Temporarily lower the difficulty, or just ignore it altogether. Like KOF XIII or Skullgirls, whose final bosses redefine the meaning of "cheap" with far more health than you, unblockable grabs, screen-filling specials, spam projectile moves with insane priority, and actually use the highest AI setting possible regardless of your difficulty setting; I simply stopped playing its arcade modes and only play on Versus (and far, far less than I used to in the case of SG).

But that is, of course, assuming the difficulty is of the "fake" sort--actual, "proper" difficulty, like the MGS series' sniper battles or FF7's WEAPONs, I'll try to power through until I manage it, for the warm fuzzies of accomplishment.

Depends on what the game itself allows. If you can adjust the difficulty on the fly or on re-load, then I may give that a whirl. If not, then I'll grind a bit to improve my character or find / buy better equipment; that is, if the game has re-spawning enemies. Doesn't always work for games that are essentially set-piece affairs, or where summoned enemies do not grant XP.

Failing either of those, I'll probably set it aside and try again at a later date. Or not.

Awesome thread, good answers in here!

For me it really depends on the game. Some games (Dark Souls!) are designed around difficulty and I had a hell of an amazing time in that one. For some reason, it just "worked" and there were nights I'd plug away at bosses or sections for (way too many!) hours.

Or games are just a total pain in the ass. They'll burn me out and eventually I reach "that point" where it's more frustrating than fun. Most times that will be the end of that game for me. If it's one particular section or fight or boss and I've really been enjoying the game I might try and make it through. The absolute WORST games are the ones I've absolutely loved, have been having a total blast with and completely enjoy the mechanics ... and then they throw an awful terrible unfun section at me. Hurts to quit them, and I do put in "due diligence" but at some point I just shake my head and that's it.

Then there are those games I "scout out" ahead of time. Maybe I'm playing them and enjoying them when I hit "the wall" - I'll hunt around a bit for pointers and come across a ton of posts about how the game constantly does this. It's a frequent exercise in frustration, so get ready. These games I might quit earlier than I would have, because I know a given problem / section is just the beginning - it's going to happen over and over and over again.

At the end of the day, while in some instances I enjoy difficulty, I play games for fun. If I'm constantly getting angry and frustrated at a game it's just not worth it for me.

Like I said, the WORST instances for me are the games that have been otherwise amazing up to "that point" - I'm also so disappointed when a previously fantastic experience is ruined for me.

People call this wuss move, but I just use cheat to level quicker or lower the difficulty. Especially if a game designs itself to require grinding to progress, but the process is not rewarding (usually) and doesn't add to any new experience.

I've played games my whole life, I've spend more than thousand of hours grinding to level up in RPG games, sticking by some virtual principle to not cheat or lower the difficulty just to be authentic to nobody (since you're playing the game by yourself), and in the process adding extra wasted hours to your life when you have more important real world things to take care of with work and family, etc, is pointless and possibly not productive. (Not that I'm productive to start with, more like wasting time posting in forums.)

Some games I just flat out quit and uninstall, such as Homeworld.

Oh I remember Mortal Kombat 9, I finished that game and got through half the trial tower without really memorizing a single decent combo. Then I realized fighting games are probably just not for me.
Install it again and get bitchslapped again and again until you can bitchslap it back. What's wrong with you do you actually have a job or something?

... yes, and it puts a nasty strain on my gaming & social life.

In all seriousness: I quickly came to the conclusion that the game looked far more crisp & fun in Nostalgica than it did when I replayed it. Just lost overall motivation fast. With games I really like when I encounter something unpassable tough I do it like a real gamer of this day and age; complain till it gets patched! :P

normal series consecutive button mashes? :p

100 Light Punches
100 Crouches
100 kicks

And 10 km dashing. Every Day.

Didn't help a bit. Sometimes you jst gotta be The King.

Dunno man, I never liked grapplers

:p


Speaking of Daikatana, for some reason, enemies throw out that line in Sin a lot. I just checked the dates, and it's very likely referencing the Daikatana ad - apparently that thing appeared in 1997, while Sin was a late 1998 release.

I keep trying, but my patience has its limits. Sometimes it's enough to just stop playing for a while and try again another time. Sometimes it gives me a reason to abandon the game once and for all, when it's the final straw. If I really want to continue playing the game and as soon as possible, I lower the difficulty or search for cheats or tips on how to better deal with it.

It doesn't happen that often, but I actually just did that with Rise of the Tomb Raider. There was a section where you're diving below a room with eight special forces guys who are searching for you and you can only move on after you've killed all of them, one by one. You can't just storm in, you have to be stealthy, hiding underwater, swimming from on opening to another, waiting for opportunities to strike, and if you mess up and get killed you're reset to the last checkpoint and have to try killing those eight from scratch. So e.g. defeat 6, get killed by no. 7 or 8 would erase all of your progress. That in itself doesn't have to be a problem yet. I played through Hotline Miami and had fun. But Hotline Miami was fast-paced, if you failed you could jump right into it again. In this scene, on the other hand, all the diving, cutscenes, forced stealth and kill animations made it very slow, frustrating and tedious. I decided not to waste my time any longer and lowered the diffculty instead. Afterwards I increased it again and moved on, and I continued to have fun.

(Despite not liking this section at all, I give the devs credit though for allowing me to bypass it this way. The waterslide section in Tomb Raider 2013 was much, much worse in this regard.)

I honestly have no idea how people are so quick to beat those types of games. I have seen it done and I really envy them. Maybe, it's from years of gaming in general or they started out at an early age.

For me, games are supposed to be fun, interesting, entrancing, enjoyable. Yes sometimes things get a bit iffy, or slow, or tedious. I usually press on for a while until things improve. If they don't I'll try another and come back later. If I am stuck with a puzzle or boss I keep at it if I can see some progress with each attempt. Otherwise, I'm happy to search for hints.

Been gaming since the 80's (Spectrum, Amstrad, PC route). Started with text adventures, and moved on to sims and rpg's. I do ok, but still get stuck sometimes.

All things considered, the game is MY bitch. It can struggle a bit, but either I win or walk away (for a while).

Before standing up for another go I either think about my mistake or come up with a different way to beat it. If none of them fails. Git gud.

If a game has proper mechanics in place that enable you to work towards getting better skill-wise and you're being rewarded for your time in the end, I do love the experience. Volgarr the Viking comes to mind. I kind of want to get back into it, but I fear the initial wall of rust.

On the other hand, should a title have nothing but a bullshit difficulty curve and is outright unfairly structured, it is not worth my focus.

As others have said - if it stops being fun, they broke their game (for you). The obvious example for me would be Psychonauts (before they patched it). One of the best games ever made, but I didn't finish the meat circus because at the time it was simply a wall of frustration. I tried for a while, was advised it only got harder than what I was currently struggling with, so quit, watched youtube for the ending. I've never regretted that, the level was just no fun.