Kids these days are dumb and lazy back in my day we had to walk uphill in snow with no boots to solve a puzzle and if you couldn’t figure it out you had to call a 1-800 number.
Or check the back of the CD case so you can contact Merryl
Streep?
I wish!
ahem… 1-900 number. that shit wasn’t free! (or 1-976 number?)
Yellow paint on the ladders too
As stupid as the whole yellow/white paint on ladders and climbables is, this has as much to do with graphics as it does difficulty.
Back in the day, if an object existed in a scene it was probably put there for a purpose, and you could do something with it.
As games strived for more and more “realism” though, this means scenes get filled up with cluttered objects (because real life is cluttered) and the colours get more muted with less contrast, both of which make it more difficult to distinguish scene elements.
Is that broken window there just for the atmosphere, or is it a broken window I can climb through?
Is that valve lever something I can turn, or is it just decorative?
The modern games that don’t try for realistic graphics also don’t tend to need the silly paint, regardless of how hand-holdy they’re trying to be.
Eh, games just used to have terrible level design. Literal mazes for levels, main path going through tiny crevices somewhere underwater, random vents, behind seemingly indestructible/immovable foliage, with buttons that trigger who knows what somewhere on the opposite side of the map. Games just can’t get away with it anymore, can’t make player stuck for weeks when they have literal hundreds of games still waiting to be played.
That’s also a factor, can’t deny. Maps were intentionally more esoteric, or perhaps sometimes accidentally more esoteric because we hadn’t got good at the art of level design yet.
But it was still a different problem. Back then you were getting stuck because the switch was in such an illogical place you’d never look there, whereas now you’d be getting stuck because the switch blends in so well with all the other scenery you can walk right past it 5 times and not notice it unless it glimmers at you.
The issue isn’t that they tried to signpost, it’s that they do it in the laziest way possible. You can consider how to handle it in a lore friendly way in your world, but they don’t.
For example, go play Dark Souls. You’ll almost never get lost, because the path is subtly marked. They use lights/fires to do this though, not yellow paint. Another option is to make a surface look worn down and used if it’s meant to be interacted with. A smart thing for doors is just don’t include handles for doors that are static (ideally, make it look like they broke off, but not required).
Good sign posting you don’t notice. It takes more effort though. It’s also not something the executives will understand. They’ll tell you you need yellow paint so players can’t get lost and put the game down, but this leads down the path of just making brain dead games.
Helldiver-level security.
“I can’t read this, there’s no arrows!”
Fine with me TBH, I kinda hate doing puzzles in games. Half the time I’m looking something up the UI was doing unexpected anyway. Though IDK how vital these kinds of puzzles are to the Resident Evil experience, for some games the puzzles are pretty much half of the gameplay and if I was into that kind of game I’d hate it if the core gameplay got dumbed down this much.
Fine with me TBH, I kinda hate doing puzzles in games
Big same. They tend to require the kind of spatial awareness and working memory that my ADHD brain will absolutely not do well.
It really sucks that RPGs, otherwise my favorite genre, so often contain mandatory puzzles. It’s made me give up on literally dozens of otherwise good to great games.
If you don’t like the puzzles, don’t feel bad about using a walk through to get through them. They aren’t why you’re playing the game, so you’re not ruining anyone’s fun.
You might want to avoid The Witness.
It does have at least one puzzle.
if you don’t like puzzles, i highly do not recommend any of the resident evil games to you. almost all of them are pretty puzzle heavy.
Neat. I was already not playing them because I don’t like horror, either.
The puzzles are a major part of RE games. That’s fine to not like puzzles, but you shouldn’t play a puzzle game if you don’t like puzzles. RE games are (or at least were, idk if they still are) horror themed puzzle games.
This reminds me of a joke about internet safety.
Don’t be fooled. They wouldn’t make it 3944.
The code is 4493. No one would guess that.
taps forehead
Splinter Cell puzzles be like:
4993
Hell is Us is promising a return to puzzles without handholding. I haven’t played enough of it to say for certain, but I think that’s true.
Someone (or someone’s parent) was born in March 1944
Reminds Skyrim
