I’m sort of a masochistic gamer. I’m a fan of the deep dark evil games like Dark Souls (1-3), BloodBorne, and The Surge. I’ll play any game on it’s hardest difficulty almost without even thinking about it. For me, games should be challenging to keep me engaged. When Dishonored 2 released, I invented my own difficulty to clear the game I called “Iron Man” mode because the hard mode just wasn’t hard enough. Here’s what it entailed:

• Hardest difficulty
• No kills (purposeful or accidental)
• Never seen (pure ninja achievement)
• No Powers from the outsider

Do you have any idea how brutal that stack up was? It took me an entire month to get through it, but it was AWESOME! I loved it – the challenge, the puzzle of getting around obstacles without taking the “easy” way out. I truly enjoy a challenge and will go out of my way to seek them.

So when the new God of War released and I heard it had a “Give Me God of War” difficulty that would force you to RESTART your game if you gave up, I was immediately sold. I literally bought it the same minute after I heard about it. I’m as predictable as the sun rising.

With game in hand I get home, slap the disc in and lock in the hardest difficulty mode without even a second thought. As I created my save file, I could feel the excitement welling within me for another brutal challenge to sink my teeth into over the next few months. I glanced at my Twitter feed and saw gamer after gamer declaring the Give me God of War mode was far too hard.

I scoffed!

What they couldn’t do, I would. Because it was there. Because this is what I do. This is my thing. The distant mountain peak was singing my name. I strolled through the story before I came to my first encounter. “A Drauger!” my virtualized boy called out. “No!” Kratos shouted, “You’re not ready!” Ice frosted over my Axe in one of the most badass intro-to-combat screens I’ve ever seen and as soon as control returned to my hands; I died instantly. “Hah! Ok, this ought to be interesting!” I thought as I quickly loaded back to the beginning of the combat sequence. “No!” “You are not ready!” I hear Kratos shout in the distance before dying a second time from a quick blow to the head.

I grit my teeth and sit forward in the chair—you know, that power move you do when it’s about to get real. From there I spent the next 40 minutes working my way through that first encounter. One Drauger becomes two, two becomes four, and four becomes seven. Its not long after I realize that if they are allowed to recover from an attack pattern they’ll upgrade to level two before they bend me over their knee. Things started to look up when I discovered how to parry effectively and use the environment to my advantage. I manage some perfect axe throws and push my way forward, frustration building inside of me until I finally kill the last drauger, some 60+ attempts later.

I think to myself, maybe that was a gatekeeping exercise to make sure I REALLY want to play in this mode, and it’ll sorta balance later…I rolled through some more really difficult encounters until I came across the First Boss (there’s some thoughts about which boss is the actual first boss, so for the record I’m counting the big troll with the massive health bar as the first boss encounter). I killed him in one try, only taking approximately 12 minutes for the full battle. Strangely enough, that boss battle was pretty easy, compared to how hard it was to get to him. I pushed onward, again being delayed by Draugers on the way home that take WAY longer to beat than the boss, causing me multiple deaths.

At the Second boss (The Stranger), I again complete the battle pretty handily—30 minutes and 10 deaths. I started feeling like maybe something’s a bit off with the stacking. Each boss has (thus far) telegraphed and performed pretty similarly to a dark souls greater demon and therefore the solutions are the same: parry when possible, get into the rotation of attack patterns, and don’t forget to dodge when you see attacks coming. Patience is needed, and that’s what I like. THIS is where the challenge lies: Perseverance against a greater foe.

Moving forward, I’m stopped for more than an hour at another Drauger encounter. At this point both countless deaths and more than a little rage (both in game and out) are building. This is wrong! I started to get some cramps in my left hand from how hard I was smashing the L1 button to deflect the almost constant barrage of sword swings from multiple enemies. My XP gain was about 5 per kill, almost enough to have 2 upgraded powers at the end of the first boss battle. I was stuck with base gear, base powers, and no way to move forward without hurting myself.

After a few days deliberation, and over 50 additional tries in this zone… I restarted my game on the lower “Challenging” mode. It took me 4.5 hours to get where I stopped on “Give Me God of War”. On challenging mode? Roughly an hour; flying through all the battles that killed me over and over again in my previous attempts. At first, I was upset at myself for giving up and feeling so utterly defeated, but then I realized that the game devs might not know how to stack the difficulty in an effective way. There’s an art to balancing a challenge; and in all fairness, that difficulty is for people who love painful slogs through hell to feel like a god at the end. It’s designed to suck. Playtesting a mode like that for scale feedback has got to be an immense challenge. Not only do you need to find play testers who are willing to play on this mode, but you’ll also need to weigh the feedback you get against the point of the mode. It’s SUPPOSED to suck. It’s SUPPOSED to be hard. Complaints mean you’re doing it right. Right?

So what’s the problem?

When a player gets stuck with no path to advance, there’s a threshold for “willingness to continue.” You must balance this, but every player’s threshold is different. If you’re playing on the hardest setting, your threshold is already a lot higher than others. I loved each boss battle on the hardest difficulty. They felt like the right level of challenge. They felt like worthy opponents. But I hated how difficult it was to GET to the boss battles. Something that the Dark Souls/Blood Borne/The Surge games got right, was understanding that the real challenge is the bosses, and that the journey there shouldn’t prevent progress between them. (At least, not to the point where it felt like the undead were each individually mini-bosses) It’s okay to have gates or walls that need to be overcome through incredible feats of strength and persistence. It’s okay to have a slog through hell to even get to the boss. The creatures you face between these greater demons should be seriously dangerous, and have the ability to kill you if you aren’t paying attention. In these types of games, with skill and determination, you’d usually succeed in getting through or around them. But they shouldn’t necessarily be more complex to kill than a dragon or a god. Almost more importantly – I shouldn’t feel like my chance of getting past the small skirmishes on my way to the boss is determined almost entirely by RNG. (Who attacks first and at what time and did your block register?)

God of War is a linear adventure story for the most part. Meaning, there’s no going back, getting stronger, and then trying an area again. (Well, at least not until you reach the lake). As a result, players can find themselves trapped in a never ending slog through pain that hinders experiencing the story, as opposed to satisfying the challenge/pain hunter’s internal desires for a really good experience. The difficulty: “Challenging” meets that need, and it certainly isn’t easy.

All that to say: I love God of War, I’m glad I picked it up, and more than anything else, I’m glad I let myself actually play it. It’s a story that should be experienced. It is without doubt, one of the greatest single player story driven games that I have ever played. I’ve beaten the game now on the Challenging mode. “Give Me God of War”, is the mode to play AFTER you’ve beaten the game on a lower difficulty, and in my opinion, might have been better served as a new game + difficulty. Were I to start on “Give Me God of War” with my upgraded stack of powers/abilities/armor, I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing this at all.

God of War is a beautiful achievement and deserves every ounce of praise it has recieved. But don’t start with the “Give me God of War” mode. Instead, play the game and enjoy what it has to offer, on whatever difficulty you’re comfortable with. Get to the end and explore the world that so very much deserves to be explored. If I had stayed in the extreme difficulty mode, I would STILL not even be half way through the plot, which would be a disservice. This is one time I’m glad I gave up. Knowing my thirst for challenging experiences, I’ll still have the ability to go back, if I ever decide I’d like to try again. Or maybe I’ll check out the latest patch difficulty option: “Give me a Balanced experience” – because I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve been after this whole time.