Are Games Getting Easier?

An anonymous reader writes
"I can't help feel that this generation of games for both consoles and PCs are getting increasingly dumbed down and easier to complete. There's no challenge in today's games, most of which can be completed on the day of purchase. Triple A titles such as Halo, Modern Warfare 2 are the worst of the lot. The whole reason for this article is Medal of Honor, this can be completed within hours of purchase. Where's the fun in that?"

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/1...Getting-Easier

I guess its because of the gaming era I grew up in but I miss the days when every millimeter of every jump mattered. When the slightest mistake would cause you to have to start all over. No recovering shields, no checkpoint every other screen, and no endless continues.

I'm mostly referring to the days of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, etc. Those games may not have been technically superior, but you had to emerge yourself into the games to such an extent that when you cleared a stage, beat a boss, or even beat the entire game, the sense of accomplishment felt was like no other.

Bottom line, games getting easier to cater to casual gamers will rarely make for a better game.

The last I remember was DMC 3 on the PS2, it had the right amount of difficulty

Agreed. At least there are some gems that occationaly pop up like Demons' Souls.

DLC and FPS online multiplayer is to blame. Why ship the whole game when people are more than willing to pay more via DLC and what is the point in making a long singleplayer FPS when everyone is only going to play the MP part.

There's no fun in an impossible part of a game. Mario == G3y.

I just laugh at people who call themself "Proper Gamers" because they play old 8&16 bit games on emulators, but then almost burn out the savestate system from constant save/loads everytime there's a difficult section, back then people could play 1 game over 100 times just to complete it, and when i bought a game it was so rare it was like an event so made sure i did everything possible to complete it, unlike now you play a game for an hour then ends up shelved and never played again.