Cheeseless said:
shrekfan246 said:
Yeah, uh... I'll see how simply I can put it.
What do I primarily do when I play League of Legends? Point and click on things. I point and click to move, I point and click to attack, I point and click to escape enemies, I point and click to fire skill shots or use support abilities.
What do I primarily do when I'm playing... hell, any first- or third-person shooter? Point and click on things. I point and click to aim and fire at enemies, I point and click to pick up ammo/collectibles (depending on the game), I point and click to advance dialogue.
What do I primarily do when I'm playing an RPG? Point and click on things. I point and click to attack enemies, I point and click to manage inventory, I point and click to choose dialogue options (depending on the game), and I point and click to use spells/abilities.
I've been playing a lot of Persona 4 Golden lately, and while I'm absolutely loving it so far, I'd like to ask how there's any more depth to the gameplay than in The Walking Dead? In P4G, most of the actual gameplay is either selecting answers to questions, running around locations examining things, or running around dungeons and getting into typical turn-based JRPG combat that involves - you guessed it - scrolling and clicking on things.
There's something I've been thinking about the past few days since I heard Arin (a.k.a. Egoraptor) mention it on Game Grumps: How many games out there are actually over something like 30 hours long without any padding? Bioshock, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Persona 4, Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher 2, Dark Souls, Darksiders II, Torchlight II, unlocking characters in Super Smash Bros., Skyrim, Fallout 3/New Vegas, hell, Batman: Arkham City. These are all games you could put countless hours into, but you know what? After about 8-10 hours, you've usually seen the extent of the 'new' things they're going to throw at you. This isn't always the case, but a lot of the time the gameplay and subsequent time played are artificially extended by various means - Travel time between locations, endless dungeon diving through similar-looking areas, fetch quests, even a lot of side quests are usually just inane drivel added in to lengthen the play-time you'll give the game. But this doesn't mean it has any more depth than a short, tight game like The Walking Dead.
They do have more depth. They have the same pointing and clicking that TWD does, but the fact is, poiting and clicking in those games makes the little man on the screen do different stuff: either through making him perform different actions or having a different significance from the point-and-click game's eternal "rub this on that to open door". Yahtzee sort of makes this point in his Amnesia review. Or maybe it's some other review, but the point (without any clicking) is that other games make your pointing and clicking a far more contextualized, adaptive, and purposeful deal.
Except
The Walking Dead does that as well. There's very little in the way of 'typical' logic and inventory puzzles that many,
many other Point&Click Adventure games are well-known for, and much more in the way of
Heavy Rain-style quick-time events. The actual pointing and clicking generally all has a specific purpose, and there are very few instances where you'll be randomly clicking around on everything because you can't figure out what inventory item you need to use on what door to make the game continue moving forward.
What's the depth in, say,
The Witcher 2? You have conversations with characters and it effects future events, much like
The Walking Dead. You pick up items while exploring, much like
The Walking Dead. You mash a button to kill an enemy, much like
The Walking Dead. The only way I'm simplifying it here is that in
The Witcher 2, you might need to click one or two other buttons to parry or put up a damage-absorbing shield. Wow, I'm blown away by all of the depth
that adds.
Does
The Walking Dead have the most engaging gameplay on the market? No, of course not. Quick-Time Events and Point&Click Adventuring surely aren't for everybody. But that's not the point. Anything they could've done to change the gameplay would've just ended up padding out the game and taking away from the tightly knit narrative they were trying to get across. As Zhukov said, being able to equip Lee with a +2 Axe of Amputation to increase the chances of killing Level 4 Walkers would not have made the game
better.
And just to use some anecdotal evidence here, I generally don't like point&click adventure games. I find them frustrating and boring because the "logic" puzzles are usually anything but logical and the pacing is often slower than
Final Fantasy XIII. But I loved
The Walking Dead. Partly because the quick-time events added a sense of tension that normal FPS or RPG gameplay just wouldn't have, and partly because the game didn't overstay its welcome. The pacing and writing were fantastic, and more than enough to make up for the fact that all I was doing when I had control was meandering around clicking on things and listening to Lee's reactions.
.
