Tag Archives: difficulty

The Difficulty Of Difficulty.

Difficulty is one of the hardest things for a modern game to get right. Because games are catering for a much wider range of players than they were even ten years ago, deciding what level you should pitch your game’s difficulty at is very tricky and potentially very risky. Make it too hard and you’ll alienate the coveted “casual” gamer market that makes up the bulk of game sales these days; too easy, and you’ll piss off the hardcore gamers who are most vocal about their hobby and generate most of a game’s buzz. Either outcome hurts sales, and pleasing both camps is nigh-on impossible. This is why the difficulty setting exists.

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In Praise Of: Bungie Software, Part Two.

This finishes up my history of Bungie during the pre-Halo years; the first part can be found here.

Part Two: Myth.

Myth is a game that is remembered for all the wrong reasons. I suspect this is at least partly down to a marketing misstep on Bungie’s part, as it was the first ever 3D strategy game and that was the element they subsequently played up in all the previews. This was a mistake; the 3D in Myth is kind of janky and horrible and doesn’t really add much to the gameplay, and what’s more the game uses 2D sprites to represent its units which doesn’t exactly help it in the looks department. As a result the first Myth game was critically panned1 as a failed experiment. Some of that criticism is fully deserved – Myth’s gameplay is, to me, a fascinating tactical challenge, but I can easily see how it would have provoked feelings of revulsion in reviewers used to the Command & Conquer RTS paradigm – but I would be willing to bet a fair amount of money that those critics didn’t get too far into the game before dismissing it out of hand. Because, once again, Bungie have turned what is otherwise a merely fairly solid game into far more than the sum of its parts through the addition of a well-told story.

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