If you've ever seen reviews at Gamespot website (which you can access through links at GameFAQs), you may have noticed that games are labeled as "easy", "medium" or "hard" difficulties. They hardly ever are unaccurate, and if they ever say "game X is easy", it's easy for good. But what makes a game easy? This Top 10 is about the most known ways, and therefore the most used, and the games in which they appear (which may or may not be easy at all, by the way). Wanna some light challenge? Search for these cues:

So the Aliens have overtaken all your bases and are ready to crush your main base, which houses your remaining Command Center? You can do three things: die like a man (the most likely outcome), overpower your foes and retrieve the bases (such an exploit require some Korean powergaming), or pressing enter and typing some weird wording and making all your units immortal, your resources plentiful or just getting an instant victory. That'll make the game so easy, but you'll lose about two dots in Honour by resorting in such dirty tricks (you're adviced).

This game is by no means easy (indeed, it's one of the toughest games ever), but it DOES have a feature which makes it easier (or in more appropiate words: easy enough to be finished), and it's just an easier mode! This is the most obvious way to make a game easy: just a mode in which you hit stronger, you're sturdier and you're less likely to get hurt. This feature is almost as old as gaming, but you'll never ever see how easier does it make a game than DMC 3 would show it. Of course, once you finish easy difficulties, go play in harder.

For RPGs, if some boss fight gets you screwed and your characters never end to fall like flies, the straightest solution is to earn some more experience levels. You can do it if you get stuck with an impossible enemy, but you can also do it for the simple joy of reaching level 99 with all player characters (the only downside is that you'll always do 9999 damage, be it a normal attack, a low-tier spell or Ultima; and that way the game gets just disgustingly easy). Use at your leisure, but with the proper caution.

It may sound tricky, but one of the most obvious ways to make a game easier is to make the player character immortal, so there's no chance to see a Game Over screen of sort. In most games, such a feat would make games unbearably easy, but most games which feature this mechanick are by no means easy (but granted: they would be waaay too hard if your character could die). Most Point & Click adventures you'll see feature immortal main characters, who no matter what you try to do nor who you face, they'll NEVER die... but you'll never go any further 'til you figure out the solution.

If you're playing in arcades and you've got loads 'n loads of quarters, there won't be a game you could beat. That's because of the Infinite Continues; whenever you lose all your lives, you can toss a quarter into the machine and go for it one more time. In Metal Gear Solid Series things are similar: whenever you die (and you WILL die very, very often) and you hear the trademark SNAAAAKEEEEEEE!!!! scream (by now a treasure of the gaming sound samples), you'll get the chance to continue and restart from whence you got killed. Better than reloading saved games, I guess.

This is obvious: if your characters (for example, in a RPG) have a harder time getting killed than actually killing the foes (ever the most gruesome foes), the game is bound to be easy. Immortality may be granted by several ways: high HP, Auto-Life, Regen, some damage-shoaking ability which won't allow HP to descend below 1... Valkyrie Profile features many of these features, and they are rather easy to get and use (it's hard to get yourself killed); but make no mistake, this game isn't easy at all: if you don't get these abilities, you'll be in great trouble!

Most games makes the main character face an army of wicked, mischievous or outright evil and nefarious foes in order to accomplish his/her quest. These enemies can be the minions of some über-demon, a crowd of mad citizens, or in this case some weird undead demons which resemble women (those nurses are quite yummy, but so wickedly disgusting at the same time; it's hard to get the proper image in mind, I warn you). In such games, a way to make it easy is to make those enemies cannon-fodder, so they cannot withstand the unleashed wrath of the hero!

In most games featuring enemies, your character is bond to get hit sooner or later, and of course he/she'll lose some HP (the higher the difficulty, the greater the loss). Most of these games also feature some collectibles which allow you to restore the lost HP, so you don't die needlessly. In the proper amount, these restoratives can make a game quite balanced in terms of difficulty: the more damage foes do, the more (or more effective) restoratives should you get; and the less damage, less restoratives. Increasing restoratives over par with enemy damage (such is the case of this game), can make it pretty difficult to ever see a Game Over, despite of fierce enemies.

So far, foes are part of difficulty equation, and restoratives and curatives are another; each one must be in balance with the other in order to get the proper challenge. But wait: there's more. Enemies do damage to you, and restoratives heal you, but how much do the main character damages the enemy against their likeliness to restore their health? That's also a crucial part of the equation. If your character can mow down crowds of enemies with ease (and in this game you'll have to fight huge crowds of them, and you may get unscratched), then the game can't be anything but easy.

This is just sick: a game in which enemies are soo lame they'll rarely land a hit on your character; thousands of restoratives to purchase (for cheap price) if foes manage to touch your character; and a main character who may eat even the fiercest enemy it can meet for breakfast; also featuring some "extra lives" in case your character's HP hits 0. In short: unless it's done purposedly, in this game is IMPOSSIBLE to get a Game Over, period. Puzzles are quite a challenge, and the game is fun overall, though.

You may think for other details which make games easy, but these are the most common. Note that most games listed (expect of the last ones), despite featuring the named detail, aren't easy at all, but they are easier than if they hadn't had such detail. Other points could be more oriented towards puzzle (being one of those details "getting key A to door B"), but games whichse difficulty mainly rely on puzzles are (sadly) few and far between. So take notes: if you wan't some easy gaming, go seek these points.

List by pejg