Peespee63 has been playing Tekken 6 and getting the hell beaten out of him, just like everyone else. Turns out fighting games are difficult. I had no idea. I’ve never broken a controller out of frustration at a fighting game. Possibly.

After playing it for another half hour, I have come to the conclusion that Tekken 6 is one of the most frustrating games in the history of gaming.  It’s so bad that in comparison, you feel like you’re getting somewhere even when you do fail at Tetris (widely regarded as one of the Top 10 most frustrating games ever).

But it’s not the only frustrating game in the Beat-em-up genre:  Street Fighter IV is notoriously difficult, but that’s OK, Street Fighter games have a reputation for being hard as a triple-brick wall reinforced from the back with steel-plated adamantium, but that’s no excuse for having a near-impossible final boss.

You expect a game to get harder as you progress, to challenge you and your skills, to force you out of your comfort zone and develop new techniques.  And in most BEUs, it does this quite well, but there’s also a bit of a jump in the last boss’s difficulty.  Fair enough.

But, in the case of SFIV, with Seth, even on the easiest mode, he’s nearly impossible to beat, and you have to resort to dirty tactics and button-mashing to get anywhere.  It’s just wrong.  Not only is he quick and powerful, he pulls out big flashy teleportation moves out of nowhere which you have 0.00000001ms to react to.  How unfair is that?  The jump is so high in difficulty, you’d swear you were playing on super-duper hard mode.

The same goes for Azazel in Tekken 6.  He’s freaking huge, quick, powerful, pulls out massive moves you have no time to react to, and he teleports.  How is this fair? I buy a game to enjoy it, not get annoyed at it, and quite frankly, I’m not enjoying Tekken 6.

And don’t get me started on the bogus silver trophy for beating a bonus character NANCY something.  A massive robot with gattling guns, missiles and rocket fists, oh and a laser beam.  It’s impossible to beat it, and you only get a silver trophy for doing so.

But, let’s not forget about the human element here: I cannot stand the saddos who learn every combo move for a character and only use exclusively that character.  it’s stupid and pointless and at it’s core, cheating.  You would play a fighting game to have a bit of fun, and you can’t have fun with opponents who outclass you with their memory.  A true player is one who can set everything to random and still be good.

I hate it when a game is no longer enjoyable because of the difficulty level.  It’s supposed to be challenging for everyone, not just hardcore gamers. It could be that I’m just grumbling because I’m not any good at beat ‘em ups, but I don’t remember the Tekkens before 5 being THAT difficult at the finale.