Your Girlfriend Mode
It may not be the most feminist term I've ever come up with, but my friends and I use the term "Your Girlfriend Mode" to describe the difficulty level that I regularly play at.
The etymology is along these lines: You have this game, and you want your girlfriend to see it, because it's blowin' your mind and it's awesome and you'd like to share it with her. Unfortunately, all girls, without exception, suck at videogames. If you give the game to her at a normal difficulty level, she'll keep dying, will get tired of it, and won't want to play it, and will miss the experience. Easy Mode to the rescue: put it on a level where all enemies will die on one hit, where all the secret riddles are extremely simple, and there are health nummies all over the place, and she'll be able to have a version of the experience that's more than just watching you play.
I tease--it's funny on the level that many of my female friends do play videogames and can kick my ass, and on the level where I haven't dated a girl since 1999--but I am extremely glad that many games nowadays contain a Your Girlfriend mode. This is the level that I regularly play on. It's excusable when I'm just renting a game--I want to beat it before the rental period is up, and don't want to spend much time dying--but even on games I've purchased, I just simply don't find harder difficulty settings to be more enjoyable. Normally they do things like give monsters more hit points, give you fewer, and scatter fewer health items around--and that, to me, doesn't make games harder, it simply makes them more frustrating. And let's face it: I have a job and a life and if I'm spending too much time on a level, I'm going to give up on it, plain and simple. The types of challenges I enjoy in games--mostly environmental puzzles like in Zelda or ICO--can't really be made any harder or easier.
Well, okay, they can, but then you're going to get into the area of multiple versions of dungeons--in effect creating two or more separate games--and few if any developers are willing to do those things. It is much easier to make combat more "difficult" and since I don't enjoy combat...
Difficulty settings are one of the few things that The World Ends With You did perfectly--you are able to customize the game's difficulty level on the fly to your heart's content. You can raise or lower your character's level, which mostly affects how many hit points he has. You can raise or lower the difficulty level of the fight--which I believe affects the monsters' stamina. And there's an actual reason to make the game harder on yourself--lower levels make the enemies drop more items; higher difficulty makes the items better-quality. It goes beyond simple bragging rights ("Yeah, I beat that boss on SUPER HARD.") There's usually no functional difference between difficulty levels as far as most games are concerned. If there's any difference, it's usually there'll be a different cutscene or a better ending on a harder level--and frankly, I'm just going to go on Youtube and watch it anyway. If you're going to make difficulty settings, give me a reason to play harder, make it more of an interesting challenge rather than a frustrating challenge--don't simply make it easier for me to die.
The etymology is along these lines: You have this game, and you want your girlfriend to see it, because it's blowin' your mind and it's awesome and you'd like to share it with her. Unfortunately, all girls, without exception, suck at videogames. If you give the game to her at a normal difficulty level, she'll keep dying, will get tired of it, and won't want to play it, and will miss the experience. Easy Mode to the rescue: put it on a level where all enemies will die on one hit, where all the secret riddles are extremely simple, and there are health nummies all over the place, and she'll be able to have a version of the experience that's more than just watching you play.
I tease--it's funny on the level that many of my female friends do play videogames and can kick my ass, and on the level where I haven't dated a girl since 1999--but I am extremely glad that many games nowadays contain a Your Girlfriend mode. This is the level that I regularly play on. It's excusable when I'm just renting a game--I want to beat it before the rental period is up, and don't want to spend much time dying--but even on games I've purchased, I just simply don't find harder difficulty settings to be more enjoyable. Normally they do things like give monsters more hit points, give you fewer, and scatter fewer health items around--and that, to me, doesn't make games harder, it simply makes them more frustrating. And let's face it: I have a job and a life and if I'm spending too much time on a level, I'm going to give up on it, plain and simple. The types of challenges I enjoy in games--mostly environmental puzzles like in Zelda or ICO--can't really be made any harder or easier.
Well, okay, they can, but then you're going to get into the area of multiple versions of dungeons--in effect creating two or more separate games--and few if any developers are willing to do those things. It is much easier to make combat more "difficult" and since I don't enjoy combat...
Difficulty settings are one of the few things that The World Ends With You did perfectly--you are able to customize the game's difficulty level on the fly to your heart's content. You can raise or lower your character's level, which mostly affects how many hit points he has. You can raise or lower the difficulty level of the fight--which I believe affects the monsters' stamina. And there's an actual reason to make the game harder on yourself--lower levels make the enemies drop more items; higher difficulty makes the items better-quality. It goes beyond simple bragging rights ("Yeah, I beat that boss on SUPER HARD.") There's usually no functional difference between difficulty levels as far as most games are concerned. If there's any difference, it's usually there'll be a different cutscene or a better ending on a harder level--and frankly, I'm just going to go on Youtube and watch it anyway. If you're going to make difficulty settings, give me a reason to play harder, make it more of an interesting challenge rather than a frustrating challenge--don't simply make it easier for me to die.
posted by R. Goodness at 6:06 PM
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