This is related to the first point I made about health regeneration. If I were to say to the frothing masses of gamers, Games arent difficult anymore, Im sure someone would bring up Demons Souls and how ridiculously impossible it is. Yes, its a tough game to complete, but its tough in the same way that bending a crowbar by repeatedly hitting yourself in the testicles is tough; it just leaves you frustrated and you wonder why youre even doing it in the first place. My point is that modern gamers are coddled by constant health, ammo, and mana pickups to ever have to worry about dying, or being inconvenienced in any way, really. The first Bioshock suffered from this imbalance. I was tripping over medkits every ten feet, and if I needed to use them all during a fight, I wasnt worried because A) If I lived, I could just walk down the hall or to a vending machine and get fully stocked again, and B) If I died, I would be revived at no cost or penalty. This problem plagues most shooters and adventure games, since every enemy you kill drops a weapon that provides you with a full magazine. This saturation of resources kills the challenge of a game, and the unbalanced gameplay that pervades most new releases is a far cry from the old-school, hard-scrabble games that established the industry.
Eller likes a lot of old video games, and some new video games. Follow him on Twitter (@JordanEller) for updates about articles, but mostly silly jokes.
