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Mogri wrote:
So what are you looking for when you ask for an "incredibly difficult" game?
I would say that your I Wanna Be the Guy example is illustrative of increased difficulty, whereas your Dragon Warrior example is just increased frustration. Both are outside the player's control, yes, but the challenge from the first can be prepared for (I assume, not really familiar with IWBTG) while in the second you've just arbitrarily added a frustrating chance that the player will lose through no fault of their own (I'm assuming the Dragonlord is the end boss; haven't played DW either...).
TVTropes has an article called "Fake Difficulty" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty) that I think illustrates the difference between "frustration-based" difficulty and "challenge-based" difficulty to coin some phrases... Your DW one definitely falls under the second heading as the outcome cannot be reasonably determined by player input.
Quote:
It is exactly the same game on Impossible difficulty that it is on Medium, except that losing sets you back further. The game's challenge has not increased, but it punishes failure much more harshly.
I have to disagree with this. If we are defining "beating the game" as the challenge, surely the challenge has increased by decreasing the number of checkpoints? It is now more difficult to reach the end because I must replay more of the game after dying, right? Again, not familiar with IWBTG other than very generally.
E: VVV Oh, agreed. That's why I added a "beating the game" caveat. Put another way: if you reduce the life count at the start of Battletoads to 1 you've made Battletoads as a game harder without doing the same for Ragnarok's Canyon.
