Games with high entry barriers

[Vorgot]

A video on youtube turned up on my feed this morning, and made a great point. It was about Persona Q2, which was probably the last big third party release for the 3DS, but is also an amazing game.

 

 

The problem comes with its entry barriers. Q2 is a brilliant dungeon crawler, not quite as good as Q, but still a stand out game. But if you have not played Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5, the interplay between all of the characters will be lost, and it's huge part of the games appeal. Atlus, who have history of amazing english dubs, passed on an english dub of this because they knew they were selling to a small market in the west. I bet they had an amazing estimate of how much they would sell that was really close to current sales.

 

This is not just a sequel though. It's an amazing game in it's own right. But I would find it difficult to recommend to anyone who has not played the earlier games, I'd point them at Etrian Odyssey instead, though for me this is way superior.

 

So my question is, am I missing out on some amazing games because I need to have played other stuff first?

 

[Kevvy Metal]

From a different perspective - Half-Life : Alyx. 

 

There's a new Half-Life game out! ...and it's highly regarded, and I just have to pretend it doesn't exist because I can not justifying all that expense on a high-end PC and VR set up. 

[Vorgot]

1 minute ago, Kevvy Metal said:

From a different perspective - Half-Life : Alyx. 

 

There's a new Half-Life game out! ...and it's highly regarded, and I just have to pretend it doesn't exist because I can not justifying all that expense on a high-end PC and VR set up. 

Different perspective, same issue though.

 

If you have the required gear, are you pumped for this game if you have not played the earlier stuff?

[Qazimod]

I dropped off the Ace Attorney series but I think it suffers from this a bit, even when Phoenix’s internal monologue tries to fill in the gaps. Imagine it’s 2008 and you‘ve never played an Ace Attorney game, but you wanted to jump into whatever the newest game was at the time... so you picked up Trials and Tribulations - you’d miss out on the hype of seeing returning characters or having that extra bit of backstory knowledge...

 

Also, I’ve seen similar criticism levelled at FFVIIR. “What’s the deal with the guy who has the silver hair and the long sword?”

[Vorgot]

It must be a fine line for devs to manage. Get the fan specific stuff in while not putting off newcomers. FFVII is a perfect example. As a new player I don't give a toss about the silver hair guy, but the music and visuals say that I should.

 

There can always be subtle stuff, like Yukiko appearing in P3P, but when it hits big game beats it can be an issue. I'm just glad that I can play these games that are basically odes to fans as there are so many people who will buy them. But is seems a lot of people may be missing out on a great game because they don't know the back story stuff

[Fry Crayola]

55 minutes ago, Vorgot said:

If you have the required gear, are you pumped for this game if you have not played the earlier stuff?

 

That's something I occasionally suffer from - the feeling of not really willing to jump in to a reknowned sequel without having played its predecessors.

 

For the most part, that's daft. Not every game is Kingdom Hearts. Yet, it persists and means my backlog grows by three games rather than one.

[df0]

Maybe not an answer fitting the question, but most of those City Builder/Tycoon games. PS+ subscribers recently received Cities Skylines and there is a swamp of tutorial text. In my head, every action I was meant to take was preceded by paragraphs of text explaining the why and how. By the time I was given control I forgot most of what I just read.

[Timmo]

If any game requires prior knowledge of another game to enjoy it then it's badly designed.

[Qazimod]

What about Dark Souls? I finished the third game and learned that it had some significant returning areas and bosses that I never saw in the first game because I binned it fairly early on...  I still thought the areas/bosses were cool but it probably wasn’t as much of a ZOMG moment.  

[Captain Kelsten]

Eve. 

[Kevvy Metal]

2 hours ago, Vorgot said:

Different perspective, same issue though.

 

If you have the required gear, are you pumped for this game if you have not played the earlier stuff?

 

Yes, I was kinda playfully re-interpreting the question. I get your original point though. 

 

You really do not need to of played the other Persona games to get and understand a Persona game.

I played Persona 5 and not having played any others at that point did not affect my enjoyment of it at all. They're all self contained. 

 

I don't get the FF7R complaints either. It's established that Sephiroth is the bad guy, you see some vision of him and learn as you go along through the game why he's evil. It's basically the same as the original just without the visions which establishes him a little earlier in the remake. 

 

The only series that I've played that kinda needs you to play the whole series sequentially is Metal Gear Solid... or maybe Halo 1, 2 & 3.

But even then, they're all totally fun on their own. 

 

  

1 hour ago, Qazimod said:

Also, I’ve seen similar criticism levelled at FFVIIR. “What’s the deal with the guy who has the silver hair and the long sword?”

 

I don't even get why this is a criticism, unless it's people looking for one deliberately and reaching. 

As a new player you're meant to be questioning at that moment "who is this guy"... and then in the game later, you find out.

A sense of mystery, It's not like he never appears again. 

[David Kenny]

13 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

What about Dark Souls? I finished the third game and learned that it had some significant returning areas and bosses that I never saw in the first game because I binned it fairly early on...  I still thought the areas/bosses were cool but it probably wasn’t as much of a ZOMG moment.  

Did it? I played both and didn't even notice that.

[DukeOfEarlsfield]

Most vertical shoot 'em ups and beat 'em ups. Both seem to have gone on a long journey from their roots, evolving to please their fan base rather than broaden their appeal. So if you haven't gone on that journey with them, and don't have the time to invest in catching up, then they're very difficult to get enjoyment from.

 

Shoot 'em ups have gone from games where you battle your way through hordes of enemies, killing as many as possible to survive until you defeat a final boss, to games where you pick your way through a geometric field of neon shapes whilst fulfilling a high-score version of the fizz-buzz game.

 

Beat 'em ups have gone from pushing a joystick up to jump and then pushing in a different direction, plus the fire button, to kick, to... well I have no idea. I occasionally wander into the fighting games threads and I have literally no idea what they're talking about.

 

Not necessarily bad things, both genres seem to be doing quite well for themselves and are hugely popular. But they're a very, very long way from their ultra accessible, pick up and play roots.

 

 

Cue somebody trying to argue that I'm wrong and that they're actually really easy to get into, here's a half hour youtube tutorial on tech-frames in Super Street Fighter 5 Ex Alpha Final vs Capcom Complete Edition.

[df0]

3 minutes ago, DukeOfEarlsfield said:

Beat 'em ups have gone from pushing a joystick up to jump and then pushing in a different direction, plus the fire button, to kick, to... well I have no idea. I occasionally wander into the fighting games threads and I have literally no idea what they're talking about.

I assume you mean fighting games (Street Fighter) and not beat em ups (Streets of Rage).

Skullgirls offers a very digestible and thorough training mode where everything is explained while you perform the action. It becomes too complex for my old man reflexes but if you're genuinely interested in learning, give it a try.

[Qazimod]

1 hour ago, David Kenny said:

Did it? I played both and didn't even notice that.

Stuff like 

 

Spoiler

In DS3 you go back to Anor Londo. At the end you travel to the Kiln of the First Flame again. The final form of the Soul of Cinder has a moveset similar to Gwyn‘s.

I think there’s a bunch of other stuff too but it’s been a while.  Also I think the different eras (or ages, or whatever) complicate things because DS3 can give you a location name you recognise but it might not look the same as you remember...

 

 

1 hour ago, Kevvy Metal said:

I don't even get why this is a criticism, unless it's people looking for one deliberately and reaching. 

As a new player you're meant to be questioning at that moment "who is this guy"... and then in the game later, you find out.

A sense of mystery, It's not like he never appears again. 

 

I think people have beef because it seems like he's shoehorned in a bit here - he never shows up during the equivalent bits in the original game - and people think that it's because fans want to shake their fist at the big bad, rather than having a first chapter with little motivation. So it placates the fans but confuses newcomers.

 

I'm not necessarily agreeing with the critics, but I can see where they're coming from.

[DukeOfEarlsfield]

2 minutes ago, df0 said:

I assume you mean fighting games (Street Fighter) and not beat em ups (Streets of Rage).

Skullgirls offers a very digestible and thorough training mode where everything is explained while you perform the action. It becomes too complex for my old man reflexes but if you're genuinely interested in learning, give it a try.

The fact that a fighting game has a tutorial mode for you to learn the game is kind of the problem. IK+ is a game you could 'learn' by glancing at the inside of the cassette cover. I'm not saying all games should go back to that,  just pointing out how much accumulated knowledge there is in modern fighting games that has to be learnt by any newcomer.

 

And yes, I stuck with beat 'em ups as that's what we called them in the C64 days.

[Vorgot]

1 hour ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

Yes, I was kinda playfully re-interpreting the question. I get your original point though. 

 

You really do not need to of played the other Persona games to get and understand a Persona game.

I played Persona 5 and not having played any others at that point did not affect my enjoyment of it at all. They're all self contained. 

 

 

 

Every Persona mainline game, yep. Stand alone, some little Easter Eggs, all good.

 

Q and Q2 though. Different gravy, The core mechanic is solid, even better than the source material of Etrian, they are briliiant games. But they only shine with knowledge of P3P, P4G and P5. 

 

Thats not a bad thing, but it massively reduces your audience,

[Fry Crayola]

I find this is also a problem with some of the more advanced sport sims. Games like FIFA and PES, NBA 2K etc. have pretty complex control schemes, in a fast paced environment, on top of an already established sport with its own ruleset, strategies etc.

 

As a football fan with over 20 years playing the biggest games, these things are second nature. Coming to NBA 2K20 recently with no background in the sport or the genre of game, I find myself floundering a lot more. I note that while it has a pretty good tutorial for the game, it doesn't at any point explain the rules of basketball. And neither do FIFA or PES.

 

And they don't explain football either.

 

Which is understandable but it still remains a barrier - the games rely on prior or externally derived knowledge about the rules of their own gameplay.

 

Yet I find hands on play of any sport to be an ideal way of learning its intricacies. It'd be interesting if the games tried to involve themselves in the teaching of the sport more, to expand their audience to the likes of me.

 

There are dozens of us!

[Vorgot]

1 minute ago, Fry Crayola said:

I find this is also a problem with some of the more advanced sport sims. Games like FIFA and PES, NBA 2K etc. have pretty complex control schemes, in a fast paced environment, on top of an already established sport with its own ruleset, strategies etc.

 

As a football fan with over 20 years playing the biggest games, these things are second nature. Coming to NBA 2K20 recently with no background in the sport or the genre of game, I find myself floundering a lot more. I note that while it has a pretty good tutorial for the game, it doesn't at any point explain the rules of basketball. And neither do FIFA or PES.

 

And they don't explain football either.

 

Which is understandable but it still remains a barrier - the games rely on prior or externally derived knowledge about the rules of their own gameplay.

 

Yet I find hands on play of any sport to be an ideal way of learning its intricacies. It'd be interesting if the games tried to involve themselves in the teaching of the sport more, to expand their audience to the likes of me.

 

There are dozens of us!

Madden was like this. Grabbed the latest version on EA Play and it assumed you knew everything. And I am an NFL veteran

[tnman]

MMOs, CCGs and the like. You know, stuff that's been going on for years. CS:GO, TF2...

 

Destiny, WoW, FFXIV, Hearthstone are all great games but I'll be damned if I can see people joining any of them as a new player these days in what I would call a successful manner.

 

Then there's stuff like League of Legends with toxic as all hell playerbases.

[Nick R]

28 minutes ago, DukeOfEarlsfield said:

And yes, I stuck with beat 'em ups as that's what we called them in the C64 days.

 

I applaud you taking a stand against the creeping Americanisation of game genre names! 

[DukeOfEarlsfield]

10 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

Yet I find hands on play of any sport to be an ideal way of learning its intricacies.

This is an excellent point. The vast majority of physical sports require no knowledge of it beyond the absolute basics for you to start playing and enjoy it. Football = kick the ball at the goal. Cricket/Baseball = wait for somebody to throw a ball at you, hit it with this bat and run, Rugby = get the ball over the line but don't throw it forwards.

 

Everything else you learn whilst doing the fun part.

 

And yet the video game equivalents effectively require you to have internalised the finer strategies and rules for you to even start.

[Plissken]

And that’s before you get to Ultimate Team and all that.

[Qazimod]

Nier Automata is another one. The story (and gameplay) means so much more to people familiar with Gestalt or Replicant, and some people even recommend playing some of the Drakengard games for additional context...  

 

2 hours ago, Kevvy Metal said:

You really do not need to of played the other Persona games to get and understand a Persona game.

 

This is true enough for the mainline series, but even then you have the semi-sequels - P2: Eternal Punishment, P3: The Answer. Games with stories that are direct continuations of earlier games' stories. Long before my LP threads I wanted to take a look at P2 but nearly ended up starting with the "wrong" game...  

[Nick R]

1 hour ago, Fry Crayola said:

As a football fan with over 20 years playing the biggest games, these things are second nature. Coming to NBA 2K20 recently with no background in the sport or the genre of game, I find myself floundering a lot more. I note that while it has a pretty good tutorial for the game, it doesn't at any point explain the rules of basketball. And neither do FIFA or PES.

 

47 minutes ago, DukeOfEarlsfield said:

This is an excellent point. The vast majority of physical sports require no knowledge of it beyond the absolute basics for you to start playing and enjoy it. Football = kick the ball at the goal. Cricket/Baseball = wait for somebody to throw a ball at you, hit it with this bat and run, Rugby = get the ball over the line but don't throw it forwards.

 

Everything else you learn whilst doing the fun part.

 

And yet the video game equivalents effectively require you to have internalised the finer strategies and rules for you to even start.

 

My very first introduction to basketball was Total NBA '96 on the PS1. It was fun and it got me interested in the sport, but I was really confused about what the difference was between the commentators' shouts of "offensive foul" and "defensive foul", and what the rules were about getting free throws. I assumed free throws were the equivalent of a football penalty kick, so I thought it must be related to whether a player was within that painted box around the hoop.

 

Soon afterwards, I played NBA Jam for the first time. Of course that was a lot easier to understand - but it took me a while to figure out why my blocked shots sometimes came up as "goal tending" and awarded points to the opponents.

 

In the end I got a book on basketball out of the library, which taught me the differences between personal fouls, technical fouls and team fouls.

 

I haven't played many post-2000 basketball games (a couple of entries in the 2K series, and that's it), but whenever I've played them I always treated them as arcade games like the '90s ones - I don't think I ever touched the simulation options for things like playbook tactics.

[sir stiff_one]

It’s a weird one. Like why would you try and play a sport when you don’t know the rules? But yeah, they definitely go deep yet can still be can be quite pick up and play, but American sports have HELLA rules. 
 

 

[Fry Crayola]

I picked up NBA 2K20 because it was a couple of quid, really. It's tough to get into, but I'll stick with it longer.

 

I can see why developers expect the knowledge going in - they're not about to spend resources on something most of the audience would find patronising and unnecessary, and there are more than enough books and websites dedicated to gentle introductions and unpicking the finer points. The work, really, is done for them.

 

Still, it's a barrier to entry, in the spirit of the thread. The best path for the uninitiated, I think, is to find the more arcade experiences with simple controls and relaxed rules, and then work from there. 

[Paulando]

9 hours ago, Kevvy Metal said:

From a different perspective - Half-Life : Alyx. 

 

There's a new Half-Life game out! ...and it's highly regarded, and I just have to pretend it doesn't exist because I can not justifying all that expense on a high-end PC and VR set up. 

It’s like the modern equivalent of the six ‘32X CD’ games that required a Mega Drive, a Mega CD, a 32X, and a copy of the game.

[Strafe]

Sekiro, because it’s rock hard*

 

*completed it, mate 

[Dig Dug]

Not strictly a video game but YuGiOh in 2020. Jesus Christ, no set rotation means your card pool is every card released from 2002 up to now.

I’ve been playing it on and off almost my entire life and the power creep, combos, and complexity has begun to reach the point where I can’t stomach it anymore.

I don’t even know how I’d begin with that game if I was a new player.