Re: Don't understand why some people don't like FTL's gamepl
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:01 pm
1. Hard
I'm really pleased with the difficulty level. I love the hours of time I've put in to learning how everything works to the point where I respond to situations without even putting much thought into it, and when I look back to my first couple of playthroughs I realised just how tough it was and reflect on how much I've learned about the game and how it works. The exploration side of a game isn't just restrained to what you find as you jump around sectors - There's the mechanics to take into account as well, and the feeling you get when you discover a new little tactic (I never bothered with boarding parties for ages and when I realised how good they were that felt so good). The longer you play the better it seems to feel as you tend to become more "streamlined" with your approaches to different situations.
2. Random
That said, the game still keeps you on your feet. Every time you feel like you're in your comfort zone, every time you relax a little and assume you've got this playthrough in the bag, something really unforgiving happens and it pulls you back out of your OP dreamland and you have to start rethinking. I really love that.
3. Saving / Loading
The game is designed to be 30-90 minutes per playthrough. People are forgetting you CAN save - You can save when you leave to go do something else. It's the perfect kind of save. You don't get a checkpoint to refine your mistakes so your mistakes matter, and when your mistakes matter you get more involved. Look at DayZ as a prime example - The very fact that you'd lose EVERYTHING if you screwed up made so much more of an impact to your experience, take a quick look at their forums for the most vivid gameplay stories you could ever imagine. Maybe that isn't for everyone, but it's for this game. It's not a save you can abuse, its a pause.
Games rarely punish you any more, they rarely make you work. The fact of the matter is, games over the years have changed from a "challenge" to a "cinematic experience". This year has been awesome for games being released with a change in perspective when it comes to how you should approach them. It takes me back to digging into a room on Dungeon Keeper full of level 10 samurais, or losing a full squad of full augmented operatives on Syndicate. I'm aware they both had saves, but whatever. I always forgot to use them.
Maybe I'm showing my age, but this is far more to my liking. I'm bored of hiding behind rocks waiting for my shields to recharge and tapping F5 or replaying a 1 minute window 17 times to get through a checkpoint. The way FTL works means that what you do matters, and when what you do matters, it makes it far more memorable.
I'm really pleased with the difficulty level. I love the hours of time I've put in to learning how everything works to the point where I respond to situations without even putting much thought into it, and when I look back to my first couple of playthroughs I realised just how tough it was and reflect on how much I've learned about the game and how it works. The exploration side of a game isn't just restrained to what you find as you jump around sectors - There's the mechanics to take into account as well, and the feeling you get when you discover a new little tactic (I never bothered with boarding parties for ages and when I realised how good they were that felt so good). The longer you play the better it seems to feel as you tend to become more "streamlined" with your approaches to different situations.
2. Random
That said, the game still keeps you on your feet. Every time you feel like you're in your comfort zone, every time you relax a little and assume you've got this playthrough in the bag, something really unforgiving happens and it pulls you back out of your OP dreamland and you have to start rethinking. I really love that.
3. Saving / Loading
The game is designed to be 30-90 minutes per playthrough. People are forgetting you CAN save - You can save when you leave to go do something else. It's the perfect kind of save. You don't get a checkpoint to refine your mistakes so your mistakes matter, and when your mistakes matter you get more involved. Look at DayZ as a prime example - The very fact that you'd lose EVERYTHING if you screwed up made so much more of an impact to your experience, take a quick look at their forums for the most vivid gameplay stories you could ever imagine. Maybe that isn't for everyone, but it's for this game. It's not a save you can abuse, its a pause.
Games rarely punish you any more, they rarely make you work. The fact of the matter is, games over the years have changed from a "challenge" to a "cinematic experience". This year has been awesome for games being released with a change in perspective when it comes to how you should approach them. It takes me back to digging into a room on Dungeon Keeper full of level 10 samurais, or losing a full squad of full augmented operatives on Syndicate. I'm aware they both had saves, but whatever. I always forgot to use them.
Maybe I'm showing my age, but this is far more to my liking. I'm bored of hiding behind rocks waiting for my shields to recharge and tapping F5 or replaying a 1 minute window 17 times to get through a checkpoint. The way FTL works means that what you do matters, and when what you do matters, it makes it far more memorable.