Are games getting too easy? Analysis of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask difficulty

Are video games getting too easy? After playing through Fallout 3 for PC, I am rather disappointed by the games lack of difficulty. I'm not saying that Fallout 3 is bad, it's an amazing game. I have not seen a Wii game that is difficult, either. I can say that there are moments in games that are difficult, but there is no game that is consistently difficult. I mean, the Sling Pod Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy was indeed frustrating (in a good way) when it came to difficulty, but in general, the game was easy.

The game that I raise high as the most difficult game I have played is The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. In this game, you are somewhat limited by the fact that you have to beat the game in a measly 72 hours (not real hours, game hours. You'll only have like, an hour.). However, you can use the Ocarina of Time, an item featured in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as well, to travel back to the beginning of the 72 hours. This concept did not affect IGN, who gave it a near-perfect score of 9.9/10, when Ocarina of Time got a perfect 10/10. Gamespot, however, gave the game a considerably lower score. Gamespot justified this score by stating that it, simply, was too difficult. It wasn't that it was impassable at parts, but it was always difficult.

Now, let's put both parts of this analysis together. The only major thing that Majora's Mask that was bad (for anyone that didn't call it perfect) was the fact that it seemed difficult. Since the seventh generation of home video game consoles has not seen a consistently difficult game, could we say that if this game or a game with the same time concept, could it be heralded as one of the greatest video games ever? If a new Zelda game comes in 2009 or 2010, I think having a Zelda game like this would be great for the series.

How long will Sony last? Will there be a PlayStation 4?

I have been thinking about this for the whole month of December, but it appears that my opinion is being cemented. I believe that Sony will exit the video game market in the same fashion as Sega with the Sega Dreamcast. Originally, I looked at the NPD Group's software sales. When a PS3 is sold, Sony loses about $50. To make up for this, Sony plans on making money through great software sales. Here were November 2008's sales numbers:

Hardware
1. Wii- 2.04 million
2. DS- 1.57 million
3. Xbox 360- 836,000
4. PSP- 421,000
5. PS3- 378,000
6. PS2- 206,000

Software
1. Gears of War 2- 1.56 million
2. Call of Duty: World at War (360)- 1.41 million
3. Wii Play- 796,000
4. Wii Fit- 697,000
5. Mario Kart Wii- 637,000
6. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3)- 597,000
7. Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii)- 475,000
8. Left 4 Dead (360)- 410,000
9. Resistance 2- 385,000
10. Wii Music- 297,000

NPD Group Source

Notice that the only two software titles PS3 has on this list sell a little over 900,000 copies for Sony. This is not enough to make up for the money lost for hardware sales. This is what fueled my opinion previously, but recently I found something else. On the Wall Street Journal website, they say that Sony helped produce a $400 million Cell processor chip with Toshiba and IBM. It turns out that an IBM representative Adam Bennett showed this amazing chip to Microsoft which Microsoft used to make its Xbox 360. This allowed Microsoft to get the chip for the Xbox 360 before Sony could get the chip for the PS3, which was the primary cause for Microsoft's early release and PS3's continuous delays.

This does show that Microsoft, truly, could not have been successful without Sony. There is much speculation as to whether or not this makes the Xbox 360 a bad console because of this. In my opinion, it should not affect Microsoft very much. However, this situation could make Sony much more cautious about how they want to go about making a PS4, and will it scare Sony from making a PS4 if they don't want to go through the stress of making the PS3? The NPD Group numbers are a point that will simply be a positive for Sony to withdraw from the video game market.

WTF? What's with all this Wii HD Speculation?

It is a little late, but I just noticed this article while I was peering through the archives of Gadget Lab for the heck of it, and I found the article that the link leads to. This is speculation that a new "Wii" could hit store shelves by 2011. There are two sides to this debate:

First, take a look at the years in which previous Nintendo home consoles were released. NES was released in 1986, SNES in 1991, N64 in 1996, Gamecube in 2001, and Wii in 2006. This pattern suggests that a new Nintendo home console is likely to release in 2011.

Second, the worldwide sales for each home console has fallen with exception of Wii. NES sold about 62 million consoles, SNES sold about 49 million consoles, N64 sold about 33 million consoles, and Gamecube sold about 22 million consoles. Wii is currently at 35 million consoles which breaks the pattern, it is projected that Wii will also sell more than SNES by mid-2009. Since the sales of Wii have broken the downward trend, does it change the trend when it comes to the release of the successor console? I am on this side of the debate. Also, why would Nintendo want to break up the party among casual gamers when they are already swimming in money. There has not even been a price drop, yet. Let's wait for a price drop, then we can speculate.

Got an Xbox 360!

I thought I wouldn't come back for a little while today. But, my parents took me out and bought me an Xbox 360 Arcade. It was a late Christmas present, apparently, since this was the first year that I bought Christmas presents for my parents.

When they surprised me by telling me they were buying me an Xbox 360, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't at least have at least the Standard Xbox 360... that's OK, though. It was very nice of them to spend over $200 to buy me a new game console, for just good behavior. This will be my trial version. If I feel I can be entertained further, I will save up for the Xbox 360 Elite model. Help me out, though: Are there any software titles that I should stay away from just because I have the Arcade model? See, I really want to play Bioshock. I don't think there would be any problems, but you can never be too cautious... or maybe you can.

Happy New Year! Thoughts on MySims Kingdom

A little late I guess... I couldn't stay up to the year change, unfortunately. I tend to hit the sack rather early, I guess. Anyway, I spent my time not watching the big ball drop, but I was playing MySims Kingdom for Wii.

I am sure that almost everyone agrees to the fact that its prequel, MySims, was somewhat of a disaster. However, I must say that I am very impressed at this video game. In MySims, there would always be a loading screen in between everything that lasted for at least ten to fifteen seconds each. In addition, the video game improved by not relying heavily on the running around that MySims relied heavily on. I recommend buying this video game. I am not finished with it yet, and I feel it will keep me busy through Monday. Well, see you later.

Graphics: How should they be incorporated into a video game review?

A question that has been lingering around for quite some time is: What is the most important aspect of a video game? There has been a huge gameplay versus graphics war that has settled down in 2008 but was a huge deal in 2006 when Nintendo's Wii was scheduled for release and lingered on throughout 2006, 2007, and a little bit in 2008. I am going to offer my opinion on what the most important aspect of a video game is.

Now, gameplay and graphics are important. However, I want to introduce another aspect that can make a huge difference when purchasing a video game, and that is its value. When you bought that video game, were you ripped off? If the video game has amazing gameplay and amazing graphics, but will only be amazing for twenty minutes, did you get your money's worth? Now, this is an exaggerated scenario, but value can make a difference. If I rent a bunch of video games from the rental store, I know I am going to buy one, and I have never heard of these video games before, I ask myself these questions in this order:

1) Which video games are fun?
2) Of the fun video games: Which video games immerse the player well?
3) Of the immersive video games: Which video games give me my money's worth?

The first question is asking about the general gameplay experience. This can include how fun the video game is, flow of the video game, controls, and other things that make a video game fun. When talking about gameplay, if we score every little thing gameplay affects and average them out we should get a sensible gameplay score.

The second question is asking a yes/no question: Does the video game immerse you, make you feel like you are physically inside the video game? Things that immerse you are graphics, sounds, story, personality of the characters, and other stuff. Unlike gameplay, we can't just average the individual scores, for two reasons. First, humans are fully content with playing an 8-bit video game like Super Mario Brothers as long as its fun, so why shouldn't any video game be immersive. Second, and more importantly, if graphics are amazing and sounds are amazing, then why does the story have to be good if you are already immersed? Usually, it makes sense to use the highest or second highest score from the individual parts to give a sensible immersion score.

The third question is also a yes/no question: Did you get your money's worth? Things that contribute to value could be gameplay hours, replay value, and tilt. Although it's a yes/no question, we should average the scores of the individual parts unless one of them is extraordinarily high to come up with our value score.

So, for the gameplay versus graphics question: Gameplay is more important and that graphics are important sometimes, but can never be more important than gameplay.

I Real Gamer

It bothers me when someone who isn't a gamer (or non-gamer) decides to pummel a video game console or software without knowledge of the video game or harm the idea of video games in general. I will blog about video games I'm playing (I may review it also), philosophies on aspects of video games and video game review, and announcements related to video games. This blog is supposed to be opinionated, so I would appreciate it if you would respond to them, especially if you disagree with me.

Who Am I?

Hey everybody! My name is Brandon Legried. I am fifteen years old and I have been playing video games for, what I consider, a very long time. I suppose I got into video games when I saw my dad and my uncle play video games (Mortal Kombat II was the one of the video games that wanted me to watch them, ironically) on the Sega Genesis, together. I was about two years old. They didn't let me play video games, sadly, until I made it to three years old. I wasn't very good at video games, either...

Since the Genesis controller was about twice the size of my hands combined, I didn't thrive off playing video games. But I watched my dad play video games a lot. He had already bought Mortal Kombat 3 and some other video games. He showed me Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that year (1996) which I LOVED to death! I was actually quite good at those video games at the ripe old age of three. Getting all the way to the boss in Chemical Plant made me good at video games, right?

After the Christmas of 1998, my dad bought a Nintendo 64 video game console (I know there was snow outside, anyway). Those video games definitely weren't for me, because my hands were still smaller than you could imagine. The only video games he played were Goldeneye 007 and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. I decided I would play those video games with him. I remember whining when I was forced to be "that girl with the red hair" Natalya. I hardly ever won against my dad: I always blew myself up with the rocket launchers... The following birthday I got two Nintendo 64 video games: Mario Party and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My dad tells me that when I unwrapped those video games that day, I just tossed them away not knowing what they were. I wasn't very good at either of those video games when I started playing them. After that day, I noticed my dad was playing Ocarina of Time a lot. Did he really buy that video game for me or for himself? I just watched him play that video game for the heck of it, I didn't even care if I played or not. I watched him play the video game as if I was in the cinema watching a movie.

The first video game that I played religiously was, indeed, Ocarina of Time. I started playing the video game from the start. I was proud of myself when I got "Inside the Deku Tree". When I got to Queen Gohma, I started crying "Daddy! Daddy! Help me!". I didn't cry in a lazy way, but in a frightened way. He didn't help me, but I defeated her! I was kind of stupid when it came to solving puzzles in the Forest Temple and Water Temple and such (What do you expect? I was only five...). However, I ended up finishing the video game in about three months! Yeah, finishing Zelda video games don't take THAT much time anymore, but I was only five years old at the time. Give me a break, lol!

Other trivia related:

Video game consoles owned: Genesis, N64, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Wii

Favorite Video Game: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Most Hated Video Game: Shadow the Hedgehog

Least Time Spent on a Video Game: About 4 Hours (Rayman Raving Rabbids- Wii)

Most Time Spent on a Video Game: About 4 Months (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)

Hobbies besides video games: Singing, Acting, Writing (not just about video games, I love writing)