@maxopower said:
>Spelunky, more puzzle game than action game,
I really hate this line. I get what people get at when they use it. But it completely undermines the many many many hours of time it takes to get the hang of the action part, and much less master it like Rex does. Bananasaurus Rex is in his right to say utter the line. But the rest of us, who still get hit by arrow traps, or on occasions get killed in the mines, should just shut up about it. Watching Patrick (or myself) play, it's clear that Spelunky still very much is a challenging platformer, and not quite a "puzzle game" yet, or at least not more so than an action game.
Patrick is one of the only people who says that, and it continues to be a super wrong opinion. Even when someone like Bananasaurus Rex has mastered the fundamentals and it's all about "how can I ghostmine this level most efficiently", that still doesn't make it a puzzle game. Just because you can do something more or less efficiently doesn't make it a puzzle game.
Yes, in Spelunky, one has to learn the rules of how the different elements interact, and you have to be situationally aware of nearly everything around you to approach it the right way. But just because there is some "right" way to approach a given series of obstacles doesn't make it a puzzle game.
If anything, it makes me concerned that Patrick isn't thinking things through in most games he plays, but because Spelunky (and Dark Souls) really require you to confidently choose a safe strategy to tackle each obstacle, somehow that makes those games puzzle games. It super duper doesn't, unless you want to call all video games puzzle games. Patrick, you can apply that methodical approach to almost any game. It's just that so many games are easy nowadays, and Spelunky/Dark Souls are some of the only games that punish players with a swift death if they don't play cautiously.
Puzzle games can be many things. Aside from just Professor Layton or whatever, lots of other weird experiences can be puzzle games. The Castle Doctrine is a puzzle game; you're either devising puzzles for other players to solve, or you're taking a gamble that you can bring enough tools into another player's house to circumvent the lethal puzzle they've created. It's pretty easy to argue that you're being presented with a puzzle, and tasked with finding a solution.
In Spelunky, the puzzle is uhhhhh, "get past all this shit, ideally without getting hit", except it's ok if you get hit sometimes, and much of the time the "solution" is "be pretty good at Super Mario World platforming and/or be good at aiming the shotgun/bombs". These reflex skills are so important, and pull it pretty firmly away from being a puzzle game.
Just because you have to pause the game briefly to think "OK, how do I safely handle this situation?" doesn't make it a puzzle game.
Log in to comment