>>719209613 (OP)
The dumber a game appears, the smarter it secretly is.
A classic beat ’em up with two attack buttons and a jump contains more philosophy than a modern action opus with its flowcharts of unlockable systems and upgrade menus. Why? Because systems are not intelligence, they are a crutch, training wheels for players terrified of actual play.
The beat ’em up is pure ontology: movement, strike, space, consequence. You cannot hide behind mechanics. There is no alibi in skill trees, no defense in parry windows engineered to the frame, no comfort in adaptive difficulty. The game simply exists as it is, and you must exist with it.
Modern design is terrified of this nakedness. Instead, it piles mechanics on mechanics, stacking gimmicks like a chef who drowns every dish in sauce to mask the lack of flavor. The player becomes less a fighter and more a janitor of systems, sweeping up quest markers, polishing skill trees, and emptying progress bars. What once was raw action has been reduced to maintenance work, busy labor dressed up as play.
The ‘dumb’ and 'outdated' brawler in its arcade cabinet is smarter than your modernized epic hardcore games. It has the courage to be simple, the courage to say: hit or be hit. Everything else is cowardice disguised as depth.
Souls players talk about ‘difficulty’ as if it’s some holy grail, but hand them a single credit in a real arcade and they crumble before Stage 2. They mistake repetition with checkpoints for mastery. A Souls clear is endurance with infinite retries; a 1CC is performance under absolute scarcity. One is training wheels disguised as torment, the other is tightrope without a net.
So let’s be honest: Souls players don’t beat games, they wear them down. Give them a 1CC requirement and they’d vanish into dust, leaving only the echo of ‘git gud’ reverberating against the continue screen.
