Difficulty and Pleasure

Hi all,

It's been a while that I want to talk about insane games on Neo Geo. I'd be curious to see what you guys think about it.

First of all, I must say I'm an average player, that's to say I have much difficulty in certain games that are piece of cake for some of you. But let's take exemples.

1- Magician Lord: I bought it several days ago because of my curiosity. I was not particularly interested in this one but I wanted to give it a try. Then I love it now. Speaking about the difficulty, I often compare this game to Pulstar because I find the pattern-learning obligatory. You know, I need to create miracles to pass one of the last stages. I'm at the 7th to be exact and I had a fucking hard time with the Beauty and her two assistants.
So I would like to know if there are some of you that have VERY MUCH difficulty with this game and why (or where). I personnally use several continues in a single stage and I wonder if you guy like when a game is so hard that you need to do it more and more.

2- Pulstar: I still don't have that game, obviously because of its price but I played it often and it's another good exemple of by-heart pattern-learning. I even find the learning more extreme in this game than in Magician Lord because there is even less liberty of action. Everything must be done in a certain order at a certain timing to be good. Otherwise -> instant death. I just can pass through the first two stages without losing a life.
Same question here: Do you like its difficulty? Would this game have been more enjoyable if difficulty had been set down?

I think the pleasure of an insane difficulty can be really deep but it depends of the kinda game because when I play AoF2 alone, I don't have much pleasure to play.
Ho yes, just think of it: Is AoF2 really enjoyable for someone? It's so hard that I can't take pleasure with this though. But I'm sure this game perfectly fits to someone here.

And the global question: Does a game need to be hard to keep us awake for weeks?

Tristesse said:

Is AoF2 really enjoyable for someone?

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aim to finish the game, regardless of how cheap your gameplay may get. then try to increase the difficulty. then maybe you will need to finish the game without losing any match, or use new characters ... etc.

just learn strats and try to get around the game's AI. again, your gameplay will get cheesy, but it's ok. your goal must be winning .... and you'll enjoy it.

if you stuck at a point, ask for help here.

AOF plays different from the other series'. so you may need to spend time learning the basics.

Magician Lord is a very straight-forward and pattern-based platformer. Just like Pulstar, Viewpoint or AoF2, it has one simple rule: Play the game properly (read: as it was meant to be played) or don't play at all. This means that you don't have any real choice of what to do in these games, there is no 2nd or 3rd place, only loosers or winners. Learning the patterns and knowing exactly what to do against the bosses is a must if you want to beat them, because if you try to play these games on a per-reaction basis, you won't go nowhere, or at least would have to spend considerably more time and credits to finish them.

AoF2's CPU is cheap, but not really hard, most of the CPU opponents' attack patterns are very predictable and rarely change. Once you see the gaps in the patterns, you can work out strats to exploit them. For example, if you see an opponent (like Temjin or Mr. Big) charging you with a rushing attack if you land from a whiffed (non-hitting) jumping attack about a character length away from him, you could trigger his rushing attack by jumping up vertically and hitting him with a small combo or special on landing.

Working out strats for all those games works best with a couple of friends because sometimes it's difficult to see your own mistakes while playing.

About the influence of difficulty on gameplay fun, IMO, difficulty alone is no reason to play a game except if you desperatedly need to get a rep as an uber-hardcore gamer. If a game is crap, I don't feel challenged to play it even if it would be quite some achievement to beat it, but if a game is good AND very hard, I don't mind the difficulty at all because beating it would feel even better.

However, too low a difficulty level can ruin an otherwise nice game (vs CPU of course, 2P is a totally different thing), so every game should have at least one really tricky difficulty setting to offer a bit of extra challenge for those who have beaten it on all other levels countless times. Console games mostly have this feature but if we're talking about games like AoF2, we have to talk about arcade games and how an arcade owner wants to make money with them. Here, a high diff can get him a pretty penny if the game itself is excellent, while a very low diff would make ppl stick to the cab for too long to break even.

I myself love Last Blade, but Amano in Last Blade 2 is a cheap bastard. I ain't gettin' no pleasure from that game at all.

always found aof 2 enjoyable. once you find the patterns, the game is a breeze.

That's the end, I'm definetly blocked at level 7 in Magician Lord.

I tried, tried once more, and tried again. But I can't even reach the guardian. The first passage always kills me 2/3 of the time and when I have the luck to reach the inside of the building, the insane number of enemies make me bite the dust as never.

I'm good at side-scrollers/plateformers but the playability of this game ends at level 7. The first passage with the eyes shooting while you TRY to jump with accuracy is nearly cheap because of this catastrophic playability. Once you jump too far because the character seems to be 1 ton weight, otherwise you get hurt by the eyes that come CHEAPLY in a dead-angle to make you fall down.

I'm sad because I started to very like that game but as Takumaji said, there's a pattern to respect and even if I find it sometimes, I fall almost every try.

I'm fucking frustrated.

Sooooooooo, more than one hour later, I finally managed to fight against that motherfucking guardian. I found another passage into the builing to get the shinobi cloth and then extra life. But this guardian is simply cheap as hell. In fact, that's not him who's cheap, but the surrounding.

Actually, this fucker has a fucking long range and can't be hurt ouside his attack time. The thing that I never saw before is the ridiculous size of the room. The ceiling is so low and if you make the mistake to loose your ninja cloth, you jump far less high ->death pure and simple. This bastard can even chain attacks to came across the whole room. And the thing that makes me FUCKING NUTS is that when he attacks and reaches the edge of the screen, you normally jump over him to avoid the attack. Obvious. But you jump so slowly that he turns back and cut you through whereas you didn't even finishe your jump!!! THAT MAKES ME FUCKING MAD!

I look over-stressed. Damn.