Which do you prefer? Tough-as-nails games where you die 99 times before you finally succeed, or games that you can breeze through but are a lot of fun to play? Or does difficulty make a game fun for you? I like challenge in a game, as long as it's not to a frustrating level. A game isn't as fun if it's a total cakewalk, but it's even less fun if I want to throw the controller fifty times during each play session.
I prefer some challenge to my games. My favourites are the ones that feel challenging (...for me) but are fun to play all the way through, which is probably why I'm so hooked on FTL right now. But as much as I'd like to say I only play games like that, where it's challenging but not frustratingly so... I can't. I'm really stubborn so even if I come across a game/level that is just infuriatingly hard and not fun at all based on the gameplay/difficulty, unless I've barely played it at all, I'll still throw myself at it again and again until I succeed. :( And then there are games that I find too easy and breezing all the way through it is no fun at all, even if I like the game. So I'll add my own restrictions, like I play KH games at the lowest levels possible now, if not flat out LV1. Tales games, as soon as I'm comfortable with their mechanics, I bump up the difficulty. If I really like a game, I play it to death and I tend to get bored of the default difficulty after a while. On a similar note, I don't feel too bad about playing games I'm really bad at on easy. I find a lot of FPSes to be fun but as soon as I bump the difficulty up to normal, the management of ammo and the less forgiving medpack distribution really takes the fun out of the game. I also don't have issues playing with the console on in some games if I don't want to do something that's too difficult, haha. I just have weird priorities when it comes to challenges, I suppose.
I'm kind of that way with Pokemon games. I'll intentionally keep myself as underleveled as possible in order to at least add some challenge into the game. Most of the time when I replay Platinum, I'm around Lv50 or even high 40s going into the League, and it's challenging. I think when I played through SoulSilver last time I was like...high Lv30s when I beat Lance, and it was a nail-biter of a battle. Just the way I like it. It makes for some epic battles that aren't just a series of OHKOs. FPSes are weird for me though. I had very few issues clearing HL2 on Normal, but games like CoD or Halo are exercises in repetition and frustration when I play at that difficulty (unless I'm co-oping with someone). And platformers are just frustrating in general for me, which is why most of the time I just don't find them very fun.
...I overlevel a bit in Pokemon because as much as I love the series, I do not like battling. I really don't like things to be down to the wire in it. :( But I usually get so sick of grinding that I end up a little underlevelled by the E4 anyway, haha. Definitely not trying out that Hard Mode in Black 2 when I finally sit down with it after I decide on my team. :P
Whenever I pick up White 2, the first thing I'm doing is transferring Challenge Mode into it and starting it that way. :P
Can't say I'm surprised. :P You should consider doing challenge runs. A lot of them look like fun but I'm just... not good enough with the games to appreciate them. I'd end up being way overlevelled in order to deal with the run which sort of defeats the purpose to me, haha.
I don't want to die 99 times or breeze through. I want a balance. I like Mario. For the most part, challenging enough that I'll almost die but don't and then feel accomplished. Or, if I do die, I'll have it solved after a handful of attempts. Getting to the point of ripping my hair out is not fun. But neither is having no challenge at all.
I don't mind dying 99 times so long as it's my fault. If it's due to poor level design or gameplay mechanincs (i.e. jumping in Epic Mickey) then yes that's a problem. Losing shows you that you're doing something wrong and that you need look at a problem in a different way perhaps. That's part of the appeal of the Professor Layton games. You work out an answer and sometimes you're right and sometimes you're way off. It wouldn't be fun if you got the answer right on your first try every time.
