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CladInShadows on 18 March 2016
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spemanig said:
Chazore said:

But there are people who enjoy the actual difficulty, the challenge of how hard a game can be, just like those in real life who look at an impossible challenge and get all giddy and happy because they want to take it head on, there are others in life who just don't want that sort of deal up front and center and it happens with games. You can still learn how a game works and still get put fof by it's brutal difficulty, I can figure out how a game works but that doesn't mean there isn't a fault with it's difficulty. 

I think those people just can't put into words what I just did. They don't like it because it's hard. They like it because it's nuanced. Nobody likes an "impossible" challenge, but none of the challenges in the types of games you're referring to, the Bloodborne's and Super Meat Boys, are "impossibly" challenging. They are 100% the opposite.

Learning how a game works is easy. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about becoming intimate with a game's mechanics. Becoming so in-sync with your toolset and having a complete understanding of the rules of the word and the limitations between you and your opponents, and then performing extremely intricate feats based on that intimacy.

That's why so many people who actually like Souls games say Souls games aren't hard. Most "hard" games aren't actually hard themselves. At least not unbearably hard. People just think it's hard because these games take longer and are more difficult to become completely intimate and in sync with the nuances of their mechanic and they aren't patient enough to put in the time. The better you are at video games, the less time this process takes.

I can definitely take stuff from what both of you said and make it apply to me. I love the nuances of difficult games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Ninja Gaiden, etc).  It's learning a new dance, so to speak.  But I also look at that super difficult boss as a challenge. There's a part of me that will go forever unsatisfied until I overcome it.  Same feeling I get with the Myst games.

Impossibly difficult games are really just broken games.  But games that are punishingly difficult yet still beatable?  That's the perfect balance.