{"id":116310,"date":"2020-08-04T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/08\/soapbox_theres_no_shame_in_playing_on_easy_even_if_youre_a_pro"},"modified":"2020-08-04T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T17:00:00","slug":"soapbox-theres-no-shame-in-playing-on-easy-even-if-youre-a-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/08\/04\/soapbox-theres-no-shame-in-playing-on-easy-even-if-youre-a-pro\/","title":{"rendered":"Soapbox: There’s No Shame In Playing On Easy, Even If You’re A Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Dark<\/a><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s time to make a \u2018confession\u2019 that will potentially see me getting shunned by some gamers. I have no shame in doing so, though, and I hope that by making this known about myself maybe others will also have the confidence to come forward too. Right, here goes.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I play games on Easy difficulty.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, before you round up a posse to descend on the comments section and call me a games \u201cjournalist\u201d with quote marks (a cutting attack so devastatingly original that it happens\u2026 well, every day really), hear me out, because I happen to have very<\/em> good reasons for this.<\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s no need for me to \u201cgit gud\u201d, because I\u2019m happy enough with my current level of “gudness”, thanks very much<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Firstly, let me get the obligatory credentials out of the way: not for the sake of boasting or anything, but just to eliminate the inevitable \u201cgit gud\u201d nonsense that will come with a statement like this. I\u2019ve been gaming for nearly 35 years, I\u2019ve been playing Nintendo games since before the NES even launched in the UK and I\u2019ve reviewed literally thousands<\/em> of games in a career spanning nearly a decade-and-a-half.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t usually blow my own trumpet because the internet has enough show-offs as it is, but please excuse a little toot-toot<\/em> in this instance. This isn\u2019t a situation where someone new to gaming is struggling to cope or anything like that: there\u2019s no need for me to \u201cgit gud\u201d, because I\u2019m happy enough with my current level of “gudness”, thanks very much.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the main reason? Simply put, life\u2019s too short, and the older I get the clearer this becomes. There used to be a time (mainly when I was in my late teens and early twenties) when I would happily play games all day and night. I still have vivid memories of a three-day Dreamcast binge at my first uni flat in which we played for so long we ended up accidentally inventing Danger Doubles, a four-player version of Virtua Tennis<\/strong> where you had to keep nudging your partner to stop them falling asleep.<\/p>\n

\"Call<\/a><\/figure>\n

I’m now 37 and the idea of pulling an all-nighter \u2013 let alone three in a row \u2013 is laughable. I’m juggling my freelance work, my own site<\/a>, my book-writing career<\/a>, my 9-to-5 job and the small matter of a two-year-old daughter, so free time is very much at a premium these days. I wouldn’t change any of it, either: this is my life now, and I’m delighted with it. What it does mean, however, is that I have to be more careful with how I spend what little free time I have. On some nights I’ll be lucky to get a spare hour or two to play games, and I need to make that time count. This is where Easy difficulty comes into it.<\/p>\n

\n

Many of these people have no problem playing on Hard, even though presumably the true artistic vision would be the Normal difficulty level<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I\u2019m playing games, I want to make sure I\u2019m at least making some sort of progress. I want to turn off my game after my session and be satisfied that I\u2019m working my way towards the end. If it turns out I\u2019ve only got 90 minutes to myself that evening, I don\u2019t want to spend that entire time doing the same level over and over again because of a particularly tricky section. If I\u2019m on the fourth mission and by the end of the night I\u2019m still on the fourth mission, that\u2019s a wasted night in my book. That\u2019s why I\u2019ll happily drop the difficulty: that way I may be on mission seven or eight by the end of the night instead.<\/p>\n

Most of these games have stories, too. Most of the time I\u2019m just more interested in seeing where the story goes than in any sort of serious challenge. Various people took the time to write a game\u2019s dialogue, perform that dialogue, create the necessary assets, make an ending and the like. Some of the people who own these games will never see the back halves of them because they\u2019ll bump the difficulty up to Hard, get burnt out playing the same levels multiple times, and move onto a different game before they reach the end.<\/p>\n

There will be some who baulk at the idea of an Easy difficulty level, and bleat on about how it ruins the \u201cartistic vision\u201d of the game. Oddly, many of these people have no problem playing on Hard, even though presumably the true artistic vision would be the Normal difficulty level. It seems if you\u2019re willing to make things more difficult than the default you\u2019re doing nothing wrong, but if you want to make things a bit easier you\u2019re somehow spitting in the developers\u2019 faces.<\/p>\n

\"Super<\/a><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s the deal with artistic visions, though: if I know a game is going to take up a huge chunk of my free time and consist of repeating difficult sections over and over again, I\u2019m probably going to give it a miss entirely and play something else instead. If you\u2019re so concerned about me experiencing a developer\u2019s artistic vision as intended, surely you\u2019d rather I played through it in a slightly easier state than not playing it at all? I\u2019ve never played Dark Souls<\/a><\/strong> and I\u2019d absolutely love to because by all accounts the lore is brilliant, but I just don\u2019t have the time to put up with all its cheap tricks; I fully appreciate that many players love that aspect of the game, but I just want to get on with it.<\/p>\n

\n

Both my dad and a self-appointed \u2018hardcore\u2019 gamer paid the same amount of money for the game, and both thoroughly enjoyed it in their own way<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are degrees to this, of course. It\u2019s not like I want the game to play itself or anything like that. You may remember features like the Super Guide<\/a> in New Super Mario Bros. Wii<\/a><\/strong> and the Cosmic Guide<\/a> in Super Mario Galaxy 2<\/a><\/strong>, where the game will offer to play through a level for you if you can\u2019t beat it. I\u2019ll always turn something like that down because that\u2019s taking it too far in my opinion (although, crucially, I\u2019d always fight to keep it in there, because others may need it and who am I to decide where the line is?).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the whole point, I suppose: difficulty is subjective<\/em>. What might be considered too hard for you may be a cakewalk for me, or vice versa. My dad loves his Xbox One and particularly loves the Call of Duty<\/strong> campaigns, but if they didn\u2019t have the easier \u2018Recruit\u2019 difficulty levels, he\u2019d have given up on playing them a long<\/em> time ago. As it is he\u2019s played through practically all of them and loved every minute of it. And here\u2019s the secret: him doing that had absolutely zero impact on people playing through it on Veteran difficulty. Both my dad and a self-appointed \u2018hardcore\u2019 gamer paid the same amount of money for the game, and both thoroughly enjoyed it in their own way. That\u2019s how it should be.<\/p>\n

Naturally, there are plenty of times when I don\u2019t play on Easy. Whenever I\u2019m reviewing a game for Nintendo Life, my own site or anyone else, I always play through it on its default difficulty: after all, it\u2019s only fair to judge games on what the developer feels is the best way to play it. And there are still times when I actually feel like a challenge and I\u2019ll pop on Mega Man 2<\/a><\/strong> or play something online.<\/p>\n

\"Honestly,<\/a>
Honestly, give Danger Doubles a try next time you’ve got your Dreamcast out. You’ll love it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People play games for different reasons. Some play them because they want to test their abilities, others play them to relax and escape the stresses of the real world. I\u2019m very much in the latter camp these days. I\u2019m at the point in my gaming life where I no longer feel the need to justify my skill level: I\u2019m content knowing that I\u2019m good enough to play through a difficult game if I ever need to. It\u2019s just that, right now, I really don\u2019t want to: I\u2019d much rather make my way through my backlog and enjoy a bunch of shorter, simpler adventures than spend a while slowly making progress on just one of them.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, my message should be an obvious one (but it isn\u2019t, because the internet<\/em>). You play your games your way, and let me play my games my way. I don\u2019t question the young bucks who still have enough free time to pump 30 hours into a game on a weekend and test their skills to the limit; if you\u2019re enjoying the challenge, go for it. Just appreciate that not everyone is in the same boat and many of us just like to sail ours on the river without going through the rapids and over the waterfalls. As I approach my 40s, life gives me enough stress without the games I play adding to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time to make a \u2018confession\u2019 that will potentially see me getting shunned by some gamers. I have no shame in doing so, though, and I hope that by making this known about myself maybe others will also have the confidence to come forward too. Right, here goes. Sometimes I play games on Easy difficulty. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}