A couple of gaming annoyances

A couple of very specific gaming related things that have provided some annoyance over the past week or so. And why keep such annoyances to myself?

Not too long ago, I played through Metro 2033. Overall, I enjoyed the game. I enjoyed it enough to go and pick up the book that the game was based on.

I was expecting it to be different, so the general changes weren’t a surprise. For example, the book (which is EXCELLENT by the way) contains a lot less action. I can understand adding more shooting sections to a game that’s primarily set as a shooter. That’s fine, and it was generally done quite well. I can also understand adding a lot more ‘above ground’ areas to the game than were in the book…more fighting against mutants and demons tends to, again, fit the shooter motif. No problem there.

There was a section of the game, though, that I absolutely loathed.

You’re working your way through a massive library, trying to find a specific piece of information. During this section, you do one part alone…in an area filled with damn near indestructible ape like creatures. It became an exercise in trying to memorize how to make it through without being torn apart, a type of level design that I find particularly obnoxious. I had assumed it was based on an important book section. It was…sort of.

There is a part of the book in the library. The group does encounter the creatures (called Librarians). However, in the book they aren’t unstoppable killing machines with hair. They’re tough, but they’re NOT INVULNERABLE. That means the game designers actually thought that this made for a compelling level. I want to hit these people. Hard. With a solid object. The level would have been great as in the book…even more action, without any frustrating “Oh, I turned the wrong way…now I’m doomed!” bullshit.

I know that a game based on a book, or a movie based on a book, is going to stray from the source material. That’s fine. The content has to be changed to fit the new medium a little better, and so long as it’s done well I’m fine with it. Hell, the Bourne series of movies is a MASSIVE departure from the books…there’s a whole third side to the ‘battle’ in the books that isn’t in the flicks at all! They’re essentially telling a different story, but they’ve done it well enough that it doesn’t bother me.

Changes like this just don’t make any sense though. The level in question wasn’t fun. I’ve yet to encounter the fellow Metro player who actually enjoyed playing through it in any way. And the original was not only better, it would have made for a better game level. Why make a ton of changes to add more action to the game, then here go the other way and drop the action in favour of a tedious puzzle in rote memorization? It doesn’t make any sense.

Secondly, I haven’t updated my play through of King Arthur for awhile now. I just haven’t felt much like gaming recently, hence the lack of updates. Anyway, today I loaded it up and started…and promptly got screwed over.

In that last post, I took the whole thing in a very dark direction. It fit well with what was going on in the game (and my own mood regarding those events), and I was quite excited to continue with it. Turns out I can’t. I CAN’T attack the people who led to the rage in the game…it’s impossible. I had assumed that once the faction I had declared war on was defeated, I’d be wide open to go forth and butcher my previous allies. Nope. Can’t be done.

I promptly quit the game, because I’m now stuck without an idea for how to deal with this. How do I possibly just explain that away? Up until now I’ve quite enjoyed the game, but this presents a rather sizeable problem with it as this really puts the whole experience on some serious rails. Once you’ve made a choice, that’s it, you can never do anything else? Frankly, that’s lame. So this is going to require some figuring out.

Part of the draw of trying to craft a narrative around a game is having to respond to the unexpected, but this is just silly. I’m not a fan of strategic games that really put barriers around where you can go, and that’s exactly what the case is here. I’m not really sure of how this is going to work from this point simply because I now have to limit how ‘in character’ I get to avoid possibly walking in to another literary trap like this one. Frankly, I’m tempted to just junk it and start again with something else, but I’m going to wait until I’m not acting on pure annoyance to make that decision.

Mild rant over!