mikey_boson
ShinRa Guard
I'll admit, I don't play many games anymore; I prefer to watch people gaming instead. One thing I have noticed is the distinct lack of thinking needed in quite a few games due to the prevalence of 'Detect' mode.
I have recently watched a few of the newer Batman games and from what I saw, the moment you needed to go somewhere, find something or flick a switch, you fire up Detect mode and voila, the way to progress in the game is shown to you. I know Batman is more about the action and adventure so it might not be the best example but there were moments when the way forward was pretty clear but you'd still press Detect to be shown where to go. The same was true for Tomb Raider, which if I'm honest seemed a particularly poor game (but that's another topic of discussion). Call me old school but the point of Tomb Raider was for it to be an action / puzzler game. Sometimes you'd enter a location and maybe spend 10 minutes working out what the hell to do, but that was the beauty. The game lasted a long time because you had to actually THINK about what you needed to do. I know Tomb Raider is slightly different nowadays and targeted at a different market but I just get the feeling that some of this market is borderline 'mindless' gaming.
To cite an example, in Tomb Raider the cliffs you were able to climb all had exactly the same texture and after climbing one, it was blindingly obvious that this texture was climbable. So why on earth did the fact you could climb these cliffs need to be highlighted when you pressed detect? To me (and this is just my opinion) it was like you were insulting the gamer's intelligence by (almost) implying that the gamer will have forgotten that a texture is climbable the next time they encountered it, therefore it must be highlighted when detect is pressed. Surely people are not so forgetful...?
Now I'm not tarring every game with the same brush but surely the excitement of games like Tomb Raider was the fact you had to find things out yourself, not just click Detect mode and then have everything laid out on a platter. Assassin's Creed seems to have started this trend but that is a game that was designed with a 'Detect' function in mind which is why is appears to work quite well. In Tomb Raider though? I just thought to myself, "What a joke".
It's as if games are designed to be completed as quickly as possible with minimal effort or thinking required and I think that's quite sad really.
Rather than being told to go to a specific building next, or even a room in a building, to look for something, you press Detect and you know EXACTLY where to go and which switch to flick (for example). It's almost like watching a film with a tiny amount of gamer interaction. Exploration of an area doesn't exist (in some cases) because you don't explore the area, you're told exactly where to go and what to do there. It sometimes makes me wonder why developers spend so long on graphics when most people will just sprint through an area. I'm not suggesting that these types of games need to make the gamer stop and take stock every 15 minutes to solve a puzzle, not at all. I just don't think that there's any need for things to be made so patently obvious at times, especially for parts of games that are already patently obvious.
To cite a game I thought did get things nicely balanced was The Last Of Us. This is a game that I really enjoyed because you weren't just spoon fed everything, you had to play the game, engage with it and explore an area.
It's just a personal opinion (gripe) of mine that some games are needlessly dumbed down to the extent that they almost play themselves, that's all.
I have recently watched a few of the newer Batman games and from what I saw, the moment you needed to go somewhere, find something or flick a switch, you fire up Detect mode and voila, the way to progress in the game is shown to you. I know Batman is more about the action and adventure so it might not be the best example but there were moments when the way forward was pretty clear but you'd still press Detect to be shown where to go. The same was true for Tomb Raider, which if I'm honest seemed a particularly poor game (but that's another topic of discussion). Call me old school but the point of Tomb Raider was for it to be an action / puzzler game. Sometimes you'd enter a location and maybe spend 10 minutes working out what the hell to do, but that was the beauty. The game lasted a long time because you had to actually THINK about what you needed to do. I know Tomb Raider is slightly different nowadays and targeted at a different market but I just get the feeling that some of this market is borderline 'mindless' gaming.
To cite an example, in Tomb Raider the cliffs you were able to climb all had exactly the same texture and after climbing one, it was blindingly obvious that this texture was climbable. So why on earth did the fact you could climb these cliffs need to be highlighted when you pressed detect? To me (and this is just my opinion) it was like you were insulting the gamer's intelligence by (almost) implying that the gamer will have forgotten that a texture is climbable the next time they encountered it, therefore it must be highlighted when detect is pressed. Surely people are not so forgetful...?
Now I'm not tarring every game with the same brush but surely the excitement of games like Tomb Raider was the fact you had to find things out yourself, not just click Detect mode and then have everything laid out on a platter. Assassin's Creed seems to have started this trend but that is a game that was designed with a 'Detect' function in mind which is why is appears to work quite well. In Tomb Raider though? I just thought to myself, "What a joke".
It's as if games are designed to be completed as quickly as possible with minimal effort or thinking required and I think that's quite sad really.
Rather than being told to go to a specific building next, or even a room in a building, to look for something, you press Detect and you know EXACTLY where to go and which switch to flick (for example). It's almost like watching a film with a tiny amount of gamer interaction. Exploration of an area doesn't exist (in some cases) because you don't explore the area, you're told exactly where to go and what to do there. It sometimes makes me wonder why developers spend so long on graphics when most people will just sprint through an area. I'm not suggesting that these types of games need to make the gamer stop and take stock every 15 minutes to solve a puzzle, not at all. I just don't think that there's any need for things to be made so patently obvious at times, especially for parts of games that are already patently obvious.
To cite a game I thought did get things nicely balanced was The Last Of Us. This is a game that I really enjoyed because you weren't just spoon fed everything, you had to play the game, engage with it and explore an area.
It's just a personal opinion (gripe) of mine that some games are needlessly dumbed down to the extent that they almost play themselves, that's all.