How do you feel about puzzles in games?

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Hey there guys. I've been thinking on this for a while now and I'd like to share my thoughts with you. Keep in mind this is all opinion on my part and I'd just like to share a discussion.

How do you guys feel about puzzles in non puzzle-centric games? I'm not talking about exploration centred puzzles (where is the pathway that will let me scale this mountain?) or combat-based puzzles (what flow of attacks and abilities will let me defeat this enemy?). I'm talking about the puzzles where otherwise you'll be dungeon-crawling, exploring or fighting your way through a level and suddenly you will be locked in a room with no way to progress unless you solve a puzzle involving blocks and switches or similar.

Personally I'm a huge fan of focus and flow in game design. Some of my all-time favourites include Shadow of the Colossus, Dustforce and Dark Souls. These are games with a strong sense of focus on what mechanics they mean to base the game around and stick with it throughout the entire experience. They are also quite minimalist in essence, and personally I've found that is what I enjoy when it comes to gaming.

I'll give you an example of the opposite. I was playing Skyrim for the first time a while back. I'd been going at it for about 40 hours or so and was nearly finished the main quest line. Finally it came to the epic finale when you storm that keep to be transported to Sovngarde. I'm charging up these icy steps, killing draugr and dragons left and right, epic music playing, a real sense of urgency and purpose to the game at this point. I was having great fun, I had a sense of momentum and power. I stormed into the keep, blade and shield in hand, wondering what horrors would await me... And then they locked me in a little room until I could figure out another turning picture puzzle. All power and momentum I felt from the experience just drained away into frustration. It's not that the puzzle was difficult, it's the fact it was there in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I love puzzle games when the game is built around it and has a clear focus. Portal is a fantastic example. Clever, intuitive and interesting. But a lot of game designers these days seem to feel the need to force these non-organic puzzles into games where they aren't needed. God of War is another good example of what I'm talking about. You're meant to be this unstoppable force of brutality and death, killing your foes in a miasma of gore, destroying enemies hundreds of times larger than you with your cunning wit... but sometimes Kratos gets stuck because he needs to figure out how to push a stone block onto a switch and sometimes the block is trapped under another block and he needs to pull this one over so he can climb up and get the other one off. It just makes no sense to me in terms of design or theme, and I've just stopped playing a lot of games because they keep doing this and I'm not having fun. I find Zelda games do this to me too, where all the joy of the exploration and fighting my way through baddies in a big creepy dungeon is just drained away by the monotony of figuring out where the water needs to go or how I transport this thing across this chasm.

A lot of people are going to disagree with me I'm sure. Puzzles do add a sense of variety to games (something I'm not particularly sold on as a concept myself) so you aren't just slashing your way through goons for the whole game, but at what cost to the flow and momentum of the design?

Anyway, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this. How do you feel about puzzles in games where they are non-centric to the design?

 

[shrekfan246]

God of War is really all I need to say for this.

One of the things that puts me off of the games the most is how rapidly the puzzle sections cause the pacing of the game to become a massive train-wreck. III gets a small number of bonus points for speeding it all up a little bit, but the fact that they're still there is just draining. Same thing with the original four Devil May Cry games.

I do feel like the greater context of the game will change how I view it, though. For instance, I don't mind the puzzle-solving in Zelda games because I feel like the puzzles and exploration are a greater part of the game than fighting enemies. In fact, I generally just start running past enemies if I'm not trying to collect Rupees or items.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I like them because they offer a bit of change in pace and variety to the gameplay, I'll be honest if DMC or GoW was just monster clobbering for 10+ hours straight I'd be bored stiff a couple hours in.

But that doesn't mean puzzles get a free pass, mostly devs get it horribly wrong by just not making an effort to design puzzles in keeping with the theme or worse yet rehashing old shit we did millions of times before, also very possibly put them in the wrong places where you expect the action to keep heating up and suddenly you grind to a halt with the next puzzle... don't fucking do that.
Devs shouldn't be afraid to mold the concept to their game because the most off putting puzzles are ones where you get locked in a damn room doing something completely arbitrary in order to progress, hell monster and platforming rooms are just as bad, "beat this room" is horrible old game design that should be weeded out, spread things out in a way they make sense for your world, you don't need puzzle rooms for something to be figured out you can mix all that into the environment.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

I like puzzle sections in my games. I like the variety in gameplay and the fact that I'm being tested on more than just my reflexes.

I loved all the puzzles in Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call, I probably never would have finished God of War if it was nothing but hacking and slashing - and I'm probably one of the few who genuinely liked the hacking mini-game in the original Bioshock.

 

[veloper]

If a game is going to have puzzles, then the puzzles should be clever and original and comprise of a significant portion of the game. Else it's a waste of effort that will only detract from the game. The game should then be advertised as such.

A gamer who enjoys shooting at pixels doesn't necessarily enjoy solving puzzles, while an experienced puzzle gamer will break the simple puzzles in an action with little effort and doesn't get any satisfaction out of it either.
Better is a game that has equal amounts of two different gameplay elements and is fairly challenging in both ways.

 

[SonofSpermcube]

Pretty much any puzzle which works via the same mechanics as the rest of the game is gonna be okay with me. Portal and Shadow of the Colossus are the obvious examples, but you've also got the hunt for Merasmus in Team Fortress 2's 2012 Halloween map, and most JRPGs (which are all "go there and press button" anyway), and Zelda-type games. When the puzzle is solved with a weapon you can use for other things, it never seems out of place.

If Skyrim made me play whack-a-draugr to open a door, it would be a lot easier to live with.

 

[Guffe]

I don't mind them
The only games I can actually think of I've played that has this sort of "quick change in momentum" are the Metroid Prime games. And even them I remember very little of. But I overall like puzzles so I can't say I really mind them that I can think of, even in fast flowing games.

 

[Branindain]

I enjoy puzzle sections in games, in theory. However, in the modern gaming world where every game must be completable by a blind 6-year-old lest we scare off $60 in precious revenue, no-one is going to put a challenging puzzle in a game because you can't scale down the difficulty of a puzzle like you can with a fight (although having said that, I seem to recall a Silent Hill game that had harder puzzles on harder difficulty settings. Do I?). This means puzzles devolve into padding, and I already can't finish the games I like for wont of time. So may as well leave them out.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I like them when they come across as being a problem that needs to be solved using your brain, as opposed to feeling like it's an actual puzzle. The Half-life games did a good job of this, of presenting parts where it felt like you simply had to think of a solution, as opposed to "you need to make the blocks line up with each other".

But I do like them, if I want to play a game that's just non-stop action with zero puzzles, that's what games like Painkiller, Serious Sam, and Bulletstorm are for.

 

[krazykidd]

I like them. If you think about it,any villain would want to prevent the hero from progressing. Thus puttin a puzzle in his path makes a lot of sense. What would stop an average joe from reaching the top of whatever tower of doom with an ancient power capable of destroying realms, if there is nothing stoping him? It's more of a sense of , a true hero needs brains and brawn. This is why it makes sense to have puzzles. Bonus points go to games where you see corpses of other adventurers who attempted to get through a place and failed . Kind of like in Castlevania Lord of shadows. So in the context is makes perfect sense.

Metroid is a game where things make a little less sense. Having doors only samus can open make little sense, how does everyone else proceed in their own ship/planet/whatever?

As for me i like puzzles, but i think most puzzles are lazy and uninspired. But i will aknowledge that creating puzzles are kind o hard to do.

 

[Paintedbird]

I like puzzle games but like you i found those in skyrim a bit random and in my opinion a bit repeatative. I didn't feel they added to the game play because of the randomness in which they were placed.
The first time i got to one i had no idea the answer was on the claw at all.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I love them in Zelda and the likes of Metroid, Golden Sun, the Mario RPGs, God of War, etc. Obviously, once in a while I get stumped and frustrated, but I like having to think really hard once in a while.