What is it about the “hardcore gamer” that makes us so fucking stupid? In what other medium, whether it be movies, music, art, etc. do advocates of the hobby readily, and often times purposefully, submit themselves to being utterly debased as a human being at the merciless hands of the works we so admire, and by association, the vile designers behind said works? When art aficionados came by to take in the majesty of the Mona Lisa, did Leonardo da Vinci pop out from behind it and steal their wallet before pulling down their pants and showing the world their baby dick? I doubt it, but then again, da Vinci probably wasn't as big a masochistic asshole as Itagaki is.

To be perfectly honest, I've moved on from the point in my gaming career where I need to torture myself with cheap enemy AI and memorization of entire levels, that was what the 90's were about, but more so because I got sick of buying new controllers. I'm not exaggerating when I say I have an entire bag full of broken controllers in my closet, hording them like some kind of psychopathic axe-murderer, my collection of human skulls perpetually accumulating. From the NES, all the way up to a 360 pad I literally ripped apart with my bare hands, I've broken more controllers, furniture, and innocent household items than I have beaten games, and I must stress, yet again, that this isn't an exaggeration.

In the days of yore, otherwise known (to me) as the early to mid 90's, my sole obsession, aside from Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters, was videogames. I've played games since the age of 3, when my parents bought an NES in 1988. When you're that young, there's nothing in the world you find difficult, and there's no such thing as failure. Flying and defeating hoards of deadly Foot Ninja is all in a days work, but as you grow older, that all changes. The first time you jump off the bed, hoping your Super Mario Bros. 3 raccoon tail, made from a sock covered in permanent marker, will carry you to that coin-filled heaven in the clouds, the cold hard facts of life hit you as abruptly as the sharp edge of your nightstand. With this sudden realization that Big Bird is a fucking liar and imagination can't, in fact, make anything possible, failures you once brushed off without issue, now become as big an obstacle as getting dibs on the only copy of “Where's Waldo?” in the school library.

Thus, the first time I truly began to comprehend what that dumpy little mushroom was saying at “the end” of Super Mario Bros., my rage was nearly uncontrollable. Another castle? What other castle? How many fucking castles are there? If I'm not supposed to be in this castle, which castle am I supposed to be in? Is there some kind of map? Perhaps a signpost to point me in the right fucking direction!?

My first instinct was to run to my mother, and immediately begin questioning her about the whereabouts of the Princess, and whether this other castle was merely some kind of elaborate ruse. When she explained to me that I had spent the last year of my life systematically mastering and defeating what was only the first of 8 seperate worlds, my mind exploded, giving birth to a primal rage that led me to do one thing; conquer the shit out of every game I played.



For nearly two decades, this led me to force my way through some of the most harrowing and frustrating games of all-time. And at this point? I'm done with that entire facet of the medium. Gaming has changed in almost every fundamental way since the golden age of console gaming, the way games are viewed, both by the core audience and popular culture at large, has evolved almost as fast as the games themselves. With this sudden shift into mass appeal, challenge in games has taken a back seat to narrative and (if we're lucky) engaging new mechanics.

So, why is it, with this greater focus on more accessible, less frustrating gameplay, that games of average or below average difficulty are scoffed at for having some kind of deficiency from the hardcore?

One thing that I should immediately make clear is that there's nothing wrong with a challenging game, or people who enjoy said challenge. It's the dickless group of self-loathing, 13-year-old children who think insane difficulty automatically equals hardcore, and having to restart the same sequence less than 10 times is for pussies.

A perfect example of this bullshit is the latest Prince of Persia. A game built more around an experience than anything else. And what was one of the biggest complaints? Difficulty. Did nobody sit back and look at how many times they needed to have their asses pulled out of a bottomless pit by the ever present Elika? Yet, these mindless drones who take it upon themselves to preach the creed of the “hardcore gamer” still think the game would have been improved by adding a Game Over screen? What is it about extra load times and the countless replaying of already completed sections of game that constitutes itself as fun? And even if, in your warped prepubescent mind, that was somehow an enjoyable experience, why does the lack of said monotonous replaying make the game any less legitimate?

Another thing that really pisses me off about this whole masochistic, “play a stupidly hard game until your vagina turns into a dick,” thing are the forum kids who claim you "haven't really played game x" unless you've played it on the hardest difficulty. No. You know what? Fuck you. I simply no longer enjoy games like Ninja Gaiden; a game that just keeps punishing you until, like that pale-ass D&D nerd who got picked on in high school, you finally snap and unload a clip into the popular kids table in the cafeteria. If the game I'm playing on normal isn't indicative of the game the developers set out to create, then why the fuck is the difficulty option even present? Why do I have to play Halo 3 on Legendary to really get the entire experience? And to make things even more recent, why is the Professional difficulty in RE5 the only “real” way to play the game?

Maybe, for some of these kids, the day will come when they too let go of the shame they feel for simply playing a game on normal . For me, that day came the moment I realized I was no longer enjoying games. Most of the time, I was forcing my way through a particularly ridiculous game just to get the last laugh, and as time wore on, and my patience for ridiculous difficulties began to waver, I found that my “last laugh” usually came in the form of snapping a disc, or hurling something fragile into an object made of glass. And under those circumstances, the laugh is usually extremely short lived, when I stop Hulking out and realize I snapped a $60 game in half, or else smashed something I really should have learned to put away before engaging in a displeasing game of Rainbow Six on Realistic mode. My legless, drill-less Big Daddy statue certainly wishes I had learned my lesson long ago.

Either way you slice it, difficulty in games is always going to be draw for some, and a deterrent for others, the difference being that those who let the ridiculous notion of difficulty equaling legitimacy overtake the genuine merits of a game, will miss out on things the rest of us can enjoy as is. And we're also gonna save a lot of money on broken controllers.