SweetieGames

It’s 2006. My brother and I have been gifted a PlayStation 2 for Christmas. Along with it is a selection of games, one of which is Scooby-Doo Unmasked, a 3D platformer featuring the beloved cartoon character as he navigates various locations in search of Fred’s missing cousin.

Both my brother and I remember sinking a lot of time into this game, and finding it particularly challenging. I always thought it was because we hadn’t played a game like this before; the PS2 was our first console, and we may have dabbled in a couple of free 2D platformers on a flash website but there was nothing like this on there. Obviously, if we’re new to not only the game, but also the PlayStation console as a whole, it’s going to be tough! We have to keep looking down at the controller to see which button is X!

Fast forward to 2021, and everyone is stuck indoors. We bust out the old PS2, which somehow still works despite collecting dust for years. During the pandemic, we were all reminiscing on a simpler time and so we decide to play Scooby-Doo Unmasked again. We joke about how it’s going to be so easy in comparison to what we remember. There’s no way it’s actually that hard… is there?

What started out as a fun trip down memory lane quickly descended into shouting at the TV screen; palpable anger that permeated the room and could be felt as soon as anyone entered the room. Our memories didn’t deceive us. The game was actually difficult, primarily down to the fact that it has extremely limited camera angles. How am I meant to judge distance in this 3D game if I can’t turn my camera around? Every time the crossed out camera icon appeared on the screen, our frustration grew and grew.

It’s not only Scooby-Doo that had me putting my head in my hands. In my movie tie-in games article, I mentioned Ratatouille on the PlayStation 2, another game that I played as an adult that I enjoyed in my childhood. There was this one slide level (I have no idea why there were so many slide levels in this game, there’s not that much sliding going on in the original film) that had both me and my brother tearing our hair out. There was a slight delay between the controller input and it happening on screen, and the speed you’d move at made it so you had to do it perfectly down to the millisecond. It took us about 2 hours. We are 25 and 27 this year. This game is made for seven year olds.

Older games made for kids definitely didn’t shy away from providing a real challenge, but also were filled with artificial or inflated difficulty. Limited camera angles, delayed response to input, ridiculously challenging AI that knew your every move before you’d pressed a single button, stupidly fast speed that was impossible to control and more felt like they were put there purely to make children cry. If it’s providing a challenge for adults in their mid 20s, who have been playing games for 15 years, how do they expect kids picking up a controller to stand a chance?

These older games definitely felt like a trial by fire, not pulling any punches and truly getting you to work hard to get good. Even if some of the challenge was only present due to the limitations of tech at the time, or because the tech was new and we were still trying to figure out what worked best, they provided me and many others with fond memories. A win felt like a real victory; I can still remember physically trembling once I had completed a difficult level or challenge. These games made us laugh, made us cry, made us throw our controllers in frustration, but I do miss the feeling of those old PS2 games. Even if some of the difficulty was contrived.

Of course, as an adult I’m not picking up games aimed at the same audience that those games were aimed at (they don’t have the nostalgia factor!) but I don’t see anyone talking about them still being a challenge to complete. I wonder if those kinds of games are creating the same kinds of memories that Scooby-Doo made for me. When the kids of today grow up, they may pick up a Switch game from their childhood, but will it get boring quickly because it’s not providing the challenge it did when they were children?

Children are just tiny adults; I think games shouldn’t shy away from providing a difficult challenge for them! But maybe provide a challenge that isn’t inflated artificial difficulty, now that we know how infuriating that is.