Note: A bit of a rant at an aspect of game play feel free to agree disagree or post comments
As you can no doubt gather I have just become ticked of (again) at a certain aspect of game play in a game I am currently playing. The aspect? Platform jumping in 3D games where failure means death.
Bit ?o? Background. I bought the Buffy game for the X-box the other day, being a bit of a fan and seeing as its all cheap now I though why not (laugh if you must). The blurb on the back of the box gives the impression that it?s a fun demon and vamp mashing romp through the town of Sunnydale with the cast of Buffy (-the voice of Buffy herself but meh) I know not to believe the hype so I went in with low expectations knowing that my fandom would have to carry the weight of the experience. Let it be known that nowhere on the packaging does it even elude to that fact that this may be a platformy romp. Thus we come to the point of irritation.
The last levels of this game are nothing but a collection of jump from this platform to that platform, fail and you die. This is further complicated by obstacles like moving rotating blades that are also instant death to the touch. Oh I almost forgot to mention, some of the edges in the game can?t be grabbed. They look just like the ones that can, there is no way for you to know till you try ? fail ? and die. In the immortal words of that guy, ?just wait, there?s more?. There is no save as you go in Buffy, so miss one of these jumps, die and its back to the start of the level again. Oh the fun.
This could have been avoided, or made easier. In Tomb Raider you can press a button and behold Lara takes care not to walk off edges. In Devil May Cry, you just can?t walk off an edge that would mean your death (nor jump for that matter).
The reason that its presence in the game galls me is two fold (other then general annoyance)
1, artificial 3D environments: In a artificial 3D environment, such as a game, it is hard to judge depth and distance. This is because all the visual cues we take for granted can not be implemented. Its like trying to navigate the real world with one eye closed and universal focus. Without the depth perception and focal ranges to assist us, the platform you must jump to becomes an arbitrary distance away. Perspective and other tricks can help but the closer the object, say jumping distance, the less accurate these are. Add differing heights to the mix and a jump distance that can be under or over shot and you have a good mix for frustration.
2, Sudden escalation of difficulty: In a game where, for the most part, such jump or die instances are rare, to find a sea of them in the final levels stinks of bad design. Its like the designers where stuck for an interesting way to increase the difficulty of the game as it reached its climax so defaulted to the ?that hard bit earlier, lets add 50? school of design.
Humans are inaccurate creatures, we do not deal well with repetitive tasks that have to preformed accurately, errors creep in. So why make a level that ignores this rather obvious bit of human action? Look at it statistically say you have a 10% chance of failing each jump. This means that given 10 jumps you are on average going to fail. Why add this to a game? Is this fun? No its not. Its frustrating akin to someone asking you to roll a die 6 times and if 6 comes up they slap you and you start again, oh and your paying money for the privilege.
Buffy is not the only game that has suffered from this, just the one that brought this bit of annoyance to my attention again. It is also indicative of one of the basic mistakes that can be and often is made by those who design games ie the inclusion of certain types of game play to up the difficulty of a game and for no other reason.
Game developers seem to forget sometimes the most important question you can ask yourself when you make a game, ?Is it Fun?? This applies to challenges and obstacles in the game also, will the satisfaction of completing this challenge surpass the frustration of the challenge itself? In other words after overcoming the challenge are your players yelling a hearty ?Yeah!? of victory and self congratulation, or are they letting lose a sigh of relief and saying ?I?m glad that bit is over? because if your game is filled with the second then you have just lost your repeat custom.
Is it Fun? In the case of the Buffy game, no it is not, and it will try my stubborn pig headedness hard to complete this game, if I can be bothered.
Pantmonger
well, one of the few game i have ever finished was 'space station silicon valley' (n64) which was interesting and fun, and halfway through was a large and amost impossible level where -step or fall in water = death. it would take over 15min of careful play to get to the end of the level, where you had to navigate swinging vines which ultimatly went over the same water. took quite a bit of practice...
this is perhaps the positive argument for 'occasional extreme difficulty', it took me a few days to beat the level, and was able to finish a few different levels rather than finish this difficult one (that mario64 style multiple level options), but in buffy it is just sounding annoying. wonder if there is an easier way to finish that level...
Indiana Jones and the Emperors Tomb had a LOT of jumping action. Thankfully, not all the time you died if you fell off, but then again a lot of times you did.
The jumping parts weren't too bad, and jumping with the whip was actually fun. However, there was one level towards the end, where you are running through a large aqueduct, and you are being chased by a tank. Basically the whole level, you had to keep running and jumping across pits, if you stopped you got run over. Add to that consecutive whip swings, where there will be three pits in a row that you have to swing across. Very hard to let the whip go and have enough time to swing your whip again while in mid air, so you can go across the next one.
It took me over two dozen tries to finish that level, it was extremely frustrating. The rest of the game I had barely any problems with jumping puzzels, it was just this one level that suddenly got insanely difficult.
The awesome hand to hand combat system made up for it though. Damn it was great, and spot on to the fighting in the Indiana Jones films.
If repetitious shooting was as critical as jumping puzzles, for example, you died everytime because you didn't hit your target, then the genre would definately die a pretty quick death [:)].
I'm sure most game designers are aware that no one has the patience for precise jumping puzzles + death as the penalty. I read somewhere that Shigeru Miyamoto made an effort to tone down that kind of thing in Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine, so instead of dying, you just fall back down a bit of the level.
Speaking of cheap games, I just bought Tony Hawk 3 on PC for $10.. [:)] (yes, it's a legit copy). Pretty nice deal if you ask me!
Most of this proves the amazing ignorance of some of today's leading developers. You'd think after several decades, things like cheap death and frustrating difficulty levels would be firmly entrenched in the design process as a universal no-no. Dodgy cameras never case to amaze me. It's been, what...seven years since Mario 64? How fucking hard is it to get it right? Aesthetic quality in graphics is also lacking. Stilted, robotic characters now look pretty much like the stilted, robotic characters of yesteryear; the only difference being a higher resolution. Too many developers are willing to replace old game engines with new ones instead of improving their drawing skills.
Makes me wonder if...1. Developers actually play games, 2. Their QA testers aren't doing crack. Perhaps there's hope for the future.
I think people tend to forget that developers want to build games for the public but answer to publishers not the buyer, the developer generally will have a much better game in mind until the publishers marketing department get their hands on it.
If a developer has sole control of a title and is self funded then you have a case to be annoyed with them but most generally have little choice, make it our way or find someone else to pay your staff.
As for bad design such as mentioned above, well thats mainly certainly the developers fault and alot of these isssues that keep reappearing, invisible wall that look like you can pass them, insta-death puzzles etc shouldn't be in modern games, it just plain laziness in my opinion.
You have to understand that there are MANY publishers (and developers) out there who have no interest in delivering new (or refined) gameplay. They are driven by the $. People keep buying "franchise X", so why would they change their approach.
I'm not saying this is wrong. But as a gamer - i hate it.
In a perfect world, gameplay and innovation would drive sales. Which would essentially mean that Nintendo would rule the world, not EA (and its ilk).
cheers
Smeg: I absolutely agree its not actually 'wrong', publishers are in it for money after all, but I will say I think they would make more cashola if they actually listened to consumers instead of imposing there will on us, they are short changing all involved with their creative(hehe right) input.
Like I said before the gameplay issues on the other hand are just plain lazy design and testing.
Have to disagree that Nintendo would rule the world, I always look forward to Nintendo titles/consoles as I've always had a soft spot in my heart for them but time and time again they don't deliver. Except Zelda titles, I'd buy the console for those alone.
BTW how much are they paying you to be their number 1 fan. [:P]
The problem is that consumers don't realise what they want. Consumers may say they want good games, but sales figures often say otherwise.
Gaming is becoming so mainstream that games now appeal to demographics or existing fan-bases, rather than relying solely on being a good game.
Nintendo are clever because they combine the best of both approaches. They take their incredibly strong franchises, and build new gameplay into them. Sure, they are often guilty of thrashing their franchises to death, but they are at least concerned about the quality (and appeal) of their games.
I cant comment on Nintendo not delivering... I'm not sure what games you mean. And as far as getting paid - i have to keep forking over money for blood must-have games... =D
cheers
quote:If repetitious shooting was as critical as jumping puzzles, for example, you died everytime because you didn't hit your target, then the genre would definately die a pretty quick death
Have you ever tried to get your dad to play "shooter x"...the games really *do* die a pretty quick death in their minds. My dad struggled like all hell to overcome the interface (he mostly just plays Grand Prix Legends and Freecell). There is definitely punishment for failure in killing games.
It's not just punishment that is the issue. It's about superflous interface, 'reward structure' (as I call it when I'm toying with game design), and player motivation.
I think the reason shooting isn't as boring for most of us, is because
i) We aren't challenged by the interface.
ii) There is a reward, you kill/destroy the obstacle (I think there's something psychologically rewarding about that for most gamers).
iii) You are motivated to do it again by a sense of displaying power.
(ii and iii vary depending on the game. For example, some games the motivation is more story based, objective based etc etc. Some games the reward is the exhilaration of a well executed strategy blah blah...you can fill in the blanks)
Whereas, when you jump over something
i) the interface can be challenging. It's not very naturally/superfluously expressed by the mouse + keyboard or gamepad controllers.
ii)There is no reward, only punishment for failure.
iii)And the only motivation is that if you finish that fuxing jumping episode, you won't have to do it again.
I agree that jumping obstacles/puzzles are stupid - however not entirely because of the punishing nature of it, but because of the obstacle's poor genetic make-up - it fails my three 'tenets' of good game design.
The biggest problem is that game design more often than not, forgets about player reward, and just adds in a "punishment structure" instead.
I'll admit my dad isn't a big fan of Shooter games but I showed him Diablo once and he's been hooked ever since. Diablo didnt really revolutionise gameplay (click, click, click, drink poition) but it was interesting, random, had a decent story, and had replayability. In other words it didnt bore him which is why it the only game (apart from possible minesweeper and freecell) that he plays.
Stu
I tried playing this game at harvey norman for 2 minutes. I ended up running along a set of train tracks toward an oncoming train...
I really hated the experience.
I feel for you - Turok on the N64 was a similar experience, that game drove me nuts...