Poll of the Day > Games that struggle with difficulty

(+) Yeah! (+)

What are some games where the difficulty levels are just wrong?
Like, easy makes the game a movie or easy is a challenge. Or, vice versa where an extreme mode is just brutal or hard is still a walk in the park.

Fighting games come to mind where even easy settings have me getting stomped by the 3rd fighter. Virtual On is one of them.

All new Nintendo games are too easy and refuse to add a harder mode

One day Miyamoto said "most people haven't beaten the original Mario game, so we now have to make our games for kindergarteners"

Critical is the supposed highest difficulty in Kingdom Hearts II but with some of the perks that come with it id argue its easier than Proud which is the intended second highest difficulty.

Never played a game where easy was hard or hard was simpler than easy though.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn shuffled the difficulty names around when it got localized (Normal/Hard/Maniac -> Easy/Normal/Hard). I feel like Path of Radiance in NA was harder but I can't remember why

Postal 2 had some strange difficulty levels.

Liebermode (named for anti-video game violence proponent Joe Lieberman) is supposed to be the easiest level, since nobody has any guns (they still have melee weapons). But this also means there's no ammo drops, so it's actually pretty hard.

Hestonworld, on the other hand, equips everybody with guns, which is supposed to be the hardest of the normal difficulty levels, but it also means there's ammo literally everywhere.

Insane-o replaces the NPC's guns with super weapons like rocket launchers, napalm, mini-nukes, and WMDs. But the NPC's don't have the AI for using these weapons, so they're as much a danger to themselves as they are to you. Plus you get tons of ammo for the super weapons.

They Hate Me used to be the highest difficulty level. It was basically just Average difficulty, except everyone who is armed will attack you on sight, including the RWS employees who are normally allies. With the A Week In Paradise DLC, they added Nightmare Mode and Really Fucking Hard, which are basically They Hate Me combined with Hestonworld and Insane-o

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/9/1/AAQwHjAAEzlz.jpg

Oblivion

Even Skyrim in a sense. You can feel overpowered against most enemies, but then get destroyed by mages if you don't have enough magic resistance.

Bayonetta feels that way for me. The easy mode is too easy, and the next level up, normal or whatever, is really tough . I get destroyed in that game

Bionic Commando Rearmed comes to mind, the hard difficulty is a breeze but go one step higher to the top and suddenly bosses have quadruple the HP in addition to nearly everything taking two hits to kill you and it becomes torture.

agesboy posted...

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn shuffled the difficulty names around when it got localized (Normal/Hard/Maniac -> Easy/Normal/Hard). I feel like Path of Radiance in NA was harder but I can't remember why

PoR's NA release just left out Lunatic mode altogether, having only Normal and Hard. I don't remember off-hand if there were any differences in names between the versions, but I do know that a lot of people found normal pretty easy.

FrozenBananas posted...

Bayonetta feels that way for me. The easy mode is too easy, and the next level up, normal or whatever, is really tough . I get destroyed in that game

I remember in that game, some of the challenges could only be completed on certain difficulty levels. Like one was you can only attack like 10 times, which makes it impossible to win. But on. Higher difficulty, there are 2 enemies, and you can make them stack each other. And after one dies, the other should be weak enough to kill with a simple combo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNhF3gblgII