Sorry, not “easy”. It did take me a good hour to figure it out, and this was at the prime of my video-gaming skill. But not substantially different from other games of that era, and it gave you as many tries as you wanted, as I recall. The games that really got on my nerves were the ones where you had to play through the whole damned thing again if you died on the boss a few times. Most of those, I never beat; I just got tired of playing through the whole game.
Maybe I was just really lucky? As I said, I never played through Castlevania, just beat my friends’ game when they were stuck. I actually had to get someone to play through the handful of screens before the Count because I kept dying on that part. :smack:
I don’t (hell, my video card is 7 years old!), but I agree with tonedef. I beat GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas on the PC, but Vice City (I think) was the only one I managed to fully complete on the Xbox. Same deal with Mafia, which is a somewhat similar (and vastly underrated) game.
Rule of Rose for the PS2. Great creepy game. Good atmosphere. Good story. Everything worked except for the combat. It was terribly wonky. You could hit targets sometimes from the front. Other times you had to be practically at a 90 degree angle. Just all around terrible. If we hadn’t cheated to gain invincibilty, we never would’ve seen the ending, which was terribly depressing. Another plus.
The most recent Madden (which I played once on a friends 360,) seemed to have a pretty big flaw.
I’ve played other versions (either '04, or '05…maybe '03?) on my brother-in-laws PS2. When you had to select your play, both the offense and defense did it at the same time. You had three to five choices on the screen, and hit a button to decide which one, the idea being the opponent didn’t know which play you were doing. But the most recent version…it goes offense first, then defense (I think…) but the play you select is the ONLY ONE displayed on the screen! The other guy knows EXACTLY what you are doing!
Now, I know that, to a degree, an opposing football coach knows roughly what the other team is going to do based on how they line up, and from watching their calls and plays, but they don’t know the EXACT PLAY they are going to do.
I’ve got to chime in here with another recent game…
Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox (or any of its variants). This was a game billed as so twitch-based, so hardcore, that even the Devil May Cry fanboys would be tearing their hair out. Since the thing I loved most about DMC was its pure, unforgiving but fair combat, I desired this game for many years. It wasn’t enough to make me fork up the cash for an Xbox, tho.
Finally, there came a time when I owned an Xbox360, and the greatness that was Ninja Gaiden would be mine. I would conquer it, cursing at every enemy until I figured out their secrets and patterns and then skillfully dispatching them before moving on to greater and deadlier challenges. I ended up enjoying the game thoroughly for a few hours.
Then the fourth level - a large city populated by enemy ninja - loomed before me. I got halfway through the level and got blown to smithereens.
Now, ninja are cool. Wearing all black and dashing around like a badass is a sure way to endear me to your cause. Unless your cause is to throw exploding shuriken at me every few seconds, from offscreen, while I’m trying my hardest to have a fair fight.
I don’t ask for much. When I get hit, I want to know that it was coming so I can blame myself for not blocking or dodging all ninja-like out of the way. Apparently ninja-blocking has nothing against these super-sticky exploding shuriken, because they attach to my body while my ninja avatar just sorta hangs out, sword ready, before blowing up a few seconds later and making me curse the name of every insane git at Konami who let such a game-breaking attack slip through.
This only has to happen a few times, halfway through the two-hour level, before I decide it’s time to trade this one in and play some more Devil May Cry. Sorry, Itagaki! Pretty boys and balanced combat are calling me back~
Oh, yes. Absolutely. Those enemy ninja are the most irritating enemies I’ve had the misfortune to encounter in just about any game. I turned invincibility on to play through Ninja Gaiden and it was still difficult to get through the game just because those guys were so god damned annoying.