Hacker News Reader

Comment by vincnetas | Hacker News Reader

I have not seen any comment about the idea that you are being handholded through whole game without even needing to think about what to do next.

For me this is the biggest complaint about some games where instead of making a player think what to do and how to navigate game, player basically gets "click her" "go that way" "click that" "congrats you won"

so i think this is the parody aspect of this minesweeper.

Cant imagine current AAA games allowing player to be stuck for days trying to solve the problem like good old times of monkey island or leisure suit larry

View on HN

I tried it, and clicked in the corner as the first move instead of the hand-holding location. Revealed half the board, as that usually does, and also revealed that the simulation of a AAA game was imperfect. Because what AAA game is going to let you actually start playing the game right off the bat, without even so much as a single click on a "Skip the Tutorial" button?

(Answer: some. I'm struggling to recall which game does this, but there's definitely a game where if you solve the first level in 40 seconds or less — numbers might well be wrong, but it's something like that — then the game assumes you've played it before and quietly skips the tutorial without making a big deal about it. But all too few AAA games will do that.)

Not exactly what you're describing, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) had a training course at the start. The game suggested a difficulty level based on how fast you completed it.

They even used yellow markers, explicitly parodying the yellow paint they've been putting in AAAA games to show players where to go next or what crate to break.

Exactly. “Yellow spray paint” has become a derogatory term in the industry to talk about these patronizingly obvious visual cues devs add to 3D games these days to let them know where to go.

I think part of it has to do with reasonable software design principles around affordances and discoverability making their way to game dev. I think the relationship of user::app is completely different from that of player::game. When a user takes 2min to find the button that means the button should be easier to find. When a player takes 2min to find the chest, it could mean a lot of things but it doesn’t necessarily mean the chest needs to be easier to find.

That’s my morning subway take, at least.

There is a bunch of AAA parody: 17 loading screen logos, epic music without anything happening, deep dialogues over nothing, gameplay is as imperative as it gets, unskippable dialogues.

I did let the credits scene play out completely, because it completely parodies the large staff count, with large numbers of them being in positions like directors and producers. It's such a good parody.

I fondly remember getting so stuck in Day of the Tentacle or Grim Fandango not just for days but even giving up for weeks before coming back with fresh motivation! This is the sort of challenge that’s actually rewarding when you manage to solve it (unlike being held by the hand the entire game).

The Super Press Space To Win Adventure RPG parody was uploaded to NewGrounds in 2009 already (and later gave us the "dot dot dot" video).

It's been a growing problem for two decades now.

[0] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/495903

[1] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/558516, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2Z23SAFVA

> Cant imagine current AAA games allowing player to be stuck for days trying to solve the problem like good old times of monkey island or leisure suit larry

I've been thinking about it and I think the best gaming experiences I've had were the ones with the least hand-holding; or rather, where the hand-holding was best integrated truly and nearly invisibly into the environment.

Elden Ring, Outer Wilds, Fez, Animal Well, Rain World, Chants of Sennarr, Axiom Verge, Path of Achra, Caves of Qud, Disco Elysium, Noita. OG Minecraft before there were tutorials. I've been trying to find similar titles.

Turn off tutorial mode in the original Civilization. Play it. Every person I considered really smart in the early to mid nineties had a Civ addiction at some point. Because who doesn’t want to try to be God?

One of my friends played on hard mode to challenge himself. One played on easy to build a proto-Factorio without interruption. Both valid ways.

Ah civ 1. Been chasing that high ever since. I talked my parents into buying a 486sx “for school” but I made sure it met the min reqs for civ. I put that packard bell through so much.

486sx was for Doom. Civ1 could run on 286 if I remember correctly. With CGA.

Check out UFO 50. Piles of amazing games, mostly just the right length (no need for filler content in any one game when you're making 50 of them!), and almost entirely tutorial free.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a solid add to that list

Rimworld, of course. You'll keep discovering creative new ways for your colony to die for years.

I’ve been playing Valheim for 2 years and I’m still finding things you can do that i didn’t know about.

I thought it was part of the parody... It's one of the reasons I cannot play these modern games. So are just too linear. When I only have to follow the marker, it's ridiculous. I would love to have a list of games where there are no markers or at least you can disable it properly. No highlighting, no markers, no nothing... Does that exist?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com