作者：Steven Bogos

随着时间的发展，游戏作品的层次也在节节攀升。其编程更加先进，图像更趋于照片的现实感，创新功能也迅速被次世代游戏所接纳。在90%的时间中，这些创新属于受人欢迎的增值，但有时候某些创新却像是狗皮膏药一样老粘在游戏行业中。以下是我希望开发者取消的5项创新。

1.再生命值

第三次世界大战爆发了。我与俄罗斯/韩国/一般的阿拉伯恐怖分子作战，他们压制了我所在的小团队。我试图脱身并迎面遭到枪击。这并没有什么不妥，因为我可以在墙体后躲上片刻。虽然命值包是一个可笑的概念（玩家可以用绷带和止痛药治愈枪伤），它们至少可以增加一种玩法的紧迫感。在玩《半条命》的时候，因为有一波又一波的敌人在慢慢逼近，我无法躲在墙体后一动不动。如果我被枪击中，我就会耗损命值，我就得去找一个医疗包或者命值包。这里我还要加上再生弹药，原因也同样如此。你不知道《军团要塞2》决定保持命值包和医疗包时，我有多放松。

regenerating health(from criticalmissive)

2.高及膝盖的墙体

我玩过一款动作RPG/第三人称射击游戏。我进去的第一个房间凌乱地堆积着许多低劣、高及膝盖的墙体。这让我第一时间想到的就是躲在这些掩体之后，以免被坏人击中。这几乎与我第一点提到的现生命值绑定在一起，但似乎今天的游戏若不能让玩家躲在及膝墙体之后，并举起枪向后盲射就不能算完整一样。《战争机器》可谓这种设计的一个主要来源，虽然它在掩体系统上的确表现出色，但其他游戏不加以选择地盲目照搬就有问题了。

3.开放世界的沙盒

不要误会，我喜欢沙盒游戏。我一直是个《侠盗猎车手》（以下简称GTA）粉丝，《Sleeping Dogs》是我最喜欢的去年发布的游戏之一。有时候你并不想玩沙盒游戏，有时候你想玩立体方格铁架，有时候你想玩滑梯，总之都可以在游戏中如愿。我喜欢初版的《Red Faction》，但《Guerrilla》的沙盒游戏却让我讨厌。与此相似，我并不期待《Prey 2》，因为我真的喜欢原版游戏中令人回想起《毁灭战士》和《雷神之锤》式的线性FPS情节。“线性”已经成为游戏行业中一个令人讨厌的词，开发者正争先引入“沙盒世界”来避免这种情况。

4.快速反应事件

你们都知道这指的是屏幕中常出现的“摁压X键来取胜”这种设计。快速反应事件上是低劣开发者的支柱，他们常制作冗长而频繁，或者无聊得无法吸引玩家的过场动画。在设计一个过场动画时，开发者应该自问：“这个过场动画需要快速反应事件来令其生效吗？”如果答案是肯定的，那就要果断抛弃并重新制作。

5.围绕简单模式而设计的游戏

你玩电子游戏的水平很差，没有关系，我也有一些自己玩得很不拿手的游戏。比如，我在战斗游戏方面就很不在行。我并不认为人们不擅长玩电子游戏有什么问题，也不要误会我，我所抱怨的就是围绕简单模式而设计的游戏。游戏设计曾经以折腾和蹂躏玩家为主，如果游戏实在太过困难，你可以调整其中某些元素，令其更加简单——例如降低敌人的命值条，给予玩家无限的弹药，减少敌人数量等等。现在，多数游戏设计似乎都选择了最简单的设置，如果玩家想要更高的挑战就可以提升难度设置，并增加敌人的命值条和损害数量等。问题在于，仅仅增加难度并不会令游戏更具挑战性。你理解吗？游戏并不是围绕敌人在困难模式中的额外命值所设计，因此导致游戏常常令人受挫而不是富有挑战性。这还会导致开发者为了提高难度而赋予敌人一些“廉价”的能力（例如自动瞄准）。

这就是我目前对游戏行业的5个最大成见。它们多数时候不会给游戏设计增加好处，实际上在削弱游戏设计。各位的看法如何呢？你最讨厌哪些游戏创新？

原文发表于2013年6月6日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（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）

OPINION: Five Gaming Innovations I Wish Were Never Innovated

by Steven Bogos

As the years go by, games tend to get better. The programming becomes more advanced, the graphics become more photo-realistic and new innovations are introduced that are quickly adopted into the next generation. 90% of the time, these innovations are welcome additions, yet occasionally we’ll get a particularly nasty one that for some reason will stick to the games industry like a dog turd to your brand new sneakers. Here are the top five things I wish developers would just lose their boners over already.

1.      Regenerating health

The third world war has broken out. I’m fighting the Russians/Koreans/generic Arabic terrorists and they have me and my squad pinned. I step out to try and offer some cover fire and I get shot in the face with a shotgun. It’s K, though, because I can just hide behind this wall for a few seconds and I’ll be fine. While health packs aren’t any more ridiculous of a concept (heal gunshot wounds with bandages and painkillers), they at least had the benefit of adding a sense of urgency and care to your gameplay. In the days of Half-life, I couldn’t just stay behind a wall as waves of bad guys slowly got closer. If I got shot, I lost health, and I had to go and find myself a med pack or a HEV battery. I’ll add regenerating ammo to this point too, for the same reason. You have no idea how relieved I was that Team Fortress 2 decided to stick with health packs (and the medic).

2.      Knee-high walls

I’m playing an action-RPG/third person shooter. The very first room I enter is littered with these pissy little knee-high walls. ‘Whelp, guess it’s time to hide behind cover until bad guys stop running at me.’ This is almost exclusively tied to my first point on regenerating health, but it seems like a game these days isn’t complete unless you can duck behind a knee high wall and blind fire over the top. Gears of War is the main source of this grievance, and while it actually did the cover system pretty well, other games are so intent on copying it that they will occasionally forget that they are supposed to be a different kind of game.

3.      Open-world sandboxes

Don’t get me wrong. I like sandbox games. I’ve always been a GTA fan, and Sleeping Dogs was one of my favourite games released last year. It’s just; sometimes you don’t want to play in the sandbox. Sometimes you want to play on the jungle gym. Sometimes you want to slide down the slide. I really liked the first Red Faction game, but the sandbox of Guerrilla just turned me off.

Similarly, I’m not looking forward to Prey 2, because I actually enjoyed the linear FPS plot reminiscent of Doom and Quake that the first game offered. “Linear” has become a dirty word in the games industry, and developers are constantly scrambling to throw together a “sandbox-world” to avoid it.

4.      Quick-time events

You all knew this one was coming. The famous ‘press X to win’. Quick-time events are a crutch used by bad developers, who make cut scenes that are either too long, too frequent, or too boring to hold the player’s attention, and they are thrown in to offer the illusion of interactivity. When designing a cutscene, all developers should ask themselves: ‘Does this cutscene need a quick-time event to make it work?’ If the answer is yes, then scrap the cutscene and start over.

5.      Games being designed around Easy mode

Hey, you suck at video games. That’s ok. There are video games I suck at too. I’m really bad at fighting games, for example. I don’t have a problem with people sucking at video games, and don’t get me wrong; they should have the ability to make games easier. What I’m complaining about is games being designed around the Easy mode. Games used to be designed to be grueling and tough, and if it was too much, you could make it easier tweaking elements of the game – lowering enemy health bars, giving yourself infinite ammo, reducing the amount of enemies and so on. These days, it feels like most games are designed to be played on the easiest setting, and players wanting an extra challenge can turn the difficulty up and increase enemy life bars and damage numbers or whatever. The problem is, just making things harder doesn’t make them more challenging. You understand? The game is obviously not designed around enemies having the extra health they have in hard mode, so there are times that it becomes frustrating rather than challenging. It also leads to developers giving enemies abilities that feel ‘cheap’ (such as instant auto-aim) in an attempt to ramp up the difficulty.

So these are my five biggest peeves of the games industry right now. Most of them add nothing to a game’s design, and actually detract from it at times. What do you guys think? What gaming innovations do you hate?（source：stevesgameblog）