Difficulty and Stakes
Article and Illustration by Toby Jones
Earlier this year I began a somewhat ambitious attempt to play through all the 'major' games throughout history that I've missed. The first thing I played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. My thoughts on the game as someone completely new to it are something for another writing (well, I liked it), but for now I'd like to talk about a very specific enemy in the game and what it means to me about the concept of "difficulty" at large.
I am talking about the Wallmaster.
This enemy, for those uninitiated (as I was just a few months ago), is a horrific abomination that comes down from the ceiling when you're deep into a dungeon and pulls you back to the entrance. The game does give you fair warning before unleashing this grotesque evil on you, but sometimes I was just too occupied (re)fighting enemies and (re)doing puzzles to take heed. When this happened for the first time I was annoyed, but by the fourth or fifth time I was positively livid. If it simply reset the room or something like that I would take no issue, but instead every time it got me I had to go through up to five minutes of rooms all over again, a task that did not challenge me in a captivating way or add any value to the game. It only made me curse loudly and want to turn the game off. I've never heard of anyone else finding this creature to be such a destroyer of fun, though, so maybe I'm just terrible at Zelda.
Another game I've been playing recently that has walked the line between healthy challenge and downright unfairness is Yoshi's Island DS. As I mentioned in my article, in its later levels the already rather large levels begin to grow exponentially and fill up with unbelievable amounts of insta-kill spikes and other death traps. The worst example of this is a stage titled "Find the Number Ball!". It is a massive, non-linear monster of a level which requires you to explore all its nooks and crannies in order to find five "number balls" that are required to progress. One you have one, you go back to the "main" room to drop it off and continue your search (you can also keep them with you, but they take up an egg spot for some reason and tend to get accidentally shot at enemies).
"Find the Number Ball!" is a reasonably interesting idea for a level, and it might border on being a well-designed one if it had not been completely smattered with these opportunities for a cheap death. What is the purpose of creating a huge level based on exploration if there is a chance to lose all the time you've invested at every turn? There are a few save points about the area, but they almost make the situation even worse because it's unclear how many (if any) of your number balls need to be re-collected. The later levels of the original game were deviously challenging themselves, but in a way that caused far less frustration.
What puts these things I've discussed over the line as far as difficulty goes, in my opinion, is not the challenge itself but the punishment for failure. On the other hand, consider Bangai-O Spirits and N+: two recent games known for being quite a bit of trouble to beat. Personally, even though both of these games can be ridiculously difficult, I was very rarely frustrated by either. This may have something to do with the stakes on display - the levels in these two games are very short (rarely lasting more than a minute), so when I died (often) it was no problem for me to try again without feeling discouraged. The difference between an engaging challenge and infuriating difficulty has a lot to do with how much is lost when the player does not succeed.
...Then again, Mega Man and Contra games can be exceedingly punishing and that's part of their appeal. Not only that, but games that are too easy and have nothing at stake can be really boring. Dang, I thought I had this one figured out. Oh well.
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Earlier this year I began a somewhat ambitious attempt to play through all the 'major' games throughout history that I've missed. The first thing I played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. My thoughts on the game as someone completely new to it are something for another writing (well, I liked it), but for now I'd like to talk about a very specific enemy in the game and what it means to me about the concept of "difficulty" at large.
I am talking about the Wallmaster.
This enemy, for those uninitiated (as I was just a few months ago), is a horrific abomination that comes down from the ceiling when you're deep into a dungeon and pulls you back to the entrance. The game does give you fair warning before unleashing this grotesque evil on you, but sometimes I was just too occupied (re)fighting enemies and (re)doing puzzles to take heed. When this happened for the first time I was annoyed, but by the fourth or fifth time I was positively livid. If it simply reset the room or something like that I would take no issue, but instead every time it got me I had to go through up to five minutes of rooms all over again, a task that did not challenge me in a captivating way or add any value to the game. It only made me curse loudly and want to turn the game off. I've never heard of anyone else finding this creature to be such a destroyer of fun, though, so maybe I'm just terrible at Zelda.
Another game I've been playing recently that has walked the line between healthy challenge and downright unfairness is Yoshi's Island DS. As I mentioned in my article, in its later levels the already rather large levels begin to grow exponentially and fill up with unbelievable amounts of insta-kill spikes and other death traps. The worst example of this is a stage titled "Find the Number Ball!". It is a massive, non-linear monster of a level which requires you to explore all its nooks and crannies in order to find five "number balls" that are required to progress. One you have one, you go back to the "main" room to drop it off and continue your search (you can also keep them with you, but they take up an egg spot for some reason and tend to get accidentally shot at enemies).
"Find the Number Ball!" is a reasonably interesting idea for a level, and it might border on being a well-designed one if it had not been completely smattered with these opportunities for a cheap death. What is the purpose of creating a huge level based on exploration if there is a chance to lose all the time you've invested at every turn? There are a few save points about the area, but they almost make the situation even worse because it's unclear how many (if any) of your number balls need to be re-collected. The later levels of the original game were deviously challenging themselves, but in a way that caused far less frustration.
What puts these things I've discussed over the line as far as difficulty goes, in my opinion, is not the challenge itself but the punishment for failure. On the other hand, consider Bangai-O Spirits and N+: two recent games known for being quite a bit of trouble to beat. Personally, even though both of these games can be ridiculously difficult, I was very rarely frustrated by either. This may have something to do with the stakes on display - the levels in these two games are very short (rarely lasting more than a minute), so when I died (often) it was no problem for me to try again without feeling discouraged. The difference between an engaging challenge and infuriating difficulty has a lot to do with how much is lost when the player does not succeed.
...Then again, Mega Man and Contra games can be exceedingly punishing and that's part of their appeal. Not only that, but games that are too easy and have nothing at stake can be really boring. Dang, I thought I had this one figured out. Oh well.
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Share and Discuss on Facebook