The Shrine

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>More news from Mr. So-Six-Months-Ago, Ninja Gaiden is truly badass! The combat system is amazingly complex, but I guess that's what you get from a team who designs fighting games.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>It is great, but it's too damned defensive. Dude is a ninja, and I spent half the game rooted to the one spot, blocking!</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>You can't block much after level 2; they throw like a bitch. Some enemies also have to be Guard Broken to start a combo. The game is damned hard, but the Advanced Combo FAQ on GameFAQs has a wealth of nice info. It's amazing how deep the combat engine is.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt georgia; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>I've beaten the game and I don't remember enemies doing a lot of throwing. I remember earning most of my kills using blocking counter-attacks. (I actually didn't start blocking until about the fourth level, after wondering why I was having so much trouble beating the levels. I'm an idiot)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Yeah, your best bet is generally block, block, block, Izuna Drop!!!, block, block, block, etc. When you get good you gotta start throwing in that charge slash move and such to finish dudes under the combo timer apparently.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I think it may be even better than Devil May Cry, though it's a tough call....</div>

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>flying swallow. Makes the game move at a quicker pace and it looks hellava lot cooler. I barely blocked in the game. To busy flying around slashing people's heads off.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Ha. You fool. DMC is a poor man's Gaiden. A -very- poor man's Gaiden. You're poor. Eat poo.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>You've obviously lost your mind, so there's no point in discussing this. Also, you totally suck and you're dumb.</div>

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>"Totally suck" "Dumb" Gentz unleashes a fury of witty comebacks. How will Black Lotus respond???</div>

<div style='font: 12pt georgia; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Is that the jumping move where Ryu flies a few metres horizontally? The one you put to use against those giant annoying skeleton things? That was a pretty cool move but it too often seemed to land me just in front of a sword on the down-swing.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>It doesn't matter how much they do it. In this game, you can't afford to get hit much. BTW, the nunchakus own enemies in Mission 4.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I agree, and least in terms of combat. I can't believe I found a comment somewhere that said the DMC's "freeform" combat system "pales in comparison" to NG's system. What the fuck?!</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>360+Y. After a while, you need a good 360 coverage move.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I haven't played Ninja Gaiden, but I don't think the games were intended to be competitors. DMC went for lots of easy to do action that looked cool, whereas NG went for prove your skills.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>DMC was pretty fucking hard, dude. NG did go a bit deeper with the skills though, I agree</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>He won't. It's just too real for him.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I always felt 360 moves are too hard to pull off under pressure. Anyway, the Izuna Drop is the only move you need!</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Just FYI, every Zangief player in the universe now thinks you're a complete wuss.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I've yet to complete my first run through of DMC, but I don't consider it really hard. Beating the bosses has to do more with understanding their patterns (like games of old) than mastering your skills.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Well, that's fine. I suck at fighting games.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>That's true, but you're still nuts if you don't think DMC is hard.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>All I have to say on this subject is that when I was at the controls, Ryu died WAY more times than Dante. That is all.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Okay, I'm just fucking saying that DMC is a hard game! I'm not comparing it to anything. Jesus!</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I'm just surprised by that, because I generally don't have much tolerance for hard games.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I dunno. To me, a "hard game" is one where the frustration of completing a task starts making the game less fun. I certainly had to play some bosses close to ten times, but I never felt like I got to that point.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Ah, so you're using "hard" in a critical way? Well, that makes a bit more sense then...</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeesh. Snap much? :P

Anyway, I consider any game hard in which I have a bitch of a time doing anything, or I die an inordinate amount of times. Thus, for example:

Ninja Gaiden was hard.
Viewtiful Joe was hard.
The Mega Man Zero games were/are hard (got distracted, haven't finished Z3 yet).
Panzer Dragoon Orta was hard.
Castlevania (the NES original) was hard.

(And you know, I believe I've inadvertently listed these in decreasing order of difficulty.)

Sorry dude, but by that metric, I don't remember DMC being inordinately hard. I definitely remember continuing a couple times at a few of the bosses, and there were these gigantic beast-things that would kick my ass in this large field area unless I jumped on top of a building and took them out one by one. It wasn't a <i>cakewalk</i> by any means, but still.

<i>-57</i></div>

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I am good at games. I play many games, many games that are difficult, and I do very well with them.

But in VJ, I could not get past that 1st freaking helicopter mini-boss. I don't know if I just don't get that game or what but I tried like 50 times. And having to replay the whole level every time I died a few times annoyed me so I haven't played it in months.

Maybe if I go back, I'll be able to beat it. What exactly should I do to beat it?</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>DMC was harder than Viewtiful Joe. You can crush any enemy in VJ as soon as you learn its pattern. In DMC learning the bad guys' patterns was the easy part...</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>FFTA is a game that I stopped playing because it was too easy; I never needed to use any strategy to win, so battles weren't fun to play.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Bah. "but" -> "then"</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Yeah, I don't remember dying to regular baddies in VJ. More common in DMC, it was. Those shadow -cat-T1000-orb thingies were bitches.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/dmdgame.php3">Dante Must Drink!</a>

Heh, not if you've played DMC with a drinking game. :)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I would label DMC as hard. It was challenging, but still a lot of fun. When is more difficult than it's worth, I use "frustrating", or the even more creative "extremely hard." Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Battletoads.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Apprantely, Viewtiful Joe on Adult was insanely hard, one of the major reasons it did extremely poorly in its initial release in Japan</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Do you mean V-Rated? Adult was Normal mode for VJ. And I thought DMC on Normal was about the same difficulty as VJ on Adult. DMC on Hard was way harder than V-Rated though.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Hard. I'm sure it was much harder on V-rated, but there was no kiddie mode and Hard is fucking hard enough, too much so for the Japanese. It actually killed sales of the game 'til they rereleased it in the International version, that helped it out a bit</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Real...like in the streets...as it were.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Once you get into Hard mode in DMC, the game is virtually unplayable.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>And then there are immortal games like Bart vs. The Space Mutants.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Do the 360 during a jump or while blocking. It's much easier to do with a thumbpad.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I'm still waiting for Capcom to come out with some sort of "Street Fighter Judo" type game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Then I'll make sure not to try it under Hard.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I don't think it translates as well. Associating a button press to a punch or a kick is associating a button press to a discrete action. Grappling/throwing doesn't really have discrete actions.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>It was Kids (Easy), Adults (Normal), V-Rated (Hard), Ultra V-Rated (Very Hard). Same as DMC's difficulty modes (Easy, Normal, Hard, Dante Must Die). Adults mode was a healthy challenge the first time through, but anyone who complained about it being "too hard" is just a fucking pussy. Also, they had the same complaints with DMC too, incidentally - which is why DMC2 sucked so bad.

And while we're on this note, I'm sick of lazy ass gamers who are too fucking worthless to be bothered to build up any skill and so complain about the "difficulty" of any game that they can't breeze through in 3 hours without dying. Don't these people remember the days when it was considered an <I>accomplishment</i> to beat a game? Nowadays conquering a game is something gamers take for granted. And, I mean, you <I>should</i> be able to at least finish a game you bought for 50 bucks, that's true, but it should at least require some effort on the player's part to master the gameplay. I'm not saying we should go back to the NES days, back when beating a Ninja Gaiden title required cybernetic implants and a brain-swap with a military supercomputer, but games that require no challenge and minimal effort on the part of the player are just as bad.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>But, as much as we seem to differ, from what we've said previously, I know that we actually desire about the same level of challenge in videogames. We just come at it from different sides.

Oh, and I think that the entire concept of saving makes games today easier - which I have no problem with. Starting the game over from scratch every goddamn time you play it is not fun. That trend mostly died with the NES, but I did play some SNES games that did it. (Aero the Acrobat and Bubsy come to mind. Fun games that I would have enjoyed much more if I could have either had a password or save option.)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>All I'm talking about is a healthy challenge. There's a difference between a game that's difficult because it forces you to develop strategies, master techniques and improve your skills, and a game that's difficult because it pits you against insurmountable odds, forces you to muddle with ridiculous control schemes or doesn't allow you to save. Nor do I really care about treating games as "trophies" that you beat just so you can prove your superiority to your friends or whatever. When I beat a game I just want to feel as though I had to work for it in some way.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Yeah, I still have yet to beat Hard mode in DMC (I'm on the last boss with no items and he's essentially impossible).</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Oh, I know there is. I'm gonna go through the two games back to back once I find the time and that's what I'll be playin'. I love difficulty, but it's all about time and # of games. BTW, I beat NG 1 and 2 with one man and NG3 with 2</div>