We love our video games. We spend hours invested in these fantasy worlds, overcoming every challenge. Hundreds of dollars go into our hobby. Many of us search out games that will challenge us, testing our abilities. The question is, are some developers underestimating our skill? Do they not realize the time and effort we put into such affairs? A few recent events give us pause.
Let’s think about Dark Souls. This can be one of the most overwhelming and difficult series, yet we keep hearing about people who manage to master the game. They find tricks and strategies that allow them to accomplish what would have been unimaginable feats, leaping over From Software’s most diabolical hurdles.
The most recent events to give people pause are a number of Dark Souls III accomplishments. Neptunusequester managed to kill both The Abyss Watchers and Deacons of the Deep in one hit. The Happy Hobbit has been going through, trying to beat the game without taking damage, and has achieved varying degrees of success. TolomeoR ’s beaten the game seven times, and most recently went through it at level one, without blocking, parrying, or rolling. This is an incredibly overwhelming game, but multiple people are doing things that seem impossible.
What’s more, it seems like another major game with allegedly overwhelming odds has been trounced. DOOM has an Ultra Nightmare difficulty level. id Software claims it can’t beat the game on that level. The game came out May 13, and this past weekend, DraQu_ beat DOOM on Ultra Nightmare. He did it in just over five hours. This is a game that was only just released, contained a developer-stumping difficulty challenge, and someone immediately did it.
It makes you wonder how legitimate all of these difficulty claims are. We keep hearing how every new game, or even experience, is the Dark Souls of something. Developers try to lure people in with the thought of something unbeatable. Yet we have people tackling Dark Souls III like its nothing. We have an “unbeatable” difficulty level in DOOM being conquered the first weekend after the game’s debut.
Maybe we need a new standard of difficulty. Maybe, instead of games that claim to be so hard and so challenging, we need something that doesn’t have hype for being daunting, but actually and subtly is.