BIGsheep - Last week I reviewed Blood Bowl for the DS, scoring it a competent but average 5/10. The thing is, despite its unresponsive touch screen input, the limited game options, the way it creates seemingly arbitrary rules out of thin air and also seemingly a nasty habit of fixing dice, I’m completely hooked to it. Most nights at home you’ll find me wandering around with my DS in my pocket just in case I can find a 10 minute gap whilst Ali watches Masterchef to get a couple more plays in. I won’t rest until my Skaven team lift high that trophy.
No one in their right mind could argue Blood Bowl as being a classic, more a flawed gem that I am slowly falling for. Have you pair got any similar games that you know should have been put down long before they actually were?
Pogo – The subject of flawed gems brings me back to one of my all time favourite titles, Shining Force on the Mega Drive. I don’t know why I loved it so much. I still don’t know to this very day. I’ve even spent the last few lunch breaks at work hacking through the sequel on my Mega Drive emulator on the work PC. It’s a turn based strategy/role playing game. Characters would level up through battles with spells and weapons increasing in strength the further you got into the game. Thing is, the story was totally broken, not to mention rubbish. You’d spend hours wandering around in the wrong direction trying to find somebody who could tell you where to go. But the sweetener that kept me hungry was the possibility of more random battles popping up along the way to increase my bumbling bunch of heroes’ strength. Or get my mage to cast the fire spell about 40 times so I could increase its power another level. The combat was spot on, but the rest of the game became the “grind”. Wandering around talking to random people in random towns, just looking for the next monster to penetrate.
Manuel – Most recently, I’d say Need for Speed Undercover is my biggest guilty pleasure, given that when I ran through it at launch it was almost unplayable (until the recent patch). The frame-rate was all over the place, the screen tearing was worse than anything Ubisoft could muster, and yet I still sat there for hours with a grimace on my face, forcing myself through it. I have no idea if I enjoyed that game or not. I suppose I must have if I sat there for a cumulative amount of 10 hours or so, and yet I can only recall fleeting moments of joy. The rest is a blur of attrition.
I suppose that’s more to do with structure though. If a game gives me a trail of breadcrumbs that sparks the completionist in me– however rare that might be – I simply have to see it through. Alone in the Dark is probably the worst one for that. Plenty of mechanics that were almost fundamentally broken, but it kept throwing enough weird stuff at you, amidst fleeting moments of genius, that I just had to see it through, even though I knew it was bad and I knew I was largely wasting my time.
So what is it about those games that drives you on? Some connection to a previous experience? A structure that just pushes all the right buttons?
BIGsheep – One thing’s for sure, nothing could cause me to complete Alone in the Dark. You are a dedicated man, sir, if you managed that.
Levelling is a feature that can cause me to play a game I have no real interest in. If in the early stages it allows me to “Ding” and bestows upon me extra stats and skills then there’s a reasonable chance I’m going to stick around longer. That sort of design you can see a lot in the Facebook games I’ve happened across.
More so than that, however, I think a previous experience is a often a very strong reason why many people may persevere with games. I, for instance, used to play the board game of Blood Bowl back in my youth and so I’ve a strong affinity with the brand and can reflect back to a time spent rolling dice with friends. The same feeling can be true of sequels, too, as Ali has doggedly stuck with the entire Tomb Raider series throughout all its peaks and troughs – even Angel of Darkness – because she was hoping that at some point the magic she remembered from the original game would kick back in. All it would take was one well designed or executed section and that would make the entire game worthwhile for her.
It’s worse when that mentality is inflicted on others, though. Back on the original Xbox days I was positively ecstatic when I heard there was a 3D version of Worms coming out. I pre-ordered it and the weekend it arrived I set about it with gusto, opening up as many maps and options as I could find. Trouble was, you had to basically learn how to control the camera before you learned how to play the game. It was so awful that when I took it back in to work for a four-player lunchtime session that I received abuse from pretty much everyone who played it with me because they considered it almost unplayable. It lasted a few days but it wasn’t long before I was left on my own with just a pack of Worms for company.
Pogo – It was such a great concept it’s a shame it didn’t pan out. It’s one of those games that if you’ve never played you have no chance ever of winning either, just making it impossible for the newbie. Then you try and play bad to make them feel better, but then they start getting cocky, so you end them. Gotta love those one sided games.
BIGsheep – I never play bad…
Pogo – I think my friend Joe summed it up for me with Halo Wars. He played the first level and declared it was a rubbish genre to branch the franchise into. He then just sat and watched all the CG clips in a row which occur before and after each level, turned to me and said “I don’t need to play it now. Ace.”
I think it really hit home. Wish I just watched the CG clips too!
BIGsheep - From all that is coming forth from the reviewers, it seems that Scribblenauts is going to be sadly included in this bracket. It was on my “must have” list coming into this Christmas run up. Everything that I had heard about it say that is was such a great concept, an ultimate sandbox, but now it’s hit the shelves it appears wracked with so many glitches over character movement, annoyances with physics and trump objects that would always win you the level that my enthusiasm has been popped.
Manuel – Yeah, it sounds like a shame. Although if the design remit is to include 20,000 unique objects I’d say you’re on a loser before you’ve even started. Can you even imagine trying to balance something like that? Virtually impossible.
But then I guess those are the games I like most within the context of this discussion. Aim high, scrape the stars, fall in the gutter along the way. Whatever happens to the final product, it’s interesting at the very least.
BIGsheep – That’s a motto I wish all designers would adhere to. No matter what you think about the Fable series I’ve always loved the way that Peter Molenyeux has aspired to create this world where gamers can find love, and everything else he has espoused during their development. The games always fail to meet his lofty goals but the fact that someone has the conviction to come out and say “this is what I want to achieve” is great.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, drumming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife fits in.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer. "
