Using Walkthroughs: When It’s Not Cheating

How many times have you got­ten stuck in an adven­ture game because you missed one tiny lit­tle pixel you some­how neglected to click?  Or because you couldn’t make sense of the con­vo­luted story hinted at within the 300 pages of books and diaries the game expects you to read?  Or maybe you didn’t real­ize that you were sup­posed to com­bine the rope with the rub­ber chicken (how silly of you) which turns out to be mirac­u­lously crit­i­cal in mak­ing your great escape.  It’s hair-pulling moments like these when the temp­ta­tion to use a walk­through is at its strongest.  It’s the inevitable eth­i­cal dilemma all adven­ture gamers must face: do I con­tinue to waste hours get­ting nowhere, or do I take one lit­tle peek at the answers?  We’re torn between the desire to feel sat­is­fied in solv­ing puz­zles for our­selves, and on the other hand, the desire to merely get on with the rest of our lives.

If you’re like me, you’ll reach one of these mad­den­ing impasses and at least try to give it your best shot.  You’ll click and double-click every­thing, retrace your steps, talk to every­one, and exhaust a good hour or two of play­time before your brain trans­forms into Jello and your once opti­mistic pow­ers of rea­son­ing dete­ri­o­rate into thoughts of obscene and utter con­tempt for the mak­ers of such mind­fucks, that were obvi­ously designed specif­i­cally to destroy you.  I’ve been there.

Case in point:  Last night while play­ing The Black Mir­ror , I got stuck in William Gordon’s tower study room and for the life of me could not fig­ure out why.  I knew I was look­ing for a diary, and I knew it would be in this room.  I picked up every object there was to pick up, tried com­bin­ing items to no avail, and clicked and double-clicked on every square pixel of screen real estate that I could.  Yet the game would not let me leave the room, stat­ing that “I need to explore this area more thor­oughly.”  When I real­ized I had wasted over an hour in this sin­gle room, I decided to sac­ri­fice my pride and guiltily con­sult a walk­through, feel­ing stu­pid and defeated.  And you know what it turns out I was doing wrong?  I needed to right-click on the damn desk drawer to find the secret hid­den diary, not left-click it.  (WTF!)  So even though I had already fig­ured out exactly where to go and what to do, an unfor­tu­nate tech­ni­cal­ity pre­vented my progression.

When it comes to adven­ture games, I believe there’s a fine line between dif­fi­culty and poor game design.

Let’s be hon­est, game design­ers some­times do things that are just plain stu­pid and/or  make no sense.  And it’s cir­cum­stances like the one described above when I will hap­pily con­sult a walk­through and not feel guilty after­ward.  When we learn puz­zle solu­tions in a walk­through, we will usu­ally expe­ri­ence one of two reactions:

1. Wow, how could I have missed that!??
2. OMFG that is SOOOOO stupid!

The first reac­tion typ­i­cally leads to feel­ings of guilt and shame for hav­ing looked up the answer.  But if it’s the sec­ond reac­tion, should we feel jus­ti­fied?  I say yes.  Can it really be con­sid­ered cheat­ing if a game’s poor design or quirky con­trol sys­tem prac­ti­cally requires you to cheat?  (Of course, the only prob­lem is, you won’t know the dif­fer­ence until you’ve cheated…)

So in the inter­est of restor­ing everyone’s dig­nity dur­ing our moments of des­per­a­tion, I’d like to pro­pose the following:

Using a walk­through is not cheat­ing when…

• You already know where to go and what to do, but can­not fig­ure out exactly how to do it.
• You dis­cover some­thing impor­tant or con­nect the dots ear­lier than the game’s pro­tag­o­nist, and you must then do exces­sive amounts of back­track­ing to bring your less intel­li­gent alter-ego up to speed.
• Ter­ri­ble con­trol or inter­face designs make oth­er­wise easy tasks exceed­ingly difficult.
• The game has known bugs that inhibit progression.
• Exces­sive use of red her­rings fea­tured in the game.
• Puz­zle solu­tions turns out to be almost com­pletely illog­i­cal, with no prior clues given for how to go about solv­ing them.
• Solu­tion requires com­bin­ing two com­pletely unre­lated objects in a non­sen­si­cal fash­ion to become key­stone of epic McGuyver-like proportions.

I remem­ber play­ing adven­ture games before the Inter­net.  Before walk­throughs, before Game­FAQs.  Before you could just Google a descrip­tion of the exact part of the game you were stuck on and be met with hun­dreds of detailed, pic­to­r­ial solu­tions.  Those were the days.  You felt a real sense of accom­plish­ment when you com­pleted games.  Nowa­days it’s far too easy to Google up the answers, or worse, unin­ten­tion­ally stum­ble upon cheats and spoil­ers posted online.  I guess one solu­tion could be to avoid the Inter­net com­pletely while you’re play­ing a game, but let’s be real­is­tic here.  These are the rea­sons why I’m thank­ful for sites like Uni­ver­sal Hint Sys­tem which is help­ful with­out giv­ing too much away.  After all, the very rea­son we play adven­ture games is because we enjoy games that reward us for our clev­er­ness and intu­ition, not pun­ish us with frus­tra­tion and feel­ings of inferiority.

A love letter to the Sega Genesis/CD

Remem­ber the sheer awe­some­ness of Sonic the Hedge­hog?  Remem­ber how great the 6-button con­troller was?  Remem­ber Sega Visions mag­a­zine?

I got my first glimpse into that 16-bit world one sum­mer when my older cousin came to visit and brought along his shiny new Sega Gen­e­sis .  All I knew at the time was that it wasn’t a Nin­tendo, the only con­sole I’d ever really known.  The Sega Gen­e­sis was black and mys­te­ri­ous, almost as if it were inten­tion­ally designed to be in stark con­trast with the pedes­trian light gray of Nin­tendo.  I had no con­cept of graph­ics, hard­ware, or these things called “bits.” I just knew video games were fun to play.  But when my cousin showed me those early Gen­e­sis games for the first time–games like Golden Axe and Alex Kidd–my world changed.  These games looked like noth­ing I had ever seen before.  I vividly remem­ber the first time my cousin and I played Altered Beast.  The char­ac­ters looked real. The sound effects used real voices (POWER UP!).  It blew my lit­tle 7-year-old mind.  Sud­denly my Nin­tendo games seemed bor­ing and amateur.

And you must admit, the graph­ics were amaz­ing for 1990.  It was at a time when most kids had never heard of Sega Gen­e­sis, and if they did, their par­ents prob­a­bly couldn’t afford to buy them one.  And if they could, good luck con­vinc­ing them it was some­how dif­fer­ent or bet­ter than “that Nin­tendo you already have.”  Lots of beg­ging and tons of chores later, I was one of the proud but few kids in my neigh­bor­hood with a Sega Gen­e­sis.  When I went to the local video rental store (this was before Block­buster), I was one of the hand­ful of cus­tomers who had any rea­son to go near the small but brand spank­ing new selec­tion of Gen­e­sis games.

Two years later, Super Nin­tendo arrived.  And inven­tiably, us kids were divided on whose video game sys­tem was supe­rior. (Funny how some things never change.)  The lucky kids had both.  The rest of us were forced to choose one or the other.  The Super Nin­tendo kids were the soft­ies, the kids with the “toy” con­sole.  Us Sega kids were the hard­core gamers, the ones with the con­sole that actu­ally showed blood in Mor­tal Kom­bat.  Choos­ing your alliance was crit­i­cal to your social sta­tus and geek cred, and I defended my console’s honor with a noble fist.  A side-by-side screen­shot com­par­i­son of every sin­gle game looked more real­is­tic on the Gen­e­sis, and that was all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion I needed.  And though years later I even­tu­ally did get a Super Nin­tendo (and yes it was a great con­sole) for the major­ity of the 1990s I was first and fore­most a Sega girl.

Remem­ber this?

Nat­u­rally when the Sega CD came out, I knew I had to have that too.  And like the Gen­e­sis, the Sega CD blew me away with its graph­ics and sound.  Video games on a com­pact disc?  Sega has always been ahead of its time.  (Their exper­i­men­ta­tion and for­ward think­ing is per­haps the rea­son for where they’re at right now, but that’s another blog post for another time.)  Before Playsta­tion, even before the Pana­sonic 3DO, us Sega CD own­ers were play­ing mas­sive games with full-motion video and CD-quality sound.  The Sega CD is also the con­sole (or should I say pseudo con­sole) that really ignited my love for adven­ture games.  Willy Beamish, Snatcher, Rise of the Dragon; no other con­sole was putting out games like these.  I remem­ber lust­ing after the CDX, one of the first multi-purpose con­soles on the market.

Although it even­tu­ally became unpop­u­lar, I kept right on play­ing my Genesis/CD, even when the games began to dis­ap­pear from that local video rental store.  There were so many great games, the con­sole kept me play­ing for a long time after its even­tual demise.  Over the years other con­soles came and went in my life, and some­where in between I got Sat­urn and Dream­cast too.  But my fond­est Sega mem­o­ries cen­ter around the Genesis/CD years, which to this day remains my favorite con­sole of all time.

I guess what I’m really try­ing to say is, I heart you, Sega. Thanks for mak­ing my child­hood a lit­tle more awesome.

Worst Valentine’s Day Gifts for Gamers

Valentine’s Day is just 1 day away.  So what have you got­ten for your sweet­heart who loves video games?

Stuck for ideas? There’s a ton of good blog posts out there rec­om­mend­ing awe­some V-day gifts for the spe­cial gamer in your life.  Great stuff like  this , any of these , and (my per­sonal favorite) this .

But for all the great Valentine’s Day gifts for gamers, there’s a whole lot of bad ones.  And bad Valentine’s Day gifts can lead to cry­ing, shame, and the with­hold­ing of sex.  Lucky for you, I’m here to help you avoid such pit­falls by review­ing some of the worst gifts pos­si­ble.  This is espe­cially help­ful for you non-gamers who know you want to get your Valen­tine some­thing gamer-related, but have no idea what NOT to buy.   And if you’re a gamer your­self, you should know better.

Warn­ing: Giv­ing your sig­nif­i­cant other any of the fol­low­ing items for Valentine’s Day may result in a swift and imme­di­ate breakup.

Wii Fit

There’s noth­ing like giv­ing your part­ner a Valentine’s Day gift that not so sub­tly sug­gests they should lose some weight.  While I don’t think it’s quite as bad for a girl to give this to her man, I do pity the guy who makes the mis­take of buy­ing this for his girl­friend, espe­cially if she didn’t ask for it. Get­ting a Wii Fit is anal­o­gous to receiv­ing a bath­room scale, which, FYI, usu­ally tops the lists of worst Valentine’s Day gifts .  Even if your inten­tions are com­pletely inno­cent, stay on the safe side and just assume that on some level, whether sub­con­sciously or not, she will get offended.

Generic Game Systems

For gamers, there’s noth­ing quite as dis­ap­point­ing as receiv­ing a generic game sys­tem as a gift, espe­cially if you had your heart set on a real one.  You know the ones I’m talk­ing about–they’re the no-name “all in one” con­soles with built-in games that QVC tries to pawn off on clue­less moms around the hol­i­days, or the Brand X game sys­tems that resem­ble con­trollers col­lect­ing dust in some bar­gain bin at Toys ‘R Us. They’re easy to iden­tify because A) they’re cheaply priced; B) they usu­ally say things on the box like “you’ll never need to buy another game again!”; and most rec­og­niz­ably C) THEY DON’T FUCKING SAY “NINTENDO”, “XBOX”, or “PS3” ANYWHERE!  Nobody, I repeat NOBODY wants one of these worth­less pieces of shit as a gift on any hol­i­day, let alone Valentine’s Day. Avoid!

Stu­pid Gamer T-Shirts

There’s a lot of cool gamer t-shirts out there, but also plenty of uncool ones.  If you plan on get­ting some geeky gear for your favorite gamer, make sure you at least buy one that doesn’t make them look like a com­plete douchebag.  As a gen­eral rule of thumb, you should avoid any­thing that says “1337.”  Also ter­ri­ble are shirts based on shitty games, shirts boldly pro­claim­ing how much you “pwn” (unless of course you really don’t, and you’re just try­ing to be ironic), unfunny cus­tom design jobs that nobody under­stands but you, or per­haps this shirt .

Rock Revolution

Also known as the game that ISN’T Rock Band or Gui­tar Hero.  So if your BF/GF had their heart set on either of these games for Valentine’s Day and you get them Rock Rev­o­lu­tion instead, con­grats, you fail.  It’s almost like the devel­op­ers delib­er­ately made this game to trick naive peo­ple into buy­ing it think­ing it’s one of the other two.  The track­list is sur­pris­ingly not hor­ri­ble, but hardly any of the songs are per­formed by orig­i­nal artists.  The game has also received ter­ri­ble reviews from most crit­ics and game sites.  Com­pared to Rock Band and Gui­tar Hero, Rock Rev­o­lu­tion is undoubt­edly the red-headed stepchild.

Plug ‘n’ Play TV Games

These lit­tle one-trick ponies are a close cousin to the afore­men­tioned Generic Game Sys­tems, and they come in a wide vari­ety of games rang­ing from crappy to crap­pier.  These are the kinds of video game prod­ucts you buy for some­one that only likes or has ever played one video game in their entire life (usu­ally Tetris), your grand­mother who only knows how to play card games, or young chil­dren who you don’t yet trust enough not to fuck up a real con­sole.  These plug ‘n’ play devices are typ­i­cally very gim­micky, with prod­uct designs that go out of their way to let you know what game you’re play­ing, and uncom­fort­able con­trollers. While there are SOME decent retro plug ‘n’ play devices that mimic clas­sic game con­soles, they usu­ally have excep­tion­ally shitty con­trollers and/or a lim­ited library of built-in games. The only time it’s accept­able to buy one of these toys is if you’re unable to acquire a real Atari or Com­modore 64 and are des­per­ate to play your old favorites.  Buy your Valen­tine the real thing instead!

Hope I saved you from a sex-less Valentine’s Day!

Coraline: A modern day Wizard of Oz

“You prob­a­bly think this world is a dream come true… but you’re wrong.”

Cora­line is one of those movies I knew I would love before I even knew any­thing about it. Between being writ­ten by fan­tasy god Neil Gaiman , directed by Henry Selick (The Night­mare Before Christ­mas) , and fea­tur­ing dark and dreamy stop-motion visu­als, it just had my name writ­ten all over it. Nev­er­mind that I had never read the story*. I knew I had to see this movie the moment I heard about it.

And I was not disappointed.

From begin­ning to end, Cora­line is an absolute delight on the eyes and ears. It was sort of like watch­ing the inhab­i­tants of a Vic­to­rian doll­house come alive and invite the entire toy box over for tea. Every char­ac­ter was lov­ably quirky, funny, and mem­o­rable; includ­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of the not-always-inanimate objects. Even the voice act­ing of Dakota Fan­ning and Teri Hatcher, two actresses whom I ordi­nar­ily don’t care for, was very well done. I found myself so absorbed that it didn’t even occur to me which famous per­son I was lis­ten­ing to, which is one thing I typ­i­cally dis­like about ani­mated films–I tend to hear the celebrity, not the character.

And the visu­als were top-notch, as usual, which seems to be stan­dard for all of Henry Selick’s pic­tures so far. Kudos to LAIKA ani­ma­tion stu­dio and the hun­dreds of tal­ented peo­ple who brought the world of Cora­line to bril­liant life.

But Cora­line isn’t just eye candy. Like most of Gaiman’s sto­ries, Cora­line has a good mes­sage, and deliv­ers it with a bit of clever wit wrapped in child­like intrigue. Movie­go­ers may find Coraline’s sto­ry­line sim­i­lar to Mir­ror­mask , another of Gaiman’s stories-turned-movie, in which a young girl becomes dis­en­chanted with her life and par­ents, escap­ing to a dream­world where the grass seems greener at first, but soon dis­cov­ers it to be a warped and night­mar­ish ver­sion of her own reality.

I’ve seen some crit­ics already refer to this movie as a clas­sic , and I don’t think I would dis­agree with that. In many ways, the story of Cora­line is rem­i­nis­cent of another clas­sic, The Wiz­ard of Oz. And like Dorothy, Cora­line reminds us that there’s no place like home.

*Note to the book Nazis: Cora­line is pretty faith­ful to its source material.