Itagaki apologizes for ridiculous difficulty, says Devil's Third will be less frustrating

Tomonobu Itagaki, the developer behind some of the most difficult console games on Earth, wants you to know he%26rsquo;s sorry for all those times he kicked your ass. In an interview in the new issue of Edge Magazine (issue 218, on newsstands now), the creator of Dead or Alive and the newer Ninja Gaiden games acknowledged that some of his past work has been %26ldquo;too difficult,%26rdquo; and %26ndash; more relevantly %26ndash; that his 2012-bound shooter, Devil%26rsquo;s Third, won%26rsquo;t be as frustrating.

"For Devil's Third, there's absolutely nothing to worry about,%26rdquo; Itagaki told Edge. %26ldquo;We've got support from THQ's testing team, and we're going to work really closely with those guys to balance out the game. It's going to be the best game ever."

Love for his current project aside, Itagaki shouldered blame for the final boss in Dead or Alive 4 (%26ldquo;[It] was definitely too difficult. %26hellip; I'm the one who did that, and I'm sorry.%26rdquo;) and the difficulty in Ninja Gaiden II (%26ldquo;We ran out of time for balancing. That was a tragedy. Really.%26rdquo;), but stopped short of actually apologizing for the first Ninja Gaiden.

%26ldquo;It was absolutely intentional that it be that difficult,%26rdquo; Itagaki said. %26ldquo;That game was a revival version of a classic game for old-school gamers, so I wanted to make the hardcore happy.%26rdquo;

Source:CVG

Aug 3, 2010

Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.