So, here I am. My first two weeks of vacation this year. Just staying at home, relaxing and of course, playing games. I've been playing a couple of different games over the last few days (The Witcher 2, Magicka, Smash Cars, Sega Rally Online Arade just to name a few), all of them are fairly new and from different genres. But they all got something in common: They all are f*cking hard and caused me a lot of frustration.

I think most people here have played TW 2 and I'm sure that I was not the only one who got his ass raped in the tutorials (!!).

Another fine example is Sega Rally Online Arcade. Five tracks, a bunch of cars and good ol' arcade fun. Can't go wrong with that? Oh boy, was I wrong. Installed the game and jumped right into the championship mode. The goal is to advance from position 22 to 1 on the four tracks you race on. First three tracks: No problem at all, everything is fun and quite challenging. Then there's the last track. The car behind you is suddenly twice a fast as your car, the track is f*ucking hard and no, there's no way you can practice on this track first because it's locked...

Same thing with Smash Cars. Why are big, fat monster trucks faster than my tiny, super light-weight race car?

I could go on and on... Why are most modern games so hard, unfair and frustrating? Is it only me? Am I getting "to old" to play games? I've been playing games all my life. I really enjoyed every single hour of my life "wasted".

Please, tell me I'm not the only one with such an opinion on more modern games!
Thanks for reading all this crap...

That's quite the contrary. But still, very funny :D

I dunno. I think games in general are easier today.

But it might not just be "hard" or "easy" that's causing the problems. I struggle with some games myself, like the Super Mario Brothers Wii game. You give me an older Mario, and I can play the crap out of it. I was raised on platformers.

But in SMB Wii? There's SO MUCH going on, in colors and movement, plus a further back camera that I can't make out what's going on half the time. It could just be my eyes, but I often lose track of what the hell is going on in game, and end up dying.

Which often makes me insanely frustrated. I know I could sit down and blaze through the game if my eyes and brain could process what's going on quick enough for my reflexes to kick in. And again, if you give me a basic 2-d platformer like the original SMB's or even Terraria, and I'm completely golden.

Another example of this is Altitude on Steam which is on sale. I really like it. But when things get hectic, my eyes and brain can't process all the information quickly enough. I end up running into obstacles, or mixing up the controls, or just plain dead.

Oh, I love that game. Maybe we should play together sometime?

Games *can* be harder today than they have been in the past, and Super Mario Bros Wii is a good example of that. However, games are generally less FRUSTRATING than they have been in the past because its much easier to save now, there's more checkpoints, difficulty levels, and much more that has been implemented to design gaming for shorter periods of time.

Yes, games are simpler and I think they are "less tactical" today. Also, I can see some odd trend among developers to make games even simpler as they are. I loved all "complicated" games from the past. I do not know about "action" games as I am fan of strategies, but I do not like today's games.

Sure. I'm not sure if I'm going to buy the game yet, but we can try to join the same server tomorrow if our hours match up. I'm in a unique position as a GOG'er. I didn't get my first PC until 1996, was only 10, and missed out on pretty much all RPG's and many other classics (I never played X-Com until 2009, for instance).

Having gone back and played several classic RPG's on the PC...To me? They're complex because the games never told you how to do anything in them. You either had to try to figure out things manually through trial and error or by pouring over manuals (if you had them), to try and decipher information.

Where as usually your basic PC game has loads of in game help explaining how every single mechanic or system works. Most games hand hold you through the early parts of the game.

I don't think that means newer games are less complex. I think it just means they're better designed and nicer to the player.

I think the general opinion among mature gamers are that games are getting easier and dumbed down compared to games of the past. But I do agree that modern games have such a hard time keeping the difficulty consistent and "fair". Most of time "harder" just means numbers ie. the enemy have more hitpoints, faster cars, bigger weapons etc. than you do.
I personally play games for fun more than for challenge so I tend to play on Easy or Normal depending on the game. Most games also have these difficulty spikes and once to get past that the game will be fairly easy again. But some modern games are just too hard - a few weeks ago I had to give up on the PC version of The Last Remnant because the game was just way too hard for my liking about half way through.
So don't be afraid to lower the difficulty if the game is hard - some of us play for fun and repeating the same thing 100 times is just not fun at all.

Maybe that's true. While modern games may get simpler over time, I also feel the devs try to supplement missing content with poorly designed game mechanics (or just making things diffucult just because they can) which will ultimately result in some parts being nearly impossible all of a sudden. Just my opinion.

games these days getting hard lol, magicka looks like a fun game but playing it solo is tough, hate games where difficulty is forced and you have to play it as it is

I indeed play Magicka aswell and I tell you it's has painfull as bein b*tt f*cked!

I didn't find that part. What do you need to do to get that scenario? Doesn't sound like something they'd do to the main character, usually those only happen to random damsels for cheap revenge motivation or something. If you're not talking about Geralt but yourself, then I am very sorry to hear that, but it probably wasn't the game's fault.

Whahahaha! True =D