Ever since I started gaming, I've always played games on the easiest difficulty setting. My reason for doing this is two fold:
1) I value my sanity. The repetitiveness of playing and replaying the same section over and over again drives me crazy. The "sense of accomplishment" that games like Dark Souls or Bloodbourne (or as I like to call them, Aneurysm Simulators), is completely lost on me. I tried playing Bloodbourne once and only got like 90 minutes, maybe two hours in before I got to the point of almost breaking my controller. There was one enemy I couldn't get past. But I stayed patient. I kept at it, getting a little better each time and eventually I finally made it past him. And I felt... Nothing. There was no great sense of triumph or achievement. Just an overwhelming sense of dred at the prospect of having to do that again for 30+ more hours. It felt like getting my teeth pulled. It was this horrible, painful experience. And when it was over, I didn't feel pride or accomplishment. I just felt relief, and thought "thank God that's over. Hope I never have to do it again".
2) I like narrative immersion. Single player, story driven games are my bread and butter. Nothing beats getting fully invested in a world and it's characters. So it royally pisses me off when I'm in the climatic chapter of a game, a great cutscene just finished, my heart's pumping I'm all amped. And then bam. You're dead. Start over. Now I've been completely sucked out of that moment. All tension that had been raised is now gone and I'm just trying to push through. This happened to me repeatedly towards the end of Red Dead Redemption 2. A spine tingling, chill inducing moment would occur, only to immediately be interupted by that slow motion death screen. Playing games on easy difficulties allows me to progress the story without fear of breaking immersion. It also allows me to walk in the shoes of the character. Master Chief is a galactic badass. He doesn't back down from anything. Yet play on Legendary and all of a sudden you're crouching down behind rocks hiding from some grunts. Playing it on easy let's your steamrole through enemies the way Chief would.
Naturally, this puts me off multiplayer gaming. In addition to being inherently repetitive, multiplayer games often have a large learning curve that requires a lengthy humbling period before you can actually compete. This is among the biggest turn off for me as a gamer. Gaming is my hobby. I'm not a journalist or an MLG (er?), I don't make a living off this. It's just something I do in my free time for enjoyment. I don't want to log into Gears 4 and get smacked around for an hour in hopes of one day being good enough to not be greeted with an audible groan when I get placed in your team.
It's like, I love basketball, it's probably my favorite sport. But I'm not about to get up every day, go hit some layup lines and dribble drills, just so I can smoke some kids in a game of 21 at the Y.
"Why even play games then? Just watch a Let's Play". Because I love playing video games. The actual gameplay part isn't what bothers me. It's just the dying over and over again part that bugs me. I still enjoy controlling the character, completing quests, making decisions and inhabiting the world. I just don't want to break up the flow of the game with respawning.
Point is, I'm not the only one. There are plenty like me, and we are people do. #CasualGamersUnite
1) I value my sanity. The repetitiveness of playing and replaying the same section over and over again drives me crazy. The "sense of accomplishment" that games like Dark Souls or Bloodbourne (or as I like to call them, Aneurysm Simulators), is completely lost on me. I tried playing Bloodbourne once and only got like 90 minutes, maybe two hours in before I got to the point of almost breaking my controller. There was one enemy I couldn't get past. But I stayed patient. I kept at it, getting a little better each time and eventually I finally made it past him. And I felt... Nothing. There was no great sense of triumph or achievement. Just an overwhelming sense of dred at the prospect of having to do that again for 30+ more hours. It felt like getting my teeth pulled. It was this horrible, painful experience. And when it was over, I didn't feel pride or accomplishment. I just felt relief, and thought "thank God that's over. Hope I never have to do it again".
2) I like narrative immersion. Single player, story driven games are my bread and butter. Nothing beats getting fully invested in a world and it's characters. So it royally pisses me off when I'm in the climatic chapter of a game, a great cutscene just finished, my heart's pumping I'm all amped. And then bam. You're dead. Start over. Now I've been completely sucked out of that moment. All tension that had been raised is now gone and I'm just trying to push through. This happened to me repeatedly towards the end of Red Dead Redemption 2. A spine tingling, chill inducing moment would occur, only to immediately be interupted by that slow motion death screen. Playing games on easy difficulties allows me to progress the story without fear of breaking immersion. It also allows me to walk in the shoes of the character. Master Chief is a galactic badass. He doesn't back down from anything. Yet play on Legendary and all of a sudden you're crouching down behind rocks hiding from some grunts. Playing it on easy let's your steamrole through enemies the way Chief would.
Naturally, this puts me off multiplayer gaming. In addition to being inherently repetitive, multiplayer games often have a large learning curve that requires a lengthy humbling period before you can actually compete. This is among the biggest turn off for me as a gamer. Gaming is my hobby. I'm not a journalist or an MLG (er?), I don't make a living off this. It's just something I do in my free time for enjoyment. I don't want to log into Gears 4 and get smacked around for an hour in hopes of one day being good enough to not be greeted with an audible groan when I get placed in your team.
It's like, I love basketball, it's probably my favorite sport. But I'm not about to get up every day, go hit some layup lines and dribble drills, just so I can smoke some kids in a game of 21 at the Y.
"Why even play games then? Just watch a Let's Play". Because I love playing video games. The actual gameplay part isn't what bothers me. It's just the dying over and over again part that bugs me. I still enjoy controlling the character, completing quests, making decisions and inhabiting the world. I just don't want to break up the flow of the game with respawning.
Point is, I'm not the only one. There are plenty like me, and we are people do. #CasualGamersUnite
(not casual in the sense that I only play games casually [I'm on a video game internet forum for Christ sake] but like, I play games on casual difficulty)
Last edited:
