What difficulty do you typically play on?

Lately, I've been starting a lot of games on hard, but I still go for normal/medium most of the time. Then, if I like the game enough (and there's enough incentive to replay it), I go for the harder modes.

No poll? Lame.

One of the things I love about Alien Soldier (Mega Drive) is that it offers 2 dificulty levels: Supereasy or Superhard. There's no middle ground there! Ninja Gaiden 2 (360) does something very similar: Acolyte is easy, Warrior is equivalent to the hard mode in NG1 (I say it's even slightly harder). You don't get a medium/normal mode.

This dificulty thing kinda sucks because a game may seem to easy but then have an absurd dificulty spike in its final areas/stages/bosses, so you may have started the game on hard and then discover that, by the end of the game, it became annoyingly unbalanced. I experienced it with Far Cry: as anyone who played that game knows, the final area is absolutely bullshit, and most people can only complete it (on normal) by abusing a very cheap tactic. Now imagine my frustration when I play the entire game on hard thinking it was challenging but fair, and then I get to this final area. I managed to finish it, but man, it was infuriating - and yes, I had to resort to cheap tactics, and even then I died a lot. More recently, I felt it with the final boss in Viking: Battle for Asgard (PC): the hard mode is pretty easy until the very last boss, then it becomes frustrating.

Some games give you the option to change the dificulty either anytime or between levels, and I think it's a good compromise. I just started Golden Axe: Beast Rider (360) on hard, but by level 6 or 7 the game started kicking my ass, and I can change the dificulty anytime. If it becomes too frustrating, I think I'll play the next levels on normal until I get more used to the game.

But, in general, most modern games are ok on hard; I think some of them can only be appreciated on hard, actually, as normal is usually so easy that the game becomes boring. A very obvious example is the new Strider: it's an excelent game on hard, a boring one on normal.

In general, I do agree with spidershinobi - the best thing is do some quick research before starting a game, or just start it on hard to see how it goes for the first few minutes. If it already looks frustrating, go back to normal. Now, what I can't stand is dynamic dificulty. That's a very bullshit way to punish you for doing ok in a game. I mean, every time I was getting good at God Hand, the game immediatelly became impossibly hard with enemies killing me in one hit. To avoid that, I usually played badly on purpose, so the dificulty was kept on normal.

stratogustav not all developers wants you to play on Normal/Medium, the Halo series has always been supposed to be played on Heroic (which is the difficulty below Legendary, the hardest).

Haha, when have I ever been wrong about Halo?

easy peasy lemon squeezy