I'm confused on the phrase "games that hold your hand"

[Virtual_Dom]

I've been hearing that there are too many games that "hold your hand" and I'm a little confused as to what it exactly means. Does it mean games that are very easy, or very scripted and linear?

Please explain to me, and maybe provide examples.

 

[robotam]

I think it might be games that don't let the player fiqure things out for themselves. Although I am not certain.

 

[Amnestic]

I generally assume it to mean either games with rigorous, unskippable tutorials or games which constantly offer you hints.

The former: Final Fantasy XIII, where the majority of the first few hours felt like a tutorial.
The latter: Bioshock, where you always had an arrow pointing to your next objective and could always hit up H for a hint anyway.

*shrug* I still enjoyed both games well enough, but those would be my interpretations of the term.

 

[Danish rage]

The GPS system i most sandbox games are a good example.

But yes, waypoints,to much script, and autosave functions are the culprits here.

 

[tombman888]

I'm not exactly sure, but i think the term is used for when a game is basically just TELLING you how to do things instead of letting you figure out how to do it yourself.
kinda like a puzzle where someone is telling you what to do on every step.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Basically games that do it for you if you can't do it yourself.

An extreme example: Alone in the Dark for 360. It actually gives you the option of skipping chapters if you suck enough to fail a certain amount of times.

The game moves the plot forward if you can't do it yourself. Guh.

 

[Don't taze me bro]

World of Warcraft has gotten to this stage. You now get a quest, press 'M' for your map, and it shows you exactly where to go to complete your quest. Very little thinking involved.

 

[Amnestic]

World of Warcraft has gotten to this stage. You now get a quest, press 'M' for your map, and it shows you exactly where to go to complete your quest. Very little thinking involved.

To be fair, the majority of players used to have Wowhead up on their browser so they'd just alt tab to that, check the quest up and then follow the instructions. Blizzard basically streamlined what a majority of their players were doing to begin with and cut out the middle man.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Picture someone teaching a kid how to walk. Instead of letting them go free, they hold tight onto their hand, telling them everything and guiding them in just the right direction.

That's what it means.

 

[Twad]

Metroid fusion is (unfortunately) like that; they more or less litteraly take your hand and lead you where you need to go.
YOu dont have a choice, just follow the instructions.
YOu cant explore freely (the gameplay prevents it), you cant get out of sequence (like skipping a level), its linear and you cant do a thing about it.

 

[omega 616]

It happens alot in "Enslaved" (spiderman games do it aswell if I remember right) play that demo, it will have pipes that you can jump onto look shiny, so yo know you can grab it or it will stop the combat and say "press [] to attack" ... "now press [] [] [] to combo" ... "now press ^ to strong attack" .... or the camera zooming in on the characters face so he can say "I need to get to that", then it looks at whatever you need to get.

Basically, it takes away the need to think or discover things on your own, which leads to a very easy, patronizing game.

 

[Folio]

It means that they don't give you the challenge. It's like Metroid: Other M. They hardly let you aim while walking, Samus just aims for herself.

It surprizes me that it gives a little challenge. Even exploring is: HEY! THERE IS SOMETHING HERE, NOW! But you still need to do your best to find it.

Valve uses little hints and tips rather than making it easy for you. But they know what draws a players attention as subtle as possible. This is not 'holding one's hand.' this is narrative and perhaps a little guidance.

 

[burningdragoon]

The most broad description I can think of would be an unreasonable removal of challenge. Games can do it in different ways.

FF13 as an example has a lot:
-Majority of the game is extremely linear. Walking down almost literal hallways a lot of the time.
-extremely frequent save points, including after and between cutscenes. 10minutes of cutscene, games asks to save, 10 more minutes of cutscene.
-if you die in battle you can just start from the beginning and you can even restart the battle at any moment.
-there's a cap to how much you can level up at any point, so you have a rough estimate of how strong you should be at any time.
-very, very gradual introduction of new aspects to the battle system.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but too much is. For example, fast traveling in Oblivion and Fallout 3 is hand holding, but it's a big time savor and I don't mind it.

 

[jbchillin]

Its a game thats so easy it does most the work. Like if in left 4 dead u sat back and let the AI's kill all the zombies. (that was an example the AI's are shitty in that game)

 

[archvile93]

Wait I'm confused, so most people prefer that the game have you wander around aimlessly until you just happen upon the next point in the story? No body here seems to like waypoint systems. Anyway, I always thought a hand holding game is one that's incredibly easy and always tells you exactly what to do.

For a non-existent example: 1. Oh that big monster stabbed you and drained the last of your health. Guess your dead and have to try again now. Oh wait no you don't, your partner came in, healed you with magic and then liquidated the enemy, guess your fine now so lets continue on.
2. Huh, an interesting puzzle, this could take some thinking to solve. Oh wait, there's a sign at the entrance that gives you step by step instructions on how to solve it. Not cryptic hints, but exact instructions as if the designer put it there while designing the place so he wouldn't kill himself by triggering it on accident and forgot to remove when he finished.

These examples are a bit extreme and you probably will never see anything this blatant in a game, but I think they my idea of what hand holding in across pretty well.

 

[Lullabye]

I don't mind games that hold your hand, so long as it's sufficiently challenging. Like Demon's Souls.

 

[Amnestic]

2. Huh, an interesting puzzle, this could take some thinking to solve. Oh wait, there's a sign at the entrance that gives you step by step instructions on how to solve it. Not cryptic hints, but exact instructions as if the designer put it there while designing the place so he wouldn't kill himself by triggering it on accident and forgot to remove when he finished.

I wish every game did that with sliding tile puzzles.

I fucking hate sliding tile puzzles.

 

[snow]

Wow, so many people on this thread are wrong.

Games that hold your hand is a term used for when a developer creates a game with the mindset that the player is a complete and utter moron, and feels the need to throw in unnecessary elements in there to keep the player in the right direction, for not once should that player stop for a moment and go. "Huh, I wonder where/what I should do next..."

There was a trend in the creation of games a few years ago that, within certain games. (That one Transformers game and the single-player of a lot of FPS games comes to mind rather quickly but I do recall many, many others.) They will give you an objective, and if you haven't done it within X amount of time, the person or persons that gave you that objective will hurry you along.

for example.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

(Scene: A warzone in an unnamed middle-eastern country, two sides are fighting against each other for whatever known reason)

Enter stage left, A butt-load of tanks all coming to get you and your team.

Captain: Rookie! Get up on the second floor of that building and grab a bazooka to take out those tanks!

(Waypoint shows up on compass telling you exactly what building he was talking about and the exact location of the bazooka despite you never being in that building before. You just happened to have been across the battlefield when this command was given to you.)

2 minutes go by while you make your away across the field trying not to get shot.

Captain: ROOKIE! WE NEED THAT ANTI-ARMOR SUPPORT NOW!!

2 more minutes!

Captain: ROOKIE!! WHERE ARE YOU!

(You finally arrive to the building pointed out to you. Not only do you find the bazooka, but you find 6 or 7 of your team-mates shooting their rifles at tanks out the windows... -,-; You pick up the bazooka.)

Captain: GREAT! You found it! Now take out those tanks!

(No shit sherlock, you've been screaming at me for the past 10 minutes about it...)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________


Now we can probably all agree that this is not only, annoying as hell, but completely unnecessary...

Let's look at another example. With Boss fights. The most memorable boss fights that we know of today, are those that consist of bosses having a bunch of attacks and a set pattern of which we much avoid them.

That in a way kind of holds your hand but developers have found out that this made the game more enjoyable because then players were able to figure out the bosses pattern and exploit it.

The worst of these kinds of battles are when the Boss only has 2-3 kinds of attacks, and a lot of health, so you cycle through these patterns over and over again till he is dead and your brain hurts from the rinse and repeat.

Then of course, they decided to dumb it down even more. There are games out there where the boss had a weakness that you could exploit, but you had to look for it.

A good example in games that hold your hand these days is the example of Boss fights with "Insert knife/bomb here, boss go dead/boom" weak points that are most of the time color coded.

They are pretty much saying that the character you're playing as, knows exactly how to defeat this mofo even if he had never seen this creature/person before.

What they could have done, and what they should do to keep the game feeling like it is holding your hand is...

Let's say you're playing as a warrior, you're traveling down a deep dungeon filled with baddies and hopefully some treasure, and most likely is the home of something that will mud stomp you in the pooper if you make it angry.

This boss happens to have a weak spot, perhaps for the sake of easy explanation, weak knees... Your character does not know this, because he does not know that this boss exists yet, and if it turns out to be his quest to defeat this boss given to him by the mayor of a town just outside of the dungeon, it is still going to be his first time fighting this boss, he doesn't know anything.

What if this dungeon used to be a mining facility owned by the town? What if this boss was the reason why it was shut down? Perhaps you will find old relics from the miners in these caverns, what if some one decided to write down something on a parchment that hinted at the boss, not necessarily giving away the weakness but explained it a bit? Leaving the player to figure out if there were any clues to what would bring this thing down?

That's not holding your hand at all, because it's not telling you directly what the weakness is, leaving the player to figure it out for himself, and even if he misses this scroll of information, he would still eventually figure it out some how...