CLW
2011-10-29 22:24:02 UTC
I had a friend who absolutely insisted over my loud objections that todays video games are better than those I grew up with 25 years ago. So fool that I am I went out and brought three PS3 systems and three huge monitors to play video games. I brought about $1000 dollars in video games whose adventure story I liked. Now to be fair some video games I could play to the end. Borderlands, Prototype, Infamous 1, Infamous 2 and a few others. Oh I enjoyed the heck out of the video games I could beat but they were rare exceptions.
Even on easy \ causal mode most video games are so hard all I do is practice to die. Some of my greatest failures were Grand Theft Auto 4, Mafia 2, Bodycount, Saboteur, Bio Shock 1, Bioshock and so many more. My list of video game failures is so long I can't put it all here. For me video games come in three Types.
Game Type One: Games so hard requiring so much coordination that I die so often in the beginning that the game is useless to me. Actually this type of game is rare and is usually made by one company Activision. Activision makes the most disabled hostile games in the marketplace.
Game Type Two: Games that have tasks that must be completed in an unreasonable short time limit for the story line to continue. Saboteur, Singularity Mafia 2 and a LOT of video games use this timer trap to make video games inaccessible to disabled people. I actually have enough manual dexterity to play most video games, I just don't to the tasks fast enough to satisfy the time limits imposed by the game. Most of the games I can not play fall into this type. This is why I am mad. Game Time Limits do nothing but make the game too hard. In easy mode the game time limits should be turned off. The game developers lie when they call game modes easy and causal if the must beat time limits imposed make the game impossible to play.
The word casual implies that your game play is unhurried. Casual means the gamer should not be rushed at all and a timed task of any type is anything but casual or easy which is why most of todays video games are so hard. Why are today's video games designed for the physically elite hardcore gamers and no accommodation is made for those of us who just want to play the game without the challenged imposed by must beat time limits.
Why can't the video gaming industry just agree to turn off all the game imposed time limits in easy or casual mode. The fun would still be in the challenge of playing the game and getting lost in the alternate world the game invites you to imagine. Not everyone has the speed of Mercury when performing the tasks required by a video game.
Now for a funny fact. In video games requiring sharp shooting using a sniper rifle, I win every sharp shooter trophy their is without even trying if I am given the time to make the shot. Even with the disabilities I do a great job playing video games until the strict must win time limits get imposed halfway into most games. In my humble opinion there is no valid reason to impose must win time limits in the Easy \ Causal Game Play Mode. I am not saying do away with must win timers in the normal or insane game play modes but, in Easy \ Casual mode there should never be a timed must win situation in a well designed game. In casual \ easy mode we just want to enjoy the imaginary game space with a token bit of stress free effort at performing required story line tasks.
Why can't the dumb bells that develop video games realize there is a vast market of game space tourists who just want to take a casual stress free un-timed romp through their alternate game worlds. Maybe the words easy and casual are not correct. I am not a hardcore gamer. In the eyes of the game developers I am not even a casual or easy gamer because those settings are still too stressful making the game too hard to play. I am a "Game Tourist", I just want to go into the game have fun, see the sights experience the locales, soak up the culture and shoot, blow up, drive through, fly over, kill, destroy, sail over or under and explore everything that moves (or does not move!) Maybe all new games should come with a "Game Tourist Mode!" for us video world explorers! The gaming industry is stupid for thinking we video game tourists do not have scads of money to spend. We video world tourists are a vast untapped market of people frustrated by timers and other non-sense that prohibit us from fully exploring the alternate universes created in their games. Video games are also art forms and video game touri