myk
webbed digits
Posts: 14316
Registered: 04-02 |
bimlanders said:
Balance is kind of pointless to discuss when talking about Keen 4, 5, and 6 because you can save your game ANYWHERE! This makes extra lifes kind of irrelevant.
I agree save-gaming disrupts balance, and that's something one can say to anyone who is progressing through while using saves as an in-game feature instead as a system for taking breaks. However, the feature doesn't stop people from playing the game by its intrinsic rules to challenge themselves or for an honest competition between friends or associates. Obviously, it is also useful for practicing particularly hard sections without having to play through a chunk of the game just to get there. Thus, game balance matters, especially if whoever is talking about it is playing in a way that makes it relevant. If it didn't matter at all, then why should it matter to the designers? If the designers didn't care for such a basic game principle, why play any such game they designed?
Doom, for example, can still be very challenging (Doom 2, TNT, Plutonia) even though you can constantly save because you still have to get past everything.
One acquires the habit of trying games on their hardest difficulties, maybe out of curiosity, or maybe for teenage bragging rights. Naturally, if things get rough, we resort to whatever we can to get through, and thus become habituated to hitting F2 (or the equivalent) throughout most of the game. That habit becomes "part of the game" and various players end up taking it for granted. It might be challenging in some sense, but certainly not in the way it is when playing through the game without saves. Having seen this, I really don't see any reason to push the difficulty setting past what I can manage naturally or to disrupt the flow of game balance by inserting arbitrary saves for the purpose of progressing.
One thing that has strengthened DOOM in the game balance appreciation department is demo recording. In demos you can't save, so you need to play through "as intended." (Actually, now some source ports allow saving in demos, but thanks to tradition that's considered in a separate category of "tool assisted" play.) Another is public multiplayer, of course. Its use is a bit limited for cooperative play because strangers don't tend too be the most cooperative of people, but it does encourage play without saves as a habit. Commander Keen has neither, although sharing videos of play-throughs can play the role of demos.
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12-21-09 16:27 
