I don’t have a ton of time to play video games (mainly I just do not want to spend that much time sedentary) and I certainly don’t have time to grind away at a game to progress in a story gradually. I just do not have enough time for that!!
(btw I am not talking about “casual” games with no death / mobile games / etc though those are fine and valid also I suppose, I specifically mean story-based / signle-player campaign games)
props to easy games (the most recent Dragon Quest I’m looking right at you) and games that let you scale the difficulty (especially the ones that let you adjust it on the fly). also easy modes get bonus points for making the worst gamers mad.
shout out your favorite easy games here
I liked that Psychonauts 2 had a “I don’t give a shit about combat button” so you could just take zero damage during combat. You still had to defeat the enemies, do the platforming, and solve puzzles. But I like platforming a lot more than I like combat, so being able to ignore a part of the game that would have been otherwise frustrating was nice.
I didn’t use it, but Hades is a really good game and it has an easy mode.
The “godmode” where every death buffs you without any other changes made that game so much easier to enjoy while still being a fun challenge.
The way they did it was really elegant, too. For anyone who doesn’t know, whenever you fail a run with God Mode on you get a scaling damage reduction, not a damage boost or bonus XP or anything like that. It means you still have the chance to learn how to do the fights, since Hades is mostly a game of “dodge the telegraphed move/big red circle.”
Celeste’s extra settings were great and kept me from bouncing off the game.
It’s why Nintendo exists. Most of their games are quick and decently fun
Obviously, not every game is meant to be some kind of test of mechanical skill, but when it comes to stuff like combat, I find that a lack of meaningful challenge completely kills my immersion in a game and deflates the whole experience
Most recently, I thought I would hate atomic heart because of the tanky enemies, but after easy mode as too easy I tried the normal mode and had a lot of fun. It forces you to treat the combat as more of a dance (which fits the vibe of the ballet trailer) darting forwards to strike before darting back in time with the enemy. Hard mode was obnoxious though.
That’s what hard mode is for, which is also a good thing, as long as they don’t do dumb shit like lock the real ending behind it.
I got a real kick out of the challenge of Elden Ring, but even with the cheesiest of magic builds and a lot of cave grinding, it took me 3 weeks of solid 4 hour a day playing to take Rennala down.
