“How Difficult Should Video Games Be?” is an interesting question. Search anywhere on the internet and you will find people impassionately arguing for one side or another. It’s an interesting debate that begets many points of discussion and viewpoints.
When discussing video game difficulty, it is always worth bringing up the concept of “Nintendo Hard” which refers to the brutal difficulty that many games of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) era (which would include games on the competing Master System) possessed. This is due to the short lengths of the games (which would often be completed too quickly if they weren’t hard) as well as being inspired by arcade games where the goal is to make players spend money when they die.
As time progressed, in the hopes of garnering a larger audience, video games began to become easier. That’s not to say that hard games weren’t still made but they became relatively rarer. Instead, difficulty levels were introduced so that players could choose how hard they wanted their games to be.
However, around the seventh generation of consoles and continuing to the present, we saw a rise in games that rejected difficulty levels and, instead, created challenging gameplay that tested players. Examples of this new tide of difficult games include the Souls series (including Demon Souls and Bloodborne), Super Meat Boy, Cuphead, Megaman 9 to 11 and more.
These games have faced controversy for their difficulty with a notable example being Cuphead. While technically offering 2 difficulty levels (simple and regular), the final world of the game is unavailable unless you defeat every boss on regular difficulty. There were calls for the developer to allow players who had defeated the bosses on simple difficulty to be able to access the last world.
This brings up the question of whether difficulty can be considered part of the artistic value of a game. Some people have argued that including an easy mode in games such as the Dark Souls series would degrade the vision and ideals of the game. I do believe that if the difficulty of the game is a central part of its artistic vision, the creator should be entitled to offer only one difficulty mode (or a restricted easy mode).
I will confess that when I was younger, I would often play a game on the easiest available difficulty. It was simply a case of picking the path of least resistance. As I have grown, however, I have come to respect the difficulty that games can offer and the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. Let me know what your thoughts are on video game difficulty and whether more games should offer only one level of difficulty.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.