Transportation, the thing is that we are mad because a lot of people are mistaking the natural learning curve for the thing that hardcore gamers are smug about.
I'm not smug about beating Devil May Cry 1 on normal. If I want to experience the entire retail game, I have to beat it on normal or I can accept a watered down easy.
Now, you can beat the game on easy and eventually decide to go poke at normal. Maybe it'll click. Maybe you've grown better for your normal experience. Maybe you are more mature and your brain works better.
But the thing is, you can't really get around beating the game on normal. They sat down and decided "This is the standard experience." You can argue all you want that the game is not good because of it, but it is not some sort of MEMBERS ONLY CLUB. It's the bare minimum. Like passing your Driver's Test. If you cannot defeat Phantom on Normal, do you really think the experience will get any better when Gryphon or Nightmare flatten your ass in an even trickier fashion?
That is what bugs me about these articles! There is a fine line between hard game and bad game. Imagine how Spelunky will probably be reviewed as soon as it reaches X-Box 360's Live Market. Hell..
Here's a taste.An experienced Spelunky player can point out to you several things here:
1) The player did not realize that he is playing a game that is supposed to be difficult to win. He ran in, gave it a few whacks in the starter area, and got stymied by the easiest of obstacles.
2) He got some facts wrong because he thinks the game owes it to him.
3) CLEARLY, IT IS THE GAME'S FAULT.
This is what bugs me! It is the most asinine reviewing angle I have ever seen and it pisses me off.
Now there are arguments you can make. Maybe Spelunky could have some in-game hints, like background details or a pre-determined event where you kick a pebble and it sets off an arrow trap below you. Maybe the tutorial cave could be bigger.
But it is an inherent part of the game's design. It is not avoidable. You learn to deal with skeletons and arrow traps or you do not go any further. It is a separate argument as to whether or not the developer should care if more people will avoid his game because it's too hard. He wants you to develop a protocol for dealing with the enemies.
There is a point where a game is too hard or poorly made.
There is also a point where you
must walk before you run.
You cannot pick up a Fighting Game and be the best player with a run through of story mode.
You cannot beat NetHack on your first life.
You cannot expect a medium where you have infinite continues and retries available to feel sorry that you're a lazy ass.
Ideally, you should have games with parallel goals. I like the way World of Warcraft does that: if you want to just hit 80, you can do it in the stupidest, clowniest manner possible as slow as you'd like and you get this huge game. If you want to go do raids, you shape up or you don't. I'm not saying that to be smug or saying that because I hate casuals. It's a simple set of facts you can prove. When you're fighting 10 raptors one at a time, you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as they die and you live. When you have to down Patchwerk as a member of a team, every member does 2000+ DPS or the monster kills you first.
As another example where I think it was done wrong, in the first God of War you go to Hades and Hades is a lump of shit. The programmers admit as much. It was rushed, it's a boring, stupid, frustrating area and even if you turn down the difficulty, it makes the monsters easier to kill but doesn't affect all of the terrible stupid spike puzzles. The game is not hard because you should be a stud(Hades is near the end of the game), it's hard because it's poorly done. But there's a difference. God of War 2 is pretty hard, but not because of stupid spike puzzles. And you can adjust the difficulty. And you should pick up God of War 2 knowing that you can't dumb your way through it no matter how much you want to because the standard experience is set to a quality of challenge that
makes it popular.
Can we agree that it's OK to look down on casuals like this article for not wanting to even walk the very most basic elements of competence? You can't beat Bane in Arkham Asylum and you can't be arsed to seek readily available help in incredibly efficient time spent and ease of access? And the game itself will toss you hints if you're that bad? Arkham Asylum doesn't need to be nicer to you, you're just bad at the game. Now if you can't beat Bane because he randomly bugs out his invincibility frames and you only get 1/3 as many chances to hit him as you really need, then that is the game's fault. But we're really past the point where bugs that big make it through.