Difficulty

Remember when those days of beating a really tough game made you like this?:

Well, those days may be long gone. The default difficulty in games is getting a lot easier in general, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on where you stand. Remember Ocarina of Time? There was less hand holding, less guidance and less hints dropped along the way. You were basically given a sword and then told to go have an adventure. In something like, Twilight Princess, you were given a sword and then told to go to the next temple. After beating that, you were told where the next temple was and had to go to that. Now, while they're both great games, there is a noticeable difference in the structure of the game, Ocarina's puzzles were harder than Twilight Princess' (in my opinion) and the enemies were more powerful than they were in Twilight Princess. While there are some who distaste the newfound formula, it's actually more engaging to most audiences. In Ocarina of Time, you wandered around the immense Hyrule Field (sometimes on foot, which was very slow) trying desperately to find out where the next Temple was. If you give this to an audience of today, if they aren't receiving stimulus or prompting from the game, then they will get bored because of the lack of stimulus. In Twilight Princess, you always had a vague idea of where to go, therefore, even if you weren't really doing much at the time, you could be comforted by the fact that you wouldn't have to wander around the place for ages and that you would get to the fun soon. This design lead to Twilight Princess being very popular. But, because they added in a more linear design, they took away something grand that Ocarina of Time had. The great feeling of discovery. When you find that temple, you know that it was you who found it, and that just emerges you a little bit more in the world. I do miss that feeling that most games nowadays are missing. Most gamers, or people who would call themselves gamers, wouldn't have that pleasure today, or even like the feeling. Most of the gamers of today are so used to being lead by the nose to the next objective with no breathing room. They expect fast pace action like COD to entertain them with no time for wandering off the track or exploring. When a game comes along that breaks this trend (like Skyward Sword) people will often dismiss it, which is a huge shame. Anyway, the difficulty is a had thing to balance in a game or a game series, but in my opinion, games need to be hard. Some of the levels in DK Country Returns are amazingly hard and the World S levels of Galaxy 2 were at times on par with rage quitting, but beating them was the most amazing feeling. Conquering an easy game is usually unsatisfying, but there is still some fun to be had with it. On the other end of the spectrum from Galaxy 2, there's something like COD which is so easy (in the campaign) that beating it is like...drinking water. Effortless. Make a game too easy and the player loses interest. Make a game to hard, the gamer will most likely rage quit. Personally, harder games are for me.