Has the Difficulty of Gaming Gone Easier?

I recently downloaded two games from the PSOne classics range on the PSN. Those games were Toy Story 2 and the first Crash Bandicoot game. At the time of purchase my initial I thought was that these games would be easy and completed fully in just a few hours. My assumption that these games would be easy proved to be wrong. Although Toy Story 2 wasn’t too hard, it was a major step up from when I played Toy Story 3 on Xbox 360. Lots more jumping puzzles needed to be solved and the some of the tokens you had to collect were brutal as there was a very short time limit to do some objectives.

Crash Bandicoot was another story altogether. When I was younger my brother bought Crash Bandicoot 2 and 3 but we never purchased or played the first game in the series. This was maybe because we bought our PSOne in 1997 the year the sequel came out so we bypassed the first game. 13 years later I decided to have a go at the first Crash Bandicoot game – as I initially thought it would be give me a great (and manageable) gaming experience like its sequels. My thoughts were proved wrong yet again as Crash Bandicoot was one of the hardest and most frustrating games I have ever played recently. The many times I had to start over and repeat the same level was enough for me to tear ALL my hair out of my head!

Which brings to me one question: Has the Difficulty of Gaming Gone Easier? It may be a generalized and broad question to answer fully but a few more examples may just prove this theory of mine.

Street Fighter II vs. Street Fighter IV

In 2008, I bought the Capcom Classics Collection that was released on PS2 solely because I wanted to play Street Fighter II. I remember when I was four I used to play it but was never really good at it, so I wanted to see if I’d improved now that I was older and more mature. To my bewilderment the game was STILL hard. Even playing on the easiest difficulty level I barely managed to beat the A.I. 2 years prior to playing this game I bought Dead or Alive 4 and was able to beat the A.I. on the hardest difficulty. I was also able to beat the A.I. when I played Marvel vs Capcom 2 at the arcade. I initially thought that it was just that I sucked at Street Fighter II.

A year later Street Fighter IV came out. At the time of its release I shuddered to think how difficult the game would be. Thankfully, the game was a much easier game for me to play. The hardest difficulty may be still hard but I’m able to win a few rounds. Not only this, but I’m able to beat some people when I play online (that’s if I don’t suffer too much lag since I live in New Zealand). I came to the conclusion that maybe Street Fighter II was just a brutally hard game to play since it was made in the early 90s.

Final Fantasy X vs. Final Fantasy XIII

I bought Final Fantasy X a few years ago and needless to say it was difficult. It may not have been the most difficult game ever released but it did require a lot of patience and leveling up. There were also those dreaded “Cloister of Trails” puzzles you had to solve too. I remember by the time I faced up against the final boss my characters were too weak to best him at the time and my equipment was utterly useless too. I remember I had to spend an inordinate amount of time more to beat him. SEVERAL hours later of leveling up I was able to finally finish the game.

As for Final Fantasy XIII it was one of, if not the easiest RPG games I have ever played. Sure, I still took 49 hours or so to beat the main part of the game but I did not die as many times as in Final Fantasy X nor did I struggle too much on any boss. It was one of the most relaxing Final Fantasy games I ever played. People can argue that the game was very linear but I did not mind as it was easier for non RPG enthusiasts to get into.

This got me thinking again. RPG games have always been hard but have developers decided to make this genre easier too? I’ll leave that question for another time.

Doom II vs. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

I recently downloaded and played Doom II on the Xbox 360. I never played Doom before so I was interested to see what it had in-store for me. Let’s say lots of dying and dreaded puzzles were ahead of me. The enemies come out you in large numbers and sometimes ammo can be scarce so you’re there trying to survive every minute you play. It can be very exhilarating to play but it’s sure to be too difficult for some gamers. The puzzles were also difficult sometimes to solve as well.

The single-player campaign in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 seemed like a walk-in-the-park compared with Doom II. It’s also worth mentioning that in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, there’s a linear path for you to take so there are no puzzles to solve to open a door or hardly any chances of you getting lost.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica vs. Resident Evil 5

I was too young to play the older Resident Evil games on PSOne but I did play Resident Evil: Code Veronica on PS2 and Resident Evil 5 on PS3. Resident Evil 5 was a lot easier for me to play as it was more action-orientated and you could save as many times as you want. There was also lots of guns and ammo that you could find lying around too. You also had Sheva with you at all times to help you out of those very sticky situations.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica was a totally different experience for me. I hated the fact that you had to find ink before you could save using the typewriter. It made the game more difficult then it already was. Ammo was scarce and killing Zombies was harder in my opinion.

This example may not be too fair both games were pretty much different genres. Resident Evil 5 (and 4 for that matter) was more like a third-person shooter while Resident Evil: Code Veronica was a traditional survival horror game. Nevertheless, the game was harder to play than the more recent game of Resident Evil 5.

Conclusion:

You could say it’s a matter of a player’s personal skill and experience whether they find a particular game difficult or not. This is true as easy and hard games have come out both recently and in the past. But gaming has now become an entertainment medium to rival that of the music and movie industry now. It makes sense that developers nowadays make games easier so more people will be able to enjoy the benefits of playing a game. If games were still made the way they were earlier, I doubt that we would have seen the amount of popularity the gaming industry gets right now. Back then it was okay for games to be difficult as it was a niche market back then catering for the hardcore gamer. Now that gaming has become universal developers want to make sure to satisfy everyone’s taste.