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Project: That Really Hot Chick [XNA]
Project Started: 4th July, 2011 Last Update: 27th August, 2011
Project Owner: HorrendousGames Project Members: Strife
Project Type: XBLIG Music Project Progress:

Ready to go and crybabies
Posted 25th Jul 11, by HorrendousGames  
Well, we're able to resubmit the game again, though we're still having trouble with the start menu bug (you know, the important one). The memory unit bug is fixed, by accident apparently, though I'm not going to complain.

The App Hub users have been very unaccommodating, especially when it comes to playtesting. I've only had two people playtest the game so far, both ignoring the fact that I wanted them to look for bugs, not to give me their opinion on the game. I welcome their opinions, and I'm glad they're offering it, but that's not the issue.

Every single playtester on App Hub has cried that the game is just to darn difficult, which I'm calling BS on. One of the most popular games on XBLIG is called "The Impossible Game" which is a very difficult and unforgiving game, which is a similar format to the gameplay of this game (character automatically runs, player jumps over obstacles). In the impossible game, if you don't jump with around 100% accuracy, you will not make it, and this occurs throughout the entire game. My game has that maybe 3 times in the entire game, none of which are on the first level (which is the only level any of them have played). I can beat my game easy, I have never been able to beat any of the levels in the impossible game (and I still enjoy the game).

"But John, it's your game, you know all the levels so it's easier for you". Cool. But it also doesn't explain how my friends younger brothers (ranging from 8 - 12) were able to beat the first level at least within a few tries. My programmer (who had nothing to do with designing any of the levels) was also able to beat the first level on his first try.

With "Santa Doesn't Love You", I could understand people claiming the game was hard, even with the hints, you still weren't told how all the traps worked. In this game you press 1 button. You press the A button. That's it. You see something dangerous, you hit A, it's not rocket science.

Every single one of them says the only way to fix it is to make it easier or to make checkpoints (which with a music based game on XBLIG, it's not happening, specifically since Microsoft has horrible support for music)

And App Hub wonders why XBLIG is ridden with overly simplistic mini-games geared towards casual gamers, which is fine, but you shouldn't expect every game to be as such.

This is the type of lazy gaming that I cannot stand, ESPECIALLY from fellow developers. It's fine to have games that are easy that make you feel good about yourself for winning, but you shouldn't try to force everyone else to do the same. I'm sorry I came from a time where if you screwed up in a game, you got back up from the beginning and tried again. Granted, with RPGs, this wasn't the case, you'd go back to your save point (which you weren't allowed to save in dungeons and towns), and it was fun.

I had a game for the playstation called Robo-Pit, a game where you build a robot and fight other robots in a rank based system. If you beat a robot, you got to take one of it's weapons, if you lost, the opposing fighter would take one of yours. I had to baby sit a few kids that grew up on garbage like call of duty and halo, after about an hour, I had to shut the game off because one of the damn kids started crying and throwing the controller around because he lost all his weapons. I have a feeling these are the same kinds of gamers I'm dealing with now, that whine because they have to redo the last 2 minutes of gameplay, hate to see how they'd react when playing something like Golden Eye or Mega Man, they'd probably kill themselves if they ever played Commandos.

One of the last games I played through (well, not all the way through) was Fable III. This has got to be one of the easiest games ever. To start, they give you the option to play on easy or hard (whatever it is), easy lets you recover from time, and hard only lets you recover from rest and potions. Hard might as well have been easy, because all of your attacks are murderkill, especially magic. You don't even really have to think, just mash the attack button and you'll be fine. Even if you manage to lose all of your health, all you do is lose your progress towards next guild seal (which you'll get 1000s of just by talking to people anyways).

Are we seriously going to get to the point where games that are challenging are labeled as "poorly designed"?

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