Not long ago every game had an ill conceived, tacked on multiplayer mode that everyone ignored. Like, who the hell played the Last of Us’s multiplayer? I did. I was forced to if I wanted to get the platinum. But it was a needless waste of time and money for the devs for a middling game mode with a very short half life. The multiplayer modes never needed to be included. Nobody wanted them. Thankfully that has mostly gone away. A relative of the tacked on multiplayer mode has persisted however: the minigame.<\/p>\n
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As I stated in my prior article, I’ve been playing through Expedition 33. And as I’ve stated several times in the past, I’m a completionist. That means I am doing everything offered in the game so far, including some of the most frustrating unfun segments I’ve dealt with in my life. First of which was a long platforming challenge in a game with floaty, imprecise controls. Jump puzzles in games where platforming clearly isn’t even considered in the design of the controls is always a nightmare and I’ll never understand why devs feel the need to jam them in. E33 is far from the worst I can think of but it is the most recent. Back in the day when I played Maplestory there were quests that I just walked away from. The controls didn’t allow for enough precision to justify the effort. Elden Ring has some hidden items that force you to platform VERY carefully to reach. Just because you can run and jump in a game doesn’t mean you should need to lower your head and plow through some poorly conceived nonsense.<\/p>\n
Later on I played volleyball with some sentient paintbrushes and this was what pissed me off. E33 has one of the most satisfying combat systems in a turn based game I’ve played in a very long time. King of the mechanics that are employed is the parry. Few things feel better than nailing a string of parries and landing a crushing counter. Even without the parry system the combat is great. But the ability to completely negate an enemy’s damage by learning their patterns and properly executing on that knowledge. I think the devs had this in mind when they came up with the volleyball minigame. And I think that’s where all thought was concluded. You’re stuck on a little raft in the water where you have to run back and forth around this platform and aim where your parry goes. In a game with floaty imprecise controls. There are 3 tiers of difficulty in opponents and the 3rd is an absolute monster. Huge health bar, fast “attacks,” and higher damage from the occasional flaming paintbrush baby. When you get to that last opponent you are expected to just execute perfectly. If you miss a parry the animation takes far too long to reset and you eat damage as a guarantee. You can recover, but it’s very difficult. I eventually completed it and it felt good to conquer that nightmare but in the same way popping a stubborn pimple can feel rewarding. I’d rather not have had to go through the effort.<\/p>\n
The good news is that all of the above minigames are optional. That’s what they should always be. Optional. They can be loads of fun but please for the love of god give me some choice. Sometimes developers get their minigames so right that their releases almost double as minigame collections. Final Fantasy X had blitzball, which is super polarizing, but I genuinely adored. Grand Theft Auto has dozens of side activities and objectives you can take part in. Pretty much every JRPG in the last 20 years has had a fishing minigame of some sort. And the Yakuza series, my beloved, has some of the most entertaining side content in all of video games. Darts, batting cages, bowling, pool, Japanese mahjong, gambling. All are available and all are fun. And the king of all minigames, at least to me, is Triple Triad. Final Fantasy VIII was a Triple Triad game with some RPG to push through for me. Hours of fun.<\/p>\n
I play RPGs for character progression systems and story. I play FPS games for satisfying gunplay and a decent challenge to overcome. I don’t play platformers because I genuinely suck at them and find them frustrating. For those of you who can play Super Meat Boy or Celeste with any degree of precision and confidence, I tip my hat to you. I just don’t have the manual dexterity or patience. Which brings me back to my earlier point. Platforming, in my opinion, needs very delicate and precise balance. You have to ride a fine line between floaty and ice skating levels of momentum. You have to decide when a character can catch themselves on ledges or whether you want that to even be a mechanic. You have to determine how long you can expect a player to continue without messing up and how to fix sections where the balance is off, via checkpoints or what have you.<\/p>\n
I want experimentation in game design. If a developer wants to include a minigame where you copulate off-screen until a vase falls over and breaks, whatever David Jaffe. Go for it. But I do insist that it be treated as a separate entity within your game that you design with care and attention. If you bring over your control scheme and make it some form of challenge, ensure that it actually works and isn’t just a torturous mess. It makes the quest for completion for masochists and idiots like me so much more annoying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not long ago every game had an ill conceived, tacked on multiplayer mode that everyone ignored. Like, who the hell played the Last of Us’s multiplayer? I did. I was forced to if I wanted to get the platinum. But it was a needless waste of time and money for the devs for a middling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethanirl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60184"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60192,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60184\/revisions\/60192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}