A Tale of Two Games...
Hey all. I’ve been meaning to post something for a while, since I haven't said, “boo” since my first post. I’ve been playing a couple of games on the 360 lately, though, so I thought I would post some thoughts about them to see if my experience matches yours at all.
Cloning ClydeI started playing
Cloning Clyde a couple of days after it showed up on the Arcade. At first, I really enjoyed it. It’s silly, and they almost immediately dispense with any pretense of trying to make any sense. The puzzles require some thought, but not too much; and you can finish a level pretty quickly. There was also the boon that it wasn’t too twitchy. On the whole, I’d say it was just about right for blowing off a little steam right after work. It would not have been too much to say that I was starting to love
Cloning Clyde.
Then, I was betrayed.
I hit a level where the designer took the term “platformer” just a little too much to heart. So far as I can tell, it is an exercise in perfecting your ability to jump and has no other redeeming value. There’s nothing to figure out… just jump, jump, jump. Now, I’m not young anymore, and I do not have the reflexes of a ten-year-old boy. I also don’t have the tolerance for boring repetition in my entertainments as I used to (I get enough of that at work). So, when I got to the exit after my twentieth attempt and realized I missed a security camera all the way at the beginning and that I’d have to do all those damned jumps again, I gave up.
Now that I have returned to a calmer state and can think things through, I think this level in
Cloning Clyde points out a couple of common game design problems that tend to ruin a game for me:
- Game designers sometimes mistake repetition for entertainment. I don’t know if it is a lack of creativity (certainly, the number of games with water, snow, and lava levels argues for that), or if it is just that you have to earn their respect by showing you can press the A button ten thousand times in a row without screwing up, but there are almost always levels where you have to do the same task ad nauseum to complete the level. In this case, it was jumping up an ungodly number of platforms. Don’t think. Don’t try to solve a puzzle. Just jump. Jump! Jump for your life! For me, repetition is not entertaining; it’s not challenging; it’s just dull. That’s the worst thing a game can be.
- Game designers also seem to have a lack of respect for our time. This is shown in many ways in many games, but in this level of Cloning Clyde you can see it when you make a mistake on a platform and fall all the way to the start. There is a long tunnel to the bottom (in the real world, it would probably be a thousand feet long), and you get the entertainment of watching Clyde fall very slowly down the whole thing. Then, you get to watch him fly back up again when you try to return to where you made your mistake. I suppose it is meant as some sort of negative feedback, but it doesn’t really work for me. So much time has passed flying up and down tunnels I forget what I did wrong or even what I’m doing in there. By the tenth time, as soon as I start to fall, I’d get up… go brew a cup of tea… chat with the roommate… whatever. I then start Clyde flying back up again, and then I’d go make some toast… tease my pets… again, whatever… until he got back to the top. Yes… entertainment, thy name is Waiting.
- I’m sure designing a good game is really hard, and probably the hardest part is trying to get the balance right. Still, here’s the thing, where the hell did this level come from? Did they get a guest designer in for that level? Was it designed by some guy with a trampoline fetish? Most of the levels were pretty easy, and they involved a variety of tasks. Suddenly, we get the Twitchville level that feels unlike anything else in the game so far. Doesn’t anyone at the company actually play these things? Didn't anyone in QA say, “You know Bob, level 24 is just completely out of whack.” Or, is this sort of thing deliberate? You know, a let’s lull them into a false sense of security kind of thing.
In the end, however,
Cloning Clyde lost me. While it was fun up to this point, this one level was so horrible for me, I’ve lost all interest in the darned thing. It went from fun, to boring, to just plain bad in one level. That’s actually pretty amazing, usually I can shrug off a bad level; but in this case, I just couldn’t.
PreyNow,
Prey forms an interesting contrast with
Cloning Clyde. I’m not into
Prey as much as I was into
Cloning Clyde. The story behind
Prey is pretty weak in my opinion, and the hero is an idiot (I’m reminded of a line from a British comedienne, “He’s very strong, and he’s very brave, and he’s very handsome, and he’s very stupid… a regular L’il Abner type.”). Also, I have to agree with Ozymandias’s earlier posting that the language is a bit much. It’s funny, I normally have a filthy mouth and could probably make a sailor blush, but a lot of his cursing is just too much for me. It just feels gratuitous… like he really doesn’t feel that strongly, but he has to curse to play a role. Still, it’s just a shooter, so I guess I shouldn’t expect Tom Stoppard, should I? (Now, that would be something…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: the Video Game… I wonder if it would have a hover-board race?)
The negatives aside, the game is growing on me. The levels are very playable, and you can easily finish one after dinner, work, or whatever. You have a lot of options as you play, and you can develop your own play style. Most importantly, though, you can
just keep playing. There really aren’t any roadblocks in the game play, and they only succumbed to the tired boss monster cliché once so far (but boy, did they ever make it clichéd… blech!). The “death mechanic” partly contributes to your ability to just keep playing: it’s still a little annoying having to shoot those stupid thingies, but they don’t send you back to the last save point or the start of the level. That helps, obviously, but it isn’t the whole story (since I really don’t die all that often in the game). In general, I think they did a pretty good job balancing the game play and in timing the levels. In a tough battle, you burn through most of your ammo and health… but not quite all. In a pitched battle with a nasty with rockets or what have you, there are usually places to hide and regroup (or cower and catch your breath, if you prefer). Basically, there is nothing getting in your way of enjoying the game.
Another good thing about
Prey is the way they play with gravity and space. There’s a fair amount of messing with your sense of space and direction. Being able to shift gravity about means there are more possibilities for environmental puzzles, which I think they exploited quite nicely (there were several times I kept thinking to myself: Down is your enemy’s gate). Beyond pure mechanics, however, the level designers were quite creative with the scenery. There have been a couple of spots where I’ve just had to stop to look around. Partly, I’m just enjoying the view, but partly I’m just trying to figure out what direction is up. There is one level with some sort of moon-mining operation where gravity flips so many times I
still don't know how I went through it.
So to sum up, we have one game that grabbed me immediately and then lost me with one hellaciously irritating level; and then we have another game that has grabbed a hold of me slowly but has kept me playing by not putting up barriers to my actually playing the game. For me at least, this points out the importance of letting the player continue. I think some games are designed to be some sort of testosterone-fueled test of manhood where you have to beat the game (you’ve all heard people use that terminology) to get respect. If you can't twitch your fingers in the
exactly correct sequence, you are not worthy, and you may not continue.
Prey’s attitude seems to be different… and more my style. Blow some stuff up, try not to get hurt too badly, but keep pushing ahead to see what’s beyond the next door. That keeps me playing... and keeps it fun, too.