Peeve #307 - Ridiculously Hard Bits In Computer Games

[major_clanger]

I've been playing my way through The Thing on XBox for about six weeks now and in general I've been very impressed with it. It does the best job since Aliens vs Predator of capturing the feel of a movie, and has some nice unusual touches - most notably having to look after the sanity of the NPCs you need to bring along to do essential tasks for you.

Unfortunately it has a couple of flaws that I've had annoy me in other games, both related to areas of excessive difficulty. One is that it features really hard end-of-level bosses. I can see the point of making an entire game or group of levels finish with a really difficult challenge, but at times games designers seem to think "just in case someone is playing through this too fast, let's slow them down with a really nasty opponent". I like to play through games, i.e. make progress, not repeatedly try to batter my way past a triple-strength nasty.

The second problem is similar but in its way much more annoying: the otherwise minor task that's made almost impossibly difficult to do, but which is essential to progress in the game. I'm currently stuck on part of a chapter where your character has to take two sniper shots, run to another part of the building and take two more, all in a very short time window.

I just can't do it.

Now, I'm prepared to waste a lot of my time on computer games now and then, but as I said before, I like to feel I'm getting somewhere whilst doing so. Repeating the cycle of load from save, try task, fail task, load again... becomes very tedious the ninth or tenth time.

IMHO, game narratives should avoid where possible single points of failure. Single points of success, i.e. individual goals, are fair enough, but you should have more than one chance or method available to complete them. Single points of failure are tightropes that you should only ask the player to cross rarely, if at all; they have too much risk of just ending your progress through the game on an anticlimactic note.

MC

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

fail task

(OK, now I'm going to be very mean, and misquote a rather old slogan :-)

"Why Don't You Just ..."

... accept that you're dead...

"... And Go And Do Something Less Boring Instead!?!!?!!?"

(Serious bit: I've never really become hooked on computer games any more complicated than Tetris or Shang-hai, and the "save, fail, reload" thing - which you can't generally do in role-playing games - has always had a whiff of cheating about it to me :-) My biggest stress-busting waste of time is to watch stuff - favourite films and TV shows, cool new documentaries.)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Often when I've become totally stuck in a game its because of a mistake I've made several steps before the apparently fatal point. Going back and rerunning from a bit earlier can be a way through this. [I could discuss a specific example from RTCW but that may be a bit boring].

When all else fails, looking at the Net for a walkthrough of the game can be an answer. A quick google shows plenty of sites discussing The Thing, so if you're desperate that may be an answer.

Of course you may already have done all this...

Happy alien killing!

[blufive.livejournal.com]

I've ranted on this subject many times to poor unfortunate fools who didn't run away fast enough. Drives me nuts too. What REALLY gets my goat is the ones that:

• Don't have any difficulty levels, so you can't just try an easier level (I-War, Homeworld)
  
• You have to know exactly what's going to happen to stand a chance i.e. it's all but impossible to beat it first time (Homeworld again, the Ground Control mission pack)
  
• Have bosses that require levels of l33t s|<illz way above the rest of the game (Jedi Knight series)

End of rant.

Now playing Serious Sam 2. Big guns, loadsa ammo, no plot and... HOW MANY bad guys?!?!?!?.