Anybody else prefer NO PUZZLES in their games?

I'm not a champion for story nor am i a champion for online-competition. I am more a champion for gameplay. I came from an era of the arcade. The only games that really had a story that you needed to seek out was Dragon's Lair. Yes, your fighting games had a story but that was all summed up in 30 seconds after you beat the game. Beating games like Tekken 3 on my PS1 presented the most convoluted story that I knew better than to care about.

The puzzles are there in the games from my youth. In the form of figuring out my opponents patterns or recognizing waves of enemies and how to conserve resources. Moving blocks in Tomb Raider 1 to solve puzzles absolutely made sense. She was Connecticut Jones so i expected that. Well every game sense seems to want to shoehorn puzzles into my games. I could do without. I am in it for the gameplay. If your gameplay doesn't have enough substance to present puzzles in a fashion better than 'oh look, this room can't be passed without doing this,' then im out. Uncharted gets a pass but boy do i hate that game. Last of Us 2 does as well because their environmental puzzles are presented in a novel way. But the Bioshocks of the world with their pipe puzzles just really irk me.

In what may sound ironic the game that broke puzzles for me was Catherine. I was enjoying that game despite all of it's puzzles. I reached a point where i couldn't progress the story and i had laid down the controller for too long to retain any of the skills i need to complete the game. A raw nerve was exposed. I hate puzzles.

I'm quite the opposite. This is the reason why I haven't picked up Ghosts of Tsushima, there doesn't appear to be any challenge, maybe a bit of "make sure you look everywhere for the collectibles", but not much more than that. And that's fine but I know it's not going to keep me engaged. Maybe you will love that game. RDR2 also, really zero mental capacity needed to play it.

Puzzles to me, add a challenge that when I overcome it, I feel smart or accomplished or maybe I learn about a new way of approaching a problem. That feeling is what sucks me into a game and makes me want to go back. If it was simply about dexterity, then I would see it more as a sport, which is fine too, but it doesn't do much on its own for me. Puzzles are an integral part of gaming to me, even something like a board game presents an intellectual challenge to solve, not just one of brute force.

I also like to test my mental stamina, but I can see why someone may not want that kind of stress while gaming. Maybe that's why I don't play fps.much any more either, I play through the campaign once on hard or whatever the hardest default is, and then I play a week of multiplayer and move on. (Titanfall 2 I played a lot more of because again I felt like the different mechs, abilities, and guns had me thinking about what counters what).

One of my favorite games of all time is Into the Breach, which is one big puzzle but at least there's no time stress like Catherine. I also really like Catherine because like Tetris the micro puzzle solutions flow in interesting ways where you can combine two small solutions to solve one big problem. That's really neat.

Sounds like you are more the action gamer, or story driven gamer. Good news is, Plenty of games out there should you want to avoid puzzles and the subsequent frustration!

@aktane: I just bring this up because it seems like more gamers are like you so developers cater to that. If i get Medium for the Series-X launch i know there's going to be some abrubt stop in gameplay that has me matching patterns or something that i really dont have an industry term for. Using the Last of Series as an example I guess the rope puzzles of Last of Us 2 are fine and looking for safe combinations isn't too bad. The raft puzzles from Last of Us 1 were just a pain.

It depends on how well they're implemented. It's very rare for a game that isn't completely based around puzzles to do them well, and I'd rather no puzzles at all over half-assed or pace-killing puzzles. For a recent example, there's a puzzle in Control involving finding the proper order of symbols scattered around a room that took me a slogging 20 minutes of running to and fro to solve. After all the momentum the story had been building up until that point, it felt like slamming into a brick wall. Puzzles for the sake of puzzles just aren't worth it!

I always liked puzzles in the middle of games, but some of the half-assed "check your journal" puzzles in Uncharted soured me on the concept these days. The old Tomb Raiders, Soul Reaver, Prince of Persia had some damn fine puzzles, but those were slower-paced games revolving around that sort of stuff so it made sense to have them there. If I'm playing some tightly paced narrative-driven game, the last thing I want is spending 20 minutes on a dull puzzle that isn't particularly creative (just tedious).

So it's all about the pacing and the style of game for me. Vorador's Mansion, for example, was so much fun to dissect piece by piece because that gameplay was a big part of LoK. But if I run into another game with "spin these three rings but watch out because some rings spin another!" puzzles, I'll probably leave the room.

@csl316: Too right about uncharted. Sony gave away the uncharted collection on PS4 and I was so pumped to play that game I was calculating how long it would take me to beat games so I could have a quarantine plan. Man did I not take into account the length of the uncharted's inane puzzles. Got halfway through 2 and stopped.

Assassins Creed and Watchdogs have some pretty light puzzles. Watchdogs 1 and 2 have essential puzzles which im sure i'd decry if they were just 'press x to pay your respects,' level of ocmpletexity so I get that. Im just curious to why developers include puzzles. Is it padding? I mean I truly don't think anything in the game development process allowed a puzzle to bubble up organically. It's like they found one of those huge dictionary size books that contains 100s of puzzles and they just randomly select one and throw it into games. There should be a warning label on the back of retail copies. Has puzzles that are not skippable and do not enrich gameplay in any way. Not sure what the pictorgram for that would be but yeah.

@banefirelord: @csl316: It is true... the puzzles have to be worthwhile and the pacing has to be good! "Light puzzles" are fine as long as something else is happening when you're doing em. Usually action games have these, I think I legit remember that Control puzzle just being weird, but I probably repressed it.

I kind of liked the simple puzzles in Spiderman (Ps4) - thoughts on those? I remember them being easy but adding something to those interactions with Octavius.

@fourthline: Do you really think so? I feel like most AAA games have some very light puzzles (like the ones you mentioned in Naughty Dog Games) or none at all. Your Fortnites, CODs, Gears, Halos, Souls-Like games, Arena Shooters, Destiny-like's, Marvels Avengers, I expect pretty much zero puzzles. I'm sure there will be maybe A PUZZLE OR TWO in Cyberpunk but honestly, I doubt it? Nintendo first party games will probably have more puzzles than the average big game though. They're closer to board games than action/cinematic/story experiences.

Depends on genre, quality, etc. Puzzle platformers? One of my least favorite genres. Old-school adventure games? One of my favorite genres. Time and place for everything.

I like how Spiderman PS4 did it: Want to take a break from forcefully extending your limbs at people until they fall over? Pop by the lab and make lines look like other lines. Don't like making lines look like other lines? It's cool, you don't have to. (I liked the puzzles in that game, but making them mostly optional was a great idea)

I don’t mind very light and simple puzzles.

It’s very easy for stuff to get out of hand though.

The airlock puzzles in one of the Persona 5 dungeons and that puzzle you have to do in Twilight princess before you get the Master Sword are some of the worst I’ve played.

Puzzles that take out of the game and force you to finish to progress through the game are terrible, especially if the don’t actually have you make use of the game’s mechanics.

Optional or side quests I’m usually ok with, but mandatory puzzles can get fucked unless the game is built around them like the Witness.

@aktane: I was so glad the Spiderman puzzles were skippable. I think I struggled doing them initially and just wasn't up for the inevitable progressive difficulty.

The issue for puzzles with me is I am a mechanical engineer and puzzles in games just seem like some made up stuff. I really like Persona 5's little quizzes. However, I do think those were poorly localized. I get it, the game should be about Japanese culture. The one that sticks out to me as what I want from puzzles is how the game mentioned there's only enough gold in the world to fill 3 Olympic size swimming pools. I believe that as much as I don't. If you're going to puzzle me give me something real that I can move into the real world. Im substituting reading books and doing research for your game. At least make it somewhat fruitful. Bully had some real world puzzles but there game was marred in the tropes of PS2 games and no matter how many times ive tried to go back to it (I should probably give it another try) I really haven't been able to get to the chemistry or other coursework puzzles.

With the start of a new generation I want to call out some things I can't stand. I will be picking up Watchdogs 3 and probably not Assassins Creed. I'm on the fence with Cyberpunk because I am absolutely not interested in anything more complex than what Watchdogs was doing. Somehow I got through Deus Ex's puzzles no problem but I can attribute every prematurely quit game to an abrupt puzzle mechanic. Im really more curious about next gen now that I've got my mind wrapped around ray tracing and I am comfortable with not playing multi player ever again. I really just hope puzzles were a placeholder while they were waiting for tech to solve what they really aspire to do.

What do the credits call the people who make puzzles? I'd love to do a resume search online to see if the people that make these puzzles are mathematicians or physicists. Maybe im just jealous of their craft.

I don't like puzzles, but then there are games like The Room, Portal and The Talos Principle that i absolutely adore, but it's not because of the puzzles, Portal 1 and 2 are the only puzzle games where i never had to look up solutions, but if i can't even see where the puzzle begins let alone work it out i'm looking up the answer within 2 minutes.
I'm currently playing Ocarina of Time again and it struck me how simple it is, would you guys consider it a kids game?
To me it feels like back then they were still coming up with the rules of what you could and couldn't do in a 3D world, so they didn't come up with dastardly puzzles in case it annoyed people, and for me that's perfect, i want to see where i need to go next, i need level design that implies what the correct path is, and if i haven't figured it out within 2 minutes i want the game to give me a hint or just tell me what to do.
I've always wanted to play The Witness, but being completely puzzle based and increasing in difficulty throughout i know i'll get annoyed.

I suppose I don’t fully get this criticism? Like, the puzzles in Bioshock only appear should you choose to hack, but you can clear that game without hacking. And Catherine’s block puzzles are a competitive esport at this point. I’m just thinking OP doesn’t like certain genres of games?

EDIT: Oh crap just realized who started this thread. I’m going to see myself out lest I get sucked into an illogical vortex.

@navster15: Forgive me for not recalling every game I’ve ever played. You get the sentiment. With bio shock there was an incentive to do the puzzle game because (fogive me for not recalling details for a game I played about 8 years ago) but it was fun til it wasn’t. So many games have this and their like the original micro transaction. Pay the bridge troll if you want to play.

@cikame the witness was a games with gold title. I really couldn’t find the logic in the puzzles and it was a great personal shame of mine that I couldn’t figure early stuff out (Apples in a tree) until I got over it real quick. The witness is absolutely a game I will not like. I remember hating Braid and being reluctant to look up solutions for some sort of badge of honor

@fourthline: See i was ok with Braid, i don't know why but i'm sure i'll find out when that remaster comes out, i think my brain can handle physics/time puzzles better than more traditional fare.

I forgot to mention my main issue with puzzles, i get no gratification from completing them, i don't feel accomplishment or a sense of pride for figuring them out, i don't feel smart, just a sense of relief that it's finally over and i can get on with whatever i was doing before i was stopped.
Using The Room as an example.

I see this box and get extremely excited, i love clockwork, mechanisms, stuff that unlocks, unfolds, slides, but because it's a puzzle game i'm constantly stopped from making the box do the things that brings me joy, i remember in the third game where you're free to travel between rooms, there were multiple instances where i didn't know where to go next and ran through every room multiple times trying to figure it out, that's not fun, you should be moving because you're making progress, not moving because you can't find the progress.

@cikame: The scarring can be real. I remember trying to play Leisure Suit Larry and Maniac Mansion as a kid. I ended up feeling like the perfect moron because i couldnt figure out solutions to the puzzles or find a means to progress the story. This was very much pre-internet so i took not progressing in Leisure Suit Larry and police quest as a fault of my childishness and some mechanism would click right about the time my mustache might come in that would make it so i would just know. Those games are just bad. Of a time, but still bad none the less.

Braid hurt me like no other. I got so far in the game and as you probably know was a digital purchase. I bought it and never finished it. I felt like a fool for so long. I really never let it go.

@navster15: hahaha I should really know better...

@fourthline: Puzzles aren't a hold over for tech. They're actually fundamental attributes of that game's design and interactivity. I'm an aerospace engineer by school. Anyways maybe your issue is a stubbornness not to just look up some solutions, that or maybe you have fallen into the trap of myopic thinking. I find engineers are typically masters of their logic, but often get stumped by thinking that isn't in their silo of thought (me included). If you feel bad that you can't solve puzzles, I think it is a mental thing that you can exercise by... Doing more puzzles! Or you can look up a few solutions to get a sense of what tools you can use to solve something...your engineering brain needs to adapt.

You still didn't respond to my many examples of games that probably won't have puzzles. It would be pretty easy to avoid puzzles if all you want to do is focus on dexterity.

Gears and Halo are the only games on this list that interest me. I really dont like online-multiplayer and i've written screeds about Fifa being harder than Dark Souls, but i can't get into the fantasy lore. The surge was more up my alley but if a newish game isn't part of a the current community zeitgeist then i feel like i'm playing in a vacuum. Though i do love writing reviews for older games even though nobody comments (see my days old Arkham Asylum review). As i write this what i wrote in my AA review was how much i hated the riddler trophies. I know people commented that i should just open my mind to puzzles but with the 100(?) puzzles in the game that's a daunting task asking me to do mental gymnastics required to learn something that doesn't serve me elsewhere. I really need to nail the definition of sublime and surreal a little better than manipulate what is essentially an arbitrary puzzle with arbitrary rules.

I can be a hypocrite given enough time but a game like Tomb Raider has really enjoyable puzzles in that they present the perfect time to set down the controller and come back to the game another day. Oftentimes skippable. I will call those type of puzzles Type-B.

Tetris and Catherine are Type- A puzzles whereas Bioshock, Watchdogs, and Deus Ex, Assassins Creed, and Last of Us 2 puzzles are Type-C (in that they serve the narrative somewhat). Uncharted puzzles are games written around puzzles but in a dissimilar way to Type-B in that you can't progress the story without doing them. These are the kind i hate. Type - D (not happy face). If there's official names for this stuff i'd love to hear it.

Depends on what you perceive as a puzzle, but i think that there will be plenty of puzzling action to be had in Cyberpunk.

Like the whole braindance mechanic that has been showcased, ( where you look through other people's eyes to see their experience) will be used as a puzzle solving mechanic for sure. Who shot who? Can i access a new perspective to see the perpetrator? Which point of view will give me new valuable information that could progress this quest?

I haven't seen all the video material for Cyberpunk, so this is speculation on my part, but i also imagine that a RPG game like that will feature hacking minigames that can take the form of a puzzle (fallout,bioshock, deus ex). Perhaps persuasion or speech checks come into play where you have to strike the right tone and say the right things to get the information you need.

It's quite a bit different than stumbling on a room with mirrors and lasers and having to solve this 'puzzle room' , but these are still forms of puzzles.

@onemanarmyy: you make a ton of very valid points. I agree!

@fourthline: I like your categories. I think you just need to break through your puzzle barriers for type B and C because those puzzles are hardly ever difficult or demanding and you can simply look up a solution and move on. Barely any time lost. I would venture most gamers have less of an issue with them than you do, and they shouldn't be removed from the game because you're losing both content and gameplay if removed or made skippable.

All the stuff onemanarmyy said above is all really cool shit that I WANT in my games, haha.

I like puzzles.

Nope. Wish every game had puzzles.

I love puzzles in games as long as they're worthwhile. Uncharted and tLoU would be better without their low-effort puzzles unfortunately, but I really enjoyed them in the latest God of War. Pure puzzle games are hit and miss for me, but the Witness is one of my favorite games ever.