Leave Me The F**k Alone

[Mahoshonen]

I get irritated when they hold my hand to teach me how to play the game (I often skip tutorials and learn as i go if it's an option), but the game is unplayable when they hold my hand the entire game.

How the hell is a tutorial in the beginning of a game that teaches the player what the controls do equal to "hand-holding"? So a person is expected to play a game they've never played before without knowing how to play it, what the rules are, and what they need to do to try and win? Because if you've played it, then everybody on the planet Earth must have played it, right?

He was referring to games that never drop out of hand-holding. And yes, Tutorials are kinda necessary for introducing a new player to the controls, but there are good and bad ways to do them. A quick flash of the button you are supposed to press is a good way. Repeating the instructions two or three times is not.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

I actually came in here just to post this.

Ouch, that makes my eyes water just looking at it...

OT: Yeah, I've never understood this practise in games. The Half-Life series commendably avoids this, since you're in control at all times, but that does mean you can jump around like a lunatic swinging your crowbar while you're being told things of vital importance.
Captcha: Bet on Cheltenham at Betfair. Dammit; when did captchas become adverts?

 

[Frostbyte666]

And this is why I liked some of the Alma free-move scenes from Fear 2. Hell the 1 in the nuclear silo I walked up to that swing then looked over my right shoulder when she said "I love him" and found her staring at me in the face palm distance away, that ripped a pretty good scream from my throat. Now if I had the same moment as a cutscene it would have been no where near as scary, being rail-roaded to that position, there would have been tension and I probably would have jumped but no soul searing terror.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Kinda funny how many people in this thread think that game devs "don't get it". They get it just fine. They get it a lot better than you do. They know that player freedom is extraordinarily time consuming to code for, requires huge amounts of testing, is near-impossible to make narratively coherent, and often results in bugs galore. See: every open world RPG ever.

 

[bificommander]

Can't say I agree. Sure, there are games that use this techinique to annoying levels. And there's room for games that don't do it at all. But 'every game should just keep the view where you want to look at all times'? If it is plot relevant, I don't mind releasing control for a few seconds.

There was a game, I think it was Crysis or Crysis 2, that had a decent compromise. If something scripted happened, an eye symbol with a button indicator appeared in bottom of the screen. You could press the button to automatically look at whatever was happening, or ignore it.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

How I feel everytime a cutscene begins in Farcry 3. Like, I live to jump around and crouch like a maniac during boring expository dialogue.

 

[chadachada123]

A sidenote, but from the title, I was hoping this would be about "enhanced single player" that developers (well, publishers) seem to be forcing for many games nowadays.

JUST LET ME PLAY AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. I don't care about highscores and sharing with friends in my single player game, dammit. Some of Nintendo's Wii U games are guilty of being extremely annoying about 'sharing.'

That said, this version is just as effective.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Nice visual metaphor.
I still subscribe to the "Flashing Applause Sign" metaphor myself.

 

[Olas]

3 cheers for Valve.

Also, I kinda liked the way ME3 let you press a button to turn and look at whatever was going on without taking control away from you.

 

[Vault101]

My god, BioWare and David Cage have combined into one.

whats wrong with the mass effect aproach?

no really? in game controll is rareley (if ever) taken away and the cutscenes only serve to give you the information you need

for example Zaeed and Kasumi from ME2 were DLC charachters....you went into their areas and just stood there while they spouted lines...I found it incredibly boring unlike the normal proach where you see them talk with camera angles and all..much nmore engaging (but then dialouge was actually part of the game)

.
A far better method, in my opinion, is the one used in the Half-life series (and Portal, I believe) where the player is in control of the character at all times, everything is rendered ingame, and the only times you actually lose control are reasonable instances-like the pc being knocked out, or held up by physical restraints, which therefore make control moot anyway.

that doesn't work for every single type of game...granted the only 3rd peron game Ive ever seen this done is dead space (which did it well) but really in that case you get a game like Fallout3/NV which actually could have benefiteed from a little cinematic flair

This is exactly how I felt, when I played Uncharted 3.

You have to walk in this part, cuz it's a slow moment! Running ability removed!
You don't need to shoot anything here. Shooting ability removed!
Don't die or you'll interrupt all the in-game dialogue and our cool story!

Every 5 minutes they were yanking control away from me and forcing me to play the way they wanted, not how I wanted.

and how would you want to play? shooting at all the main charachters during the story set up and jumping around/teabagging like an ass?

I am fine with peoples wishes for freedom and to screw around in games....but if you can't do that then its not really a fault of the game

 

[Tradjus]

This reminds me of that scene in Red Dragon.
"This is our Ambient Occlusion, DO YOU SEE?!" xD

 

[Robetid]

I get irritated when they hold my hand to teach me how to play the game (I often skip tutorials and learn as i go if it's an option), but the game is unplayable when they hold my hand the entire game.

How the hell is a tutorial in the beginning of a game that teaches the player what the controls do equal to "hand-holding"? So a person is expected to play a game they've never played before without knowing how to play it, what the rules are, and what they need to do to try and win? Because if you've played it, then everybody on the planet Earth must have played it, right?

He was referring to games that never drop out of hand-holding. And yes, Tutorials are kinda necessary for introducing a new player to the controls, but there are good and bad ways to do them. A quick flash of the button you are supposed to press is a good way. Repeating the instructions two or three times is not.

No, a tutorial is one thing, holding hands at the start of a game is something else. Tutorials are optional, ever see a prompt to skip a tutorial? Yea that. When they intergrate it into the game and you cant do a thing until the game gets to that part (such as not letting you leave a room until you pick up a can and consume it's contents for no reason) it becomes irritating, the next time you play through said game you have to go through it every single time? It really kills the replay value of a game for me. Also, opinion, don't lose sleep over it people.

 

[john heerens]

I don't mind the camera thing as much, I don't even really mind when they use cut-scenes to make the character cooler then he is when you play him. What really gets under my skin is when they take away control for a cutscene to make you completely incompetent. When you stand there like a douche while the bad guy monologues, shoots your dog, flips you the bird and then casually strolls away. Fable 2 comes to mind, several scenes in AC3 and about every other game that had me pulling my hair out in frustration yelling at my tv-screen : "Shoot him! Shoot him you dumb smuck, he's right there!!".

I could really do with less of that.

 

[Ukomba]

I like how Mass Effect did it, where you have to push a button to have your view redirected to where they want you to look rather than it just being automatic. I like that it has that button too so I don't accidentally miss something I might want to see. Best of both worlds.

 

[Godhead]

My god, BioWare and David Cage have combined into one.

whats wrong with the mass effect aproach?

no really? in game controll is rareley (if ever) taken away and the cutscenes only serve to give you the information you need

for example Zaeed and Kasumi from ME2 were DLC charachters....you went into their areas and just stood there while they spouted lines...I found it incredibly boring unlike the normal proach where you see them talk with camera angles and all..much nmore engaging (but then dialouge was actually part of the game)

.
A far better method, in my opinion, is the one used in the Half-life series (and Portal, I believe) where the player is in control of the character at all times, everything is rendered ingame, and the only times you actually lose control are reasonable instances-like the pc being knocked out, or held up by physical restraints, which therefore make control moot anyway.

For me it was more in Mass Effect 3 than anything else. Was it really intrusive? No not really, but it was one of the smaller things that irked me about the game when it would have me press down a button and then it showed me a beautiful vista. I can look at it on my own without you holding my hand damnit. (Not a major gripe but I like to be a drama queen about shit and I got annoyed at how it's a really technologically advanced galaxy and the security cameras only run at like 15 FPS)