So, why do YOU want hard games to completely disappear?

Let's face it: most of the gaming population either fears or hates challenge. Most "big" franchises are getting increasingly easier, and nobody is doing anything about it. Hell, a lot of people are BEGGING for easier gaming. See for example threads like "Most Annoying Popular Video Game Trends?", where some people are crying about freaking checkpoints, and then try to name a game that features quicksave and that is challenging at all. (There was a much bigger thread about it a few days ago, but I'm way too lazy to dig it up.) And I don't even want to imagine what those people think of games with limited amounts of lives (as in, you die too much: game over, try again from the beginning).

I didn't die in my first, and only, playthrough of Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and 2. I died once in 40 hours of Zelda: TP. Sure, I'm a better gamer than I used to be, I'm better than the average gamer, yaddi yaddi yadda. Fact is, though, that this kind of uber-easy gaming is accepted, and even welcomed, in today's gaming world. Really, which mainstream games are hard at all these days? Right now, you're mashing the "reply" button ready to write "lol, Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, fool". If anything, it is rather sad that this is all that pops to your mind when you think "hard games", because it is further proof that there's pretty much nothing else on the mainstream gaming scene. Oh, and Ikaruga got some praise from the mainstream crowd. How many of those that praised it have logged more than 2h with it, though?

When a game is hard, "professional reviewers" either give it a very negative score/review (based solely on its difficulty), or remind you every other second that its difficulty might turn you off. When's the last time that you read "Bottom line, the extreme decrease in difficulty will surely bore some people to death before they've seen all that this game has to offer" in a gaming review (see: Gamespot's F-Zero GX review)?

The whole mainstream gaming scene avoids/fears/hates hard games in general. Think about it for a second. Do YOU play hard games regularily, or at all (hint: no.)? Why not? (And there ARE plenty of hard games out there, you just have to look for them.)

i love hard, challenging games! I hate games which are pointlessly hard- like, every enemy has a super cheap move whch drains all your life in nearly one hit. Or even an easy game which has a really cheap boss battle that kills you for no reason. THAT is annoying.

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

Killburglar

The idea behind checkpoints is to make sure that the gamer goes through specific strings of enemies/challenges without being able to save his progress after every move. Endurance and consistency are some of the very main skills that a hard game should put to the test. A game can't really be hard at all if it lets me save after every bullet/hit I dodge. Try naming hard games that feature quicksaves (hint: there's none).

On a side note, Ninja Gaiden is harder than DMC3. In DMC3, you can retry individual levels as often as you want (and build up your orbs count to buy items).

Ps. You hate challenging games.

[QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

ReddestSkies

The idea behind checkpoints is to make sure that the gamer goes through specific strings of enemies/challenges without being able to save his progress after every move. Endurance and consistency are some of the very main skills that a hard game should put to the test. A game can't really be hard at all if it lets me save after every bullet/hit I dodge. Try naming hard games that feature quicksaves (hint: there's none).

Ps. You hate challenging games.

First off, there's no reason to be a dick.

Second, I fail to see how making me go through the entire level again when I was killed by the boos adds to the challenge of a game. It's annoying and just making me do the stuff that I can clearly already complete over again. It's like saying games with good controls are too easy because they make doing what you need to do easier.

[QUOTE="ReddestSkies"][QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

Killburglar

The idea behind checkpoints is to make sure that the gamer goes through specific strings of enemies/challenges without being able to save his progress after every move. Endurance and consistency are some of the very main skills that a hard game should put to the test. A game can't really be hard at all if it lets me save after every bullet/hit I dodge. Try naming hard games that feature quicksaves (hint: there's none).

Ps. You hate challenging games.

First off, there's no reason to be a dick.

Second, I fail to see how making me go through the entire level again when I was killed by the boos adds to the challenge of a game. It's annoying and just making me do the stuff that I can clearly already complete over again. It's like saying games with good controls are too easy because they make doing what you need to do easier.

The idea is to be able to kill whatever comes before the boss AND the boss (with whatever remaining life/inventory you have after the whatever comes before the boss). Now, I agree with you if the game's normal enemies are ridiculously easy and the boss is uber hard, but that is rarely ever the case (it wasn't the case in DMC3).

[QUOTE="Killburglar"][QUOTE="ReddestSkies"][QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

ReddestSkies

The idea behind checkpoints is to make sure that the gamer goes through specific strings of enemies/challenges without being able to save his progress after every move. Endurance and consistency are some of the very main skills that a hard game should put to the test. A game can't really be hard at all if it lets me save after every bullet/hit I dodge. Try naming hard games that feature quicksaves (hint: there's none).

Ps. You hate challenging games.

First off, there's no reason to be a dick.

Second, I fail to see how making me go through the entire level again when I was killed by the boos adds to the challenge of a game. It's annoying and just making me do the stuff that I can clearly already complete over again. It's like saying games with good controls are too easy because they make doing what you need to do easier.

The idea is to be able to kill whatever comes before the boss AND the boss (with whatever remaining life/inventory you have after the whatever comes before the boss). Now, I agree with you if the game's normal enemies are ridiculously easy and the boss is uber hard, but that is rarely ever the case (it wasn't the case in DMC3).

Wouldn't putting checkpoints before the boss make the game more challenging? I mean then I am forced to beat the boss with whatever health I have reamaining. I just don't like replaying parts of a game that I have already completed.

Very few games are both hard and fair. Even fewer are designed well enough that being hard isn't an issue due to a progressive learning curve.

Somewhere along the way hard become synonymous with badly defined learning curves and artificial challenge. I'd rather have a game that is laughably easy than one that is badly designed.

The last game I recall being a good challenge in the right sort of way was Viewtiful Joe.

[QUOTE="ReddestSkies"][QUOTE="Killburglar"][QUOTE="ReddestSkies"][QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Well frankly, if a game is too hard than it's not going to be fun. Making me run through a whole portion of a level simply because there are no checkpoints doesn't make a game more challenging; it simply makes it more frustrating, Devil May Cry 3 was harder than Ninja Gaiden because of bad game play mechanics. If the yellow orb worked like the talismen of rebirth in NG2 the game would have been improved. Lack of checkpoints in games is an old outdated game play mechanic that needs to go away. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the difficulty of the game.

Ps. I like challenging games.

Killburglar

The idea behind checkpoints is to make sure that the gamer goes through specific strings of enemies/challenges without being able to save his progress after every move. Endurance and consistency are some of the very main skills that a hard game should put to the test. A game can't really be hard at all if it lets me save after every bullet/hit I dodge. Try naming hard games that feature quicksaves (hint: there's none).

Ps. You hate challenging games.

First off, there's no reason to be a dick.

Second, I fail to see how making me go through the entire level again when I was killed by the boos adds to the challenge of a game. It's annoying and just making me do the stuff that I can clearly already complete over again. It's like saying games with good controls are too easy because they make doing what you need to do easier.

The idea is to be able to kill whatever comes before the boss AND the boss (with whatever remaining life/inventory you have after the whatever comes before the boss). Now, I agree with you if the game's normal enemies are ridiculously easy and the boss is uber hard, but that is rarely ever the case (it wasn't the case in DMC3).

Wouldn't putting checkpoints before the boss make the game more challenging? I mean then I am forced to beat the boss with whatever health I have reamaining. I just don't like replaying parts of a game that I have already completed.

TBH I think not checkpointing and allowing retries before a boss is somewhat cheap as the whole point of a boss is that it is a challenge in and of itself. If not then that boss should really be demoted to sub-boss material.

Wouldn't putting checkpoints before the boss make the game more challenging? I mean then I am forced to beat the boss with whatever health I have reamaining. I just don't like replaying parts of a game that I have already completed.

Killburglar

It all depends on what the designers have in mind. There's no saving at all in shoot 'em ups, and it works really really well for them. DMC3's difficulty wasn't cheap. It's not like the game made you go through hours without letting you save. Most levels were shorter than 20 minutes. The way that the levels are made, it makes sense for the boss fights to be part of the un-cut strings of challenges that are the game's levels.

Re-play the level where you fight Vergil (~7?) for the first time if you want a good example why there shouldn't be more checkpoints in the game. The level has something like 4 seperate battles, all of which against a lot of enemies, a mini-boss fight and then Vergil. Each battle is somewhat challenging on it's own, but it's the way that they are stringed together that really makes the level hard. Now, put checkpoints between every battle, and it's a walk in the park, because you don't need endurance anymore. Just retry every battle until you have enough health for the next one, and move on. All you need is to be able to decently survive each battle once. I retried that level ~3 times on my first playthrough, and I wasn't frustrated, I just found it fun.

I don't see it as people wanting easier games, but more balanced gameplay.

Kinda like the checkpoint arguement. Some games just have poorly executed checkpoints. You shouldn't have to play for 1 1/2 hours to hit a checkpoint. Personally, I like the checkpoints in general or a save before a boss. Not because I don't like the challenge, but I'm limited in my gaming time. Sometimes I only have 20-45 min to spare. If people think thats too easy, make the boss battle 10 X harder. You'll get a good use out of the saves that way. And then you still get your feeling of accomplishment for beating some hard battle.

Or you could have future games that play on your gaming strengths/weaknesses. Like the new Madden coming out. You run drills and it points out the strengths and weaknesses in your gameplay, Then gives you a balanced experience.

I can an enjoy a difficult game if it's difficult within reason. Shinobi for the PS2 comes to mind. The game starts off easy and it gradually gets more difficult. Skills that you once thought were useless are now being learned and mastered. The final boss fight is one of the most difficult boss fights in gaming, but it doesn't feel unfair because the game has been pushing you to learn the skills throughout the game and you have everything you need to get the job done.

Difficult without reason includes: Horrible game controls or camera or anything else that should be standard. (See Classic Resident Evil games, Marc Ecko's Getting Up)

Checkpoints being few and far between: A level that takes 90 minutes to get from one end to the other should have more than 3 checkpoints! A checkpoint right before a boss and one right after, okay? That proves to be too hard for some game developers to grasp. Checkpoints done right = God of War, Mega Man, Metroid, Halo... Checkpoints done wrong = Resident Evil Zero, Classic Tomb Raider...

A boss fight with no room for error: Making a mistake should be punished, but it shouldn't be instantly fatal.

Impossible situations: There should always be a way. Megaman X6 ignores rule blatantly. If the only way to win is to die or reset, the game developers failed. For example: If the only way to beat Level 7 is with an item that is only available in 4, the game should not let you leave Level 4 without it!

I don't want hard games to disappear. I want games that are so difficult that they take away from the game to disappear. Video games are supposed to be fun. Spending 4 hours on what should be 10 minutes of gameplay is not. Please take note, makers. Please take note.

you will regularly see me complaining about games being too easy. there are tons of examples of games i would have enjoyed much much more if idiot developers didn't think it was cool to lock the harder difficulties (i hate you every dev that does this, die, in a fire, locked in a room where you have to beat life on easy mode before you can get out...).

the bottom line is difficulty should always be adjustable to preference. imagine if they locked easy mode until you beat hard? that is how it feels for those of us who enjoy a challenge. i have to beat games on boring mode before i can play the real mode. but by then i have played the game, not enjoyed it as much, and never go back to play on hard. it makes me appreciate every game that does lock hard mode quite a bit less than i would have.

[QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Wouldn't putting checkpoints before the boss make the game more challenging? I mean then I am forced to beat the boss with whatever health I have reamaining. I just don't like replaying parts of a game that I have already completed.

ReddestSkies

It all depends on what the designers have in mind. There's no saving at all in shoot 'em ups, and it works really really well for them. DMC3's difficulty wasn't cheap. It's not like the game made you go through hours without letting you save. Most levels were shorter than 20 minutes. The way that the levels are made, it makes sense for the boss fights to be part of the un-cut strings of challenges that are the game's levels.

Re-play the level where you fight Vergil (~7?) for the first time if you want a good example why there shouldn't be more checkpoints in the game. The level has something like 4 seperate battles, all of which against a lot of enemies, a mini-boss fight and then Vergil. Each battle is somewhat challenging on it's own, but it's the way that they are stringed together that really makes the level hard. Now, put checkpoints between every battle, and it's a walk in the park, because you don't need endurance anymore. Just retry every battle until you have enough health for the next one, and move on. All you need is to be able to decently survive each battle once. I retried that level ~3 times on my first playthrough, and I wasn't frustrated, I just found it fun.

It's not really increasing the challenge making you have to fight the whole thing with out dying. It's an artifical increase in difficulty because it is simply making you play parts you have already beat again. Would making a game that every time you die you have to start at the begining og the game everytime make the actual game play of the game more challenging? I'd rather them just throw more enemies at me than making me replay entire parts of a level again. I understand that it would make it easier but DMC3 was just too frustrating at times because of the lack of checkpoints. NG was much more balanced in terms of difficulty.

I don't want them to disappear. If there are people who enjoy them, then there should be developers that cater to that segment. However, it's not my cup of tea and let's face it, the majority of supposed "challenging" games offer cheap, artifically implemented challenges that don't require any sort of "skill", just perseverance. So challenge turns to frustration all too often. I don't know about you, but I don't play games to get pissed off. The type of challenge you talk about should've been left in the 80's.

If developers would invest in AI that provides an actual challenge which requires real skill, then more power to them. But using checkpoints, enemies that keep coming out of the woodwork for a set time or bosses with cheap shots...no. I can enjoy tough games, but they really have to be something else such as Ninja Gaiden, Homeworld 2 and Crysis. I suppose Crysis would be an ideal example of a true challenging game because the challenge comes from fantastically programmed AI which uses actual tactics and adapts to your playstyIe to take you down. The great thing is, AI programming is only at a starting point, there's so much that can be done. The bad thing is, most developers don't commit any real resources to AI programming or simply don't have skilled-enough programmers.

You remember the Nintendo 64, how it had all those games named things like Bomberman 64, Mario 64, Duke Nukam 64. Well they should do something like that for those people who can't handle games with any form of difficulty to them. Call it special edition.

So you walk into your local game store and you see Mercenaries II for sale, your like. 'Damn, I couldn't play the fist one cause I died and had to start the boss mission again' so you look lower down the shelf and you see ''Mercenaries II Special!''. The box is twice the size as the normal version, they also increased the font size to make it easier for you to read. On the back it says ''MERCENARIES II INFINITE AMMO, CAN SAVE ANYWHERE. HUGE WAYPOINTS POINTING TO WHERE YOU NEED TO GO!''. You also get 2 manuals. One written in braille.

I don't want them to disappear, I just want them to decrease. I like easy games, but not too easy.

I play games to relax and and have fun, not to have a hard time and be frustrated.

I always choose the normal difficulty if given the chance to choose what difficulty to play.

I almost wanted to break my God of War disk because of the "rotating spikes climbing part". I hate it when I'm having a hard time on a game because IMO games should make us happy. Hehehe!

[QUOTE="ReddestSkies"]

[QUOTE="Killburglar"]

Wouldn't putting checkpoints before the boss make the game more challenging? I mean then I am forced to beat the boss with whatever health I have reamaining. I just don't like replaying parts of a game that I have already completed.

Killburglar

It all depends on what the designers have in mind. There's no saving at all in shoot 'em ups, and it works really really well for them. DMC3's difficulty wasn't cheap. It's not like the game made you go through hours without letting you save. Most levels were shorter than 20 minutes. The way that the levels are made, it makes sense for the boss fights to be part of the un-cut strings of challenges that are the game's levels.

Re-play the level where you fight Vergil (~7?) for the first time if you want a good example why there shouldn't be more checkpoints in the game. The level has something like 4 seperate battles, all of which against a lot of enemies, a mini-boss fight and then Vergil. Each battle is somewhat challenging on it's own, but it's the way that they are stringed together that really makes the level hard. Now, put checkpoints between every battle, and it's a walk in the park, because you don't need endurance anymore. Just retry every battle until you have enough health for the next one, and move on. All you need is to be able to decently survive each battle once. I retried that level ~3 times on my first playthrough, and I wasn't frustrated, I just found it fun.

It's not really increasing the challenge making you have to fight the whole thing with out dying. It's an artifical increase in difficulty because it is simply making you play parts you have already beat again. Would making a game that every time you die you have to start at the begining og the game everytime make the actual game play of the game more challenging? I'd rather them just throw more enemies at me than making me replay entire parts of a level again. I understand that it would make it easier but DMC3 was just too frustrating at times because of the lack of checkpoints. NG was much more balanced in terms of difficulty.

Know of Ikaruga? Radiant Silvergun, Gradius, whatever shoot 'em up you might have been exposed to. Credit-feed one of them (as in, "continue" every time that you lose all your lives). Then, play it the way it's meant to be played (i.e. without continuing and having to start over every time you lose all your lives). Try actually beating the game in both manners, and tell me which play-through was the most challenging.

I play games for various reasons, not merely insane challenge. I've got nothing against difficult games (Ninja Gaiden Black is one of my favorite games) but I really don't see a correlation between difficulty and quality. You seem to think your viewpoint and lust for challenge makes you "hardcore", but it's really just an affinity for a particular type of game.

You're no better or worse for seeking out difficult games. Not everybody wants to learn the nuances of Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Ikaruga.

I play games for various reasons, not merely insane challenge. I've got nothing against difficult games (Ninja Gaiden Black is one of my favorite games) but I really don't see a correlation between difficulty and quality. You seem to think your viewpoint and lust for challenge makes you "hardcore", but it's really just an affinity for a particular type of game.

You're no better or worse for seeking out difficult games. Not everybody wants to learn the nuances of Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Ikaruga.

Grammaton-Cleric

What I'm saying is not "I play hard games, so I'm better than you"; I'm simply asking why nobody seems to want "to learn the nuances" of challenging games, to the point where gamers in general see "hard" as "bad" and the mainstream world pretty much stops producing games where you can actually die (or even worse: lose and have to start over!).

After playing hard games for a few years, you start to see recurring patterns on how game designers choose to make games harder. Nowadays if I'm not in the mood to get killed or lose a level all night long, I don't want to have a new game force that on me.

I know that means I'm getting older and I have less patience for this type of thing. I should probably go play Wii sports and stop buying new games. But if the game is challenging without being a l33tfest full of pattern memorization and one-hit deaths, I'll keep forking over my money.

I disagree. Ninja Gaiden is really hard and none of the reviews I saw took off points for it. And what's wrong with letting people know a game is hard? Not everyone likes games that are punishingly hard.

I think you're blowing things out of proportion. There will always be a market for really hard games.

Games are, for many people, a way to unwind and relax after a long day of work. We are aging, us gamers, afterall. When you have a long difficult day at work, rife with stress, and then come home and your game kicks you in the teeth, it doesn't equate to fun. Now I like a challenge myself, but the line between challenge and cheap is a thin one, and it gets blurred far too often these days, or in the case of Ninja Gaiden 2, it leaps right over that line a dozen times per stage. Truly punishing start the whole game over difficulty is a relic of the past, used to extend the life of short old 8 and 16 bit games. It's only relevant and justified now within shmups that are also very short, and need that mechanic to make them a decent value. The problem isn't the gamers, so much as the lazy and or arrogant and incompetent developers who can't take the time to create a suitable challenge, and just use old cheap tactics that should have died a decade ago.

Gamers are sick of rubber band AI, AI racers that have infinite nitrous on final laps and always race perfect lines, enemies who have pinpoint precision with projectiles from obscene distances, enemies who can enter an area when you have already hidden and know exactly where you are without looking for you, over powered enemies who spam unblockable grab moves that do excessive damage, and finally getting through an insanely difficult section of a game only to die and realize you have to do it all over again can many times reult in the system being shut off, and the game traded in. Or alternately, if the gamers makes it all the way through, is left with a feeling of "I never want to do that again", rather than "That was freaking sweet, can't wait to try that again when I replay it!" and also end up trading it in.

The underlying point to playing games is having fun, and their are certain "challenging" design choices that simply are not conductive to that. It's up to the developers to strike a middle ground, and make a game a juicy challenge, while also keeping the game flowing forward, and never outright frustrating. Oddly enough, the previously mentioned NG2 made a lot of concessions and changes that were rather progressive, and should be seen in more games moving forward, but it's almost as if Itagaki had been forced into making these changes, and jacked up the difficulty of the various encounters and bosses just to spite the people who would dare try to impose on his baby.

[QUOTE="Grammaton-Cleric"]

I play games for various reasons, not merely insane challenge. I've got nothing against difficult games (Ninja Gaiden Black is one of my favorite games) but I really don't see a correlation between difficulty and quality. You seem to think your viewpoint and lust for challenge makes you "hardcore", but it's really just an affinity for a particular type of game.

You're no better or worse for seeking out difficult games. Not everybody wants to learn the nuances of Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Ikaruga.

ReddestSkies

What I'm saying is not "I play hard games, so I'm better than you"; I'm simply asking why nobody seems to want "to learn the nuances" of challenging games, to the point where gamers in general see "hard" as "bad" and the mainstream world pretty much stops producing games where you can actually die (or even worse: lose and have to start over!).

That's a valid question and I think the answer lies in the dichotomy between casual and hardcore gamers. Truth be told, many of the games we consider "easy" would actually be pretty challenging for the more casual set but because our respective skills are so high, we blow through these games with relative ease.

Then you have those games that are challenging even to the hardcore crowd and I think the reason so few gamers delve into these titles is because the shift in paradigm from single player to multiplayer gaming, which offers its own unique challenges. Multiplayer seems to be where many gamers place their efforts and while I personally prefer the one-player experience, playing a match of Call of Duty 4 with veteran players is as challenging as anything out there.

I also think that as games become more focused on narrative and presentation, developers are less inclined to punish players with unrelenting difficulty. Think about it: a director wants you to watch his entire film, an author wants you to finish his book, and a game designer wants you to enjoy the full scope of his efforts.

name a game that features quicksave and that is challenging at all.ReddestSkies

Ramp up the difficulty on Civilization or Galactic Civilization and quick saves might allow you to take advantage of some of the random factors, but they do very little to scale the difficulty back in your favor. You could probably throw most turn-based strategy games into this category.

Silent Storm (and Silent Storm Setinels) also had quick saves. But, if you ramped the difficulty up (and major kudos to the developers for giving the gamer difficulty sliders and options), you had to adjust your gameplay to survive. Again, the quick saves could swing the random factors back into your favor, but (non-)strategies that work at lower difficults were suicide.

The best thing developers could do for gamers (to please everyone) would be to provide at least three levels of difficultly that can be fine tuned using sliders. Because, there really is nothing better than being able to adjust a dial for anything that can adjust difficulty. And, add options to disable quick saves and disable check-point saves. All slider's have to do is adjust numbers that are already in the system. Do you want the game really hard? Then adjust the sliders to increase the number of enemies, make the enemies move faster, make the enemies have more hit points, make the enemies do more damage, make yourself have less hit points, make yourself do less damage, etc. The nice thing about this sort of system is that you can quickly adjust to a difficulty level, but you can also dial-down to what challenges you want or don't want.

I guess I'm not in touch with what you describe as the mainstream gaming scene because I always hear people complaining that stuff's not hard enough. I don't want hard games to disappear, I enjoy playing them... for the most part... and play them quite often.

I actually think things are good the way they are now. Many games have three or more difficulty settings, which is a perfect model and should satisfy everyone if done correctly. Or what Nintendo did with Super Mario Galaxy -- made it very easy to get 60 stars and view the ending, but a lot harder to get all the stars. You also have achievements and now trophies; some of the achievements for 360 games are very easily some of the most difficult gaming requirements ever conceived, and I imagine trophies will have some of that too. There also are still a few games to be found with advanced or even extreme difficulty across the board.

I feel there's something for everyone out there right now. Want to just relax and do some carefree easy gaming? There's plenty of stuff for that. Want a hardcore challenge? I feel there's plenty of stuff for that too. And naturally there's plenty in-between. I think things like XBox Live Arcade have opened even more doors for extreme challenge too, both in reviving old school quarter munchers and putting new stuff out too that can be made really hard without the risk of a big budget. I don't know, maybe I'm out of touch but I don't see much of an issue with this because I think there's enough out there to please everybody and I think it will stay that way.

It beats me as to why more games don't at least include a higher difficulty out of the box. It makes no sense really. If someone wants to start on normal then fine but the options for an easy game should include a hard mode as well, it's not like it is that hard to implement in many games either.

I think part of it is also the shift to a cinematic perspective in games. Nothing quite deflates the epicness of a situation like being killed mid-flow several times. The other extreme is a game's tension is only paper thin once you see the reality that you can get through the game easily.