In this sunken hell, the idea of an area being “secured” is rel­a­tive, but I’ve cleared out the lobby, the stairs, the shops on the level above and dealt with that crazy son of a bitch who was throw­ing around Molotovs. Some joker had even set up an auto­mat­ed tur­ret in the toi­let. Around here, a guy can’t take a piss with­out risk­ing his life. This par­tic­u­lar cor­ner of hell is mine now and so I set about resup­ply­ing from the wrecked remains of the shops and my ene­mies. Everything is bro­ken here. The walls, the floors, the plumb­ing, the power sup­ply, the peo­ple. All bro­ken.

I put the butt of my weapon through the glass front of a cab­i­net, winc­ing at the crash that adver­tis­es my pres­ence. It’s nec­es­sary, the ammu­ni­tion inside is vital to me if I want to con­tin­ue. And I do want to con­tin­ue.

Shit. From direct­ly above comes the hulk­ing great thwack-thomp of enor­mous foot­steps. My eyes lift upward to watch lit­tle rains of dust that dance back and forth across the ceil­ing, mark­ing the steps. Their path leads direct­ly to the stairs. The stairs lead direct­ly to me. Shit.

As they descend she nat­ters at him, high-pitched and sing-song non­sense he almost cer­tain­ly does­n’t under­stand. All she gets in reply is his great creak­ing yawn, more like a house about to col­lapse than any lan­guage. The voice of a child is vio­lent­ly out of place here.

They reach the ground floor fac­ing away from me; she in a tat­tered pink dress and he in one of those mas­sive old div­ing suits they all wear. All thick metal and tough leather. Just like the oth­ers, the lower half of his right arm has been replaced with a huge drill bit. I see flecks of my brain and flesh sprayed across the walls, punc­tu­at­ed by shards of white skull. Nauseous.

They have to go left or right. If they go right, I can use the stair­way for cover, slip upstairs behind them. No trou­ble. Left leads straight to me. Go right. Go right! He turns right and takes a lum­ber­ing step. She goes left. He fol­lows her. Shit.

He sees me before she does and goes defen­sive. Makes a noise like a whole herd of threat­ened buf­fa­lo. Stands ready. She slips back behind him and the whole scene reach­es that moment at the top of the roller­coast­er right before the drop. Silence. Weightlessness. Equilibrium. But some­thing has to give, like the pres­sure ris­ing in the rust­ing pipes all over this under­wa­ter city. I inch right, keep­ing a respect­ful dis­tance, look­ing to get the stair­way between me and that drill. If he snaps and comes at me, it’s game over. For all that bulk they accel­er­ate at a hell of a rate and once they’re going they’re like a freight train, noth­ing I could do to stop that. Just stand there and die. Messily.

Back to the wall, I make my way around the room. I have to remind myself to breath. I don’t blink. Once I’m past the next cor­ner I’m mov­ing away from them, he likes that. Easy boy, good boy. I keep my weapon point­ing down, wouldn’t do a bit of good any­way. Good boy. Finally, the foot of the stairs and I can’t help it, I break into a run and take them three at a time just to get me to the top. When I turn, they haven’t fol­lowed. Fine.

Fine. Safe for a moment. But here’s the rub. I’m going to take my last four grenades and drop them on his head and up here we’re going to fight. I’ll use every last bul­let in this machine gun and then fire from the flamethrow­er and at the end I’ll throw elec­tric bolts from my very hands. Up here it’s all walk­ways and no cover. In a straight line he’s got me every time but up here I can cir­cle around cor­ners and never get trapped. In the end he’ll fall, grad­u­al­ly, like an oak tree. A lit­tle wisp of smoke ris­ing from his corpse. Then I’ll turn to the girl and I’ll have to decide what to do with her, because she’s got some­thing I want. Something I need.

Or…

I pol­ish off the Molotov guy with a shot­gun to the face and then set about loot­ing the area. As I grab some ammo from a glass cab­i­net I hear a Big Daddy mov­ing around upstairs. I head up, pop a cou­ple of heat-seekers his way to get his atten­tion and then switch to grenades to whit­tle his health down. On the way down the stairs he catch­es me with a charge and my own health takes a hit, but noth­ing to worry about since I’ve pep­pered the whole damn down­stairs with prox­im­i­ty mines. That does it and I stop to loot the corpse before turn­ing my atten­tion to the girl. I select X to save her; I’m going for the best end­ing.

–

Once, my house­mate strolled in and sat down to watch whilst I was play­ing BioShock. He saw me take on Splicers and tra­verse Rapture with­out much in the way of com­ment, but when he saw me eye­ing up a Big Daddy with some degree of cau­tion he spoke. “Oh they’re not so bad, go for it!” he said. He’d been sur­prised, he explained, by how easy they were to bring down, given all the build-up. After a pro­longed and ammunition-expensive bat­tle the Big Daddy fell. “How the hell are your weapons doing so lit­tle dam­age? And how were his doing so much?” We quick­ly came to the answer: I was play­ing on Hard Mode. He’d played on the game’s default Normal Mode.

I’ve been play­ing and enjoy­ing First-Person Shooters for a size­able por­tion of my life to date and, false mod­esty aside, I’m pret­ty good at them. Above aver­age at least. Certainly I am annoyed with myself when I fall out­side the top 5 play­ers on a Battlefield serv­er, which hap­pens pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly, but I’m still annoyed. (In our flat, Losing-at-Battlefield-Jim is accept­ed as a sep­a­rate but not entire­ly wel­come 4th mem­ber of the house­hold.) Many mod­ern games give a lit­tle advice with their dif­fi­cul­ty modes, usu­al­ly relat­ed to the player’s pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence and famil­iar­i­ty with the genre. So, as some­one expe­ri­enced in and famil­iar with the FPS, when it comes to the sin­gle play­er por­tion I will often select one of the high­er dif­fi­cul­ties.

The point, I guess, from a design per­spec­tive, is to give a sim­i­lar level of chal­lenge to each set of play­ers, from the brand new­bies through to the FPS vet­er­an. The point from my per­spec­tive is to cre­ate an expe­ri­ence I engage with, take notice of, with­out glid­ing through half asleep. A game that’s too easy might as well be one long cutscene, grad­u­al­ly reveal­ing the plot, since noth­ing requir­ing any play­er agency is going to break up the pro­gres­sion of the expe­ri­ence.

Becky Chambers approached a sim­i­lar topic last week on The Mary Sue, writ­ing pri­mar­i­ly on the sub­ject of flow. Like me, Chambers finds a cer­tain dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the expe­ri­ence of a too-easy game. I couldn’t agree more when she writes, “Easy games are for­get­table. The moments that stick with us are the ones that were hard won, things that required exper­i­men­ta­tion and patience.”

This is a view we find taken to extremes with all sorts of self-entitled fury on var­i­ous web­sites and forums, where peo­ple sound off over the dumb­ing down of main­stream gam­ing. In the quest for inclu­sive­ness, games have become too easy and too casu­al, appar­ent­ly, and there­fore point­less. Whenever I hear such com­plaints I find myself want­i­ng to hook the indi­vid­ual by their nos­trils and scream in their face, “There’s a hard mode, you repro­bate, did you select it? WHY NOT?!”

It’s all rel­a­tive, of course. Perhaps my Hard Mode play through would be impos­si­ble for you, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re not famil­iar with the hall­marks of First Person Shooters. Previous expe­ri­ence means that I start the game with some idea of what the game­play is going to involve, per­haps you lack that prior knowl­edge. Similarly, I wouldn’t skip straight to the hard­est set­ting for an RTS or RPG because I’m not con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to take on those sys­tems at that level. Perhaps you would be, and if so, more power to you, buddy. Games are a two-way expe­ri­ence, devel­oped through the exist­ing prod­uct and your inter­ac­tion with it. Likewise, what we’re talk­ing about here is chal­lenge, which is pro­duced through the inter­ac­tion of your capa­bil­i­ties with the dif­fi­cul­ty mode you select. Different strokes for dif­fer­ent folks. Game devel­op­ers have the unen­vi­able job of attempt­ing to cater for an increas­ing­ly expe­ri­enced and skilled core set of gamers whilst also mak­ing their games acces­si­ble to those who’ve never picked up a con­troller before. This is reflect­ed in the grad­ual inclu­sion of extra set­tings on which to play, vari­a­tions on Easy, Easier Easiest, Hard, Harder, Hardest. Every now and again we’ll even get a Don’t Even Bother To Select This Mode! Games are eas­i­er than they used to be, but play­ers are involved in the cre­ation of the gam­ing expe­ri­ence and must there­fore take some degree of respon­si­bil­i­ty for that expe­ri­ence by doing a bit of self assess­ment before select­ing the con­text in which they will play.

Why, then, in the vast major­i­ty of cases, do expe­ri­enced gamers approach a new game on Normal Mode, or the local equiv­a­lent? Sometimes, of course, the Hard Mode is locked behind a Normal Mode play through. Finish the game to prove your­self capa­ble of tak­ing on such a chal­lenge, and all that. Like many aspects of game design, this is a left­over from the days of arcades, where every game fought to hold your inter­est and offer prof­itable replaya­bil­i­ty. And like other such arcade left­overs, grad­u­al­ly that type of design is dis­ap­pear­ing. And then there is the prob­lem that you often need to select the dif­fi­cul­ty before you’ve even played the game which, when you think about it, is pret­ty bloody stu­pid. How am I sup­posed to know which mode suits me? The Hard Mode of Battlefield 3 is sig­nif­i­cant­ly hard­er (and more bro­ken) than that of BioShock, so what’s it going to be like on this brand new game I’ve just bought? Both of these fac­tors, the lock­ing of Hard Modes and their mys­te­ri­ous­ness before a play through, work to rail­road the play­er away from select­ing them. Even the lan­guage involved is telling. The word “Normal” invokes not just a sense of being between Easy and Hard, but also of being the stan­dard or pre­ferred mode. It appeals by iden­ti­fy­ing itself as the “cor­rect” way to play.

But have anoth­er look at those sto­ries above. In one, I expe­ri­ence and use the game world, assess the risks, note the ter­rain, iden­ti­fy with my char­ac­ter, engage with the atmos­phere. In the other, I blast through what could be any old FPS. BioShock’s pri­ma­ry fail­ure (and, while great, it does have some fail­ings) is that what is sup­posed to be a mean­ing­ful deci­sion – what to do with the Little Sisters – actu­al­ly lacks the intend­ed eth­i­cal punch because the “Rescue” or “Harvest” choic­es lack prop­er reper­cus­sions. Harvesting gives you a small advan­tage, but not a game chang­ing one, and cer­tain­ly not one required by even a semi-experienced FPS play­er to progress. On its hard­er modes, (Hard or Survivor) with ammo, money and heal­ing items scarcer, reper­cus­sions are mag­ni­fied. Taking on a Big Daddy becomes a risk; Little Sisters pose a viable moral ques­tion. On Easy, even Normal, one plays a meta-game, often going for a par­tic­u­lar end­ing, with­out iden­ti­fy­ing with BioShock’s inter­nal world.

Likewise, Uncharted’s Hard Mode some­what alle­vi­ates an infa­mous neg­a­tive qual­i­ty of the game. The hor­rif­ic phrase “ludonar­ra­tive dis­so­nance” is often lev­eled as a charge against Uncharted, the ugli­ness of the phrase per­haps hop­ing to take the shine off the game’s pris­tine beau­ty. Essentially, what this dread­ful group­ing of words seeks to rep­re­sent is a mis­match of nar­ra­tive and game­play, in this case point­ing out that Cutscene Nathan Drake’s charm and light-hearted wit is com­plete­ly at odds with Gameplay Nathan Drake, who is, essen­tial­ly, a mass-murderer. This is some­what (only some­what, mind you) alle­vi­at­ed when the play­er finds Drake gen­uine­ly at risk in Hard Mode. Ploughing through an area with head­shot after head­shot is less involved than a stead­ier paced duck-and-shoot route in which being hit by bul­lets actu­al­ly mat­ters. The gun­play becomes more a case of self-defence on the way to one’s goal, some­thing you feel you and Drake would avoid if pos­si­ble.

And to give one final exam­ple, mov­ing through God of War on God Mode requires you to learn, as Kratos, your ene­mies’ weak­ness­es and tells. No longer can you walk into a room and start slash­ing at ran­dom, you take a moment to count and iden­ti­fy your ene­mies, con­sid­er­ing who needs to be elim­i­nat­ed first. You can­not mash but­tons until every­thing is dead; instead, you time your attacks and learn when to block, when to roll away, when to take to the air. You learn that in thin­ning out your ene­mies’ ranks by killing off the many undead sol­diers first, you can min­i­mize the num­ber of simul­ta­ne­ous attacks that come at you, and thus the com­bos you use on the big­ger ene­mies are less like­ly to be inter­rupt­ed. As your exper­tise grows you might allow your­self a wry smile, mir­ror­ing Kratos’ own, because you under­stand just how chal­leng­ing this next room is going to be. You learn to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the bru­tal recipes the design­ers cre­ate, using var­i­ous ene­mies as ingre­di­ents.

–

What quick­ly becomes clear when we run through gam­ing expe­ri­ences like this is that Hard Mode offers the purest form of the game you’ve bought. On Hard Mode, the ene­mies will attack and defend more intel­li­gent­ly and real­is­ti­cal­ly, and you will have to learn and adapt to progress. On Hard Mode, your game isn’t just an inter­ac­tive sto­ry­book where you progress from cutscene to cutscene. Rather, you’re as immersed in the world, vul­ner­a­ble to its dan­gers and invest­ed in its pro­gres­sion, as any other char­ac­ter in it. On Hard Mode, you track your prey, defend your base, build your character’s skills, gam­ble with your time and their life. You watch your cor­ners and iden­ti­fy exits, sub­con­scious­ly strate­gize and mem­o­rize the pre­vi­ous cou­ple of areas you were in. On Hard Mode, you find the chal­lenges that force you to evolve.

So, if you don’t as a rule, give it a try some­time. You’ll prob­a­bly be frus­trat­ed, scared, tense and annoyed. Hell, you might lose or give up. But suc­cess on Hard Mode is unlike suc­cess in any other mode. It’s well-earned.