There was once a time in the history of gaming when save files did not exist, your character had only one life, and continues need not apply for the position. A time when gaming brought as much, if not more, amounts of frustration as it did entertainment.
Take Treasure Island Dizzy. One life, no continue, no saves. Not a short game, not an easy game by any stretch of imagination. Spend 2 hours playing that and lose your one life.. your ready to kick the aging computer out of the window in frustration. Repeat the process a few times, your ready to kick the window out of the wall. Complete that game though and the frustration is replaced with a glorious feeling of achievement. Risk vs Reward. The more times something knocks you down and says “you cannot do this” the more you want to get back up and do it. Of course there’s a fine line between too much risk and getting it just right.
Modern games generally allow you to pause the game and save your progress anywhere. Some feature checkpoints across levels that automatically save progress for you, removing the need to even remember to save it after that especially tricky part of the level that took 4 times to get past. In a sense we are collectively being stripped of the challenge of games and slowly dumbing down the whole experience.
I don’t care if the new game out this week has the best looking graphics on any system to date, if I can clock it without furrowing my brow in frustration a few times along the way then generally I wont rate it too highly.
That’s not to say that every game needs an element of confusion to it, wether it be which direction to go or the most complex of puzzles, but if your not at least challenged in some way.. why even play the game at all? Is it becoming the equivalent of no-brainer TV reality shows?
As a result, a lot of games now don’t capture the same feeling I had as a kid clocking games on the C64 and early consoles. These were days when you sat down and played a game over several hours, but you played from start to end in one go or you wouldn’t see the end. No saves, no re-visiting it in a few days unless you leave it turned on, paused and run the risk of the power supply getting so hot it burns through your floor… these were the glory days of risk vs reward. Less flashy graphics to wow gamers, instead the feeling of a challenge met and bested was the payoff.
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