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You Are A Baby and Games Don't Wanna Make You Cry

Posted by Amber Ahlborn

Have you been playing video games since at least the NES? Did you ever play one of the Lemmings games? How about classic adventure titles? Does it seem like games today are dumbing down, protecting you from thinking too hard, treating you like a baby who's hand must be held? Yeah, sometimes I feel the same.

Discussions over today's games lack of difficulty have been cropping up lately but usually they cover plain 'ol hardness: surviving swarms of enemies or scrolling levels of death. It seems to me that in addition to this, games are also wussing out on cerebral toughness. I call this hand-holding and complained bitterly about its prominence in Metroid Prime 3.

I like to think in my games, not just twitch the controller. I don't want the solutions to problems to be obvious. Creative thinking is a good thing, critical thinking is imperative. Yet, it feels like many games with thinking elements are easier than past incarnations, as though mental challenges are bad marketing and above all else games should make you feel good about yourself and protect your fragile ego from the harsh, harsh world. But maybe I'm just being cynical.

Even as I sit here stewing over the thought of video games playing into the general malaise of anti-intellectualism (at least here in the USA) I can't help but also think of counter examples. Zack and Wiki promoted fun creative thinking puzzles, and games like Ico and the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy made critical analysis of the environments a central challenge. And yet, these titles are tertiary to the point-and-shoot or tap-button-to-punch genres.

Are games more prone to catering to the lowest intellectual denominator these days? Was there ever really an enlightened period or am I a victim of nostalgia?

Oh, and don't even get me started on paint by numbers gaming with a FAQ.

Related Links

GameTrailers' Top 10 Most Difficult Games

Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective: Part Three

+ DIGG

+ DEL.ICIO.US

+ REDDIT

Posted Aug 15 2008, 11:00 AM

Filed under: amber ahlborn, nostalgia, challenge

Comments

Roto13 said:

"Oh, and don't even get me started on paint by numbers gaming with a FAQ"

Seriously. What's the point of even playing if you're going to have someone holding your hand the entire time? (That said, I've been known to refer to one if I'm stuck forever. There's also not much point in playing a game if you can never progress or if you're not having fun any more. xP)

There are still games out there with tricky puzzles. Boom Blox, for example, has gotten me pretty stumped on numerous occasions. I do think in-game puzzles have gotten easier as time goes on, though. I haven't gotten stuck in a Zelda game since Majora's Mask, and even that's only because of the traditional water temple annoyance.

As a side note, though, I think some of that difficulty in older puzzle-oriented games (and to a larger extent in action-oriented games) had a lot to do with the age of the player. :P I was like 8 or 9 when I played Lemmings for the first time, so of course I was going to have more trouble with it than I would if I played it now that I'm in my 20s. (That doesn't mean the game is a complete pushover, though!)

August 15, 2008 11:37 AM

OH said:

Braaaaaaaaid.

August 15, 2008 12:48 PM

About Amber Ahlborn

Artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

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Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

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