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.
But do you not feel that this way of making game's slightly easier to complete allows the gamer to feel a sense of pride having completed it? ...Having finished a game that was truly challenging and forced the player to put their all into would I guess in a way elevate the sense of pride having completed it.
ReplyDeleteBut lets face it, in todays world the attention span of the human race appears to be getting shorter and shorter. People will not spend hours playing a game when they have busy lives to lead (i.e school, university, work, family) I believe that the gaming industry as a whole is simply trying to accommodate that. Are people going to sit for hours in front of a game trying to complete it when it is only both annoying and frustrating them because they have been stuck there for ages? So making the games easier allows the consumers to complete within a short amount of time and therefore they can continue with there busy lives. Also on a separate note if the games have been made easer it kind of opens up the game to people of all ages and allows gamers of a younger age to enjoy and indulge themselves in a make believe world of fantasy.