29 Jul, 2010
Shinji Mikami, director of upcoming PlatinumGames release ‘Vanquish’ has discussed in his blog about the game’s difficulty settings. The game will feature four difficulty settings to start with, with one which is unlockable. The settings for the game include: Auto Casual, Casual, Normal, Hard, and unlockable God Hard. While Mikami advises players to play the game on Normal mode, even though it may take a while to get used to having to aim for yourself, he also talks about how fun Casual Auto is;
Before we started work on it, I can’t say that I had high hopes; however, once we got it up and running, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong. Once you get your target on the enemy, the rest is easy as pie. I’m sure saying it that way makes it sound totally uninteresting, but when you actually give it a shot, the tempo it gives the game play will make you jump up and say, “Woohoo!”
One of my favourite features of PlatinumGames previous release Bayonetta was the difficulty settings where well taylored to all sorts of players, as it encompased similar settings to Vanquish. I think its refreshing to see a company who understands the needs of their prospective audience, and I believe that this also makes the games more likely to sell as well. As a gamer who doesn’t play many third person shooters, I may still pick up Vanquish because I know that the game has a selection of settings which will allow me to have the most fulfilling gameplay taylored to my experiance. When I do get the game, I think I am most likely to play it on Casual.
Source: PlatinumGames blog
When you play a game, what difficulty setting do you normally play on? Do you think that having easier difficulty settings is a bad thing?
I don’t think easier difficulty settings are a bad thing at all. My chosen difficulty setting varies depending on unlockables or achievements. Gears of War 2 for instance, first time, I played on Casual to get a feel for the game, then Insane to get the rest of the completion achievements at once to minimize playthroughs. Modern Warfare 2 on the other hand, I was a glutton for punishment and played on Veteran first time. 24 hours later it was done and I had 70% of the trophies. And haven’t touched the SP since.
My default difficulty setting is always “normal”. If I particularly like a game, I’ll try to beat it on the harder settings too. :)
I normally will play on easy or normal depending on the games genre; for example shooters I will tend to do easy, action adventures I will usually do normal. I do find it frustrating sometimes when games only offer one difficulty setting or make their lowest setting normal, but I am still able to complete the game. But when I like a game, I will sometimes go back and increase my difficulty if I played it on easy.