Most people are familiar with the "Golden Age" of adventure gaming, stretching from text-based games like Zork or The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the Lucasarts and Sierra era of point and click adventures. There are many that bemoan the loss of that, "more civilized and enlightened" era when games required intelligence and dilligence, as opposed to our modern age of iron, where people are too busy shootin' doodz in Halo: The Duty of Modern Warfare . I played a number of these classics, as well as being at the receiving end of so-called "puzzle dungeons" like The Tomb of Horrors, and I, for one, am happy that we're done with that shit. Unfortunately, like some sort of hideous necromancer, the zeitgeist has decided to resurrect the rotten corpse of the Adventure Game. How well have these undead minions performed? Why do I dislike puzzle-based gameplay? See below the fold:
I recently played Stacking, which is a classic-style adventure game, while I was trapped in ass-crack nowhere. I actually enjoyed it a fair amount, which is a testament more to the ability of the developers to work around the fundamental problem of Adventure/Puzzle games (on a side note, it's weird that the term "Puzzle Games" tends to refer to things like Tetris, which is more about quick thinking and reflexes than something like Sam and Max, which is an "Adventure Game," but is really about solving a bunch of puzzles.) Another modern puzzle-based game that I've enjoyed recently (like..... 2-3 years ago? I played in on my younger's brother's DS) is Professor Layton and blah blah blah no-one gives a shit. Why did I find these games "fun" while others, like, for example, Time Gentleman, Please a steaming pile?
In the case of Stacking, what saved the majority of the game was a dedication to avoiding "Adventure Game Logic," while it's weakest moments came from the legacy mechanics of Pixel-Bitching and the sudden re-appearance of the aforementioned "Adventure Game Logic." Also, the fact that I had to get 100% didn't help. For Layton, the self-contained nature of the puzzles, combined with the fact that the vast majority of the puzzles are optional, meant that I could handle as many, or as few, little puzzle-bites as I cared to, and the odds of extreme frustration were low.
Frustration is the constant companion to puzzle-based problems, because, unlike in many challenges of tactics or execution, it's really hard to see if you're making progress. It's annoying to lose, it's frustrating to lose repeatedly and not seem to be making any progress. For example, dying N times on a single jump in a platformer, but being able to otherwise complete the level flawlessly, tends to be more frustrating than dying N times at various places throughout a level.
Frustration is strongly helped by two legacy mechanics that are common in modern adventure games- "Adventure Game Logic" and Pixel-Bitching. Pixel-Bitching, at it's purest, is being forced to hunt for a tiny detail which the hunter had no idea was there/important. Generally, the detail is obvious to the person making the game, and it seems like it should be obvious and/or easy for the players to figure out, but, for whatever reason, it isn't. Similarly, "Adventure Game Logic" is best exemplified by having one and only one solution to a problem, while other, seemingly logical, solutions don't work. Again, most of the time the person making the game generally thinks that the solution he has concocted makes perfect sense, and the players are just being dense to not figure it out.
The fundamental link in both of these two problems is that the players are somehow unable to figure out what to do, and are stopped from progressing until they manage to develop telepathy. Stacking solves the problem by giving every puzzle many solutions, so, in general, you can find at least one way around the problem. This is, of course, subverted when you're a horrible OCD monster like I am, and are unwilling to progress until you manage to figure out every solution, and some of the bonus challenges require a lot of dumb guesswork. Pixel-Bitching is also limited in Stacking, because everything you need to solve a puzzle is in a single room. Layton sorta sidesteps both problems (except Pixel Bitching for hint coins), by having the puzzles be self-contained, and, generally, having simple answers (that is, numbers or choices from a menu).
I want to note that I don't think that puzzles as obstacles are, in and of themselves, bad. I just feel that it's very easy to do puzzles in a way that is frustrating for the solvers, and that it's very easy to "blame the victim" by saying that it's not your fault that the players aren't diligent/smart enough to handle your puzzles. I understand the niche that puzzles fill, but it's important to understand the obstacles are meant to be overcome, and if the players can't figure out the challenge, you're just sending them on a one-way trip to frustration town.
I recently played Stacking, which is a classic-style adventure game, while I was trapped in ass-crack nowhere. I actually enjoyed it a fair amount, which is a testament more to the ability of the developers to work around the fundamental problem of Adventure/Puzzle games (on a side note, it's weird that the term "Puzzle Games" tends to refer to things like Tetris, which is more about quick thinking and reflexes than something like Sam and Max, which is an "Adventure Game," but is really about solving a bunch of puzzles.) Another modern puzzle-based game that I've enjoyed recently (like..... 2-3 years ago? I played in on my younger's brother's DS) is Professor Layton and blah blah blah no-one gives a shit. Why did I find these games "fun" while others, like, for example, Time Gentleman, Please a steaming pile?
In the case of Stacking, what saved the majority of the game was a dedication to avoiding "Adventure Game Logic," while it's weakest moments came from the legacy mechanics of Pixel-Bitching and the sudden re-appearance of the aforementioned "Adventure Game Logic." Also, the fact that I had to get 100% didn't help. For Layton, the self-contained nature of the puzzles, combined with the fact that the vast majority of the puzzles are optional, meant that I could handle as many, or as few, little puzzle-bites as I cared to, and the odds of extreme frustration were low.
Frustration is the constant companion to puzzle-based problems, because, unlike in many challenges of tactics or execution, it's really hard to see if you're making progress. It's annoying to lose, it's frustrating to lose repeatedly and not seem to be making any progress. For example, dying N times on a single jump in a platformer, but being able to otherwise complete the level flawlessly, tends to be more frustrating than dying N times at various places throughout a level.
Frustration is strongly helped by two legacy mechanics that are common in modern adventure games- "Adventure Game Logic" and Pixel-Bitching. Pixel-Bitching, at it's purest, is being forced to hunt for a tiny detail which the hunter had no idea was there/important. Generally, the detail is obvious to the person making the game, and it seems like it should be obvious and/or easy for the players to figure out, but, for whatever reason, it isn't. Similarly, "Adventure Game Logic" is best exemplified by having one and only one solution to a problem, while other, seemingly logical, solutions don't work. Again, most of the time the person making the game generally thinks that the solution he has concocted makes perfect sense, and the players are just being dense to not figure it out.
The fundamental link in both of these two problems is that the players are somehow unable to figure out what to do, and are stopped from progressing until they manage to develop telepathy. Stacking solves the problem by giving every puzzle many solutions, so, in general, you can find at least one way around the problem. This is, of course, subverted when you're a horrible OCD monster like I am, and are unwilling to progress until you manage to figure out every solution, and some of the bonus challenges require a lot of dumb guesswork. Pixel-Bitching is also limited in Stacking, because everything you need to solve a puzzle is in a single room. Layton sorta sidesteps both problems (except Pixel Bitching for hint coins), by having the puzzles be self-contained, and, generally, having simple answers (that is, numbers or choices from a menu).
I want to note that I don't think that puzzles as obstacles are, in and of themselves, bad. I just feel that it's very easy to do puzzles in a way that is frustrating for the solvers, and that it's very easy to "blame the victim" by saying that it's not your fault that the players aren't diligent/smart enough to handle your puzzles. I understand the niche that puzzles fill, but it's important to understand the obstacles are meant to be overcome, and if the players can't figure out the challenge, you're just sending them on a one-way trip to frustration town.
The breaking point for me in The Longest Journey was when you had to put the hard candy in the sludge and then feed it to the cop so he moves and you can fiddle with the electrical box to break the movie theater sign so the movie theater guy will unlock the alley and go in the back door of the theater ...
ReplyDeleteI hesitate to call them "puzzles", as that implies they are things you can figure out using logic. It many circumstances it comes down to just trying all the permutations of items you have until something happens. That's not a puzzle, it's rolling a die until you get a 20.
Portal is a puzzle game (with reaction, fps skills elements). When your first start playing tetris it's a puzzle game because you have to figure out how best to stack the pieces based on the existing board and the next piece, but after you have a good handle on that it's reactions. Some adventure games have puzzle aspects if the challenges are sufficiently logical, but this often fails to be the case.