Beyond Scratching the Surface

[machomuu]

A first impression's the most important one, generally, and there are just some times when a game doesn't really manage to impress you in those beginning hours. But you decide to give it a little more time, because you paid for it, or because your friends said that it's really good and you have to understand why they would get that impression, or because you're a goddamn completionist.

And then, a few more hours in, the game opens up, the mechanics start to click, and you throw up your hands and yell "WHY DIDN'T YOU START WITH THIS!?" From then on, you're pretty hooked. You may not play to the end, but you definitely like the game much more than you did when you'd only scratched the surface.

You ever had any games like that? Games that didn't quite grab you for a while until something changed and made the game one worth playing? Or how about the opposite, where the game has a strong start but falls off right at the beginning or its "innovative, unique gameplay" quickly becomes repetitive?

 

[Desert Stream~]

Well... I guess you could say Fire Emblem was like that for me? I didn't really like it at first but now I do.

 

[Graine]

Any game with an hour long tutorial. I hate when they want you to know every single aspect and mechanic in the first few hours of gameplay even though I understand why most studio go this way nowadays. I just wanna discover how to play as I'm progressing through the game...

 

[Alfieri]

That's how I felt about Ocarina of Time. Dodongo's Cavern was the only interesting kid dungeon for me and traveling through Hyrule Field was a painful slog. Once I became adult Link and had access to teleporting songs and Epona, things started to become more fun. The dungeons were a lot more interesting as well. It ended up becoming one of my indifferent games to one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[Juno]

I don't think I've quite experienced that, but something that's a little similar would be TWEWY's gameplay, but it's not so much things were poorly presented in the beginning, the mechanics of battle just take a while to get used to since you're essentially controlling two characters on separate screens using different mechanics for each. It feels like a real clusterfuck in the beginning, but after a while it just seemed super natural and fun.

Or how about the opposite, where the game has a strong start but falls off right at the beginning or its "innovative, unique gameplay" quickly becomes repetitive?

On the opposite end, I can think of a lot more examples. Lots of games show real promise in the beginning, and after a while you notice it was all kind of an illusion and you're just doing the same things over and over. I think a lot of Telltale Games/interactive stories like Until Dawn actually fall in this category - I still think they are amusing and I love the stories they tell, but once you start to realize your choices don't actually matter and you're just having a story told to you, the illusion of choice and branching storytelling quickly goes away and you're just kinda along for the ride.

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Two games in particular come to mind: Shadow of Mordor and Sunset Overdrive

Shadow of Mordor, for the most part, is just an Assassin's Creed clone. Not that it's surprising as Ubisoft is behind the game, but the game is really just...simplistic and boring for the most part. The game ultimately doesnt really get interesting until you mastering branding uruks and orcs which creates some crazy situations if you plan accordingly.

As for Sunset Overdrive, the game doesn't really click or run smoothly until you gain the air dash perk. The whole game plays on parkour, but if yohe miss a jump - which happens often early on - than it slows everything down and isn't fluid. However, when you get the air dash perk, than it makes traversing the environment super fun and enjoyable in my experience.

On the opposite end, I can think of a lot more examples. Lots of games show real promise in the beginning, and after a while you notice it was all kind of an illusion and you're just doing the same things over and over. I think a lot of Telltale Games/interactive stories like Until Dawn actually fall in this category - I still think they are amusing and I love the stories they tell, but once you start to realize your choices don't actually matter and you're just having a story told to you, the illusion of choice and branching storytelling quickly goes away and you're just kinda along for the ride.

While the beginning of the game doesn't necessarily allow you to have impactful choices, doesn't the middle to end of Until Dawn directly influence who lives and who dies?

 

[Firebolt]

I believe that the Witcher 3 falls into this category for me. At first, it kind of just felt like I was walking around in some generic RPG world, but then you start meeting more characters and getting to know some more uglies... There's a reason it's pretty much the only horror-like game I've played (say what you will, some of those monsters are just made of the stuff of nightmares).

 

[JJ Styles]

Path of Exile.

I remember back then PoE had a very slow start to every character and it felt really boring for the early game because your character just feels so weak as well as lacking thay "UMHFF" until one realizes that you have to understand everything in order to get the build that you want to go for. Even then, pOe is that kind of game where you cant just sinply respec a wrongly allocated passive point unlike in diablo 3 which is basically a casualized version of The loot based Action RPG that Diablo originally meant for.

End game or at least achieving what your build is becomes a different story. You start to realize how strong your character is with how much have you carefully studies your skill tree allocations. If your character is capable of surviving heaps of damage, deal lits of damage, have very fast clear speed, and most importantly is very comfortable to play while looking like an ultra badass ready to annhilate everything that isnt human or otherwise, then you have an understanding of POE and you are likely to be ready in playing your next character build that has the potential to be even better than your first one.

Its only till very late in the game where you realize how strong or how weak your character is, and also you need to understand how everything works in order for your build

There has been many efforts to make the game accessible for players who want to try the game as well as for those who want to get back into wraeclast once again. Also play on the challenge leagues please because thats usually whete the current state of the game is balanced out unlike in permanent leagues where the in-game economy is broken as hell because of the existence of Legacy versions of items, as well ad most players in general inflating prices of items just because of longetivity.

 

[Juno]

While the beginning of the game doesn't necessarily allow you to have impactful choices, doesn't the middle to end of Until Dawn directly influence who lives and who dies?

That's true, and I don't quite know how to explain why I feel why those don't really "count" - the game opens with the butterfly effect cinematic and the words "a tiny butterfly flapping its wings today may lead to a devastating hurricane weeks from now. The smallest decision can dramatically change the future. Your actions will shape how the story unfolds. Your story is one of many possibilities. Choose your actions carefully"; the butterfly effect is something they beat over your head repeatedly throughout the game, and it gives the illusion that your choices change the outcome of the story itself, not just the fate of certain characters. They make it sound a lot grander than what it actually is - a predetermined story where characters will be able to die at predetermined points of the game, after they have fulfilled their role in the story.

So in that sense, and in the context of answering that question, my initial impression of the game would be this is an open-ended story, but when you play through it multiple times to see if you can get different endings, you see the story plays out exactly the same every time, but you can kill or save certain characters at certain points in the game, which is a little disappointing but understandable since I know it would be very difficult to create a game with actual, intuitively branching paths in the story and thousands of different outcomes.