Friday, July 29, 2011

What makes a game worth playing?

Hi everyone! This is something I've been thinking about lately, and thought I'd write about here.

While playing Rule of Rose this week, there were many times where I was outright offended by how sluggish and annoying the gameplay can get at its worst. You play as a young girl who runs slowly, attacks slowly and with little power, turns around slow as a freaking battleship, and who starts limping like a cripple when she gets low on health. Now, there isn't that much combat in this game compared to many other survival horror titles, like Silent Hill or Resident Evil (Which is less survival horror and more third-person shooter anyway), but the combat you have to do is quite bad. Sure, it feels exciting to beat down a mischievous imp and see him squirm and die in a puddle of his own blood, but the excitement swiftly gives way to annoyance when you realise that every enemy you encounter will be a struggle to defeat, and the game usually throws groups of any number between 5 to 10 enemies at you at a time.

On second thought, let's NOT go this way.


So you run, you run as fast as your scrawny little girly legs can carry you, and hope that the enemies won't catch up. Fortunately, most enemies are fairly slow, so you should be fine in most cases. But then there are times when you must fight, such as boss battles or otherwise inescapable encounters. And that's when things get really annoying. So annoying in fact, that I more than once have considered quitting the game and just watching a playthrough on Youtube or something.

And yet I don't want to. No matter how annoying the gameplay gets, I feel compelled to keep playing. I want to see what happens to the poor, unlucky girl, trapped in a vicious cycle of bullying and loneliness. I want to hear the hauntingly beautiful and sad music accompanying the poor girl's fate. I want to see the end of her story, and know that I made it there myself. That's why I don't quit. If the game didn't have this engaging story, beautiful music or tangible atmosphere, I probably would have quit long ago and returned to beating raiders to death in Hokuto Musou (Which is also quite a delectable pastime, make no mistake), but because the game manages to captivate so strongly with its story and atmosphere, I can forgive the bad gameplay. Almost.

Well, I think I'm nearing the end of the game now, so maybe soon I can be free of it. I like it, but I don't think I'd want to play it again any time soon. As good as the story is, once is enough for a game with such poor gameplay.

What about you guys? Is there a certain game that you hate to play but love to experience? One where the story, or maybe the music, makes up for lacking gameplay?

Until next time, have a good day!

13 comments:

  1. I want a story that will keep me going and gameplay that will offer challenge without obstructing the narrative. Choices and Consequences are very welcome and bring the world to file, but i understand that the production cost goes very high for content that will not be seen by all players.

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  2. Story is always infinitely more important then gameplay to me. My favourite game, Dark Corners of the Earth is horrible to actually play. Slow movements, crappy weapons, overpowering enemies and your performance gets worse as you get more hurt due to realistic damage breaking your bones.

    But I'll always make the apologetic that it makes sense you're so screwed, your character's not a fighter, of course guns suck, its 1920, and of course the enemies are insane, things in the Cthulhu mythos should be. The great development of the story makes any of that stuff worth it and it all ties together for a very hard, but satisfying nightmare of a game.

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  3. Engaging story and good gameplay are paramount for me, anything after that is an added bonus. Followed!

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  4. Sluggish and annoying gameplay is sort of a feature for survival horror games. Also, my tastes are pretty much inline with Ting's.

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  5. While i agree that gameplay is a major factor considering whether a game is worth playing or not, sometimes you just dont know why, but a game simply catches you. Hard to explain actually.

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  6. what system ist hey game for i wonder?

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  7. Seems like survival horror games really try and put you in the characters shoes, limping around terrified. I think that has a lot to do with Amnesia: Dark Decent's success.

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  8. @Ken

    It's for PS2. It's pretty rare, though, so it might be hard to find.

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  9. Really don't like playing games for now. Actual solo gameplay hasn't been fun for a very long time. Most everything in a game is a chore, its like a job. Go do this, and get that, and then report back and do this. Well how about f' you, I want at least minimum wage to do all that.

    Love competitive collaborative online play, but find that too time consuming. I could, and have, literally play 20 hours a day. So much fun. Also, these games that are based on split second timing suffer horribly from lag. Maybe when we're on web 4.o everything will be better?

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  10. I like crunch or plot. Some games that have a lot of fun options and just dress it up with the barest amount of plot are fine as long as they do their best to make it fun. A lot of Tactics games do this for me. On the flipside a game where there isn't much to it needs the plot, I'm one of the few people fine with games that are more interactive movies with a few painful segments of game play. It only gets really bad when there is long stretches of that game play.

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  11. I want a rewarding game experience, and to have a serious story.

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