Easy Mode Mockery: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"I am not impressed by your pathetic fighting prowess. Come back when you've learned how to fight."''|Major Kreissack, if you reach the final level of ''[[One Must Fall]]'' on easy mode; you don't get to play that level.}}
'''Easy Mode Mockery''' is where the game radically changes when you play on easier difficulties. There are two ways to go about this:
# The Serious Way: You cannot unlock extra gameplay modes or features on the easier difficulties. The game may also end early or [[A Winner Is You|not give you]] the [[Golden Ending|best ending]]. This is to prevent you from just unlocking all the extras on the easiest levels and then ignoring the main game.
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== [[Adventure Game]] ==
* ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' on the [[Sega CD]] will end on earlier levels when playing on lower difficulties. You can only play the entire game on hard mode.
* Some [[
** ''Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge'' labeled the two modes and gave each a subtitle; Easy mode was "I've never played an adventure game before, I'm scared", and if you chose this mode, most of the puzzles were solved for you, making for a very unsatisfying experience (In addition, the Lite mode was advertised on the back of the game box as being geared towards [[Take That|video game reviewers]]). ''[[The Curse of Monkey Island]]'', by contrast, had regular (Being a Swashbuckling Pirate Adventure) and Mega Monkey (Being a Swashbuckling Pirate Adventure, But with More Puzzles) modes. Regular was a complete and satisfying game experience; Mega Monkey ''added'' puzzles to the normal mode for people looking for a greater challenge.
* The little-heard-of [[Super Nintendo Entertainment System]] version of [[Bram Stoker's Dracula]] featured this - if you beat it on Easy mode, the game ended with Harker allowing Dracula to escape. Only on Normal or Hard mode would you be able to continue past the 3rd or 4th stage.
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== [[Driving Game]] ==
* ''[[Twisted Metal]] 2''. When played on Easy, the game ends just after the first boss with a big stop sign featuring the message "No losers allowed beyond this point".
* ''[[Rock
* The number of laps on a race in ''[[Fatal Racing]]'' is difficulty dependent. Girlie mode has this below 5 laps for all of the first two cups. Two problems come from this: first, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the AI is NOT restricted by the acceleration and braking stats of the car they drive]] (which means the slowest car can pass you from 16th place on the first lap), and second, [[That One Level|the 8th course of the first two cups]] is nigh-unwinnable on Girlie mode, and most of the other tracks are difficult to get decent placement on, requiring a near-perfect performance on all 8 tracks in championship mode to win. The final slap in the face? The third cup is only unlockable on Impossible or DEATH difficulties - by clearing BOTH cups before it on that difficulty!
* If you beat ''[[Rogue Trip]]'' using one of the unlockable vehicles (which a vastly more powerful than the regulars), the AAA representative, who usually gives you a code, tells you, "My grandma could win using a vehicle like that. Try again, this time without using a ringer!"
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== [[Fighting Game]] ==
* Even the old ''[[One Must Fall]]'' fighting game got in on the trope: you had to have the difficulty set to a particular
** Or in Tournament Mode, the "unranked challengers" only appear if you're competing on a high enough difficulty (among other conditions). If you want to get all the secret upgrades for your bot, you need to be playing on either the second hardest or hardest difficulty.
* Home versions of ''[[Street Fighter II]]'' would give you a [[A Winner Is You|"Try again on a harder level!"]] screen on beating the game if you set the difficulty below four stars.
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** In ''Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3'' console games and ''Trilogy'', your reward for winning was determined by your level.
* There is a Game Boy ''[[Shrek]]'' game, in which selecting the difficulty uses Donkey's head as a cursor. If you select easy mode, he will stick his tongue out at you and even on medium, he will not look impressed.
* In a related phenomenon, the tutorial for the easier control scheme in ''[[
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** In addition, when selecting Daydream as the difficulty level at the start of the game, the game outright warns the player that Daydream is intended for beginners and thus extremely easy. And that the bonus tarot cards are disabled and can't be earned at all.
* When you play ''[[Serious Sam]] HD'' on the "Tourist" setting, enemies explode into puffs of flowers instead of clouds of blood.
** You get double the health plus regeneration on the easiest mode. On the Xbox version of Serious Sam it shows a picture of Sam dressed as a baby
** The trend is continued in ''Serious Sam 2'', pacifier and all.
* ''[[Time Splitters]] 2'': The campaign missions are shortened on Easy difficulty, causing them to end about halfway through.
* ''[[Postal]] 2'': The easiest setting is called Liebermode (a shot at former Senator Joe Lieberman, one of the most vocal of the "moral majority" crusaders against video games). In it, not only is everyone significantly less agressive than they could be, just about every weapon people wield are tazers that quite literally do absolutely no damage when wielded by anyone other than the player.
* The only way to enable full episode selection in SNES ''[[Doom]]'' was to play on a high difficulty. Selecting easy mode forced the player to go through the entire game from the beginning to even see the later levels.
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* The ''[[Civilization]]'' series gives you a score at the end of the game that compares you to other world leaders. If you play on Easy mode, you are saddled with a horrible ranking like "[[Warren G Harding]]" even if you beat the computer by a country mile.
** On the other hand, they save the mockery 'til the end, which avoids the problem of driving away newbies before they've become thoroughly hooked.
* In ''[[Galactic Civilizations]] II'', a turn-based space strategy game, the AI of computer players is circumscribed on lower difficulties. As an example, on an easy setting, the AI will not react to your assembling an invasion fleet directly next to one of their planets. It will, however, pop up the diplomacy screen and tell you he knows what you're
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* ''[[Mega Man X]] 5'' if you play on easy, you cannot get ANY parts from the bosses, because [[Ass Pull|they are low level bosses]].
** ''X8'' stops you just before the final boss if you play on easy. Surprisingly, the game is rather subtle about it here. {{spoiler|After all, Sigma NOT being the final boss is a major surprise.}}
* The Genesis version of ''[[Sparkster]]'' (not to be confused with the Super NES version, which was a different game) uses a surprisingly subtle form of this, skipping levels instead of ending them early; unfortunately, the ''very first'' skipped level contains one of the [[MacGuffin
** Speaking of the SNES ''Sparkster'', it has this even at Normal Difficulty. Easy mode is labeled '''Digest''' (which is their way of saying "this mode is missing lots of stuff"), but there's really no excuse for Normal mode to not have the final boss in it unless they really wanted it to be a [[True Final Boss]].
* The [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney]] ''[[Hercules (
* If one beats the Special Edition CD version of the original ''[[Earthworm Jim (video game)|Earthworm Jim]]'' on Practice Mode, you do not get the "UR'E THE BEST" screen after beating the Queen, and the ending cutscene is gone. Instead, you see a still shot of the ending's location, with the voice of series creator [[Doug Ten Napel]] saying "What a worm! Playing on practice, eh?". Feeling bad, he decides to explain (in a non-serious manner)
** Beating the game on Hard gets you a very different speech giving you the right to state "I'm the best" even if everybody else hates you.
* In ''[[Metroid]]: Zero Mission'' (the remake of the original NES ''Metroid'' for Game Boy Advance), there are numerous ending images that you can see showing Samus in various states of disarmament: from full Power Suit, to helmet removed, to armor removed and in the Zero Suit (blue jumpsuit), to armor removed and in short-shorts and a small top. Which image you see is determined by your completion time and item percentage. But if you play on Easy, you'll only ever see the image of Samus in full armor, sitting atop a rock.
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* ''[[Looney Tunes|Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers]]'' took the "fewer levels on easy mode" idea [[Up to Eleven]]--it had a difficulty ''slider'', and the lower it was set, the fewer levels you could play, down to just the first level at anything below 11%. If you want the whole game, you'd have to set it to at least 81%.
* In ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'', you can have the Cosmic Guide play a level for you if you die too many times in it. However, you get a bronze star rather than a genuine Power Star. They count toward your total star count, but if you have even one bronze star in your inventory, you can't unlock the final level. The Cosmic Guide will not work if you're playing as Luigi, however.
** Similarly, in both ''[[New Super Mario Bros. Wii]]'' and ''[[Super Mario 3D Land]]'', if you use any Super Guides while playing those games, then you will lose the stars on your save file sheet.
** ''[[Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels]]'' featured a variation of this: If you use any warp zones (even the ones that send you back to an earlier level) while playing this game, then you cannot unlock World 9. If you beat Worlds 1-8 without warping and complete World 9, but use warp zones in Worlds A-D, then you will be locked out of World 9 the next time you play it.
* ''[[Jazz Jackrabbit]] 2'' indulges in this a bit; once you've chosen your character, you choose the difficulty mode, with a corresponding picture of Jazz, Spaz, or Lori, making implications about who that difficulty mode is intended for. Normal mode is your chosen rabbit, no bells and whistles; hard mode gets a hulked-out, 'roided-up version; and easy mode gets a cute little melonheaded baby version.
* In ''[[Jurassic Park]] 2 The Chaos Continues'' for the SNES, you can only unlock the last 2 levels (which give you the true ending) if you play through the game on Hard.
* When the Easy mode of ''[[Mega Man 10]]'' was first announced, it was said that it would add floating red platforms to tricky sections. They seem to have not missed a ''single screen'' of the game when they added them; and they pretty much make it impossible to die by falling anywhere in the game. Plus, they look stupid and stick out from everything else. Also, you pick up an item that refills your life ''and '''all''''' your weapons once per level. One gets the impression that intiCreates was just laughing at all the noobs that need an Easy mode.
** This is made MORE funny, when you compare the [[
* Used to a degree in ''The Impossible Game''. While the game ordinarily plays high pace, energetic music while in regular play, it switches to a what can only be called a child's lullaby if you go into Practice Mode.
* ''[[The Lost Vikings]] 2'' would add dialog to the normal screen of your vikings being revived if you died in the first level, telling you that since you're so utterly hopeless that you managed to die before the game has really even started yet that you're going to get some extra powers to help your sorry ass get through the game. That said, it's literally impossible to die on that particular stage unless you're actively trying to, so it's more like an Easter Egg: said powers made most of the game a lot easier.
* ''Bonk's Revenge'' ends after the first boss on Easy difficulty, and after the fourth boss on Medium.
* In ''[[Sonic Heroes]]'' playing as Team Rose means you'll be forced to sit through the tutorial that you could already play as Team Sonic from the menu, you'll be playing shorter versions of Team Sonic's stages, doing a Team Blast gives you invincibility, a shield, and a level up for all your team members, and you have the easiest challenge levels (collecting 100 rings). On the team selection screen the teams are organized as Sonic (normal), Dark (hard), Rose (easy), and Chaotix ([[Unexpected Gameplay Change|mundane odd jobs]]), so if you beat Team Sonic and Dark first you'll end up taking a harsh shift from 15-year-old to 5-year-old. And because each team makes up 22% of the game (except for the final story which in comparison makes up 12%) it's mandatory for both getting [[
== [[Puzzle Game]] ==
* In the SNES game ''[[Tetris Attack]]'', the story mode ended at different points on each level. Easy mode ends after the second boss, Medium ends after the third, and only Hard and higher allow you to actually face Bowser himself. The original Japan-only ''[[Panel
** Furthermore, clearing ''Tetris Attack'''s story mode on Easy doesn't give you an ending, only a simple [[A Winner Is You|"Congratulations!"]] message, accompanied by Yoshi wishing you good luck on the next difficulty level. Idling at this screen would cause Yoshi to inform you that you won't be getting any special reward for finishing Easy mode, and you should just press Reset (which wasn't actually
{{quote|'''Yoshi''': HEY! I'M NOT KIDDING! That's all, there isn't anymore. Press RESET!}}
** There was also an option in the settings to have the game play itself, with several levels of skill. Trying to use this to complete any mode with an ending gets you a message telling you to play for real.
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** In ''DJMAX Fever'', which plays almost exactly like DJMP2 but with different songs and missions, the level cap is removed and the scoring penalty is weaker; you only lose 5% of your points.
* In ''[[Beatmania]] IIDX'', using the Easy modifier to clear a song will mark your status for that song as "'''{{smallcaps|EASY CLEAR}}'''", although a non-Easy clear, [[Flawless Victory|Full Combo, or Perfect]] overrides it. Newer installments have an "Assist Clear" status that is even lower than Easy Clear, for using Auto Scratch and/or 5 Keys, while earlier versions wouldn't even count anything played on Auto Scratch and/or 5 Keys besides incrementing the song's play count.
* In ''[[Pop'n
* ''[[Guitar Rock Tour]]'' on Easy Mode ends with the characters musing about how their rise to stardom came way too easily.
== [[Role
* The secret movies at the end of ''[[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|Kingdom Hearts]]'' won't unlock if you're playing through in Easy mode.
** In [[Kingdom Hearts II|the sequel]] you can only see the secret movies on Standard difficulty if you get [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] (with plenty of [[Guide Dang It]] all around). On Proud/[[Updated Rerelease|Critical]] Mode, though, you simply have to finish a few bonus areas.
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* Fighting on Easy in ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' will get you zero GRADE, meaning no treats for [[New Game+]].
* While ''[[Fallout 3]]'' will not actively taunt you, you take a penalty to all experience earned in Easy and Very Easy mode (you gain a proportionate boost in Hard and Very Hard). The game doesn't shut of features per se, but it will be difficult to reach the level cap (and the nifty Perks found there) with the heavy XP nerf that playing on Very Easy entails.
* Playing Easy mode in ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' cuts out a significant amount of content from the game, leaving out many dungeons and some items, and making it impossible to get the best ending (which is admittedly [[Guide Dang It|almost impossible to get without the guide anyway]].) Ironically, this actually makes Easy mode ''harder'' than either Medium or Hard, since some of the content which Easy omits is extremely helpful for winning the game.
** Apart from the inability to get the best ending on easy, ''Valkyrie Profile'' is all over the place. Each of the game's dungeons only appears in certain difficulties, and only on some playthroughs, so playing easy mode, then normal, then hard will actually get you more content than just hard mode. Furthermore, hard mode is possibly the easiest, because new characters start at level 1, which is an advantage once you have items that improve their stats when they level up; you wouldn't get those benefits if they join the party at level 30 in easy mode. Also because sometimes you need to level up characters for skill points in preparation for sending them to Valhalla, and it takes less xp with level 1's.
* In ''[[Star Wars]]: [[The Force Unleashed]]'', cheat codes disable certain unlockables, Achievements, and for difficulty-based game completion Achievements you must play on the same difficulty from beginning to end. (This is to prevent, for example, playing the last stage on Sith Lord after playing all previous missions on Sith Apprentice.)
** The second game's [[Xbox]] achievement picture for beating it on the lowest difficulty is Jar Jar Binks. Now that's just ''mean''.
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* The first ''[[Boktai]]'' game has a couple of puzzles near the end which offer you their solutions... as long as you're okay with being immortalized as a "LOSER" on the nearby hint panel.
* In ''[[Septerra Core]]'' the master code to unlock cheat codes is "IMAREALWEENIE" and the cheat code to make enemies stop attacking you is "MAKETHEMSTOPMOMMIE".
* Mostly averted in [[Monster Girl Quest Paradox]]. You can access all the actual content regardless of what difficulty you choose. However, the lowest difficulty of Very Easy goes beyond simply lowering enemy stats. It also causes them to take damage each turn (proportional to the damage they inflict on the party) and causes your party members to automatically regenerate HP on their turns, making it almost impossible to lose.
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** '' Mountain of Faith'' gives you the [[Multiple Endings|Bad Ending]] if you beat [[Final Boss|Kanako]] on Easy mode... after making her last two attack patterns ''harder than the Normal versions'' by having multiple bullet waves line up in a more murderous fashion.
** More specific to the trope, most regular ''Touhou'' games won't let you unlock the Extra Stage if you complete the game on Easy (''Perfect Cherry Blossom'', ''Imperishable Night'', ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View'', and ''Great Fairy Wars'' being the exceptions). In fact, ''Subterranean Animism'' has a bug that if you already have the Extra Stage unlocked and then complete the game on Easy, it will lock the stage right back up. Though, for a few of the games, there is a [[Game Breaker|way to make the higher difficulties]] ''[[Game Breaker|easier]]'' [[Game Breaker|than Easy mode]].
** While not an in-game element, the Touhou fan created song [https://web.archive.org/web/20090313081929/http://iojacket.hp.infoseek.co.jp/IOSYS_tohotsukitoro.swf "Stops at the Affected Area and Immediately Dissolves"] (a remix of Reisen's boss theme), nicknamed "Overdrive" by English-speaking fans, mocks Easy mode players.
{{quote|- "Eh? SERIOUSLY? EASY MODO?" "How gross! The only ones that should be caught playing Easy Mode are elementary school students, right?" "HAHAHAHA!"}}
** Yet another example is Kogasa. Yes, she mocks easy players with a surprise, because her last spellcard on easy is BY FAR more difficult than on normal and up.
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** ''Gradius Rebirth'''s easy modes either weaken or remove normal enemy bullets, but cannot be used to access to the second loop.
* In the ''[[Wanted]]'' videogame, the easiest difficulty setting is labeled "Pussy."
* In the American PS1 port of ''[[Ray Storm]]'', if you change any of the stages' difficulty settings to lower than the default, or change your starting number of lives to higher than 5, the game switches from Combat Mode to Training Mode, in which you can only play the first four stages.
** [[Fridge Logic]] kicks in when you try to decrease the difficulty on stage 5 or higher: That also triggers Training Mode. So what's the point of being able to lower difficulty on those stages?
* In ''[[Alien Hominid]]'', the easiest difficulty gives you a ridiculous amount of lives to complete only one third of the game. Upon completion, the game insults you and tells you to play on an actually challenging difficulty.
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* ''[[Super Title 64 Advance|Super]] [[R-Type]]'' gives an [[A Winner Is You|ending message]] on the lines of "Congratulations... and yet this was only training. You cannot know what your next encounter will bring" and then on the next screen, "Let's try the next difficulty level!"
* The arcade game ''[[Point Blank (video game)|Point Blank]]'' has 4 missions on its' easiest, "Training" difficulty, opposed to the normal 16. Also, the final, bonus level won't be triggered. Point Blank DS tones this down with 4 levels on "training" difficulty versus 8 on others.
* ''[[Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony]]'' will only let you play the first three levels on Normal difficulty, requiring you to beat them on Difficult to unlock the fourth, and then beat all four on Legendary to unlock the fifth. There is no normal mode for level 4, or normal or difficult for level 5, even in the Gauntlet mode, which ''ends'' if you choose a difficulty too easy for that level.
* Some versions of ''[[Raiden]] 1'' and ''2'' only allow you to play five stages on the lower difficulty settings.
* ''[[Rise of the Triad]]'' insults you for the two lowest difficulty settings. [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|One of the possible names for the lowest one]] is "I am a chew toy" with a picture of a doll in a dog's mouth, while the second-lowest is "Will of iron, knees of jello," with a picture depicting a dollop of smelted iron on a cube of jello.
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== [[Stealth Based Game]] ==
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'', the difficulty levels are all named after characters. In order to emulate the single most [[Action Girl|kickass and heroic]] character in the mythos, you have to beat it on The Boss Extreme difficulty. (Other than that, though, other than her signature firearm, the unlocks are all related to the the namesake of the Big Boss Hard difficulty.) However, if you're not up to that standard and decide to play it on Easy Mode, you're stuck in name as Liquid. (Strangely enough, there's ''two'' Normal
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== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==
* Serious example in ''[[Body Harvest]]'', the game has two difficulty settings (Hero and Zero) but the easier one will end the game after the third level/time period. Considering these levels can take players a long time to get through, it becomes particularly enraging to find out you have to play through those three levels/time periods ALL OVER AGAIN to see the last two.
* In ''[[The Simpsons Hit
* Completely averted and even inverted in ''[[Infamous (video game series)|In Famous]]''. If you choose 'Easy' or 'Normal' difficulty when you start the game, performing well on the first mission will automatically upgrade you to 'Hard' mode. You can change it back in the options at any time with no penalty.
* In ''[[Minecraft]]'', [[Easier Than Easy|Peaceful mode]] erases all neutral and hostile mobs...and with that, the drops you can get from them, so unless you shift up to another difficulty, you'll miss out on the materials needed for things such as bows, TNT, bonemeal, and Ender Portals.
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