Here’s another nugget from our chat with Capcom UK’s PR manager Leo Tan, who was unfortunate enough to stray within recording distance at the Monster Hunter Tri event in London on Monday. It seems Mass Effect 2 producer Adrien Cho isn’t alone in his belief that today’s games – and gamers – are complete and utter pushovers.
“Yeah, definitely,” Leo reflected when asked whether he agreed with Cho. “But it depends. It depends on what the game is, and what the purpose of the game is. I think there’s a place for hardcore skill, and there’s a place for progression and story.”
Monster Hunter and its many, many expan-sequels are firmly in the former camp, while Uncharted 2: Among Thieves perhaps ranks among the latter. Naughty Dog hasn’t got things entirely right, though, in Leo’s estimation.
“Uncharted 2, towards the end it got a bit difficult,” he said, “and it kind of broke the illusion – because all the way through you’re basically playing a movie, and kind of right at the end it becomes a game again, and that’s a bit annoying. I wish they’d made it easier there.
“But I don’t want people dumbing down Street Fighter or a fighting game system, or something like Monster Hunter – if you make it too easy, you lose some of that sensation of living for the hunt.
“It’s more about things in the right place. You wouldn’t make something difficult just for the sake of it. That would be insanity.”
The chap behind this game must be mad as a hatter, then. Read the full interview here.
Satoru Iwata Video Interview - the late Nintendo president spoke with Kikizo in 2004 as 'Nintendo Revolution' loomed.
Kaz Hirai Video Interview - the first of Kikizo's interviews with the man who went on to become global head of Sony.
Ed Fries Video Interview - one of Xbox's founders discusses an epic journey from Excel to Xbox.
Yu Suzuki, the Kikizo Interview - we spend time with one of gaming's most revered creators.
Tetris - The Making of an Icon: Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers reveal the fascinating story behind Tetris
Rare founders, Chris and Tim Stamper - their only interview? Genuinely 'rare' sit down with founders of the legendary studio.
The History of First-Person Shooters - a retrospective, from Maze War to Modern Warfare
Someone from Capcom running their mouth about the official game of the year. Resident evil 5 was garbage. I think I plat’d it in a week and the only thing difficult about that pile of crap was the poorly tuned ai of my partner.
Uncharted 2 is no walk in the park. Try playing it on Crushing difficulty and see how much of a movie it is.
He meant the normal difficulty you fuckin ass.
I don’t think Mr Tan the PR man was having a go at Uncharted.
I’ve always liked hard games, because often it proves the core action is good enough to handle the burden….a poor FPS or fighting game goes from piss easy to dead in a random situation if they tweak the difficulty, whereas with more robust core gameplay you can ratchet things up and they become more enjoyable not less.
Hello!
I’m Leo Tan, and I should go on the record here as saying that I *LOVED* Uncharted 2. Just in case it’s unclear from this quote. I started playing it on a Saturday morning, stopped briefly throughout the day to eat, slept a little bit, woke up and finished the game on the Sunday afternoon. I just couldn’t stop playing. I’m certainly not alone in thinking that it gets a bit tough towards the end, but let’s not get caught up in that. I think it’s brilliant, so we can all calm down.
I belive this is your cue for some poorly spelt inane comment about my mother or something.
I personally prefer difficult games as well, but it’s all about the balance and pace of the progression. For instance, I don’t mind a game as hard as Ninja Gaiden 2 on Master Ninja (wich I’m pround of being good enough to beat it), because it has a linear progression and it allows the gamer to be more in control of his mistakes, not to mention that there are check points.
But when it comes to open-ended games, like Operation Flashpoint. I don’t think it’s harder than Ninja Gaiden, but IMO, it’s more frustrating because if you lose after investing 30 mins going from point A to point B, only to die by a “lucky shot” it’s just not my idea of fun.
I believe that story based games, should all have easy difficulties because not every one wants to get frustrated just to see it unfold. I believe that all plot based games should play like movies, but also have harder difficulties that advantage of the depth of the gameplay and make it more fulfiling for the more hardcore gamers.
@Leo
Ur Mam iz a whoe
…You definately could look closer to home for the worst difficulty spike this gen though.
His name’s Seth, and even on easy difficulty he will cheat like a mo fo. It is a sudden, massive, jarring difficulty spike.
However i suppose he wasn’t put there for the sake of it, I imagine he was designed to extract mucho coin from arcade players.
I think they should have changed him for the console release though, at least on the aforementioned easy difficulty, because his moves interrupt your moves mid animation…he has a quite annoying washing machine stomach move, and actually in a phenomenal game, represents the low point in terms of character design, moveset, and basic fairness, this all must be a result of looking at increasing the Yen yield of arcade machines by 15%…that’s when designers really make mistakes with difficulty.
Alpha 152 the end boss in DOA4 is a well designed hard boss imo, because once rather than exploiting certian moves that happen to work…you can master the boss and enjoy beating it.
Super SFIV i’m sure will remedy things.
ohh bad engrish there.
But yea, Alpha 152 > Seth
i imagine about 2 people in the world give a shit, but there ye go.
I must say I think Seth’s difficulty is greatly exaggerated. The first round is always a push-over and if you play conservatively in the second, he has plenty of moves that you can punish as well as a predictable AI routine.