Feeling alienated by modern games

[Spuuky]

I don't really see any problems with games that hold your hand for a bit in the beginning. I'm not sure which games you guys are talking about, but most games I play stop holding my hand after not very long. The majority (probably 95% or more) of the time I spend on my games are not handheld, even if they did do that in the beginning.

Ni no Kuni held my hand for literally half the game. Maybe more.

[Mirage]

Never played that game.

Also, what exactly do you guys mean by holding your hands? Is it just having a "this is your next destination" marker on a minimap all the time, or is it more? Cause that's not really something that's new. It's been around for idk, almost two decades now.

[Spuuky]

Never played that game.

Also, what exactly do you guys mean by holding your hands? Is it just having a "this is your next destination" marker on a minimap all the time, or is it more? Cause that's not really something that's new. It's been around for idk, almost two decades now.

This may seem like a dumb answer, but playing Ni no Kuni would really explain it best. It's the hand-holdiest game ever made.

Next destination marker is one way in which it happens, yes - not the most important, and not the most new, but I still wish it didn't exist. Little tutorials with lots of explanation for basic game mechanics is another way. Removal of all consequence for actions is one. Excessive literal explanation of events and/or descriptions of what to do is one. Yet another is a very slow, tedious unrolling of abilities/features/etc in a game - like if in a platformer you started with only "jump" but then slowly were allowed to use the rest of the game mechanics like sliding, running, whatever.

Basically, it's better for some subset of players (including me) if exploration is allowed to exist. Not just literal exploration of an area (that helps, though) - but exploration of the game mechanics, even to some degree exploration of controls. I don't want to be told what to do, I want to be released to do what I want.

[Ayen]

Basically anything that explains a bunch of stuff that should be self-explanatory to the player.

[black orb]

>>> As long we still have new 2D fighting games and JRPGs, I guess will keep wasting my money on games until I die..

[Mirage]

Yeah ok. In that case, nope, can't say I have played a lot of very hand-holdy games in a very long time.

[Dr Unne]

I'm starting to develop a love for the indies as well. Spelunky and Game Dev Tycoon was the most fun I had playing games this year. I'll probably start looking more into those in the future.

Yes. Play indie games! I lost interest in games for a good 10 years, and indie games are what got me back into them. Nowadays I find that $60 AAA-release games are often not appealing to me, seeming more style than substance, while a $5 indie game can keep me having fun for months.

A lot of people who grew up with Atari/NES era games got old, learned to program, and started making their own games that harken back to those days, with modern touches. We are in a golden age today with indie PC games.

I can't plug Humble Bundle enough: https://www.humblebundle.com/ It's pay-what-you-want for mostly indie games, often cross-platform and DRM-free. Wikipedia has a list of all the games in all of the past bundles, that's a great place to start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Indie_Bundle

[Polnareff]

I'm right there with the people who mentioned the hand-holding trout. It's downright insulting. The games with mandatory tutorials need to die in a fire. Especially if the tutorials are things like "press B to jump" which actually does happen quite a lot (yes, in Ni no Kuni as well). What's worse is when they take up any more than 2 hours of your time. The Fullmetal Alchemist game for PS2 did this and it was a pain in the ass. By the time the hand holding was over, the game had already been 1/4 of the way over.

These new games also have the side effect of making people worse at older games in general. This is why I love games like Street Fighter. You can play SFIV for a good amount of time and STILL be able to play the older games decently. You can't really do this when you play the new Nintendo stuff for a while, for example, and then go back and play the old trout. You're gonna suck. There's no real tutorial given for games like SF and Demon's Souls. But they're still fun to play. That is the point of games, to let you figure out how trout works. But most developers have lost their way with how to do that. If a game can't do that, it automatically fails. Games are supposed to be compelling. To make you WANT to learn how to do things.

Now on the subject of newer games not being as captivating, I can agree with that. Most games this gen are extraordinarily hard for me to finish, because a lot of them lose their luster after about 5 or 6 hours. It also sucks that there are mostly shooters this gen. I have no idea where people are getting that there is more variety now, unless they're talking only about indie games. Even there it's mostly platformers. Handheld gaming is where it's at for me really. That's where the fun and variety is now.

[Cosmiccandy]

Hand holding doesn't bother me much because I can usually tolerate it for the beginning and occasionally I am thick about a particular mechanic and its actually useful to me. What does bother me is when deeper and more interesting gameplay mechanics are simplified to the point where it actually negatively impacts the gameplay and makes it comparatively shallow.

By far, the most egregious case of this bulltrout is everything that the FPS genre has become. Remember playing Doom, or Duke Nukem 3D? Remember non-linear level design? Powerful guns with limited ammunition? Health as a resource because it didn't smurfing regenerate? Boss fights? It wouldn't bother me so much if games like this were still around in addition to stuff like Call Of Duty, but it isnt. It's just gone, its disappeared. FPS went from one of my favourite gaming genres to my least because everything I took for granted about the genre is gone. What has replaced it is a linear corridor with action setpieces, littered with nearly interchangle guns with ammunition as a non-issue. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Gaming hasn't alienated me, but FPS and to a lesser extent survival horror certainly has.

[Polnareff]

Bringing up Doom reminded me of something else I can't stand: when games focus on story instead of gameplay. Doom 1 and 2 was pure gun-em-down gameplay all the way through. Didn't need a story. But then Doom 3 comes along and craps all over that by trying to have a "story." As a result, you have to watch cutscenes every five seconds and you shoot maybe a total of 100 monsters throughout the game. A bit hyperbolic, but accurate. Duke Nukem Forever was kind of like that too, but replace most of the story with driving around in inane RC-car segments.

[Mirage]

Would you guys be satisfied if the games asked you if you wanted to play through the tutorial first? Metal Gear Rising did that, so did Zone of the Enders.

[Ayen]

I'm right there with the people who mentioned the hand-holding trout. It's downright insulting. The games with mandatory tutorials need to die in a fire. Especially if the tutorials are things like "press B to jump" which actually does happen quite a lot (yes, in Ni no Kuni as well). What's worse is when they take up any more than 2 hours of your time. The Fullmetal Alchemist game for PS2 did this and it was a pain in the ass. By the time the hand holding was over, the game had already been 1/4 of the way over.

These new games also have the side effect of making people worse at older games in general. This is why I love games like Street Fighter. You can play SFIV for a good amount of time and STILL be able to play the older games decently. You can't really do this when you play the new Nintendo stuff for a while, for example, and then go back and play the old trout. You're gonna suck. There's no real tutorial given for games like SF and Demon's Souls. But they're still fun to play. That is the point of games, to let you figure out how trout works. But most developers have lost their way with how to do that. If a game can't do that, it automatically fails. Games are supposed to be compelling. To make you WANT to learn how to do things.

Now on the subject of newer games not being as captivating, I can agree with that. Most games this gen are extraordinarily hard for me to finish, because a lot of them lose their luster after about 5 or 6 hours. It also sucks that there are mostly shooters this gen. I have no idea where people are getting that there is more variety now, unless they're talking only about indie games. Even there it's mostly platformers. Handheld gaming is where it's at for me really. That's where the fun and variety is now.

I hear that, I went back to the first Devil May Cry game after playing Darksiders. That was an interesting week. Devil May Cry is very unforgiving of game rust.

[Spuuky]

Would you guys be satisfied if the games asked you if you wanted to play through the tutorial first? Metal Gear Rising did that, so did Zone of the Enders.

If having a tutorial is the only problem? Then yes, making it optional helps. It's certainly an upgrade over a mandatory one. Although optimally, the game should be designed in such a way that discovery of the mechanics is organic and possible without a tutorial.

The first Super Mario Brothers game sets you up to jump by putting something in the air in front of you. Obviously you're going to press your buttons and see if you can get it somehow. It doesn't have a "press A to jump!" picture with a little image of Mario jumping.

[Mirage]

Even super mario brothers probably explained the controls in the manual. With manuals becoming more and more rare, it's only natural that it is implemented in the games themselves.

[Ayen]

Even super mario brothers probably explained the controls in the manual. With manuals becoming more and more rare, it's only natural that it is implemented in the games themselves.

They are? Every new game I gotten has all had manuals.