Difficulty. It’s a topic that can breed a lot of discussion. There are those that feel if you don’t play a game on the hardest setting possible then “you suck”. Let’s explore that shall we?

So I play games on all degrees of difficulty. Depending on the game I may even switch it up during the playthrough. Fallout 3 comes to mind. I would adjust the difficulty on the fly, both up and down, depending on the situation and how I felt like playing at the time. In fact, I prefer games that have a difficulty slider that can be accessed in-game. It’s annoying when changing it locks out certain achievements or trophies, so in those cases I just deal with it.

It’s absolutely justifiable to play on an easier setting sometimes or, hell, even all the time. It just depends on your play style. Fallout 3, as mentioned above, is probably my main example. I put a lot of time into that game. I played it over a span of weeks, hours per day. Over the course of weeks my taste changes in all sorts of things, gameplay style is definitely one of them. Luckily Fallout 3 allowed me to satisfy that change. Some nights I wanted to just clear some story missions and level up, but my goal was to cover a lot of land and progress the story a bit. In those cases I’d play on normal, or even a little easier depending on my mood. Conversely, some nights I was in the mood to challenge myself and get into a heated battle that required tactics. Easy enough to fix, just turn up the difficulty. It was great, I had a good time and was able to satisfy my play style while still playing the same game.

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