Kenneth at DualShockers Writes: "The term “cheap” is thrown around quite a lot in video games – perhaps even a bit too much. Cheap has become a buzzword of sorts and it is often used to attack the integrity of a game or its developers. Some players are simply very impatient or aren’t willing to invest the necessary time in some games to become truly good at them and hence, the first time they encounter something that their tried or tired tactics aren’t effective against, they throw out the big C. However, we must observe that cheap isn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination.
Although it is subjective and its meaning is likely to be different for each gamer, cheap is a very real thing and it is quite different from “ challenge”."
"Dark Souls: Archthrones is like playing a brand new FromSoftware game, and that speaks volumes about just how much good modding can do," says Hanzala from eXputer.
Parrying has been creeping into more games, with almost every high-profile title of the last few years featuring it in some way. Why?
i understand the authors frustration i'm not the best at parrying in games. not that i can't complete a game that requires it but it is a definite harder thing for me than other kinds of techniques in games. which might be the main reason it's so heavily added in games nowadays. want to make your game challenging without having to do a lot of work? just add a parry boss. (what i mean by parry boss is a boss you have to beat by parrying such that their attacks will kill you otherwise)
I always think it's fine as long as such games also have the roll/dodge panic button. But I understand the will to parry, it seems so cinematic in a fight when you pull it off.
TheGamer writes, "Some weapons resist the test of time."
Battletoads for nes was cheap beyond any game I have ever played.
For fighting games all I use is, swing low, chop low, rob low. Works best on cyborgs.
Shao Kahn in the recent mortal kombat was so cheap that it was actually funny. I did eventually beat him but took a lot of patience.
Wow... this article started with a great concept, but quickly went to hell.
First off, Persona 4 Arena's score attack mode is CHALLENGING, not cheap. The difference is that it's COMPLETELY possible to get to Kanji (fight 5 or 6, perhaps even beat it) by abusing the preset combos in the noob mode. (forget its name) Yes, most people won't have the skill to do it (I know I don't), but it's completely possible to dominate your enemy with mastery of the game. Now I do admit some of the characters have unfair advantages, but the AI is also overly aggressive, which gives you countless chances to persona break them. The only really "cheap" thing about the AI, is the fact they can perform an instant kill.
As far as Demon / Dark Souls goes, I wouldn't say that the game is challenging or cheap, since it all boils down to playing the game a very precise way. If you go in trying to rush every situation, the game is going to feel cheap (since it's designed to discourage this) and if you take everything slowly, it's actually pretty manageable. Something that is challenging should require vast amounts of skills, not just changing your play style, like Tactical Challenge 6 in Vanquish.
Now if you want an example of cheap, go play Declassified on hard... you die in a few shots and the AI will almost always auto aim you. Even if you know all of the enemy spawn locations and have the skill to kill them, it's still very easy to die regardless. You can't even really write a guide for this mode, since so much of it is luck dependent.
In my opinion, mostly all recent fighting games used cheap ways to make their bosses "challenging". In overall, most of them are either very unbalanced, either spam bots, either profiting of lame buffs like constant healing.
A boss, or a game, must gradually require skills in order to beat a target. If the player has to use a cheap method, like an A.I. glitch (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), spamming (Mortal Kombat), etc... then he wont feel rewarded when accomplishing his mission.
He will just say "Man, that was lame. Hope I'll never have to do this again". Unfortunately, developers tend to think difficulty = challenge, so when they want something to be "challenging", they just artificially rise its difficulty.