Sulphur on 19/1/2019 at 05:30
Masocore also includes Cuphead and Super Meat Boy, IWBTG just takes that to an extreme level that's meant to cause despair, angst, and hilarity at the sadism involved all at the same time. It's... not the norm, at least god I hope it isn't.
Starker on 19/1/2019 at 06:38
Sure and games like GOIWBF, but the point is that it's deliberate design. It's meant to frustrate the player. Giant Bomb writes a bit about it here: (
https://www.giantbomb.com/masocore/3015-1165/)
Sulphur on 19/1/2019 at 08:06
I wouldn't be too fussed over that difference if Super Meat Boy and Dustforce make it on their masocore list, because both of them are on different parts of the difficulty spectrum. SMeB doesn't actually frustrate you such that it kills you without you foreseeing it (IIRC), and Dustforce definitely doesn't either.
I'd rather class difficulty in terms of what the end result means to the player instead of background reasons for why a game's difficult - the knotty issue of do we actually know how what was going through the developers' heads for each game if you want to classify them as NH or otherwise aside, how do you separate out NES developers making games hard because they wanted to make them a prolonged experience from an indie developer making a game hard because they wanted NES-era difficulty?
As far as my experience of them goes, the early Mario games are only slightly less difficult than Super Meat Boy - actually, from a different perspective you could class them as more difficult, because lives and time are limited, and a game over screen is a very real possibility. They definitely fulfill the 'masochist' requirement in terms of being brutal and demanding, if not literally enabling masochism.
Starker on 19/1/2019 at 09:50
Well, that's the whole point of this exercise, isn't it -- to tease out the different kinds of hard, not to classify games or rank them based on difficulty. And I think that one way is to look at whether a game wastes the player's time and how self-aware it is in doing that and how much of the difficulty is part of the game design. And of course there's going to be some overlap and a large degree of subjectivity in that. Yes, a lot of masocore is emulating Nintendo Hard and taking cues from that, but what separates them is the awareness of doing so and modern design principles. It's the way Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami let you get right back in action without any significant loss of progress or how GOIWBF is hyper-aware of what it is doing.
Sulphur on 19/1/2019 at 10:13
Fair enough, I still wouldn't do that for the reasons above (classifying - yes; ranking - no, that would be a fool's errand), and the level of subjectivity involved in determining if a game's difficult on purpose* /because it's self-aware** is fairly brow-furrowing to the part of me that figures these things out based on observable data, but have at it and see what sticks.
*if a game shipped with a gimped mechanic that was never fixed, but was still completeable, does that rank as 'on purpose'?
**many games are, there's a reason why Mario goes down pipes; being meta about established design templates is a different thing
Starker on 19/1/2019 at 10:25
Well, maybe it's just me, but Battletoads and Super Meat Boy feel very different to me on a fundamental level, as far as their difficulty is concerned. In the end, it comes down to whether a game's difficulty adds to the experience of detracts from it, and that's necessarily a judgement call. For example, I know a couple of people who absolutely hate Dark Souls, because it forces you to start over from a checkpoint when you die. The mere idea of losing progress is enough to make them shudder.
Mr.Duck on 19/1/2019 at 15:21
Original NES Ninja Gaiden.
Fuck level 6 and everything it holds dear.
Other classic bullshit hard (i.e. NES DIFFICULT) games that I´ve played have been mentioned here.
Malleus on 19/1/2019 at 22:25
Haven't seen Rainbow Six, or classic tactical shooters mentioned here. I don't even know what kind of difficulty they were, they required both good reflexes and mastery of game mechanics. I never gave up games because of the difficulty, but both R6 and Rouge Spear had missions (in their expansion packs) that I just could not beat.
icemann on 20/1/2019 at 03:37
Oh that reminds me. Rainbow Six - Ravenshield, was one of the hardest games I've ever played (in a good way). The multiplayer AI for the computer in particular was just insane. I'm sure I've already told the story, but it took me and a mate 6 months of attempts before we were able to beat the computer even once. Oh boy did we party when we pulled that one off.
N'Al on 20/1/2019 at 08:06
Syndicate American Revolt.
