Cross-post from Half-KIA over on Reddit, reposting here for a signal boost:
With Psychonauts 2 having an invincibility toggle, the debate about video game difficulty has resurfaced, with at least one games journalist proving how incompetent she is by saying she refuses to play on anything other than easy mode. Other topics covered this episode include the new lawsuit against Blizzard, updates on the Chris Avellone allegations, Kotaku embarrassing itself in more than a couple ways yet again, a game developer’s very bizarre Twitter thread about making female characters look less feminine, and plenty more.
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There is nothing wrong with easy mode, but when a person who's singular purpose in life is to review games will only play on the "press A to win" difficulty level, they are being utterly disingenuous with their so called review.
I couldn't count how many games have mechanics that don't even come into play in easy mode. How do you assess balance? Or replayability, or any of the things that actually should matter in a game review.
Yeah I can't remember what but there was a game I played on easy a couple years ago that I thought was pretty blah, but it turns out easy turned off a key mechanic entirely. Didn't even make it unnecessary, just made it not exist.
If I really think about it I usually play easy on games that are either old with mechanics that don't hold up well or just have super cheap ways to increase difficulty. Having 30 extreme sponge characters on you with laser accuracy in a split second or a half dozen grenades land on your head constantly is more of a battle of attrition than actual fun. The age old argument like a Dark Souls with easy mode, yeah I might play it but I'm not sure it makes it any better. I just don't like the game to begin with most of the time. There's some changes I'd make to have it respect your time more, but just making it easy would make it kinda boring.
The average difficulty has changed quite drastically over the years. Games now commonly have a normal mode that would have been "easy" in 2010. And games in 2010 the normal mode would have been the easy mode back in 2000.
In 2000 the "normal" mode was still quite challenging, and hard was usually something close to impossible if you didn't already know the normal mode inside and out.
My reflexes have reduced quite dramatically as I get older, and I can't quite keep up with some of the older games now, but I play anything recent on the highest difficulty or it ends up being a cakewalk.
I can barely manage the first level of Halo 2 on Heroic mode anymore, and I used to play through on Legendary and thought it was fun. The only challenge to be found in most modern games is in broken or intentionally gimped mechanics.