A recent look back at some nemesis games raised one question over and over again: have games gotten easier recently?  Now, some may inclined to simply make the argument that we, as gamers, have simply gotten better at games on average as time has gone by, but that dodges the issue.  Instead, to really analyze this question, we first have to ask “what makes a game difficult?”

There are, of course, many answers to that question: intricate puzzles, tricky jumps, and twitch timing are all elements that can contribute to a game’s overall level of challenge.  At core of the matter, however, is something more critical.  In general, the difficulty of games can be broken down into two fundamental categories: challenges that, when encountered and failed at, a gamer says “I know what I did wrong there” vs. those that, following defeat, a gamer says “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

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Last time, we looked over some of the games from the days of yore that dealt with issues of morality. This time, we’re going to hit the more recent past and deal with some titles that have come since the turn of the century.

Let us begin in a far-off time known as 2003. War was in the air, the Hubble started deep fielding the universe, and the first-ever (non-pen&paper) Star Wars RPG was released: Knights of the Old Republic.

Now, as any Jedi worth his salt can tell you, the moment you bring the Force into the equation, one must invariably face the issue of the Light Side versus the Dark Side. That said, the previous 15 years of Star Wars titles had managed pretty solidly to avoid ever doing that. Either you didn’t play a Force user, or you played someone locked into the side of “Good” with no questions asked.

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