It feels rather typical of quite a few Amiga games... the concept and the idea was fantastic, but the people behind the games were more programmers than game designers... and to extended the lenght of gameplay they seem to have thought 'Let's just make it as hard as possible'.
Some games and series of games I think suffers from this are:
The Alien Breed series
- I got so put of by the difficulty in the later games that I just couldn't bother about playing them at all. I will give them another chance quite soon, though... but having tried them out so many times already I am not a believer of them not 'really' being so hard as they so far have seemed to be; I guess I just want them to be as good as people claim... not really accepting the fact that the level of difficulty is pointlessly high... but yet I haven't understood the beauty of the series... actually, my impression as of today are nothing less than that the games feels extremely over rated.
The Alien Breed 3D series
- Eh... well, yes, if they thought that almost being forced to restart a level because of having missed hitting the monsters with a couple of shots was a good idea of fun... well... then so be it. My cup of tea, the constant lack of ammo and health considered, it was not! But, I have to add, AB3D feels doable but hard... where AB3DII feels impossible (and really doesn't feel like a good game at all due to many factors).
Shadow of the Beast I & II
- Yeah. Right. Great gameplay! YEAH! Especially in SotB II, where one had to sit through the dreadfully long Game Over scene and the hillariously long intro after having played a couple of minutes just to be killed in an instant due to not knowing the level... I didn't bother learning the game because it felt like I spent 90% looking at those darn scenes and merely 10% playing the game in itself... no... I'd say: go for SotBIII instead... which is rather well balanced and not that hard at all. Too bad it took them until the third game in the series to realise that they had to offer some good gameplay aswell...
Kid Chaos
- I think it is stage 2-2 or 2-3 one has VERY little time to reach the exit. That would be fine... if it wasn't for me not even managing to reach the exit before the time runs out on me... thus, even considering smashing those flowers to open up the exit while ALSO reaching it before the time ran out felt like a joke. A really bad joke! And, while we're at it... I consider myself being quite an above average player when it comes to platformers.
Rock'n Roll
- I might have missed out on something here... but as far as I know there is no passwords to be seen ANYWHERE... and the game has a hellish amount of levels... which are to be completed in one go. With a very limited amount of lives. Were they insane? Did they not want anyone to complete this game... ever? It is so frustrating, because I love the game in itself... but it doesn't feel fun playing because of having to do it all over again... with levels that at times takes VERY long to complete.
...but then we also have these games that always seem to get bashed for being so hellishly hard to complete, which I don't really understand...
Nebulus
- Is it really that hard? Not that I have completed it, I am too lazy... but as soon as I start playing the game it doesn't take all too long to complete a couple of levels. And, since the gameplay is rather paced... it feels okay to have to 'learn' the levels to beat them... now, if I just could get myself to finally play it through.
Project-X
- I was a believer of the hype have been floating around for what seems like forever... that this game was one of the hardest shooters ever. Because of that I never took the time to get into this game... but, since I am a fan of SHMUPS, I finally couldn't resist giving this one a go... no matter how hard it possibly could be. Well. I have to say that I was somewhat dissapointed with the difficulty... no, I don't find it easy... but I don't find it hard either. Why not? Well, all the levels have 'sections'; sections in which one stumbles across either mini bosses or waves of enemies... and in most cases isn't hard at all to learn how do deal with all the different 'sections' of each level. Yes, it is a trial and error game in many ways... which will put some people off... but trial and erros often means that once one has learned how it all works, it feels almost like a breeze. I can easily reach the fourth level without dying one single life... and I guess I can go further than that without dying once I have learned that level aswell. I guess what I am saying here is that I won't be surprised if I one day will be able to beat the entire game without dying one single life. But... that is something only time will tell.
