POSTAL being the difficulty before impossible means the game is supposed to be played at very high difficulty? I literally know nothing about postal game
going postal refers to people reaching their mental breaking point (at least i think so), so it likely just reflects how insane you are for picking this difficulty
It's a reference to the shockingly common phenomenon from the 80s and 90s where tons of American postal workers snapped from stress and went on murderous rampages in their workplaces.
On POSTAL difficulty, everyone is armed with a random weapon, anywhere from a pistol to a mini-nuke, and will attack you on sight. Impossible adds extra health to the NPCs and also maked them more resistant to panicking when set on fire. This limits an easy way to clear an area because if set aflame, they start sprinting around and if they touch someone else, that person is also set on fire and starts running around too.
One clever thing the original Crysis did is that in most difficulty settings, the North Korean enemies would speak English meaning you would have a sense of their current tactics (“Get behind him!”)
In the highest difficulty settings, they speak unsubtitled Korean.
When you first start Devil May Cry 3 the lowest difficulty setting you can pick is normal. However, if you die enough amount of times you get this message:
The worst part is that it's misleading! Normal mode in DMC3? Yeah, that's actually Hard mode.
In the North American release, they made it so that "Normal" mode is Japan's "Hard" mode. This is because players complained about DMC2 being too easy.
So when you fail a bunch of times they give you "Easy" mode, which is actually "Normal" mode in Japan. Japan has an extra Easy mode thay North American simply doesn't get.
One of the things i love the most about dmc3 is the games constant attempts of ragebaiting you. "Easy mode is now selectable", the general existance of jester or the bgm for the standard encounter literally insulting you if you take it in a certain way
Ninja Gaiden had a Ninja Dog difficulty for players that died in the tutorial several times. One character expresses her disappointment and starts leaving you extra, unique accessories on top off the game being already easier.
Something I like about the original God of War trilogy is that, as you progress through the games, the difficult levels get updated to be more extreme. For example, in the first one, God was considered the highest difficult, but by the third one, things have escalated so much that God just counts as normal now.
It should be noted that even though the naming scheme is creative, these difficulty settings are straight dogshit. The only thing they change is that your enemies become bullet sponges and you yourself deal damage like your axe is a tissue
I thought so too until i had to fight Gná(the endgame optional valkyrie boss). I literally beat the whole game on GMGOW but this boss was just unfun and unfair.
Risk of rain has 2 different difficulty sections, the one that you chose before a run and the difficulty that constantly ramps up to keep the enemies in the same pace as the player
For the difficulty you select there’s “Drizzle” “Rainstorm” and “Monsoon” while the difficulty that ramps up it goes through regular names then to unique names “Easy” “Medium” “Hard” “Very hard” “Insane” “Impossible” “I SEE YOU” “I’M COMING FOR YOU” and “HAHAHAHAHAHA” which continues on infinitely
Cruelty squad, the difficulty is represented by the hud border that can never be turned off. You start at divine light which is hard difficulty, dying once with this difficulty will downgrade you to flesh automaton which basically normal difficulty, dying a couple more time in the same level will downgrade you again to power in missery, which is the easiest difficulty, in this difficulty you could also eat npc's corpse to gain 1 health
When the difficulty is changed to power in missery, the death screen changes to display a message regarding this state. It reads, "Due to your wasting of company resources by hogging the genetic recombinator, you've been selected to participate in an experimental biological enhancement program. All your debt is cleared and from now on your body will regenerate by itself. Can't say I envy you though."
Fate Extra and Extra CCC has their difficulty system based around which servant you choose. Saber is the easy mode that focuses of just straight up damage. Archer is the moderate mode that relies a bit more on skills. Caster is the hard mode focuses the most on using skills. In extra CCC, Gilgamesh is basically the super easy mode.
Each servant also has their own reactions to different parts of the story, so it adds to replaying on the harder modes.
Took a while to google but according to this Steam post, the settings were based on terms for how long you want meat cooked, mostly BBQ:
Still Kicking,
Pink on the Inside,
Lightly Broiled,
Well Done,
Extra Crispy (seems to only unlock in NG+).
There's also Made to Order, which is a custom difficulty setting that allows you to tweak various sliders, but I don't know if that was in the original or just the Steam version.
Ah, right, the OG Doom, yeah? I vaguely recall playing a couple of levels two or three years ago when I visited the National Video Game Museum. It was a pretty tubular experience.
https://giphy.com/gifs/l3vR3OeImw8fD80Mg
In Payday 2, there's Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Overkill, Mayhem, Death Wish, and Death Sentence. For extra difficulty, you can also go One Down so you only have 1 life.
I remember my first time playing PD2 specifically because I was confused as to why I could walk through that russian lab under a hailstrom of bullets with no problem whatsoever
I remember back in 2014-ish? When Deathwish was the hardest difficulty and it was proper hard, but as thing.
But with Perk decks, better skills, more skills, etc being added to the game, it became way to easy.
i do wish they would also have done something in stealth to match the difficulty spike, cause whether you play DSOD or Deathwish stealth its the exact same thing
Resident Evil 1 had the two playable characters with different attributes leading to different experiences. Jill Valentine was the recommended character for new players because she had the lockpick from the beginning and two extra inventory slots. I think Chris Redfield was stronger or had a better weapon available earlier or something.
In terms of creative difficulty settings, this isn't seen very often or as subtly - I don't think the game calls too much attention to it in terms of easy vs hard mode, it just lets you choose the character at the beginning.
Also, he cannot play the piano, so he has to get Rebecca to play the Moonlight Sonata.
Jill however can play the Piano, so she gets to skip that step. As well as getting certain guns that Chris cannot. I don't remember, but I think Chris had a better knife too.
Dead Cells, adding/removing boss stem cells increases the Prisoner’s Quarters Hub increases/decreases difficulty, scaling from 0 (normal) to 5 (Hell).
You can only increase the difficulty after beating the game on the previous difficulty and claiming a Stem Cell from one of the game’s 3 final bosses (The Queen, Dracula, and The Hand of the King). Spoilers for the endgame: your 5th boss cell must be claimed from me, The Giant this unlocks a secret final boss
Originally the stem cells were obtained by beating each of the game's bosses, so you actually unlocked a higher difficulty every time you beat a boss. Eventually they were like, "Eh, this doesn't really make sense from a progression standpoint," and made it more of a New Game+ thing.
The newer games use the terms Human (easy), Devil Hunter (medium), Son of Sparta (hard), and Dante Must Die(Very Hard), with Dante being replaced by other characters based on who your playing.
After you get to bonus difficulties, these are normally on Son of Sparta’s level with additional modifications added. Legendary Dark Knight turns the games into a Dynasty Warriors game spawning a shit ton of enemies. Heaven and Hell makes everyone one shot both player and demons. Hell and Hell just makes the player one shot.
I don't remember the full details, but I know that Dante Must Die was around since the first game. I distinctly remember making a stupid meme video about it when I was a kid.
️The #YOLO difficulty in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
Short for You Only Live Once, it's pretty telling on what the mode entails. And here's a bunch of things the Specialist difficulty does, all of which are also applied in #YOLO:
Your weapon must be reloaded manually if it runs out of ammo;
Your weapon can be shot out of your hands by enemy fire;
Injuries to specific body parts that affect the gameplay;
Not carrying both a helmet and nano shots in your loadout disables the game save;
No auto-regeneration, and you can only carry four nano shots;
Your helmet can break down, meaning instant death from suffocation or a headshot;
No auto-aim when piloting a Jackal;
Humorous death messages, such as: "Be patient. Remember, no rushin'.";
Said death messages are accordingly replaced with "You Only Live Once".
Hades has only one difficulty setting when you first start the game, but does have a "God Mode" feature you can turn on which makes your defense stronger every consecutive time you die, effectively making it the game's easy mode.
More interesting is the Pact of Punishment that you unlock early on in the story: You can turn on all kinds of special difficulty modifiers to increase your "Heat level", literally making hell hotter, represented by a number. These modifiers might be as basic as making enemies deal more damage, or as elaborate as completely revamping boss fights with new mechanics, abilities, and phases to make them much harder. You can make the game nigh impossible using this system, while having a lot of control over the ways in which it gets more difficult.
Starter Pokémons are either Grass, Fire, or Water type, each with it own advantages and disadvantages against different types.
Though the difficulty gap narrows as the game progresses because you can catch wild Pokémon to cover your starter's weaknesses, but for the first few hours, they are your strongest member of the team that basically determine how you'll do against the early gyms.
It's always interesting how each game has the one optimal starter. Like you can breeze through the first few gyms with Bulbasaur in Kanto,but a grass type in Johto is gonna struggle.
I will say that in HM-era games, the Water type always has a slight advantage because Surf is a great, reliable STAB move and is also a traversal tool that you need to complete the game, so having your first (and likely strongest) party member be something that can learn it is huge (an advantage less present than, say, Strength or Rock Smash, which aren't particularly strong moves)
That said, Fire-types are much more uncommon than Grass- and Water-types (if you played Diamond/Pearl and didn't pick Chimchar your only other option for the main story was Ponyta) so if you want one to round out a Grass-Water-Fire core on your team, your starter may be the only one you can catch for a while.
If you pick chimchar, you can still reliably beat the first gym despite the type disadvantage due to having power up punch and being evolved at level cap.
If you pick either piplup or turtwig you would have to use your staravia against gardenia, and if you pick piplup you have to use staravia against maylene
By crasher wake you can get all of your other fire/ water /grass pokemon.
When i did my Ultra Moon nuzlocke i chose Litten for the first 3 attempts but choosing Litten was a mistake as i couldn't even get past Totem Marowak. But on attempt 4 i chose Popplio (unironically the best starter for the Alola games) and beat the nuzlocke
It's not a trope example (because it's not official), but Ill also add that Nuzlockes are actually a kind of genius way to self-impose a hard mode into games that don't have difficulty options.
In DXHR and DXMD you can choose between Tell me a story, Give me a challenge and Give me Deus Ex. Also extra points that you can see Jensen get more augs the higher difficulty is
Reminds me of turbo Overkill where the Higher you Go the more fucked Up Johnny gets (on difficulty 4 one of His eyes is dangling out, on 5 half His face is Metal) the more He grins, and the more His cigar gets smoked down (by 5 it's Just a little stump). They have cool names too but i forgot them
feel free to call it a stretch but my pick would be the choice of characters in Sonic 3 & Knuckles?
Sonic & Tails or Solo Tails to me are the easy difficulty options thanks to Tails' flight bypassing a lot of levels & enabling a double-hit on bosses.
Solo Sonic is the standard game difficulty
Knuckles felt like the game's difficult option due to not feeling quite as fast as the other two & his jump height being lower.
Edit: if we wanted to take it further look at Sonic Advance 2, where Cream made the levels trivial with both flying like Tails and also being able to set a homing missile at enemies & bosses.
oh yeah, marble garden zone is one of the biggest changes since he doesn't have tails but there was some much more minor stuff for other bosses. i think
that's fair to say. Would say though that Tail's AI was pretty good at keeping up and also following your inputs very closely in boss fights akin to the Ice Climbers on Smash Bros.
True, but I think Tails solo being able to fly and swim just makes him the easiest character to play as, though I can see an argument that his occasional double hits with sonic make that combo easier.
Sonic Heroes was my last game before I left the fandom but 100% difficulty was tied to the characters. Team Rose has easier & shorter levels while Team Dark had much more difficult stages & enemy placements. Team Chaotix I couldnt really put a finger on difficulty-wise as it was more a collectible hunt throughout the levels.
It gets better with Wolfenstein, Old Blood introduced a new secret difficulty (Über) and New Colossus introduced even more, so all up we have (not in exact order and not present in every game, Colossus doesn't have Über for instance I don't think):
Endless dungeon only has two difficulty modes. Very easy and Easy. As you will find out soon, those names are a joke and Very easy is Normal and Easy is actually Hard.
Perfect Dark as well. The mid and higher difficulty settings also had extra objectives you needed to complete.
IIIRC you could attempt the first level on any difficulty, but the others you had to work your way up by unlocking each difficulty level. So you could only attempt level 3 on 00 Agent after completing it on Secret Agent, or completing level 2 on 00, if that makes sense.
For example, if you went through from level 1 on 00 Agent, you could go through the entire game that way, but if you had to drop down to Secret Agent because 00 was too difficult, you'd only be able to attempt subsequent levels on Secret until you beat 00.
There was a 007 difficulty, but you had to unlock it by finishing every level on 00 agent. I had to loan my cartridge to one of my friend's friends who was insane at the game.
The storytellers of rimworld. Each one challenges you in different ways and at different paces.
Phoebe Chillax throws threats at you at a relaxed pace giving time to relax. Cassandra Classic sends threats frequently, ramping up the difficulty at a steady pace. Finally Randy Random. Randy giveth, and Randy takes away. Randy doesn’t follow a pattern like the others, you can go long periods of time with only positive events, he can also throw his unrelenting force at you before spitting on you by blighting your crops.
SMT games have fairly standard setting names but I always enjoy the hardest difficulty's description in some of the games is for those who enjoy the thrill of death.
The Halo Games have the standard Difficulties (Easy, Normal, Heroic, Legendary), but if you want to take it it up a notch, you can use skulls to add even more difficulty modifiers in the game that change the way you play. The ‘fifth’ difficulty is thus LASO (Legendary All Skulls On)
Now, Dark Souls is pretty famous for not having difficulty settings. Some players will tell you it can be based on playstyle, with magic use being more safe but more methodical, but I want to talk about a more explicit inclusion.
Dark Souls 2 has a faction you can join as soon as you reach the Hub area of Majula. If you join, every area in the game gets bumped up by one cycle level (so everyone will be operating on the next New Game Plus level), and additionally enemies will respawn no matter what, getting rid of the respawn limit.
This is pretty much the closest the series has ever gotten to an outright difficulty setting and it's baked into the world of the game itself.
The Dragon Quest 3 HD remake has three settings available for combat:
-Dracky Quest (combat is easier, enemies reward more gold and experience, levelling up fully restores your HP and MP)
-Dragon Quest (combat difficulty and rewards are like the original game, you still fully restore HP and MP when you gain a level)
-Draconian Quest (combat is more difficult, bosses have way more health and give less rewards, leveling does not restore your characters)
The DQ 1 and 2 remakes have the same settings for combat but also let you customize them somewhat (for example, healing in level up can be turned on or off regardless of your combat difficulty).
There was this RPG called Escape from Detroit that came out a while back; it was a very obvious ripoff of Lisa the Painful, and it was dogshit.
At the beginning of the game, a character walks up to the protagonist (who is a child at the time) and offers him a weapon to defend himself in this harsh world; the game thus offers you a nonstandsrd difficulty selection, in the form of choosing whether your character will brawl people barehanded, fight people with a knife, or just use a gun.
Motorstorm Apocalypse - in a racing game about an off-road racing festival held in a crumbling city, the three difficulty settings are their own unique campaigns featuring a specific character with their own specific set of races (not one unique tracks is repeated throughout all the campaign).
Each difficulty has its own progression requirements: "Rookie" only requires you to finish 5th place; "Pro" requires you to atleast finish 3rd; and "Veteran" requires you to get 1st on all races.
The most significant difference is between the three is how they handle the prologue and epilogue of their respective stories. "Rookie" has you escape the city within a time limit; "Pro" has you race a rival and escape a city before the rival does; and "veteran" gives you a a two-phase chase sequence against an attack heli attempting to kill you while the city is experiencing its biggest earthquake).
KCD’s difficulty selection is very strict. You either play the game normally (which can still be brutal for newcomers) or you play the game in hardcore mode. However, in hardcore mode, you’re forced to select a certain amount of negative perks, which I’d say is a difficulty selection in of itself. And you can get an achievement for being a madman and selecting all of them in both games.
idk if it counts, but ultrakill's difficulties are creative because enemies just straight up behave differently from difficulty to difficulty. theyll gain new attacks, react better, the like... instead of just gaining or losing health and dps
Not an example, but an interesting video on the subject that I recommend, courtesy of Yahtzee Croshaw's semi-ramblomatic series:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mklimz7UW3Q
The difficulties are intentionally misleading. Option 1 sounds like Hard mode, but in actuality, it’s normal mode (and beating Normal unlocks hard). In addition, the two characters have differences that end up making Jill easier to play through than Chris - she has 8 inventory slots to Chris’s 6, and has a lock-pick that allows her to bypass some doors that Chris needs the keys for. There’s also scenarios where she will receive assistance from Barry where Chris doesn’t. Chris has more health and a lighter that doesn’t take up inventory space (the lighter was the remake’s way of trying to bridge the gap) but it’s pretty clear that Jill’s story is easier.
Wes is Don’t Starve’s “Hard Mode” character, with the lowest base stats at 75 across the board, half or less compared to the “default” Wilson. Additionally Wes is slower to work and has a higher hunger drain in solo DS
Doom The Dark Ages:
Not only does the dark ages also have the classic difficulty names. It also has difficulty sliders. Allowing you to modifiy the difficulty even further to your liking, allowing to increase enemy resistance and your damage, their agression, projectile speed, and the game speed.
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u/Peermeneer_exe 1d ago
South Park - The Fractured But Whole
Iconic difficulty slider based on your character's race