How hard do you like it?

[Erik_Twice]

Game's difficulty, of course. Are you the kind who prefers a calm walk in the park or the one who prefers ten enemies per bullet?


I like hard difficulty but I hate wasting time with grinding or a console-like save system so I normally play everything on the slighty harder difficulty but not the highest.

Assume well done difficulty levels.

[noiseredux]

default is my default.

[irixith]

I like a game to have a challenge, aka a properly implemented difficulty curve, where the game gradually increases the difficulty.

Hard for the sake of being hard? No thanks. Challenging and then ridiculously hard at the end with no curve? No thanks.

[Rocketman]

Usually "normal" the first time playing through, and if I decide it's a bit too easy I'll adjust the difficulty.

[Inazuma]

All of the above. I like to pick easy the first time I play a game, and then keep increasing the difficulty with each playthrough.

[ZeroAX]

depends on the genre.

Easy for RPGs, normal for FPS, 3rd person action games and strategy games, and hard on platformers (as long as they are not broken)

[FerretGamer]

Back in the day I didn't mind playing on hard for a first playthrough. However, I am now faced with limited time and patience. As such, I almost always choose easy or normal since I usually only have time for one playthrough.

Nowadays, I just want to have a good stress free time with a game since I've got enough challenges and stresses from dealing with school, work, married life, and children. Of course, some games are excellent at masking challenge with fun such as Pilotwings Resort. The game gets challenging in the Gold/Platinum missions; however, I've been having so much fun with that game.

[Niode]

If given the option of difficulty, I put it on the hardest. Mainly because it makes games last longer. If I put games on the normal difficulty I just breeze through them. I'd rather have to think outside the box to overcome the odds. Plus I'm a sucker for punishment. I LOVE IT. Especially when each brickwall is overcome and you just go "FUCK YES" *adrenaline surge*.

One thing that really pisses me off these days is giving you say 4 difficulty settings; easy, normal, hardcore, insane but Insane is locked until you complete the game. What's the point? Seriously. Why can't I just bang it on Insane and slog through the game. It just encourages me to put it on easy, blast through the entire game in a couple of hours, then put it on Insane to play it properly. I HATE it when devs do that sort of stupid shit.

[brunoafh]

I tend to pick the hardest difficulty if I'm given the option (with the exception of FPS, which I don't really play anyway).

I think that the best route is that there is no initial difficulty option, and the difficulty instead is an integral part of the game in general. The game's challenge should be set by the developers as part of the experience (most recently, think Demon's Souls). Unlocking bonus difficulties is cool under this philosophy too.

[J T]

Perhaps it's a faulty assumption, but I assume that the difficulty that the designer most intends for me to experience the game at is the default setting, so I start with that. If I really like the game I might amp it up to hard. I never go to easy unless I'm just trying to burn through some unlockables, it's kind of a pride thing.

I do like hard games, but some games don't need to be hard to be fun, and others have the difficult as a major component of the fun, such as Super Meat Boy.