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Hardcore Vs. Casual Gaming

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ScrambledGregs:
(This post originally started out in the Odin Sphere thread but it got too big and I wanted to get the perspectives of other people who haven't played that game, too).

Allow me to rant.

GOD DAMN. Whoever designed Titania in Cornelius's epilogue in Odin Sphere needs to get cancer and die. I literally cannot beat this boss, and it took me an entire day of trying just to get to it because of the fucking ridiculous ("sup, I'm a green slime who you can only do 1 damage to unless you happen to have Napalm potions on hand"), fucking annoying ("hi, I'm a magician who will teleport each time you hit me, so it takes far too long to kill me"), and simply fucking cheap enemies ("hi, I'm a giant axe wielding guy who will almost instantly land on top of you and take a good half of your life each time I do this"). Then we have the boss, which is the same dragon you fight in Gwendolyn's first boss fight, only now he's got an army of all the annoying enemies you've been fighting all along to get to him, horrendous slowdown, and more powerful versions of the same cheap moves that pissed you off the first time.

Odin Sphere is a triumph of aesthetics over gameplay. Everything about it is amazing, but it's easy to forget you have to play the game. Despite the old school look and feel, it's got the same problem as all modern console Japanese RPGs where the difficulty of the game comes not from strategy or skill on your part but from hardcore grinding and preparation.

Do you remember in the old days when you'd play a game, and right away you'd have all the possible skills you needed?? Or at the very least, you got them as the game went along?? So if you ever got 'stuck' in the game, it was due to some defect in your skill or poor strategy?? Well, most modern RPGs are the antithesis of this. As long as you have the patience and free time, you can beat anything. The problem is that I simply do not have the time or patience anymore. I play games to relax and have fun, but I also don't want to be coddled. For example, I think that Paper Mario on Gamecube is childishly easy to the extent that I couldn't even finish it. All of my favorite games aren't hand holding fests; they work so well because the difficulty comes from trying to overcome the game's obstacles with what you're given/can acquire instead of having to waste time grinding levels or farming items.

The fact that Odin Sphere is an action RPG where reflexes and skills are worthless is most damning of all. A game like Secret of Mana or the recent 2D Castlevanias are possible to beat even if you are underleveled or don't have the right weapon/item. Remember Mega Man: sure, you were supposed to use specific weapons on each robot, but you could beat them using only the basic weapon if you were psychotic enough to try. Even something completely unique like Ico, which I recently played through, was difficult, but not unfair. You're given everything you need to overcome the game's obstacles, so if you can't figure out a puzzle or can't do a platform sequence, it's your fault and not the fact that your Grip skill isn't at a high enough level or you don't have a Potion of Crate Stacking. I often wanted to snap my controller over my knee while playing Ico, but when I finally completed certain tasks, I felt a sense of accomplishment because *I* was the one who did it, not the fact that I accumulated enough numbers or finally got the right item off an enemy I had to fight 20 times to get the right drop.

All of this ranting is my way of saying, maybe I'm just tired of hardcore games, RPGs in particular. I really, really want to love Odin Sphere, but it's so much wasted potential obscured by the problems that mar almost all modern Japanese RPGs: powerleveling overrides skill and strategy. Anymore, I feel like I'm becoming a casual gamer because I want something that's going to be fun and yet challenging for 10 to 20 hours (modern Castlevania's come to mind) or is just an open ended fun kind of game you can play over and over (stuff like Meteos or most Wii games).

Is this all just a side effect of getting older and not having the time/patience to spend on a 60 hour game, or are most modern games really just the frustrating, arbitrary time sinks that I think they are??

rasufelle:
This is one area where I think games like Morrowind excel.  You can technically beat the game at level 20, and you can get that just by completing the main quest easy.  OR, conversely, you can run around like an idiot for 100+ hours, be an ungodly level, and still have fun playing the game because of leveled monsters and an open, gamer-friendly play environment.  No grinding, no 'have to have this skill to do this', just having fun playing the character the way you want to play them.  Neverwinter Nights is the same way: no matter what class your character, no matter how you level their abilities, there is no wrong way to play, but there's enough difficulty to keep the game fun.

Storm Rider:
You could even argue that a game like Smash Brothers is a casual game, because it's a fighting game that doesn't require tons of combo memorization and introduces mechanics that aren't wholly based on skill, like the altering environments and random item appearances. People act like the rise of casual games is somehow something we should be upset about, but personally I don't mind playing a game that is fun to pick up and play with other people like Wii Sports or Mario Strikers Charged (which is coming out soon, and I'm pretty excited for) rather than yet another sci-fi/WW2 FPS that teenagers will spend all day online with and swear at each other with their prepubescent voices cracking. I guess this puts me in some sort of minority, or at least the minority of people who visit video game sites.

Narr:
www.playithardcore.com

That is all.

McTaggart:
If you don't play it fairly hardcore, it's not really worth your time (for me anyway). The things that piss me off though are those unwinnable situations. Like your level 43 hardcore paladin going down one level into the forgotten tower and getting instantly alpha striked by 7 champion dark rogue archers.

Incidently, smash bros is at the same time the greatest casual game I've ever played and one of the most fun hardcore games I've come across.

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