| By :
Mark Etinger
I remember the old days where video games were hard. You'd put an original NES controller in my hands and I fought tooth and nail to beat Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania. And in most cases, I was so young I didn't have the concentration and patience to do so, nor the hand eye coordination. Even today as an adult I find these games to be incredibly hard, compared to the titles of today of which I've beaten every one I own. But is it a good thing that games have become gradually easier over the years? Think about when you first beat Megaman or figured out the clues in DejaVu. You felt good, accomplished. You spent hours, days, weeks, sometimes even months trying to complete a game and when you did, you bragged to all your friends. In fact, some of these video games are still worth bringing up and bragging about for those who really know what a challenge they were. There was something rewarding about overcoming a challenge, about feeling as though you really did something that took skill. Now, games aren't hard to beat. It no longer takes skill or a well timed jump. All it takes is patience and hours put into a game. As long as you put in the time towards playing through the storyline, you can beat a game. There's no sense of challenge. While games are more story driven, so much so they could be mistaken for interactive movies, there's nothing else there but taking the time to sit through it all so you can see the ending. This isn't completely true about every game. Even the most recent iterations of Ninja Gaiden, while all dressed up in 3D graphics, are still as hard as their predecessors ever were (or harder). But it's still rare to find. Boasting about beating a game just doesn't hold weight. Now it's more about completing games in their entirety, as evident by achievements and trophies collected through the game which are created to make you go back and play again and again until you do certain actions to get them. It's not quite the same and sometimes I long for the days of a really challenging video game, even if I do like being able to see the ending of the games I play. Still, it doesn't mean as much when I know everyone has seen the ending and not just me because I was that skilled player.
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