Obviously Cryptic

October 10th, 2010 at 12:07 pm -

We’ve all been through it before.

The long dark corridor that leads into a wide and nondescript room. There’s a door in plain view but it’s locked or there’s a laser fence preventing you from passing through. The room looks ordinary enough but we can sense there’s something amiss here.

It’s the mid-level puzzle room.

We only have a sparse few minutes of searching for a solution before we go crazy and yell profanities at the game for not leading us through it by the hand.

Why is the door locked and why can’t I bust it down like I’ve busted down every other door in my path?

Our responses range from the random to the systematic.

We may start looking in our inventory for the possible combination of items that would produce a key. I mean what else could that stick of butter from the last level be for?

Failing that we may decide to pace from side to side searching ever little pixel of the room frantically pushing the use button until something works. That coffee pot on the counter looks awfully suspicious.

We finally cave and either quit the game entirely or Ctrl+F through a walkthrough on GameFAQs until we get the answer, never bringing it up to our friends when it turns out we’ve spent more than 2 hours looking for a magic button.

There’s good puzzles and then there’s the bad ones that keep us all short of breath and inches from the answer.

Level designers have to walk a delicate line between challenging and annoying.

Lately, I’ve felt like these designers are building more sensitive games that plainly offer the answer. Dead Space featured a ‘Where do I go now?’ button. Mirror’s Edge had objects turn red when you had to use them next.

Then other games are more merciful but evoke a feeling of cleverness in the average gamer. Half Life 2 introduced the idea of weight and physics to the first timer by providing a room with a seesaw and some bricks. The challenge was to reach a particularly high up ledge.

Some games get it right and some games get it wrong.

Developers are taking a slight gamble when they implement something that challenges an average person’s wit for just a moment.

One way that they get out of their predicament while still retaining the feeling of cleverness on the part of the player is by implementing objectives that glow a certain color.

Imagine your character is in the same room from before. Instead of looking around for a magic key or button you notice a particularly shiny ventilation grate. Naturally you make your way over and the puzzle is solved!

Don’t feel too good, buddy. The game pretty much told you where it was.

Batman Arkham Asylum did the same kind of thing but neatly hid their guiding hand in a secondary vision that only made the important stuff glow.

Yeah, I did everything in Arkham Asylum and I feel good about it. I still have to acknowledge the fact that most of it was solved with ‘detective mode.’

Now that I think about it, I can’t really think of an example for a hardcore action adventure puzzle that doesn’t hold your hand in some way. The closest example I can get is Hera’s garden sequence in God of War 3 but even that had indentations in the ground for where stuff was suppose to be placed.

I prefer having a challenge and a bit of help as long as it also required commonsense on my part. It was fun to figure out that Fatman in Metal Gear Solid 2 hid a bomb under his dead body.

True, I used a tool that helped me find it.

Still it felt like I did most of the work.

I think most people can agree with an implementation like that.

Portal was another one that had great puzzle design. The light ramp up from puzzle to puzzle fit the mold perfectly. When you played through the game, it starts by giving you certain spots that the portal gun can be used on.

When you hit the middle portion, they start increasing the amount of spots you can use it on.

By the end of the game you truly have to create some insane portal acrobatics and the feeling of accomplishment at the end is matched by no other.

What kind of puzzle do you guys prefer?

There’s the obvious, hold my hand, nothing can go wrong puzzle. There’s the veiled assistance but feeling of cleverness puzzle. There’s also the hardcore, you figure it out, I’m not telling you at all puzzle.

Also, can anyone think of a game that had a truly difficult puzzle and made no effort to help the player through it?