Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie Is 8 Years Old!
Veteran game designer and top hatted geezer Ernest Adams has posted the 8th yearly edition of his 'Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie' column over at Gamasutra, running down things game designers absolutely should not do.
The first (of many) is 'wildly atypical game levels', described by a submitter as: "Optional mini-games are fun, and can be a refreshing change of pace, but optional is the key word here. Levels where a player must complete a game that uses a completely different skill set in order to continue back to a point that uses the original skill set can be irritating as hell."
Adams adds: "Bullfrog was often guilty of this -- I remember some wildly atypical levels in Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, and Populous: The Beginning. They padded out the game, but because they made just about everything you had learned useless, they were very annoying." There's also now a No Twinkie Database on Adams' site, collecting all of the submissions so far.
Comments
Conker's Bad Fur Day on XBox: The level where you race those cavemen on the hoverboard. I hate this level with all my heart. It's insanely difficult and unforgiving it has nothing to do with the rest of the game and it made me quit playing the game. I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it.
There aren't even cheats out for the XBox version of the game, so I can't skip the level.
Hate you Rare! Hate you so much!
Posted by: technophile_gamer | September 5, 2007 6:50 AM
Despite being a bad game designer, I believe I have eaten an 8 year old twinkie before. Quotation marks to clarify.
In other news, atypical levels piss me off. It's such fluff. The worst for me is when you spend an entire game running around shooting people, and then are suddenly forced to carefully escort a target. It may not be the most egregious diversion in a shooter to include a "protect and escort" level, but it bothers me the most.
I don't want to spend a game shooting everything that moves and then suddenly be required to repeat a level 10 times because some fat guy with a briefcase keeps getting his ass shot.
Posted by: reeds | September 5, 2007 1:21 PM