yh TP was easy but had hard partssss...that damn puzzle 2 get the master sword, grrrrr. but it was much easier den ocarina

Nintendo (in general) has been pretty good at producing well balanced games where the game can be easily completed by a child that is over 8, and yet has segments which are hard enough for even the most "hard-core" gamer; the Mario games (for example) have always had several fairly easy stars/shines to get in a particular level, a few moderate, a couple hard, and (typically) at least one really challenging start to retrieve.

Video games today are all easy in comparison with all the platformers of the past. Anyone remember Batman on the NES by Sunsoft? Talk about hard! Contra? Lifeforce? Vanguard on the Atari? All very difficult. But I have played the emulated versions of these games and beat them in less than an hour. That's why there were so hard. There wasn't anything to them. Todays games put obsticals in your way but not anything realy that difficult to overcome. Halflife 2 was very easy but pretty long. You just keep progressing the game, and it tells you a story. It's still alot of fun, and I actually prefer it this way. No use beating your head into a wall for 50 hours if the story, and gameplay suck.

wow, seems like somebody has started a completely new topic...

Honestly, this is the same "Nintendo is dropping the hardcore" matter we have discussed over and over. Besides, as many have stated, games have become easier since the early days anyways.

However, the quote Bod added illustrates very well how I feel about it: "What I mean is that there is no point in making a difficulty level the fun factor of a game.(...)" This is important.

For example, I'll show you my experiences with the Zelda franchise. My first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time. At that time, I was ten years old and had almost no experience with games from that genre, I played mostly platformers. Therefore, I had a lot of difficulty to play that game and was quite frustrated because I couldn't finish it (I think I stuck after the fire temple).

MM was more or less the same, while Wind Waker was the first Zelda game that I could finish. Altough I felt that it was easier, it was a lot more fun to me than OoT because I could enjoy it and I did not have to think about how to get past that boss and such things.

Shortly afterwards, I bought ALttP. At that time, this game was perfect for me in its difficulty, I had to try bosses several times before I could finish them, but I managed to beat the game and it felt great.


What I'm trying to say is that I know that it feels better to finish a game like ALttP than one like TP or WW, but that it still feels great to play a great, but easy game, while it can be absolutely frustrating to play a great, but hard game.

Therefore, my conclusion is that hardcore gamers should be a little less selfish and think about the people that are new to the industry or just not so extensive players.

I call bullshit. Mario Strikers is not easy. Zelda I haven't played through yet, and Paper Mario isn't even out here yet. But Strikers, the core game I've been playing as of late, as proved to be quite a challenge. Put simply, I suck at it.

Yeah I agree here.  The old hard games have been gone for a long time now.  The challenge level in games now a days is laughable in comparison to how it used to be.

Well, we were younger then. It took me almost two months to finish Ocarina of Time then, but I was 11. 

Twilight Princess... I finished it in less than a month. Its not only of how the games are made. 

For an extreme example... I didn't finish Super Mario World until around 1994 because I couldn't handle Bowser... and I got it at launch.

QFT. That game is hardcore to the nth. Seriously.

Mario Strikers is hardly a casual game hehe. Those that don't play many videogames tried playing a 4 player game with us...they liked it, but it was way too hard for them.

So basically we should all just give up on wanting a challenge from single plaeyer games because Mr. Miyamoto and you said so?

The truth is single player games can be extemely challenging, just go back to older games, most of them were single player and really made you want to throw your controller in frustration at times. But game makers have been making games easier and easier lately and it's a shame. We need more difficult games, not less.

This is a main reason why I love Ninja Gaiden, cause it's one of the few newer games that can make you want to kill somebody :)

The idea that we should stop trying to make challenging single player games because you can play multiplayer online is very extreme. Why not have both? I know that a lot of times I want to play a single player game, I don't want to go online and play with some people who are yelling at me cause I didn't capture some flag or something... why? Cause they spend every day for the last 2 years playing the same game, while I move from game to game.

If you want to get good at a certain multiplayer game, it takes time and practice and devoting yourself to playing that game more than other games to keep up with the other players who only play that game or that type of game and keep improving at it. Frankly, usually I don't find this worth it. Which is why I play very few select online shooters for a period of time and then eventually move on from them to cause I want to play something else.

This is great, if you are someone who wants to focus on a single or a handful of games and play mainly them for most of the year, but for someone looking to play dozens of games, this doesn't work. This is the reason why I didn't get into Gears multiplayer too much or Resistance multiplayer. The last time I actually thought it was worth it playing hours of the same game a day online was Battlefield 2 and I moved on from that too eventually, needed something new.

I expect I'll play Warhawk a good amount for a few months then mostly move on to play other stuff.