I have admitted on more than one occasion that I have zero patience in games (well, with anything, really), hence why I got into strategy guides in the first place. While this may lead many people to assume that I play games on the easiest difficulty setting, this really isn’t true.
For new games or games that I’m reviewing strategy guides, I mostly play them on Normal. With strategy guide reviews, I really, really try to play the games on Normal due to the fact this is the difficulty setting the guides are typically written for. On an Easy setting, you rarely need a strategy guide to help you get through a boss fight because the player is usually quite powerful whereas the boss is rather weak. Not saying that you never need one, but whenever I play a game on Easy, I’ve typically found the bosses to be overly easy (shocker, right?).
The one exception I have with reviewing a strategy guide on Easy is with stealth-based games. I suck at these games so hard, I need the AI to be as dumb as possible, and yes, I still need the strategy guide to help me find the best stealth routes even with this setting. I admit that’s pathetic, and I don’t care.
Now, when I’m playing through my backlog or I’m replaying a game (a/k/a Mass Effect), the game is almost always turned down to Easy. The reason why is simple: I need to burn through this game as quickly as possible, and that means I can’t waste my time dying. Of course, there is the occasional exception, like right now, I’m playing Halo 3: ODST on Normal, and that’s because any lower of a setting, I won’t get Achievements. It’s a stupid reason, but I’d probably play it on Normal anyway because I’m so fluent in how to play Halo games. Another exception is the Gears of War games, as I often replay these with friends, so we play on Insanity for some unknown reason.
Do I maybe lose something by burning through a game? Maybe, but just because I burn through a game on Easy doesn’t mean I ignore all side quests. Please, it’s me! I’m all about the side quests!
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