Here is the thing. If I am a character in a video game, film, TV show, or in real life, stricken with amnesia, and at every juncture I am solving puzzles involving conveniently placed fuze's and circuit boards, I am going to just assume that my past involved this kind of work. This would also be the case if I was running from splicers in an underground post Utopian hell, but still had time to direct water across a board or whatever the fuck you were doing to open doors in Bioshock.
I am not an electrician. I want everyone(especially game developers) to know this. I want to scream it from the rooftops. Taking voltage from one side of an electrical panel and distributing it evenly through a circuit is about as fun to me as having my pubic hairs removed by tweezers. Just so you know. but recent games like Bioshock and Lost: Via Domus, seem to not have gotten the memo that I, and most gamers, in fact, have no Issac Newton aspirations.
In the case of Lost especially, this puzzle element drastically hinders the flow of the game. situations that call for immediate action, tense situations where you don't know what is coming next, are derailed at their apex by these antiquated, filler, Myst-esqe,puzzles that would make even Steven Hawking mutter under his breath "For fuck sake..."
Uh oh, the plane I think I may have been on just violently crashed and is leaking fuel. Something needs to be done! I better run around and collect fuzes, cause when I complete a Circuit on this electrical panel, that gas is getting shut the fuck off!
Damn, I lost my camera and laptop, because I am a Photojournalist, that does electricity work as a side gig, apparently, and they seem to be stowed in the compartment of the airplane that was ripped in half, but it can regain full power if I just put a fuze... there! Got it!
Aww shit, I'm in the hydra station and I am about to finally confront my captors, they are on the other side of this door, but how do I get to them? Fuck, man, I wish there was a... Oh there it is! A goddamn electrical box! Good thing all these random fuzes I have been picking up from the jungle floor are compatible with every circuit box on the island! good stuff.
The whole, "putting puzzles in adventure games to lengthen play time," thing, needs to go to hell if the puzzles themselves cannot even be properly put into context within the world of the game. I don't remember Locke ever having to collect fuzes to escape a hatch lock down. So why did this guy? The whole situation reeks of either laziness or a misplaced pretension on the developers part.
They were at best pandering to the Idea of viewers of Lost being "smarter" than the average television viewer, and in doing so created what they thought would "challenge" us. Or, they assumed that this smarter viewer was too busy reading Faust in braille while completing black belt level Sudoku puzzles blindfolded with their penises to play little "pew-pew games," and decided that having engaging game play was not necessary to rake in the moo-la.
And that ending... Ehh. It wasn't bad.
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Afterthoughts? More like Afterbirth. That game was a pile of wank if I remember correctly.
I like the write up though, and i agree to an extent. Puzzles like the Bioshock one certainly bring you a bit out of the experience. But then, I actually really enjoyed that mini-game and ended up hacking pretty much everything.
There's this big deal about whether video games have to be fun/challenging. Personally, I think if the medium is going to develop into more of an art form, then it has to get rid of that idea. I don't know how Bioshock would've faired without the hacking mini-game. Maybe people would've found it more immersive?
Anywho, keep it up, and I lolled at your biography (the head nodding bit).
Lol @ I am not an electrician. Dude, GREAT write-up about that sh!t. I am in concurment.
Still want to play the game though, if only for the fact I'm horribly hooked on Lost.
You are correct, sir, the game is a big doo-doo sandwich, and the obligatory play through because I love the show was a painful process.
And if I were to fall on a side of the fun/challenging debate, I would bend more to the challenging side with the slight caveat that the challenge would have to be more than a harder puzzle. I would like the challenge to be more organic, and not something that just seems like filler.
Thanks for digging the stuff. And now that you mention it, the hacking portions of Bioshock bear little resemblance to the dogmeat that is the Lost game.
Hah, why are you playing "Lost" the video game anyways? That was my first question before I read all of this :D
Anyways, good read as always but I will always take those "electrician" puzzles over the sliding puzzles. I mean come on, who really gets enjoyment over those?