As I was trying to play through Jedi Knight II (JK2) for a second time, this time on the "Jedi Knight" difficulty setting, I couldn't help stopping to write this essay. The reason is simple. Games have grown increasingly complex, more beautifully executed and so forth, but when it comes to so many of the elements, I simply must ask: is this fun? Is there something about being a game developer that warps your sense of entertainment? Or am I simply the lamest gamer on the planet?
I'm asking these questions because of the kind of things I see repeated in game after game these days, almost to the point at which it would justify being called a standard formula in the industry. In JK2, the specific situation that set me off is a fight in the hanger where Lando's ship is stored. Once the protagonist meets up with Lando in that hanger next to his ship, an immense battle ensues. While I found it an utter blast during my first time through the game, on the "Jedi" setting, it was worse than no fun this time around; i.e., it was a nightmarish, seemingly never-ending hell in which I was forced to attempt the impossible in keeping Lando alive.
Being the frail idiot that he is, Lando heads straight for the bad guys. I admire his bravery, but this isn't very helpful given that the entire game ends in failure if he dies. If the first round of bad guys don't kill him, the second round surely will as 3 - 4 of the enemies who chuck thermal detonators (i.e., highly explosive devices) at him will take Lando out in a single stroke. After no less than 36 attempts to complete this sequence successfully, never even coming close I might add, I gave up and decided to use the cheat codes. Even with the cheat codes, I had to play through that awful sequence 5 more times just to keep Lando alive. The idiot simply refuses to avoid fire, and he has a penchant for running into corners, in which the explosive-chucking bad guys can hardly fail to waste him with a single volley.
Now I have to ask: what developer thought that would be fun for the player? Are there really players out there who find a challenge of this level to be fun? I have to confess that I don't, and I don't think it's because I'm a particularly unskilled gamer. I seem to be pretty good at most games I play, so I can't help but wonder if the rest of the world's gamers simply play on the very lowest levels, always use cheat codes, or are skilled to a ludicrous degree. This same kind of problem appears elsewhere in JK2 as well, particularly in the Nar Shadda streets. That whole level, while obviously a labor of love for the map developers, was similarly nightmarish, though for different reasons. In the case of Nar Shadda during my second time through, I just kept getting disintegrated by snipers. Gameplay went something like the following:
Step out of a door... BAM! I'm dead. Reload. Step through the door while running sideways... BAM! I'm dead. Reload. Open the door, fake to the side, then run through the door—yes, I made it into the hallway! BAM! I'm dead. Damn. I still haven't seen where the sniper is. Repeat for another 3 - 4 attempts until you can see the sniper. Then start thinking about how to shoot him before he can disintegrate you in a single shot. After a good 5 - 10 minutes working on that five feet of forward progress, the sniper is dead. Yes! Now, walk to the end of the hall... BAM! I'm dead. (sigh) Here we go again...
The most egregious example of this was in trying to find one particular bad guy who was roughly 10 - 20 stories above me, perhaps 400 - 500 feet away—so far away, in fact, that I couldn't even see him without using the scope on my own sniper rifle—and had the ability to blast me to atoms with a single shot. Ultimately, I was never able to beat him. I simply had to dodge around like a mad fool all the while I was within his sights. I have no idea how I'm supposed to kill him.
I wish I could say that such things are confined to JK2, but they're not. An equally ridiculous set of snipers can be found in the recent Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. A nearly indestructible final boss can be found at the end of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. A nearly indestructible intermediary boss can be found in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The bad guys in Operation Flashpoint can accurately target the left, and only the left, testicle of a gnat from 300 yards out in the very blackest of night, using nothing more than an average AK-74. Dal Gurak, from Blade of Darkness, is essentially unbeatable until one discovers the one, stupid trick that makes him a complete pushover, which might be even worse than the merely nigh-invulnerable boss. Were I to take the time to list all such things I've seen in games, I would still be writing tomorrow.
I realize that a certain amount of difficulty is necessary for a game to be challenging, and thus provide a sense of accomplishment upon its completion, but is this really the appropriate standard? Is it really reasonable to expect the player to reload again and again and again, literally dozens of times, to proceed from one small area to the next? And yes, final bosses should be intimidating and difficult. I will never forget the adrenaline rush from defeating the mechanized version of Adolf Hitler in Id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, from finally destroying the cyberdemon in the original DOOM, and so forth. That's what final bosses are supposed to do, but the bosses from those earlier games weren't even in the same league as the baddies wandering around today.
So I guess I'm curious: do others gamers out there think as I do? Or do y'all simply play on the very easiest of settings? Or are y'all so incredibly skilled that wandering through today's games on the very highest difficulty levels takes little to no effort? In short, is this fun?
04/25/02