Capcom

So I'm playing Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP)... another long-time buy from an EB "Game-Days" sale awhile back.... finally decided to rip the shrinkwrap off of it & have a go.....

What gave me some trepidation about Monster Hunter Freedom is that it is notoriously hard. It's just really really easy to get killed by monsters, and you can spend an hour preparing yet still die & have to start over.

I'm only at the very early stages of the game, but there is a lot of coolness about it. If only there weren't so many problems that Capcom refuses to fix due to tradition then this game would be seriously awesome.

Anyway, this post isn't necessarily about MHF, but about Capcom. Yes, MHF is hard, but here's something I never see anyone say: All Capcom games are hard. I haven't played every Capcom game, but it seems like every one I come across is known for its difficulty. Lost Planet. Resident Evil. Hell... even the deceptively kid-looking Zack & Wiki is supposed to be really hard!

How hasn't anyone noticed this??? People complain about companies catering to the "casual" market, well isn't Capcom a company that makes "hardcore gamer" games???

Another thing I've noticed, there's usually a level of difficulty on games based on where they were created. Japan probably has the most difficult games (Rhythm Heaven), with U.K. companies making the 2nd most difficult (Pursuit Force) and U.S./North America companies having the easiest (more "casual-friendly" games) Kind of strange.

Me, I'm not very good at video games at all. So I'm probably more of the "casual" gamer, but I want the coolness of the "hardcore"-- I certainly don't want all mini-game collections all the time! But I think there's a way we the gamers can have our cake & eat it too. It doesn't have to be either stupid hard or blandly casual, I think games can be scaled to suit the different needs & difficulties of the gamers as a whole. But companies need to stop thinking so dogmatically; just because a control scheme has been a certain way for the last 20 years that it's fine for the next 20, that sort of thing... has to stop.


Another truism of the video game industry that no one talks about: EA & Ubisoft games always drop in price. Yes, it could be argued that *all* video games drop in price eventually... but that's not always true. There are some that never seem to go down in price, even years later.... Nintendo first-party titles are a prime example but there are more.

But with EA games & Ubisoft, eventually all their games end up in the discount bins of the Walmarts of the world. And I'm not just talking about shovelware, even their great titles drop in price eventually. I don't know if it's because those 2 companies are so big with such a wide distribution reach that they can blow out product for a fraction of their launch MSRP or what.... but especially with Ubisoft... like No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Yeah I want it, but I know it'll be $20.00 eventually... I don't know if it'll be 6 months or a year, but eventually it will. That's actually the reason I like it when Ubisoft publishes a game I want.

Just a few things that the video game industry won't talk about.



later
don