Avoiding Wasted Time With Prince of Persia 507
Zonk pointed out an interesting video presentation by Shamus Young on the importance of the new Prince of Persia, calling it the most innovative game of 2008. Young brings up the fact that many of today's games punish failure by wasting the player's time; being sent back to a check point, the beginning of a level, or sometimes even further. This cuts into the amount of time players have to enjoy the meat of the game — the current challenge they have to overcome. Unfortunately, as Young notes, modern controllers are designed for players who have been gaming since they were kids, and have evolved to be more complicated to operate than an automobile. The combination of these factors therefore limits or prevents the interest of new players; a problem Prince of Persia has addressed well through intuitive controls and the lack of punitive time sinks.
missing the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to hit the quicksave button all the time, then you might as well make it automatic, like they have done here.
The game isn't easy because of this, it's less frustrating. Forcing the player to restarting huge segments at the smallest error is a very cheap way to make something "difficult".
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. While Yhatzee's Zero Punctuation may be seen as somewhat abrasive, he does hit the nail on the head when reveiwing games that seem to lack this feature.
I know myself, when I play a game for a bit of fun, I want to do just that... have fun. Not be PUNISHED for a simple error, or not knowing the level.
I reccomend anyone who enjoys gaming to watch his reviews. They are abrasive, but they are also down to earth. He pretty much spells out what really sucks about modern gaming (and, yes, he does praise what's right).
Sure in MMOs and the likes you are "punished" at times, but it's not for not knowing, it's for not working together. Solo, I don't want to be punished by some want-to-be benevolent programmer with a sadistic nature, I want to have fun.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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And there's a reason for that - Yahtzee is much, much more entertaining when he's being critical, and so whilst he occasionally gives positive reviews (like Psychonauts), most of the time he gives the audience what it wants.
I disagree that Yahtzee's reviews aren't a good measure of whether a game is purchase-worthy; if a game is fun despite the flaws he delights in pointing out then he will make that very clear.
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I agree. I watch Yatzee partly for the hilarious quick-flashes of funny pictures justaposed with his criticism. I often rewind to re-watch something, as when I'm only listening to it, it's about one third as funny (or informative).
More importantly, I watch his stuff because the things he complains about are things which I often find annoying. He is the Mr. Cranky of Videogames. Chances are, if something about a game pissed you off, he'll have mentioned it. More importantly, he also will compare games t
Anton Ego in Ratatouille (Score:4, Insightful)
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends."
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Sure, Yahtzee is overly negative, but every other game reviewer is overly positive. When was the last time you saw a game get reviewed lower than 5? Shouldn't 5 be the median?
At least when Yahtzee you know what you're getting. And honestly, I'm one of those games-as-art guys, so I am more interested in hearing about the game's flaws than whether or not I should buy it.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
Take out the word "items" and it sounds like my divorce
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> Wiping out lets you keep all items and XP you've earned, but costs you 50% of your money. Take out the word "items" and it sounds like my divorce ... ;)
Perhaps the cause of the divorce might be found here as well...from what I've heard most wives wouldn't like it if their husbands considered making love to them as "leveling up".
I've also heard they don't like to hear "For The Win!!" during the most intimate moments.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about that...
One morning when my girlfriend and I had her daughter at the sitter's, we were spending some quality time together. Just as we finished, that damn robotic car warranty telespammer called my cell phone. My generic ringtone is the Final Fantasy victory fanfare.
I think it took us 20 minutes to stop laughing.
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You, my probably-not-graduated-from-HS pup, are free to run your mouth, but the fact of the matter is, as you grow up, fewer and fewer of the women your own age won't have some sort of baggage from the past.
I'll take one with a kid and hope you enjoy the herpes-infested frathouse gang-bang leftover you end up with.
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You have a point, but it's mostly as an addendum, really. It's not that games shouldn't at all "punish" you for failure (there's Lucasarts graphic adventures for that), but rather that games shouldn't punish you with time sinks -- which was the article's point. Certain gameplay elements are fun done once, but become horrible if you have to repeat them. For example, if you have a gauntlet run immediately before a boss fight, having a checkpoint/savespot/whatever in between is more or less essential (unless,
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>It's about immersion. True, basketball isn't about immersion, but some games are.
I find it sad that people are playing BASKETBALL on a gaming console? Whatever happened to going outside and shooting some hoops? You get fresh air, some exercise, and you get the REAL immersion...
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it sad that people are playing BASKETBALL on a gaming console? Whatever happened to going outside and shooting some hoops? You get fresh air, some exercise, and you get the REAL immersion...
A bit off-topic, but people always try to use this argument to say that guitar hero is stupid. Because you are playing a game that emulates some real-world activity, that game is stupid because you could be doing the real world activity.
But look at it this way, you're going to be playing video games no matter what right? So why not play the game that entertains you the most? It doesn't matter if that game happens to exist in the real world. It's FUN.
Many a time my band and I got tired of jamming, so we'd head in my house and play guitar hero. What's wrong with that?
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A bit off-topic, but people always try to use this argument to say that guitar hero is stupid. Because you are playing a game that emulates some real-world activity, that game is stupid because you could be doing the real world activity.
As a musician myself I can categorically say that learning to play is a long road. Maybe most young men would love to be a drummer, and they give it a go, but discover it to be a lot more difficult than they imagined. It is rare to find someone with the discipline to push through the terrible-sounding initial learning phase.
I've often thought, too, that the only time I can consider myself competent at a piano piece is when I've played it so many times it is rather boring to my own ears.
So, yes, computer
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
>It's about immersion. True, basketball isn't about immersion, but some games are.
I find it sad that people are playing BASKETBALL on a gaming console? Whatever happened to going outside and shooting some hoops? You get fresh air, some exercise, and you get the REAL immersion...
Yeah, immersion in DEADLY ULTRAVIOLET RAYS.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
I find it sad that people are playing BASKETBALL on a gaming console? Whatever happened to going outside and shooting some hoops? You get fresh air, some exercise, and you get the REAL immersion...
I find it sad that people are playing GTA on a gaming console. Whatever happened to going outside and shotting some hoes? You get fresh air, some exercise, and you get the REAL immersion...
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's the rationalization I used to use, to make the endless save/restore cycle seem tolerable. But I'll venture a guess here - you've never regretted hitting save, but you HAVE regretted getting into the game, really enjoying things, and FORGETTING to save. You get hit
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Funny)
"Your comment has been submited." doesn't count as quicksave
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Forcing the player to restarting huge segments at the smallest error is a very cheap way to make something "difficult".
Seeing as this is modded to (5: Insightful) I am going to have to assume that no nethack players have mod points today.
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, emulator is the only way I play old games now. I ditched my NES since I would rather play most of the games on PC.
Some games are playable without it, but even simple games like Mario can benefit--sure, you shouldn't need a save file to beat the game the quickest possible way, but what if you want to go through Mario 3 playing every single level? Who the hell has time to do that in one go (assuming you don't die) aside from young kids on summer break?
Most JRPGs--even modern ones--have terrible save systems, IMO. Boring as hell to repeat sections, and painfully easy to die. Too long between saves, so you have to block out a huge chunk of time to make sure you can get to the next save, then, even if you still want to play, you have to stop if you don't have enough time left to get to another one. I play them in spite of this, but it does raise the bar significantly for how good the game must be for me to bother with it. I'll play through a shitty PC FPS because it's probably short and I can (generally) save at any time, but I'll quit a JRPG after a couple hours if it's not really, really good.
Ditto for the Zelda series; I'm finally playing through Ocarina of Time because I can use an emulator and save-states. It's worth the occasional graphical glitch for that feature. I have the cartridge, but I don't use it.
I keep trying to play WindWaker (no 'cube emulator worth using yet, unfortunately) and losing 30 minutes to an hour of progress, then putting it down for a couple weeks out of frustration. It's going to take me a couple years to get through it at this rate :(
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The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?
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But Dr. Falken, the same is true of chess, for at least one player.
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Isn't what they implemented basically what was the biggest complaint against Bioshock, that dying is more of a minor inconvenience than anything else?
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Funny)
pop is a far better system.
Although I find it completely useless without push, personally.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
What Prince of Persia does different is that it in cooperates its reset mechanic into the game world. In other games you die, then see a game over screen, then restart the game at the last save point, in Prince of Persia on the other side you simply can't die, there is no game over screen, its all handled fluently without interruption in the game.
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Re:missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
He SAID he wasn't an experienced gamer and that is precisely what qualifies him to make the statements he has made.
He challenges the concept of how games are played and analyses the psychology of gaming. He supposes that a great deal of it is likely stuff that was carried over from more simple times when game systems were less complex.
He also never claims that Prince of Persia was the ONLY one doing what he believes is unique and/or innovative. What he claims is that Prince of Persia is a very good example of a departure from what quite often puts off new gamers to the scene. And I have to agree completely.
I recall my first experience with Halo3. I consider myself to be a somewhat experienced gamer though I no longer keep up with the latest anything. I was playing against my son who had been playing it for quite some time and was already very adept at it. I had played Halo2 and was reasonably comfortable with the game. However Halo3 is a different game and has some different features and different tools and weapons and of course different maps. These differences represent a learning curve. My 17 year old son was killing me left and right and I asked him to take it easier on me but he refused (though he said he would). I knew nothing of where to find any given weapon on this arena of this new game. I knew nothing of how to use many of the new tools and weapons. I was defenseless because I had no base knowledge of the environment or how to use it. This made playing with him significantly more frustrating than it needed to be. I played with my son for as long as I did attempting to learn but was effectively prevented even from learning due to the punishing nature of the game... get killed, lose everything, reset to original spawn location, meanwhile other players keep what they had, their location and everything. My response to him was to quit. After trying to play with him for at least 30 minutes, I just quit and told him I would never play against him ever again because he was brutal, unkind, and deceitful. But how many other gamers have this sort of experience with games or other gamers? Overcoming challenges, having some learning curve and some degree of difficulty is indeed part of what gaming is about...part of it...but by no means is it ALL of it. But how much is too much and for whom?
The psychology of gaming needs further analysis. Some games compensate by running you through tutorials and lessons to get you up to speed. I do not recall this in Halo3 -- my first experience with it put me off considerably. I may try again at some point in the future, but for me, I prefer games I can play alone where my only foe is the game itself because even though there are variations in complexities and learning curves and that sort of thing, at least I am granted opportunities to learn that are generally acceptable by me. But I can most certainly identify with the author's perspective on the matter and how some people have a lower tolerance for things that are too difficult to overcome and punish the player too much for failure.
Punishment. What an interesting choice of words. It brings new meaning to the old word itself and also adds new meaning to understanding gaming psychology and philosophy. Punishment can drive people to overcome or it can drive people away. I suppose the key is to moderate the degree of punishment so that it doesn't cross the line to driving people away.
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
I simply have a modded xbox360 controller that waxes my kids and nephews. I only bring it out when they are being selfish in the game. I silently switch the controller on to my rapid fire and hacked mode and then own them hard over and over and over using my cheating.
They whine and I say, how do you like it? Gaming is about fun for everyone. It's not about being an ass.
It works, and I only have to do it maybe once a month.
Punishment. What an interesting choice of words. (Score:3, Interesting)
And very wrong too. It's simply in the nature of failure that the task is not considered done, in real life if you screw up and the only consequence is getting another chance that can't be called punishment of any kind, punishment is not receiving another chance or far worse things.
The problem is not death but instant death. Death should not be the consequence of a single mistake but the result of a chain of accumulated failures, by the time the player dies he should have a very good idea of why he
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The feeling of humiliation was not a factor... I didn't have time to feel humiliated. I was trying to learn to play just as I played Halo2. Halo3 is not THAT different, but the weapons and the maps are and knowing those two things are key. When someone knows where all the weapons are as well as the best locations in the map, a person can rule a one on one game. My son does not know the meaning of fair play. When we were playing Halo2 as team members, his favorite tactic was to hold back until he heard
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Did your son mod the engine? Did he do something that you yourself could not do? Then it's fair.
You, sir, are as broken-minded as he is. Forgetting about "fair" for a moment and considering this as a military simulation as it attempts to be, using your fellow soldiers as fodder is an offense that would lead one to the firing squad. Using your team mates to further your own score is immoral. If you think "fair" is the same as "legal" then you show a trait that is also indicative of why our legal system is
Good sportsmanship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
The best games for me are ones where things keep flowing along or happen in nice tidy chunks. I want to experience what the developer put together in the short time I've got to play, but if I'm punished constantly and made to replay the same piece over and over, I'll give up long before I get to see all of the marvels of the game's world.
WRT inexperienced gamers, I think they're worth listening to. They're a lot more interested in 'fun' rather than overcoming never ending frustration. Hardcore gamers never seem to be able to get the same sort of glee out of something like Katamari Damacy or Guitar Hero. They're way too jaded.
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I wouldn't care if it was a stranger. I saw what I identified as bad character traits in my son. I found those character flaws worrisome.
But this is going way too far off topic. If the game itself were less punishing in nature, that sort of dominance wouldn't be a problem. But these problems are clearly identified in other aspects of the games by effectively partitioning player levels and ranks in the xbox live arenas. Unfortunately, this was not one of those cases.
But to go with your sports analogy, i
The secret (Score:4, Insightful)
Had to be said.
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Re:The secret (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "time wasting" but instead "entertaining". Different things.
If one wants to "waste time" there are plenty of ways of doing it which are not entertaining (for example: count to 1 million in your head)
The difference between entertainment and pure time wasting is that the first is supposed to be enjoyable.
Which brings us around to the point that games (and videos and books) should be enjoyable (fun). Clearly people are using some kind of criteria to choose the games, movies and books they spend time with (otherwise why would some be great successes and others flops) and it seems logical that the main criteria would be enjoyment.
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Yeah. I agree with you. I think the waste of time is all the crap we do during the day that *isn't* fun.
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...movies and books, are essentially toys/time wasters
Books? Really? So reading The C Programming Language and Programming Perl were both complete wastes of precious time? My definition of wasting time would be to attempt to write useful (i.e. precious time saving) C or Perl code without having read those books or an equivalent reference.
That said, compile and run my signature (#including stdio.h, conio.h, and replacing PAUSE with main) and do not reply until you have continued.
Hint: use the 'any' key on your keyboard
Punish failure? (Score:2, Funny)
Young brings up the fact that many of today's games punish failure by wasting the player's time
I hear the Playstation 4 implements dual electric shock controllers, for more direct punishment of failure.
Braid (Score:2)
Braid got rid of (most) of the save/load BS. Still had to occasionally reload a room when the level had tricked you thoroughly.
Braid is also better for casuals, imho. Fewer dimensions (har har har harh ahrharharhahrahrhar) and other graphical distractions. A little patience was the only requirement, something I've found older folks (esp. former(?) parents) have in spades.
Re:Braid (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw it as one of the most inspired uses of current generation of hardware (speed of caching and disk storage). The insinuation that it was "for the casuals" is off-base imo because even I, an extremely seasoned gamer was enthralled by the mechanics which pushed me to expand my way of thinking about games and level design (and story telling) in order to finish.
If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Monkey Island (Score:5, Insightful)
In Monkey Island, you could never die either. But it was still a lot of fun to play!
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Actually there was a way to die in the first game, but you really had to suck (or do it intentionally). Early in the game guybrush makes claims about being able to hold his breath for 10 minutes. When you are thrown in the water tied to the idol you have 10 minutes to figure out the very easy puzzle before you drown and all your actions turn into float, bob, etc.
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In Monkey Island, you could never die either. But it was still a lot of fun to play!
Monkey Island was all about the puzzles, and dying just distracted from that. Even the combat was a hilarious puzzle game, nothing to do with arcade skills.
PoP has arcade-style fighting and platforming, and the thrill there comes at least in part from avoiding death. I agree with earlier posters: where is the sense of achievement without that threat?
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There is no sense of achievement, then
You've never played Monkey Island, I take it.
Just because you can't die, doesn't mean you can't fail. You can fail to solve a puzzle, in which case you'll never reach the end of the game.
'course in those days we didn't have gamefaqs.
Some of my friends picked up the Lego Indiana Jones game and this has the same issue, probably worse. They didn't seem to care that as soon as they died they just re-appeared and kept going, but within a few minutes I questioned why I would ever play it if you're just brute forcing through the story without consequence.
You've got to remember that Lego Star Wars is a kids' game. Just treat it as a ride. But there are challenges in there - you need to solve simple puzzles to make it through the game, and more complex puzzles to get all the collectible items.
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Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Funny)
I know what you mean, everything is frustratingly easy these days. Back in the days of Tron, if your character died, YOU DIED*. Just squeaking by was a real adrenaline rush! Not like the pampered kids these days, with their save points and what not. Could at least build a tazer into the controller or something as punishment.
*At least, that's how it was in the 80s documentary of the same name I saw.
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If you watch the video all the way through, it makes a good point. Besides the wii, one of the best selling platforms of all time is the gameboy of the various generations, all the way back to the original.
It's hasn't ever really gotten more complicated (two more buttons added just this generation with the DS and no changes in the previous gens since the original) and I would argue the stylus actually makes it easier. Contrast this or the Wii controller with the ever more complicated Playstation controlle
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Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because "not losing" isn't the same as "winning" and *that* still takes effort.
Just look at Lucasarts' adventure games for example, like Full Throttle or as the sibling post mentioned, Monkey Island. Impossible to lose there, yet they're considered classics today and rightfully so.
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Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is not about making games easy, but about not forcing you to replay the same shit over and over again when you die. The whole reason why hard games can be annoying is because you have to play the *easy* parts of them a trillion times to reach the hard ones, then you die quickly and repeat the easy parts again. The fun part is overcoming the hard part and thats what a game needs to focus on instead of punishing the player for failure.
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"The fun part is overcoming the hard part and thats what a game needs to focus on instead of punishing the player for failure."
I understand the frustration of repeating long stretches of level (i.e. no automatic saved waypoints from which to restart in case of death throughout a level).
But personally I think modern gamers are diluting gaming. You mind as well just take all the risk out of the game, and turn on the invincibility cheatcode. That's exactly what cheat codes were for back in the day - to give
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One of the better ways to reduce the 'getting stuck' that I've seen was in the Simpsons Grant Theft style game Hit and Run. If you failed a mission around 10 or so times it offered to just let you continue on, or you could keep on trying.
I have played enough games that have 1 utterly painful level to appreciate a way to continue on without hours worth of repetition.
Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now see... for me, the "fun" part isn't in defeating the hard part, though that is gratifying, it's in finding out what happens with the story line and the characters. The best game out there is going to come out with a really involving and interesting story line, and if it has challenging gameplay so much the better. That's why, on my Wii, I have spent *many* more hours playing through Bully than I have on Mario Galaxy. It's just a better story. (Mario Galaxy basically tells the same story of *every* Mario game since the original Donkey Kong) And I'm just not interested in games where the object is to run around killing things. Hell, the last shooter I played was either NOLF2 or Thirteen on the PC.
Different kind of gamer, I guess. I won't play PvP games at all, because there's too many 13-year old retards out there (mindset, if not physical age). And I get tired of people asking me to get on voice and cyber when they find out that women actually do play games. Closest I get is WoW, and I play on a non-PvP RP server. *shrugs*
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I just started playing grand theft auto 4. The worst part of the game is exactly what the video describes -- when I get killed in a shootout, I have to go back to the start, waste a bunch of time getting across the city, only to risk more time wasting.
Why not just send me back to the start of the fight so I can give it another shot? Going across the city again is
- not fun
- doesn't teach me anything! (read: taking the tedium out doesn't make it "training wheels")
On the other hand (even if it is less work) su
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GTA4 is specifically a time wasting game, just like the sims or WoW. You can't really compare it to worthwhile games. This is like comparing a Schwartenager movie to a Kubric film they're totally different classes of the same medium.
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I just started playing grand theft auto 4. The worst part of the game is exactly what the video describes -- when I get killed in a shootout, I have to go back to the start, waste a bunch of time getting across the city, only to risk more time wasting.
I enjoyed GTA4 for many hours, but exactly what you describe is the reason I put it away never to be played again. It was the strip club shootout:
while (motivated) {
Spawn at spawn point
Find mission trigger
Find car
4 minutes of driving (no challenge, no interest)
2 minutes or less of shooting: get killed
}
But there's nothing novel about this. It's just a matter of sensible checkpoint placement. Here, GT
Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:If you can't fail, why bother playing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't played the game, but that said, how much of the heart of great games was the thrill of just squeaking by? If you know that there isn't any way to loose, what you're left with is a empty shell.
I liken it to mountain biking. When I run a trail and have trouble with a section, I back up a bit and repeat the section. I don't restart the entire 10km trail. That would be stupid. Just getting to the end is satisfying.
Eventually I master a trail, and can do a clean pass, and that's even more satisfying. But I would NEVER reach that point, if, after every time I had to put a foot down, I had to go back and restart the entire trail.
Nice to look at, and shows you some neat tricks, but nothing else later.
Huh?
Putting training wheels on a game isn't the future, it's just a gimmick to try and make a bland game that offends no one, and doesn't really try to solve the problem of playability. My 2c.
Realizing that most people who want to play a game aren't aiming to prove they can do a flawless run IS the future. If they like the game enough, and want to do a flawless run, by all means, have that as one of the challenges or achievements or whatever, and those people that can and want to do that will, hell, give them a bonus cutscene or dialog or whatever even... but there is no reason for that to be how one has to play the game.
Nobody normal puts up with that kind of nonsense in anything else they do, whether its biking, snowboarding, skiing, fishing ... hell even programming... I mean can you imagine deciding to kill an afternoon writing a few perl scripts where you would delete your project and start from scratch every time you found a bug, under the assumption that eventually you'd get good enough that you'd be able to write it flawlessly?
I don't know anyone who is that "hardcore". In fact I wouldn't call that person "hardcore"... I'd just call him stupid. ;)
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I'm sure I could find a kinder way to phrase this if I cared to try, but don't be fucking retarded.
Saving my game right before I plunge into a room full of enemies with limited cover and even more limited ammo doesn't prevent me from dying once, twice, a hundred times before I develop a winning strategy. It doesn't mean that I win just for showing up. It does mean I get to focus my effort on overcoming the challenge at hand, rather than being forced to replay some arbitrary chunk of the game over and over a
If there's no risk to the story, why watch a film? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same as why watch a film when there's no risk involved in the outcome of the plot?
I play some games this way, I treat them as interactive stories, that doesn't mean I need risk, it just means I'm more immersed in the story than I would be a film and the stories usually last longer and are hence more interesting- many people hate film adaptations of books because they have to cut so much, this is less of a problem with games as the player creates large
Games don't have to be about challenge, they can equally be about story telling as movies and books are but with a form of interactivity and hence immersiveness that can improve the story telling. In a book you might get a description of a beautiful scene (coastal Thailand on Tomb Raider: Underworld for example) which is great, but in a game you can spend time looking round that scene and admiring it.
That's not to say I don't play games with risk as well, I always play through the Call of Duty series on veteran difficulty for example. I find games with little risk nice to relax to sometimes though and unlike playing Call of Duty on Veteran you're not stuck in the same place over and over for 30mins+ so the story flows much better and is much more suited to those of us who don't have 50 hours to burn on a single game. Dead space was a good example of this, as was Bioshock- I didn't find either game very hard at all (even on hardest difficulty) and hence I would say these are games with little risk, (certainly there was no part that required repeating more than once which is in contrast to Call of Duty on Vet.) yet they were still absolutely excellent.
I agree with the article, punishing people for a minor slip up is not something that should be implemented in every game, nor is it something that should be taken too far. An example of an excellent game, completely destroyed by the risk of an improper save system is Dead Rising- the gameplay was superb, the story was good, the graphics were great, but the save system made the game simply too frustrating to play. Even autosaves/checkpoints have made gaming so much better than it used to be without them- I recall the frustration of losing hours of play if you forgot to/couldn't save all too well.
Assassin's Creed anyone? (Score:2)
Yeah, real revolutionary.
New PoP is awesome thanks to the lack of death. (Score:5, Insightful)
I just finished this game and the lack of the death is fantastic. It makes it all about the awesome acrobatics and less about the stupid camera or dumb mini-boss killing me yet another time. Every time you fail is YOUR FAULT and not a big deal. I beat the original PoP games when they came out (and even harder games), so I can do hardcore ridiculous, but I no longer want to.
I estimate I spent about 10 hours on the game, and I would far rather have 10 AWESOME hours than 40 hours of padded frustrating crap. I'm old enough I don't want to waste my time on stupid sh@# just for the sake of being hardcore like an internet suicide.
The combat is eventually a bit tedious, yes. I'd prefer the game be even MORE stripped down. I'm perfectly willing to drop $40 for 8 hours of making you feel like a total badass.
Elika is amazing - she is never annoying (which is astounding for a companion) and the dialogue is interesting and funny. And the ending is just fantastic; it deserves a mention even separate from the lack of death. I can't say anything much without spoiling it, but I love how it asks you (and you likely comply gladly) to subvert everything you've done.
So yes, I've reached the age when I will gladly pay more money for less bullshit and more fun.
Re:New PoP is awesome thanks to the lack of death. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's lame to reply to my own comment, but I've been reading the other comments and they make some interesting points, even if I don't agree with some of them.
I have to say I didn't even consider collecting the light seeds a minus. There are 1001 light seeds in the game (as I found out by googling). You need 560 of them (just more than half) to beat it. This is easy for me - it's sort of like Crackdown: if you can see a light seed, the Power of Christ Compels you to grab it. I beat the game with about 800 light seeds without even really trying.
For the people who are upset about the lack of punishment, I don't know. I do sympathize to an extent, since I can remember that feeling (I beat Contra), but I guess there's a point where your time is worth more than the cost of the game. Yes, I do want to blow through a game as fast as possible these days, getting only TEH AWESUM, because my stack of games is 20 deep because other things are competing for my time. While I admire the hell out of someone who can beat Morrowind in 7.5 minutes, that's just not for me.
But this sort of meta-discussion is fascinating and one of the few slashdot threads where almost every comment is of interest to me. Unlike the predictable boring crud (windows vs linux vs osx Or ps3 vs x360 vs wii) this reveals a lot about what you value as a person.
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That's a fair point - but I think even slight involvement gives you far more emotional ownership than a movie involves. Watching Jake Gyllenhaal scale a tower gives you far less personal investment than doing it yourself by pressing 30 buttons gives you, even if those buttons are well telegraphed by the game (oh, there's a ring, better hit the extend button).
I guess I wouldn't mind movies that pull you in further even if your choice is a complete illusion.
It's a good question, but the wrong perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
The question as to whether time-punishing is a good part of the game is really posed very well here. But I imagine it's more a measure of the player than of the game. Two games come to mind, as radically diametrically opposed examples.
"The Curse of Monkey Island" (Monkey Island 3) is one of the old-school Lucas Arts adventure games where you can't die. The "puzzles" are simple combination-of-action puzzles. The game is extraordinary. Not because it's anything special, and not because it's particularly good in any capacity, but simply because it's very funny, and a smooth ride the whole way through. It's very much like a movie, and yo,u're never punished for anything.
"Left 4 Dead" is the big, huge, enormous time penalties. Die at the end of a thirty-minute attempt, and you get to start all over again -- with your three friends too. Play it on expert, and you'll likely be retrying levels dozens of times. Is it frustrating? Not in the least. You get the action of "ooooh, so close!" And it becomes a strategy game of how the next attempt could be done differently, what else can we try, and where else can we go.
It's important to note that the time-penalties discussed in the article, do more than simply force the player to redo things. It grants the player another opportunity to do something completely different. Now, when a game is completely linear -- as with super mario brothers the first -- then it's nohting more than a "do it again" concept, presented well by the article. However, when a game has many many many many freedoms provided to the player, and the player fails a challenge along the way, having the opportunity to change the past is a good thing. And being forced to do so gives the decision-making process some level of importance.
Is it a waste of time? That's the whole purpose of the game. Does it matter if you're wasting time at the beginning of the game doing the same thing over and over again, or wasting time at the end of the game going through the whole thing once? If it's different every time, then there's no difference -- except for the potential to have more game to play, which is a good thing.
The article uses a great example, that I felt was perfect. If people learned to drive the way they learn to play games, it wouldn't be by backing out of the driveway, it would be by driving a stick-shift in a rally race, and requiring many many humiliating failures before winning a single race.
I agreed with this example at the time. Now, I'm thinking it better serves my perspective. Sure, if you're learning to drive your grandmother's car to go to the movies, backing out of the driveway and not being time-punished for mistakes is the way to do it. But if you designed and built the rally car, and are trying to develop a car to win races, having the chance to make design changes between failed races is precisely what you want. What didn't work, what did work, what can be tuned to work better.
I'm thinkin', if you want to develop a car to win races, backing out of the driveway will get you no-where.
So, when I play a video game, am I developing a playing strategy of a grand quality to pass the level, or am I enjoying the progression of an in-line story? The answer is a fairly simple and direct mapping.
If the game is a comedy, then I want a straight story with no chance to fail. If the game is an action-adventure, then I want failure. Failure is a big part of action, challenge, and adventure -- it's all about the risk-taking. Failure is not a part of successful comedy. Actually, I guess that's slapstick. And I'm not a big fan of slapstick. But you know, if you could play a nice comedy, slip on a banana peel and die in a vat of goo, it could be funny.
Re:It's a good question, but the wrong perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everyone is misunderstanding the problem entirely.
The problem is not that when you die, you must repeat content: the problem is that the content is fixed.
I can engage in a sport, lose, and then play again right away. I never say "Oh, that's the same game we just played" because every game is different. Few video games offer that.
Failure mechanics (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the things I like about Puzzle Quest and Castle Crashers is that failure doesn't have much penalty. Certainly, you have to restart a level or boss fight, but any XP/gold/etc you've acquired stays with you so the "time penalty" is minimized. You may have lost but you've bettered your character in the process and can make another try incrementally better.
Don't forget (Score:2)
This is the game that Ubisoft was like 'We are selling this game with no DRM on PC. Let's see if these people really will put their money where their mouth is', meaning that now more people will buy it simply because there is no DRM.
This is NOT the reason I buy games. I buy games if they are good. Ubisoft thinks they might even get those people who are thinking to support Ubisoft in their effort to set an industry example. As IF.
But regardless, I refuse to buy EA and Take2 games. EA because of SecuROM and a
Why God gave us "skill level" (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
You mean punishment for failure, right? Because that's what going back to the last checkpoint is. The game saying "No, you're an idiot, try again." If there was no punishment for your failure you wouldn't be concerned about not dying as much.
Playability (Score:5, Insightful)
The way to improve playability in strategy wargames, and so-called 4X games especially, is to use variable degrees of abstraction to address issues of game scale. There is NOTHING more annoying than playing a huge game of, say, Sword of the Stars, with hundreds of stars and countless units and economic factors, AND HAVING TO DEAL WITH ALL OF IT PERSONALLY. So-called "micromanagement" is fine in the early game, when a single less-than-optimal action could decide the game against the player, but later in the game it simply isn't practical, nor is it a reflection of reality: if the player represents an emperor or five-star general, such a figure would NOT be dealing with all that minutia personally at that point. Nowhere is this failure more evident than in so-called "real time strategy" games (which are almost all really "real time tactics"), where not only is the player forced to micromanage but the time required to do so costs him in terms of the game, because the computer AI opponents at least don't suffer from this problem.
Sadly, I know of no single game that employs this level of intelligence in the player interface, and the game I mentioned, Sword of the Stars and its sequels, is actually one of the biggest recent failures in this regard. It also has bugs that persist across sequels and a dev team with no coding discipline, which may or may not be related to the aforementioned failure.
Micromanagement problems (Score:5, Insightful)
So-called "micromanagement" is fine in the early game, when a single less-than-optimal action could decide the game against the player, but later in the game it simply isn't practical, nor is it a reflection of reality: if the player represents an emperor or five-star general, such a figure would NOT be dealing with all that minutia personally at that point.
Hm. The way that ought to work is that the player gets to appoint "subordinates" to various jobs, each of whom has an identity and a back story. The subordinates all have different personalities and decision styles; some favor military action over negotiation; some don't. Some are bold generals; some overprepare on logistics. (Do you want Montgomery or Ike in charge?) The player has to monitor how they're doing, and be prepared to fire or move around subordinates.
This is what a CEO of a big organization really does. It's a good skill to teach.
So this shows it was on the wrong consoles (Score:5, Interesting)
Prince of Persia is a huge bomb sales wise.
Now the question is why?
This analysis would lead us to understand that it was on the wrong console then.
Especially this tidbit from the OP: "as Young notes, modern controllers are designed for players who have been gaming since they were kids, and have evolved to be more complicated to operate than an automobile. The combination of these factors therefore limits or prevents the interest of new players; a problem Prince of Persia has addressed well through intuitive controls and the lack of punitive time sinks."
There is the problem. The audience to whom this was adressed, is not on PS3 or XB360. The game didn't solve anything, as the people scared by these modern controllers just won't buy the consoles that come with them. There's only one home console this generation that solved this, and this is the only one where Prince of Persia wasn't released. Go figure.
So basically, they published a game that solves only half of the problem, but unfortunately, they released it for the wrong audience.
The audience on PS3 and XB360 is not scared by these old mechanics, and don't want what they think are dumbed down mechanics. Those that are veterans but still wanted this to change also bought a Wii, but they're not the bulk of the audience needed.
This just shows this PoP was a very stupid move, these 3rd parties look more and more stupid as time passes.
Done (Score:3, Informative)
Predictability (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand and agree with the analysis made by the author, but it seems to be based on the idea that the enjoyment comes from the discovery within the game. The first time someone plays a game, it's a new experience. After that, they learn the topology and it comes down to refining your ability to reflexively work through the game. I believe the rise of multiplayer gaming has in part driven more people into games since it's a slightly new experience every time you log on. Sure, you can learn the map and objective, but you never know quite what you'll get.
I can only think of one title in Video Game History that had both dynamic maps and interactive elements that were different every time: Larn. It's a 20 year old DOS title that used nothing but ASCII characters. But hey, it rocked since it was new every time.
Can you imagine what a typical shooting game would be like if the enemies were moved around on the map every time? How about a driving game where the road was always different?
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Can you imagine what a typical shooting game would be like if the enemies were moved around on the map every time?
It would be like Left 4 Dead, in which replaying a level is a joy instead of a chore.
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I almost hate to do this to you, but... are you aware that that's actually just one member of the genre called "roguelikes"? My preference is for Angband, but you should also try Nethack. There are tens of other good ones. (IIRC, Angband is closer to Lar
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button mashing:
Press a button as fast as you can to save your character.
Guess you weren't a big fan of Decathlon in the good old C64 days:
http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/decathlon.html [tesco.net]
I still remember the pain in my fingers, hand and wrist after the final event, the dreaded 1500 m run;-)
Re:Console vs. PC (Score:5, Informative)
Other Console annoyances include:
Those really have little to do with consoles, PC games had plenty of all of them as well and the video in the last issue isn't even a real game, its a ROM hack meant to be nearly impossible to solve.
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"Not to start a flame war, but this is one of the reasons I prefer PC games. They typically allow for quicksave and/or a sane autosave."
Flamewars generally start when people say something that's inflammatory or outright false, not if they have a valid opinion. Unfortunately, judging by your comments below and the fact you posted AC you were surely fully aware that your comments were inflammatory.
Not one of the points you cite is in any way related to console gaming vs. PC gaming. The majority of my gaming l
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Re:No skills? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't repeat the game's content, then how are you supposed to get good at the game?
Agreed. But what is the point of repeating the content you already mastered?
Lets say I kill 3 guys, then jump through a window, land on the ledge, dodge the whirling blades, evade the fire trap, kill 3 more guys,...[six more minutes]... jump onto the pole before the floor collapses, all flawlessly and then mis-time my jump onto the swinging rope and fall into a pit trap and die.
What do I need to get better at?
"make the jump onto the swinging rope"
or
"kill 3 guys, then jump through a window, land on the ledge, dodge the whirling blades, evade the fire trap, kill 3 more guys,...[6 more minutes]... jump onto the pole before the floor collapses, then make the jump onto the swinging rope."
???
Making me repeat the lengthy sequence of stuff I already figured out and beat just to take another shot at jumping the rope is just more annoying than anything. I've played games where I couldn't figure out the boss, but had completely mastered the 6 minute level to reach him... WASTING 6 minutes between each attempt to try a different attack pattern on the boss is just annoying.
People who want to prove their skills should have difficulty mode with one life/ no respawns/ etc. But while learning the game or the first time through... What's the point?
You get killed, you try again, and you get better.
You try again to get past what killed you. Why exactly do you need to re-do several minutes worth of stuff you've already mastered?
If you're not enjoying the challenges that the game is giving...
The primary challenge in such games is simply one of my patience. The enjoyment comes from beating the parts you got stuck on, not on replaying the parts you were good at. I don't mind taking several tries to figure out a boss or a jump or a puzzle, but I do get pissed if I have to spend hours replaying the parts I've mastered just to retry the parts I'm stuck on.
When I go mountain biking and have trouble with a section I'll back up a 100 meters and take another run at it, I don't go back and restart the entire fucking 10km trail. And sure, there is definitely a feeling of satisfaction upon reaching the level that I can do a given trail in one clean pass... but I certainly don't want to get to that level by restarting the entire fucking trail every time I have to put my foot down.
then the technical term for your state is "burned out"
No. That's the state I get to when I have to restart.
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You should not be playing games with that attitude. If you go in looking to use time wisely, you're not PLAYING a game. Unless you get paid to review games, stop caring about the time wasted, because that's what games are FOR. Wasting time.
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No. Games are for wasting time ENJOYABLY.
Significant difference there.
Those elaborate 6 minute timesinks are just for frustration/stupidity. It is an elaborate game mechanic to simply waste time. Kinda like not giving you an option of skipping a stupidly long cutscene before fighting a boss in a game.
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No the whole point is to have fun.
If you think the point is to waste time, go play World of Warcraft. And no, that isn't meant as an insult to WoW. It is just WoW is built around having fun by wasting time. However, that is not the only way to have fun.
If you don't want to waste time, I suggest to press "quit".
I have a better solution. If you enjoy wasting time, restart the game every time you fail in a task. Heck, you can even give yourself three lifes before you have to restart (or any other set of rules). Real hardcore players know how to challenge themselves. I
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Oh, I knew "the other side are whiners also" argument would come up as soon I had posted my first response.
There is a difference however. The "hardcore whiners" as I prefer to call them could easily restrict their actions to emulate a more difficult game. They however choose not to, because what they really want is everyone else to have as difficult a time as themselves. What they enjoy is to finish games when others can not. They are basically the "my car is better than yours" type of people.
The opposite i
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Did you watch the video? It's evident that mashing buttons would never get you past an obstacle in Prince of Persia.