Here at GameSpy, we've all been chatting about what we did over the holiday break. Finally away from the crush of assignments and deadlines, most of us had a chance to play games on our own terms. Gerald went after World of Warcraft with a vengeance. As for me? I unplugged... mostly.
I spent a couple of weeks at the in-laws, away from my home gaming rig. It gave me a chance to explore the analog side of gaming. I love a good board game. I even painted some wargaming miniatures (!) and wrapped up my vacation with a marathon nine-hour D&D session -- now that's old-school, baby.
But it's funny how you get the gaming equivalent of the junkie itch, and like some sort of addict, you start scraping around for your next fix. That iPhone I carry around? Yeah, I started downloading games. So far most iPhone games seem to be quick distractions. Oh, and that pirate game on Facebook? Yeah, I was all over that. I'm level 14 now. It's almost sad.
I did allow myself one gaming luxury though: My Nintendo DS came along for the ride during the extended break. Snuggled into the cartridge slot was my copy of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, which I'd saved for just this occasion. I got the game in November and left it unopened until vacation. "THIS bad-boy is for the Holidays!" I told myself.
My plan was to play it during downtime throughout the break, as I'd done a couple years earlier with the fantastic Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. But instead of the enjoyable, leisurely beat-em-up-rpg hybrid I was expecting, Dracula's minions kicked me in the junk until I wept blood.
The Difficulty Dead-End
It's not that I couldn't clear through Ecclesia -- it's just the punishing boss fights felt more like work than play. I died usually a dozen times before finding the right combination of safe places to move and effective attacks to allow me to beat a baddie. And not just the later bosses: The early giant skeleton encounter really works you over.
A new movement gimmick allows you to latch on to parts of the map and "fling" yourself in a particular direction, but to do so requires that you first move in the opposite direction and let go. It's a nifty game element for maneuvering around the map, but in the context of a boss fight, it's remarkably counter-intuitive. Want to get away from a monster? You have to leap toward an attach point near the monster, immediately switch direction the moment you attach, then let go. Miss the point, move too soon, or let go at the wrong time, and you drop onto the monster and take colossal damage. With patience, you can master the moves. In the meantime, get ready for a lot of dying and reloading. Only really experienced gamers have the patience for this.
I'm certainly not the first to bring this up: Are we making games too difficult? (Peter Molyneux asked the very same question in a recent BBC interview).
The problem with increasing game difficulty is that it narrows the audience for subsequent games. There was a time where I would've gladly banged away at those boss encounters for hours on end, but those times have passed, at least for me. Only people who play tons of platformers or who have mastered all the previous Castlevania games hunger for that kind of difficulty. What if you were new to the genre? More importantly, what if you were new to gaming? Ecclesia's difficulty would be a punishment, as if the games industry were snarling at you: "You don't belong here."
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