I enjoyed watching the recent Games Done Quick (GDQ) charity stream, mainly to enjoy someone speeding through a game that is too hard for me, such as Cuphead. I absolutely love the classic cartoon art style of Cuphead, but I know that hard platformers and “bullet hell” games are outside my ability, I’m not their target audience that they designed the game for, for enjoyment and to entertain.
What I don’t understand is all the “glitch” speed runs. Especially when they run older versions of a game because it has the glitch before it was patched in a subsequent version. If I was on the panel to approve which games make the cut for the GDQ marathon stream, I’d grudgingly allow in Japanese versions where they allow skipping dialogue and cut scenes for improved time runs, but I’d not approve older versions just because they have an unpatched glitch.
As far as skipping / busywork, I appreciate the option to gain more power before confronting the boss, if my personal skill is not up to defeating the boss’ mechanics. This, however, only applies to premium games, where I give the benefit of the doubt that the developer has tried to make the best game they could, but that sometimes I’m not the target audience they are aiming to maximize enjoyment for. I’ve become increasingly skeptical of games with IAP that makes me question if I’m being trolled to spend money.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown to appreciate more the inclusion of difficulty settings, I now look for them when making decisions on which titles to invest time and money on. I absolutely love that the Switch games seem to be targeting me, older games updated for the Switch seem to now include difficulty options that were not in the originals … I bought Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, which now not only has a great art style but also added difficulty settings that were not in the original Sega Master System version. Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze adds a Funky Mode that “makes the game more accessible”, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe adds not only an “Easy” character choice, but also a “Very Easy” character option to the Switch version.