Modern becoming easier? Relatively…
Hello everyone. I was just reading a thread on gametrailers when I suddenly realised something. There have been plenty of articles covering how games have become easier through the ages.
A lot of gamers mention Super Mario Bros in situations like these and I can’t help but think of something. If you “die” in these Mario games you are simply pushed back to the beginning of the level or back onto the world map, so rather than being easy they simply apply harsher punishment for dying. This in my opinion means that the games aren’t harder, and that the modern games simply have implemented more checkpoints and save functions in order to allow a less annoying experience.
Platform games in the old days were much about perfecting your timing for each map rather than learning how to become an overall skilled player. Given a new map you’d have to practice through this one just as hard as you did on the last one, and die over and over again until you finally finished a game.
In modern games, however, we tend to look upon a game like Call of Duty as a relatively easy game, even on the hardest difficulty. Why? Because it still doesn’t take 20+ hours to finish. You don’t have to go back to the beginning of a level if you die and that in itself has become some sort of negative. But if you look at it that way, the only reason that the former games were harder was because of harsher punishment when you died, and not that you died more.
It’s a theory in the works, let any thoughts that cross your mind (except for abusive language) out in the comment section.
