09-09-2012, 03:12 PM
Adding my opinion on this:
Open-ended games were never my favorite. I get its premise, but if you don't even have a north to go, it kills the reason of the game to exist. It is important to note, though, that this is a design choice and depends really on the type of the game and how it is implemented.
For example, I dislike the NES Metroid because of that. "Welcome to this huge maze with similarly designed rooms without hinting where to go, with some points of "now guess what's the next place you have to go, sucker"". That was ground-breaking for the time, but really, it is a huge turn off for me. Call me a baby player if you want, but Super Metroid and the subsequent titles were better because of the distinction of each place and a built-in map. All this, without hurting the open-endedness of the game. Zelda games are an another example, I enjoyed playing OoT because it gives you a path AND the possibility of doing what you want.
Figuring out on your own can be rewarding, but if you don't have any guide, it'll just make things unecessarily hard and non-enjoyable.
Also if the game guides you through the game, chances are you really need it (sure, there are exceptions and introduction levels should be used instead of written tutorials for this task) so I don't really mind, really.
Open-ended games were never my favorite. I get its premise, but if you don't even have a north to go, it kills the reason of the game to exist. It is important to note, though, that this is a design choice and depends really on the type of the game and how it is implemented.
For example, I dislike the NES Metroid because of that. "Welcome to this huge maze with similarly designed rooms without hinting where to go, with some points of "now guess what's the next place you have to go, sucker"". That was ground-breaking for the time, but really, it is a huge turn off for me. Call me a baby player if you want, but Super Metroid and the subsequent titles were better because of the distinction of each place and a built-in map. All this, without hurting the open-endedness of the game. Zelda games are an another example, I enjoyed playing OoT because it gives you a path AND the possibility of doing what you want.
Figuring out on your own can be rewarding, but if you don't have any guide, it'll just make things unecessarily hard and non-enjoyable.
Also if the game guides you through the game, chances are you really need it (sure, there are exceptions and introduction levels should be used instead of written tutorials for this task) so I don't really mind, really.
![[Image: deT1vCJ.png]](http://i.imgur.com/deT1vCJ.png)