You know, I actually really enjoyed Onimusha, depite the control system (which I have never liked - I gave up on 'Resident Evil code veronica X 2000 super plus go mega').

I even went as far as going to the effort of unlocking the uber Bashimon sword or whatever it was called (it was totally unnecessary to complete the game and was only available right near the end IIRC). I can't remember if I went for very easy though.... Have a feeling it was just regular easy - it was a loooooong time ago.
[Reply]

I never even beat the first boss
[Reply]

That's a shame, it did get a lot better once you started to get different weapons and power them up a bit. No great loss though, you didn't miss out on too much - it was good but not great.
[Reply]

I play through games on normal and if I complete them I will revisit them on more difficult modes. I remember having a competition with my friends on Timesplitters 2 on the PS2 to see who could complete the levels the quickest. After you remebered the enemy patterns you could fly through it very quickly - it was really funny to watch each other do it because you would be killing one person while arming grenades to throw at a specific location to kill someone on patrol by the time you were in front of them - it looked like the whole thing was sped up. I have the Amiga to thank for my memory feats - shadow of the beast makes modern games look easy by comparison!
[Reply]

Try Ninja Gaiden (Xbox, or the new Ninja Gaiden Sigma remake on the PS3). That game is sure to make you want to scratch out your eyeballs - even though the controls are quite a bit better than Onimusha, admittedly. Single most frustrating game ever, even on Normal mode.

Games nowadays do generally appear to have become easier, maybe to cater to the masses of casual players.
[Reply]

Always use the normal mode, as I'm only a casual gamer, and other modes are way too hard. I never pick the easy mode, as sometimes they let some things out of games to make them easier to finish, but I want to enjoy the whole thing.
[Reply]

Games nowadays are easier. I can get reasonably far in most modern games, but going back to 16 bit games on UAE, I got my ass handed to me. They are much more challenging and less forgiving.
[Reply]

Ideed they are, thats why I like them so much.

I have however (after getting my new GFX card) been playing halo, with full gfx settings and hard setting. All I can say is "IT NUTS", bloody hard.
[Reply]

Halo or Halo 2? I found the first game on the xbox much harder on the hard setting than Halo 2 on the same hard setting. Also I got quite bored of the sequel and don't think it is a good Vista launch title as it was dated even when it came out on the Xbox as it didn't really do much new that we hadn't already seen in the original. I still enjoy playing the original game though, somertimes still firing it up on the old xbox, but I do still much prefer the PC version over the Xbox version, mainly due to the better controls of a keyboard and mouse. I never can get on 100% with using a console controller for FPS style games. Always makes the games harder and more fiddly than they should be.
[Reply]

I mostly start playing at normal and then increase the difficulty after a while. Starting at easy can be dangerous as you remove a lot of the challenge and the game can be too easy to complete.

And I agree with JT that games were much harder before. One can just have a look at the Xenon competition at this board to see that. Had a few goes at this game and it didn't go very well.
[Reply]