"Hard" difficulty: complexity or bullet sponges?

[JarlFrank]

Games that do difficulty good/okay:

Thief 1 and 2. Higher difficulty means more objectives to complete. Fun!

Doom. Also Brutal Doom which makes the higher difficulties even more ridiculous, although I never play on the ones that change the stats. The good difficulty differences are those that add/remove monsters from the levels to make them harder/easier.

Ultimate General Gettysburg. Different AI profiles with different behaviours that range from easy to challenging. That's how strategy game AI should be done, really.

 

[Renegen]

Sometimes it makes sense to increase hitpoints on the enemies, remember that often the player has superior firepower but most importantly superior hitpoints. What this leads to is a situation where the player stats are more in line with his enemies and he has to use his skill. In a bullet hell game, having to dodge everything perfectly for 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds is a big deal.

 

[Mangoose]

How is this even a question?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Sometimes it makes sense to increase hitpoints on the enemies, remember that often the player has superior firepower but most importantly superior hitpoints. What this leads to is a situation where the player stats are more in line with his enemies and he has to use his skill. In a bullet hell game, having to dodge everything perfectly for 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds is a big deal.

I can't think of any bullet hell shmups that increase enemy HP with difficulty. They tend to increase bullet count and speed, add completely new enemies or patterns, and sometimes change some core mechanics (like giving the player a smaller hitbox, for instance). They don't mess with the player firepower to enemy health relation, though.

 

[Machocruz]

Sometimes it makes sense to increase hitpoints on the enemies, remember that often the player has superior firepower but most importantly superior hitpoints. What this leads to is a situation where the player stats are more in line with his enemies and he has to use his skill. In a bullet hell game, having to dodge everything perfectly for 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds is a big deal.

Because of the fantastical nature of weapons in some shmups, there is no expectation for the weapons to perform to certain level, outside of screen clearing attacks. Shotguns and sniper rifles do have expectations for damage on peons and lesser enemies, at least to some people. I expect, and desire, a pinky demon or a Combine go to down in 1-3 shotgun blasts on all difficulties.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

When I started Deus Ex:Human Revolution for the first time, I was totally hyped by the extremely positive reviews. And as I always play DX1 on Realistic difficulty, of course I selected the "Give me Deus Ex!" difficulty.

The first thing I noticed was, that silent takedowns require you to get close and press a button. My immersion was shaken.

The second thing I noticed was, that you need to press a button to crouch behind stuff. WTF!

The next thing I noticed was, that I had to unload one and a half clips in the head of each terrorist to take them down. Bye bye, immersion.

I shelved it and waited a week before my curiosity got the better of me. But it didn't last.


Edit: The yellow highlighting, the really bad boss fights and that the pistol is a better sniper than the sniper rifle didn't help. Or that the locations are very static.