Would You Like A Hint?

Games, regardless of genre, always present a challenge in some form. Maybe it's a complicated puzzle or a boss battle. Either way, the player has to figure out what needs to be done in order to proceed. The question is, when do we help the player with this and how much help do we offer?

There are the two extremes, no help at all and giving the answer away. I've found that the "no help at all" approach is mostly a thing of the past now. Maybe I just haven't been playing the right games, or I'm extremely smart, but lately games seem to have been giving me more than enough help to get by. This "no help" method used to be the approach taken by the old adventure games such as the King's Quest games, a genre which was notorious for having trains of thought that only made sense to the game's designer. On the other end lies the "giving the answer away" crowd. I've never played Uncharted, but apparently it frequently presents you with ancient mystical puzzles and you solve them by opening your journal and reading the answer out of it. One of my favorite reviewers called this the "Dan Brown school of thought approach to puzzle solving".

One of the big factors when considering how much help to give players is how much time the player has to act. In the middle of an intense gun fight with the main villain, the player usually does not have a good chance to sit back, survey the area, and determine that there is a representation of the Fibonacci Sequence in the corner that the player needs to add the next number to in order to expose the boss' weak spot. On the other hand, in a game like Myst time is never an issue and so the player may take as much time as they wish to complete a puzzle. As a result, the puzzles get more complex, and the hints get fewer and farther between.

As usual, I find the answers for such problems lie somewhere in the middle. Take Metroid Prime for example. You can scan every enemy in the game to get information about them and how to defeat them. This is nice, because it makes obtaining the information optional. You are not forced to get the games hints, but can fall back on them if you are stuck or having difficulty figuring out how to topple a given foe. Scanning an enemy takes precious time, and you cannot attack, so getting the info leaves you vulnerable. However, it is worth it, as the data is very useful. The important thing to remember here, is while scanning often outright tells you the method to beat an enemy, you still have to actually pull that method off yourself.

Compare that to Luigi's Mansion. To take out the ghosts with your vacuum, you must first expose their heart. For the common enemy this is fairly easy, but for others it can be very complicated. You have the option to scan their heart for hints, which leaves you wide open for a long time, but usually the information isn't very helpful. One ghost, when scanned, says that no one can see him in the darkness. However, lighting the torches around him is only step one. You must then drain his food, kill the two butler ghosts who appear to replenish his plate, drain the plate completely, and the dodge his fireballs he belches at you until he gets tired. Then he can be captured. The entire time, all scanning mentions is the darkness bit.

Still, I find bad information is better than having the game beat itself for you. As I implied at the end of the Metroid Prime discussion, even with hints or just figuring it out yourself, you must still do it yourself. But what if the game were to do that part for you? In Super Mario Galaxy 2, if you fail at a given point a certain number of times, a friendly "Cosmic Guide" (who will look very familiar if you played the first Super Mario Galaxy) will appear and offer to guide you to the star. I have never taken her up on this offer, as her appearance just makes me more determined to do it myself, but what's the point of trying if she'll just take you to it? Oh, because if she guides you there it's a bronze star, which doesn't count. So then why would I ever take her up on her offer? Having never used it, I'm not sure what the guide process looks like, but I fail to see the logic behind the mechanic at all. The only use I see getting out of it, is that the path is shown to you if you don't know the way. But the worlds are basically linear, making getting truly lost an unlikely possibility.

How to steer the player the right way without holding their hand is a tricky problem. I find too many games these days are hand holders. How much help do you like?

Uh, yes please Ma'am. And while you're at it, could you do the rest of the game for me?