Why do difficult?

               In discussions of games, difficulty is often called into question. People who like difficult games are often considered a niche audience, which is cool. Games like Dark Souls, Hard Corps Uprising and XCOM probably don't fit into most people's gaming needs. The part of difficulty that irks me is that I feel like I'm having my hand held in a lot of modern games. Sure some games have difficulty settings, but that's not exactly the difficulty I'm talking about.  

                

                I want to start by berating some modern shooters. I always seem to have the next objective taking up a third of my heads up display's (HUD) total area and it's not usually more complicated than "Move from point A to point B." Or "Hunt down the rebels inside the base" or something similar. It should be able to guide me in the right direction three different ways before resorting to on screen text. I should know that I'm stamping out rebels from dialogue or the story and the next objective can easily be marked unobtrusively on a mini map. I don't need constant pop-ups telling me what button tosses a grenade or how to take cover. Dropping the constant pointers for what to do and where to go can increase player creativity and encourages exploration allowing for a different style of level design.

               

              Another common hand hold feeling is enemy patterns. Sure enemies probably do need a limited set of motions so as not to be overwhelming but complete predictability is often boring at a lower difficulty level. The Legend of Zelda games often use this tactic for their bosses and while they aren't the center point of the games' mechanics it does take you out a bit when after struggling through a dungeon you simply have a memorization puzzle to end it. There's actually a narrow line here, mega man is a good example. Each boss has a move pool and most of them are pretty predictable, but the way to dodge and hit the boss isn't always clear or easy, but if you mess up it doesn't punish you too heavily. It feels fair and when you finally figure it out it makes for a much more fulfilling and rewarding boss fight. 

-Baxter Cranch