Some thoughts on Hard Mode in games and Hard games in general.

So i've been playing Victor Vran a lot lately and what a genuinely good game it is. You have main protagonist voiced by same voice actor who did voice for Geralt of Rivia,Stanley's parable narrator voicing main antagonist ,game runs/looks/plays very well. Having great time with it .

To the point - I love myself a hard game ( I'm Souls junky what can i say :3 ) and obviously i;m playing VV on hard mode as well ( Now this might sound like i'm criticizing this game in particular but i am really not,just using it as an example since my experiences with it are fresh and current. ) And damn it's hard mode is shit. This is not how you do a hard mode. And great deal of games are guilty of this - just bumping stats of enemies . They do not act smarter,they do not act in any new or unpredictable ways .. they just hit harder and have more health. This is so cheapest and most uninspired way of making your game 'hard'. It's not hard ..it's just frustrating. Hard games are not supposed to be frustrating. They should produce double the engagement and triple the fun from player since you are put to your limits as a player.

You are not really getting better by playing hard modes like these. You just waste more time grinding levels/items or just plainly abusing checkpoints and/or hoping to get lucky.

To be perfectly fair Souls are guilty of this as well. Most of new game+ "difficulty" just comes from stat boost but i guess it being hard ( not conventionally hard at least imho ) kinda gets away with it more easily.

Anyway,thanks for reading if you did it at all and here's a little ( probably easy ) game .