I despise difficulty spikes, they' re like a sudden obstacle thrown out in front of you that hits you like a Ivan Drago punch. If a game is easy to begin with, and remains like that throughout, then surely a sudden increase in difficulty is unnecessary and - not forgetting to mention - rather cruel.

Japanese RPG' s are a good personal example, one minute I' m leisurely exploring without feeling too threatened by the inhabiting goblins, wizards and other nasty monsters wandering around. But once I approach the end of the game and the difficulty rises like a hot air balloon, it makes me mad!!

At least there’s some games that remain challenging throughout, and even those with a difficulty level that stays neither easy or hard are more acceptable than what I’ve mentioned above.

Don’t get me wrong, challenge is good, difficulty levels are good, what isn’t so good at least for me is having to suffer the consequences of a difficulty spike, especially if it comes near the dying moments in my quest for completion. If I sail through a game with a nice breeze behind me, and then realise that I' m not going to be able to witness the ending because of a nasty difficulty leap, I become rightfully angry at the development team for trying to deny me of some deserved closure for both me and the game.

GRRRRR

Do you share this view or have a different one entirely?

Most games I play have a consistant difficulty level...

The most legitimately difficult game I have played is obviously Ninja Gaiden 2..

IIf you suck at Ninja Gaiden... You suck, that' s just it, it' s not a case of the
A.I being unfair or having monumental power, Ryu is just as powered up as the
A.I.. So..

I' m trying to think of any difficulty spikes I have ever experienced... Well, there' s
a few in DMC1, what the hell were those Ink dogs on?(Or whatever they were
called)

You have at least 10 seconds to kill them, then they release their devil trigger
mode..

Parts of Call of Duty: 2 were ridiculously hard compared to the earlier bits. The Pointe du Hoc battleground was quite difficult on easy, and when trying to snag the veteran achievement the Ack-Ack guns automatically zero in on you whenever you look down the scope. It' s ridiculously hard on mechanics alone. There must be hundreds of enemies on the battlefield, and they zero in on you when you bring your scope up... [:' (]

That was the only huge unbalanced portion of the game though, which is good.

You think COD2 was bad, COD3 is far worse. Some parts are just fustrating, even for me.

No no, CoD:2 is an awesome game. There was just that one point when playing on Veteran. Not a big deal for most folks, but when you' ve been trying to get the same dang achievement for 2 hours, re-trying strategies, it tests you.

I know, CoD:3' s Campaign is very inconsistent when it comes to gameplay, visuals, and difficulty. I' ve almost snagged all of the single player achievements, so I' m probably going to hock it off, pick up Double Agent, and buy it again for the multiplay when it gets cheaper.