A tough game? Hell yeah! Copyright Tecmo
I remember the days when I used to buy a game and instantly look at the game manual to find out the controls and any scrap of information they contained that would help me. Nowadays it seems that games hold the hands of the gamers, with massive unskippable tutorials that are just frustrating, or annoying little pop ups that explain game play mechanics that at one time we were left to figure out ourselves.
Take the new Tomb Raider TM, for example, while the game was brilliant and I loved every minute of it, I kind of feel the game was made slightly too easy, the survival viewer pretty much held up a massive neon sign telling you where to go, highlighted supplies and walls you could climb. It really took away the exploration element of it. Ok fair enough you could just try and get through the game without using it, but it's still there as a crutch to fall back on.
I can remember playing the original Tomb Raider TM, back on the PSone and spending alot of my time both lost and stuck.
Anyone else get really stuck at this point? Copyright Core Design
Deep Space TM, is another game that held your hand all the way through the game, just pushing down the R3 or left joystick and you're physically turned around pointed in the right direction, with a nice little line for you to follow to your next goal.
It was Shigeru Miyamoto who when creating Legend of Zelda TM, decided to take away the starting sword and left the players to discover it all by themselves. He did this he said because he knew that gamers couldn't keep these things to themselves and would get together to try and solve these puzzles with their friends. With the internet now we can do these things on a much larger scale.
No one holding your hand in this game! Copyright Nintendo
I'm not asking for a lot, I'm just asking for games to become challenging again, and for developers to stop holding our hands and guiding us through the experience and instead telling us to hold on to the seat of our pants and give us an awesome experience we have to figure out for ourselves.
