Celia Wagar's CritPoints

You’ve said that for short games it’s reasonable to reset to begining in case of repeated failure, as in Curse of Issyos. While I can see that, it still comes off as frustrating when you want to practice a specific section, and the game keeps demanding you get from the begining to there. Plus, it creates the problem of unnecessary, trivial repetition, because you have to continually repeat parts that you’ve already mastered, which is a complete waste of player’s time when they’re wanting to practice a different section. Seems better to leave self challenge to the player, rather than ask for consistency, at least at this kind of level that demands a lot of time spending.

All arcade games are this way, and most games to some extent are this way. Dark Souls shunts you back to the bonfire, and you can’t get back to the part that gave you trouble until you get through all the stuff inbetween.

I mean, maybe there’s a case that these games should have more interspersed checkpoints, that’s what Super Mario Bros and Castlevania did on console, but I’m not gonna harsh on games of reasonable length like Contra sending you back to the beginning.

That and frequently you haven’t already mastered those parts, you’re still getting hit. Segments of this length get repeated in games like Ninja Gaiden or Nioh or Dark Souls all the time. I don’t think it’s a big deal to lose 6-15 minutes over this type of thing. It took me like 6 hours to beat contra, it’s probably gonna take me less to beat curse of issyos, both because it’s easier and because it’s shorter. Continue reading →

What do you think of hand holding in games?

Okay, hand holding, it can be a pain, especially in Nintendo games, double especially in Zelda Games.

I think Hand Holding is primarily a User Experience issue. Like, if you use photoshop, or microsoft word, or another such program, it won’t constantly stop you to tell you how to use it, it’ll maybe pop up a tip of the day at the start, which you can disable, and have a separate manual, plus little tooltips reminding you of functions when you hover over things and their key shortcut.

In games, we’ve come to build tutorials into every game, because manuals went the way of the dinosaur.

Old games didn’t need as much tutorialization, because they were simpler. You could figure out the functions really easily through simple experimentation. Continue reading →

What do you think are some games with conveyance issues?

MGR, Parrying. I honestly didn’t get this without guides and the ingame tutorials were not very helpful.

W101, knowing you should buy unite guts and unite spring from the store, knowing you should use unite guts to reflect projectiles, knowing to use the whip to pull spikes off enemies, a lot of things.

God hand, pretty much everything, the basic method you’re supposed to be playing. Continue reading →

On a broad level, my 4 criteria for depth fit basically everything. Not going to repeat those.

Well designed enemies are good at performing multiple functions. They’re good at engaging with the player directly, they’re good at blocking the player’s path, they have ways they can be exploited to deal damage to them, and they avoid falling into repetitive patterns.

Good enemies are aggressive enough to threaten the player sufficiently, and passive enough to fit their function in the level, like barring the player’s path, or simply making a section as challenging as it should be. Ideally an enemy is both difficult to engage and difficult to bypass. Continue reading →