NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a few thoughts on difficulty levels, and the impact they can have on basketball game reviews.
There’s a very old video game trope that has been dubbed “Easy-Mode Mockery” over on TV Tropes. In short, it’s when a video game makes fun of you for playing on the easiest difficulty setting. At its most benign, perhaps the easiest difficulty level will be accompanied by an insulting message or image. In extreme cases, playing on an easy difficulty will lock you out of certain content, such as the true ending. Infamously, one of my favourite adventure games – Monkey Island 2 – advertised its easy mode as being “suitable for video game reviewers”. Take that, critics!
All jokes aside, I’m not one for gatekeeping and elitism. Video games are meant to be enjoyed, and if hitting the virtual hardwood on an easier difficulty level is fun for you, don’t let anyone bring you down (but probably don’t brag about dominating the game on Rookie, either!). In fact, with the way many games cheat to allow the CPU to be challenging on the Superstar and Hall of Fame difficulty levels, it’s not always a very satisfying experience. To that point however, if you are reviewing a basketball game, you must play it on those tougher difficulty levels as well. Contrary to Monkey Island 2’s snarky jab, video game reviewers shouldn’t just be hooping on the easiest setting.
At the very least, anyone reviewing a basketball game and playing it on Rookie or Pro should disclose that fact. And no, not because they must prostrate themselves before all of the elite basketball gamers in the community, but rather because they haven’t seen all of the game on that setting! Oh, they’ve seen how the controls and mechanics work. They won’t be locked out of big parts of the game. However, just as the easy mode in Monkey Island 2 stripped out many of the puzzles for an easier experience, a basketball video game on Rookie or Pro won’t demonstrate its full capabilities. It’s important to evaluate the challenge and fairness of all of a game’s difficulty levels.
Again, basketball games have a tendency to be unfair by design on harder difficulty settings, in aid of allowing the AI to be competitive and provide a worthy challenge. Of course, it often means the CPU will outright cheat, from gaining superhuman abilities to playing by its own rules. When a game isn’t giving you any leeway or showing any mercy, you’ll really notice issues with balance and broken mechanics! Difficulty spikes can also be too drastic or occur too soon, or the easier settings may still be too tough. A challenge that feels phoney or overwhelming to newcomers and intermediate gamers is naturally going to be frustrating, and a problem worth noting.
We don’t like to admit it because it’s interpreted as a lack of skill, but how much we enjoy video games greatly depends on whether we can beat them, or defeat others in multiplayer gameplay. No one enjoys losing, and there’s no fun in feeling helpless as you’re overrun by either the AI or a human opponent. If you’re consistently winning, chances are you’ll feel far more positive about a game. To state the obvious, it’s much easier to win time and time again when playing on the easier difficulty levels! Again, it’s perfectly valid as far as your own enjoyment is concerned, but it’s not going to allow for the most accurate appraisal if you neglect to try out the tougher settings.
It’s why it’s important for reviewers to put all the difficulty levels to the test, or at least disclose which one they’re playing on. It’s impossible to say for sure if any game will meet someone else’s needs and expectations, but the settings that you play on add vital context to your impressions, and allow you to offer recommendations. The problem is that there’s a stigma around playing on lower difficulty settings, so few people want to admit to it. There’s toxicity and gatekeeping here, which I’m strictly against. However, if you’re reviewing a game – and especially if your review contributes to its Metacritic score – due diligence requires you to see how challenging it gets on a higher difficulty.
Once again, there’s no shame in playing on a lower difficulty level. Sometimes, the combination of an easier setting and slider tweaks produces more desirable gameplay for simheads. Mind you, that’s an important observation to make in a review! Also, as I said, winning can skew our impressions of a game. Playing on Rookie or Pro, wins and cool highlights are going to be far more common, delivering a dopamine hit that can have us declaring a game to be the greatest ever. It may well be, but not everyone wants to effortlessly dominate the CPU, even on easier difficulty levels. If nothing else, reviews need to accurately describe the differing experiences gamers can expect.
This is why 2K’s controversial practice of buffing sliders in their demos was an issue that deserved far more attention than it received. The Preludes already offered a very small taste of what to expect in the full version to begin with, allowing the developers to carefully curate the experience so that it left the most positive impression possible. Again, winning and feeling dominant on the virtual hardwood is fun, while struggling and losing is not. Buffing the sliders in The Prelude made it more likely that we’d be able to succeed and thus have fun, despite controlling a low-rated MyPLAYER. With The Prelude for NBA 2K18 in particular, it honestly bordered on false advertising!
Even if we want to give 2K the benefit of the doubt here and suggest that this was done with The Prelude because the devs wanted to start us out easy and fine-tune the finished product based on our feedback – and frankly, that’s being very trusting to the point of naiveté – it’s imperative that anyone seeking to review or give feedback on the full game test out the higher difficulty levels. At the bare minimum you should play on All-Star, as that’s when the challenge tends to ramp up with the game becoming far less forgiving of mistakes and mistiming, and the AI getting noticeably cheesier. The difficulty curve is important to note as again, some games have definitely bungled it.
After all, a new mechanic and approaches such as “Green or Miss” may work fine on the easiest settings, but be impossibly difficult on the hardest levels. At the same time, a general lack of aggressiveness and smart play from the AI on lower difficulty levels may make them unsatisfying for experienced gamers who nevertheless struggle with or simply dislike the way certain mechanics work on higher difficulties. The last thing that basketball video game reviews should do is perpetuate elitism and gatekeeping, but they should definitely outline the pros and cons of all of the difficulty levels. It’s not about there being a correct way to play, but that all ways of playing are viable.
Indeed, diving deeper into difficulty levels in basketball video game reviews could potentially combat the stigma of playing on lower levels. Again, noting that one of the intermediate difficulty levels will offer a good mix of realism and challenge for most sim gamers, while the hardest settings are less realistic and deliberately unfair but still playable and great for putting one’s stick skills to the test, is useful information. It lets gamers know that they don’t need to play on the highest level to enjoy themselves, and that there’s value in the normal/medium setting. Alternatively, if a game is lacking that balance and none of the settings truly feel right, that’s important to know, too.
Unfortunately, not all reviewers bother to properly evaluate the different settings and make recommendations based on skill level and experience. Far too many reviews read like promotional materials, recapping all of the major additions and changes that were discussed during the preview season and complimenting them all. That’s not to say that there’s never any criticism, but issues that are immediately noticed by gamers – and acknowledged by developers during the next game’s preview season – are too often glossed over. It leaves you wondering if the reviewer just messed around on the easiest difficulty level, and didn’t see the need to truly subject the game to critique.
Now, it isn’t fair to expect most reviewers to spend time adjusting sliders and other settings beyond the difficulty level. That’s more of an activity for communities and content creators with a particular interest in basketball gaming than anyone reviewing games for a site or publication with a wide scope. Besides, games should be judged on how they play “out of the box”, using the recommended settings and tuning. With that being said, a trustworthy review needs to cover the impact of difficulty settings. Also, since some mechanics and settings work better in certain modes than others, a good reviewer should be clear when their gameplay impressions don’t apply to every mode.
Incidentally, this is also something to keep in mind when revisiting old basketball video games. There have been times when I’ve dusted off an old game to write a Wayback Wednesday retrospective – or just for my own entertainment – and found myself thinking “Hey, this is way better than I remembered!” because I’ve been playing the game on an easier setting while reacquainting myself with it. After I’ve got a feel for it once again and cranked up the difficulty level, that’s when I recall the issues that annoyed me all those years ago; especially in games that went from being far too easy on lower settings to unfairly difficult and frustrating on higher levels!
I’m leery of saying that a good review seeks out problems, because that mindset can result in us nitpicking and trying to find fault. However, reviews should always be looking for legacy issues and potential problems, from controls and mechanics to features and functionality to difficulty and balance. It’s all part of evaluating games, and that requires both familiarity and attention to detail. It’s also vital to remember that our point of view can be skewed by the rush that comes with succeeding at a game, as we become more forgiving of flaws and forgetful of factors that the target audience should know. In short: raise the difficulty before you finalise your review!
