Auto-Adjusting AI for Player Skill

There are advantages and disadvantages to reviewing a game without playing the majority of it. If I waited until I was completely finished with a game, I'd probably never get around to posting reviews. Half the time I don't actually finish the game. Reviewing the game early on, however, could cause me to miss things that would possibly improve my outlook on it, or conversely, make me dislike it.

One thing I just remembered, after having posted my review of Midnight Club: Los Angeles a couple days ago, is that the Midnight Club franchise usually auto-tunes its difficulty to the player's skill. So, I looked into it and, sure enough, the latest game also has this feature. I very rarely quit a race cold turkey without finishing it, even if I am sucking horribly, but when you do finish races, the game adjusts the difficulty to the player. If you're losing a lot, it'll ease up to match your skill level. If you win a lot, it'll come on stronger to give you more of a challenge. That is one more positive about this game.

That being said, however, I still felt the difficulty is a tad much. I'd lose a string of races in a row and still have a hard time on some of the "story" races. Although, I must say, yesterday I did about five of the races where you wager a certain amount of cash on each race and if you win you double your bet, if you lose, you're out the cash. I did them all on medium difficulty, which seems to usually be right on par with my skill level (and I really mean usually, because sometimes its still incredibly difficult). I seemed to do alright, I won them all and make a load of cash in the process. Even though each race was fairly close, one mistake didn't make me lose all hope of winning (and trust me, I made mistakes).

So, needless to say, I'm still on the fence about how effective this auto-adjusting difficulty feature actually is. In some cases it seems to kick in and work well, while in others it doesn't.