Recommended Difficulty?

[Metallic Fruit]

About do start playing this game, what difficulty do you guys recommend? Normal or Hard?

[Mamma_Duck]

I used to start first person shooters out on the next to easiest mode just to see what the game was about, and then crank it up from there until I was losing fairly regularly. Defeat is often the best teacher. It shows you where you're weak points are, and what you need to work on. If you don't push yourself, you won't improve. My goal was always perfection, but I wouldn't let myself come close to it until I was on the highest difficulty setting. That's when improvement gets hard, because as things start getting easier, you are no longer being pushed to your max. There will be times when you seem to be stuck, or even getting a little bit worse, but then it becomes almost a little like letting the Zen takeover. This, of course, is just pedagogy. There are other issues at hand also. What's the best strategy, what's the best tactics, when should you shoot, and when should you just sneak by? As the level of difficulty rises, so also will the decision-making.

I am reminded of a time when the now deceased yet still extremely famous violinist Jasha Heifetz was stopped by a man who was quite out of breath, and looked a bit lost. The man said,

"How do you get to Carnegie hall?"

To which Heifetz replied,

"Practice, practice, practice!"

Here endeth the lesson.

[Metallic Fruit]

Yeah... That's great man, but I was just wondering if you felt normal mode was too easy, in which case I'll crank it up.

[Mamma_Duck]

Not knowing how good your skills are, I'd suggest starting it at the normal level, and have a look around. If you've played a lot of first person shooters in the past, that should be a pretty easy place to start. This game doesn't have a lot of the trickier issues such as having to take into account bullet drift because of the wind direction such as seen in Elite Sniper V2. The difficulty in this game arises from the number of bad guys, and where they're located. On the easy level they all seem to stand out in the open totally oblivious to your presence. There also aren't too many of them, the rest having presumably died due to severe visual, auditory, and mental deficiencies. As the difficulty level increases, you will be faced with more bad guys who are more difficult to spot, which are at odd angles from each other but which you will have to shoot in quick succession, and there will be more moving targets, and sometimes a combination of all three. At the hardest setting you'll need a sharp eye, quick wits, and light-speed reflexes to get the job done without being hit. In the end it's not about whether you survive or not, because you will survive, it's more about points and how many you can make in a game. In the end a perfect game is nigh on impossible to accomplish. It's all about improving, beating your own scores, and also those of your friends (or enemies as the case may be).

Best of luck to you!

[Valeriaan]

Hard isn't too difficult. I'd recommend that. Normal is too easy. True West (which is only unlocked after you've played through the game at least once on a lower difficulty) is fun.

[Metallic Fruit]

Ah well thanks guys. I started on hard and am on chapter 7 now. Fun game, the hardest parts for me have been the duels, especially the one with two guys.

[Dingo]

Originally posted by Mid_Knight_Owl:

Ah well thanks guys. I started on hard and am on chapter 7 now. Fun game, the hardest parts for me have been the duels, especially the one with two guys.

The cool thing is, when you play through it a second time or persue the duel challange with achievements in mind, you can see yourself getting better and better each try. It is suprisingly deep in a world where that stuff usually is a lame 1-button quicktime event.

[Metallic Fruit]

Ha yeah, the second playthrough was actually must easier. I just blasted through it in less than 3 hours. Great game.