[PA Comic] Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - Apophenia

Geth

Apophenia
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/03/13

RoyceSraphim

Crotches are hard to draw without someone thinking they're sexy.

SwashbucklerXX

Oh man, I have done this sort of thing so many times.

Black_Heart

haha, this has been me in so many current generation adventure games. The super detailed and realistic environments have me trying out items and attempting to figure out complex ways to solve incredibly simple obstacles.

I'm used to the Playstation era of graphics where you walk into an empty room with 3 huge stone blocks with hand grips on them and 3 holes in the wall.

DaltonCarl

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PaperPritt

I can relate to that comic. I've spent waaaya too many times overthinking simple puzzles.....

Henroid

SwashbucklerXX wrote: »

Oh man, I have done this sort of thing so many times.

Overthinking the situation in video games can be funny.

You Have to Burn the Rope comes to mind.

furlion

I am not sure which is the stronger emotion in cases like this: The feeling of elation at figuring out what you were supposed to do, or the knowledge that you wasted a lot of time attempting to solve an embarrasingly easy puzzle.

RonTheDM

I did this in Ocarina of Time: Master Quest ... I must've wandered around forever thinking I left something behind.

Nope, can hop that gap.

Hang head in shame.

Skull2185

Yeah... been there too.

~20 mins of "Well... how the fuck am I supposed to get up there then?!", followed by "Oh for fucks sake... you just jump up there. What a novel idea. God, I'm dumb..."

Henroid

Are there any examples where such a simple solution can be considered a fault on the developer's part? Like if a game was getting increasingly complex and then blindsides you with a simple solution that isn't evident because you've been working on this specific way to view the game? Or is it just a consequence of getting too wrapped up in things?

theResetButton

Henroid wrote: »

Are there any examples where such a simple solution can be considered a fault on the developer's part? Like if a game was getting increasingly complex and then blindsides you with a simple solution that isn't evident because you've been working on this specific way to view the game? Or is it just a consequence of getting too wrapped up in things?

I feel like Portal or Portal 2 might've done that, but I think it was intentional on the dev's part to screw with you.

MalReynolds

The puzzle in that tomb was, if you were playing with the appropriate brightness setting, the fact that you couldn't see where you had to go unless you lit a torch but there was gas everywhere, so you had to clear it out, light your torch, and figure out where the platform was.

...

I just turned my brightness way up because I was getting confused and that tomb is pitch black.

godmode

Yeah, Portal/2 are perfect examples of this happening.

kingworks

Equally frustrating are adventure games where you have to find that one pixel that will let you know an object is clickable. Looking at you Sanitarium and Longest Journey.

jothki

MalReynolds wrote: »

The puzzle in that tomb was, if you were playing with the appropriate brightness setting, the fact that you couldn't see where you had to go unless you lit a torch but there was gas everywhere, so you had to clear it out, light your torch, and figure out where the platform was.

...

I just turned my brightness way up because I was getting confused and that tomb is pitch black.

Anyone remember how Link's Awakening had those dark rooms in dungeons where you could barely see unless you lit torches or cheated by tilting the screen?

Load the game up on the 3DS, and everything is perfectly visible even in the dark. The original Game Boy's screen just sucked, and the game took advantage of that.

Henroid

jothki wrote: »

MalReynolds wrote: »

The puzzle in that tomb was, if you were playing with the appropriate brightness setting, the fact that you couldn't see where you had to go unless you lit a torch but there was gas everywhere, so you had to clear it out, light your torch, and figure out where the platform was.

...

I just turned my brightness way up because I was getting confused and that tomb is pitch black.

Anyone remember how Link's Awakening had those dark rooms in dungeons where you could barely see unless you lit torches or cheated by tilting the screen?

Load the game up on the 3DS, and everything is perfectly visible even in the dark. The original Game Boy's screen just sucked, and the game took advantage of that.

That's the sort of thing where it's hard to say the game took advantage of it, because it's not like the screen brightness was defying some sort of better standard. It was adjusted for it, sure, but hardly some stroke of genius move on Nintendo's part. Purely circumstantial.

Shadowhope

So, Gabe and Tycho made it to the

beach tomb.

Griswold

Henroid wrote: »

Are there any examples where such a simple solution can be considered a fault on the developer's part? Like if a game was getting increasingly complex and then blindsides you with a simple solution that isn't evident because you've been working on this specific way to view the game? Or is it just a consequence of getting too wrapped up in things?

There's a jump in the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time that you can make, but it absolutely looks like you can't. To the point where it took me multiple hours' wandering on my first playthrough before I decided to even attempt it. No other makeable jump in the game looks even remotely that far.

Henroid

Griswold wrote: »

Henroid wrote: »

Are there any examples where such a simple solution can be considered a fault on the developer's part? Like if a game was getting increasingly complex and then blindsides you with a simple solution that isn't evident because you've been working on this specific way to view the game? Or is it just a consequence of getting too wrapped up in things?

There's a jump in the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time that you can make, but it absolutely looks like you can't. To the point where it took me multiple hours' wandering on my first playthrough before I decided to even attempt it. No other makeable jump in the game looks even remotely that far.

Can I just say that your and Ronaldo's examples caused me no problems whatsoever? 8-)

Monkey Ball Warrior

I'm somewhat startled at the implication that they created a good Tomb Raider game. Has that ever happened? Has it happened since the 90's?

Warlock82

All of the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games have been good...

blackpariah

Monkey Ball Warrior wrote: »

I'm somewhat startled at the implication that they created a good Tomb Raider game. Has that ever happened? Has it happened since the 90's?

Legend and Underworld were good. YMMV on the stories, (I thought they were fine) but the gameplay was spot on. I never played Anniversary.

pt_Cena

I need to finish Anniversary. Well, more like actually start it. It's sitting in my Steam, along with like ten other things.

As for the content of this comic...happens all the time.

Rehab

RonaldoTheGypsy wrote: »

I did this in Ocarina of Time: Master Quest ... I must've wandered around forever thinking I left something behind.

Nope, can hop that gap.

Hang head in shame.

Not the Master Quest mode but in the regular game I hit something like this.

I was playing through the Forest Temple for the first time and was having some trouble discerning where to go next. At the time I was taking breaks from the game days at a time and was stuck over a period of weeks. The thing was, I think that I even had a dungeon key but just couldn't find the next locked door. Then I noticed that there was an eye icon above a long hallway and decided to shoot at it, even though I thought that was something I tried earlier. Yeah, felt like an idiot about that one alright!

BlackDove

The Beach Tomb concept was intentional.

After all the other tombs where you had to crank the crank with the rooster key and puzzle it out, in this one they put decoys around to get you to trip all over yourself. First they made the room dark so you'd be looking for connections yourself. Then they put the braziers around at different heights that you could light and pull. Then they added the gas which had to be ignited in order for you to be able to pass upwards. To top it all off, they put debris to plug the hole, and situated the hole at the top of the room.

I got stuck trying to figure out how to get the debris to crumble. I knew it'd be easy to jump, but the braziers, the gas and the setting of the room tripped me up, because I thought one was connected to another, since that's the logic which worked in all the previous tombs, and this was the intentional part, The puzzle is to mindfuck you and trip you over the game knowledge you accumulated up until that point.

I shot a grenade at the debris, and it didn't work. Finally, I thought to myself, it can't be that simple, and I shot a fire arrow at the debris and it crumbled. A grenade launcher won't work, but an arrow with a fire tip will. Game designer logic right there, but it worked. It tripped me up for a good five minutes.