Rev Rant: crushing difficulty

Dunno why the formatting is all screwed up with this week’s rant (nor why, after almost half a year of doing these things, I’m still incapable of wrangling Final Cut Pro into submission), but it’s about absurdly difficult games like Pathologic, The Void, and Demon’s Souls, and the pros and cons of that sort of design.

I didn’t mention this in the video, but I’ve never played a game that actually made me feel a true sense of desperation until I played The Void (with the possible exception of the corridor scene in MGS4, though that probably doesn’t count).

On the one hand: great! How wonderful to feel a particular emotion so acutely, and have that emotion effected entirely through gameplay alone. On the other hand: for every one person who finishes The Void there are a thousand who will not, and the desperation itself didn’t really allow me any degree of intentional freedom. You technically do a lot of “exploring” in The Void, technically, yet it never really feels like “true” exploring since you’re only visiting new areas out of a ravenous hunger for more Color. Hard to admire the scenery when you’re starving to death.

Really, though, this rant is more of a “hey what do you think” sort of thing, so feel free to leave comments below.