Tedium and Cruelty

Difficulty in video games is a deceptively broad topic since the challenge can come in many different forms.  Depending on the game, what's called for could be lightening reflexes, system comprehension, group co-operation, or supreme patience.  On top of all that, there's one other point worth considering - the attitude of the designer(s).

To paraphrase something Rowan Kaiser said on the "Three Moves Ahead" podcast with regards to Darkest Dungeon II, 'I can see why the developers made the game that way, but I wish they hadn't.'  It's a sentiment I can relate to.  I was only ever able to finish the original Darkest Dungeon after a judicious application of mods that collectively lessened the grind and provided a nice variety of tools to negate some of the more punishing RNG elements.  I don't hate roguelikes, deck builders, or games that use percentage values to denote the chance of success.  However, my tolerance for these gameplay mechanics hinges on the overall difficulty of the game.  Perhaps an especially egregious example is in order?  To illustrate the viewpoint I'm trying to convey, lets look at another game - Fear and Hunger.  

Developed in RPG Maker, Fear and Hunger is the product of a single intelligent, but deeply disturbed mind.  The game features graphic violence and nudity (as well as all the horrible associations and wildly inappropriate topics that exist between those two things) plastered over a grimdark fantasy setting.  Basically, the world is like that of a Souls game with the edginess cranked up to the max.  Personally, I don't see why the sole developer of Fear and Hunger went through all the effort considering most of the 'adults only' content detracts from (rather than adds to) what the game is really trying to accomplish.  Even in gratuitous horror stories, sometimes less is more.  Anyway...the combat mechanics are turn-based, more akin to a 16-bit JRPG than anything else.  I could go into more detail, but there are already some excellent videos about the way the game is played on Youtube channels such as "Zuldin" and "Super Eyepatch Wolf".  Suffice to say, Fear and Hunger comes across as a video game that really hates the player.  Well...maybe that's a bit disingenuous, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that fans of this game also have masochistic leanings.  Even so, a lot of the brutal challenge can be mitigated by player knowledge.  Specifically, item application, secret areas, class capabilities, and combat tactics all go a long way toward making the experience less trial-and-error.  The game even has a tutorial area of sorts, though it is very much of the show-don't-tell variety. 

So, I'm sure to the unfamiliar this sounds an awful lot like a Soulsborne game or some kind of fantasy take on the survival horror genre.  The thing is you can't grind for EXP, nor are there any random encounters.  Additionally, unlike Silent Hill, Resident Evil or pretty much any iconic entry in the survival horror genre, Fear and Hunger has mechanics like random item distribution, procedurally generated environments, soft lock traps (both time and location based), as well as enemies that have insta-kill attacks that come down to a literal coinflip.  There's even a merchant selling restorative items that are actually deadly poisons.  Oh...and the save system is deliberately unreliable, plus the game sometimes crashes.  It's all very arbitrary, frustrating, and (when combined with the game's generally downer endings) comes across as more than a bit nihilistic in a post-modern way.  Given the rise of meta-modernism in media, it feels "old hat" to me.  Why do people still insist on deconstructing fantasy tropes these days when G.R.R. Martin popularized doing that way back in 1996?  Build something new from the ruins already, I say!  Actually, the developer of Fear and Hunger did change things up a bit with his sequel Termina, but that's a game for another blogpost. 

Despite activating pretty much every trigger warning there is, Fear and Hunger does have a degree artistry to it.  Unfortunately, much like Darkest Dungeon (I and especially II) there's a whole lot of meanspirited, obtuse and downright hostile game design piled on top.  Let me put it this way, if the developers of these games were table-top RPG hosts (DMs, GMs, etc.) they would rarely explain the rules, never let their players do anything fun or cool, and would most definitely take every opportunity to torture characters in disturbing detail.  To anyone that happens to be nodding their head while reading this and saying to themselves "sign me up", I have to insist that you consider holding yourself in higher esteem.  I enjoy a challenge, but finishing a crushingly difficult game isn't a rite of passage.  Nobody is going to look up to you, let alone care that you beat these or any other hard video games.  So, having made that perfectly clear, I have to ask, are you sure you don't have better ways to spend you limited time and money than on these killjoys?