Technical Difficulties: Upon the Threshold

When it comes to challenge, the general thought drifts to terms such as the number of player lives/continues, enemy health, enemy AI, ease of control, whether or not the game has cheap shots, and the presence of broken gameplay (bad cameras, mechanics). Ultimately, challenge itself is in the eye of the player. All of the above are basically deterrents – a common argument against newer titles is that if you have enough time, you’ll get through it regardless of skill. But either way, you put in time, and how much a game succeeds in slowing you down is determined by your frustration threshold. I was only recently able to properly articulate the presence of such a thing by a couple of games – I’ll get to them later.


In the shortest terms, the threshold is the period of time a player stays with a game before declaring “fuck it!” and hurling the controller across the room. So what determines this breaking point? As stated prior, everyone has a different tolerance, but these tend to be the common factors:


When I see this, I know it's all over.

Of course, some games have done the exact opposite. I’ve never beaten a bit.trip game, and can only finish the first level of Beat. The reason being is that you not only have to endure a death throe and a death screen, but the music breaks up whenever you make a mistake. For me, that’s the perfect combination to set my threshold unbearably low. I can complete Battletoads, I’ve finished Ikaruga (though not with one credit!), but toss a game at me where it’s designed to constantly poke and prod me whenever I do wrong, capped off with your paddle shrieking and a neon flashing death screen, and I crumble.


So, what builds your threshold?

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