What ever happened to Hard mode?

So far the game is awesome, glad to see the series revived.
good job guys!

What ever happened to the games having a "hard mode"?
MI 1-3 all had a mode that were the same puzzles of course just more challenging. Then starting on MI 4, that mode was gone. And if you ask me, that one (and so far this one) is far easier than MI 1-3 (even in their standard mode).

Do you think we will ever see a Hard mode again? I always loved to play the game through once on standard, then again on hard to see the difference.

Does anyone know if the newer MI1: SE coming out is still gonna have that hard mode available?

Comments

  • edited July 2009
    There was never any hard-mode in MI1.
  • edited July 2009
    matan wrote: »
    There was never any hard-mode in MI1.

    Yup. There was also no hard mode in MI2 - only easy mode ;)
  • edited July 2009
    Also you got it kinda backwards. It's not that there's no hard mode ... it's more like there's no 'Lite' mode. What you are calling the hard mode is really just the normal, full game. Some versions of MI2 don't contain the Lite mode at all, for example.

    Sure, the difficulty may be a little easier so far in TMI, but it's not as if puzzles are being missed out!
  • edited July 2009
    CMI had a regular and a hard mode as opposed to MI2's normal and lite mode. Also, lite mode is still included in every version of MI2 but you can't access it because the menu to choose which one is part of the same interface as the copy protection screen, which the CD version skips. They should have added a command line option to use either lite mode or normal mode.
  • edited July 2009
    CMI had a regular and a hard mode as opposed to MI2's normal and lite mode. Also, lite mode is still included in every version of MI2 but you can't access it because the menu to choose which one is part of the same interface as the copy protection screen, which the CD version skips. They should have added a command line option to use either lite mode or normal mode.

    I know this, but aren't you being a bit pedantic? Geeze, these people come in here and talk like they're the only ones who know a bit of MI history. I've been around, too. ;P

    1) sure, they called the harder mode in CMI 'Mega-Monkey' or whatever, but everyone knows that that was the full game wheareas the other one was a stripped down version, just like in MI2

    2) Sure, you could fiddle about using trickery and such to access the Lite mode in MI2CD, but if they thought it was THAT important then they would have found a way of putting the difficult screen back in or giving you an option. For all intents and purposes, it wasn't included, even if it was technically there on the disc.
  • edited July 2009
    Dude, relax. Don't bite my head off. I'm just talking here. I'm not being pedantic. No need to be so assuming.
  • edited July 2009
    Dude, relax. Don't bite my head off. I'm just talking here. I'm not being pedantic. No need to be so assuming.

    thought that the winky ;P might have been a slight tip off that I wasn't really being entirely serious in my percieved 'head biting', but oh well. :rolleyes:
  • edited July 2009
    if you play MI2 CD with scummvm, you get the difficulty selection screen.
  • edited July 2009
    Mm. That's true. But then that's an unofficial thing years after the CD version came out in '94.

    I suppose the only point I was attempting to make, poorly, was that if they'd considered the difficulty modes all that important, they would have made sure they were accessible in '94. :)
  • edited July 2009
    ok...well you guys got me on that point,
    the "hard" modes still weren't really THAT hard, just more complex and much more fun :p

    But, moreso my point was that there were 2 modes, one more complex than the other. Also making the point that MI4 and MI5 (so far) are much easier games than even the "lite" versions of MI1-3, what happened?

    Where did the challenge go?
  • edited July 2009
    Wal-mart owns the rights to hard mode.... and the smiley face.
  • edited July 2009
    AquabatX wrote: »
    ok...well you guys got me on that point,
    the "hard" modes still weren't really THAT hard, just more complex and much more fun :p

    But, moreso my point was that there were 2 modes, one more complex than the other. Also making the point that MI4 and MI5 (so far) are much easier games than even the "lite" versions of MI1-3, what happened?

    Where did the challenge go?

    Modern gamers do not like challange. Simple as that =(
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited July 2009
    There were four Monkey Island games before Tales. Two of them had a toggle between two difficulty modes. We chose not to do that for this game. It actually never really came up as something to consider. We thought we could make the game we wanted to make without having to make an additional hobbled version of it, because the hint system is there for people who get stuck on the main puzzle path.

    I don't know how hard Tales is going to be at the end of the day but you're only 1/5 through the game at this point. Don't forget that :)
  • edited July 2009
    Jake.... Can we have a dancing Guybrush GIF? please? Those dance animations were brilliantly funny so congratulate whoever did it.
  • edited July 2009
    Guinea wrote: »
    Modern gamers do not like challange. Simple as that =(

    Way to oversimplify the issue.

    The problem is, in old adventure games the difficulty was all too often not due to a puzzle being really logically taxing or requiring a lot of thinking through, but becaise the puzzle didn't quite make sense or was flawed in some other way.

    When someone is more likely to solve a puzzle by random combinations than by thinking it through, that is arguably not a good thing. Telltale's aim has been, and continues to be making puzzles which are enough of a challenge to make you think, but not so obscure as to be unfair.

    This is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and after some shakey starts it seems to me that they are getting better and better at it. To simply say that they're pandering to a more impatient, casual audience who 'don't like challenge' is to misrepresent all the good work they've done toward designing puzzles which require some thought but ultimately can be worked through without all the frustrating pixel hunting or try-everything-with-everything puzzles that wer never fun, even in the earlier MI games.
  • edited July 2009
    No to hard mode, it will only make me look at walktroughs. :)
  • edited July 2009
    I think the level difficulty is perfect.... just enough to make you think.. Personally I like being able to watch the story unfold and not have it come to a dead stop because im stuck
  • edited July 2009
    I remember playing lite mode MI2 for the first time after only playing normal mode. It was actually more difficult because some puzzles were so easy, I never imagined they would work the way they did. I remember i really cracked up laughing when the guy from the shop at booty island just sold me the map piece. I was thinking "wow, that just spared me like... 20 puzzles.."
  • edited July 2009
    That changed with the G rating...
  • edited July 2009
    TMI Easy mode is when you have hints on 5, Hard Mode is hints on 0. There, solved.
  • edited July 2009
    Extra hard is when you try to play and your wife is talking to you
  • edited July 2009
    Irishmile wrote: »
    Extra hard is when you try to play and your wife is talking to you

    I can see how that would make things extra hard, giggity...
  • edited July 2009
    Irishmile wrote: »
    Extra hard is when you try to play and your wife is talking to you
    And not about the puzzles, I'd imagine. I found the puzzles far easier when my girlfriend was talking about her ideas for solutions to the puzzles. We find different puzzles difficult, so it tends to even out if we play an adventure together.
  • edited July 2009
    Just as long as you guys don't try to cram the puzzle pieces where they wont fit...
  • edited July 2009
    tumbleweed.gif
  • edited July 2009
    AquabatX wrote: »
    ok...well you guys got me on that point,
    the "hard" modes still weren't really THAT hard, just more complex and much more fun :p

    But, moreso my point was that there were 2 modes, one more complex than the other. Also making the point that MI4 and MI5 (so far) are much easier games than even the "lite" versions of MI1-3, what happened?

    Where did the challenge go?

    The one good thing about them having a 'lite' mode is that by going straight to the 'hard' mode and finishing it you felt like a genius.
  • edited July 2009
    Jake wrote: »
    There were four Monkey Island games before Tales. Two of them had a toggle between two difficulty modes. We chose not to do that for this game. It actually never really came up as something to consider. We thought we could make the game we wanted to make without having to make an additional hobbled version of it, because the hint system is there for people who get stuck on the main puzzle path.

    I don't know how hard Tales is going to be at the end of the day but you're only 1/5 through the game at this point. Don't forget that :)

    Excellent point Jake. I absolutely love MI2 to bits, but I never really saw the point of the "lite" mode. Playing through "normal" mode first and then "lite" mode seems pretty pointless. I actually did it the other way around back then, and apart from also not being particularly helpful (I think I didn't find the fisherman for ages because he simply didn't exist or wasn't relevant in the lite version), I sort of wished I'd played it on full to begin with, so that I didn't know the story already.

    The hint system seems like a much better way to achieve the result of helping players who might get stuck. (Although I can't say how well it works since I don't play with it on.) Of course it doesn't give the game replay value; once you know the solution to the puzzle thanks to the help system, you know it after all. But as I said above, I didn't think the addition to replay value was all that great in MI2 either - replay value came from the fun, as it does in TMI so far.

    Regarding puzzle difficulty - I never really got stuck on this one, but that doesn't mean I totally breezed through either. It would be ok to lift the complexity of puzzles throughout the series, but _only_ IMO if there is lots to explore and maybe some additional hints to discover about the more difficult puzzles by this exploration.

    And thanks again for a great first instalment!
Sign in to comment in this discussion.