Question for the KiwiFart community.
How many of you play games on the hardest difficulty?
I havent played anything under the hardest difficulty for over a decade.
Old FPS shooters would slap your bitch ass around if you up the difficulty.
Phil plays Halo on normal "as intended by the developers" and its insane how many shots you takes before actually dying.
When I was younger and had more time and vidya was my main hobby, I tended to play games on harder difficulties. Nowadays, games just generally aren't interesting with the difficulty cranked up unless it's a Soulsbourne type of game designed for that, which is still cheesable with the right build - so if Phil can beat those "super duper difficult" games, anyone can. That said, Risk of Rain 2 is in my topmost played games on Steam and that's a game which hits the difficulty curve right no matter what level you play it on, so I play it cranked up to the max.
I think we need to point out most of us don't stream and as such don't play to keep people entertained. I find it utterly exceptional when people like Phil claim they're good at games and put them on lower difficulties. It makes me cringe when they curb stomp AI and start going on about how good they are. Phil was always wank at games, and it shows it multiplayer games. In most shooters he will hide, camp or by sheer luck survive. Even in Street Fighter he is slightly above bog-standard even after all the years he's played.
I would even understand him playing on easy mode if at least he had a nice, fun or engaging personality - however he does fucking not. All he does is act like a mentally impaired git, cries about his real life issues, insults people that even slightly don't agree with him or he's finding new ways to beg for money.
I know this is something that's been said before about Phil and his "durrr I'm a variety streamer," but my response above got me thinking. I wouldn't be able to play Risk of Rain 2 on the hardest difficulty without being able to watch other streamers do it, mainly a guy named Woolie. He's a bit over the top and listens to shitty techno, but he's fun and always engages with the audience while constantly teaching you what he's doing (which isn't easy in a hard as balls roguelike). He does super hard challenges for it, which lol fuck that, but then he'll mix it up and play other games like Darkest Dungeon or Terraria.
My most game played on Steam is New Vegas. Between vanilla runs and mods, I've got hundreds of hours in it. My favorite streamer/creator for it is a dude named Al Chestbreach. While he has a heavy slant towards Fallout games and reviewing mods, he also plays and streams other stuff on his channel. He has a weird sense of humor and style, and he's been doing it about as long as Phil so he's built a tight knit community full of in-jokes, to the point that he has turned his cat into a giant meme in a way Phil wishes he could monetize Jasper K. Burnell.
Neither of these guys are PewDiePie level famous or anything, but they have carved out solid niches for themselves with less than Phil was given when he gamed the early YT algorithm. Phil's only claim to fame now is being fantastically bad at everything since he's a "variety streamer," but considering he's such a sperg about his schedule, he's not even good at the variety part now. I'd go so far to say that being a variety streamer, in this day and age, is actually a bad thing; why should I watch someone play Forza by himself, badly, one night out of the week, when I can search up however many other people who do it well, or do it and have fun, 3-4 nights a week? Phil could move from the variety part and still play some new releases, but make fighters a bigger focus, and host a weekly SF/old school fighting game tournament for the wheelchairs where he doles out advice, teaches them to get better and does the LTG thing where he makes people pay to play him. He could play old JRPGs like FF6, one of the few times he was competent at a game he seemed to like. He could play more retro/indie titles since he's the "king of retro" or do Soulsbourne challenge (excuse me, redemption) runs. Not even a DK Bongos thing, but imagine Phil replaying MGS2 without using rations or a silencer or something.
And yes, we know he'll never do any of this. He still has OIC and the other handful of whales keeping him and his massive ego afloat, so why change what isn't broken?