Those games can make you feel like you’ve climbed a mountain when you beat them, but they have a pretty big downside. We’re seeing a new obsession with “permadeath” and high difficulty in games such as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Necropolis. I’m here to testify that it is possible to make a game too difficult. If a game is too hard, a lot of more casual gamers like me are just going to give up. This raises a question about the wisdom behind the game industry’s spiraling quest to make games more engaging by making them harder to play for a smaller group of hardcore gamers. But I started playing this game on the “normal” setting and had to ratchet it down to “rookie” in order to continue with the game.
I’m going to get a lot of flak for this from hardcore gamers who want their games to be difficult.
The game is too hard, and I’m in so deep that I can’t make more progress unless I start over. I have tried to turn back the alien conquest of Earth in a last-ditch guerrilla war by humanity. I have put dozens of hours into playing a single game of XCOM 2, the turn-based tactical strategy game from Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games label. Join gaming leaders online at GamesBeat Summit Next this upcoming November 9-10.
