I’ve been trying to expand my videogame playing to different titles and different types of games, and while videogames have come a long way since I was a kid, I’m struck by how some basic gameplay mechanics remain unchanged to this day. Honestly, it’s ruining the experience for me.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell once observed that the key to a good game was that it should be easy to learn but hard to master. Of course, Bushnell coined this term, ahem, during the golden age of coin-operated arcade games in the 1970s. And he oversaw the creation of some of the first videogames, like Pong and Asteroids, that were by definition basic and thus easy to learn.
Things got more complicated, and quickly. My Intellivision home videogame console had what is arguably the first real-time strategy game, called Utopia. Later that decade, I spent hours upon hours frustrating myself trying to get further into Shadow of the Beast, a comically difficult game with no saves. And thanks to the fluid movement of early 3D shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM, we could suddenly run through virtual worlds, fending off enemies, finding secrets, and, eventually, competing with other people.
Pong and DOOM are both videogames, but given the technical improvements that occurred during the intervening 20 years, one might assume that’s the extent of the similarities. But both games share another trait: They are both easy to learn and hard to master. DOOM offers difficulty levels, which is interesting, but it also brought multiplayer gaming to the mainstream, amping up the challenge and, based on the gaming experiences of the 30+ years since then the engagement.
Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM are memorable for all the obvious reasons. Both were technical marvels, with Wolf3D firmly establishing the PC as a first-class gaming platform and DOOM, just one year later, adding new levels of realism and levels—worlds—that were bigger and more open in every dimension and not confined to corridors and small rooms with right angles and flat floors. But they also share some basic play mechanics. There were three episodes in each, initially, each consisting of several levels through which you would traverse in linear fashion. Each level ended with a door or elevator, or whatever. And each episode and game ended with a boss fight of some kind.
Both games also featured secret doors which, on a PC, you would try to find by running up against a wall and tapping the Space bar. Players would spend hours or even days running through levels they had previously emptied of enemies, tapping Space repeatedly as they bumped into whatever walls, hoping to find some secret door that would lead to a hidden area with goodies of whatever kind or even transport them to a secret level. A friend from the DOOM days used to imitate what it would look like to be the DOOM guy, as the player character was called, in real life, stiffly walking straight into a wall and then bouncing off, stepping sideways, and trying again. It was always amusing, and thinking back on this, I find that imitation to resemble Open AI’s Sam Altman now. You know. Stiff and not quite human.
Anyway, I’m not sure that these games were my first introduction to the key/door play mechanic, but that’s my memory. That is, in addition to having levels within episodes, these games had areas within each level. And to get from one level to another, you needed to find a key. In DOOM, these keys (really, keycards thanks to the sci-fi setting) were red, yellow, and blue. If you ran into, say, a door with lit-up red border around it, you would need the red key (keycard) to open it. If you didn’t have the key, you’d have to go find it.
I hated that. I still hate it. More to the point, I’m confused why this is still so common in games today.
I don’t play a lot of what we now call single player experiences in videogames. I typically stick to multiplayer. The reasons for this are many, but it boils down to some perfect match between the addictive nature of these matches and some ADHD-driven belief that next time, maybe, I’ll do even better. The sheer number of times I’ve plowed through the same multiplayer levels in whatever game I’m playing that year, again and again and again, is depressing to think about. But it’s also all I think about at times. Maybe next time I’ll do even better.
But, again, I’m trying to branch out. I have incredible collections of PC games in Steam, Epic Games, Xbox/Windows, GOG, and elsewhere, and I’ve purchased more new games in the past several months than I have since the Xbox 360 launched in late 2005. Many of these games have single player experiences or are literally only single player experiences. And one of my hopes is that I can separate, to some degree, from the quick-fix hit of a multiplayer match and enjoy some longer-form content. This is similar to what I’ve tried to do with reading in recent years as I found my attention span plummeting thanks to the Internet and its news feeds and headlines. In short, I’m trying.
What I’ve found is that some games are still easy to learn and hard to master. Others, no doubt tied to my attention span issues, are just hard. They’re hard to understand because they were perhaps made several years ago or more and were designed for an audience that didn’t suffer from my all-too-common condition. This is reminiscent of older movies, where there is some extended scene at the beginning during which the credits roll, a scene that is either expository or just boring, and likely to be skipped past by today’s viewers. It just feels tedious now.
Anyway, a reader recommended two Star Wars titles, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, that are now several years old but still look and play wonderfully, and they were incredibly inexpensive to buy on Steam. I’m maybe three or so hours into the first of the two, and I chose to play on an easier setting so I could just enjoy the story, being a big Star Wars fan, and not worry about getting past certain enemies or whatever.
This has worked out fine, mostly, but the initial sequence in which you’re separated from another character and have to reconnect was baffling to me at first. There was no hint about what I was supposed to do or which direction to take. And for a comical (and then frustrating) few minutes, I found myself “DOOM guying” my way around that part of the level, looking for a way forward. Which I found, eventually, eased future transitions and resetting my brain a bit, which is probably for the best.
Other games have proven to be more frustrating. Where Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was, for me, hard to learn but then fine to play, some games were easy to learn, setting me up for forms of frustration and disappointment that were all too familiar. Silent Hill f, Silent Hill 2 Remake, and now Resident Evil: Requiem, which was released just last week, all fall into this pattern.
I like the horror genre. I can’t explain this per se, though I’m familiar with the idea that horror—be it in the form of books, movies, or whatever else—is essentially a coping mechanism, a way of confronting something that is far more terrible than anything we will experience in real life, which helps to put our own fears and issues in context. I get that. And I suppose it’s real. I’m not sure if that’s why horror fascinates or interests me. But it does.
Horror videogames, like other horror content, are a mixed bag. I recall enjoying the first few F.E.A.R. games on the Xbox 360, in part because they were part shooter and part horror. I really liked Condemned: Criminal Origins, also on the 360, and that was just a straight-up survival horror title. I’ve played parts of Alan Wake, and I’ve at least seen or played parts of games like Alone in the Dark and The 7th Guest. And there are sci-fi titles that edge into horror, like Bioshock and Dead Space. And so many others.
But when it comes to horror in videogames, it’s pretty much Resident Evil and Silent Hill at the top of the list. I’ve always been fascinated by both, but their PlayStation heritages meant that both series were originally outside my experiences. Until fairly recently, when ports of them appeared on the PC, sometimes in remastered or remade form, and, in Resident Evil‘s case, on the iPad and elsewhere too. Oddly, I own several of these games now, and I’ve even finished at least one of them, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
But they are frustrating.
For Silent Hill f, Silent Hill 2 Remake, and Resident Evil: Requiem, I started off as I did with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I chose the easiest difficulty level specifically so I could just enjoy the story and the overall experience without worrying about getting killed off by some enemy or not being able to get past some puzzle. And in each case, I found myself experiencing both problems regardless.
The details aren’t super important, perhaps. But each of these games is essentially puzzle-based, and as with the red, yellow, and blue cards in DOOM, you can’t get past a certain point in the game until you’ve solved them.
In Silent Hill 2 Remake, you have to get an object on the top floor of building in which the fire escape that’s the only way up there later collapses, and I’m reasonably sure I caused that fire escape to collapse without me first getting that object. That shouldn’t even be possible, but I’m stuck.
I found Resident Evil: Requiem to be initially more to my liking than either Silent Hill title for whatever reasons. And there’s an interesting back and forth where you play two different characters, one in first person who is more action-oriented, and one in third person who is more vulnerable, that I like. But this game, like the others, like so many games dating back to Wolf3D or whatever, is puzzle-based. You’re not getting to that next section until you complete some task, often a literal puzzle. And the puzzles are ridiculous. There’s a slot machine-like thing in Resident Evil that you have to spin just right to get whatever reward and move forward.
I find this maddening. I chose the easiest difficult level and I find myself turning to walkthroughs on the web so I can get past a puzzle that, to my mind, shouldn’t even be there in the first place. They may as well be red, yellow, or blue cards. Actually, that would be easier.
I write software. I like to solve problems. I literally finish a crossword puzzle each morning. But I hate these in-game puzzles and that I am required to spin wheels, locate secret objects like keys and screwdrivers, or perform whatever other nonsense just so I can keep going. I just want to experience the game and its story, but the game experience, by and large, is unchanged from that of Wolf3D and DOOM despite the technical and presentation advances we’ve seen since then. You’re stuck in this section until you find that secret item or solve some stupid puzzle.
Is this really the only way these games can be made?
It’s so common. There’s a terrific indie videogame called Firewatch that I did finish and can recommend, as it’s one of those rare games that I think even non-gamers would find entertaining. I played it first on Xbox, I believe, but it’s everywhere now though its developer oddly dropped off the face of the earth. Firewatch is more mystery than horror, but the elements are similar, including, yes, the often frustrating need to find some thing, solve some riddle, or whatever to move on. Round and round we go. And that’s one of the good ones.
I will keep trying with Resident Evil: Requiem, and I will continue turning to walkthroughs as required because being stumped by a stupid puzzle is not entertaining for me. But this is perhaps the 12th major Resident Evil title. Are all these games like this? Is this all they are, the same tired puzzles surrounded by ever more realistic graphics?
There has to be another way.