Easy There Now Lads

I’ve played video games since I was a kid. I took great pride in playing my favourite games over and over and mastering them at the higher difficulties. I loved replaying levels or maps over and over until I could speed through them, almost on instinct alone. 

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about my experiences playing the Spec Ops co-op missions in Call of Duty Modern Warfare, replaying the oil rig level for literally weeks until my friend and I beat it and leaped from the couch hugging each other and screaming!

I remember borrowing the Star Wars game Force Awakens from a friend and playing through it on Easy difficulty, because I just wanted to experience the story, but the game ended up being so easy, I felt I had missed out on some of the experience of the story. I used to play Gears of War with my brother on the highest difficulty, because anything less wasn’t fun. The challenge was part of the thrill. 

But that was a different time and a very different me. I can’t play games the way college me could. Or, indeed the way 30 year old me could. 

I have Parkinson’s. My hands seize up during intense gameplay. My tremor intensifies as my pulse quickens. My reactions aren’t as fast as they sometimes need to be. Long, multistage boss fights are mentally exhausting as well as physically. 

I also have a four year old who loves to play games! He wants to just fly his spaceship and blow up the bad guys. He wants to take down a massive Prime and show me he got the Core. He wants to drive his car around the city and not care about having to win all the time to see more. 

For both of us, an Easy difficulty is a blessing. We each have innate difficulty modifiers already that make playing the game much harder. 

He just wants to enjoy the gameplay loop, I’d like to experience the story. Together we’ll finish your game, but it’ll take dozens of hours and constantly having to explain if you spend all our resources on paint schemes we can’t build the Power Towers we need to unlock the next area of the map. 

Let’s just play the goose game and terrorize a small English town again.