<![CDATA[Harder by Choice]]>While most people use their interfaces to facilitate interactions with the game, there exist a few who purposefully do the opposite. In much the same way people choose to turn their difficulty up to the hardest setting, there are some who take it a step further by making the very controls themselves harder to use. YouTube is full of videos from people like these, with one popular trope being the completion of Dark Souls (a notoriously difficult game) with one or another ridiculous interface.

Examples include a Guitar Hero controller,big_1410160715_imagebananas, bananas-810x400a racing wheel, maxresdefaultand even voice commands.

To me, these examples demonstrate the reverse of what I expressed in my “Third Party Interfaces” post, because rather than a non-standard interface detracting from ‘play’ these instances show how varying interfaces can enhance it by offering a new challenge to a game about overcoming difficulties. Especially for those who have learned the game’s mechanics front to back and want to rekindle the experience of first play.

]]>