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Superhotline Miami - Choose Your Challenge
41 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about challenging games and how important it is to allow you to pick your battles (and challenges) in this week's episode!
Intro:
- HL2M – Divide
Outro:
- HL2M – Dust (Carpenter Brut Remix)
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Transcript
00:00:18
Speaker
Thanks for watching.
Introduction and Morning Routines
00:00:35
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Substone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? Uh good, I think good. I still feel very sleepy. I still have not showered um This is my recovery day. So i'm gonna Be a goblin and this is implying that i'm not a goblin all other days But this is the one where I have um Accepted that about myself. That's fair. That's fair. You mentioned morty and shower. Are you a
00:01:10
Speaker
a shower before bed or a shower when you wake up in the morning type of individual or both, but I will say This does violate the one principle we learned from Sesame Street. Don't waste water Ooh, about that. I don't drink water a lot of times, so that kind of probably weighs out. It's osmosis. That's why you need the shower. You're quiet, basically.
00:01:34
Speaker
um i I like to do it in the morning or whenever I'm like, oh, now we're getting up, because that for me, it's like a a state change, because like right now I'm essentially still in my pajamas, which is like shorts and a t-shirt. But I'm not ready to go out and do something. I'd want to shower, brush teeth, get ready, go through that process. But for me, this is how you start your day clean. Right. So it's kind of like you would wake up, brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack, get in the shower, and you're like, wait a minute. No, this isn't that. It's not going to be like that, Kesha. Then you can be a productive individual. Yes. I make myself vomit up the the jack that I have used to brush my teeth and uh That's entirely fair Yeah, I just don't mean like it if you feel really gross at the end of the day I get a shower like yesterday I do that I came back from being all day and it was like hot out and I had jeans on the whole day. I thought I brought a pair of shorts for change and I did not
00:02:41
Speaker
um So when I got home obviously a night shower. Yes, but even so that morning like when I got up. I'm like I got a shower. Yeah It's part of the ritual. I think to to start the day It's nice if you've if you're waking up early enough to have the time for it. um which I do, i I'm going to concede that I do not do, but I think it's better from like a work life perspective to have these transition phases from like, OK, I'm not working into I'm getting ready to work, kind of can slowly pick it up and get into work ah versus OK, I got to wake up, maybe miss an alarm or something, got to wake up, get ready or super fast, immediately sit down and jump into it.
00:03:26
Speaker
um less advised. I mean, at that point, you just do whatever you're going to do. And then around lunchtime, you're like, I'm going to grab a shower quick i need shower and you're like, ah, I'm clean. I'm going to have some food. And then it all just lines up. Just imagining you're just in the shower with a sandwich trying to position it. So it's not getting it by the water. Yeah. um But
00:03:59
Speaker
Glad you're doing well. um Hopefully you can get that shower at some point and you can wake up.
Exploring Minimal State Games
00:04:05
Speaker
Obviously you'll wake up because today's topic is about um two games that I played a lot more than Dave did. So curiosity, curiosity will help wake Dave. No, I was thinking of exactly how to angle this. and considered talking to you beforehand about how we should hit the topics, like what's interesting to bring up. um But then you know what, it's better if we bring the listeners in, I think. So you guys can help us decide in real time, just feedback, send in the emails now. we'll read them now um So the topic is ah kind of a pun, super hotline Miami.
00:04:47
Speaker
um But obviously this is a combination of super hot and hotline Miami. Um, and the core idea I wanted to discuss today is the, um, kind of the minimal state that a game requires to continue to be enjoyable and how sometimes that minimalism actually improves the experience of the game.
00:05:15
Speaker
But I did some soul searching, and this is in some ways very similar to our episode called The Loop, um where we talk about like a core gameplay mechanic that inspires the game.
Game Mechanics and Player Engagement
00:05:27
Speaker
um I think this could be a little bit different than that if we focus on some of the minimalism or we pair things down to the very minor point. like What is what is the the absolute core of it? um But I've been talking for a little bit here. i'm gonna hand things over with a question, and I'm going to relate this to a different game first. I'm going to get back to Superhot, Hotline Miami, and all that jazz. But like what is the core important mechanic of a game that you play that you think keeps it interesting, keeps it fresh? You could pick a game. It looks like games he has to play. ah
00:06:09
Speaker
Because obviously, my most recent or like most common occurring is going to be something like Dota 2 or Elden Ring. Dota 2's loop is very much, it's the same structurally as far as kill your opponents, work your way into their side of the map, destroy their base. um But what makes it fresh and new is it's a different dynamic each time. You're going to be playing different characters for your team. and You're going to be playing against different people every time. And there's also going to be like meta shifts that happen every so often with patches. right But that is the gameplay loop. And let's say it's like roughly an hour, it's you know what you're getting and you're going to be expecting every single time. Right.
00:06:52
Speaker
Eldering has a similar, I don't want to say a similar game loop to Dota 2. Hot take, can justify it. yeah this And it similarly has a game quote unquote loop as far as exploration, combat, and then like I want to say spectacle fights. Yeah. um And like for me, I love the exploration part of it. That's the best part of like a fresh new experience in those Souls-like games. But that part is not truly repeatable all the time.
00:07:26
Speaker
But going back and re-experiencing some content, um understanding a move set better, ah just going back, doing different runs, trying different builds type of thing. But that's kind of like a make your own thing. I can also be somebody who just collects and makes crafting materials all the time and have a blast, right? So that one's a little more subjective and open-ended. Yeah. Yeah. So go ahead. Oh, I have, I have a list. You're going through all the recent games I've played. The last one I was going to mention, cause we talked about this a while ago, RoboQuest, I think is fully out, maybe even was at the time of the episode.
00:08:05
Speaker
um But I had it on Steam, I was like, oh, let's reinstall that again, do some roguelike stuff. And again, the roguelike elements are pretty much like the weapons you get, ah some of the enemies you'll encounter, some of the routes you'll take. But. the The core loop is that fast-paced music driving you through, ah them giving you some movement tech as you progress through the game and unlock more things to make it feel like you can do things even faster and then getting access to better weapons and abilities. ah So it feels like you're streamlining your run.
00:08:42
Speaker
Right. But it's really easy to pick back up and go into it because each time you feel like you're getting an extra piece of, oh, that's actually going to help me out here. Oh, that could be huge. I'll compare these two things together. um
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll take a break in my ramblings. So the line that I see across all these is the argument I want to make. And kind of the focus of what I envision would be interesting to talk about is the ah the pacing that these games have. Because this is actually something that's going to come up again when we talk about super hot hotline Miami. um is there's an acceleration phase, there's a climax phase, there's a resolution phase, and all of these games that keeps you from getting worn out ah like while playing the game. like If you need to take breaks while playing video games, absolutely do it.
00:09:36
Speaker
I've moved past that in my life. That was a phase when I was young. I'll play Alden Ring all day now. um But it's because, like going back to your example, you have that exploration phase, which is a down period of ah like button inputs, activity, whatever. It's just doing it at your own pace. approaching a boss fight, maybe there's mini boss, maybe there's some difficult enemies. The heat map for the buttons you're pressing is going to increase a little bit. You get into a boss fight. If you were just keeping track of how many buttons were pressed for a given period of time, there will be so many button presses during a boss fight. A lot of them panicked, maybe throw a controller, you know. um Hopefully not. um And then it goes back into resolution, probably because you died in the boss fight.
00:10:25
Speaker
But maybe also because you beat the boss fight, right? Two valid outcomes. And it's the same thing for Dota, in a way, right? You have this down period of getting ready for the match, picking characters, the slow early game, accelerates in into team fights, culminates in the destruction of an enemy objective, hopefully. And then you can enter that state again. um And I think that this is something that games and RoboQuest does the same thing, right? There's the shopping phase. Yeah, you need something in between. Exactly. If you don't have a palate cleanser, you get burnt out. Exactly. I don't care who you are. But like, imagine just playing Floppy Bird, where it's literally just one thing. And if you stop, you're dead and your game's done.
00:11:22
Speaker
um Yeah, it's it's the same for all the games you mentioned, and I think it's the it's going to be the same for Superhot and Hotline Miami. um The games that can keep you coming back to it is because they're confident enough to give you a break, and they understand that that's necessary in order to get you of your own volition inspired to keep going.
00:11:46
Speaker
Like there can be hooks, ah obviously. There should be some incentive to keep going. Like in RoboQuest, you're shopping so that you can get guns to use the guns and stuff like that. but um But that downtime gives you a time to take a breather and then move on to the next thing. And that one literally pauses the time, which is also really nice. They're trying to go fast. um I should introduce the games. We're actually talking about them. ah Now that we have some preamble for some of the common DNA they may share. um Super hot. We talked about a little bit some episodes back, but the very, very brief summary of the type of game it is, is it is a first person shooter where time only moves where you do. You're immediately thrust into a combat scenario with opponents that will spawn from monster closets or like red doors, whatever you want to call them.
00:12:44
Speaker
And the goal is to beat defeat a certain number of opponents, occasionally a boss, and then you succeed. Pick the next level, maybe pick an upgrade, go again. And um and there's not a lot more to it than that outside of some like meta plot and things like that, that you don't have to worry about. That is the game. And then Hotline Miami, a personal favorite of mine, obviously. is largely based as a top-down game um where if you get hit by any attack, you're dead, outside of very few character mask selections, do you you wear a mask, where you're fighting a bunch of Russian gangsters. You kill a whole bunch of people very fast, walk out of the building, get into your ah your car, leave. And that is, for the most part, the game, with some downtime scenes in between them.
00:13:37
Speaker
um
00:13:39
Speaker
And they're interesting to me because they have this core DNA of there's not all that much going on in the game, but they can be very addictive to play in a way that we don't often see outside of like really well remembered arcade games. Yeah, it's partially a scope thing, I think, because basically each level you have is like a little puzzle Now, there's technically different ways you can solve the puzzle, but it's just, hey, you got to do this one thing for the puzzle. In the case of Hotline Miami, it's you got to kill these couple of people. ah Maybe you fail and fuck up. OK, those people are going to so spawn in the same way because you're in the same level, right? Right. Same thing for Hotline Miami. Because you can only be hit once before dying, you have to kind of plan out your route and
00:14:37
Speaker
who you're going to kill and how, but it's basically a ah puzzle you're being presented with. And again, there are different ways to solve it, but it's kind of like mechanics in a boss fight where it's going to be the same every time as far as ah what it is functionally, but it can play out in different ways. But it's hey, just try and do this one thing. not perfectly, but correctly, and then succeed and move on. Right. Into the next puzzle.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, in Hotline Miami's case, like those puzzle pieces are enemies generally don't start alerted to you. You can hit them with doors to knock them to the ground. If you like open a door while they're on the other side, it'll knock them down. And then you can kill them on the ground with a quick animation, but you're locked in that animation if you do it. um You can punch enemies, but it takes several hits to to kill them. You can use melee weapons, you can use guns, but that'll draw enemies to your position. And so a slow procedural clear of the game is completely valid. <unk> I've done it myself. There's nothing wrong with it. um But if you know how the enemy is going to react and you do this, like if you
00:15:58
Speaker
plan a route basically it's completely valid to shoot an enemy the next guy is going to run in you have a plan to deal with him you throw the gun at him to knock him down like this chaining and sequencing is where most of the gameplay actually is in Hotline Miami. And then when you pull it all off, you're like, awesome. I just got through that entire thing and I didn't get hit once, which is necessary.
Challenges and Mastery in Gaming
00:16:20
Speaker
Yes. It's kind of like in other games where you have that.
00:16:28
Speaker
Basically, you're trying to do it perfectly. Like, yeah, you can struggle through a lot of things where you're like, oh, I'm playing Binding of Isaac and you take a lot of hits in a boss. But the part that feels really good about it is going back and then being able like, oh, this level. And then you just destroy it or like this. is And you're like, oh, I know how to dodge these. I know when like the punish windows are. Another good example of a game kind of like this is Katana Zero, where you can really only be hit once. um So it demands that you do the level without being hit kind of perfectly. And you'll usually have a repeated number of attempts to get to that point. Right. And it's it's an interesting genre. I think it definitely falls into
00:17:17
Speaker
that old arcade space ah because they want to eat your quarters, right? They want you to fail. But the difference is these games hopefully don't require you to insert money into your computer to play them ah besides the one-time purchase when you buy the game and put a quarter into the USB slot. Don't do that ill-advised. um But they take that that difficulty and that challenge and that payoff like the kids that were good at arcade games. I can only speculate because our kids were kind of before my time, to be completely honest. um But there's this old 80s idea of a bunch of kids congregated again about around the one person who was good at Wave Racer or something like that. Right. Or Wipeout or whatever.
00:18:07
Speaker
um and they're just sitting there, they put one quarter in four hours ago, and they're just crushing the machine, right? Like the kid that the the arcade owners hate becomes the pit boss comes out, you gotta go. Yeah, exactly. um And these games kind of replicate that feeling if you're successful in them. When you pull off a chain of attacks in super high, if you punch an enemy, and they have a weapon, they'll drop the weapon, And it'll just be there in the air for a second, because time only moves when you move. You can grab the weapon out of the air, shoot that enemy, perhaps shoot another enemy. um And the chain feels, it's basically like, it was kind of an older reference, I guess now, but like Neo from the Matrix simulator is pretty much what it is. Yeah, I can see that.
00:19:03
Speaker
And even though it's very minimal in its presentation, like you're fighting b blocks, basically, like red blocky characters. um It was an early VR game as well. That's important context, because that's one of the reasons the aesthetic is so like minimal, and is VR couldn't run. Super great graphics spectrum. um But like when everything is working as it should, you feel like that kid in the arcade who put one quarter in and four hours have passed. And if you fail, if you get shot, you're like, I shouldn't have been moving in that instance. I should have ducked behind cover. Maybe I wasn't ready to like, I should have gone for a different enemy first.
00:19:49
Speaker
um It feels like you're that kid who's been at the arcade with that one quarter for four hours and you just died to a boss like that you shouldn't have. right You know you could have taken him. And that is the draw of these games. they're like yeah it's the You know you're good enough to do this. Like any time I fail in general, um, anytime I failed something, I will always run through my head of like, okay, what could I have done differently? Like back in the days of Wally ball, I'm also is very self-critical. Um, I don't know if that's a problem yet. I'll eventually get a therapist and look into it, but. but
00:20:27
Speaker
I'm like, oh, I probably been should have been positioned here to have more opportunity for defense. I should have been in position, et cetera. I should have been looking out for my teammates, something like that. Or if you fail in like a Souls boss fight, you're like, all right, I'm being punished by this one move. What can I do to get past this piece of the puzzle? Right. And it feels good when you are struggling up against that and then you kind of get it perfectly. It also kind of manifests like when you were younger and you had this conversation with your friends like, what would you do if like somebody broke into your house and you're like, well, I'd obviously go to the kitchen. That's where the knives are. And I've just started throwing them at them. It's just these like things of these impossible situations you're not really ever going to run into in real life. but
00:21:19
Speaker
If I was a badass, what would I do? Right. Yes, exactly. And a lot of games in general do kind of lean on that power fantasy of like, OK, show me how badass you are. Right. Yeah. So it feels good to be able to do things well and fluidly because I've definitely beaten some bosses in games where it's like, I got I got them. Uh-huh. Right. Like literally the last ring of the last ring, the last boss of the Elder Ring DLC finally got to that point. Beforehand, a lot of struggling and it still doesn't feel like I won cleanly. Whereas these types of games, you have to win cleanly and then you get to like see your your successful run of like, hey, you did it, you crushed it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it relates to the games you've
00:22:13
Speaker
you You explained too, right? Like obviously Elton ring, you made a good comparison for that, for finishing the boss fight cleanly. But even like Dota, right? Like there are characters I played in Dota, back when I played Dota, hey where I played them a lot and their win rate was pretty low. Thankfully, my team didn't check Dota buff, so they weren't criticizing me for this exclusively. um But notably like Invoker, Crystal Maiden, people like that. um Their win rates were really low. ah Crystal Maiden was okay, but like not great. They were lower, but I felt like I could play the character better. And occasionally I would have that experience where it's like, okay, I'm struggling against the wall here.
00:23:03
Speaker
But I know that it's possible to push past this. And if I do, in the rare instances where it's been it's been accomplished, it feels better than just, I could just play it i could just play Phoenix. You know, like 60, 65, whatever percent win rate it was, or Oracle, or some other character I had a really good win rate on. And it's like, those are fun characters, and I love them. But sometimes you want the challenge of improving a character that you think is not at the top of your roster. um
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's being met with some type of adversity and then having the willingness to overcome it. That's usually... I mean, that's a mark of good game design, is wanting to get those players involved by being like... I don't want to say the phrase of like, hey, bet you can't do this, but you know a little bit of some of that exists in games, whether it's designed in or not. But yeah, it feels good in the case of Dota 2 to take a character who's maybe not meant for a certain role, but you're so confident that you can use them in a certain role and then styling on people in pubs. Right. Yeah. Right. And so just being like, oh, well, like, it's Crystal Maiden can't mid. She's a support. She only plays role five. um But then overcoming that implicit boundary to be like, actually, hear me out. Hear me out in this. Right.
00:24:28
Speaker
um Yeah, it's there's different reasons people play games and that's completely valid. That's good. um But there are types of games that are I would say the ones that are on the in the sphere of video game rationale. They're the on the opposite side of this are like the narrative. non-challenging games, like a walking simulator, story-driven game, something like that. I love those games. Those games are but perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with that. um Play them, enjoy them. But this is the game line, the genre, where it's like the point is to be challenging. The point is to, and when I say challenging, I i mean like different than difficulty. Because like a lot of people see Dark Souls or Elden Ring, and they're like, the game's too hard.
00:25:20
Speaker
that's That could be true, you know based off wherever you're at. But there's a lot of ways that you can reduce the difficulty of the game, but still keep it challenging. And when I say challenging, I mean at or near your skill level, it's challenging what you can do, personally. like And the same is true for Superhot, for Hotline Miami. um super hot. The game is a lot harder if you don't use guns. um The guns don't have a lot of ammo, so you're not really allowed to use them a ton anyways. But if you're going through and you want to get use all of the tools available to you, guns kill enemies really fast at great ranges. And they may also have guns. There's reasons to use guns, but you can clear it without them with some of the powers.
00:26:10
Speaker
Um, like the ability to take the enemy's place. So he swaps bodies with you and now you have the gun. You can just throw it away or throw it at him or whatever, and then run up and punch him in the face. Um, or the ability to close distance and like hit him with a knee attack or whatever it was. There was a lot of cool abilities that allow yourself to set the challenge level within the game. And like same is true for hotline. Um, notably the masks people are, if you know anything about hotline Miami, you're probably familiar with some of the masks, at least, uh, Rasmus, um, the owl or Richard, the chicken mask, very popular. Um, that's jackets, canonical mask. Um, and those can inform the way that you play the game.
00:27:02
Speaker
and they can make the game more challenging um or easier. like One of my favorites that I particularly enjoy is Tony the Tiger. No relation.
00:27:17
Speaker
Tony the Tiger, who instinct kills enemies with his fists. like and it encourages you to move through the game really fast and just punch people, right? But the horse, it's like Dawn, I can't remember his his last name, but Dawn's something, or hurt her name. Their gendered masks also, which is funny, but... um It instant kills people if you hit them with a door, right? So now you're like, OK, how am I luring the enemies to the other sides of doors so that I can just instant kill them when I hit them with the door? um And it allows you to choose the way that you play in a way that can fit the challenge level that you want to attain there. um And that's really important because, again, these games, the impetus is you want to overcome the challenge.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yes. I mean, its same thing for a lot of those other ah role something like RoboQuest. Yeah. I mean, some of it is just build diversity. um But like certain classes, usually like the generic class will be like you're kind of evenly static across the board, just generically OK or good. But some of the other classes are going to be a little more specialist where you maybe have to weave elemental combos or specifically have us be like, oh, this one's really good with explosives. I guess I kind of have to lean into explosives to get the most out of it. Right. um But essentially putting yourself in those situations, like going back in Eldering for like a
00:28:55
Speaker
Okay, I did my strength playthrough. What's Dex like? What is it if I use perfume or beast claws? Because like you have beaten the game before, but now you're looking to approach it from another angle, right? Like how many times have you played through Hotline Miami? i Don't know there's also the two of them, but it's it's a fair chunk of time there's But like how many times did you find yourself going back through a level mm-hmm trying as a different mask in that case Oh, yeah, I mean I switch masks all the time usually because the game is
00:29:30
Speaker
I don't profess to be the best at video games. And sometimes it did challenge me. And I was like, oh, I need to just bring the guy that starts with throwing knives or something like that. Right. um But like a fair number of times for sure.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, because you know, you know, you can do it on whatever other col class you already cleared it with. Right. Mm hmm. But what about this one? Right. And the the people who kill with gorys didn't spend a lot of time on that. But shout out to slug a discord dota friend who did all of the content and binding of Isaac on three different profiles. And gets like a special thing for that. um Super majestic Platinum God 3000 or something. ahha um But just even having to switch between those characters kind of will influence a play style.
00:30:25
Speaker
oh yeah Whereas in something with Elging Ring, you really have to kind of pick that for yourself. And that's where a lot of things like challenge runs come in. Yes, I can beat the game with summons. Can I beat it without summons? Can I beat it with just a specific weapon type, like the torch or broken sword? yeah um and it Or just even, hey, I'm not going to level up at all. I'm going to do this on soul level one. God bless you, kid. Good luck. Yes. Enjoy.
00:30:55
Speaker
But yeah, the game has to be good enough for that to even exist. ahha Because if it's like a shitty, unenjoyable game, you don't really have that drive to go back and do a challenge thing. You don't want to be more challenging, you want to be more fun. That's true. That's a good thing. The fun loop has to exist first, then to be able to add other things. Right. Going back to even Super Giants games. Great fucking games. All of them. Still waiting for the FPS. But they will always have like, hey, that's cool you beat the game. ah Do you want to beat it with an extra difficulty turn down now? Do you want to be a real boy and get it like statues and stuff?
00:31:40
Speaker
um But they allow you to go beyond if you want to. Right. And that's huge because there are a lot of casual gamers who will check out a game and be like, that was cool. I'm glad I went through it. I don't necessarily want to go back and play more. The content I had was good. There's people who are like, man, this was like. really good. Superhot or Hot Lame really spoke to me, really and enjoying that game. I wish there's more content in it. Yeah. So technically, just adding some of that variability allows people to do that and kind of make their own extra content of challenge runs.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's an excellent example. um Yeah, the Supergiant games in particular are just, they may be the best example of this, of challenging game, good gameplay loop, and pick your own pick your battles kind of in a way.
Balancing Challenge and Difficulty
00:32:39
Speaker
like You can make it easier, you can make it harder, and the game will reward you for making it more difficult. But not to the extent that you didn't you feel like you didn't accomplish anything. if you left heat off in Hades, right? You get the entire story with no added heat in Hades. Like, I think you level faster in Bastion. um Something similar for Transistor, I can't remember exactly. Yeah, there are different gods you can opt into. Yeah. um But past the point, you are playing a markedly different game ah in difficulty compared to the base game.
00:33:18
Speaker
Like, take Dave and I for Elden Ring. I'll make the comparison. I mentioned this for the erd tree episode. I played through on narrative difficulty, which is to say I adapted pretty much everything at my disposable to make the boss fight as easy as possible. Short of short of summoning players because my character is too high a level to summon anyone else that's still playing the game. but um My experience was different than Dave's um because Dave was challenging himself for each of these boss fights. He had to skip over some bosses, come back to them, um or spend more time kind of learning, grinding out a boss fight. I guarantee you that there are probably all of the bosses in the DLC, honestly. If we were to pick the same character, same loadout, just like a standard
00:34:11
Speaker
a weapon in two hands type of loadout. um They would destroy me on every boss in the DLC, because he's learned them more than I have. He's ready to ah go to that next level of challenge, where the challenge for me is like, could I beat this myself without Mimiktir or without Egon yelling at Bail? Curse you, man! ah I love that, by the way. that's I love that that became one of the the memes of third trade. But um it's the it's the mark of a good game where they're confident enough that they're like, we have things down pat to the point where the game is enjoyable. Now configuring the challenge to your specification is a layer on top of that.
00:35:02
Speaker
um And I think that's good. I think it's good. Hot take. I will say the mark of a good gamer, rank yourself, listener, um is basically like when you are presented with that type of challenge or wall, how do you address it? Do you bang your head against it? Or in the case of like Elden Ring, do you like, I'll come back later and you essentially gather information, power, tools, anything else to have at your disposal to then come back and be like, here I am, motherfucker. And it's not there's nothing wrong with that. Now, to be fair, like the first boss in Elden Ring is designed to and kind of encourage you to go and explore and find a way to either to level up or something else to not get your shit kicked in. um But you also don't have to.
00:35:57
Speaker
Right. So again, like from a game design standpoint, you want to give players those options so they feel like they can maybe find their own way to approach it. Right. Where something like Sekiro, it's um did you do it? Did you do it correctly? That's something where you really have to kind of learn the boss fight or the level yeah um in that case to be able to progress.
00:36:30
Speaker
That's a good point. i would I would agree with that entirely because I actually, I really like Sekiro. Sekiro amongst the FromSoft games is probably the closest to the top of the list for a replay. Now that I've Platinum the Bloodborne, I don't want to touch that ever again. um like Because it is so It's ideologically different than Elden Ring. there're They're almost yeah completely separate sides of the spectrum. Sekiro has some side paths you can explore if you're hard stuck at a boss. But there's a lot more gate bosses in that game, where it's like you absolutely must clear this. There's not that much more you can do to get more powerful, since beating bosses is what increases your attack power.
00:37:20
Speaker
um And like you could perhaps perhaps get some items, but there's not a tremendous number of items in that game. You could get the prosthetics. That's probably the biggest thing you could do to kind of like mix it up. And that does allow you to also set the challenge of the game a little bit if you've got the shield fan. ah Excellent. you can You can significantly mitigate a lot of the game's difficulty if you use the right prosthetics for the boss fight. but And it'll look cool while you do it. um But you can always up the challenge and not use them at all. right so
00:38:00
Speaker
oh I feel like with all of that, though, the reason that Sekiro is so good is it's very smooth, very smooth experience. Looks good. It feels good to move around, ah to tether to things like Spider-Man and then to assassinate things. Like, it feels good to go through an area and just instant kill all of these enemies who were not expecting you to be there. And now you are here, the Grim Reaper. Yes.
00:38:31
Speaker
And it feels good to beat down a boss who like the monkey, for example, a big challenge wall for a lot of people, myself included. Oh my God. um But you have to learn and go forward because you aren't given that. option to go and explore, you aren't given the option to like, what if we change my build around? yeah There's not really builds. Should I use something other than a sword? Yeah. Like, and the game was designed specifically around those mechanics. Yeah. So it makes for like a type of experience, very streamlined. I mean, you could so you could still somewhat someone summon someone in for the fight though, right? Like they they wouldn't take that away for a second row.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, they definitely wouldn't remove that this entirely single-player experience But yeah, like it's a great game the Zelda ring do the same thing No, is eldering your great game? Yes. Yeah, arguably better most people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not arguing it is Elden ring is their best game ever made a lot of people will say that I can't disagree. But yeah, um the key thing there across those is still going to be that the the game loop is enjoyable. um And people, when met with challenge, are looking for different ways to solve the problem rather than just be defeatist or not have enough interest to keep going.
00:40:01
Speaker
And that's not easy to do um if you look at a lot of games. Right. Some games are just designed around like, hey, this will be fun for multiplayer. OK. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely not. um Room for all kinds of games in the ecosystem. Um, one other point that I wanted to discuss around this. So we've, we've talked about variable challenge. I think that's probably what I'm going to use near the title, something like that. Choose your challenge. That it sounds nice. Um, but, uh, another thing that I wanted to mention is escalation of challenge. And this is one of like the oldest principles in game and ah in gaming is basically like, don't kill Mario in world one. Right.
00:40:49
Speaker
And you can you can die on Mario World 1. Tons of people have. But the idea is as the game progresses, it should become more difficult. And I think that that also plays into this choose your challenge um mechanic like that we're talking about um for i'm I'm going to start with super hot and hotline my hands, and that's where we started for super hot. um Eventually, you'll reach phases in the game where they're they're limiting your powers, or they're forcing you to fight more waves of enemies, or the real challenge are the many bosses that force you to not use certain tools against them, or they may be outright invulnerable, and you need to kill the other enemies while avoiding the boogeyman that's chasing you through the level.
00:41:40
Speaker
um And it forces you to basically prove your ah proficiency with the skills that the game is expected you to learn up until this point. um Hotline Miami's example is like they have a couple boss fights where you actually do need to time reflexes and stuff like that, where previously it's like, am I ready to enter the door? OK. All right. Now, let's I think I have an idea of where things are. Let's go in. um But they test you later. Do you think that that's true of some some of the other games that we mentioned? Yeah. That's a softball. Yes, I would agree with the i would agree with the what is it?
00:42:27
Speaker
There's like a supposition. I would agree with that tautology. Ah, okay. Elden Ring gets harder. Why?
00:42:40
Speaker
But yeah, like let's say... Even a game as simple as like Flabby Bird, right? okay If it was like the exact same thing going through, very boring, very simple. You kind of get used to it very quick. Have you ever had ah the internet be down, you're on Google Chrome, um and you play that little dinosaur jumping game? yeah You play it for like a minute or two, maybe 20 if you're trashed. Depends how long the internet's down. Yeah, depends on it. But there isn't much variety in there. But even with like something like Clappy Bird, like it has to mix up and become more challenging. So it's impressive to say ah you got this far versus, oh, I followed the exact same pattern every single time. ah Just got that memorized down easy peasy. Right. Right.
00:43:29
Speaker
um It just it makes sense to have something progress and get more difficult. so Something like Celeste, right? It's a platforming game. Do they give you all of your tools up front? No. Because one, that would be overwhelming. Two, you haven't even proved you can do the basic sheet yet. Why are we going to give you access to this Super Dash when you don't even know how to control your own basic jump? Right. Yeah. um Yeah, it feels more rewarding as you go to
00:44:01
Speaker
Like when you beat your first boss in a game, you're like, oh, hell yeah. I'm the king of the world. Nothing can stop. And then you find the next boss. You're like, well, I'm in a bit of a pickle. But again, it's a new problem for you to solve. And it's like, hey, for these existing tools that I've been using, can I essentially use a hammer and pretend everything's a nail? Or do I need to transform this hammer into something else? Does the hammer need to dodge roll more? I don't know. yeah But yeah, it's. I wouldn't have ever thought about it in that context if you did not exactly bring it up on on this podcast, but it makes sense for games, at least a single player game like Eldering or Hotline Miami or Superhot to have that progression to give you meaning to play more. Because again, if it's all the same thing, okay.
00:44:56
Speaker
And it it forces you to evaluate your toolkit. right In Superhot's example, you have ah you can choose one power for, I'm talking about the one that's on Game Pass right now. It's like Superhot Ultimate Hacked Edition or whatever it's called. It's something like that. um You choose a starting power when you're going into an encounter, which is basically a level. And some of them legitimately give you better defensive options than others. um Some of them are just hyper aggressive and ah you might find that what you were using comfortably at a lower difficulty is no longer comfortable once the enemies only have certain weak spots instead of being able to hit them anywhere.
00:45:41
Speaker
um In Hotline Miami, once a bunch of enemies have firearms and the levels have long open hallways, you may find that running straight for them is no longer the play. I hope you learned that really early in that game because running right at someone does not work that well in Hotline Miami um if they have a gun. um And it's absolutely the case. This is that this is this is the number one tip for Elden Ring. i' It's like ah the the YouTube thumbnail that doesn't exist. That's what we say. Number one tip. Nobody wants you to know for Elden Ring is like you can change what you bring to the fight.
00:46:23
Speaker
um This is essential for playing on narrative difficulty like I did. Change what you bring to the fight. You can make the boss like a puppy. It's still a rabid puppy. It's coming for you. But by comparison, a puppy to the beast that it was. um I guess we would say Cerberus. We were talking about Supergiant games earlier. um And you can adapt your toolkit in ways that, as long as you're not lowering your own personal challenge to the point where you're like, OK, I'm not enjoying this, not really a risk for treating people completely honest. Com intelligence builds. Mean it's a big laser. I mean how many bosses and erd tree could you do the thing that would not? I don't think you get time to be a glazer anymore You'd start to do the little Ronnie moon pose and then just immediately be crushed into the air three times Yeah before i go before the moon spawns, but
00:47:22
Speaker
um Yeah, like the it's it's the other part of this, right? Because if the difficulty was flat, if it wasn't increasing, you would find something that works and then just stick with it forever. But so the difference is, say you did find something that was working and it's now less effective, you're increasing your own personal challenge. Yes. Right. Like that's going back to how cool I was at Eldering ah DLC. I carried over a character where I was doing a strength build. Strength build is what I always like to do first. It's very much the you got some cool stuff, can cool anime attacks with like range and magic. I'm going to go in and beat the shit out of you yeah when I find the opportunity to.
00:48:10
Speaker
um And I very much have to avoid a lot of attacks, get in, so I can be close enough to use my melee weapon, and then strike when the while the iron's hot. um But even using like the last boss as an example, I started out with strength, and then I went through like five or six different other builds. I started looking up larval tiers to be like, that didn't work, what else can I try? but um Went to faith, went back to dex, went back to strength. I eventually went back to strength because that's where I was most comfortable. um And I figured out a way to utilize that to my advantage. But even so, I was looking at consumable items, um different talismans. I was trying to look at all the things in my ah Mary Poppins bag of tricks, yes yeah or Felix's bag of tricks, whoever you're talking about, bag of tricks, um to approach that situation.
00:49:06
Speaker
because I was not going to let the feed be an option. right Because the difficulty had escalated, I needed to escalate my mindset and figure out how to not lose.
Adapting and Overcoming Challenges
00:49:16
Speaker
right And while it was frustrating, it feels really good to have finally gotten through that point. I'm like, okay, I succeeded in what I set out to do. I explored my options, tried some things. Yeah, and there's because the yeah you can pick what you bring to the fight, unlike Sekiro, basically, to a certain extent. um You can keep the fight challenging. I didn't do that. I kind of went beyond that and maybe reduce the challenge more than some players would recommend. But like that adaptability is what makes these games good. I will say for Superhot, for Hotline Miami,
00:49:56
Speaker
they don't generally allow you to completely trivialize the difficulty. Neither of those games go to the air that to the same. You're not sitting behind a great shield poking the boss with a bleed spear while you cannot be hit at all. um But um but they they they may make it a little bit easier for your preferred play style while still increasing the challenge. um And I think that's good. I think like they they do it in a way that keeps you engaged in the game, because that's the other thing options do, is the people who complain about Elden Ring. And some of them might have completely valid concerns, whatever, of not judging your personal experience.
00:50:39
Speaker
But the number one complaint I see for that game is someone wants the challenge to be at a certain tier. The challenge is higher than that, but they're not willing to raise their personal kit to make it a little bit easier. right to So it's they're back in the sweet spot for their personal challenge. Instead, they tried to beat a boss 50 times, failed 50 times. They have not learned the moveset. They have not considered changing what they're bringing to the fight. So they're frustrated because they want the game to be a little bit less challenging.
00:51:18
Speaker
But they're not willing to bring better gear to the fight. i I have a perfect analogy for this. Yeah. As I am the God of analogies, um because I can never speak directly, it seems. of So I am looking to bench. I've been trying to go to the gym on and off for years. There was a time where I was going semi-consistently and I was decent at lifting. um And I've learned how to lift correctly since then, and I'm out of practice. So I i suck. I am dog shit right now, right? Bottom of the lifting tier. um Now, if I were to just go and lift constantly and not change anything,
00:52:00
Speaker
I could technically maybe make some progress, um but it also makes sense to maybe work on some other muscles to ah take a rest day to maybe change your form instead of just worrying about the raw power. um Again, like there are other things to do to kind of compliment, as you put it, your own personal kit. um that you can do instead of just, oh, it has to only be this one thing. right Oh, it's also that thing's fault and not mine. Weight is weight. it is not It has no sense of being. It has nothing against me as far as I'm aware. um But it is essentially a personal challenge that I've set for myself and I'm looking to try and use more tools at my disposal ah to make that goal achievable.
00:52:56
Speaker
Right. Exactly. You don't want it to be trivialized. You're not like, all right, let's go back to the one pound weights. Right. Throws them at the same.
00:53:07
Speaker
um But you can work your way up to it. And that's that's the same way, you know, a lot of these games play, even if they don't have a difficulty slider. um There's ways that you can mitigate the the difficulty understanding move patterns, understanding how enemies react to sounds and hotline Miami. um understanding what's safe and what's not safe to do. um Maybe even just getting better gear in a sense. Yeah. Like sometimes it's just, Oh, I need more health or more defense. yeah
00:53:39
Speaker
um Knowing like the sliders, the variables that go into the game, and being willing to configure them to make to tailor the experience that you're looking for, is pretty much key. like this is this ah This is just generalized advice for i guess challenging games in general. but like That's that's pretty much it the the people who and and sometimes like there can be issues with the game I'm not saying that all criticism is bad um But sometimes people focus on difficulty rather than challenge. When challenge is the thing under your control, an overall difficulty is just derived from that. right um That sounded pretentious to say. But what I meant is there's things you can control in the game and there's things that you can't. But if the game is really, really hard and there's nothing you can do to change it at all,
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah, you might not like that game. right like I think Ninja Gaiden was a game that was like that. It was notorious for just like punching people into the ground because they had to play like perfectly. um And what can you do but play perfectly? you Oh, you're not playing perfect? Oh, the remedy is to play perfectly. There you go. right um Modern games oftentimes give you some variables that you can play around with so that it's a little bit less terrible of an experience to get into. um Yeah, even games like Wo-Long or Neo, which are even more challenging Souls-likes, still give you that type of option or toolkit or the ability to grind your power level up or something to come back to it. It exists in a lot of forms in a lot of different games.
00:55:31
Speaker
So needless to say, if at any point you find yourself challenged in a game ah because the current difficulty is above what you would like, maybe take a break, maybe come back after you've gotten some new gear, maybe try and learn the boss fight or what or the level, what have you. Right. um Everything is achievable. One of the things I love to do, I literally messaged somebody earlier because I saw them playing Elder Ring. I was like, yo, where are you at? Because like, I want to watch them beat the game. I want to watch them succeed. um I want to get more people into this community. I don't want them to see like, oh, most difficult thing. And then like, I really like hard games. You can do it. There is a point where I was not like a FromSoft nerd and I was just playing
00:56:23
Speaker
Dota 1 or Nintendo stuff. um But over time, like, I worked myself up to be more comfortable with those types of games. um I got into that mindset of sometimes you're just gonna suck and you need to come back, right? So message out to everybody who's possibly having any type of doubt in their gameplay performance or life in general. This is always applicable as well. um You fucking can. Don't say that you can't. But maybe your approach is wrong. Maybe you need help. And that's fine. um It's not wrong to play life or a game on narrative difficulty. It is a choice. That's all.
00:57:07
Speaker
There's no right or wrong choice there. um But don't ever say that you can't because I have seen myself and others do it and I've seen them work at it. That's good. and I was going to say, well, any closing thoughts, any advice for the people out there? But I don't think you can end on a better note than that. Here's some medications you can try. No, absolutely good. Yeah, if you guys have other games that you think fit into this particular niche challenging, but one where you can maybe configure the challenge or over level four or do whatever to mitigate it or strap a gun to your back.
00:57:53
Speaker
um Send those send those games in soapstone podcast at gmail dot.com Or you could join the discussion on Facebook, which can be a challenge in its own right? I understand facebook dot.com slash soapstone podcast and as always we'll see you in the next one you can do it