Levels of Difficulty

Now that I'm without my school-provided 360, I've shifted all of my gaming focus over to my DS. I've gotten to play with quite a few DS experiences thanks to the wonderful service that is GameFly. Seriously, the service is a must have for any gamer who wants to get through a wide variety of titles without having the shell out $30 - $60 per game. It's perfect for me as I try to catch up on everything I missed thanks to school and World of Warcraft.

Anyway, the last four DS games I've played are interesting because the way in which they are difficult varies considerably. I would break down difficulty here into two core components: knowledge and execution. You have to figure out what to do and then actually do it. How each game dealt with this really affected the way in which I reacted to each game.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
I actually have a hard time calling this a game. It's much more like the true adventure games of old (think LucasArts), and feels like interactive fiction. As expected all of the difficulty in this game lies in the knowledge portion. You have to figure out the correct action given clues... and believe me they're not always that obvious. Execution is a trivial as pushing a button or shouting Objection! All the fun comes from thinking, not acting. The focus is on reasoning, story, and presentation... and it delivers pretty well. I love adventure games and couldn't put the thing down. However, the classic two flaws are still there: there is zero replay value, and you run the risk of getting absolutely stuck. Can't figure out your current set of clues? Tough.

Elite Beat Agents
This is a pretty straightforward rhythm game that makes great (and exclusive) use of the touch screen. This one is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Phoenix Wright. As with most rhythm games, it's all about execution. The knowledge of what to do is handled with a few minutes of tutorial and then it's just practice to improve your skills at the game. It can get pretty hard, but you just know it's a matter of time before you get that song down. The interaction itself is usually fun enough to offset any frustration that would result from repetitive failures (typical for rhythm games). This one was so much fun I ended up keeping it.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife
This one wins the big disappointment award. The mechanics, the interactions, the play... it's all great. The game is just too damn hard. I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty bad at games, but this one was so frustrating I didn't even want to stick it out until the end. The problem seems to be that once you know how to beat the level, you feel like you should be able to execute. EBA is good because you feel like you make continual improvement even if you fail. However, in Trauma Center you can keep failing at the same spot because it's just really hard... and it's not that you have to do anything different or learn anything new... you just have to do it faster. Doing something for the sake of speed doesn't strike me as engaging enough by itself.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Plenty of people recommended this title to me, and with good reason... it is a fun and hard game. Granted, this is my first Castlevania game so maybe I'm just unfamiliar with what to expect. It has a great mix of the two elements of difficulty... there's no one way to beat things. You can play to your strengths as a player and usually find a way to execute on them. There's lots of trying out different methods on things, and good feedback on when you should be trying something else. There is still a considerable amount of skill required to get through the game (especially on bosses). When I find myself facing bosses, I end up trying a method... dying... refining my method (and dying) several times until I'm sure it can work... then it's a matter of practice to get the job done. I thought dying would be more frustrating, but for some reason it's not really that bothersome. I'll admit that I'm starting to suffer from player fatigue, but I'm also not the core gamer that this style of game seems to target. The fact that I put up with it as long as I did speaks volumes for the strength of the design.

It's been interesting to look at how these games dealt with their challenges and difficulties. If you put too much on the knowledge side and you risk making your player feel dumb because they can't figure out how to proceed. Put too much on the execution and you make the action incredibly frustrating. The answer is staring the player in the face but there's nothing they can do about it because they suck at your gameplay. I'm not sure which feeling is worse, but obviously both should be avoided. As always, it comes down to balance and your target audience.

Here Comes the Rain

...again. Normally, I wouldn't blog about the weather because that's dangerous close to the world of inanities that includes what I had for lunch or what flavor of floss I decided to use today (cinnamon? Thrilling). However, the weather in Dallas has been fairly unusual as of late... and I got one (albeit obvious) 80s pop reference in there, so we should be good.

We're one week away from July. Usually that means only one thing in Texas: dry and hot. Instead, we've got another week of rain in the forecast and highs just barely starting to crack 90. Our precipitation MTD/YTD stands at 6.53/27.51 compared to normal values of 2.83/18.51 (all in inches of course). Now, I'm no meteorologist, but that strikes me as rather unusual. I don't recall a time in recent memory that we weren't facing drought conditions in the summer. Granted, we've still got time left to dry up, but we're having an awfully wet start to the dry months.

Of course, now that I've written this, it's unbelievably obvious that it is of little general interest. So we're getting unusually high rain during an unusually mild June here... big deal. I could try to extract some relevance out of it by going off on global climate change or something, but I'd much rather try to come up with another 80s reference to end this on a high note.

It's the end of the world as we know it... (double prizer)

A Simple Solution

I find it interesting how much I enjoy writing considering how rarely I actually write anything. Blogging has always appealed to me as an easy and accessible outlet for my writing desires, yet every blog I've started eventually ends up silent. Funny that I'm making yet another (probably doomed) attempt to enter the blogosphere. However, this time feels somehow different than all those other times. I realized that I'm in fact approaching this blog very differently than I have in the past.

Each iteration of my blog was usually linked with a new iteration of my website. This one is no different, as it comes along with my new (and improved) website: marsers.com. The key difference is that I'm working on this site with a specific purpose. I've actually come up with requirements that need to be met... everything involved has a stated purpose of some sort. In essence, I've actually designed a solution for my web presence.

The problem was I focused on tools rather than solutions. Making a website was all about having cool things, gadgets, whatever. Hell, I remember when having a website at all was cool enough by itself. I was obsessing over the feature-rich blogging system and never bothered to come up with a purpose for all those features. I used to spend so much time pouring over templates and layouts that I never had time for writing. This time I've dropped the fancy software whose features far exceed my needs, and I'm sticking with tools that actual create a solution... not more problems.

As a software engineer, I'm amazed that I never realized this sooner. Tools by themselves do not create solutions. The human element messes with that whole equation. An excessive tool is almost as bad as a inadequate tool because neither manages to solve the end-user's problem. I've seen plenty of examples and still managed to fall victim myself. Perhaps all that CS education taught me a thing or two, so I can now see the error of my ways. Regardless, the complex content management system is out and the lightweight blogging platform is the new black. Hopefully, this will let me spend my time on writing... the part I actually enjoy.