Sometimes you come across that game that you just can't play. Some people are skilled at some games and not so at others. Perhaps these lead to genre preference. I'm sure this is the case for me on some aspects. My favorite genre of video game is the Japanese style Role-Playing Game, aka, jRPG. One characteristic that pleases me is that you usually do not have to jump. Yes. Jumping in video games is my downfall. I may enjoy the Mario games a lot, but you can pretty much guarantee that I will fall in just about every single hole there is. I'm sure there are a lot of people with weird quirks like that.

But what about those games that you try to play, and you can barely see how anyone can even play them. Take for the moment the Castlevania games. Now, I know the die hard Castlevania fans relish in the series' difficulty. But what about us who don't equate frustratingly hard with enjoying playing a video game? I love the Castlevania formula. The play style, the equipping of items, leveling, and so on. I think its great. The Castlevania games would probably be one of my favorite series... if I could play them. I mean, how long am I supposed to go without getting more health? I recently tried Circle of the Moon for the Gameboy Advance again, and after hours of playing, guess where I am? Guess? Yeah, the very beginning. I play, I die, I have to start all the way over from game start and enter your name. How do people do it? Seriously. I'm sure you probably have no trouble, or maybe you're like me. Or perhaps there is a different game that smacks you down time after time.

I understand some people enjoy this difficulty, but there is a fine line between pleasant challenge and practically complete inaccessibility. I know this is something game developers struggle with all the time. If they don't make a game hard enough, the die hard fans will scream murder. And if they make it too hard, for the rest of us, it is murder. It is hard for them to strike that perfect medium. So, that is why we usually see the easy, normal, hard difficulty settings. That is fine by me. I like to play on normal when I can. I'm not really the hard mode player. But I also don't want to have to step down to easy usually either. But then I've came across a game here and there that gimps aspects of the game for the easy players, and to me, that's just not right.

It is hard to know when to keep on trying, and when it call it quits. If I put a game down and don't come back to it for a long time, I usually have trouble getting back into it. But if I've reached a difficulty ceiling, I can only have so much patience before I have to give. With Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, I have to call it quits when the problems arise so early. Which is a great shame, since I would love to experience the game. Then other games don't reach that level towards the end and then you have invested a lot of time and its much harder to call it quits when you just need to go a little further to finish the game. But I know we have all gotten towards the end of a game or two and just never been able to quite finish it...