There's A Difference Between Hard Games And Hardcore Ones, And The...

True skill is about more than learning how to win, and true challenge is about more than an insurmountable obstacle.

The welcome release of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection has brought a whole host of klassic fighting games to PC—and also brought many people face-to-face with the series' unvarnished arcade AI opponents for the first time in years.

They're tough, but they're the bad kind of tough. They openly cheat, regularly bending or breaking rules to give computer-controlled characters an unfair advantage, so much so that even the shortest session can rapidly erode any sense of goodwill anyone ever had for blood-splattered fighting games. Learning how to consistently beat these frauds using some repetitive cheese only encourages bad habits that are neither useful against another player or in fighting games in general.

I'm relieved we're not in those credit-munching days anymore, and that other games are around to show what good-hard CPU opponents can look like. Renowned fighting game Virtua Fighter 5, which was remastered for PC this year, just got a new mode featuring over a thousand custom-tuned CPU opponents for me to challenge. Even though I'm playing alone, I'm expected to observe and react to what's playing out on the screen as it happens, as if I'm trying to outfox a real person.

Every match feels like an intense martial arts session. I duck and weave and jab as best I can, and when that's not enough I go back to training, combing extensive move lists for some new technique that might help, or have a CPU dummy perform whatever attack I'm struggling with until I work out an adequate response based on my chosen character's capabilities and my own showboating preferences. Win or lose, I'm a better player for trying my best.

Virtua Fighter demands my time, skill, and attention, but it's also more than just hard: it's hardcore. A place where personal skill and a game's complexity work together to create something special that's more than the sum of its parts.

The distinction between a generally hard game and a hardcore one is a crucial nuance that debates about game difficulty often brush up against, but all too rarely fully grasp.

🪡🦗Silksong expects me to do so much more than use something pointy to kill things quickly. Observing enemies and knowing when and how to strike at them is even more important than how much raw damage I do. Poise and precision, refined through a mixture of time, hardship, and stubborn refusal to quit, turns what wer

Source: PC Gamer