So I was watching a few youtubes and remembered how the vast majority (of like the ten) nes games me and my sister had were hard as all hell. I loved to play Little Nemo and Street Fighter 2010 but I am pretty sure I never made it past the third level of either. Let alone infamously hard games like The Lion King.
Which got me thinking. Basically every game for the past 20 years has been designed around instant gratification and being accessible. We outright had to make a new concept “hard but fair” to account for games like Dark Souls that are designed to be difficult but beatable as opposed to putting you in a death spiral if you hesitate too long on a hard jump (hello Ninja Gaiden).
So do the younger folk even have a concept of a “favorite game” where you likely never experienced more than fifteen minutes worth of content?
Did, and still do enjoy fast-paced shooters from time to time but I absolutely suck at it. Sometimes you just need to do something exciting without putting too much thought into it and not having a care about whether you win or lose, what your K/D is or whatever. I just find it a nice way to unwind from time to time.
i like ddr alot, but i suck ass at it
still a fan
DDR?
dance dance revolution, a neat arcade rhythm game played with your feet
damn, i guess so
Dance dance revolution.
I’m obligated to post this since Dragon’s Dogma was mentioned:
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Yea StarCraft 2 was this game for me. I first saw some beta gameplay from TotalBiscuit and just got hooked into it and I was so ridiculously bad. I still play every year around Christmas for some reason
After years of dominating everyone at my high school in LAN parties, we finally got the Internet at my house and I played my first few online games.
I got my shit wrecked 10x in a row. Haven’t played SC online since lol
Depends on how young you mean exactly, but there’s a niche space warfare simulator (simulator in the sense that it only uses currently or very close to existing technology, models the behavior of every major component on a ship, and the developer has stated that it intentionally isn’t made to be balanced as their motive for making it was partially to see what kind of strategies might become dominant in a space war rather than create a balanced game, obviously a true simulator of a space war would be difficult considering one hasn’t happened yet) called “Children of a Dead Earth” that I really like the concept of, and really want to enjoy, but have never been able to properly get into, because I’ve never managed to design ship components that are particularly efficient or effective compared to premade examples, and my experience in games like Kerbal space program havent given me a good enough understanding of the game’s more realistic orbital mechanics to figure out how to maneuver my fleets properly. It feels like a game that one needs to be a bigger space nerd than I am to properly enjoy, but that same effort at realism is why I find it so appealing in the first place.
Have you tried Space Engineers or Empyrion? They’re open world survival crafting games that let you explore entire planets and build your own space stations and ships and such.
Space engineers yes, though not empyrion. I do like the game, but I have found it not quite as fun as a voxel vehicle building game as games that let you also design your own components or subassemblies, such as From the Depths, and not quite as fun as a space game as Kerbal Space Program, as least in my opinion.
If that’s the case, then you may want to check out Starbase. It’s basically on life support at this point (being an MMO), but the ship building is pretty wild. You can build your ships from absolute scratch, choosing the specific size of the plates and able to cut them to fit exactly, choosing where to place your bolts and struts for maximized stability and ship strength. You can even build the engines from different individual parts, and there’s an entire coding system so you can write your own code for autopilot, automatic landing, and all kinds of other things.
Dunno if I’d consider myself “younger” anymore (who am i kidding, i ain’t THAT old lol), but…
If we count really old games: the OG castlevania’s. Didn’t grow up during that era, but thanks to handmedowns, i got to play pre Symphany Vania when i was super young. Love them, wish i was better at them tho. The collections are sitting in my steam library, and maybe some day, I’ll beat at least one of the classics.
For something more recent(?) tho, i love me some Touhou. fangames, offically made games by Zun, fan games in the style of Zun, ya name it…but MAN do i suck at the actual bullethell Touhou games. i can make it past two or 3 stages, but then the boss destroys me and I’m like “I CAN choose continue, nothing but pride is stopping me…but also, if i can’t manage this far without continuing, how bad is the rest gonna be??” and wuss out lol
Sort of relevant, I had a friend who was really into super smash brothers (brawl, I think). Talked a lot about the competitive scene, different moves and tactics etc. He didn’t have a Wii or Switch though, we were all pretty broke.
Anyway, some money came buy and he was able to grab a Switch and SSB finally. Super keen.
And then he just kinda sucked at. It was pretty sad, he almost immediately stopped being excited about it and the Switch, which he had bought new, was barely used a couple of months later. I was kinda worried about him because he wasn’t mentally in a good place before that and talking about SSB seemed like an outlet for him (none of us in the mutual group played or cared about the game).
This was a while ago, he’s doing much better now
Smash Brothers is one of those games where you think you’re good casually but it has such high skill cielings that even other casual players can curb stomp you. It depends so heavily on what sort of games you played growing up. (Assuming you don’t out in effort to practice I mean.) I (used to) be able to reliably win against my wife because she never played anything growing up, but my friends that played a lot of fighting games growing up easily beat me.
I feel like I had this experience repeatedly in RTSes. I don’t think I quite had the same dive as my friend did, but still
I am not young but I can’t beat Souls games. I adore the world design of Dark Souls, Bloodbourne and Elden Ring but I just can’t motivate myself to suffer through them. I know they are beatable, there are many safepoints, but I don’t have fun doing that. Still, I wish these games had a difficulty slider for anyone who just wants to enjoy the story. But that will freak out the gamer bros who think that will somehow ruin their precious game.
And it’s not like I never play anything on hard mode. Games like Sniper Elite work best in „Authentic“ mode for me. In puzzle games I always turn off any assistance if possible. But simply increasing the health bar of bosses is not my understanding of fun.
CS:GO
Never thought about it like that. The Adventures of Willie Beamish taught me a lot about the nature of an uncaring universe… And now I don’t think it’s possible for someone to be frustrated in that same vexating way anymore as the solution is only ever a google away.
Well now I just want to watch young people try to beat the unbeatable games of my yout’.
Prince of Persia, Mega Man X, Ghosts & Goblins, Ecco the Dolphin (my favorite, but I screamed so much at Ecco dying one pixel away from air). Zork without a walkthru. Solve all the puzzles yourself or by talking to friends also playing it blind.
And you paid $60 ($200 in today’s bullshit money) for this, you can’t get another for 3 months.
God damn, I think Super Ghouls and Ghosts gave me PTSD. I literally spent an entire summer where that was the only game I played. The absolute freefall of my happiness when I went from thinking I was going to finally get a chance to beat the final boss to the princess telling me I had to play the game all over again but with a shitty bracelet as a weapon was damned near heartbreaking.
I got pretty far in Sands of Time, but never actually finished it. The first miniboss of Warrior Within can eat my entire ass, though.
Karate Champ. I probably spent hundreds of dollars on that game and never got past the third match, and don’t have the slightest clue what would make a round kick score a full point or a half point… You could come up with strats that usually worked, but nothing ever worked reliably… Mortal Kombat you could come up with strats that would 100% get you double flawless, but it’s grandpappy would toss all manner of randomness at your ass and fuck you up pretty reliably :)
I don’t think there’s any game I like that I’m good at
oh yes, a bunch.
Sekiro wasn’t as hard for any of my friends then if was for me, that game practically made me not hesitate, even just a little.
Then there’s ULTRAKILL that game aant you to do everything from muscle memory or it’s straight up going to kill you, Have not perfected the final challenge, but the game is extreamly fun.
And to give you another example, let’s sag the Keli games. Oxygen NotnIncluded and Don’t Starve (Together), these two can be the two hardest games I’ve ever played. Easly clocking in more then double the playtime then the previous two, and yet I’ve never beaten neither of them. In Oxygen I managed to get to the “mid game”, as the community calls it, ONCE, on m most recent. In Don’t Starve all my notable achievements are because I have friends that play way better than me and we played co-op.
These games are easly in my top 10, making me work for the reward is much more fun. Played Legue and Fortnite 1k hours in both. I hate them for making me addicted and stealing my life. Oh, also you asked for younger gamers, I’m 17.
That’s why I only play aram, urf and 5v5 lmao
So the thing about these linds of games is that you theoretically can master any Champion/Pokémon, but there are some that you just intuitively understand. Keep trying different characters until you find one you gel with in Standard/non-Ranked matches, then get a feel for how to improve your runes/items by playing Ranked and studying your shortcomings. It’s how I found out that I love to play walls and use items that optimize walls for damage. (Iceborn Gauntlet, Sunfire, Demonic Embrace type stuff for LoL and Rocky Helmet/Shell Bell/Drain Crown for Unite.)
Yeah aram and TFT for me lmao
