{"id":984,"date":"2012-03-26T09:29:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T16:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/islemaster.wordpress.com\/?p=984"},"modified":"2014-03-17T00:46:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T07:46:46","slug":"anthony-burch-rev-rant-snakes-plants-and-difficulty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/anthony-burch-rev-rant-snakes-plants-and-difficulty\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Burch: \u201cRev Rant: Snakes, Plants, and Difficulty\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/12905355@N05\/5248716673\/\" title=\"Plants vs. Zombies Are Now Adorable Misfit Toys by Photo Giddy, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5041\/5248716673_b8d635abce.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"450\" alt=\"Plants vs. Zombies Are Now Adorable Misfit Toys\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Reflection on an article by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/reverendanthony\">Anthony Burch<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=msc9gr_17Hc&amp;feature=related\">\u201cRev Rant: Snakes, Plants, and Difficulty.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Wow &#8211; I\u2019ve never seen these \u201cRev Rant\u201d videos before and they seem fascinating.<\/p>\n<p>This gets to the heart of the matter so quickly, I love it: A game should be difficult enough to make the players explore your mechanics.  Now, I\u2019ve often been grateful for an \u201ceasy\u201d mode in a game (if Halo was only playable on \u201cLegendary\u201d then I probably wouldn\u2019t touch it) but I totally agree that it\u2019s usually the hard mode that teaches players to exploit a game\u2019s mechanics.<\/p>\n<p>This comparison goes back at least as far as Super Mario Bros 2.  The Japanese version (Lost Levels, right?) used Mario mechanics that only the most dedicated players uncovered in the first game.  The second game was designed to force players to learn those mechanics.  More recent Mario games use layered challenges to encourage players to explore those mechanics:  Galaxy 2 unlocks a whole new set of star challenges when the game is completed, and NSMBW has the star coins that unlock World 9.  In both cases, these secondary objectives require mastery of mechanics in a way that standard completion does not.  Personally I prefer this secondary mechanic approach, but it may not be as appropriate for a story-heavy game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflection on an article by Anthony Burch: \u201cRev Rant: Snakes, Plants, and Difficulty.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62,222,227,258,293],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-designer","tag-balance","tag-mario","tag-metal-gear-solid","tag-plants-vs-zombies","tag-rev-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}