Games you can't parse

billy

i’ve been playing that super mario bros and there are bushes in the sky and clouds on the ground and i don’t understand

tapevulture

billy dude they must have been on a fucking acid trip seriously………

◉◉maru

This is evidently more of a « me » problem than the game design’s fault but I am simply too stupid to handle any form of multitasking micro-management. RTS were OK until Z and Warcraft 2 but Starcraft was already too much. Fortunately – and that’s not something I expected to say back in 1998 – I outlived them all! Ha!

You were okay, Z, you were okay. This is not a problem of disliking the genre either. (I hate tower defense games, for instance, but they are slow enough for me to handle them.) I genuinely love the idea of real time strategy, I just can’t handle the “real time” part. Obviously their natural evolution and eventual patricide, MOBA, are also a big no-no for me.

rearnakedwindow

Great topic idea!

This is probably not going to be a popular answer but, for me, this is where I put the Guilty Gear series after the first one and X and most other Arc Sys games. I love fighting games and I respect Arc Sys for their style and craftsmanship. But it’s just too hard for me to tell what going on when I play these games. Everything is so fast and flowy, shapes and colors appear and disappear out of nowhere, the “weapon attacks” don’t look like weapons half the time, I can’t tell what’s going to hurt me because it’s a damaging strike/object and what’s not going to hurt me because it’s just special effects. It’s all just very maximalist and a little too much for me to settle into. I’d like to like the new ArcSys stuff and maybe one day I will! But for now, this is where I’m at.

RubySunrise

Dead Cells. All the glowy effects make it very difficult for me to see what’s going on. It becomes so frustrating so quickly. I’ve put too much time into the game, I’ve never beaten a boss, and I think I’m pretty decent at side scrolling action games. It really feels like beating my head against a wall, so it’s not a game I will likey ever play again.

Hades has a similar issue, but it doesn’t get to Dead Cells level until late game, and only with certain boon combos. I was able to ID the problem ones, avoid them, and progress through the game quickly.

dylanfills

RubySunrise my experience with Dead Cells is almost the exact opposite, though I acknowledge how busy the screen gets and how dense the visuals become with information and particle effects. The developer did recently release an update with a litany of accessibility options, some of which I think are connected to the visuals. I don’t know precisely because I haven’t messed with the new options too much. (Not to say you should pick it up again. I just think it’s cool that they’re updating the game with accessibility in mind so long after launch (though maybe later than they should have))

I did have a much more frustrating experience with Hades in this regard, but primarily for a select few enemy types.

ttzop sliding puzzles

I hate these puzzles so much. I’ve never learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube, but I find that much more pleasant to fiddle with. I have that exact experience of observing four blocks rotating without understanding how to get them in the right place. It angers me when game progress is gated by these stupid puzzles (Wind Waker)

yeso

I’ve tried to play Vangers about a half dozen times and never succeeded in figuring basicaly anything out

It’s bizarre, sure, but my brain has a hard time figuring out how to play it when it looks like it kinda sorta should be a top down racer

yeso

Also not sure if words count, but I’m totally unable to process more than a small amount fantasy jargon. I found FF XIII totally unplayable for this reason. Completely mystified about pulse, cocoon, grand pulse, fal’cie, l’cie, eidolon etc

ttzop

Hopefully this isn’t against the spirit of the topic, but as far as mechanics I’ve never been able to parse in any game they’re featured in, sliding puzzles:

Nothing in games makes me feel dumber than these. I always feel like I’m just bashing my head against the wall, rotating the same tiles in a circle over and over until I eventually stumble on the solution. Never feels like I’ve “solved” them, just brute forced through. Cannot make my mind, idk, see the steps ahead required to get every piece where it needs to be.

As far as not being able to parse visually (and i don’t mean the language):

turn down your speakers for the gameplay on that one

treefroggy

I love the bit generations series, but I don’t think I ever truly figured out this one

DaveedNoo

most modern FPS games I have no idea wtf is happening. not a fan!

JoJoestar

Okay so… Sentinel Returns, for the PSX.

Listen, I don’t even know what to tell you about this one. I don’t even think I can begin to describe this game because, honestly, I don’t even understand what’s is supposed to be happening here. Even though I own a physical copy of it which I have played several times at this point. I think should be around somewhere (I’m not going to look for it though).

This is a game that, same as Polybius (mentioned above), was attached to a peripheral. It was either light-gun compatible or designed for a light-gun, like the G-con 45 or any of the off-brand ones. I don’t remember playing it with a gamepad but maybe it was possible? It’s… kind of an RTS??? And chess? But not any of those things actually??? An RTS where you place weird geometrical shapes and structures over a map with a pistol pointed to the screen (lol), in very strange, barren and vaguely cronenbergian Myst-like environments. As I said, I don’t even know what the heck is going here, what they were going for, or what I was supposed to do.

I don’t think it was a good game all things considered, or at least it didn’t feel that way the couple of times I have struggled with it, but maybe I would have liked it if I managed to dig deeper? I’m resistant to say so because if you look at the video, the issue is not poor on-boarding or mechanics not being properly explained. Take for example the way you move through the environment, which you do by stacking strange flesh towers in order to teleport from one place to another (I feel weird even just describing it!). And yet still, it feels like something interesting, like, I want to understand it, it’s enticing. At the very least, is an unique and interesting curio, and really one of a kind.

I should try to find that copy!

yeso

JoJoestar it’s a cool game but yeah the rules are novel and the sequel has a disorienting (but cool) visual style. It’s a puzzle game btw

The first game has a simpler look to it, which makes it more legible

https://thekingofgrabs.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/the-sentinel-amiga-65.png?w=233&h=149

I’d put The Sentinel alongside Vangers and The Void as games in which parsing is part of the game

Contrast I suppose to The Witness which is about players getting their heads around things but it’s clinical and antiseptic

JoJoestar

yeso Really strange they went for this nightmarish flesh constructs theme considering how the original game looks! Now that you said it I actually remember reading that in a review at the time, I got my copy around the time it was released, definitely during the PSX era.

bwood

Is this what you want?

I stopped playing Deadly Towers for the NES after about 5 minutes. The stage design looks like you move the character in a 3-D environment, you and the enemies are in 2-D. My brain wants me to think that I should be able to just move around or behind the enemies and not get hit, but because the game actually plays in a 2-D environment, I just get pummeled and die quickly.

Also, if you fast forward into the playthrough and see the character fighting in an environment with stairs, this design gives me motion sickness.
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exodus

Yeah, that’s the stuff! Also sorry to everyone for locking the thread - total finger slip accident!!

Gaagaagiins

I announced this publicly elsewhere but this was exactly why I bounced off of G-String. Among other things it is a first person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic urban decay maximalized hellscape to end all post-apocalyptic urban decay maximalized hellscapes.

As I am declaring by posting here I cannot parse the dang game and thus cannot clearly remember any concrete examples, but in my opinion, the paths through levels to progress could often be described as “finding the one ventilation shaft or hole in the floor or path up along a piece of fallen debris among others that will take you along the linear path through the level.” This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in of itself but something about the visual language of the game (and the admittedly impeccable commitment to just the groadiest and most chaotic urban decay sprawl) as well as the level design as a whole just had me completely unable to parse how to actually find the correct paths. Maybe it’s just me but, like, it often felt like the game was strictly linear, but at the same time liked to give the impression of a fairly realistically executed environment, and most realistic environments (especially if they look like they’ve sustained protracted mortar bombardment) are not linear. If the path to progress is usually the most obvious and signposted one that’s obviously boring, and if the path to progress was always in the most tucked away and obscure looking corner or path, that’s a different way of making it obvious and signposted after the first few times. G-String often felt like it was consciously attempting to not communicate any discernible pattern whatsoever, so every path feels just as likely as any other to lead to progress. Pickups and ammo and shit also being hidden in the various armpits of the world as well as along the critical path mean that although it’s a somewhat reliable method of keeping track of where you have and haven’t been, it’s certainly no substitute for progress through the game.

As such, well, at least for me, navigating through a level in G-String was an endless process of trial and error, carefully investigating every seemingly viable path, finding the shortest dead ends among the paths that don’t lead to progress, finding the one path that seemed long enough to show that it wasn’t a dead end and in fact increased my proximity to the level’s end point if I was lucky, but often it meant just more carefully re-investigating every path in ascending order of distance from the branching point to the dead end again and again, until a specific environmental interaction or viewing angle revealed some obscured or concealed path that I had overlooked.

JoJoestar

Gaagaagiins navigating through a level in G-String was an endless process of trial and error

This is pretty much how the game is played and how it expects you to engage with it, so your perspective here is very valid. It’s one of the most problematic aspects and I have even talked to Eyaura herself about it, but she hates hand-holding and having to compromise her vision for the art direction and the spaces she wants to build (which quite honestly, are the meat of the game) so much that what you played and experienced is pretty much what you get.

For me personally it works for two reasons.

Its origin as a HL2 mod already defines how you’re gonna engage with it. And this is already true in all the Valve-flavored games, Portal (specially the second half) and HL are all about these kinds of environmental puzzles, where the substance of the moment to moment gameplay is not the combat, but precisely finding how to proceed (stacking boxes, iffy platforming between cranes, stacking barrels or boxes to create an exit). G-String is, when you think about it, taking that same idea and leaning into it a bit harder. I agree is almost too much at points, but in my opinion (the opinion of someone who loves this game) it’s also a good excuse to spend just a little bit more of time in those captivating spaces and environments.
Second reason is that it gives the game some adjacency to the cinematic platformer genre, in the vein of Éric Chahi and Jordan Mechner. Those games are entirely based around the concept of constant trial and error, and make up the lack of direction with a strong sense of place, atmosphere and vibes, coupled with good art direction, engaging plot and music. And that’s exactly how I would describe G-String! Combat in Another World has always sucked a bit and it’s very easy to get stuck/lost, same thing happens in here. But that world, those places and vibes, that’s the stuff!!!

All things considered it’s probably not your kind of game but hey, you already got some cool points in my book for just trying it!

rejj

This may not count, but I could never make any sense of the Snafu box art - so much so that I never considered getting the game.

A screenshot of the game doesn’t help all that much either:

(turns out it is probably just a snake game)

exodus

rejj yeah I gotta say it does look to me like multiplayer snake! But I have played a lot of snake.

Gaagaagiins

I feel bad raggin’ on G-String cause it was cool in many other respects and was also made largely by I think one Japanese woman, and that’s really cool.

I think I will couch my criticism within the statement that I think if it took her 13 years to make G-String that Eyaura must have made it that way because she wanted to make it that way, and I can only have respect for that.

Gaagaagiins

JoJoestar Just in case I followed up while you were responding, I’d like to draw your attention to my own self-rebuttal. Gaagaagiins

And I’ll add on that it also makes me think of a videogames-wide implementation of Tim Rogers’ concept of the “I get it” button. Being able to just opt-out of struggle one personally experiences as dissatisfying or frustrating from individual segments of gameplay once one has intellectually understood what is going on, sounds like a silver bullet for this entire thread, really. At least for me, I would probably enjoy G-String if I could switch on or even toggle a little glowing path through the level.

yeso

I had some trouble with pathfinding through the geometry in G-String too and resorted to watching playthroughs on youtube to figure out where I was supposed to go. But more often than not it makes sense once you get on the developer’s wavelength and let go of the ingrained FPS standards of where you’re supposed to go in a shooter level

JoJoestar Éric Chahi

is this something the dev said herself? just curious if she had this in mind

JoJoestar

Gaagaagiins Oh yeah, we stepped over each other a bit right there. As I already said, your complaints are valid given what I think the game is, so no rebuttal required in my opinion. Having already tried it and decided it’s not for you, what I would suggest you do at this point is give the full soundtrack a good listen, because even if you didn’t like it as a game, I think as a music album it holds up arguably even better.

And also, if you want to keep discussing it I’d suggest moving the conversation somewhere else, so we don’t deviate too much this specific thread, if you don’t mind!