David Houghton over at GamesRader has composed a series of grievences directed at developers as to how they are destroying what used to be 'a proud warrior people' known as real gamers.
Various techniques and new features in gaming have made things almost 'too easy', and take away from the challenge of it.
Things like regenerative health, auto-aiming, unskipable tutorials, cut-scene boss battles, and the ability to quick save, are making things far too easy for us.
Publishers and Developers need to realize that the majority of their fanbase knows that if you press A to jump, pressing it twice will double jump. There isn't much originality anymore - many games share control schemes ala button layout, and techniques and styles.
Don't excessively cater to the generation of new gamers who might have to actually think about what they are doing for a second by crippling your real fanbase. That's the 2% rule gone wrong.
Read on after the jump.
Once, we were a proud warrior people, adept in every skill, discipline and combat technique required to earn mastery over our every digital domain. We were a pantheon of noble thumb-ninjas, our legendary victories and kill-counts matched in number only by the calluses on our digits; calluses we wore as badges of honour through the eternal, bloody war against AI and our fellow man. But through its ever more sophisticated design and an unerring need to be accessible to all, modern gaming has done us a disservice.
Not only are our skills being neutered, it's being done in a way which makes us think we're still at the top of our game. It's exactly like The Matrix. Exactly like The Matrix. Yes, a no-thumbed bonobo monkey can now feel a simulation of the sense of achievement we've enjoyed since the '80s, but just remember, as The Incredibles told us, when everyone's super, no-one will be. Don't believe the full extent to which we've been emasculated? Read on.
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I wanna see this guy beat Gears of War, Call of Duty or Ninja Gaiden on the hardest difficulty without dying. He does that, then I'll listen. If he can't then he has nothing, NOTHING, to bitch about.
"I wanna see this guy beat Gears of War, Call of Duty or Ninja Gaiden on the hardest difficulty without dying."
The whole point of the article was that it was easy because of respawns and quick saves etc. Therefore your above statement is mute.
In fact I beat COD4 with only dying a few times on the hardest difficulty. I agree with the author, games are easier.
If you want old school challenge then do it yourself. There's nothing stopping you from restarting the whole game over if you die three times.
The point is that gaming has evolved into a medium in which story telling is hugely important. Almost as much as gameplay. It's not fair to to relentlessly punish gamers who want to enjoy the ride.
It's equally unfair to bitch about QTE (quick time event) moments instead of just shooting the shit out of a boss until it dies. It's experimenting.
Still, games DO have their challenges these days. Namely the Hard/Insane modes.
Tutorials are also not a bad idea. Some people might be just getting into a game. And sometimes you'd rather just start up the game, and learn via a tutorial, rather than read it all. I do generally browse through the manual for some info though. The ability to SKIP tutorials would be nice though >_>
I don't recall any game where you can die, and the boss is as weak as when you left him after you died? I'm sure some games do that (Bioshock I'm guessing?).
Games often let you save right before a boss (a save area at the end of a level gives you an obvious indicator of a boss battle that is going to happen in the next area).....
Can't forget the fact that games are generally a fair bit longer these days. A lot of 'levels' in games can eat up an hour or more of your time. A Mario world would eat up what? 5 Minutes or so, at most? If we had to go through those whole hour or longer levels all over again, every time we died at a boss, well, it would be friggen annoying. Though that whole 'bosses are very easy to kill' thing applies here (not likely to die. Though if you didn't know a boss battle would be in the next area, and you hadn't topped off your health....Yeah, you could very well die) >_>
Oh, and I personally hate the 'interactive' cutscene type battles. And if you think about it, doesn't it seem rather lazy on the developer's part? It is a lot easier to script actions, than to actually make it a proper battle...
The vast majority of games I play on 'hard', and if that doesn't challenge me, I stop playing. If I know I'll have no trouble beating a game then I'll no longer continue to play. This most recently happened for me in Mass Effect. Combat became too easy and it wrecked the game.(Actually in this sense it was just like KOTOR. )
So many games no a days have hardly any penalties for death. You need some sort of penalty or it ultimately makes dying pointless. And if dying is pointless then its no fun. If a game isn't challenging than it is boring.
It's sort makes me think of cheating in online FPS games, that seems so rampant... I honestly don't understand how people find that fun. Just as I don't understand finding it rewarding to finish a game that is too easy.
If Diablo 3 doesn't have a hardcore mode I'm going to be so sad.
I too like Final Blade must agree with Seproth here. Some people aren't playing games to die 50,000 times before moving up a little, they just wanna play for the story or simply to have fun. Granted it is true that games have gotten easier, but developers are trying to bring in a bigger audience, and now that there's a whole lot of space on DVD's and Blu-ray to tell stories, well it's gonna be used for that purpose. That's the whole point of having a difficulty setting. If you don't like playing your game cause it's too easy, then amp up the difficulty. Short of that, make your own challenges to achieve to make it harder on yourself.
Personally I find bits and pieces of COD4 Vet and Gears of War Insanity near impossible simply cause I don't have the time or the will to spend 50 hours playing to come super uber good and be able to make the difficulty nothing to me. Granted it won't stop me from trying the difficulty (and getting my ass kicked at bits) but for the most part I'm playing to have fun, grab a huge achievement score, and check out the story, like a lot of other people.
I actually like the quick save tbh. However certain games should actually have an option for it like GTA4 for example.