OK, so for my first rant, I decided to choose a game that everyone seems to like. Well, at least the people who have played it liked it. Anyway, I fell into this hype and had to try it out. So what was my first thought? ADORABLE. I was lovin' it. The sack boys were adorable and I loved the controls and the level design. I also loved the content online, there are some really awesome users out there creating levels. Unfortunately I soon ran into one of my biggest pet peeves in modern gaming. Limited Lives.
I know what you may be thinking. "Limited Lives? This guy is a bit of a pus." My response: naw. In this day and age, something like limited lives should be an option for the hardcore crowd, not the default so that everyone has to suffer. Especially for a game like LBP which was aiming for a mixture of Hardcore and casual gamers. (yes, Hardcore is capitalized and casual is not). Why must I replay parts of games that I've already passed, just to get back to the area that I'm having trouble with? This game was going great at first. It has periodic checkpoints so if you die you don't go back very far, which was nice. UNTIL I FOUND OUT ABOUT THE LIMITED LIVES FOR EVERY CHECKPOINT. So now I get to the first challenging part of the game and what happens? I die a few times, but no worries, I just spawn back at this nearby checkpoint. Oh wait, I just died a couple more times and I have to start the WHOLE LEVEL OVER. Some of these levels are really long, and like I've said, most of it is a cake walk. So now, I have to traverse this whole level over again just to get stuck at the same spot? Why? Why is this practice still around today? If I've passed a certain part of a game, Why should I ever have to do it again? The game knows I've done it, so why do I need to prove it again? Just let me keep trying the part that I'm stuck at! If I'm just stuck at the tunnels of fire, why do I need to go back and jump on the buffaloes again?
What if the real world was like this? If you fail to graduate your senior year do they send you back to kindergarten? naw! You've already learned that crap! That would be ridiculous!
Like I said, I'm sure there are people who like this whole idea and see it as a challenge. That's why it should be an option. I don't see it as a challenge. How is doing something that I know I can do over and over again a challenge? It's just tedious busy work! So many games do this and it pisses me the hell off. Wait till I tear into GTA 4 and the way it's missions work.
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haha I would totally hate that. I haven't played a game that had limited lives and the backwards checkpoint thing, but man I would get tired of redoing really tough puzzles in Prince of Persia games because of the retarded checkpoint rule.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I hate it when a game has limited lives and few checkpoints. It's not challenging its just annoying.
ReplyDeleteLimited lives is something that is really different from the way the game industry is treating death now a days. Halo has the checkpoint system. WoW you take a little damage to your armor, but little more than that. And in the biggest "fuck you" to real world death, Bioshock had those chambers that would spawn you scott free if you died. This happy go lucky attitude seems to have been through a bad break up and is feeling particularly spiteful in LBP. But I don't know. LBP seems to want to be different from the start. So, maybe this is their way of separating themselves from the rest of the crowd. Annoyingly, which is unacceptable. Maybe they could have just made it better. It's easy to to see a good game when everything around is shit.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. I believe in limited lives. The point of a game is not only to be challenging, but you must also invest time in them. I mean, if you were good enough, you could pass those tough spots with the number of lives you are given. If you are not good enough to pass that spot the first round of lives, then you obviously need to invest more time into the level, and therefore need to start the whole level over again.
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