Does. Not. Want.

Dear Game designers: Take it down a notch.

Why do some designers persist in raising the difficulty levels in their games to near-sadistic levels? Is it to artificially increase their true length (shrinking each year due to high production costs)? To appeal to the l33t gamers who form the obsessive fan base? Because the testers complain about games being 'too easy' after playing them for weeks on end?

Regardless of the reason, it needs to stop. They're damaging the industry itself at this point, making initiation into gaming an unpleasant experience for anyone without excellent reflexes and hand-eye coordination. The average person who hits a tough section and dies 10 times in a row is going to give up, trade the game in, and probably not bother picking up the next game in the series. Maybe she or he never picks up any more games at all.

Some designers do a pretty good job of preventing people from giving up. Bungie, for example, offers a variety of different skill levels in their Halo games, from Easy to Legendary. They even allow others to join in on the action, helping the player make it through more difficult spots. Diablo II makes the first run-through of the game relatively easy, offering the option of two increasingly tougher difficulty levels with far better items for veteran players who've gotten their character through the previous one. The difficulty slider in Oblivion can be changed at any time, ensuring that no section will be so tough that the user will want to give up, while allowing more skilled players to retain their sense of danger at every turn.

Additionally, most other hobbies go out of their way to present a welcoming image for newbies, and other forms of entertainment see no need to punish their audience. Crocheting beginners are offered a wealth of learning materials designed to make learning not only easy, but fun. Movie studios pull sections of their films when they see the test audiences getting bored. Books don't prevent you from skipping to the next chapter if you find one character's story annoying.

There's no reason for continuing with this games-for-the-l33t-only mentality. Publishers, bearing the brunt of the financial responsibility for poor-selling titles and reaping the lion's share of the rewards for those that take off, should be taking the developers to the woodshed on this issue. If presented a choice between satisfying their hardcore audience or getting their title published, any sane developer would choose the latter.

There are so many ways to be creative in giving skilled player additional rewards, allowing gamers to bypass frustrating sections, or even just adding something like a God mode for casuals who just want to see everything, that it seems lazy to frustrate paying customers who don't want to jump through every flaming hoop.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Impressions

What's a review called when finishing a game isn't in the cards? Impressions is as good a name as any, so that's what I'm calling my experience with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

First, the good: The hype about the Wii controls is entirely justified. As Halo was to console FPS controls, MP3 lays out a blueprint for all future motion-based shooters. Intuitive, responsive... as someone who found the controls for Metroid Prime 1 utterly annoying, that should be read as high praise.

The graphics are also regularly stunning. Excellent use of lighting effects make using the morph ball look like pinball from the ball's perspective. Imposing alien statues and sprawling outdoor maps greet the player at every turn. I'm not a big fan of the gangly design of some enemies, but it's well done nontheless.

Well designed environmental puzzles have part of the Metroid experience since its beginning, and MP3 is no exception. Using the scan visor to help detect parts of the environment you can interact with, you'll be shooting, blowing up, grappling and even hovering your way to the next section, accompanied by some great cutscenes showing the results of your work.

To sum up the worst of the game in two words: Boss battles. Overlong, completely unintuitive, and regularly cheap, gamers without the patience to fail repeatedly will find that GameFaqs is their friend.

A general pattern for destroying one of these guys goes something like this: Spot glowy part of boss. Don't bother with your super-weapon - until the glowy parts have been defeated, it won't do jack squat. Try every other weapon in your arsenal until you find the one that seems to do something to glowy parts. Mind you, you're not actually doing damage yet. No, you'll either need to blow off more of the glowy parts (did I mention that the boss will keep regenerating them?) or, if they're all shot off, you'll have to find a new weapon to shoot a newly revealed glowy part for the 5 seconds it's available to shoot at. At this point, you should finally be damaging the enemy, if only in tiny increments (otherwise, you may have to work through another layer of glowy madness). This damage, naturally, ticks your enemy off, causing them to start throwing more damaging/annoying attacks your way, including ones that'll pull off the majority of your health in one shot and are virtually unavoidable unless you know the tough-to-use secret to avoid them.

Wash, rinse, repeat until the boss finally frigging dies. If you die, you may have to start at the beginning of the level again and run back to the boss. So don't die. Wheee!

Does that sound like fun? If so, you either have the reflexes of a 13-year-old or the patience of a saint. I know there are plenty of talented old-school action/platformer fans for whom this is heaven on earth, but I find these kind of boss battles to be the worst kind of tired cliche. They're the reason I wasn't able to get interested enough to finish the otherwise excellent game, and I hate them for it.

Sure, I could bang my head against the wall for 20 tries in order to get through on the 21st, but it just wasn't worth it. I'm too old to bother with games that're frustrating to the nth degree, regardless of the otherwise high-quality gameplay.

I plead with you, game developers - allow those of us without ultra-l33t skills or a vast reservoir of patience to finish your games. After the fifth time we've failed a section, ask us if we want to just skip to the next area. 95% of the people won't be having fun at that point, so just let it go. Driving casual gamers away with crazy-hard sections is terrible for both your game and the industry in general.