This week, I was planning on playing my copy of Resistance 2: Fall of Man. But then, as part of the gaming hype machine, I saw the Catwoman trailer for the new Arkham City game. I suddenly felt like playing Arkham Asylum. Am I that easily influenced? Yeah, I guess I am. However, in my defense, Arkham Asylum has many wonderful things going for it. An engaging storyline, brilliant voice acting, solid combat mechanics and some interesting ways to include the detective part of the comic book character make it, in my opinion, the best comic book game ever. Why not play it for the column, I thought.
So, I popped the blu-ray game disk into my PS3, and continued the game from where I left off. And suddenly remembered why I stopped. I remembered why this really fantastic game sits in my stack of shame: it got too hard. Before you revoke my gamer cred, though, let me explain. There’s a point in every game in which the game itself requires that players either get better at playing it, or they lose. In a game like Rockband, this can come between difficulty levels – there is actual practice needed between the level at which players currently rock at, and the next level up. Personally, I refuse to practice plastic instruments more often than I practice real instruments, so I currently sit comfortably in Hard mode in that particular rhythm game. I’d begun Arkham Asylum on Normal mode, and played through to the point where my interest in learning yet another boss’ particular patterns was lower than my interest in continuing the storyline. On resuming the game, I found myself in the same predicament, and perhaps in even worse shape, as I had no recollection of the particular control scheme for this game. After about twenty minutes of fumbling through the boss fight and repeatedly dying, I went to switch to Easy Mode.
It wasn’t there. There is no easy mode. The first thing about easy mode is that…never mind. Hunh. This isn’t cool. I’d really like to keep playing, but I don’t have the time or interest in working so hard at it. I took the only other solution available to me – I started a new game, on easy mode this time, which also helped me re-learn the control scheme. I’m humming through it again and happy as a bat-clam. Wait, that doesn’t sound right.
A similar thing happened to me this week with Infamous. I have long since sold my Infamous disk back to a GameStop or some such, so took the opportunity to download the freely offered game via the PSN’s Welcome Back Program. When I started it up, I was immediately taken back to the point in the game at which I had stopped. And yes, it was one of those moments where my disinterest in playing overwhelmed my ability to move forward. Again, I went to the options menu, chose the easy difficulty mode, and continued forward.
What makes one game development team allow difficulty setting switching, and another not allow it? Did I just miss the way to do it in Arkham Asylum? Did Rocksteady Studios decide to not allow the choice once a game was saved on purpose? Did Square Enix and Warner Brothers notice and decide to allow it? Was it even discussed? All good questions that I’d be fascinated to find out. In the meantime, I’m gonna head back in to both games this weekend and see if the change in difficulty allows me to get through the whole story. Because THAT is what I play these kinds of games for. I got through Bioshock both one and two, so it’s not like I can’t play them.
Development teams, take note. If you want players like me (and I assume there are more than one of us) to finish your games, you’ll need to offer the easy mode switch so we can start the game in full deluded joy, but be able to switch to an easier setting to actually get through the game. Otherwise, your game will sit in our stack of shame, and that’s not really what you want, is it? As artists?
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