Recently I purchased Sins of a Solar Empire, some new space strategy game that (wrongly) claims to seamlessly blend 4x with RTS. I ain't gonna go into some big review about it but the short of it is after only playing a couple of games to familiarise myself to it I'm absolutely slamming the computer, even on the allegedly 'hard' mode. And it got me thinking; Are any games genuinely challenging these days?

Now I'm not saying a mind-bogglingly painful stampede through the gates of hell and back again armed only with a used bus ticket and a copy of the Sunday Times is going to be a particularly joyful experience, but come on at least give me something taxing that'll keep me from turning into some mindless rupee collecting vegetable. These days it's all about 'scaling' the difficulty to make it completable by the mainstream 'tards that are still stuck looking for the [any] key on the windows start up screen, and it's really destroying the games for the people who they were originally made for. It's really prevalent in the PC gaming scene these days (I don't play consoles so much anymore so I can't speak too much for them) but it is generally due to the horrible syndrome we're currently experiencing known as 'cross-platform'. It's a great idea for the console fans; get to play PC titles on their giant 4642 inch widescreen TVs. What happens to the PC game? It's dumbed down to the point of idiocy and becomes far less enjoyable than it should be. It's really not that hard to see how a ramp up in difficulty would've made a lot of titles over the last couple of years so much more intense and enjoyable, and without alienating the 'mainsteam'.

Crysis...it's 5 hours long. Five hours. £40 for 5 hours. Yeah the MAXIMUM POWER suit is pretty cool, but it's just God Mode in another form. Getting shot at from 20 guys by shotguns in your face? No problem! Stealth in front of them and they'll stop and spark up a ciggie and then go and watch EastEnders whilst you flee for the treeline and pull out your uber powerful godly rifle with every attachment you could ever want As it's accessible from the start until the point at which you no longer need normal guns it also makes every other gun inferior (and consequently is a better gun than every single bad guy you will face) Fun? Kinda. Would be more fun if it felt like the AI actually had a single weapon in it's arsenal that could stop you, then you might actually have to play sensibly instead of throwing MAXIMUM STRENGTH trolleys in their face.

Prey. Oh Prey how you failed me so badly. Don't get me wrong; I really, really loved Prey. But then something happened. About 3 hours into the game I cocked up and was taught the feeling of having my head separated from the rest of my body. Now just before I go to hit the quick load button what happens? I'm transported to the spirit realm where I have to shoot a couple of spirits with my bow and all of a sudden I'm back where I died with full health and power. There's no prizes for guessing what that did to my playing style...I got reckless. No longer did I care about dying, because it didn't matter. I would kamikaze everything and be frankly stupid and careless and just respawn if things got out of hand. I couldn't help myself because I really did not give a crap about dying anymore. The game ceases to be scary, challenging or more importantly fun after you realise death doesn't matter and it completely ruined the game. How to fix Prey? Crank up the difficulty by remove free respawns. When you felt helpless and were desperately trying to survive the game was fun. When you didn't it wasn't.

Couldn't leave out Bioshock could I? It's a wonderfully atmospheric game with remarkably good scripting and voice acting for an FPS, but why did it take a beating after the initial hype-filled 10 year olds went back to their halo deathmatches? It turns everything that should be a challenge into something you don't think twice about. Golden highlights on 'important' items, giant compass markers, near unlimited supplies of health, EVE and ammo, pretty much no negative consequences for either of the story 'paths', and in case you're really struggling we give you Free Unlimited Respawn Powers(TM) (Sound familiar?). A bunch of unnecessary features that made the game 'easier to play' for the console fans, and completely ruined the game for the *Shock fans. Hooray for Average Joe! Again not caring about death ruins the game. At first you'll reload..after a while you'll just keep respawning. System Shock 2 had it right. Desperately struggling for health and ammo the entire game made you feel vulnerable, and you could respawn but it cost you a fraction of your credits to do it. Yeah it was essentially infinite respawn in SS2, but nobody really did it because there was actually an incentive to not die.

Command and Conquer 3. At first I loved this but before I even knew which end of the gun to point at the enemy GDI command decided to throw me the Mammoth Tanks. What does Nod have to stop the GDI from their 30-strong Mammoth Tank rush (note: Mammoth Tanks when upgraded have double railguns which are lethal against buildings, infantry and vehicles. And missiles, which are lethal against air units.) Nothing. They might as well take their nucl--tiberium missiles and launch them at themselves for all the good they do. In an instant you go from playing a semi-strategic RTS which actually plays pretty well back to the oldschool yawnfest of mass and rush that ruined all the decent Command and Conquers of yesteryear. I never felt compelled to play much further as it was just too easy.

Back in 2006 or so we were all majorly hyped up about Spore. Some of us still are; I'm not. It's received 'The Sims Treatment' from what all the media is saying, aka it's been dumbed down extensively to cater for the less-than-two-brain-cell housewives that don't understand you can't buy double glazing for Microsoft Windows. Yes it's always intended to be a sandbox game but damn it just looks so incredibly easy. Going from single celled amoeba to godlike race of superbeings in the span of 8 hours? I dunno it just doesn't sound right to me. It reminds me of Dynasty Warriors 5 XL which had the great feature of 'Play as a normal soldier'! 'See what it's like not being an officer!' But then you play it, and you realise that after a single battle you become more powerful than your commanding officer and after 8 battles the game is over and you're God-Incarnate. Why? Because playing as a soldier in the first battle was actually challenging and heaven forbid some poor 11 year old kid might actually struggle!

I'm notoriously hard to please in games. Give me a game with a great story, great graphics, amazing gameplay and then make it completable by slamming my head repeatedly into the keyboard and I'll probably get bored of it pretty quick. Whereas something with decent gameplay and challenge but an abysmal/non existant story and even worse graphics and I'll probably play it longer. And no I don't enjoy I wanna be The Guy, there's a fine line between enjoyably difficult and breaking 3 keyboards in frustration.

Got a comment? Think I'm talking out of my arse and infinite free respawns is a 'good feature'? Then jump on the forums and give your opinion (note: it's wrong)

It wouldn't surprise me if soon someone releases Tetris but only includes the [][][][] shaped block.