What game mechanics were good, or at least tolerable in the time they were introduced, but need to go away, or are just plain bad?
In my opinion, it’s parts in games where after you complete an objective, you have to go back to a certain place to be given your next objective. Why can’t you just tell me my next objective right after I finish the previous objective?
All it really does is artificially lengthen the game.
It wouldn’t even be so bad if you were just instantly transported to the area where you learn your next objective. Having to travel back to that area breaks the flow of the game.
4: Enemies do more damage (or cheat outright) on higher difficulty levels in fighters, rather than fight more aggressively and choose to extend combos to pursue more damage
Seriously, I want to be able to stop playing whenever the fuck I like without losing progress, this doesn’t destroy challenge when it is done sensibly (see Etrian Odyssey 2, Dark Souls, A few Castlevanias if I remember correctly and any Fire Emblem) and it makes it easier to actually find time to actually play the fucking things rather than going “Shit I don’t have time to actually do anything if I start playing this now”.
I disagree with this. Tutorials need to stay, and as games get more complicated they’re as necessary as they’ve ever been. Tutorials need to be more streamlined, less intrusive, and better incorporated into gameplay at times. Games also need to allow the player to skip them if there’s a save file detected, and there needs to be less hand holding throughout the course of a game after the player has been introduced to all the mechanics, but tutorials are absolutely necessary and every game should have one. Seeing as paper instruction manuals are pretty much a thing of the past there has to be some mechanism that teaches the player. To those of us who have been gaming for decades most of the controls in games are second nature, but for new gamers they need to be told how to play the game. Still, even if you’ve been gaming since forever and are the type to roll your eyes at obvious control layouts pretty much every game has that one nuance that you may not otherwise know without a tutorial.
Here’s a few examples:
Super Metroid: One of the first games I can think of with tutorials at all, and they were done right… It wasn’t though the player was almost done with the game for the first time that they knew about the wall jump. Maybe it was in the manual, I don’t know, I never read it, but without those little critters that jumped off the wall it’d have taken me a lot longer to figure out the need to wall jump, and don’t forget wall jumping in that game was annoying as fuck. Then there was that one that shows you how to super jump. Without that I’d still be stuck in that pit.
Castlevania SOTN: Gravity Boots. The game never fucking tells you how to use them. I don’t know if I found this out online, or if by accident, but I was pretty damn pissed when I finally found out what the fuck they did. If the game would have just said something it’d have saved me a lot of pain of turning into mist or a bat and taking forever to get somewhere.
Super Ghouls and Ghosts: Ah yes I’ll never forget being stuck in the first stage for hours. I think I may have even taken the game back to Blockbuster without knowing how to get past the first pillar. Why? How the fuck was I supposed to know I could double jump. It seems like damn near every game has some double jump or in air jump mechanic now, but SGNG was among the first, if not THE first to let you double jump. This concept was completely foreign in 1991. The game didn’t come with a book, if I had known that I could have saved so much frustration trying to get past that first pillar. I thought the game was glitched or something.
Sonic 2: Another simple mechanic we take for granted. The spin dash. Loved Sonic 1. Played #2 at a friend’s house. Couldn’t figure out how to get enough speed to run up this one damn hill. He was like “oh you just do this”… my mind was blown.
Situations like these are easily avoided with tutorials.
Since games have all but ELIMINATED manuals to brush up on mechanics, having some type of tutorial in place is absolutely necessary. There just needs to be better balance when it comes to how intrusive they are.
Ninja Gaiden, the most manliest game of all time, the hardest game of all time, the best hack and slash whatever you wanna call it would like to say hello.
I’ve had nigga’s counter my roll into a death grab. Shit is no fun.
