作者：David Wong

本文旨在批评《侠盗猎车手IV》及其他经典作品，并非出于敌意，而是出于钟爱。挖掘糟糕游戏的缺点毫无益处，因为糟糕游戏本身就没有拯救的必要。

现在我们通过指出《上古卷轴》和《半条命》系列所犯“罪状”拯救这些游戏。我们通过指出游戏所犯戒律，令其获得救赎机会。

我们是谁？不过是群倍感无聊的玩家。打破戒律的后果是什么？我们开始转投阅读或做其他休闲活动。

第一条：游戏应让玩家同现实好友共同体验

违反作品：

《侠盗猎车手IV》、《MotorStorm》和《暗影狂奔》……

后面省略的游戏存在什么共同之处，提示下，它们都是2007年10大最受欢迎的游戏：

《Wii Sports》

《Wii Play》

《吉他英雄III》

《超级马里奥：银河》

《疯狂橄榄球2008》

《吉他英雄II》

《马里奥派对8》

还有什么？若你觉得这些游戏都包含多人元素，旨在让玩家能同好友在同个房间共同体验，的确如此。

同样2008年的冠军畅销作品是？《Smash Bros. Brawl》。

掌机相比PC而言存在的优势是玩家可以坐在舒服的沙发体验。沙发之所以被视作家具技术之最是因为其还有空间供其他人入座。

但《侠盗猎车手IV》却吹嘘游戏的强大多人机制，若你觉得所谓的“多人”就是邀请一群人共同体验，豪饮，狂欢及互相击掌示意，直至天明，那就糟糕至极。你不能这么做。想要同好友共同体验，他们需在千里之外，置身宽带连接另一端。《侠盗猎车手IV》多人模式是缺乏肢体亲密互动的游戏世界。

他们会说《侠盗猎车手IV》的广阔游戏世界令多画面得以实现。《MotorStorm》如何？这是款令人生厌的赛车游戏。游戏无法令玩家在分区屏幕中扮演真实好友。

你清楚技术局限不是大家放弃分区屏幕的原因所在。上代人都体验过这种模式，当时系统并没有这么强大，宽频电视也不多见。

你放弃这款游戏是由于同处一个分区屏幕的4位玩家仅需要一份60美元的游戏。而4个玩家同时在线则需要4份游戏，需要240美元。

这些人同样困惑，Nintendo Wii如何通过自己的平价、低动力小机器“戏弄”整个游戏行业。也许这是由于他们是唯一明白人类需要互动的公司。是真正的互动，而不是徒有虚名，通过耳机进行的无聊谈话。

有些玩家对于单玩家《超级马里奥：银河》上榜颇为不解。事实证明任天堂包含选择机会，这样好友就能够在任何时候拾起第二个掌机，通过指示器帮助首个玩家收集道具，瞄准敌人。这并非什么轰动之举，但意味着玩家可以邀请女友参与活动，防止其抱怨男友过多沉溺游戏，忽视自己。

所以当女友到来，你觉得他是会带上耳机体验《侠盗猎车手IV》，或是突然出现在《超级马里奥：银河》中？答案是：第二个选择会让他更贴近女友。

第二条：不要拖延游戏长度

违背作品：

《质量效应》、《教父》系列、《萨尔达传说：黎明公主》和《上古卷轴：湮没IV》。任何开放世界的游戏作品。

我们不介意简短游戏。《Portal》是款很短的游戏，大家都很喜欢它。游戏持续4小时。短亦无妨，只要能够相应调整价格。

而你们所采取的举措是通过任意方式延长简短游戏。例如：

在目标间植入大量延伸土地。

游戏设置在优美的延伸画面中，我们需要骑马行驶20分钟，方能步入下个任务。这样玩家就不清楚下个目标是什么，因此我们就会漫无目的地游荡，直到偶然发现目标。然后你将这些骑马行程和无目的游荡累加起来，称游戏包含“50小时体验”。

简单来说，这就是刻意填充。

添加无意义的强制乏味任务。

《银河战士》系列就是如此，让玩家靠近终极目标，然后要求他们重新 体验所有旧关卡，重新获取某些元素。《黎明公主》将玩家变成“跟踪狂”，他们每次需花费很长时间重新获取魔法珍珠。

《湮没》和《质量效应》之类的游戏给人予无限延伸的错觉，但游戏反复“进入另一地牢，取回X”任务就如同之前关卡的混合版本。

这些作品仍旧算是合格，因为其重复性的分支关卡具有选择性。

第三条：不要要求玩家进行重复操作

违背作品：

《生化危机4》、《战争之神》系列、《天堂之剑》、《英雄不再》、《丧尸围城》以及任何存在保存节点的作品。

以下是非常简单的规则：

大家只有在自己选择的情况下才会觉得重复操作富有趣味。

假定你某天下午坐在床上，出于无聊，朝帽子里仍扑克牌，连续进行这样的操作2小时，只是为了消磨时间。你以连续扔进10张扑克牌作为消遣乐趣。

想象下现在是夜晚，你将要入眠，忽然女友坐起来说道；“如果你没连续投进10张扑克牌，就不能睡觉！这是我的规矩！”

这次你是否会享受扔纸牌？不会，之前你觉得颇有趣味的重复动作顿时变得颇令人抓狂，因为你是以受挫心情扔纸牌。

有些视频游戏就像扔纸牌：运动游戏、战斗游戏和赛车游戏。其乐趣在于反复练习这些内容。但其他基于任务的游戏就像与女友共处。我们心中存有特定进程和目标，反复干扰只会破坏心情。

由于积分保存限制，我们必须重新体验关卡内容。

这是重回街机/NES时代，系统限制令玩家无法保存进度。现在已不存在此问题。我们非常忙碌。我们有工作、约会和电话需要处理。我们无法忍受不能保存游戏进度。

《半条命2》再此表现杰出，游戏每隔几分钟就会自动保存。玩家无需担心此方面，无需重新打败已被击退的敌人。

有人觉得拒绝保存能够增加游戏“紧张感”。当然考虑到360可能随时着火也会增加游戏紧张感。若在你看来，增加游戏悬念的唯一方式是废除某应用功能，那么你制作游戏的水平就很粗劣。

迫使我们反复观看截屏。

这是法则：若你编写截屏的方式促使我们无法跳过这些内容，那么你的编程许可证应被撤销。若你将截屏放置于我们可能死亡的地点之前，令我们之后无法进行保存，你最终失败实属理所当然。

《战神：奥林匹斯之链》就是如此。你最好期望自己不会在《超级马里奥银河2》末尾漫长的Bowser战斗中死去，因为你每次重新开始时都要忍受无聊旁白。《Unskippable》截屏胜过《Nights: Journey of Dreams》。

还有什么比这更糟糕？

快速操作中的立即失败

这是游戏行业最邪恶的发明之一。若你不熟悉此术语，这出现在在截屏中间，忽然“点击按键或死去”的Flash画面闪过屏幕。

若你无法在瞬间点击正确按键，结果不是丢失伤害积分。而是再次观看此烦人截屏。

直到你退出游戏，驱车前往办公室。

第四条：促使杀戮内容富有趣味。

违背作品：

《生化危机：安布雷拉历代记》、《半条命》系列以及其他玩家持剑战斗的游戏。

许多游戏都让玩家杀死大量生物有其原因。人类具有原始的杀戮冲动。因为由于自然选择，缺乏原始杀戮冲动的人类已被扼杀。

因此我们觉得杀戮非常具有满足感，视频游戏令我们能够在不伤害自己或他人的前提下体验杀戮情境。那么为什么你要剥夺玩家的此种乐趣？例如：

在游戏开始时赋予我们糟糕武器。

是的，强大而优质的武器是能够促使我们继续体验的奖励道具。不要在开始时赐予我们现实生活就能见到的武器。

在游戏给予玩家优质武器后，不要迫使他们重新面对糟糕手枪（游戏邦注：通常是在优质手枪没有子弹的情况下）。你将此元素放入游戏中不过是由于我们讨厌它。你心中有数。我们付费体验游戏；那么你为何要让我们体验我们讨厌的内容？

在游戏中融入渺小的侵蚀性敌人。

每款第一人称游戏似乎都有这些渺小的敌人，它们会附着在你的脸上，难以击中，更糟的是，即便杀掉它们也没有满足感。

多少玩家会因此而着迷于《上古卷轴：湮没》：在游戏初始越狱情境中发现自己置身某洞穴，手中只有把生锈的剑，用于杀死反常老鼠？不是吧？老鼠？在这款期待颇高的游戏中？

多少玩家会享受于射击《半条命》系列中的头蟹，杀死无数此类敌人？多数Wii用户会着迷于《生化危机：安布雷拉历代记》这类疯狂射击游戏，结果发现自己的任务是射击各房间地板上的可怜水蛭？

另一更令人失望的方面是：

子弹缺乏视觉效果。

若我们击中僵尸手臂，我们希望其手臂炸开。若击中膝盖，我们希望看到它们变成瘸子。若击中头部，我们希望看到其脑袋爆炸。我们希望子弹创造伤痕。而在《安布雷拉编年史》中，僵尸依然若无其事，好像击中其头部的是棒球。

还有些关于水蛭的内容。

《湮没》之类的持剑战斗游戏更是糟糕。玩家用刀猛砍坏人脸部，其依然毫发无损。敌人看起来没丝毫变化，直到他最终死去，仿佛是由于过度兴奋而心脏病发作。为何要给予我们无法损及敌人的剑？不要告诉我们系统无法处理，我们10年前曾在《死亡之屋》中摧毁敌人四肢。

这不涉及我们的流血欲望，而是确保我们在前行中消灭成群类似敌人时能一定成就感。你知道我们还讨厌什么？

游戏融入成群类似敌人。

这是新生代游戏的另一大问题。如今我们已能够制作具有真实感的面孔，杀死大量相似人物着实有些怪异。

差异化面部特点和声音有多困难？我们希望自己杀死的是不同敌人。而非大量克隆体。我们希望游戏融入悲伤的母亲角色，惋惜我们可怕刀剑所进行的恐怖活动。

第五条：应适可而止。

违背作品：

《恐龙猎人》、《战争机器》、《荣誉勋章》、《使命的召唤》、《Call of Honor》和《Metal of Duty: Honor Call》。

创意世界出现这两种情况时你得继续前进：当某事无法实现；某工作持续过久。有些无法实现的情况包括：

护送使命。

所以玩家在游戏前半部分所进行的是收集武器，瞄准目标，将自己变成杀死僵尸的机器。游戏如何奖励你？迫使你护送无助徒手笨蛋穿过战争区域，只要此人受伤，你就失败。

在游戏行业中，没有玩家喜欢护送任务。那为什么这些内容依然存在？

CPU控制的团队成员

这与上述情况相反，这里电脑让一半团队成员协助你对抗纳粹或僵尸之类的敌人。这行不通。

AI或过于愚蠢，或过于复杂（游戏邦注：令人意识到生存的徒劳）。在《使命的召唤4》中，团队成员在我们的机关枪前走过，迫切希望体验死亡的美好。然后我们因此受到惩罚。

第一人称障碍谜题

就第一人称内容而言，我们很难准确跳跃。所有能够让你在现实生活中进行此操作的条件都已消失（游戏邦注：例如平衡感、动量和肢体感觉）。所以你再也无法看到自己的脚。

但在《半条命2》中，我们进入令人毛骨悚然的僵尸镇莱温霍姆，准备为我们的性命而战。我们如何打败不死部落？像奇怪的Mario那样越过屋顶，置身木制平台和悬浮汽车上。

这带我们进入第二类“适可而止”游戏元素。这类游戏颇受欢迎，但其实并不合理。例如：

《第二次世界大战》系列。

每个玩家杀死的纳粹党数量比整个俄国军队消灭的还多。《第一次世界大战》系列在哪里？

头发斑白的星际舰队

《毁灭战士》15年前在游戏世界中引入头发斑白的星际舰队，这是id Software某成员在观看《异形》几分钟后想到的内容。头发斑白的星际舰队角色极大激发第一人称粉丝的想象力，于是他们决定今后在所有FPS中都融入此角色。

第六条：确保游戏能够真正运作。

违背作品：

360的《Bully》和PS3的橙盒内容等。

我们羞于谈及此点内容。这就像在麦当劳餐厅点餐，指明要汉堡。这让人觉得有些可笑。

我们希望游戏行业务必销售能够运作的内容。关于此点存在几个问题：

进行5分钟初步测试后便移植游戏。

我们这里担心的是内容入驻掌机后将出现的情况：他们会开始像PC领域那样将早期用户当作免费测试者。发行游戏，等待批评，随后再发行补丁。

Rockstar games在360发行《Bully》后，一直等到玩家体验好几小时发现游戏存在问题时，公司才推出紧急补丁。还有就是Valve，其于PS3推出不完整橙盒内容，也是等到玩家纷纷抱怨时才修复游戏内容。

你们是希望走PC游戏的老路？真的？盗版不是PC游戏逐步消亡的唯一原因。还包括当你同休闲玩家提及PC游戏时，他们会觉得毛骨悚然。他们依然记得自己曾花费一大下午下载补丁，实现PC游戏体验。

发行掌机无法运作的内容

我们知道在PC领域，开发者很难确保游戏能够顺利于所有系统运作（游戏邦注：每个PC都各不相同）。但你了解Xbox 360中的内容。你的作品没有理由因掌机卡住某画面而运作缓慢，

加载时间。

这是最致命的因素。出现“加载”画面，冻结操作完全破坏沉浸性游戏的魅力。这就好比去到剧院，每个场景间隙灯光均亮起，所以工作人员无法在投影仪中放置更多影片。

这个问题需要处理，目前尚没有解决方案。蓝光光碟不但没有表现更优，反而更糟。PS3单安装作品就非常复杂（例如《恶魔猎人4》），更别提加载，但降低其等级会极大损及游戏内容。

360需要快速转动磁盘，这听起来像直升机起飞——有时你可以在游戏中听到。磁盘就像装满布丁的推车，而掌机正努力通过吸管吸食这些布丁。

第七条：优质画面缺乏创造性。

违背者：

索尼和微软等开发者。

下图是3个互相竞争的新一代掌机，其比例正好反映其性能。

下图依然是这3款掌机，其比例正好反映设备2007年的销量：

Epic games总裁Mike Capps等人士曾表示他们永远不会自降身份，瞄准Wii平台开发游戏，因为这是“走下回头路”。

这是业内盛行的流行病，其仅通过画面马力定义“创新”。Mike非常困惑为何仅由于Wii能够提供全新游戏体验，大家就都希望人手一台。

这些人都忘了除凹凸映射和像数渲染外，其他元素对于创新而言无足轻重。“人类如何能够不心生厌恶地体验这些过时图像？”

若这些人能够同外界人士沟通，他们就会发现“过时”画面的整个构思对80%玩家而言毫无意义。

证据？Nintendo DS游戏：

让我们看看此设备销量的对比情况：

其销量超过6000万台。下次看到休闲玩家敲打Nintendo DS时，向他们展示《战争机器》的截图：

若他们指出你的作品由3种颜色构成，不要吃惊。当然硬核玩家知晓其中区别，他们知晓这款游戏是个技术创新。我们玩家希望获得乐趣或收获好故事。

我们有办法创造这样的内容，无需投资数百万于全新游戏引擎，挑战设备的硬件局限。

《Portal》如何成为杰出作品？其开发者聘请优秀作家撰写游戏故事和对话。

然后聘请优秀配音员叙述故事内容。

在此表现糟糕的作品是《最终幻想X》（游戏邦注：这款游戏耗资3200万美元）。公司若能将部分资金拨给故事创作团队，作品定会是另一番境况。

关注游戏结局设置

我们在此付出许多。不要向我们呈现这样的30秒画面：英雄踩着喷气滑雪板驶向远方，然后滚动游戏字幕。《最终幻想VI》的结尾如何？就是那个长达20分钟，概述每个角色故事的结尾，包含那些仅在游戏中一闪而过的角色？

这个很棒的结尾，促使我们都希望继续体验。相反《银河战士》系列的结尾只是个单帧庆祝文本。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2008年4月29日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey

By David Wong

We are here to condemn Grand Theft Auto IV, and other equally great games, not out of hatred, but out of love. For it does no good to point out the flaws in bad games as bad games by definition cannot be saved.

No, we aim to save gaming from the abyss by pointing out the sins of games like the Elder Scrolls and Half Life series, games made by creators who actually care. It is in that spirit that we proclaim the commandments that they have broken, so that they may be redeemed.

Who are we? Just a bunch of gamers who got really, really bored. What are the consequences for breaking these commands? Well … we might start reading books or something.

Therefore, we declare …

#7.Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends.

Violators:

Grand Theft Auto IV, MotorStorm, Shadowrun, etc.

Quick, tell us what the following games all have in common. We’ll give you a hint, one thing is that they were all among the top 10 most popular games of 2007:

Wii Sports

Wii Play

Guitar Hero III

Super Mario Galaxy

Madden NFL 08

Guitar Hero II

Mario Party 8

But what else? If you answered, “None of them contain male frontal nudity” then, well, you haven’t gotten the 122nd star in Mario Galaxy. If you said that these games all have multiplayer that’s intended to be played with friends in the same room, you’re right.

Likewise, what’s at the top of sales in 2008? Smash Bros. Brawl.

The advantage that consoles have over, say, PCs, is that you can play from your comfy sofa. The reason the sofa is considered the pinnacle of furniture technology is because there’s room for other people on it.

Yet, here’s Grand Theft Auto IV, boasting about its robust multiplayer, and if you think “multiplayer” means inviting the gang over to play, get drunk, laugh and high-five each other until the break of dawn, too bad. You can’t do that. Want to play with friends, they must be kept at arm’s length, faceless at the other end of a broadband connection. Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer is a world without hugs.

They’ll say that GTA IV’s vast open world makes split-screen impossible. OK, what about MotorStorm? It’s a goddamned racing game, and they won’t let you play a real-life friend on a split screen. A racing game.

Sorry, you know damned well that technical limitations aren’t the reason everyone is dropping split screen. Every previous generation had it, in times with much less powerful systems and few widescreen TVs.

You’re dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).

And these are the same people who’re baffled about how the Nintendo Wii was able to depants the whole industry with its cheap, underpowered little machine. Hey, maybe it’s because they’re the one company that still seems to realize humans need interaction with other humans. Real interaction, not trash talking over a headset behind fake names.

By the way, some of you are scratching your heads about having the obviously single-player Mario Galaxy up there on the list. Well, it turns out Nintendo included an option so that at any moment, a friend can pick up the second controller and, with the pointer, help the first player collect items and shoot at enemies. It’s a small thing, but it means a guy can get his girlfriend in on the action and cut off her complaints that his gaming is taking away from his time with her.

So when she comes over, do you think he’s going to put on his GTA IV headset, or pop in Mario Galaxy? Here’s a hint: The second choice gets him closer to touching boob.

#6.Thou shalt not pad the length of your games.

Violators:

Mass Effect, The Godfather games, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion IV, ah, fuck it. Any open-world game this generation.

See, here’s the thing. We don’t mind short games. Portal was a short game, everybody loved it. It was four hours of joy. Short is fine, as long as you adjust the price accordingly.

What you have started doing instead, game industry, is taking your short game and inventing some arbitrary way to pad the length. Such as:

Putting huge stretches of land between objectives.

Wow, what an awesome sprawling landscape your game inhabits. So sprawling that we have to ride a fucking horse for 20 minutes to get to the next mission. You also make it so that it’s often not clear what the next objective is, and thus we must wander around aimlessly until we stumble across it. You then add up all of this cumulative horse riding and aimless wandering and boast that your game has “50 hours of game play.”

It’s padding, plain and simple. And so is …

Adding pointless, mandatory fetch quests.

The Metroid Prime series is guilty as hell of this, letting you get near the end before you have to track back across all the old levels and retrieve a bunch of shit. Twilight Princess turned us into a dog and made us go retrieve magical pearls for what felt like days at a time.

Games like Oblivion and Mass Effect give the illusion of almost infinite length, but their endless “go into another identical dungeon and retrieve X” side quests are just slightly remixed copies of previous levels.

Those games get a little bit of a pass because their repetitive side-quests are optional. Which brings us right to …

#5.Thou shalt not force repetition on the player.

Violators:

Resident Evil 4, the God of War series, Heavenly Sword, No More Heroes, Dead Rising and every game with save checkpoints.

Here’s a very simple rule:

Humans only find repetition enjoyable when they choose it.

Let’s say you sit on your bed one afternoon and, out of boredom, fling playing cards at a hat for two hours straight, just to pass the time. You amuse yourself trying to hit 10 in a row.

Now imagine it’s later in the evening and you’re about to have sex with your girl. Suddenly she sits up, her boobies hanging out, and says, “Wait! We can’t do it until you fling 10 cards into that hat over there! It’s a rule in the obscure religion I practice!”

Will you enjoy the card flinging this time? No, and in fact the repetition you found enjoyable before will become maddening, as you flip cards around your frustrated, wilting manhood.

Well some video games are like tossing cards: sports games, fighting games, racing games. The fun is in repeating and practicing them. But other mission-based games are like having sex. There’s a specific progression and goal in mind, and repetitive interruption only ruins the mood.

Such as …

Having to replay levels due to limited save points.

This is a throwback to the arcade/NES days when physical limitations in the system wouldn’t allow you to save your progress just anywhere. There is no reason for this now. None. We’re busy. We’ve got work, appointments, phone calls. We shouldn’t tolerate an inability to save our progress in any piece of software.

Half Life 2 did this perfectly–it auto-saved every few minutes, behind the scenes. You didn’t have to worry about it and you didn’t have to re-fight enemies you had already defeated.

There are people who say that preventing saves adds to the “tension” of the game. Sure, in the sense that the fact that your 360 could catch on fire at any moment also adds to the tension. Face it, if the only way you can think of to add suspense to your game is to disable a feature of the hardware, then you suck at making games.

This is almost as bad as when you …

Force us to watch cutscenes repeatedly.

This should be the law: If you’ve programmed your cutscene so that we can’t skip it, then you should have your game programming license revoked. If you have placed your cutscene right before a spot where we’re likely to die, and given us no ability to save after it, then you deserve a beating.

God of War: Chains of Olympus does this. And you’d better hope you don’t die during the long-ass Bowser fight at the end of Mario Galaxy, because you’ve got to listen to his fucking monologue every fucking time you start over. Unskippable cutscenes killed Nights: Journey of Dreams, as sure as a bullet to the back of the skull.

Seriously, what could be worse than this? Oh, wait …

Instant failure quicktime events.

This has got to be one of the most diabolical inventions in the history of gaming. If you’re not familiar with the term, this is when in the middle of a cutscene, suddenly the words “HIT THE A BUTTON OR DIE!” flash across the screen.

If you fail to hit the right button in that split second, the consequence isn’t that you lose damage points. No, the consequence is that you have to watch the fucking cutscene again.

And again.

Until we turn off the game, get in our car, and drive to your office to deliver your beating.

#4.Thou shalt make killing fun.

Violators:

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, the Half Life games, almost any game where you fight with sword.

There is a reason why almost every game on the market allows us to kill many, many living things. We humans have a primal urge to kill because, thanks to natural selection, all the homo sapiens who didn’t have a primal urge to kill, were themselves killed.

Thus, we find killing very satisfying and video games allow us to go through the motions of killing without actually endangering ourselves or others. Why then do you do things that rob us of this joy? Such as:

Starting us with a bullshit weapon.

Yes, we get that earning bigger, fancier weapons is a reward to keep us playing. But don’t make us start with a weapon we probably have in our real-life garage (hey, thanks for the wrench, Bioshock).

And once you give us the cool weapons, don’t keep forcing us to go back to the shitty handgun due to lack of bullets for the non-shitty napalm-tipped shotgun. We’re talking to you, Resident Evil series.

How the hell did this trend survive past Wolfenstein? We hate using the handgun. You specifically put it in the game because we hate it. You know you did. We paid money for the game; so why are you making us do things we hate? Ever?

Things like …

Filling the game with tiny rodent enemies.

Every first-person game seems to have these tiny little enemies that hop at your face, are hard to hit and, worse of all, are unsatisfying to kill.

How many of us were enthralled with Elder Scrolls: Oblivion during the opening prison escape, only to find ourselves in a cave with a rusty sword, trying to kill freaking rats? Seriously? Rats? In the game that was supposed to change gaming forever?

How many of us still actually enjoy shooting head crabs in the Half Life games, having slain half a million of them? How many Wii owners were thrilled to have a frenzied shooter like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles only to find themselves shooting those pathetic leech things off the floor in room after room?

The only thing less satisfying is …

Bullets that have no visible effect.

If we shoot a zombie in the arm, we want his arm to blow off. If we shoot him in the knee, we want him to limp. And if we shoot him in the head, we want his head to explode. We want our bullets to create wounds. Now let’s watch a bit of Umbrella Chronicles, and watch the zombies go down undamaged, as if beaned with a baseball:

Oh, hey, there’s some of those leech things, too. Yay.

Sword-fighting games like Oblivion are worse. You can slash the bad guy in the face with your blade and it does nothing. The enemy looks perfectly normal until he finally falls over dead, as if he had a heart attack from the excitement. Why give us a sword if we can’t decapitate people? Don’t tell us the system can’t handle it, we were blowing off zombie limbs in House of the Dead a decade ago.

It’s not about our blood thirst (well, not just about that), it’s about making us feel like we’re accomplishing something as we work our way through hordes of cookie-cutter bad guys. Oh, hey, you know what else we hate?

Filling the game with hordes of cookie-cutter bad guys.

This is another one of those problems that are exacerbated by new-gen graphics. Now that we can do photo-realistic faces, it’s suddenly very weird that we’re killing hundreds of identical clones.

How hard would it be to randomize facial features and skin tones? That’s what we want, to feel like we’re killing hundreds of different people. Not a bunch of clones or twins. We want to know, deep down, that there are hundreds of grieving mothers out there, lamenting the terror of our dreaded blade.

#3.Thou shalt admit when enough is enough.

Violators:

Turok, Gears of War, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Call of Honor, Metal of Duty: Honor Call

There are two times in a creative field when you know you have to move on: When something just isn’t working, and when something has worked for too long. Some conventions that have never worked include:

Escort missions.

So you’ve spent the first half of the game accumulating weapons and hit points and turning yourself into a zombie-killing machine. How does the game reward you? By forcing you to escort a completely helpless and unarmed dumbass through the war zone, and making so that you instantly lose if they get a scratch on them.

No one has ever liked an escort mission, ever, in the history of gaming. So why do they still exist?

CPU-controlled squad teammates.

This is supposed to be the flip side of the above, here the computer gives you a half dozen or so teammates to “help” you fight the Nazis or commies or zombies or whoever the enemy is that day. It doesn’t work. It has never worked.

Either the AI is too stupid, or it’s so sophisticated that it has become sentient and aware of the futility of living. Either way, as recently as Call of Duty 4 we’ve got teammates walking in front of our machine gun, eager to feel the sweet, sweet embrace of death. And then we get penalized for it.

First-person jumping puzzles.

There is no possible freaking way to jump accurately from a first person perspective. All of the things that would let you do it in real life (sense of balance and momentum, awareness of your body) are gone. Also, you can’t see your fucking feet.

Yet, here we are in Half Life 2, entering the spooky, atmospheric zombie town of Ravenholm, ready for the fight of our lives. How do we defeat the undead hordes? Why, by jumping across rooftops, on wooden platforms and suspended cars, like freaking Mario.

This brings us to our second category of “enough is enough” gaming elements, which are ones that sold truckloads of games, but that need to be retired. Such as …

World War II games.

The average gamer has killed more Nazis than the entire Russian army. Where the hell are the World War I games?

The grizzled space marine.

Doom introduced the grizzled space marine to the gaming world 15 years ago, dreamed into existence by someone at id Software, probably just minutes after watching Aliens. The grizzled space marine character so captivated the imagination of first-person shooter fans that they decided to have him star in every single FPS game since.

#2.Thou shalt make sure your game actually works.

Violators:

Bully for the 360, The Orange Box for the PS3, too many others to count.

We’re ashamed to even have to include this. This is like having to ask McDonald’s to cook the burger before they serve it to you, or having to remind your dentist not to videotape himself slapping you in the face with his penis while you’re under. It’s the sort of thing you’d feel ridiculous saying.

Yet, here we are, telling the game industry to please only sell us games that function. Some sins that have been committed against this commandment:

Porting games after about five minutes of beta testing.

What’s happening here is exactly what we were afraid was going to happen once every console was online (never mind that 30-40% of them still aren’t): that they would start following the PC gaming method of using the early buyers as unpaid beta testers. Push the game out the door, wait for complaints, then release a patch later.

So here’s Rockstar games, releasing Bully for the 360 and then having to do an emergency patch after it took gamers literally hours to realize it was broken. Over here is Valve (you too?) releasing a broken version of The Orange Box for PS3 and again scrambling to get it patched after gamers started screaming.

Seriously, you guys want to go down the road that PC gaming has gone? Really? Because piracy isn’t the only reason PC gaming is dying a slow death. It’s because when you mention PC gaming to a casual gamer, the hairs stand up on the back of their neck. They’re remembering long, frustrating afternoons downloading patches, eventually deciding that to be allowed to play games on the PC, they had to fucking be Hugh Jackman in Swordfish.

But almost as inexcusable is …

Releasing games the console can’t really run.

Look, we know with PCs it’s hard as hell to make sure your game runs smoothly on every system–every PC is different. But you know what’s inside an Xbox 360. There no reason, none, ever, under any circumstances, that your game should stutter and slow down because the console is choking on the graphics. This is like selling us an L-shaped condom. You know damned well what we’ve got to work with here.

Which brings us to …

Load times.

This is going to being the Achilles heel of this generation. It utterly breaks the spell of an immersive game to freeze the action while a “Loading … ” bar comes up. This would be like going to the theater and having the lights come up between every scene, so they can put more film in the projector.

This has got to get fixed somehow, and there is no solution on the horizon. Blu-ray isn’t better, its worse. You’ve got the PS3 having to do huge installs of their games on the hard drive (yeah, that’s you, Devil May Cry 4), not to eliminate load times, but to keep them under a level that completely cripples the game.

The 360 meanwhile has to spin its disk so fast that it sounds like a jet taking off–you can hear it over the game at times. These disks are like a wheelbarrow full of pudding the console is trying to eat with a straw.

When you sit down to design the next generation of game machines, start with this.

#1.Better graphics do not equal innovation and/or creativity.

Violators:

Sony, Microsoft, countless developers.

Here are the three competing new-gen consoles, adjusted so that their size roughly reflects how powerful their hardware is in relation to each other.

Here are the same three consoles, adjusted so that their size reflects their worldwide sales in 2007:

Fascinating how that worked out. And yet, guys like Epic games president Mike Capps are out there making stupid-ass statements about how they would never lower themselves to develop for the Wii because that would be “going backward.”

This is epidemic in an industry that defines “innovation” purely by graphical horsepower and nothing else. Guys like him are utterly baffled that anyone could ever want a Wii, just because it, you know, offers a completely new playing experience.

Somehow these guys have gotten it in their heads that nothing counts for innovation except bump mapping and pixel shaders. “However can any human enjoy these outdated graphics without literally vomiting with disgust?”

Well, if these people would bother having a conversation with someone outside their own offices, they’d realize that the entire concept of “outdated” graphics is meaningless to 80 percent of gamers.

Want proof? Nintendo DS games look like this:

So let’s see how that machine’s sales compare:

Go check for yourself. They’ve sold more than 60 million of them. Tell you what, Mike. The next time you see some casual gamer tapping away at their Nintendo DS, show them a screenshot of Gears of War:

Don’t be shocked if they point out your game seems made up of three colors (brown, gray, and muzzle flash). Sure, hard-core gamers know the difference, they know the game is a marvel of technology. The rest of us just want to have fun, or be told a good story.

And guess what, there are ways to give us that, and it doesn’t involve spending millions on a whole new game engine that pushes the hardware to its limits. Such as …

Hiring real writers …

Hey, you know why Portal was such a great time? They hired top-of-the-line writers to write the story and dialog.

… then hiring competent voice actors to say the lines.

Don’t skip this step. Otherwise you get this …

That retarded clip is from Final Fantasy X, a game that cost $32 million to make. Come on, guys. Fork over a tiny bit of that to your story team. They need the money. And after they’re on board, remind them …

Put some work into the ending.

You owe it to us. We worked hard to get here. Don’t send us away with a 30-second cutscene of the hero riding into the distance on a jet ski before the credits roll. Whatever happened to the Final Fantasy VI endings? You know, the one that was 20 minutes long and wrapped up the stories of every single character even briefly glimpsed in the game?

It’s cool-ass endings that make us want to keep playing. Instead, we get games that graduated from the Metroid school of single-frame congratulatory text.

After all, the idea is to reward the gamer for playing.

Hell, maybe we should have just said that and skipped this whole thing.（Source：cracked）