Today I came up with an interesting topic. I hope you will find it entertaining. It is about how video games can make us lose hope in playing games. I found several factors that you will agree with me:

CHALLENGE MODES

I was playing Modern Warfare 2 last night and I began playing with Spec-Ops mode. It is a challenge mode that forces you to play with all your might and skills to clear the mission. If you play it on easy difficulty it is a piece of cake, but if you play it on the most difficult setting, you are going to cry. For example, you are in a shanty Brazilian town and your objective is to eliminate all of the illegal weapon dealers. There are 50 of them including war dogs. On top of that you are not allowed to kill more than 3 civilians. It may sound easy but since you are alone and the town looks like a labyrinth and dogs attack from nowhere and the terrorists are moving as a group it is really difficult. It took me about an hour to clear that mission. But in the later missions it is really tough! Many people brag that they finished the game but what about clearing the game on the hardest difficulty or trying to complete the challenge mode? Many gamers think themselves as a hero when they beat Halo 3. Try beating the game on legendary difficulty. You will cry!

This goes the same for the RPG games like Final Fantasy and Persona. Story missions are so easy that all you have to do is level up to a certain level and equip the latest equipment. Unfortunately it is not the same when it comes to side quests. Your party's level must be very high and you equip items that you must prevent yourself from a certain weakness. You must retry several times to defeat that boss since you learn its weaknesses via trial and error.

So an expert gamer brags when he/she completes the game on the hardest setting or completing the dreadful challenges. Many gamers lose hope when they are incapable of completing challenge games. Some even becomes very depressed since he/she finds themselves very noob.

RANKINGS

How many of you tried to clear every mission with S rank or with Gold medal? Some people don't bother them but a real gamer takes it serious. Have you ever felt that you are so cool when you are playing Devil May Cry but then you rethink that you are lame when you get the D or C rank? To be honest I do. You go crazy trying to figure it out where did you go wrong! As you keep earning poor ranks you lose hope in playing the game and you turn off the console.

You may say its useless to earn high ranks but sometimes it is very important. In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, you unlock secret weapons and items by earning S rank in certain missions. Those weapons and items helps you to complete the most hardest missions. Apart from unlocking secret content, you feel earning the highest ranks to unlock an achievement or trophy. When I bought Xbox 360 for the first I was playing N3. The game was so boring and earning A rank was a pain in the back that unlocking every achievement was a nightmare. Thankfully I got 1000G and that's the only game that I unlocked all of the achievements.

So have you ever felt noob when you got very poor ranks? If so did you lose hope in playing that game again?

MULTIPLAYER

I guess everyone has faced with this problem. You might have felt that you are awesome in Street Fighter or in Forza Motorsport 3 or in Gears of War but when you play against a human rathern than the CPU things change a lot. The reason is that the human and the CPU plays totally different. Both of them have weaknesses and strong points. Unfortunately there are some uber expert gamers that pawn you in few seconds like those ones in Tekken. Some people utterly punish you with 10 hit combos and you don't stand a chance against them. You lose your sanity and you can't concentrate with your game. After getting pawned several times in a row you just throw the controller away and cry.

GAME OVER

Finally the next-gen games have checkpoints in every moment. I remember those games which I used to play on PSone where most of the games drove me crazy when I used to see those game over screens since you had to replay a large chunk of the game in order to reach the point where you died. Save points and checkpoints were very scarce that you had to play the games at ultimate concentration. Thank God that many of the shooter games have very frequent checkpoint locations. That saves some demotivation of gaming entertainment but that's not enough. You will still go crazy to see the same game over screen over and over. How many times have you seen the game over screen when you were trying to defeat a certain boss or defeat an opponent in a fighting game. I bet we saw a lot. The most painful part is when your clear rank gets very low and you earn very low amount of money like in Bayonetta. Since you clear missions with bad rank you can't afford to buy upgrades that will help you to finish the other missions. So you have to replay the previous missions to farm some cash. Still we all cry when we lose a life in Super Mario games

So now I ask you guys. What demotives you when you are playing a game?