I'm starting to think I must drop the habit of playing games in their hardest difficulty.
Most of the enjoyment I get from games is overcoming hardships, finding the best strategy to go past an otherwise insurmountable obstacles, min-maxing in rpgs, etc... This is part of the reason I never used cheat codes, challenge is part of the fun and either I'm good enough to beat it legitimately or I'll never be "worthy" enough to see the rest of the game. I understand how idiotic it might seem but we all have our silly traits and this is one of mine and I've been like this ever since I was a kid.
But it seems more and more developers have no idea how to make their games harder or more challenging. This has been a problem since forever but maybe now it's getting worse or I've much less patience for it as I get older. "Harder" seems to always boil down to a combination of the 3:
- Enemies have increased HP / Armor / Regen (most of the times it's a ludicrous amount making them damage sponges);
- Enemies do increased damage (sometimes being able to one or two-shot you down from full hp);
- You do decreased damage or have a lower hp pool;
None of the possible combinations of these modifiers make the game harder per se, they just make it more frustrating and tedious which is insulting to the player.
The most recent example of this I've experienced was Shadow Warrior 2013 (spoiler: It's an extremely meh game). Played it on hard, as usual, and the enemies are just bullet sponges (3 headshots to kill a basic enemy...). They offer no additional challenge and every fight becomes a battle of attrition between your damage output, how much they mitigate and how much you can regen in the meantime. It's boring to a point I dreaded every single time I entered a battle arena but I mustered the "courage" and finished it. Out of curiosity I checked the steam reviews and to my amazement it has a 93% rating, so I was left wondering if I was to blame for not enjoying the game simply because of the way I decided to play it.
I did the same thought exercise to some of the other games I finished in the past 2 or 3 years on hard difficulty and that I didn't enjoy much but seemed to have positive or very positive reviews and it seems like Hard is a trap. It doesn't make the game any more fun or challenging. It's nothing but a time sink and it's actually killing the enjoyment I could have simply because it's not done right.
I guess I'll be a Normal guy from now on...