| A Man's Got To Know His Limitations, Briggs |
[Jul. 23rd, 2009|02:52 am] |
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (Nintendo DS) has a rich, chocolatey platform game in the Metroid/Castlevania vein on the top screen, a smooth, creamy, peanut-buttery match-three puzzle game on the bottom screen, and what you do on one screen affects the other. This is definitely one of those games that could sound far better in theory than in execution, but the two halves of the game come together in a delicious confection that is only enhanced by the zany storybook-steampunk visuals along with a script, score, and sound effects worthy of the greatest Saturday morning cartoons. But Hatsworth is a harsh mistress: I'm about four-fifths of the way through the game, and I don't see myself getting much further than I already have without some serious grinding, because while the puzzle element rarely introduces new elements and so is never terribly difficult, the platforming portion hits a cliff-like difficulty curve in the fourth world. And the problem with grinding in Hatsworth is that repeating a level is almost never as rewarding as doing it the first time, so you feel every turn of the grinder. And while there are hidden levels with greater rewards, even the first hidden level in the first world is as difficult as the later standard levels. If you've decided that grinding is necessary to finish the game, don't make grinding unrewarding. Grinding is, by definition, tedious. The results should be worthwhile.
Beyond Good and Evil (PS2/Xbox/NGC) has a different problem. While it's a fairly short game, there's a wide variety of in-game activities: fighting, exploring, sneaking, even photography...and vehicle racing. There are maybe two points in the game where you need to win a couple of races to progress in the game. The first two vehicle races are very forgiving. The second pair of races are not. Again, I've hit that wall where my skills aren't up to the task even with all the power-ups I can currently acquire in the game, but to add insult to injury, unlike every other activity in the game, there's no point to the vehicle races except to move on to the next part of the story. You can expend resources (to buy power-ups) to win the races, but winning the races doesn't reward you with more resources to use in the rest of the game. Beyond is very much worth playing, and probably worth finishing if you care to hack it. It has a likable, capable female protagonist who doesn't get bogged down in contrived love stories or require constant support from the male members of the cast, themselves likable characters that you grow to care for, even if it's more beneficial, in-game, to give the protagonist all the best gear. The aesthetic is like Metal Hurlant come to life, an immersive Eurotoon experience that truly deserves the adjective "cinematic". But I'm just not going to be able to finish the game, because of this stupid vehicle race. If (a) there is a part of your game which (b) is entirely unlike the rest of the game (c) at which the player has to succeed in order to progress further in the game, either give the player the opportunity to bypass this part of the game, OR KILL YOUR FUCKING DARLING AND CUT THAT PART OF THE GAME. You want people to see the end of the game you worked so hard on, let me clue you in: having to do something that I am simply not good at, and having to do it four or five dozen times, doesn't make me inclined to finish the game at all, even in the unlikely event that I even get over that wall.
Meanwhile, Fallout 3 is never difficult. Ever. This is a whole different kind of tedium. On the surface, Fallout looks like a game that will require careful planning and management of scarce resources. But scarcity, as it turns out, is solely for NPCs. Expendables - money, medicine, ammunition - are fairly thick on the ground, and advancement is lightning-fast and caps far too early, even with the expansion. It's not just easy to max out your character before finishing the main storyline and exploring even a tenth of the map, it's practically guaranteed. Unless you just skip the beginning areas entirely, you gain a safe home base very early in the game, which provides you with unlimited storage, uninterrupted rest and gadgets that duplicate all the mod cons that were ostensibly lost in the nuclear fires. So it rapidly becomes clear that Fallout 3 is not even remotely about verisimilitude, or even the illusion of post-nuclear struggle. It's about atmosphere, purely style over substance, and I'm fairly sure the series has always been this way, even back in the days of Wasteland. You start out fairly badass and become even more of a badass as you stride across the Capital Wasteland like a titan, guns a-blazin', grenades a-lobbin' and sledgehammers a-swingin'. I enjoy this. I actually enjoy this a lot. And maybe I'm just overly-immersed in the "old school revolution" currently sweeping the tabletop RPG blogosphere, but I can't help but feel like there's a missed opportunity here, that an RPG of meticulously-planned exploration of a dangerous world, cautious resource management, small-unit tactics and empire building could actually be a lot of fun and an interesting change from the current lone badass model of electronic RPGs. |
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mark_argent's journal
is basically a fantasy roleplaying game that uses 
, and then buy a copy for a friend, to spread the joy.