So ZombiU is set to receive a patch, with details of it to come soon. This led me to do some digging to perhaps try and find some information about this. On the ZombiU forums I came across a post, albeit from December, that listed possible updates that may or may not appear in this upcoming patch.

There was a mention of adding more ammo into the game, which of course is fine; I did find myself running out of rounds more than once. Then I read the remainder of the list and it had me a little confused. Other things in the post included implementation of a life system and making the zombies easier to kill. This really made me ponder on what theZombiU would be like if these ‘updated’ were included in the upcoming patch. The first thing that comes to mind is that it would absolutely suck… but thankfully an Ubisoft representative shot down the post as a hoax.

ZombiU is a tense survival first person shooter and to have it made easy more or less defeats the purpose of even playing it. It is the sort of game that you want to provide a test rather than having everything handed to you at ease whilst you play it. The game even has a survival mode that only gives you one chance, so does that not tell you that this is a game that shouldn’t be a walk in the park? And there’s another thing, the campaign has 2 difficulty options, easy and normal, both of which actually offer completely different levels of difficulty. I had a friend play on the easy mode, whilst I played on normal and we both managed to play though and finish the game perfectly well, and neither of us are the biggest fan of FPS games by any means.

So what if a few people aren’t able to defeat a couple of zombies? This proves that the game is succeeding in providing that challenge I speak of. I even lost every single one of my weapons because I died and dropped the Bug-Out Bag, then died again on the way to regaining it. Yes, this did make me a little irritant, but I knew full well what would happen if I died again. This didn’t stop me from playing the game but instead I went through with extra caution from then on.

Now let’s compare this to games such as Demon’s Soul or Dark Souls. Both of these games have the soul metre that increases upon harvesting souls by defeating enemies. If you happen to die, you will drop those souls and to regain them you will need to travel to wherever you died and pick them up. However, if you die on the way to regaining these souls, then they will be lost forever and your next accumulation of souls will take its place at the position where you just died.

How would you feel if Dark Souls gave you a life system and made everything just a little bit easier? What I mean is when you die, rather than dropping your souls you simply lose a life. Yes, it would decrease the difficulty, but that is the point, what is the point in doing so? I am sure you’d agree with me in thinking that Dark Souls really wouldn’t be as great a game as it is if you keep losing lives rather than souls. I find it exciting in Dark Souls when you die and have to set off again to get back what you lost. The same is true for ZombiU, you head in again with a bit of extra caution, and it heightens the senses and often provides a better atmosphere. Those proposed updated on the forum post are something along the lines of taking away all difficulty from Dark Souls, you just can’t do it. I don’t want to be killing the zombies with one simple hit, nor do I want to be steaming through Dark Souls because the enemies are pushovers.

At the end of the day, games need this level of difficulty in them. Most of the recent games seem to be a little bit too easy, and this may be because either the developers are getting lazy, or they just aren’t making games like they used to (which is kind of true). Most games aren’t providing a challenge like they used to and seem to instead be aiming for sparkly set pieces and big explosions. The general challenge isn’t there anymore but games like Dark Souls and ZombiU are providing a change.

I don’t want to be playing several games that are a breeze; I want to be frustrated that I have died in a game. I want that feeling of anger that I get when I’m eaten alive by that mob of zombies, when the level is designed well enough for me to fail countless times or when the AI is intelligent enough to score more goals than me. It is that sort of challenge that I’ve had since my childhood, and there absolutely needs to be more of it around, not the dumbed down, relaxed gameplay that’s being pumped out this generation.