Things we Love About Gaming: Hardcore Modes

Realism in games is a seesaw. It’s about obtaining the right balance of accuracy and fun, placing them side-by-side and ensuring the player feels like there’s some legitimacy in the game’s mechanics, while not being impossibly infuriating.

A game like Gran Turismo 5 is an example of when developers may have stepped too far into the realm of aggravation. You try and throw the car around a corner and instead of a satisfying anger from the back-end you’re met with a slight nudge as the car, realistically, holds its ground. On the opposing side, there’s Need For Speed, where the absurdity is far too apparent. It’s literally quicker to simply throw your car into a wall and bounce off it than it is to take the corner with care. Both are examples of polar ends of the spectrum: One, where it’s almost debilitating boring, and another where it’s overly fantastical.

But lots of games give you the choice. I’ve been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PS3 lots recently. It’s not a game I’d come across before, but after borrowing it from a friend I’ve become addicted. In fact, as I write this I’m tempted to simply stop typing, turn on my PS3 and binge out on several hours of sniping matches.

Crucially, however, I only really enjoy the game on hardcore mode. As I’m sure most of you are aware, hardcore modes generally create a more realistic-feeling game, where you’ve got less health, decreased HUD or other changes that make the game feel less arcadey. It does wonders for BC 2. It makes a game in which the main mechanics are running and gunning into one where careful movements, placing your shots and patience are required.

One map, African Harbor, highlights this perfectly. Almost all players choose the sniping class on a map where there’s hundreds of windows, hundreds of positions for you to sit and watch for that flash of a gunshot or movement of a head. Hardcore mode adds to the tension by ensuring that if you fire at somebody and hit them, they’ll almost always go down. It raises the stakes and makes each kill or each evasion from death incredibly satisfying.

It’s not just shooting games that feature these modes though. Remember the first Test Drive? You could actually buy a hardcore mode for 160 MS Points (free on PC) which made the game significantly harder than it would be otherwise. This again was a nice balance between fun and realism. Like Battlefield, I doubt it was a perfect representation of driving a £70,000 sports car, but it just gives the player that little extra something, yet crucially doesn’t reduce the game into GT 5-style banality. Test Drive’s mode was created for the Xbox’s steering wheel, but it worked equally as a way to make the game that extra bit challenging. Importantly, it does

In fact, more realistic games are something that I’d like to see more of. The Ghost Recon games on the original Xbox were almost stationary by today’s standards. Games where you sat in a ditch for half an hour and got two kills and one death were considered great successes. Success in today’s games requires substantially higher kill to death ratios than that.

Of course, in fairness, hardcore modes can be slightly over-done. Fallout: New Vegas‘ newly-included mode (pictured) is suicidal in some respects. Requiring you to eat, drink and sleep like a normal person is a nice addition to an already complicated game. It gives you a reason, finally, to buy water and food, instead of just stocking up on hundreds of stimpacks. Of course, applying stimpacks is no longer instant in this mode, meaning that if you get yourself in a single spot of bother with even the feeblest of enemy, you’re knackered if your health gets knocked down. Trying to fight several Giant Radscoprians without the ability to heal is damn near impossible. Quite rightly though, I would imagine.

Hardcore modes are fantastic additions to videogames and often give the devoted player (me) something to enjoy after he’s completed every quest, level or track. They can transform games into experiences that aren’t just about getting every kill you possibly can, instead making each one the more valuable, each death even more aggravating and each corner that little bit sweeter.

In the spirit of this week’s Lovepocalypse: I love hardcore modes.

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