Are we no longer playing the games ourselves?

[Guts]

Conversely, you've got stuff like Fallout 3 which is massively open. The biggest crticicism I read about people who don't like Bethesda's games is that they are too open.

Fallout 3's main quest is about as linear as it can get. Go there, speak to that guy, now go there, now go there, do that, go there, game over. There's no player choice really and the game constantly holds your hand and points where you have to go. Sure, you can waste dozens of hours wandering around and exploring boring caves shooting the same enemies over and over again and watching the slow-mo kill cam for the thousandth time, but that doesn't affect the main game what-so-ever.

The original games (Fallout & Fallout 2) were infact open. They basically threw you into the wasteland and told you what you had to do. How you did it and where you went was up to you. It's quite sad that virtually no RPG has offered the same amount of player freedom since those came out in 1997 & 1998.

[Brats]

I played the first two games. They aren't as quite as open as you say they are (there were some parts that you had to do) but I agree the main quest was pretty open.

However, I don't view the main quests in Oblivion and FO3 as a separate experience from everything else. You're doing those games a massive disservice to imply there is just the main quests plus some 'wandering around and exploring boring caves shooting the same enemies over and over again'.

The sub quests are the meat of the game with much more open gameplay and variation compared to the main questline. And many of the quests involve non-specific actions rather than just a point on the compass to go to.

[Brats]

Demon's Souls looks like a great throwback to the kind of gaming I miss, and that is the reason it's on the top of my wishlist for Christmas (along with Kinect, which is the exact opposite :P).

There are more games like this though. I've had loads of fun with Minecraft, which is all about the exploring and figuring things out. As I said, the latest Castlevania justs dumps the player in an open castle with zero explanation.

[Charlie]

Too many games do insist on holding the player's hand these days and it does remove a feeling of satisfaction, sense of achievement, an element of fun, or whatever you want to call it, but thankfully guiding the player through their every move is not the rule and there are still games produced that call on the player to think, explore and experiment as they try to figure out where to go and what to do next. Games such as Portal, Braid and Mirror's Edge immediately spring to mind.

[spagmasterswift]

Videogames today sometimes make me feel like an old man being hurried through a strip club.

[gunrock]

Videogames today sometimes make me feel like an old man being hurried through a strip club.

Yeah, but Spearmint Rhino's not the place to play your Wonderswan, man!

[H-Man]

Demon's Souls looks like a great throwback to the kind of gaming I miss

I'm sure it will be, it certainly was for me. The lack of hand holding is what makes Demon's Souls such a welcome change. Now take Uncharted 2 - obviously very good at what it does, but it never gave me a sense of exploration, or discovery, or really any sense of wonder at all other than at the fancy visuals. At times I think my appreciation of Uncharted is purely at the technical accomplishment and polish of it all - what it could have been in my mind's eye is much more.

[MCE]

Videogames today sometimes make me feel like an old man being hurried through a strip club.

You know what that feels like then?

[rmoxon]

You need direction in games, a game can be a challenge and still let you know what to do next, a game like black ops is about special ops soliders performing objectives in places they have no doubt done some research into, it would make no sense if you didnt know what to do next.

In comparison if you go back to games like Perfect dark and Goldeneye, they had you figure out your objectives yourself and it was somtimes a real pain in the arse trying to figure out what to do next as the game really gave you no clue what you were looking for.

I much prefer the way games like that are today really, but it does always depend on the type of game, as stated Demons souls is fantastic (though like many I did spend an hour wondering where the heck the monumental was suppose to be at the start of the game).

[H-Man]

In comparison if you go back to games like Perfect dark and Goldeneye, they had you figure out your objectives yourself and it was somtimes a real pain in the arse trying to figure out what to do next as the game really gave you no clue what you were looking for

I think this is the crux of it. Revisiting Perfect Dark recently, or indeed playing Demon's Souls, reminded me how much I like working things out for myself in video games. It empowers more than any headshot. Your actions become your choices and the gameworld more convincing and memorable because you're discovering it for yourself - and you have to be a little bit lost to discover something.

I agree with the OP. Many of what I consider to be the best qualities in video games, particularly their abilitiy to intsill childlike wonder in the player, have been dilluted to make them more accessible. I had no fear of death in Bioshock - there was no penalty. I got no satisfaction in climbing my way out of a tomb in Uncharted and seeing what was outside - the way out was sign posted. Assassin's Creed managed to make climbing 100s of feet in the air and running from roof top to roof top as exciting as walking along the ground - a single long jump in Mario 64 gives a greater sense of peril and achievement. Don't start me on CoD! I've still enjoyed the games mentioned here, but in the same way there's still some fun to be had in bowling with the gutter bumpers up.

[Ady]

I think I might have to add a bit to my first post: My feeling is that the games not only are too linear in movement, but also holding your hand too much when overcoming obstacles presented in the game. In a boss fight today, you are either told what to do ("Hit it's weak spot for massive damage!") or presented with a red glowing point on the boss for you to attack.

While I can see where you're coming from to some extent, I do think you're generalising way too much.

Glowing points on bosses are not a new thing; games have had this since the 16-bit games whenever it has not been possible to defeat a boss by just attacking it repeatedly.

While Fallout 3 and Oblivion have wide open landscapes, you rarely have to figure out what to do within each situation. It's basically a bunch of fetch quests with some NPC dialog in between. You might feel as you are doing something extraordinary, but at no time in the games are not going from point A to point B. You are never presented with a mission which there could be several possible answers, but only one working solution. Where you have to use hints, exploration and even small bit of trial and error to succeed.

As Brats alluded to, the side quests in Fallut 3 are open to improvisation and aren't nearly as reductive as you make out. Yes, you are given a clear objective (which I don't see as a bad thing), but how you go about it is up to you. In fact, you don't even have to follow the objective at all.

Look back to Another World (Out of this World) and Flashback in the 16bit days. While they are very niche, and almost a genre of their own, they include so much of what I feel has been lost in games today. They gave you clues and items which could be applied in a later situation if the player added a small dose of logic. While today, games are only challenging by turning the odds against you versus the enemies in games.

Limbo does all the things you describe above. Have you played it? That said, all three of those games were often criticised by some (not me, I might add) for their trail and error nature and the fact that in order to figure out what to do, one had to die many, many times. Again, I don't really have a problem with that sort of gameplay as long as it is implemented fairly.

Mirror's Edge also exhibits a lot of the mechanics you talk about above as do Ico and Shadow of the Colossus from last gen (which, I assume do count here as you refer to 16-bit era games as a pinnacle in gameplay).

Someone also mentioned the hand-holding in the recent Zelda games, and this is something I agree with, but it could be argued that Zelda's dungeons still require the player to think on the spot and improvise.

Personally, what I dislike is long-winded tutorials that cannot be skipped or games that drip-feed the controls to you in such a way that it disrupts the flow of the game. For instance, you go to do a move you've already figured out on your own, but the game interrupts your progress to tell you that pressing RB does x move.

[JSR]

As Brats alluded to, the side quests in Fallut 3 are open to improvisation and aren't nearly as reductive as you make out. Yes, you are given a clear objective (which I don't see as a bad thing), but how you go about it is up to you. In fact, you don't even have to follow the objective at all.

As far as I could tell, the objectives in Fallout had two or three possible solutions. And while multiple solutions are nice and well, the game always spelled out for you what they were. Most of them were even selected during a dialogue with an NPC. "Give gold to John"/"Claim the gold was gone".

Limbo does all the things you describe above. Have you played it? That said, all three of those games were often criticised by some (not me, I might add) for their trail and error nature and the fact that in order to figure out what to do, one had to die many, many times.

Yeah, really liked Limbo. Failure punished by death might not have then best solution, but that was more a product of the times, when battery backed up saves had not yet fully replaced passwords.

Mirror's Edge also exhibits a lot of the mechanics you talk about above as do Ico and Shadow of the Colossus from last gen (which, I assume do count here as you refer to 16-bit era games as a pinnacle in gameplay).

Have played all of those too.

Someone also mentioned the hand-holding in the recent Zelda games, and this is something I agree with, but it could be argued that Zelda's dungeons still require the player to think on the spot and improvise.

Sure, they are still good games, and far from corridor shooters, but is that "good enough"? I want more. I want to feel Like I AM Link. Like it is I who discover the crossbow in the haunted forest, and not simply going where my fairy/talking hat/talking boat is telling me to.

Personally, what I dislike is long-winded tutorials that cannot be skipped or games that drip-feed the controls to you in such a way that it disrupts the flow of the game. For instance, you go to do a move you've already figured out on your own, but the game interrupts your progress to tell you that pressing RB does x move.

I hate that too.