The Dynasty Warriors games do this to an extent. Usually, within each map there are several sub objectives that you are given. Completing them usually results in the mission being resolved sooner or with more money or xp, while fucking them up results in the enemy forces getting tougher and/or more numerous. But even if you fuck all of them up, as long as you haven't allowed the actual lose condition to occur, you can still brute force your way through the entire enemy army (and sometimes it's more fun that way, too).Zhukov said:
F'ing Up Isn't So Bad
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
The point and click adventure games were great for fucking up, it even seemed to encourage it. I have spent as much time intently pursuing the wrong solutions for those games as I have the right ones, just so I could hear the extra lines of witty dialogue.
"I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain"
Actually this is a problem I have with Skyrim/Oblivion. Their auto-levelling crap means that there are no truly dangerous or truly safe places (outside the towns where enemies can't exist). Both games are mainly about exploration and avatar growth, but since there's no real difference in how dangerous any place is, all exploration is purely audiovisual. "Go here because it looks cool" isn't as good as "go here because it looks cool, it's really dangerous and it has a great sword". The growth is similarly hampered because there's no going through somewhere that used to be really dangerous and judo-chopping everyone without breaking a sweat.
Actually this is a problem I have with Skyrim/Oblivion. Their auto-levelling crap means that there are no truly dangerous or truly safe places (outside the towns where enemies can't exist). Both games are mainly about exploration and avatar growth, but since there's no real difference in how dangerous any place is, all exploration is purely audiovisual. "Go here because it looks cool" isn't as good as "go here because it looks cool, it's really dangerous and it has a great sword". The growth is similarly hampered because there's no going through somewhere that used to be really dangerous and judo-chopping everyone without breaking a sweat.
Nice article. A little late to the party though. Most people who play strategy games and stealth games already know all this.
A game I had encountered relatively recently is Happy Wheels. It's a free flash game where you maneuver a rag doll character on some sort of vehicle towards an ending goal. But the real point of the game is to fuck up. The characters are incredible fragile and tend to lose limbs with great spouting founts of blood at the slightest provocation. Most of the levels are user-made and thus poorly designed and blisteringly unfair. That is exactly what you want. It needs to be unfair so you can get through by the skin of your teeth with only half your limbs or to die is a great, red cloud of fluids and body parts. The most interesting things happen when you fuck up and let you laugh at your own ineptitude. There is no possible way to do well in this game. The controls are shit. The level design is shit. Getting through to the end is not really your goal. It's just there to point you in a direction and get you moving.
Letting the player fail in gameplay is a great idea, but I'd really like to see more games that let you fail narratively and still keep going.
Like, if you don't make it to the closing door to the enemy base in time, you'll need to find another way inside. And if you don't kill all the baddies before they drag the hostage away you get an extra car chase mission. If you lose the boss fight he gets chased away by reinforcements before he can finish you and the game continues, but you'll have to fight him again later in an even tougher boss battle. Etc.
Basically, dynamically change the story a small amount based on how successful the player is. Let the player fail 3 or 4 times before giving them a game over so they feel they have to reload the moment a quest objective is missed.
I only know of a few games that do this. Heavy Rain was mentioned above, Deus Ex, and I heard that Borderlands 2 will have this feature. Anyone else know of any more games like that?
Like, if you don't make it to the closing door to the enemy base in time, you'll need to find another way inside. And if you don't kill all the baddies before they drag the hostage away you get an extra car chase mission. If you lose the boss fight he gets chased away by reinforcements before he can finish you and the game continues, but you'll have to fight him again later in an even tougher boss battle. Etc.
Basically, dynamically change the story a small amount based on how successful the player is. Let the player fail 3 or 4 times before giving them a game over so they feel they have to reload the moment a quest objective is missed.
I only know of a few games that do this. Heavy Rain was mentioned above, Deus Ex, and I heard that Borderlands 2 will have this feature. Anyone else know of any more games like that?
You mean like in Halo when you try to jump out of a falcon to jack a banshee and end up smacking face first into the ground...maybe I should talk about something he actually knows about.
By the docks there were a bunch of them, right next to where enemies were taking cover. ...which I somehow managed to miss the first time around. It wasn't until I replayed a few certain sections that I said, "Wait a second, those yellow things are gasoline tanks!"DVS BSTrD said:
Last summer, I tried to have a girlfriend. I soon realized that I actually have no emotions, not even love, and the relationship drifted away like Clint Eastwood after he's killed all the Mexicans. Afterwards, I realized that I'd learned much more about myself and the way I interacted with the world than I would have if it had actually worked out. And now I know how to do things better next time. So yeah, fucking up is great. Fucking in itself is great too, I'm sure, but due to numerous fuck-ups I haven't gotten to that point yet.
Yes, I agree a lot with this I once tried to make my own dota map in war3 and for some reason it never felt very fun to play. Later when I then tried the real dota map I learned that the reason it was fun is because all the actions where skills shot(click on ground) instead of click on character, this way in a dota game you could fuck up your moves while in my game the moves would always work which in turn also made everything very sterile and inorganic. This is one of the most important lessons to learn about video game design.
I kinda agree with this.
The most fun I had on Resident Evil 5 was when my friend and I were playing co-op. There was a part where the floor gave out and you had to hit a button to land properly or you would lose some health. My friend does a perfect landing while you can see me land with a belly flop right beside him.
The most fun I had on Resident Evil 5 was when my friend and I were playing co-op. There was a part where the floor gave out and you had to hit a button to land properly or you would lose some health. My friend does a perfect landing while you can see me land with a belly flop right beside him.
I don't often gush like this but I wholeheartedly agree. The greatest example still fresh in my mind at the moment is Skyrim. Skyrim has many pre-baked "super awesome" finishing moves were you clip your sword though an enemy or chop their head off or blah de blah. They all wither into insignificance after the first time a giant clubs you into a low orbit. It's you and the game fucking up in perfect harmony and it is beautiful.
Good points. Invisible (protective) walls are a good example of this. If you have the urge to do acrobatics on a railing, when you should just be moving forward, you should also meet the possibility of your character falling into certain death.
While I agree with Yathzee in theory, I don't think anyone actually shares in the fuckups of their player avatar. Nope. It was definitely the controls, lag, my cat walking in front of the TV or looking at me funny from across the room, that fucking irritating noise from somewhere that I can't identify, or the game being a stupid fucking piece of shit that the developers should commit suicide for unleashing on an unsuspecting public.
I just want to point out that while Bayonetta/DMC are bad examples in that context, they're gameplay the exact opposite of what you're complaining about. Barring Bayonetta's boss fights and some of DMC 4, the combat is totally organic. If you want to do something cool, you better damn well know how to do it. I kinda wish the boss fights would go back to being like that too *sigh*Yahtzee Croshaw said:
I enjoy self-imposed challenges and attempts to screw things up on purpose. For instance, in Fallout New Vegas, I attempted my own "retard run", where I'd conciously pick all the worst possible options in any given scenario. That includes convincing Boon to murder his best friend (and then admitting you did it for no reason). It means interrogating the centurion until he's willing to talk, and then punching him to death before he can finish. It means letting the monorail explode, letting Kimball get murdered, and allowing a suicide bomber blow up the Van Graffs.
There is so much game there I wouldn't have got to see, because I'm not accustomed to selecting the obviously terrible choices.
My favourite fucking up though happened in Fallout 3. I had to rescue children from a slave camp, but the slavers wouldn't let me enter until I earned their trust. They assigned me the task of enslaving certain individuals. Unfortunately, the woman I had to enslave had already been taken prisoner by super mutants. So, to summarise, I had to save the woman, enslave her, and finally free her again when it came to rescuing the children in the end. The fucking up came when I tried to enslave her once more, for old times sake, and her head spontaniously exploded.
There is so much game there I wouldn't have got to see, because I'm not accustomed to selecting the obviously terrible choices.
My favourite fucking up though happened in Fallout 3. I had to rescue children from a slave camp, but the slavers wouldn't let me enter until I earned their trust. They assigned me the task of enslaving certain individuals. Unfortunately, the woman I had to enslave had already been taken prisoner by super mutants. So, to summarise, I had to save the woman, enslave her, and finally free her again when it came to rescuing the children in the end. The fucking up came when I tried to enslave her once more, for old times sake, and her head spontaniously exploded.
"Final Fantasy choreographed zero-gravity swordfight taking place on the side of a nuclear missile as it speeds towards the puppy kingdom"
Ok... visualizing it... that sounds CRAZY AWESOME!!!
OT: I think it matters most that the fuck up to success ratio that the game gives the player is balanced. NOBODY likes it when a game is so frustratingly difficult that it takes dozen tries to get past just the game's first boss, yet a game where you have practically no chance of ever fucking up is also boring, as Yahtzee said.
Oh, and Yahtzee? Why oh WHY did you have to mention eating lots of Cadbury Creme Eggs?!? Now I'm hungry for CCE right now! What's worse, I can't get any CCE for a while! CURSE YOU!!!
Captcha: cherry on top
Yes Captcha, somebody give me some Cadbury Creme Eggs! Pretty please!
Ok... visualizing it... that sounds CRAZY AWESOME!!!
OT: I think it matters most that the fuck up to success ratio that the game gives the player is balanced. NOBODY likes it when a game is so frustratingly difficult that it takes dozen tries to get past just the game's first boss, yet a game where you have practically no chance of ever fucking up is also boring, as Yahtzee said.
Oh, and Yahtzee? Why oh WHY did you have to mention eating lots of Cadbury Creme Eggs?!? Now I'm hungry for CCE right now! What's worse, I can't get any CCE for a while! CURSE YOU!!!
Captcha: cherry on top
Yes Captcha, somebody give me some Cadbury Creme Eggs! Pretty please!