Why do I like HARD things?

On 06/11/2015 at 12:23 AM by asrealasitgets

If you've frequented any of my blog posts in the past, you may have noticed one or two occasions where I defend dumb, mundane gameplay as a form of leisure from real life, or at least to break from more challenging, or long form video games that require more skill, strategy and tactics to overcome.

That isn't to say that I don't like to challenge myself every now and again. Monster Hunter, Dark Souls and dungeon-crawlers like Etrian Odyssey, or the occasional card deck building game on mobile and even the current Heroes of the Storm, Blizzards moba-like can also feel very rewarding except part of what makes hard games fun for me is the process of discovery that takes place when you figuring the nuances out and reaching the point where everything just suddenly clicks.

I've been playing through a new dungeon-crawler on PSVITA called Operation Abyss. It's a first person dungeon exploration game similar to Etrian Odyssey, or Legend of Grimrock, but set in the contemporary Tokyo with a horror/sci-fi theme in place a traditional fantasy locale. The typical jobs are all still present, and your party is made of six characters, Knights, Warriors, Healer, Mage etc., and it being a JRPG it's of course Anime influenced, and the protagonists are all teens who attend school part time, like Persona. Any how, the game is pretty challenging, not as hard as Etrian Odyssey, but it is built around grinding a party and surviving tricky labyrinths. It's a lot closer to the older dungeon crawlers like Wizardy in fact and you have to put extra work into figuring out where all the little stat points go and what all the little stat numbers mean. It's a hard nut to crack but I'm enjoying pouring through the in game manual and visiting fan sites for strategy and what not. In short, hard games can be fun and I like how my party is shaping up too. I'm steam rolling through dungeons now!

I've also been watching Sense8, the Wachowskis latest media experiment on Netflix and it is quite daunting and glorious. The show is somewhat of a more successful attempt of their film Cloud Atlus, which was a film that spanned ages and jumped back and forth in space and time to tell a story, however because there were so many characters and subplots to tell, condensing it all into a film 3 hour film format somewhat sabotaged the execution and didn't really serve the novel justice, however I still found the film enjoyable. Sense8 deals with 8 characters who are located all over the world but share one mind. Over the course of the first season, the charactes are all discovering their abilities and reacting quite believably to it, but the sci-fi and action elements have been pushed into the background to let you get to know the characters more personally, and as a result of the longer TV format, the show is successful at doing that. When things do start to get crazy with mind sharing, which allows characters to visit each other like holograms, and later feel each other, well the show takes a turn for the better. It's quite a fun show, albeit requires focus to understand at least for me. I've been pouring over forums and review sites for discussions about the shows meanings and secrets. Again, a challenging show to watch, but quite fun to discover how all the pieces fit together.

I should also point out that these things I'm referring to as hard, are hard to me, and these things also have their detractors. Operation Abyss, Sense8 and Dark Souls are all controversial and have their fans and equally have people who just hate it.

~Asreal

mothman

06/11/2015 at 10:16 AM

I might give Operation Abyss a shot when it goes on sale because it looks interesting. I'm glad that most of the Vita games coming out now are compatible with the PS TV now that developers aren't writing for all the gimmicky stuff on the handheld

asrealasitgets

06/11/2015 at 02:08 PM

I honestly think that the game gives you a lot of customization and gameplay value for what it's worth. It looks and sounds great on the VITA too. I'd wait for a sale and check it out. I'm enjoying it.

Ranger1

06/11/2015 at 10:56 AM

Operation Abyss sounds like a game I would enjoy if I had access to the platform. And thanks for the mini review of Sense8, I was wondering about it.

06/11/2015 at 02:07 PM

Operation Abyss is very grindy, if you enjoy that sort of thing. Story wise, it's very text heavy with a lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo and teenage drama. Basically, an Anime.

06/11/2015 at 09:32 PM

I cut my gaming teeth on Wizardry :)

06/11/2015 at 11:04 PM

Oh, well it's basically Wizardry with an Anime paint job!

goaztecs

06/11/2015 at 11:41 AM

I saw the ad for Sense8, and after reading your description I'll give it a shot after I finish up with Daredevil.

I saw that you mentioned Heroes of the Storm, are you watching it on ESPN3? I guess its part of the X-Games now.

06/11/2015 at 02:05 PM

Sense8 gets better after the first 3-4 episodes. A lot of people are complaining about the first episode being confusing and there being too much of an information, or lack of information dump. I would stick with it after a few episodes to get a better sense of it. It's kind of like a soap opera at times. Honestly, it has a very odd structure for a TV show.

Heroes of the Storm is not that hard to get into. It's probably the most casual MOBA out there, and I jumped into it after Infinite Crisis, that DC moba got cancelled. I haven't been watching on TV. I do love watching the X-Games, and I used to go to them when they were hosted here in Los Angeles.

avidacridjam

06/12/2015 at 12:35 AM

I loved Cloud Atlas and I think they did as good a job as anyone could with the theatrical cut. Apparently there's a unreleased 4 hour cut that's reportedly even better (Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer, has seen it). I haven't finished Sense8 yet but I enjoy what I've seen so far.

06/12/2015 at 01:27 AM

I didn't hate Cloud Atlus film at all. I just didn't think film was the right format for the novel. A TV Miniseries would have served the novel better. I can see that the Wachowskis are trying to do the same 'teleportation' trick in this new show (Sense8) and because they have 12 episodes to do it in, the TV format serves the story better. That and the fact that you can binge watch the whole thing makes it easier to follow, although it is a bit dense at the beginning, but like I said, I like challenging TV and games, etc.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

06/12/2015 at 02:33 AM

I forgot about Sense8. I really need to check that out.

Machocruz

06/12/2015 at 06:36 PM

Someone told me about two fat guys making out on that show, and a black woman ramming a transgender with a strap-on. 2progressive4me.

Human beings like challenging games. This used to be considered normal. Easy games are fine too, but the whole industry was going that way after the PS2 generation, before Demon's Souls and indies brought hard games it back into semi-vogue.The problem was that they were (and still are) rebooting or making sequels to games that were deep, complex, and challenging, and turning them into mindless escapism that any scrub can conquer (or changing their genre altogether, in the case of Syndicate) Skill and mastery went out the window. Cries of "dumbing down" are about this very thing. This was mostly particular to western AAA development. Japan never really stopped making skill based games, and this is one reason I think they fell behind in the expanded market. Keep in mind that the people who grew up on NES, arcades, and older computer games (i.e. tough and/or complex games) are now a small segment of the current gaming population, and probably never amounted to more than a few million users back in the day.

06/12/2015 at 08:07 PM

Agree with generational shift in difficulty in games over the years. It's largely done to increase the user base, and I actually worry about the influence of mobile game design on console. Just look at what Konami wants to do in the future, basically ditch console games altogether. I like being over powered and being rewarded for little effort every now and again, like Diablo 3 or God of War, and I actually had to seek out Tokyo Abyss. There aren't a lot of games out there like it actually. Hard games are still niche, and you're right again, I do actively look for hard games having grown up during early console era.

As for sense8. I think that the LGBT relationships represented on the show is putting a lot of people off from finishing it. Its basically a 12 episode soap opera that intersects with 8 peoples lives around the world, and there is one gay couple and one transgenered couple. Honestly, I think Rush Limbaugh would shoot himself after watching the opening credits, which feature two fat guys sharing kiss over an ice cream cone.
Personally, the progressive themes don't bother me at all. I just kept an open mind and took it all in and in the end I really liked the characters and I felt like the story payed off in the end.

PixlBit