Being born in 1979, I had the good fortune to be growing up during the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons: The 1980s. Every Saturday brought with it the promise of exciting new adventures, from the early days of He-Man to the latter days of The Pirates of Dark Water.  Lion robots would assemble into giant fighting machines, weather satellites threatened the world, and pizza was consumed in mass quantities by reptilian lifeforms.

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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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I was entirely tempted to just write Street Fighter IV five times and call this update done, but my “journalistic integrity” is compelling me to actually say something about the game.  While on normal mode the game contains the now-fighter-standard completely cheap final boss, the game in and of itself is incredibly fun.  I’ve almost got all of the characters unlocked (still going for Gouken and Seth), and so far I’ve had the most fun playing as Chun-Li and Rose…Rose herself is beautifully animated, and the visual effects for her attacks are top-notch.  In other news, I snagged Soldner X: Himmelsturmer and have been playing the crap out of it’s pure, shmup-y goodness…look for a review in the near future, as soon as I can actually finish the damn thing.  It’s my goal to have Persona 4 finally finished in this next week, and assuming SF4 doesn’t keep eating up 100% of my free time, that goal could actually get accomplished!

-Jeff Feeser

So far this week I’ve managed to play through the first two islands of Fantasy General about 5 times; this is because I keep getting to the third island and deciding I’ve got the complete wrong army.  It’s been a good learning experience, and I’ve been branching out into trying some different strategies than the ones I’ve doggedly stuck to for the last ten years.  I’ve also been keeping my eyes on the daily trickly of information on the next TF2 class update for the Scout, which is, unfortunately, my absolute worst class in that game – I shall continue to wait patiently for the Engy update. Received Lost Odyssey from Gamefly the other day, but haven’t had a chance to crack it open yet, and I’ve got the new Fire Emblem for the DS en route as we speak, so next week should be chock full of new gaming stories.  Also been working on a redesign for the site, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the upcoming weeks!

-Joel Haddock

After spending time over the weekend advancing plotlines in Persona, almost all of this week has been spent in various dungeon-crawling games. The boss in the 4th Persona dungeon didn’t even give a second though about handing me my own ass, so i decided that I needed to get my levels up, especially that of my healer. One thing I like about the Persona games is the “rush battle” option…if I know i’m going to win, hit triangle and your dudes will just attack over and over, until the enemy is dead, while I sit back and watch something on TV (truly, I am a great leader). Also nabbed “Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony” for the PSP…I loved the PC games (and am a huge sucker for that style of game), and I’m enjoying the PSP outing as well…not a lot of depth there, but it’s good for a diversion when I just want to play something for 20 minutes. I also finally got around to hopping on the Left4Dead train, and almost immediately hopped back off due to my PC’s complete inability to play the damn thing at a decent framerate, which has angered me to the point where I’m finally considering biting the bullet and getting a new PC – anyone have any recommendations for the best gaming machine I can build on about a $650 budget?

-Jeff Feeser

My gaming time was extremely limited this week, to the point that I think all I’ve actually played was a short bout of Team Fortress 2 and some Hoshigami Remix on the train.  Hoshigami Remix, it should be noted, was designed by beings from another plane of existance with a deep hatred for humans; the coinfeigm engraving/evolution system makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  On the TF2 front, I put some more time in with my map (currently, ctf_inspiredname), and started trying to get a handle on playing Scout in preparation for the pending update.  Scout is the one class I have always studiously avoided, due to my really sucking at it – now is the time to remedy that.   Finally, I found myself suddenly missing Star Wars: Galaxies crafting system yesterday completely out of the blue; this is grounds for slapping me.

-Joel Haddock

The Shin Megami Tensei series of games is one with a large popular following in Japan, multiple titles under its umbrella, and a rich in-game history.  I knew absolutely none of this when I first picked up Persona 3 in 2007.  The “3″ in the title, of course, indicated that there were at least upwards of 2 games prior to it in the series, but I had been informed that I could jump into P3 without any prior experience with the series.  This, it turns out, was completely true.  The Persona games tend to be fairly standalone titles,  a la Final Fantasy, and while you may miss some subtle (or not so subtle) nods to the older titles, you can easily play them as their own entity.

Persona 3, on the whole, was a great game.  It was not without its flaws, however, and some of them could be amazingly frustrating.  An “expanded edition” of P3 came out shortly after I had beaten it called Persona 3: FES.  FES was said to contain many, many hours of additional content and expansion to the story, but having just sunk 60-odd hours into P3, I was not quite ready to jump back in.  As the months passed, and I geared myself up to tackle FES, Atlus announced that Persona 4 would be coming out soon. More importantly, it would be coming out on the PlayStation 2 and not the PS3, which meant I was actually going to be able to play it on launch day.  Thoughts of FES were pushed aside as I eagerly anticipated the next installment.

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After 65 hours of making friends and beating things with swords, I can finally claim victory over Persona 4; my review, of course, is pending!  I managed to get the “real” ending to the game on the first try, but not through any skill of my own – I was checking a FAQ for something unrelated during the end sequence, and happened to glance down and see the completely random series of actions I had to take to get the best ending.  I’ve talked about arbitrary actions leading to good/bad endings, and this unfortunately falls into the same category – still, a minor quibble overall.   Still powering my way through Hoshigami Remix on the DS, and I curse this game’s lack of a quick-save feature on a daily basis; completely inexcusable in a handheld game.  Finally, on the old-fashioned side of things, I’ve just finished writing the rules and putting together a prototype of a boardgame I’m working on; I’ll be running the first playtest this weekend, and many revisions will be soon to follow, I’m sure.

-Joel Haddock

I, too, am still plugging my way through Persona 4, although my progress hasn’t been nearly as great as Joel’s, due to the game’s constant propensity to screw me over.  A fight will start, the enemy goes first, enrages my main character, who attacks it, the attack is countered, he criticals himself, and dies; and in Persona, when your main character dies, it’s game over.  Poof, there goes an hour or so of work, and my motivation to continue playing for that evening.  I managed to snag myself a PSP used for 30 bucks last week (in a very shady, craigslist based deal), so I’m now looking for anyone’s recommendations of games, so let me know in the comments.  Final note:  I know i’m late getting on the Lumines train, but if you haven’t gotten it yet, don’t…it’ll ruin your life…I started playing, and next thing i knew, it was two and a half hours later.

-Jeff Feeser

Took my first stab at (what I think is) the final boss of Persona 4 last night; got wiped out after twenty minutes of fighting, so I think I’m definitely going to have to revise my strategy on this one.  This is one of those games I’ll be a little sad to finish, because I’ve enjoyed playing it so much – that’s the sure sign of a keeper.  Got King’s Bounty for the PC this week after playing the demo – plays very much like Heroes of Might and Magic, but with a real-time world map.  I’ll provide more impressions as I get some more time in with it.  Finally, started over on Hoshigami: Remix on the DS after a 6 month hiatus; that game was designed by people who hate people.

-Joel Haddock

As cold as it seems here in Baltimore at 12 degrees, looking at the weather map shows it down to -40 in Minneapolis, so suddenly things don’t seem so bad.  On the final dungeon of Persona 4 right now, though I feel like I have failed to sufficiently max out several key social links; I chalk this up to poor planning on my part.  The game remains incredibly solid through and through, and is reason enough for anyone to dust off their PS2. On the PC side of things, I’ve loaded up good ol’ Panzer General 2, which continues to challenge me after all these years.  My TF2 map has been on hold for most of the week due to lack of time, so that 4 month timeframe suddenly seems annoyingly plausible.

-Joel

Due to the complete lack of efficient heat in my home, it appears my brain has completely been frozen over, and as such I haven’t been able to devote as much time to Persona as I’d like to.  Given my need to have a gaming experince that doesn’t require much thinking, I’ve turned to the old standby, the first person shooter.  I’ve been spending the better part of the week plugging through F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2, and (the not-actually-first-person-but-close-enough) Gears 2.  While they’ve all been great at passing the time, none of them have been particularly engrossing, with Far Cry being the worst of the bunch.  I’m still working on the original Prince of Persia on XBLA as well, in preparation for a “then and now” piece I’m writing on the series, but I’m stymied by the game’s completely brutal difficulty.  Finally, I dug in the bargin bin this week and nabbed a copy of Skate, and while i think my skater’s broken enough bones to be put in traction several times over, I personally have been having a blast putting him there.

-Jeff

I started out this week by discovering that, for some unknown reason, Castlevania: Order of Ecclasia is the one game I apparently cannot play on the train commute to work.  For whatever strange reason, it makes me incredibly dizzy.  So, with that unavailable, I decided to go back and re-tackle Panzer Tactics, which I was never able to beat (which I guess makes me a historically accurate player…).  On the console front, my march through Persona 4 continues, and I think I’m coming to the end of the game – it remains a fantastic game, and I’ll have a full review as soon as I wrap it up.  I also got down and dirty with starting my text Team Fortress 2 map this week, and I’m aiming to finish this one in a much quicker timeframe than the 5 months it took me for my last one…

-Joel Haddock

Much like Joel, I’m still stomping through Persona 4, although my progression hasn’t been as quick due to the game’s propensity to murder your main character without you so much as taking an action.  Unfortunately, unlike most RPGs outside of the Persona series, as soon as your main character is offed, it’s game over, due to your teammate’s apparent inability to use a healing potion, even though you’ve used it on their own ice-weak dumb asses plenty of times.  Since Joel and Chris got it for Xmas, I’ve also been spurred to get back to Order of Ecclesia, in which I’ve just entered the seriously hard Castle of Dracula.  My only problem with the game so far has been that it falls into the niche that I call “games which require GameFAQs”, as I see no way that i could’ve possibly found the last two villagers without a FAQ or randomly running around the world and hitting every single wall with my mace.  Maybe there’s an X-Ray Specs glyph that you can use that I just haven’t found yet…

-Jeff Feeser