Which do you find more exhilarating, Trevor, pain or pleasure?
The Angry Video Game Nerd does his best to be empathetic, especially compared to his successors. In this world of near-constant Youtuber and Twitch personality scandals, James seems like a downright sweetheart most of the time. Sam Beddoes of Freakzone Games, the creators of The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures games, does his best to follow suit. His goal is to express his love for the AVGN and give his audience a good time in unison. That’s why he is reworking the difficulty of the entirety of the first game in the series per player feedback before launching both games on Switch later this year.
Seeing as fans have pushed back against the idea of “Easy Modes” in games like Sekiro and Cuphead out of concerns that the difficulty is part of the artists’ vision, I was worried Sam would suffer a similar backlash. He sounded undeterred, saying “My intent is to make a game that’s hard, that stays true to the kinds of scab-picking frustration that ‘The Nerd’ expresses so well in his videos, but I can also take criticism. When I hear that players aren’t having fun with a game I made, I want to take that feedback and use it to build my skills. This new version ofAVGN Adventureshas a lot of improvements, both visually and technically. It’s still hard. It’s just hard in a more fun way, at least in my opinion. And if you liked the original level designs, you can play it that way too. Giving players options is always a good thing.”
Sam’s also adding some kind of new 3rd campaign for people who beat both games in the collection. It’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about that, no matter how angry and nerdy they are.