![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Quick Impulsive Videogame Gripe...
Mar. 28th, 2006 11:28 am... Getting it out of my system.
I've always been a fan of the Wild Arms series. I've gotten WA 1, 2, 3, and the revamped original "Wild Arms Alter Code F". All of them have been fun. Wild Arms 4, despite some rather jarring modifications, looked to be good too...
... but it has now committed one of the absolute cardinal sins of RPG games: putting in "puzzles" that rely, not on cleverness, but on fast fast reflexes to solve. There were some timing-related puzzles in the prior ones, but all of them were solvable by recognizing that there was a "trick" to doing it. I'm not 18 years old any more. I don't react as fast as I used to, and I do not appreciate having to try to hit a button and hope I can both time and react properly so as to then hop, hop, hop up a bunch of temporarily-extended platforms which are out JUST long enough to reach the top IF -- and ONLY if -- you do everything EXACTLY right and waste not even a single second.
If such games had a "Frustrated" command, so that by hitting it the character would just make his way automatically through the puzzle, that would be fine; I'd be able to try it, but if I got to the point it was no longer fun, I could move on. They don't, however, which means I'm probably never getting past about, um, hour 10 or so, which is still very early in the game. (I've fought exactly one significant boss from the first main adversary group).
EDIT *FACEPALM* As LMekko points out, I can probably easily get by it using the time-stretching Accelerator option. I just forget about that one so easily.
The basic point still stands -- I really think games that include puzzles but are not, in their essence, puzzle games should have a built-in, simply activated "go around".
I've always been a fan of the Wild Arms series. I've gotten WA 1, 2, 3, and the revamped original "Wild Arms Alter Code F". All of them have been fun. Wild Arms 4, despite some rather jarring modifications, looked to be good too...
... but it has now committed one of the absolute cardinal sins of RPG games: putting in "puzzles" that rely, not on cleverness, but on fast fast reflexes to solve. There were some timing-related puzzles in the prior ones, but all of them were solvable by recognizing that there was a "trick" to doing it. I'm not 18 years old any more. I don't react as fast as I used to, and I do not appreciate having to try to hit a button and hope I can both time and react properly so as to then hop, hop, hop up a bunch of temporarily-extended platforms which are out JUST long enough to reach the top IF -- and ONLY if -- you do everything EXACTLY right and waste not even a single second.
If such games had a "Frustrated" command, so that by hitting it the character would just make his way automatically through the puzzle, that would be fine; I'd be able to try it, but if I got to the point it was no longer fun, I could move on. They don't, however, which means I'm probably never getting past about, um, hour 10 or so, which is still very early in the game. (I've fought exactly one significant boss from the first main adversary group).
EDIT *FACEPALM* As LMekko points out, I can probably easily get by it using the time-stretching Accelerator option. I just forget about that one so easily.
The basic point still stands -- I really think games that include puzzles but are not, in their essence, puzzle games should have a built-in, simply activated "go around".
