I Like It Hard

Treading through icy catacombs, I’m suddenly ambushed by a force of fanatic cultists. I’m faced by two mages and four warriors. I’ve seen this situation before; it calls for a simple roar from my war dog to stun the enemies in their tracks, which opens the door for easy and dirty kills. I quickly pause the battle to plan out the attack. My rogue archer will retreat towards the back wall and launch flame arrows into the enemy while my mage tends to the wounds of the forward attack force, consisting of my melee rogue and the war dog. It’s set: after the initial stunning, the dog will maul the mages, while the rogue melee  handles the four incapacitated warriors with dual-wielded swordsmanship. After one final inspection of my scheme, it’s time to begin the bloodshed. I un-pause to let the battle commence.

The dog dashes between the huddled group of warriors. A split second later, one of the enemy mages casts a spell of ice, freezing the dog in its tracks. The warriors quickly make do of the dog, severing it unconscious. This is not going according to plan. Frantically, I assign the rogue archer to take out the spellcasters as quickly as possible – we can ill afford another freezing. Meanwhile, my lead rogue charges forth into the thick of the warriors, keeping them busy with my mage constantly healing his wounds with magic. While watching the progress of the rogue melee, I gaze towards my archer… she’s down. This is not going according to plan.

It’s been five seconds into the battle and  two of my party are already lost. Drastic times call for drastic measures, so I command my mage to unleash a spell of earth shaking fortitude. This knocks the warriors around some, along with my melee rogue, killing him in the process. This is not going according to plan. Three down, one to go, thinks the enemy. I cast what spells I can in the amount of mana I muster, but to no avail. It takes them a fraction of a second to eliminate my last standing party member. “Your journey ends” the game tells me. This did not go according to plan.

I’m playing Dragon Age: Origins. And this story of defeat can be told numerous times through my experience of the game, yet I’m still immensely enjoying it. Usually, for me, I don’t take too kindly towards repetitive loss, which often ends in words my parents wouldn’t be proud of screamed from the top of my lungs. But for Dragon Age, I take loss as a sign of progression – on the whole, I end up fighting each battle at least twice, sometimes increasing to five or six times, before actually winning. This game is hard.

OH MY GOD I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO PLAY THIS.

The game reminds me of my gaming “golden years,” so to speak: the late-NES/early-Genesis era. Back then, I played all the challenging games of yore; Battletoads, Chakan: The Forever Man, Ghosts’n'Goblins – you name it, I played it. And I was damn good. In my elementary school years, all I’d do was play video games, and games like the previously mentioned trained me through the most brutal means possible. But all that training with difficult platforming games in the early ’90s wasn’t enough to prepare me for when I became a PC gamer around 1995. PC games of that day were difficult, but in a differing manner than their console brethren. It wasn’t about the skill of successfully pressing the jump button quick enough to dodge enemy bullets. And even if it was about that, the same process was largely dissimilar compared to what it was on a console. When I first booted up Commander Keen IV: Secret of the Oracle, I expected it to play just like what I was accustomed to. Like Contra. But boy was I wrong. That game wasn’t about the successful string of jumps, but more about the presentation of the character and atmosphere of the game. This was directly in contrast to console gaming of the time. PC gaming wasn’t just about the challenge of the fingers, it was a challenge to the mind.

Games like WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness and King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow blew my mind. Those games and others made it clear to me that PC gaming was something totally different than the “kids games,” as I then titled them, on the consoles. PC games were brutal in a clearly superior way to console game difficulty. PC games make players think differently. Taking into account monetary funds in X-COM or bullet trajectory in ArmA II is seemingly much more a game of the mind than knowing how many lives you have left.

With the progression of technology and gameplay mechanics over the years, PC gaming has led the way for new ways to go about difficulty. With Left 4 Dead, the game forces you to work together with other people to succeed. It does it in such a way, that it completely redefined cooperative gameplay as we knew it up to that point. That made the game difficult. Even more recently with indie titles like VVVVVV taking the simple platform game concept and throwing in a hint of gravity manipulation adds to the mix of innovation that PC gaming offers.

That’s the way I like it. (Uh-huh, uh-huh).

After playing games like Bad Mojo, Rainbow Six and Crime Fighter, it was obvious to me that there was no other platform to experience this difficulty on than one of PC gaming. And to no surprise, most console games I’ve played since the PlayStation 2-era have been incredibly easy. There was no challenge. There was no charm. I could breeze through games like nobody’s business and be done with it forever.

So despite the numerous expletives and rage-quits, I’m very fortunate to be a PC gamer. I’m glad games kick my ass. Difficulty makes gaming interesting, and only the PC gets it right. I like it hard.