8/28/2004
Metal Arms
I recently picked up a copy of Metal Arms: Glitch in the system for the PS2. I had seen a special on TV over the holidays about the making of the game. It looked like a pretty funny concept (robot from the scrap heap helps other robots). Plus the graphics looked pretty so I put it in the back of my mind to check it out. After seeing the price was $49.95, I decided to wait and get it used or on sale.
Well that day came this week and I was able to pick it up on sale for $19 and I thought that was a pretty good deal. Until I tried to play it last night. On the training level, right there in the very beginning, there was a jump that I could not make. And to top it off, half the time I jumped I fell into this pit that caused my character to die.
I could not believe it. Killing the player on the first level? Having a huge jump that was difficult to do? Even though it had little helper robots there to "show" you how to do stuff, they were so far ahead it was next to impossible to see what and how they were doing. I fell off of those damn cliff/pillar things so many times I was furious and disgusted. I was planning on taking the game back today (or reselling it), but I managed to finally make the jump.
This whole time (in addition to cursing the game, the people who made it, and anyone else that came to mind) I kept thinking "Why doesn't the game detect that I'm having trouble?" This is the same thought I had in GTA:Vice City.
Most games these days keep track of all kinds of statistics. Shots fired, hits, misses, damage, times, etc. Why can't they keep track of things like "The player seems to die a lot at this exact point when they are jumping" If it could see those situations, say you've died 10 times in the last 2 minutes, it could/should do something to try and help the player out. Something like present a help box, or perhaps even *gasp* decrease the difficulty of the task that is being performed.
I can hear it now: "But I like my games to be challenging! That's the whole point of a game, to replay it!" If you are thinking anything like that, then just go ahead and move on and stop reading this page.
What a lot of these hard core gamers tend to forget is that some of us don't want to dedicate 80 hours a week to making it through 1 room in a game. I have better things to do with my time, and when I sit down to play a game its to have fun, not spend 2 hours doing the same repetitive task over and over and over with no (or minimal) reward in the end. I quit playing Vice City after the 100th time I had to run the same street race with out even coming close to winning. To me, the game should have, at a minimum, started slowly ratcheting down the AI to allow me to at least get closer to winning.
I'm not saying it should drop the difficulty down to 0, but take it from 99% hard down to 90% hard. That would let me the player get a little bit further. Who knows, maybe I'm only stuck in that one area and as soon as I get out of it the difficulty can go back up to 99% and everyone would be happy. I know I would be. Even a little bit of progress is a enough to keep me playing a game (i.e. Monkey Island). And I would rather be playing a game and being happy rather than getting stuck half way through and having to go look up cheat codes just so I can finish a level.
*sigh*
Well that day came this week and I was able to pick it up on sale for $19 and I thought that was a pretty good deal. Until I tried to play it last night. On the training level, right there in the very beginning, there was a jump that I could not make. And to top it off, half the time I jumped I fell into this pit that caused my character to die.
I could not believe it. Killing the player on the first level? Having a huge jump that was difficult to do? Even though it had little helper robots there to "show" you how to do stuff, they were so far ahead it was next to impossible to see what and how they were doing. I fell off of those damn cliff/pillar things so many times I was furious and disgusted. I was planning on taking the game back today (or reselling it), but I managed to finally make the jump.
This whole time (in addition to cursing the game, the people who made it, and anyone else that came to mind) I kept thinking "Why doesn't the game detect that I'm having trouble?" This is the same thought I had in GTA:Vice City.
Most games these days keep track of all kinds of statistics. Shots fired, hits, misses, damage, times, etc. Why can't they keep track of things like "The player seems to die a lot at this exact point when they are jumping" If it could see those situations, say you've died 10 times in the last 2 minutes, it could/should do something to try and help the player out. Something like present a help box, or perhaps even *gasp* decrease the difficulty of the task that is being performed.
I can hear it now: "But I like my games to be challenging! That's the whole point of a game, to replay it!" If you are thinking anything like that, then just go ahead and move on and stop reading this page.
What a lot of these hard core gamers tend to forget is that some of us don't want to dedicate 80 hours a week to making it through 1 room in a game. I have better things to do with my time, and when I sit down to play a game its to have fun, not spend 2 hours doing the same repetitive task over and over and over with no (or minimal) reward in the end. I quit playing Vice City after the 100th time I had to run the same street race with out even coming close to winning. To me, the game should have, at a minimum, started slowly ratcheting down the AI to allow me to at least get closer to winning.
I'm not saying it should drop the difficulty down to 0, but take it from 99% hard down to 90% hard. That would let me the player get a little bit further. Who knows, maybe I'm only stuck in that one area and as soon as I get out of it the difficulty can go back up to 99% and everyone would be happy. I know I would be. Even a little bit of progress is a enough to keep me playing a game (i.e. Monkey Island). And I would rather be playing a game and being happy rather than getting stuck half way through and having to go look up cheat codes just so I can finish a level.
*sigh*
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