Games these days are just too damned easy. That’s what epic’s Cliff Bleszinski believes anyway. Bleszinski, known best for his work on Jazz Jackrabbit and some or other third person shooter has said he intends for the next Gears of War game, Judgement, to buck that trend.
“Games have become more linear and easier, so it feels like a lot of quick-time-events,” Bleszinski told Xbox360Achievements. “The more I play games like that the more I turned off to them and just want to get back to systems interacting with systems. When was the last time a game really challenged you and asked something of you, right?” he asked.
“There’s a reason why Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls have taken off lately. It’s because they really require you actually try.”
For that reason, Gears of War Judgement – in development by Painkiller devs People Can fly, with aid from Epic – is going to ramp up the difficulty.
“Casual mode will still be casual, whatever, if you just want to see graphics and you don’t want to die, but every other mode will be hard in this game and you will die,” Bleszinski noted. “If this game doesn’t make you sweat, we haven’t done our jobs.”
If the difficulty bump is done in a meaningful way, I’m all for it – but if there’s one thing I can’t stand in games, is artificial difficulty – where a game’s difficult for all the wrong reasons. Give me smarter AI , don’t just increase the bad guys’ health and nerf my bullets. That’s just lazy.
Last Updated: June 21, 2012
