It’s midnight. The moon flitters through the dense canopy of the Venezuelan jungle. You swat a mosquito off your sweaty brow as the heli touches down on the hastily-prepared LZ. You and your squad file out as shadows dance crazily from the light cast by the emergency flares.
A loud gunshot and Mercer goes down, a fine red mist spraying from a sizeable hole punched through his head.
“Press C to crouch,” barks your Squad Leader.
Time slows to a crawl, and you find to your horror that your feet are planted firmly to the ground. Bullets pass by your head in slow-motion, and the moment you crouch down the world lurches back to full-speed.
You notice that your Squad Leader has a massive neon FOLLOW sign hovering over his head. You assume it must be shellshock affecting your eyes. You both reach a steel gate, and your Squad Leader barks at you, “Press E repeatedly to pick the lock on the gate.”
*
Handholding in games is nothing new – tutorial levels are as old as the hills. But there’s been an increase in games designed to handhold all the way through. Games where you’re told, “Go there, do that and for god’s sake DON’T TOUCH THE RED BUTTON.” Even Skyrim, surely the antithesis of the hand-holder opens with a lengthy, slightly patronising interactive tutorial ripped straight out of an EA game from 2007.
But why?
Some gamers might mutter darkly about ‘casuals’ taking over their hobby, but it probably goes much further than that.
Nobody would deny it’s damn frustrating when you get most of the way through a level only to be shot in the back within piddling distance of the exit. Of course in games with quicksave you can spam away to your heart’s content, but not every game affords such luxury. So there’s probably a non-sinister reason behind it, most of the time – mitigating some of the game’s difficulty and explaining things so that even the most fumble-fingered feel comfortable.
But then there are those companies whose intentions are less honourable – those who merely wish for the player to whisk briefly through a minimally-interactive 4-hour-long corridor before being ejected the other side with an exhortation to buy the next instalment. I’m sure you can fill in the names for yourselves.
What’s the solution? There isn’t one – don’t be so asinine. It’s all horses for courses. If some people just want the shooty bang-bangs without frustration then let them be. It takes all sorts to make a world, and after all somebody has to clean the toilets.
