Welcome to a world where the best player doesn't win; where the fastest driver in Mario Kart is the one who almost always loses; where the player who knows the answers to the questions is beaten by the guy who answered wrongly fastest. Welcome to a world with no scores and no sense of achievement; where gamers play games by frantically flapping their wrists about.
You'd be forgiven for thinking Xbox World 360 has a beef with casual games, but you'd be quite wrong. We love a bit of Wii Sports and can't get enough of XBLA-bound PC ball-dropper Peggle, but the push towards the casual end of the gaming spectrum has profoundly affected the world of gaming as a whole. It's ruined Mario Kart, wrecked Super Smash Bros, and it's about to hit the 360 with all the destructive force of the meteor from Armageddon - except made entirely of shite.
But the war's not over yet. Flying headlong into the face of Microsoft's giant casual E3 space-turd triumvirate of Lips, Scene It? Box Office Smash, and You're in the Movies are ten of the most hardcore games ever seen on the 360. Games so vigorous in their hatred for softies that they'll end your life with a single bullet, stall your plane because you banked too hard, bite your head off because you strayed too far from a friend, or kick you in the nuts because you couldn't handle six buttons and a joystick. They're the SAS of gaming. When the chips are down, when all else fails, send in the hardest guys you've got and have them stamp on Shigeru Miyamoto's face until he stops making Yoga games and dishes up a Pikmin 3. The hardcore? They're not dead yet...
You board a truck and drive across eight miles of terrain as the sun sets in real time. You arrive at your destination and use the cover of darkness to infiltrate an enemy encampment, take a look around and immediately die when a sniper catches the reflection from your binoculars from a quarter mile away. That's Flashpoint. Codies' Flashpoint 2 might not be the 'real' sequel for fans of the original, but the team are staying true to Bohemia Interactive's original game and making Op Flash 2 the most demanding military shooter ever.
IL-2 STURMOVIK: BIRDS OF PREY DEV: 1C RELEASE: MARCH 2009
Already one of the hardest hardcore games you'll ever play - an inch-perfect recreation of WWII aerial combat, with physics, aerodynamics, damage, and every plane modelled to the finest detail. While HAWX and Ace Combat set you loose in arcadey skies, Sturmovik is a true simulation, where every dive, climb and turn is a delicate balancing act.
LEFT 4 DEAD DEV: VALVE RELEASE: NOVEMBER
Left 4 Dead is never the same game twice. Every time you enter Valve's co-op only zombie holocaust the AI director designs a new undead onslaught based on how well it thinks you're doing, how much ammunition you have in your gun, and how often you leave allies behind. Every mission, no matter how often you play it, is a new mission. It is, without any exception, the most exhilarating and inventive first-person shooter ever, and its only weakness is its greatest strength - in Left 4 Dead, you live together or you die alone. There's not much there for the solo player, but it may be the best game on Live.
FAR CRY 2 DEV: UBISOFT RELEASE: NOVEMBER
It'll never work. Far Cry 2, demoed on a PC back in January, was too big, too ambitious, too open, too clever, and too beautiful to ever work on a 360. Months later, and we're driving across African savannah and hacking through jungles in a perfect 360 version of the PC game. Every mission is a chance to make your own rules and execute your own strategy. It's not as complex or intimidating as the similarly open PC-only S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but Far Cry 2 is unlike any shooter ever made for a console.
STREET FIGHTER IV DEV: CAPCOM RELEASE: FEBRUARY 2009
Back in the early nineties, there was really only one game; it single-handedly sold the Super Nintendo and made every kid on Earth a beat-'em-up crackhead, arguing over which characters were strongest and the best tactics for each (The thousand-hand-slap was the coward's choice). Street Fighter II was the Halo of its day, and though Third Strike scared gamers off by being a little tougher and a little outdated among the 3D fighters of the day, Street Fighter IV is a return to everything that made SFII great, with the best-looking 3D update a game has ever received. Real fighting is back, and the king has returned to reclaim his throne.
FALLOUT 3 DEV: BETHESDA RELEASE: NOVEMBER
Thanks in part to the Lord of the Rings frenzy and a post-launch Xbox 360 games drought, Oblivion broke into the mainstream very nicely. By being playable as a straight shooter, Fallout 3 should do the same, but it's still a Bethesda RPG at heart. The hardcore part lies in the complexity and richness of the world; more than that, it's in the faith Bethesda are showing in gamers. At a time when Microsoft and Nintendo are catering to the mass market's most basic tastes, Bethesda are making a serious, high-level game, and trusting that the world isn't too dumb to play it.
RACE PRO DEV: SIMBIN RELEASE: NOVEMBER
Forza may be the 360's Gran Turismo, but Gran Turismo is one of those rare cases of a super-hardcore game being embraced by the mainstream. What we need is a game so brutally challenging and cruelly punishing that every gamer on Earth will hit the first turn on their first ever lap and instantly write-off their car. What we need is a formerly PC-exclusive hardcore racer which accurately simulates professional touring car racing down to infinitesimal nonsense even the most hardened car spod couldn't care about. That's Race Pro, another insanely hardcore game with assists for those too puny for the challenge. Turn them off and drive hard.
MEGA MAN 9 DEV: CAPCOM RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 2008
At E3, Capcom demoed two levels from forthcoming Ultimate Retro Throwback Mega Man 9; of the thousands of journos at the event, only one made it to the end of level two. Mega Man defines hardcore - a game that's been around for decades, and is as disgustingly hard today as it was in 1987. Number 9 is an eight-bit game on 21st century technology - a Live Arcade title with NES graphics, bleepy music, and a Joe Pesci-esque mean streak which will flare at a second's notice and stab you in the eye with a difficulty spike. Few will see the end; those who do will have done so out of sheer, bloody-minded spite, and they will be The Hardcore.
SKATE 2 DEV: EA RELEASE: OCTOBER
In spite of EA's claims, Skate is anything but a casual-friendly title. The casuals abandoned Tony Hawk for the new boy in their droves, but as anyone who's played Rob Dyrdek's ludicrous trick challenge already knows, Skate is anything but a casual game. In its later stages, it's one of the toughest games on the 360, demanding the concentration of Kasparov and the manual dexterity of a professional lady-pleasurer. Skate 2 is next, with more tricks and - at last - the ability to jump off your deck and actually run up a flight of stairs. Will that make it easier? Nah.
BAYONETTA DEV: PLATINUM GAMES RELEASE: MARCH 2009
Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe are among the hardest kicks to the testicles with a pair of steel toecapped winkle-pickers any videogamer has ever received. The man responsible for both these titles is the man behind Bayonetta; disappointed with recent updates to the DMC series, Hideki Kamiya reckons he's reinvented the action game here. What he seems to have actually done is make it a hundred times bigger and more beautiful, and give players countless more options for stylish, flowing combat. Bayonetta makes the ridiculous theatrics of Devil May Cry 4 look staid, and will almost certainly make Dante's difficulty curve feel like a gentle climb up your gran's stairs. Blood will flow. In rivers.
Wouldn't it have been better to judge how hardcore a game is out of existing titles? There's plenty of games out there already which can test a gamer to their limits.
Getting the hidden stars on Braid for example? Even after watching spoilers on youtube, I'm still struggling to get three of them.
Alien Homind HD? There's a game that takes the patience of a saint, and stamps all over it with big s**t-stained boots. Respawning with milliseconds of invunerability means you frequently lose several lives in quick sucession.
Or how about UT3 with godlike bots? I'm pretty sure that'd give most players a bloody good run for their money.
I dunno. I guess it depends on your definition of hardcore gaming but I'd say most games are hardcore really. If you have to do more than swing your arm Wii Sports style, your probably going to turn off 99% of the world population.
I don't know about hardcore - I've always thought that Street Fighter has a universal 'pick up and play' thing for pretty much everyone, then there are the few that turn the game into an artform....so, surely that's both Hardcore and Casual?
What is this Bayonetta? - I've never heard of it.....sounds good though!
$$johnman$$ wrote: This seems more like a list of games that may actually be good, not hardcore.
They're same thing really.
No they are not. A game being hardcore does not mean it will be good, just that it will not be very user friendly, you learn the game or feck off, thats hardcore. A good game can do that but it takes much more.
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