Ever since I first started gaming, I remember always setting it to the easiest difficulty during my first run. I’ve always felt ashamed by this because it tends to make me feel like I ruined the experience I was suppose to have with the game. There are plenty of reasons why I choose to go the n00b route and, while I may find the games easy in this way of life I pick, whenever I go to higher difficulties it totally makes me realize WHY I do it in the first place.

The reason why I choose the novice setting, even on games I’ve been playing for decades, is because I really just want to complete the game in it’s entirety, take it for it’s narrative [if it has one] and not be burdened with lame shit that I know happens on the harder settings. Games like Metal Gear Solid or God of War have great exposition that tell what Snake or Kratos are striving for and when that narrative happens over and OVER and OVER[!!!!] again because I get shot while jumping over a crevice to my death, which causes me to see the same cutscene upteen times, it tends to become annoying. Sure I can learn how to play the game better and not suck OR I could just stick to the novice route while learning how to play the game, get my narrative crack and be happy. I’ll go with option B.

Now we have the main reason why I FUCKING HATE the harder settings and it has shown itself plenty of times during my run through Gears of War 2 on the Insane difficulty: cheapness. While I appreciate the game for ramping up the difficulty, I feel they shouldn’t do it at the expense of making a shot to the fucking face mean as much as a spitball to a steel wall. If I score a headshot on ANY difficulty with ANY gun it should mean instant death to the enemy. To make it harder for the player to just keep popping them in the noggin, program the AI better to try to better conceal their head as much as possible which would cause it to be more rewarding for me, the gamer, when I do score one. Next comes how much the player gets weaker while the enemies get stronger. In Gears, I spend about 50 rounds per each enemy while two or three shots of their guns cause my body to turn to pizza. In higher difficulties I would much rather prefer many more enemies flanking me with the same type of damage percentage done to them and me rather than have each enemy be as buff as a fucking Brumak. It just seems like a cop out on the programmers of making the game actually be a rewarding and strategic experience on Insane rather than annoying like Halo 3’s “Legendary” mode.

I’m bitching because of how many times, when playing on co-op, we have to pull a trial and error tactic to see where troika placement is to better our strategy. It may be impossible to give the AI uber intellegence that makes it a formidable opponent, but I can always dream I guess…or play online deathmatch :3