Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Hindsight's a spoiler

Or is it ...

The sort of PC games I'm most into take a long time to play through. They've usually got an epic storyline as their foundation, with the player being rewarded for progression by seeing a little more of the storyline. Trouble is though, it can be incredibly tedious playing through some of the missions or stages in these games. Which is where walkthroughs and Frequently Asked Questions come in. If you're stuck on a stage, then the FAQ or Walkthrough should have the answer.

However ... Once you have the walkthrough, it's far, far too tempting to peek ahead to see what's going to happen. Which can spoil the rest of the game somewhat. I've had a good long look at the walkthrough for Baldur's Gate 2 and had a peek at the walkthrough for a little known one called Star Trek Away Team the other night. Now I've had a peek at that latest one, suddenly I'm not too bothered about playing the game any more !

This is where the question of whether it's a good thing or a bad thing to have a peek at what's coming ahead. Having a look at the last couple of pages in the book is another example. You know what's going to happen (kinda!) without having the slog through 500 pages to get there. It's similar with a game, on the story games progress can suddenly hit a brick wall as you start banging your head against the literally impossible situation the developers have put you in.

Sooo ... I know what happens in Baldur's Gate 2 and Star Trek Away Team, without having the huge long slog through the game with lots of use of the Immortality Clause* to reload from before you started the banging on brick wall thing. A book is a different case, they may be long but you know exactly how long they're going to be.

One of the selling points of games is the quality of Replayability. In a role play type game, there's often many different ways to play through to the end point. It's a rare game though that has true variation in how you get to that end. Warcraft has this now, as you can skip half the content as your character matures. But there is that long slog to get there.

I like the story games :-) But it's often just as much fun to read a book and not nearly so frustrating. Time for a bit more of that. Choice - Grab a copy of the Star Wars Empire at War game, or watch The Empire Strikes Back off dvd. Easy ! I'll take the option that will avoid getting popcorn butter over my mouse :-)

*The Immortality Clause - most games have a save feature, which lets you preserve your progress. I call the ability to save & reload back to a point the immortality clause - if something inconvenient happens, like your favourite character developing extra holes, then you can invoke the Immortality Clause, take the game back a bit and get the character back :-)

2 comments:

  1. I like to be surprised. It's like reading a book: the temptation to read/look ahead is always there, but I fight it like the dickens!

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  2. Somehow, I can rarely resist ... I like to know if the characters survive :-) (some of the books I read can have a very high body count!)

    I don't think I'll have too much of a problem with The Next Book - I kinda already know how Around The World In Eighty Days will go, although this is my first reading of the Jules Verne original.

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