's clunky and also frustrating to play at times.

[Buffalobiian]

Still playing BF4... lvl 103 now. There are so many assignments to complete that forces you to try new classes and weapons, so it keeps things interesting and challenging and sometimes frustrating.

I rely on a friend to motivate me into completing assignments.. or new guns that have good stats. I'm all about efficiency when it comes to FPS, so I tend to find something that works well and just stick with it. It happens in life as well (especially with cooking meals).

I should start playing BF4 again actually. Titanfall really isn't as fun as what I had expected. The speed and chaotic nature of it means I can't really predict what will result from my actions. I can't execute wall-runs with exact accuracy, so half the time I run up the wall or jump at a ledge not knowing whether I'll make it up there or not. In general it's a whole lot off "I'll do this and see where it gets me", which doesn't feel rewarding. I also don't play defensively or smart enough to make Titans useful. I pretty much call it in to run around while I try killing other pilots.

[Animeniax]

I rely on a friend to motivate me into completing assignments.. or new guns that have good stats. I'm all about efficiency when it comes to FPS, so I tend to find something that works well and just stick with it. It happens in life as well (especially with cooking meals).

I like the challenge of the assignments, and I've always been someone who likes to complete things and mark them completed. The minor satisfaction of checking off an assignment is worth the damage to my KDR and win %. I also like trying new weapons to find a favorite, or proving to myself I can do well with some crappy gun, especially new ones with no upgrades. Getting kills with iron sights and no barrel enhancements takes some skill.

I finished Silent Hill Downpour a second time but on hard difficulty, which is still pretty easy. The game is very frustrating and the computer cheats, but still a worthwhile game, though I almost smashed a PS3 controller out of anger at this game.

[shinta|hikari]

It was pretty easy but frustrating and unfair enough for you to have almost smashed your controller?

[Animeniax]

It was pretty easy but frustrating and unfair enough for you to have almost smashed your controller?

Yeah, even on hard difficulty it's easy to defeat all of the monsters and even the boss. It's frustrating because the boss randomly hammerfists you as you run across catwalks, and no matter what is going on (even if you shoot him to stun him or if he's busy forming trash balls to hurl at you) he will stop whatever he's doing in an instant and land the hammerfist and hurt you bad.

Also, the controls are wonky and you get stuck on corners and stuff in the environment that make no sense, allowing monsters to hit you or throwing off your timing for critical moves. My reasoning is that if your controller inputs don't matter, then the controller is unnecessary and therefore worthy of destruction. Dumb I know, and I regret it every time, until the next time the game pisses me off and I throw my controller.

[shinta|hikari]

If the hammerfisting frustrates you because you get hit hard, then it isn't pretty easy, right?

Pretty easy means you had an easy time finishing it, never getting frustrated, at cheap bosses or wonky controls, since both of those affect the difficulty of the game.

For example, cheap ambushes and wonky controls/camera/hitboxes are part of Dark Souls' difficulty. They might not be intentional, but it still does not change the fact that it makes the game more difficult to finish.

[Animeniax]

No, it frustrates me because there's no defense against it and it defies all rules of the game, as I mentioned.

It is an easy game once you learn how things work. All the monsters attack the same or are avoidable (you can run away from them and they won't follow and it doesn't hurt or help your stats), and the puzzles are straightforward. The random hammerfist attacks kill you in two hits, requiring you to replay 15 minutes of the game to get back to the boss, and as I said, they are not defensible and even contradict anything else going on at the time.

I'm fine making controls wonky to add difficulty, such as in this game the wonkiness is how they portray the fear and stress you feel as the character in this nightmare world. But in SHD, the wonkiness is from poorly coded gameplay and environment. Getting stuck on table corners and not being able to reliably go up and down ladders is just shitty programming.

[shinta|hikari]

I guess you are defining difficulty as excluding any unintentional factors or things that you do not believe to be consistent with the rest of the game. I understand that, but that is a very customized understanding of difficulty.

[Animeniax]

Well in most games difficulty comes from number, toughness, and abilities of your enemies. Difficulty can also come from watering down the player character's abilities. Difficulty should not come from randomly getting stuck on objects in the environment or not being able to move (both of which happen in this game through what can only be described as glitches, not gameplay). It also should not come from abilities for which there is no defense.

I guess you could call his hammerfists an "ability" except that there's no defense for them and he can unleash them any time he wants, including while you're shooting him (which normally disrupts his attack and occupies him for a few seconds) and while he's doing other things (giving you the sense that you have time to move to evade his next attack). He shouldn't be able to cast a spell and mid-casting stop and hammerfist you. He also shouldn't be able to recover so quickly from being shot to hammerfist you, as at other times shooting him gives you more time to act. I also got hammerfisted twice in a row in 5 seconds, and considering your character can't move or do anything while you recover from each hit, and that you die from 2 such attacks even if you have 100% health, it's a pretty shitty way to make a game "difficult."

[shinta|hikari]

I can sort of agree with you on the unintended stuff like glitches or bugs, but the cheap boss attack is definitely part of the difficulty. It was intentionally done like that to make it harder for players. It might not be the most elegant way to do it, but it made the game more difficult than it would have been without it.

[Animeniax]

Yeah and that's fine, just it is a cheap way to do it. I think a lot of corners were cut in this game and that was one of them. They could have made the boss fight more difficult in more challenging ways. He has a very limited set of attacks, 3 total I think, and they could have easily added other abilities or increased the frequency of his other attacks. They could also have sent more minions to attack you while you fight the boss, like a lot of games do. Having this one attack that you can't even defend against is just bad.

Still, I recommend a play (or two) because it is scary and also satisfying to complete the side quests.

[shinta|hikari]

Any plans on playing Dark Souls 2? It was a lot of fun. I spend 59 hours on 2 play throughs and they were well spent.

[Edort4]

Not that I really care but I guess difficulty should be measured by the game mechanics that take part for the greatest part of the game.

For example I remember that in one of CoD there was a mission where you must move through some trenches. Of all the possible moves you could make only the one scripted let you live. I remember that I died on purpose to that part of the game a couple dozen times just to see how limited the choices were. In this case it wasnt too difficult to find the "approved" path but I doubt that anyone would call CoD a difficult game if only they changed that scripted obligatory path in that mission to be a pretty awkard or complex one.

Personaly I use that kind of cheat/cheese scripted situations to see if a game is crap. The more of those the game uses, to put some "artificial" struggle to the player, worse the game actually is.

[Animeniax]

Any plans on playing Dark Souls 2? It was a lot of fun. I spend 59 hours on 2 play throughs and they were well spent.

Was thinking about it, but from reading how difficult it is, I might pass just to save myself the aggravation and busted electronics. I've come close to throwing a controller at my TV, and DS2 sounds like it would put me over the edge.

Not that I really care but I guess difficulty should be measured by the game mechanics that take part for the greatest part of the game.

For example I remember that in one of CoD there was a mission where you must move through some trenches. Of all the possible moves you could make only the one scripted let you live. I remember that I died on purpose to that part of the game a couple dozen times just to see how limited the choices were. In this case it wasnt too difficult to find the "approved" path but I doubt that anyone would call CoD a difficult game if only they changed that scripted obligatory path in that mission to be a pretty awkard or complex one.

Personaly I use that kind of cheat/cheese scripted situations to see if a game is crap. The more of those the game uses, to put some "artificial" struggle to the player, worse the game actually is.

I agree, that kind of "difficulty" doesn't really test the player or provide a challenge. It's just a lazy way to extend the game time and feign difficulty.

Like in SHD, there are ladders you have to climb (the climbing is a cutscene to make matters worse), and most of the time just getting close to the ladder will force you to climb it. Other times, like when you're being chased by monsters, you can't get on the ladder unless you approach it from just the right angle. Also, throughout the game there are objects you interact with and you have to approach them in a certain direction and at a certain distance to get the "press X to use" prompt. One step off and you won't get the prompt. That's just shitty coding to me.

[Buffalobiian]

I've reached lvl70 now in Diablo 3 with around 20pts in paragons, so now it's pretty boring from a single player standpoint. I've decided to reinstall Fallout 3 and finish it this time.. and boy have video games come a long way graphics wise. I don't tend to notice graphical improvements since they feel pretty incremental every year. Whenever someone shows me a game and goes "look at the graphics!", I rarely get wowwed. It usually looks similar to something else from the previous year, so nothing revolutionary.

Does anyone have any recommendations for texture mods etc that work well together for FO3?

[Ryllharu]

Does anyone have any recommendations for texture mods etc that work well together for FO3?

Grab something like Midhrastic ENB for Fallout 3, though ENB mods can kind of be a pain in the ass to get installed and configured correctly, and also grab all the recommended mods toward the bottom of the page. The visual haze of this one adds the right atmosphere to post-apocalyptia.

Grab a couple body textures then just start downloading mods like crazy until you destabilize the game to the point that it crashes every time you try to open a door! Not that I have personal experience with that or anything...

[shinta|hikari]

Dark Souls 2 isn't really as hard as people say. I never really play much games, and I managed to finish it quite quickly even without playing its predecessors. I even finished my first play through with no bow, which in hindsight was incredibly stupid, adding a hilarious layer of difficulty in the area Shrine of Amana.

I also played underleveled and undergeared, just because I never really explore anything and just go straight to the boss while killing anything in the way. I also soloed everything, only calling NPC help occasionally (though I've soloed every boss without an NPC at least once in my 2 play throughs) and I never summoned human allies. I watch a friend playing his game with allies and it looks at least 3x easier than soloing. He does not even die once to some bosses.

I demolished everything except the Lost Sinner boss in NG+. It was very satisfying getting revenge for all the deaths I suffered before.

They have also nerfed a lot of bosses in the game since I finished it, so I imagine it would be easier now.

Just use a shield and a bow along with your main melee weapon and it will be a nice, challenging but manageable ride.

[MFauli]

Finished playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked. Well, I got to the final, final, FINAL boss. No chance there. Three attempts and I said "Fuck off". Watched ending scene on Youtube. No regret about not wasting hours to grind some more levels. Good game, but the boss run at the end sucked.

Now I´m busy with Senran Kagura Burst, also for Nintendo 3DS. Rather repetitive, shallow gameplay, but a certain aspect keeps me motivated. :>

Looking forward to Mario Kart 8.

[Animeniax]

Finished playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked. Well, I got to the final, final, FINAL boss. No chance there. Three attempts and I said "Fuck off". Watched ending scene on Youtube. No regret about not wasting hours to grind some more levels. Good game, but the boss run at the end sucked.

You don't feel a certain shallowness and lack of finality by not beating the game and seeing the credits roll? Then you can curse at all the idiots who made the game with their shitty coding and crappy game design, and hope they never make another game because they suck at it. It's why I play video games.