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Avoiding Wasted Time With Prince of Persia
Zonk pointed out an interesting video presentation by Shamus Young on the importance of the new Prince of Persia, calling it the most innovative game of 2008. Young brings up the fact that many of today's games punish failure by wasting the player's time; being sent back to a check point, the beginning of a level, or sometimes even further. This cuts into the amount of time players have to enjoy the meat of the game — the current challenge they have to overcome. Unfortunately, as Young notes, modern controllers are designed for players who have been gaming since they were kids, and have evolved to be more complicated to operate than an automobile. The combination of these factors therefore limits or prevents the interest of new players; a problem Prince of Persia has addressed well through intuitive controls and the lack of punitive time sinks.
I haven't played the game, but that said, how much of the heart of great games was the thrill of just squeaking by? If you know that there isn't any way to loose, what you're left with is a empty shell. Nice to look at, and shows you some neat tricks, but nothing else later. Putting training wheels on a game isn't the future, it's just a gimmick to try and make a bland game that offends no one, and doesn't really try to solve the problem of playability. My 2c.
In Monkey Island, you could never die either. But it was still a lot of fun to play!
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Agreed. While Yhatzee's Zero Punctuation may be seen as somewhat abrasive, he does hit the nail on the head when reveiwing games that seem to lack this feature.
I know myself, when I play a game for a bit of fun, I want to do just that... have fun. Not be PUNISHED for a simple error, or not knowing the level.
I reccomend anyone who enjoys gaming to watch his reviews. They are abrasive, but they are also down to earth. He pretty much spells out what really sucks about modern gaming (and, yes, he does praise what's right).
Sure in MMOs and the likes you are "punished" at times, but it's not for not knowing, it's for not working together. Solo, I don't want to be punished by some want-to-be benevolent programmer with a sadistic nature, I want to have fun.
Not "time wasting" but instead "entertaining". Different things.
If one wants to "waste time" there are plenty of ways of doing it which are not entertaining (for example: count to 1 million in your head)
The difference between entertainment and pure time wasting is that the first is supposed to be enjoyable.
Which brings us around to the point that games (and videos and books) should be enjoyable (fun). Clearly people are using some kind of criteria to choose the games, movies and books they spend time with (otherwise why would some be great successes and others flops) and it seems logical that the main criteria would be enjoyment.
I know it's lame to reply to my own comment, but I've been reading the other comments and they make some interesting points, even if I don't agree with some of them.
I have to say I didn't even consider collecting the light seeds a minus. There are 1001 light seeds in the game (as I found out by googling). You need 560 of them (just more than half) to beat it. This is easy for me - it's sort of like Crackdown: if you can see a light seed, the Power of Christ Compels you to grab it. I beat the game with about 800 light seeds without even really trying.
For the people who are upset about the lack of punishment, I don't know. I do sympathize to an extent, since I can remember that feeling (I beat Contra), but I guess there's a point where your time is worth more than the cost of the game. Yes, I do want to blow through a game as fast as possible these days, getting only TEH AWESUM, because my stack of games is 20 deep because other things are competing for my time. While I admire the hell out of someone who can beat Morrowind in 7.5 minutes, that's just not for me.
But this sort of meta-discussion is fascinating and one of the few slashdot threads where almost every comment is of interest to me. Unlike the predictable boring crud (windows vs linux vs osx Or ps3 vs x360 vs wii) this reveals a lot about what you value as a person.
I think everyone is misunderstanding the problem entirely.
The problem is not that when you die, you must repeat content: the problem is that the content is fixed.
I can engage in a sport, lose, and then play again right away. I never say "Oh, that's the same game we just played" because every game is different. Few video games offer that.