I think TP, had poor level design. They were large, they had a lot of little neat aspects and features, but they were more frustrating than anything for me. I always felt like I was exploring the large expanses over and over in order to do one inane thing that I forgot to do earlier. I respect the "map" and "compass" items, but at the same time I think they just need to be a given. I don't like wandering around lost, and my sense of direction in game is not nearly as it is in real life. I can understand not granting the over world map to gamers without personal discovery, it makes sense on several levels (reducing overwhelming information at the start, making the nav-able world feel more mysterious and ripe for exploration), but the mechanical, objective-oriented aspects of the game, the dungeons and temples, let me know where I'm going; throw me a bone. Or give me some tool tips (name, short description) when I bring up my map so that circular room with small doorway on the right is easy to recognize as being different from circular room with small doorway on the left. Metroid Prime did this imperfectly (with names, at least) I was grateful for it.
Honestly, all the jar and block moving in TP really pissed me off. If you were to retell the story of the Twilight Princess to your friends, you wouldn't have countless reports that sounded similar to "and then Link slid the ice block up, down, left. Then he took the second ice block and moved it left, up. Then he took the third....? That?s a really boring story, and, in my opinion a terrible way to introduce puzzles.
I like to know that I'm to solve a puzzle, but the whole "hey, here's something ridiculous in a world where something like this wouldn't logically exist" is not the way to do it.
I like to bring up Prince Of Persia in these situations, and I think its fair to do here. The most recent port, Rival Swords, was a better reason to have a Wii than TP turned out to be. Though the story was equally weak, and the mechanics sometimes buggy, it made use of puzzles that are interesting and laid within the environments in a realistic way (for the most part). Controlling the prince through his acrobatics is a lot more exciting and fun that moving blocks around, and I believe it can be equally as challenging (and therefore rewarding). And, that?s right, you're not crazy: I just said a Prince of Persia port was better than Wii's flagship (port) game.
I agree with you, though, Russ, that similar game-play should be welcomed. People complain that this makes games boring. The games with the same mechanics aren't boring because they are a bad idea, they are boring because they have no substance beyond some stupid story about saving the world/princess/friend/lover/family member. I like that I can easily interface with my world the second I'm put into it.
Imagine having to learn how to interface with a new book every time you picked one up. I think this is where the GameCube controller really struck me as important. I shouldn't have to guess which buttons are important because then I'm not really playing the game for the first hour, but rather learning how to play it. That?s a waste of my time; I play enough games that I shouldn't have to do that. Most games aren't good enough that they should require me to do that.
I must say though, as far as Sci Fi books go: I just read Snow Crash a few weeks ago, and I'm quite glad that I grew up with a computer, got my degree in Psychology and English, and elected to take a number of religious courses (as well as being raised catholic--turned atheist about 10 years ago). I would have been lost otherwise.
